7. Chapter 7

There he was.

His feet stomping. His arms swinging long, the set of his wide shoulders heaving.

Heaving in anger, if she were to take an educated guess.

It only took Callum a good five hours to find her.

He looked like the harbinger of death again. Death sweeping across the land, dusk settling behind him as darkness took over the earth.

A sight she wasn't sure she liked or not, for if that raging ball of fury was the fury currently protecting her, she felt safer than she ever had in her life. She just didn't care for how it was currently directed her way.

Bracing herself, she poked at the logs in the wide firepit in front of her at the head of the large brick-lined pond in the middle of the expansive gardens. The wooden poking stick in her hands nearly the height of her, she stuck the blackened point of it into the fire, shifting a log along the edge so it would catch better flame.

"Where the hell have you been?" Callum's growl reached her well before he was near her.

She looked from the fire to him, watching in silence as he stomped the rest of the way toward her.

He pulled up, his breath heaving. "Where in the hell have you been?"

"Around."

"Around?" Snarling, his right hand ran through his dark brown hair, pulling at the strands. "That isn't an answer, Miss Wheldon."

She looked to the fire, poking the stick into the embers, sending sparks flying to drift up into the sky. "You need to call me Nemity."

"I don't need to do anything." His look pinned her. "Where were you?"

"I answer my friends. I don't answer strangers."

He hissed out an exaggerated sigh. "Do tell me where you have been, Nemity. You've been gone from the house for hours after you sneaked out behind my back."

"I did no sneaking. I quite properly walked out the eastern door of the house." Her head fell back, her gaze on the darkening blue-grey sky. "Is it so wrong to want just a moment to myself to breathe properly? I went for a walk."

"A moment isn't hours. You also could have told me exactly where you were going so I wouldn't have spent the last five hours searching every damn place for you."

She dropped her gaze to him. "Well then, success. You found me. Well done."

"You're being a spoiled brat."

A smile went wide on her face. That wasn't the worst thing she'd been called in her day. "Am I?"

"Bloody boorish insolent woman," he spit out through gnashed teeth and spun away.

He took three steps before she called out. "Cal—Callum. My apologies. Please stay. A fire by one's lonesome is…well…lonesome."

He stopped, his right hand curling into a fist and uncurling. It looked like it took monumental restraint to not take another step away, and then his feet crept around, his body following suit. He looked at her, his glare at her in no way mitigated.

"Please?" Her eyebrows lifted, pleading. "Keep me company. I shouldn't be out here in the gardens by myself. You never know who will come along."

Obnoxious abuse of the situation, but she didn't care.

His eyes went to slits on her, knowing full well what she was doing, but he let her get away with it.

He took a step back toward the opposite side of the fire from her and threaded his arms across his chest.

Animosity rolling off of him, he refused to look at her, his gaze scanning the surrounding landscape—along the tall evergreen hedges bordering the gardens, to the many formal raised squares of various flowers, to the allée of cherry trees, and then down the length of the long, rectangular man-made pool lined with heavy limestone blocks to keep the water in. The center grand pool was raised, a holding pond providing the necessary water for the many plant beds coming from this main source.

His eyes never stopped moving, looking for danger in every corner, in every shadow.

She watched him across the fire for several full minutes in silence. In the dark, she had to admit he was even more handsome. The dark shadows hid the animosity that usually lined his face when he was dealing with her.

She was beginning to understand he didn't want to be here at Springfell any more than she wanted him to be here—that much was evident on the sour look always lining his eyes.

But in the dark, those hostile lines smoothed away, and he looked almost young, almost innocent. Odd, for how big he was, that he could still possess a shred of innocence.

She stuck the sharp point of her stick in the ground, her right palm wrapping around the top of it as she leaned her temple to rest on her hand. "You are taking this guarding job seriously, aren't you?"

His look finally peeled off their surroundings and settled on her. "As seriously as you should be taking your own safety. Seriously enough to want to wring your neck."

She guffawed. "That wouldn't exactly be protecting me, then, would it? You becoming the exact thing you're trying to protect me from."

He seethed a breath, his top lip curling as his head shook. "Woman, how many men have you sent to bedlam?"

