Page 115 of The Speed of Lightning
He held her gaze, steady and unflinching. “I was asking you to accept me as your husband. To be my wife. To stand at my side through whatever lay ahead.”
Her discordant eyes swept rapidly over his face, her rosy lips parting in disbelief. “You are jesting.”
“Am no’.”
She stared, as if waiting for him to laugh, to turn it into a trick. But he only looked back, every muscle taut, every nerve raw. His heart beat so hard it felt as though it must be visible through his kyrtill.
“You were sixteen, Calum.”
He felt his patience fray. “I was auld enough to know my mind—to know the lass I wanted for the rest of my days. Loathsome father-in-law and all. Are ye saying you wouldnae have accepted me?”
She blinked rapidly, her gaze skittering upward as if the heavens might hold an answer.
His chest burned with pain, the silence between them cutting deeper than words. “You wouldnae have accepted me, then?”
“You wanted to wed me? To take me as your wife all those years ago? Of your own free will? Not out of pity or circumstance?”
Her face contorted, as though the very idea were some foolish impulse of a lad too young to understand what he asked.
His temper flared hotter. “Aye—and you still’ve not said if you would have accepted me. I need to know, Freya.”
She gave a small, frustrated sound. “But it was so long ago…I cannae believe what you’re telling me. It—it changes things. …I am thinking. Am I no’ allowed tae think, MacLean?”
He thought of his blundering question in their bed only days before, and heat rushed to his cheeks. “Well, how much time do ye need, MacSorley? Ye’ve had ten years.” The wordscame sharper than he intended, and he stewed a moment before muttering, almost against his will, “And four months.”
She arched a perfect eyebrow, the silver discs in her hair catching the dim moonlight. “What was that, MacLean? A saucy remark? About the time I’ve kept ye waiting?”
He cringed, running a hand over the back of his neck. “Aye. It was. But I cannae help it, MacSorley. Ye prance about, yer hair all a-swirling, ye make me laugh, ye recite the morning prayer… and it’s all I can do not to carry ye to my bed. I’m fairly going mad with it.”
She blinked heavily, disbelief written across her face.
He pushed past restraint, feeling frustrated, unsure how to talk to her. “I ken—I’ve said a foolish thing, just as I asked a foolish question. But ye might as well ken this agony in my heart for ye. It’s always been here. Always. And it only grows, day by day. If we’re still in this state in six months, I fear I’ll burst into flame like one of your fireballs.”
At this, she broke, a bright, infectious smile consuming her until she shook with laughter.
Embarrassed, he clenched her hand, pressing on toward the cottage, listening to her laughter ripple through the night. After a moment, she began to quiet, squeezing his hand. “I’m sorry. I just find it hard to believe that the likes of you ever considered me as someone you might have courted, let alone married. You were you, Calum MacLean—the lad all the lassies wanted. More braw, more brave than any other in our clan. To me…you were more myth than lad.”
He slowed, realizing he had been dragging her behind him. “I was always lad. No myth.”
“Aye, but I was…me.”
He looked over his shoulder at her. “Aye, you were. And I fancied her.”
She came to a sudden stop, and he jerked forward. “What?”
“But you couldn’t have.”
Her gaze held his, looking at him again as if this were some new revelation, as if she had never picked up on how he felt about her. Their eyes held, and for a heartbeat, everything else fell away—they were alone with the truth that had waited ten years to surface.
Her foxlike eyes stared up at him, drawing him in, calling to him as they had even then.
“I fancied her. Quite a lot.” He drew her closer, running his thumb along the exquisite curve of her jaw. “Her eyes…so wide with observation. As if she knew the world, but the world didnae ken her heart.” He caught the flutter of her heartbeat at her throat, and a tremor of boyhood seized him, pulling him back in time—as though he were a lad daring to declare his heart for the very first time.
“But no one ever looked at me like that, Calum… not in that way.”
“I did. Why’s that so hard to believe?”
She tried to pull her hand from his. Her cheeks flamed and she laughed, high and brittle, repeating herself. “No one… no one looked at me like that. Not like… like it makes your heart leap and your stomach twist…”
