Her words shocked him, for he only meant to admire her.‘There is no fault to find. You are perfect,’he wanted to say, but the words stuck in his throat.
‘It is impertinent,’ she continued, crushing his pride to dust and making him feel small.
‘A thousand pardons,’ said Callum. His face grew hot, and he looked down at his boots. ‘I will trouble you no more,’ he snarled, ‘and I meant no offence.’
As he turned away, she called out, ‘Please, Laird Ross. There is no offence taken. Forgive my ill temper.’
Callum turned back around. Tara cast a quick glance at Mistress Shaw and came closer. ‘It is I who am impertinent. I am grateful for your help on the road that day. It is just the mention of my mother makes me sad, is all. It has been two years since she passed, and I still miss her terribly, you see. And I…it is just that I am a stranger here, and I seem to have committed a capital offence by being English, to boot. People look at me, and not always in a friendly way. So I hate people staring and questioning. It is as though they are trying to find fault.’
‘It is not that,’ said Callum, shaking his head. ‘They cannot help but stare because…well…your face is perfection. And I, too, am struck dumb by your beauty.’
‘Please don’t,’ she replied, lowering her eyes. ‘Flattery only leads to vanity, or so Mistress Shaw says.’ Tara’s thick golden lashes fluttered like little butterflies, and her cheeks flushed with blood. Callum wanted to kiss her, in anger or tenderness, he knew not which.
‘You think I am insincere, that I am just flattering you, Miss Hennaut?’ he spat.
‘From any male acquaintance back in Truro, I would have thought such a thing.’
Male acquaintance? What did she mean? Did she have hoards of men throwing themselves at her and him but one more slavering admirer? The wind gusted, pressing her skirts against her legs, highlighting the contours of her lithe, slim body.
Tara continued, her eyes not leaving his. ‘You Scots seem very direct and speak as you find.’
‘We do.’
‘So perhaps not flattery, then.’
‘My regard is sincere,’ said Callum. She bit her lip again, even white teeth sinking into lush, pink flesh. Callum’s loins flooded with heat, and a reckless passion rose up in his breast. ‘I would add that I have never seen such a bonnie sight as you before, in all the Highlands and in all of my life,’ he said in a rush.
She looked down. ‘You should not say such things.’
‘Why not, if I think them?’
‘Because it will make me prideful, and pride is a sin. Mistress Shaw says it is the devil’s work, a pretty face, for it leads to sin and damnation.’
‘What?’ he said, with an incredulous laugh.
Tara smiled a little and shrugged. ‘That is what Mistress Shaw says.’
Callum rolled his eyes. ‘Aye, well, if beauty is the work of the Devil, then she is certainly without sin,’ said Callum.
Tara’s mouth fell open, and she put a palm up to cover it. ‘That is not very charitable, Laird Ross, and at the church door too.’
‘We call it a kirk in Scotland,’ he said, leaning in. Then he shrugged his shoulders and favoured her with a smile. ‘As a Scot, remember, I speak as I find, Miss Hennaut.’ He moved a step closer, for he could not help it. ‘Lass, beware of taking all of Mistress Shaw’s moralising to heart. She has a reputation as a lady who likes to be seen as charitable, but whether she truly is, in her heart, remains to be seen.’
Tara frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Tara Hennaut! What do you think you are doing conversing with a man in broad daylight?’ The despicable Mistress Shaw bustled over. ‘What would your uncle say, child?’
‘There’s no harm done,’ said Callum wanting to throttle the interfering old hag. ‘We were just talking, is all.’
‘Talking, was it, Laird Ross? Do you not have business to be about rather than keeping this poor lass standing out in this tempest to catch her death?’
Before he could utter a scathing reply, Mistress Shaw grasped Tara’s hand in her bony one and dragged her away into the kirk. The lass gave him a pained smile at the doorway and then disappeared into the gloom.
Callum mounted his horse and rode off down the hillside. His skin prickled at the cold, but his heart was on fire. He had spoken but a few words to the lass, not much, but it was a start. He rolled their encounter over and over in his head on his journey home, unpicking every look, every tone, every word of Tara’s conversation.
Callum stopped at the head of a glen to stare out at the vast brown moors stretching to the yawning sky. In his turmoil of feelings, he was sure of only one thing. Tara Hennaut was too fine for him. She barely noticed his existence. She was beyond anything he could hope for in his life and utterly beyond his reach.
And yet Tara Hennaut held his heart in the palm of her hand, and she did not even know it. She could never know it. There was nothing else for it. He would have to steer clear of the lass, or he would know no peace.