Trapped with the Devil of the Highlands (Falling for Highland Villains #3)

Chapter 28

CHAPTER 28

“Wait!”

Paisley’s heart leaped hopelessly, her footsteps slowing on the flagstones that had been worn smooth by decades, maybe centuries, of others like her.

Her mind had already resigned itself to the cloisters and the gloomy cell she shared with Cecilia, but her wayward heart, led so astray by Camden, had not yet relinquished control.

Despite herself, despite the cross clenched in her hand, despite the habit she wore, despite her certainty that Camden would never offer the only thing that could keep her in the outside world, she had hoped he would follow her.

After everythin’ we’ve shared, I didnae want it to be so easy.

She turned in time to see Camden running the last stretch to her. Her arms twitched, resisting the urge to open wide to embrace him, to tell him that she could accept whatever he offered. She had more pride and dignity than that.

“Ye willnae change me mind, M’Laird,” she said, careful to use his honorifics. His name was too intimate now.

Camden slowed. “I dinnae plan to.”

“Then… what do ye want?” She prayed he could not hear the note of disappointment in her voice.

He took hold of her hand and brought it to his lips, lifting his gaze to meet hers. “Ye cannae say farewell to me maither. Ye cannae say farewell to anyone.” He let go of her. “I’m sorry, sweetlin’, but there was a plan in place. If ye havenae changed yer part of it, I cannae change me part of it.”

She understood immediately, her heart sinking like a stone, her face heating.

She had once asked him why he was so confident that the council would accept her departure and relent on the idea of marriage, back when she was supposed to be there for the full month.

“Heartbreak, sweetlin’. Terrible, gut-wrenching heartbreak,” had been his answer.

Miss Nunford did not merely have to leave Castle Cairn and the fantasy of its Laird—she had to die.

Paisley Callum would continue to live, but her liberated, wild-spirited, curious alter-ego had to be wiped from memory in the most permanent fashion.

“I’ll inform yer maid, since ye seem to be friendly,” Camden continued. “But me maither—nay, ye cannae say goodbye. Nae in the way ye might want to.”

A lump formed in Paisley’s throat. “But I can say a goodbye?”

“Aye, so long as ye dinnae give yerself away.” He offered a sad smile that pained her. She missed his teasing, wicked grins. “She’ll be havin’ her breakfast now. We’ll go to her and tell her that we’re ridin’ out to the fairy pools. I’ll take care of everythin’ else when I return alone.”

“But… is that nae cruel?” Paisley wheezed, moving to the nearest wall to catch her breath.

“The necessary kind,” Camden replied, glancing up and down the hallway before he carried on. “It would hurt her more to ken that none of it was real. See, she’s long dreamed of me findin’ a love like the one she had with me faither. She only recently gave up on it ever happenin’, when the rumor about me and Kenna started circulatin’ among the council, but seein’ ye and me together has raised her hopes again.”

Clasping a hand to her heaving chest, Paisley looked warily at Camden, realizing she had never thought to ask about his mother and absent father.

“What happened to him?”

Camden sniffed, rubbing his chest as if he had a sudden pain. “The love that so many envied was as bloody foolish as it was enviable,” he said stiffly. “It makes people daft in the head. A laird came here for a gatherin’. I dinnae remember what the occasion was, but the man was drunk and tried to kiss me maither. She smacked him in the mouth, her guards threw him out, and that should’ve been the end of it.”

“It wasnae?”

He shook his head. “Me maither tried to keep it quiet, but one of her guards must’ve said somethin’ to me faither. He was incensed. He rode off to take revenge on the man, ignorin’ me maither’s pleas nae to, and he never came home. Nae alive, anyway. He was sent back on his horse, thrown over the saddle like he was nothin’ but meat.”

Paisley’s eyes widened, a cold sweat prickling down the back of her neck. “And tellin’ yer maither I died is better than the truth?” She stared at him as if he had taken leave of his senses. “Will that nae just dredge up memories of when she lost her husband?”

Paisley already adored Olivia, but hearing such a sad tale made her cherish the older woman even more. How many women could claim to have known a love like that? How many women would remain alone after such a loss, certain that nothing could ever match up again? And for her husband to be lost so senselessly…

I am so very sorry, Olivia. I am sorrier still, kennin’ that I’m about to disappoint ye.

The story, however, had an element of familiarity to it that Paisley could not place. The drunken laird, the attempt at a forced kiss, the rush of guards throwing such a wretch out.

Where have I heard that before?

A memory danced on the edge of her mind, but time had hidden it behind a dense fog.

“Ye have a point there,” Camden said, biting his lip in a way that sent her mind spinning back to the night before—to the glide of his fingers, the roll of his tongue, the way he had made her entire body sing, opening her up to paradise.

I’ll have to leave those memories behind with Miss Nunford, buried deep.

“I’ll tell her somethin’ else,” Camden said with a sigh. “I’ll tell her yer faither came for ye and took ye away, forbiddin’ the marriage, or that ye learned of a betrayal. Aye, maybe that—she’ll believe that.”

His brow furrowed, tension creasing the corners of his eyes as the heel of his palm rubbed firmer circles against his broad chest. His gaze clouded over as if he had wounded himself with his words.

“Aye, we’ll do that,” he muttered. “I’ll tell her ye discovered I’d lain with some other lass and ye couldnae bear the heartbreak, so ye insisted on returnin’ home. Me maither willnae beg me to remedy somethin’ like that. Nay one will look for ye, and I’ll make a fine show of bein’ devastated at destroyin’ me only hope of love that nay one will mention marriage to me again.”

