Frida couldn’t ignore a deep sense of foreboding. “Take Matthew with you,” she ordered, nodding to the guard who had first intercepted Callum.
“Very well.”
With a regal wave of her hand, Mirrie beckoned the three men in through the gates. She and Mathew then led them towards the stables, where two young stableboys waited to take the horses.
Leaving Frida alone with Callum.
He cleared his throat, momentarily looking as discomfited as she felt. But then the shutters came down on his face again.
Enough. They could not stand here staring at one another.
Frida turned on her heel and began walking towards the hall. Callum hurried to catch up with her.
“Your hospitality is greatly appreciated, Lady Frida.”
“Call me Frida,” she said impatiently. “You will find we do not stand on ceremony here, Sir Callum. Nor do we offer such a grand welcome as you are perchance accustomed to.”
“If I am to call you Frida, then you must call me Callum.”
As if driven by the same impulse, they both slowed and glanced at the other. Again, Frida felt a traitorous blush creeping over her cheeks.
“I am a man of simple pleasures,” he muttered. “I expect no grand welcome.”
Frida’s throat tightened. “I am glad to hear it.” She quickened her pace, ignoring the biting pain of her ankle and abandoning any attempts to disguise her limp. She must get inside, away from Callum, as soon as possible. They were approaching the side of the house and chickens scurried from their path. Soon they would be in sight of the big windows of the great hall. Frida thought that she might never again be so pleased to catch a glimpse of Jonah.
But Callum had other ideas, catching at her arm whilst they were still in the shadows.
“Forgive me,” he said, pulling her around to face him. “I mean you no harm.”
Frida tried to pull herself free. “Unhand me then, sir, this instant.”
He did so, his breathing jagged and his stubbled cheeks mottled with red. “’Tis only that I may not get this opportunity again.”
Blood rushed to Frida’s ears. She should walk away, but her feet were rooted to the soft earth beneath her. Mist covered them like a blanket, but Frida was far from cold. She was flushed and anxious and more alive than she had been in years.
Two years, to be exact.
“You are Frida de Neville,” he said, wonderingly. “You are alive.”
This was so close to what Frida had been thinking that a smile chased at her lips.
“I am alive,” she confirmed.
“I thought you were dead.”
His words landed heavily between them. Frida gave a short intake of breath, digesting this.
“I saw you fall from your horse,” he continued, his voice little more than a whisper. “Saw you carried into the castle.” His face creased with pain and Frida fought the compulsion to put a hand to his cheek.
“I did not die,” she said, steadily.
He shook his head as if to dislodge a long-held belief. “I have grieved you.” His dark brown eyes bore into hers.
Frida did her best to keep her memories of that time far away, but now she remembered waking on the third day to find her family in tears of joy. No one, bar her mother, had believed she would survive.
She narrowed her eyes. “Yet you left Wolvesley without waiting to see if I lived or died?”
She should not have said that. It was as good as an admission that she remembered the time they had spent together—and she was not willing to make herself so vulnerable. But Callum did not appear to have noticed.
