What did she want? Iain’s surprising advice confused her. Had Annie put him up to this? How would she know? Annie would not reveal something Iain held close. Iain all but said she should stay at Brodie. She was certain they would want her to stay with Calum, too. So did she.
Ella feared any decision that would take her to a strange place and a strange man. She belonged at Brodie. With Calum. She could admit that now. To herself, at least.
Calum came through the gate and closed it behind him, then turned and stopped when he saw her.
He just looked at her, and Ella could not interpret the expression on his face. Sadness? Fear? Hope? She couldn’t discern whether it boded well or ill for whatever he intended to say to her.
She studied him in return. He hadn’t changed on the outside. Still the tall, handsome warrior who pursued her once she and Thomas Ross had repudiated each other. Calum did not care about her past. He cared about her. Or she thought he did. Had it all been simply that he wanted her, as a man wants a woman he thinks he cannot have? Lust, not love?
What did she see in his eyes now?
She tried a small smile, hoping he would respond in kind.
He didn’t, but he took a step toward her. “Thank ye for agreeing to meet me, Ella. I ken I have been hard on ye. Unfair, even, in my condemnation of yer actions.”
His voice was soft. Gruff. The pain in his eyes had not abated, and Ella’s body chilled as if ice filled her veins instead of hot blood. What was he leading up to?
“There is so much I need to say to ye,” he continued when she didn’t respond. “To apologize for. To ask ye. I dinna ken where to start, save to say that I ken I hurt ye. I’ve been an arse since I woke up from Harlaw. I felt sorry for myself and let self-pity overtake every other important thing in my life. Including ye. I never meant to hurt ye. And I canna begin to explain to ye how deeply sorry I am.”
He was apologizing. But why? Was he telling her goodbye? Ella fought the twisting pain climbing like a vining rose, thorns scraping from her belly to her chest, and found her voice. “I accept yer apology, Calum.” It was all she could do.
He seemed to relax a wee after she spoke. Perhaps this would not be as bad as she’d feared.
“Ye once told me ye wanted back what we had before I was injured. Can ye accept that I want that, too?”
Heat rose, thawing the ice in her veins and melting some of the thorns twisting in her chest. But she didn’t yet trust where this conversation was going. “I have hoped for that.”
“Am I too late? I ken Iain spoke to ye about yer future. Ours. Mine, too. I treated ye badly. Ella or Janet, both. I like both sides of ye. I want ye to be able to be yerself around me, Ella and Janet combined.”
“Do ye?” Ella straightened her back and met his gaze, drawing strength from within herself. She was tired of waiting for him to get to the point. “Have ye come to this realization only because Iain and Annie have decided to push us toward each other? Are ye begging my forgiveness? Or letting me go with kindness by blessing a possible union between me and another man, as Iain suggested? What doyewant, Calum?”
“I want what we had. And more. I want the future we once hoped to have together.”
He paused and Ella watched him, wide-eyed, not yet sure if she believed what she heard. He sounded like the old Calum, the man she had begun to fall in love with. Before he’d been injured and became angry and impossible. “I have wanted that, too,” she answered, daring to admit that truth despite the risk of what Calum might do with it.
“But I want more than that,” he said. “I want ye to ken how I feel about ye. I want to say to ye the things I never had the courage to say, before now.” He took another step closer. “I was blind. Not my eyes.” He prodded his chest with stiff fingers. “In here. And too proud. And foolish. But I’ve learned my lesson. Aye, Iain and Annie’s meddling opened my eyes, but so did ye. I see ye, Ella Munro. No’ just yer beautiful face. I see the good in ye, I see how ye care for others. I finally see that I canna bear to go through life without ye at my side. I see how much ye love me, no matter how ye try to hide it. But most of all, I see how much I have hurt ye and I regret every moment of pain that I caused ye. And I never want to do that again. I love ye, Ella, more than I ken how to tell ye.”
“Calum…” She’d never imagined she’d hear those words from his lips. She reached out to him, but he didn’t move to take her hand.
“Let me finish, love. I want to show ye how much I love ye. For ye to see that I mean it. To see how much ye mean to me. Ye are everything to me, Ella. I dinna ken how better to tell you than to say I’d rather be blind again that to go through life without ye. I want ye to marry me, lass.”
“Calum!” This time she gasped his name and held up a hand. “Ye would rather be blind? How can ye say something like that after what ye have been through?” And how could she consider, even for a moment, wedding anyone else after he madea declaration like that. With all the rest of what he said. She couldn’t look away from him, overwhelmed by the entreaty in his voice and on his face.
“I say it to make ye understand how real this is. How sincere I am. How much I love ye, Ella. All of ye.”
“I must…I canna…” Her heart was bursting. Not in sadness, but from fullness. It could not contain all the feelings Calum’s surprising admission, his declaration of love and offer of marriage, made her feel. Her heart would shatter, and she’d die right in front of him. She couldn’t let that happen.
Stymied by her own emotions, unable to speak, she turned and blindly ran from him. She thought he followed her, but after a few steps, he stopped. She almost stopped, too, when she reached the garden’s gate, but something drove her on. She needed to think, to get control of herself. To make sure the decision she made was the right one for her—and for him. She would not let herself be forced into anything, not by Iain, and not even by Calum’s heart-rending profession of love for her. But, oh, how sweet his words had been. She couldn’t doubt his sincerity, nor the depth of his feelings. They were everything she had hoped for when she wondered if he knew he could lose her forever.
She stumbled up the steps into the keep and found herself at Muireall’s door before she realized where she was going.
Muireall stood as she stormed in. “Ella?”
Somehow, along the way, she found her voice. “Is Euan here?”
“Nay, he went to the training ground to watch the lads.”
“I dinna ken what to do. Yet I do. Calum has my heart, and I have naught to give to any other man.” She stopped talking, breath sawing from her lungs, in and out.