“Just an act, though?” Paisley blurted out, her heart still holding out for a last-minute gesture or confession that might be enough to make her stay.

His smile lacked any emotion, not reaching his dull eyes. “Of course, sweetlin’. As ye already ken, I’m proficient in the art of pretendin’.” He held out his arm to her. “Come on, let’s get ye on yer way.”

Paisley took his proffered arm, her heart feeling heavier in her chest as she understood, without a doubt, that Camden was not going to fight for her to remain. Instead, he was respecting her wishes, as he had done—more or less—from the very start.

I ought to be grateful for that.

Why does nothin’ feel like the right choice?

Even the weather cast a pall over the two figures sharing the saddle of the midnight-black mare, a cold drizzle spitting down that soaked Paisley to the bone. The sun had never managed to emerge from behind the endless gray clouds in the sky, the light muted, making it difficult to gauge the hour.

It could have been half an hour or an entire day since they left Castle Cairn.

“Do ye think she’ll forgive me?” Paisley asked, uncomfortable with the silence.

Camden readjusted the arm that encircled her waist. “Aye, though I dinnae ken whether she’ll forgive me .”

There was a familiar note of humor in his voice, but it was not the same as before. Her choice of clothing and future had shifted the ground between them, creating a distance that she could not close.

She had assumed that venturing away from Castle Cairn would give her the absolute conviction that she had asked the heavens and the snowdrops for, but it still had not come. Her resolve wavered back and forth with each clip-clop of Nyx’s hooves.

Because I havenae yet removed meself from the true cause of me uncertainty.

How could she think clearly when Camden sat right behind her, his chest flush to her shoulders, his arm tight around her waist? How could she steel her resolve when their journey echoed the one that had begun all of this? He had been a stranger then, evoking wariness and unease. He was familiar to her now. Intimately so.

Until she stepped into the convent and he returned to where he belonged, she suspected that her brain and her heart would continue to war with each other.

“Thank ye for lettin’ me say goodbye.” Paisley pulled herself forward on the saddle, determined to make it easier for herself.

Camden let out a laugh. “Do ye still think me such a beast that I wouldnae allow ye that privilege?”

“I never thought ye were a beast.”

“A little beastly, though.” He squeezed her around the middle, his laughter more like it used to be. “A ravenous wolf, hungry for a bite of a wee nun.”

She slapped his arm lightly, unable to contain her smile. “Like I said to ye back then, there are nay wolves in Scotland. Ye’re more of a lamb in a wolf’s clothin’.”

“Och, ye wound me,” he growled close to her ear, pulling her back against him. “Call me a beast, call me a wretch, call me a monster, but never call me a lamb. A wee, bleatin’ fluffy thing? Nay, I cannae have that.”

She chuckled despite the situation and made no attempt to shuffle forward again, deciding to savor what time they had left.

“Ye realize that’ll only make me more likely to call ye ‘lamb,’ do ye nae?” she teased, swaying to the rhythm of Nyx’s slow progress through ancient woodland.

“Just try it,” he warned playfully. “See if I’m as gentle as ye think.”

They fell into a more companionable silence, Paisley leaning against him as he held her. She did not know where she was, or how far away the convent might be, but she was innately aware that this journey would end in that cloistered seclusion. He would not take her off that path now, as he had done before when he took her to Castle Morris.

The forest looked different in the muted daylight. Although the dimmed sun barely pierced the canopy of centuries-old oak trees and slender birches, she could see everything—every leaf that had welcomed its autumn colors, plenty of them already blanketing the forest floor in satisfyingly crisp piles; the squirrels that chased each other around gnarled trunks, the birds that nested in the boughs, cooing their love to each other; and the frosty, earthy air that was greater than any perfume.

“Is it much farther?” Paisley asked thickly.

Camden held her tighter. “Nay. We’ll be there within the hour, before the sun goes down.” He rested his chin on the crown of her head. “Spare a prayer for me, eh?”

“What for?”

He chuckled. “What a question. Do I need a reason to gain one of yer prayers?”

“Well… nay, I suppose nae.”

“Ye still havenae quite learned when I’m teasin’ ye, have ye?” He paused. “Ye ought to spare a prayer for me, havin’ to ride all the way back to Castle Cairn in the dark, on me own. Well, better yet, spare a prayer for anyone who might cross me path at such an hour.”

A block of ice spread its cold fingers across her chest, and she shivered at the thought of what might be lurking in those woods. Wolves? Unlikely. Bears? Perhaps. Men who might harm her or Camden? She did not want to dwell on it, but the man in the glade drifted back into her thoughts, causing her to wonder what might have happened if she had come across him first.

Would he have hurt me? Was I luckier than I thought, findin’ Camden that night?

A dark shape appeared in the back of a hazy memory. Tall as a bear, with a voice like a growling wolf’s, wafting an animal scent that had invaded her nostrils. Old fear gripped her heart in a fist, though she could not remember what she was supposed to be so afraid of.

She leaned further back into Camden’s embrace, grateful to be in the arms of someone who—even now—would protect her, no matter the cost.

“Ye’re shakin’,” Camden said, curling his body around hers.

“It’s just the cold,” she lied, no longer seeing beauty in the ancient forest, but a terror she had forgotten.

In every shadow, she saw that dark shape, willing her mind to dig up whatever had been lost, not realizing that some things deserved to stay buried.