Page 112 of The Highlander's Auctioned Hellion
A warm breeze was blowing in from the hills, and the moon could be seen in fits and starts as the clouds whisked across the sky.
Lydia looked up into Callum’s stoic expression; his brow furrowed as he met her gaze.
“Ye are sure ye arenae hurt?” he asked.
Lydia nodded. “I am all right.”
“Come, let us get ye back into the carriage.”
“What has happened?” she asked. “Where are the girls?”
Callum took her hand and began pulling her over the rough ground. “They are safe, they are comin’ back to me castle as we speak.”
Lydia pulled her hand free, and Callum stopped, turning to her in confusion.
“What is it, lass?”
“I am happy for you,” Lydia said quietly. “I am glad that you have the girls back, and I am more grateful than I can say that you came to save me. But that doesn’t change anything between us.”
Callum stepped toward her. “Ye said ye couldnae stay with me because Moira was a threat to the girls. She is nay more a threat, lass, we can be together again.”
“As we were?”
“Aye.”
Lydia’s heart sank. “As a convenient marriage between two people who are barely more than friends?”
“That isnae what we are.”
“Then what are we?” she demanded. “Because as far as I can see, there is nothing keeping me here.”
Callum’s brow furrowed. “Nothin’ keepin’ ye here? And what of the girls, what of the life we live inside our castle walls?”
“A life dictated by you. Your rules, your laws. It is the same as it would be if I were back home with my father.”
Callum took a menacing step toward her. “Dinnae compare me to that English oaf.”
“And why should I not? How are you different?”
The rain was beginning to fall in earnest, soaking through his clothes. His hair was hanging down in front of his eyes, making his cheekbones look all the more defined in the moonlight.
“I have come to take ye back because I want ye with me?—”
“As what?”
Callum’s mouth worked as he blinked the rain from his eyes. “As me wife.”
Lydia nodded. “As I thought. A wife of convenience whom you can bend to your will? That is not enough for me anymore.”
Callum opened his mouth to speak, but she held up a hand, shaking her head.
“I can’t return to your castle, Callum. No matter how much I might wish to. I have grown to love it as much as the lands around it. But that is not all I love.”
Her voice was small and broken as tears welled in her eyes. “I love you. I have grown to love you and those girls more than my own life. I cannot return as we were. Not now.”
She stepped past him, unsure where she was headed in the state she was in, but simply resolved to try to make it back to London by any means she could.
Callum’s big hand gripped her wrist in a vice, and she stopped, looking back at him.
