‘I miss many things. But once something is gone, you cannot get it back, Callum.’
‘Like innocence,’ he said.
Callum’s words hit her like a thump. Had he noticed her reluctance, her shutting herself off?
‘Like hope,’ she said, staring into his grey eyes. The light turned them dark blue and compelling, and she was lost in their depths for a moment. Was this handsome stranger really her husband? How could this have happened? They continued the crown in silence until it was finished.
‘Do you prefer him to me?’ he said suddenly.
‘No,’ she said. Callum had taken his time bringing the Lieutenant’s name up. ‘In fact, I don’t esteem Lieutenant Forster at all.’ She twirled a buttercup around in her fingers. ‘You are a far better man than he will ever be, Callum.’ As she said the words, Tara meant every one of them.
Callum took up the crown of buttercups and placed it upon her head. ‘My spring queen,’ he said with a warm smile.
It lit up his face, and Tara’s heart clenched a little. Their eyes locked, and he got that look on his face which mingled need with ferocity. Tara’s heart thudded as Callum pulled her down onto the plaid.
‘Callum, please. We cannot. Someone will see us out here.’
‘No, the grass is long, and there is no one about. I want you to lie down with me,’ he said urgently. He kissed her hungrily, and his tongue invaded her mouth. Tara felt a spark of desire soured with shame, and as Callum’s hands slipped down her bodice and bunched her skirts up around her waist, she stared at the perfect blue sky and braced herself to pretend. She could not let loose those feelings that came upon her when Callum touched her, and Forster’s disgust still echoed in her head.
Within moments, Callum thrust inside her, and Tara turned her head so he would not look in her eyes. In the distance, through the long grass waving in the breeze, she spied movement on the bridge. A company of redcoats was riding across it. They were unseen by Callum, whose head was buried in her neck.
One by one, they crossed the bridge and rode onwards as Callum thrust gently inside her, flattening the grass beneath her back. A surge of pleasure gripped her, making her dig her nails into Callum’s back. But it was overshadowed by sadness. Suddenly, she wanted to run after the soldiers. They were England - her old life, her sense of who she was. It was as if her connection to all that she had once been, her civilised life in Truro, her place in society and all the certainty that came with it, was draining away over that bridge.
Callum grunted his pleasure into her hair and grew inside her, and some madness took hold of Tara. As the last redcoat faded from view, Tara let go of her restraint and was gripped by a throbbing ecstasy so great, it made her cry out. She held on tightly to Callum and squeezed her eyes shut to try and stem her tears, but they slid, hot and wet, down her face into her hair.
Callum eased himself up and stared at her with a shocked look on his face, and it was all too much. Too much feeling. Too much shame. Too much sadness.
‘Get off me. Get off,’ she screamed, pushing Callum away. Tara wriggled out from under him and stood up. She rearranged her bodice and she ran away from him, down to the river’s edge, where she could go no further.
‘Lass, what is amiss?’ he said, following and making as if to take hold of her.
‘No. Do not touch me.’
Callum shook his head and stopped.
‘You do that, Callum - grab me, enter me, whenever you feel like. I am not a thing to be used. I have a heart and a soul, and I feel things.’
‘I…was I too rough, Tara?’ he said, his face a mask of confusion.
‘It is not that you are rough. It is that you do it at all.’ The words sliced into the spring day like knives into flesh. They were out now, and she could not take them back.
Callum’s face fell. ‘Lass, I do not take your meaning.’
‘You…you lie with me as if I have no feelings. As if I am a beast of burden.’
‘But I thought you wanted it.’ He raked his hands through his hair. ‘Why lie with me without complaint if you hate it so much?’
She grappled for something to say, for she could not order her words, and they came out badly. ‘It is what a wife does. And you saved me from a terrible fate. I am grateful so....’
‘Grateful?’ he hissed. ‘Are you saying you lie with me out of gratitude?’
‘Yes, of course. And I know I must, for it is what the law dictates and what you are owed. But I just want you to leave me be once in a while. Can I not have that, just once in a while?’ She trailed off at the stricken look on Callum’s face.
He swallowed hard and raked his fingers through his hair over and over, staring out at the green water sliding by. ‘So this is what you think of me. What a fool I have been - a mindless fool.’ His lip curled to a snarl. When he looked her in the eye, it was as if his desolation matched hers. ‘Fear not, Tara. I will not touch you again.’
‘Callum, please.’
‘You have said your piece, lass, and now I will say mine. I was mistaken in your regard for me. I thought we could…I thought….’ He sighed and looked at his boots. ‘I was wrong in so many ways. How could I have been such a fool as not to see it, lass? I was never going to be good enough, was I?’