Frida did as she was told, but her hands were still clumsy with cold. Callum came to stand by her side and help. This time, she didn’t push him away with either words or actions. She simply looked up and whispered, “Thank you.”
“I heard her bleating as we reached the hut.” The lamb relaxed against his broad chest, closing her liquid eyes as Callum vigorously rubbed her with the blanket.
“You went out to get her?” Relief sank through Frida like a gulp of warmed wine.
He nodded and a clump of snow fell from his hood onto the wooden floor.
“You must take off your wet things,” Frida declared. It was her turn to issue the instructions.
Callum gave her a wry smile. “Then I would be standing before you wearing very little.”
She turned away so he would not see her blush. “Just your cloak then.” She bustled over to the open cupboard where she had already spied the frayed edges of a second rough blanket.“Here.” She tossed it to him and he caught it neatly with one hand.
“Here you go, little one.” He bent his knees and released the lamb to the ground, where it proceeded to snuffle around and explore.
“You’re a good man,” Frida said, suddenly.
He paused in the act of wrapping himself in the blanket. Their eyes met and the moment stretched between them.
“I do remember you,” she added, the words coming in a rush. “From Wolvesley.”
“You do?” His voice was faint with surprise.
“Aye.” She was determined to confess it all. “I knew you from the moment you arrived here. I had never forgotten you.” Her words reverberated around the thin walls of the wooden hut.
Callum stilled again. “Nor I you,” he said, throatily. His tousled hair was dripping with melted snow but he hardly seemed to notice. “Why did you pretend otherwise?”
“’Tis difficult to explain.” Frida paused, uncertain how to express the truth of her heart that she had kept barricaded for so long. “That morning, when I fell.” Their gazes locked together and she could not look away. “I should not have ridden out in those conditions. My horse was young and unsteady. But I did it anyway. Because I was trying to impress you.”
There, she had said it. The foolish, painful truth.
Callum opened and closed his mouth. “I was already impressed.”
“You shouldn’t have been,” Frida relied steadily, resolved to say it all. “I was a careless child. My attention was on you, not my young horse. That’s why he fell. That’s why I hit my head and shattered my ankle.”
She stood taller and prouder now that she had declared herself. Callum looked like a man frozen by shock. His dark eyesbore into her but his body never moved. It was almost as if he had stopped breathing altogether.
She plunged on, the words falling more freely from her lips as if she had broken through the barricades. “I was ashamed. I thought I had to live my life along different rules as some kind of punishment, to ensure I was ne’er so foolish again. But then you came back to me and everything changed.”
Without giving herself chance to pause and reconsider, Frida walked forwards and lifted her lips to his.
Chapter Fourteen
It took littlemore than a second for Callum to truly understand what his body so readily accepted: Frida de Neville was standing in his arms and kissing him.
And nothing in his whole life leading up to that moment had ever felt so good.
He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer and claiming her mouth with his own. Her lips were warm and soft; the lavender fragrance of her damp hair overwhelmed the bitter scent of the sputtering tallow candles.
“Frida,” he said, cupping her cheeks and gazing down into her blue eyes.
I remember you, she had said.I’ve never forgotten you.
The deep connection he had always felt, shimmering between them, was real. He hadn’t imagined it. Nor was it one-sided fancy on his part. His heart filled with happiness even as desire, profound and primitive, stirred his blood.
“Callum.”
On her lips, his name was a caress. It hadn’t been spoken so tenderly since his mother’s untimely death.
