CHAPTER 11
Calum couldn’t fathom how long it took for Iain’s conversation with Ella to get back to him. Mhairi pulled no punches when she told him about it. “Dinna blame me,” she complained. “I just found out today. Ella kept it to herself while she thought about what Iain told her.”
“For a ten-day?”
“Apparently. Ye ken she’s a deep one.”
“Did she say whether she’d decided anything?”
“Ye are a fool, Calum. She’s waiting for ye. She’s waited for ye for nigh on a year. How long do ye think ye can treat her like this?” She didn’t hide her disgust, but Calum suspected her dismay had as much to do with the idea of Ella marrying away from Brodie so that Mhairi lost her assistant and prospective apprentice as it did with Calum’s failures.
And as for Iain and probably Annie, too, they were meddling where they were not welcome. He needed to tell them so. Iain, anyway. He could tell his wife. Calum would be happy to leave that unpleasant chore to him.
Calum left Mhairi and went straight to Iain’s solar.
“I canna believe ye would offer Ella a betrothal to someone else,” Calum raged at him after he stormed in and closed the door behind him, still smarting from hearing the news.
“Who told ye that?”
“Mhairi, when I saw her a few minutes ago about my eye. She said ye told Ella she had choices, and that she might be in a position to decide her future soon. With someone else. Another clan. When ye posed this to me, ye didna also tell me ye were going to plant this poisonous seed in Ella’s mind. Damn it, do ye want her to leave? I thought ye understood that I want her—when she’s ready.”
“I spoke to ye nearly a fortnight past,” Iain reminded him, not backing down. “What have ye done since then?”
He waited while Calum sputtered, fighting for something to say to absolve himself, but nothing came out.
“Calum, there are many men interested in a lass as lovely and kind as Ella. Honorable men, who would treat her well. Surely there are several who would care for her—even love her—for her whole life. Such a match would be good for both of them. Or for both of ye.”
Calum groaned at that. “Ye ken I care for her. And ye ken how shy she is around strangers. Do ye seriously expect her to accept as another husband a man she doesna ken?”
“She kens many good men. No’ well. No’ as well as she kens ye, for instance.”
How serious was Iain about this? And how soon? “Who are ye thinking about?”
“I willna tell ye, no’ with ye in this frame of mind. Ye’ll run off and start a clan war.”
“Give me a little credit, Iain.”
“If ye are so fashed about this, why have ye no’ offered for her yerself?”
“I told ye before, I was giving her time…”
“Ye’ve given her long enough. And by dragging this out for a year, treating her as ye have since ye were hurt, ye ken fine that ye’ve hurt her, perhaps worse than Thomas Ross ever did.”
That stung. And the blade bit deep. But Iain was right. He’d been a fool. A proud and stupid fool.
“I have a claim on her. Unspoken, aye, but what I feel for her is…between us.” And now he even sounded like a fool. But he hadn’t admitted to himself what he felt for Ella. He certainly would not tell Iain.
Iain grinned and waved toward the door, a clear invitation for Calum to leave. “Then ye must convince her, no’ me.”
Could he? He hadn’t done so well in his last conversations with her. If he meant to repair the damage Iain pointed out, correctly, that he’d done, he was going to have to impress her. But how?
Ella waited impatientlyin the keep’s garden, pacing among the roses she hadn’t the wit to stop to enjoy. She was distantly aware of the cloud of scent around her, something she would normally savor, but Calum’s request, delivered by Muireall, that she meet him here had set her pulse to racing and her mind to spinning. Her friend would not tell her what he wanted. Perhaps she could not because Calum had not told her, but simply requested she deliver his message. Muireall would have done so without question, knowing Ella’s feelings for the man, and hoping as Muireall always did, for something good to come from his unusual request.
But what would she consider a good outcome? Had he learned from Mhairi or Muireall that Iain spoke to her much asshe knew he’d already spoken to Calum? Was that why he was eager to speak to her in the relative privacy of the walled garden?
At one time she thought Calum the only man who would ever make her happy in this life. But much had changed. And not enough had changed.
Or had it?
