Page 10 of When a Scot Gives His Heart
He didn’t respond. There was no way he could without starting a quarrel. His mother was wrong; yet, in her heart, she believed she was right. He had no notion why she had mentioned Marsaili, unless she sensed him brooding the past couple of days—or more likely if Brice had said something to her about it. Brice had a problem holding his tongue. For Callum’s part, he rarely talked of Marsaili, and when he did, it was never to his mother. He had loved the woman. In truth, Marsaili was the only woman he had ever loved—wouldever love—but she had left this world and was never returning. And as laird, he had an obligation to marry Coira for the well-being of his clan. Besides, he had to atone for choosing his heart’s desire over the good of his people the last time around.
“Callum, we should make our way down,” his mother said.
He wasn’t ready. He wanted another moment, just one, before he walked to the shore and put his past behind him for good.
Brice’s shrewd blue gaze seemed to register Callum’s unspoken thoughts. “We’ll join ye shortly, Mother. Callum wanted to instruct me on which men to have guard his future wife while she is here for the tourney.”
“I hope that is all,” his mother said, giving Callum a pleading look.
“Dunnae fash yerself. Iwillmarry the lass when the time comes.”
She nodded, causing once-shiny black strands of hair, now dulled by age, to slip from behind her ear. She twisted the locks around her finger. “I’m nae fashed,” she replied, her lips puckering for a moment. “I ken ye realize that if ye had nae broken yer first vow to Edina, yer father would still be alive and we would nae be in such dire need.”
“It amazes me how ye always manage to fit that reminder into conversation several times a day,” Brice quipped.
Callum held up a silencing hand to his brother and looked to their mother. “All will be fine,” he said, willing it to be so.
“Ye will follow?” she persisted.
He nodded. “I’ll be at the shore before their birlinn reaches it.”
She offered a triumphant smile before walking away and disappearing down the slope.
“Ye ken,” Brice said, “she has convinced herself ye will fall under Coira’s spell.”
“Does Coira have a spell for me to fall under?” Callum asked, eyeing his brother.
Brice scowled. “How should I ken? She is yer future wife.”
“Aye, but ye just said—”
“I simply referred to her beauty,” Brice interrupted, red-faced.
“Ye always have had an eye for the lovely lasses, but a pretty face will nae make me forget my past.”
“Ye talk as if ye dunnae like Coira. Do ye believe her a bad person? She is simply tart-tongued.”
Callum chuckled, recalling Coira once flaying Brice for flirting openly with her maid when they had visited her home.Tart-tonguedwas putting Coira Ainsworth’s disposition in a kind light. Still, he understood why she likely behaved as she did. “I dunnae believe she is a bad person, Brother. She is but a game piece moved on a board by her father, and she dunnae care for it. I can hardly berate her for feeling what I myself felt about wedding Edina.”
“Och,” Brice growled. “It infuriates me how ye are accepting this fate.”
Callum smiled at his brother. Being younger had offered Brice a certain freedom that Callum had never had, though he briefly had tried to take it and failed. He was not fated to choose his wife; he had to marry for duty. It was not how he had wanted it—truly, he’d done his best to avoid it—but it was the way of it. Coira had told him she did not wish to wed him, either, because in him, she saw a man who would never love her. And she had been right. He had been unable to deny it, so he could not begrudge the cold way she treated him.
“Ye dunnae have to marry her, Callum,” Brice said.
“Ye ken I do,” Callum replied. A bird soaring through the air caught his attention, and he was struck with a very clear memory of something Marsaili had said not long after he had met her. She had been sitting by the water’s edge, staring up at a bird in the sky with a wistful expression on her face, and said,I wish I could fly away as birds do.
That was how he felt in this moment.
“A pretty face may nae make ye forget the Campbell lass,” Brice said, shifting beside Callum, “but it can make the joining more pleasant.”
“We will join only once, to seal the marriage.”
Brice gaped at Callum. “Ye kinnae mean that. Ye’re nae a monk, Brother. And ye need an heir. What if ye dunnae get her with child during that one joining?”
“She kinnae have bairns,” Callum said, revealing to his brother something he had not told anyone else, including their mother.
Brice’s eyes widened. “How can she ken this?”