She laughed, the sound echoing into the night. "Only one."

"You are serious?"

Her laughter died and she shrugged. "He was only in the asylum for a short while. And I really couldn't be blamed for it, though his mother tried to place the fault solely on me. He was unstable as it was, long before I met him. Charley will verify that fact. But that was my first scandal in London. Certainly not the last."

His eyebrows cocked. "You left a trail of broken hearts in London?"

"I don't know about hearts, but broken coin purses, yes. I don't ask, don't encourage gifts, yet some men will gamble their last desperate coins on silly baubles that they think will impress me. Why, I have no idea. Nor, I learned, could I control it."

"Men will gamble on things they think they can win."

"They wouldn't have to gamble if they just asked my opinion on the matter." She shook her head. "Then they would have known I wasn't about to marry them. That message should have preceded my entry into society—wealthy heiress, not looking for a husband."

"Plenty of men would still play those odds."

"Then that was their problem, not mine."

He nodded. "I imagine it was."

His countenance relaxed slightly, his legs shifting as he widened his stance. He pointed toward the fire. "At least it was easy to find you once this was lit."

She smiled, looking at the pool next to the fire to watch the reflection of the tall flames dance across the ripples of the water with the slight breeze. "I do love evenings like this, when it isn't too cold or damp and the fire keeps me the perfect temperature."

"You like to be outside, don't you?"

"I do." She flipped her fingers back toward the manor house. "Truly, Springfell is a lost cause on someone like me. Some people would go in there and never want to leave. While I cannot wait to get outside the walls every day. But that has nothing to do with how grand the house is."

He glanced up the gardens toward the house, considering it. "It echoes lonely, I would imagine."

"It does. But that's not the manor's fault. It was meant for grander things than me living here by myself."

"And a staff of eight."

A chuckle bubbled up past her lips. "Yes, they do make it less lonely."

She looked over her shoulder at the house. The high torches lining the gravel pathways were already blazing in the dark air. "The manor was built over the medieval castle of Lord Oppler. The castle was crumbling a hundred years ago, when they tore the stones down and built Springfell."

Turning back toward the fire, she pointed to the rectangular raised pond next to it. "They used the stones to build the pond. And this, the fire pit, the gardens were designed with this as the center. It's one of the same fire pits that they used hundreds of years ago when tournaments were held here and knights roamed the land."

He moved a step closer to her. "Knights had tournaments here?"

"Aye. Or so goes the history that was passed down to me." Turning toward the fire, she leaned on the long stick in her hand. "Mr. Youngstrom usually starts a fire for me, he knows how much I like them."

Callum looked about. "Where is he?"

"He went to bed when he saw you storm into the stables. His broken arm was aching. He figured I'd be in safe company soon enough."

His mouth pulled to a tight line. "Did he know your whereabouts today?"

She shrugged. "He usually doesn't keep track of my whereabouts, nor would I expect him to do so. He has been more vigilant since the incident, though. Why, did you ask him?"

"I did. And he mumbled something about you being on the estate."

"Not much help, then?"

"Far from it. And I think you know that."

She lifted her shoulders. She may have asked Mr. Youngstrom to be evasive with Callum, and Mr. Youngstrom was nothing if not loyal to her. He'd been stablemaster here at Springfell since before she was born.

She flicked a finger out at him. "You mentioned your background in the army—what did you do in it?"

"I went where I was needed. Fought, of course." His voice dropped slightly, slowed. Barely noticeable, but it was there. "I observed and reported. I investigated. That's why your cousin wanted me in particular to come here and not only protect you, but to help discover who would have attacked you."

She eyed him, attempting to decipher what he wasn't saying. "Were you a spy?"

His right cheek pulled back in a strained smile. "I did what I did."

Her left fingers went to her chin, tapping as she stared at him. He could be just as cagey as she was. "Were you always known as Callum Lonstrick, soldier, at these mysterious, various locations?"

His look swung to her, staring her down.

She smiled.

His eyes lifted upward and he shook his head. "No. Sometimes I was a coachman. A footman. A gamekeeper. A sailor. I did whatever was necessary to blend in."

She nodded, staring at him, trying to read his impossibly hard-to-crack fa?ade. "I imagine you played all those parts well. Even with your size drawing attention. You've been here for a few days and I still don't know a thing about you. Were you good at it?"

"Yes. People see what they want to see." His gaze sank into her, pointedly.

She laughed. "Yes, your huge, thick fingers are capable of grasping tiny slivers from a foot. I think we established that."

He chuckled and the low sound rumbled effortlessly from him, making her own chest vibrate with the sound. A warmth she wasn't expecting came with his laughter, filling her lungs.

The grin didn't leave his face as his eyes locked on hers. "Just as long as you know how capable my fingers are."

Well…hell.

Was he flirting with her?

He was here to protect her.

Thomas hadn't said one word about Callum trying to charm her into marriage. Though Thomas wouldn't confess to such a thing. Even if he wanted her married and out of his hair more than anything.

Hell, Thomas could have been the one to send those men to kidnap her, just so he could contrive this very situation.

She pinned Callum with a look. "What are you really here at Springfell for?"

His bottom lip jutted upward. "What do you mean? I'm here to protect you."

"No other reason?"

"What other reason would there be?"

"Thomas didn't send you here to seduce me? To trap me into marriage?" She lifted the stick and jabbed it into the ground by her feet. "For if he believes a little tryst with you is enough to trap me into marriage, he has another thing coming. Clandestine trysts have never forced me into anything. I'm even more careful about them than actual marriage."

Callum coughed, his eyes going wide. "You partake in clandestine trysts?"

Her hand flew up at her side. "No. Not at the moment. But I have. I am a spinster, after all. No proper mama of a lord looking for a respectable rich wife would now let me anywhere near her son. Which means I am currently in the position where getting caught with any of those men in a compromising situation would be enthusiastically overlooked."

"You choose to have trysts with men that will marry for money and are honor-bound to please their mothers?"

Her mouth pulled to the side. This sounded like a trap. "Maybe."

He moved closer, leaning past her to take the long stick out of her hands and he stuck it into the fire, rolling a log that was close to breaking and tumbling out of the fire onto her foot. "It sounds like you're partial to picking fairly boring gentlemen—ones that are still hiding in their mother's apron strings."

Her jaw dropped and she swatted his arm. "You don't know a thing about the men I've enjoyed company with."

He jabbed the stick into the ground and rested his elbow atop of it, looking at her. "Your description just told me anything I ever needed to know about any of them."

"Yes? And what is that?"

"That they probably didn't know what to do with you. You are a lot, Nemity Wheldon, and not for the faint of heart." His chest expanded in a deep breath, and he leaned closer to her, his voice dropping into a low rumble. "I imagine they didn't know how to make your heart thunder. Didn't know how to make your skin prickle under their touch. Didn't know how to kiss you properly enough that it swept you into a dumbfounded state of mind. Didn't know how to slip a hand down your body so slowly, it sparked every single one of your nerves alive."

She'd leaned towards him, her lips parted, her breath quickening on its own accord. "And what would you know of what those men did or did not do to me?"

He met her gaze, and the heat in his grey eyes nearly stole all the breath from her lungs. "You like to argue with me, so I know if any of them had had that effect on you, you would already be defending them. You aren't. You didn't even interrupt me, and you do love to do that. Am I wrong?"

She held his gaze for a long moment before she broke.

Broke, because he wasn't wrong. Most men didn't have a clue what to do with her.

But she would never admit that to him. So instead she did the only thing she could.

She inclined her head to him. "Good eve, Callum."

She spun and stepped around his body, stiffly walking up the expanse to the manor house.

Never once did she dare to turn around and look at him, for she wasn't sure what she would do in that moment.

Bait him some more? Probably, it was too much fun not to.

Touch his arm, flirt? Most likely.

Kiss him? Almost definitely.

None of that would do.

She chewed her lip as she walked, all of her nerves on fire for exactly what she knew he could deliver. It took her long seconds before she shook her head to herself.

No.

She wouldn't go there. Not with him. Not with someone Thomas stuck in front of her when he only wanted to auction her off.

Callum was far more dangerous than she first deemed him to be.

She needed to get rid of him before this whole debacle of protecting her took a turn she couldn't afford.