Page 64 of The Tartan Trap

Even now, the memory of what he’d said rolled through her like a shiver. When the nights are cold and the mist rolls off the loch, you want a warm, soft woman to hold on to.

Truthfully, those words had kept her up every night since, and not because they disgusted her. On the contrary, she couldn’t decide what fascinated her more—that he’d spoken of marriage so freely, or of holding her.

Still, she couldn’t forget that the man had lied to her about his acquaintance with Daisy. In her more vulnerable moments, Margaret threw the knowledge around her as if it were a shield. Perhaps that was how she was using it—as an excuse not to trust him. She reasoned that a betrayal that one saw coming would naturally hurt far less than one that came out of the blue.

Except, despite all her self-warnings, she was beginning to trust him. If Callum’s lie was a shield for her feelings, that shield was wearing thin. Margaret desperately hoped that there was some good reason he’d lied, something she could easily forgive. At the same time, she gnawed her lower lip with the worry that there was no satisfactory explanation for his duplicity at all.

Margaret was so involved in her thoughts that she didn’t notice the man walking toward her on the path until he was perhaps a dozen yards away. In the end, it was the yapping that made her look up. When she did, she stopped and blinked.

It was Callum, naturally. He seemed to be everywhere she was these days—near St. Alban’s, at every ball, in her parlor. The real surprise was the little white dog prancing along at his side. Margaret frowned and narrowed her eyes.

It almost looked like the dog she’d thrust into Callum’s arms near the orphanage. Only, this dog had fluffy white fur that tufted from the brown sweater it wore, instead of a wiry, brown coat. And this pup only possessed a small hiccup in his gait instead of the hopping limp that the other had.

Callum covered the ground far too quickly for Margaret’s liking, barely giving her time to recover from the start of seeing him unexpectedly. He wore brown trousers topped with a dark green wool coat; Margaret thought she’d never seen a coat quite so handsome.

He pulled his hat from his head and smiled. “Good morning, Margaret.”

“Good morning, Your Grace.”

Callum pressed his lips together at the honorific, but there was a hint of a smile there, as if her renewed refusal to use his first name was a delightful challenge he looked forward to surmounting.

“Who’s this?” she said.

Even as she asked the question, her eyes fixed on the the pup’s foreleg. The dog wasn’t wearing a brown sweater, as she’d initially thought. Instead, he wore a piece of leather with padded straps running around his stomach and over his back.

Margaret squatted in the gravel path in wonder, heedless of her hem. The dog snuffled forward at her outstretched fingers, happily wagging his tail. “Is this…?”

“I named him Albie. I hope that’s okay. He’s a decidedly clever chap; he already responds to his name. Watch this—Albie, sit.”

Albie ignored Callum completely, instead flopping on his back to direct Margaret’s fingers to his stomach. She laughed.

Callum shrugged with a good-natured smile. “Close enough, I suppose. Besides, one can’t blame him for ignoring a fellow when there’s a beautiful lady about.”

Margaret shook her head at his insistence in calling her beautiful, even as she scratched at Albie’s pink stomach. She was delighted to see he had already filled out a bit in his time with Callum. The pup wiggled in ecstacy as she patted his belly with one hand and inspected the leather contraption with her other.

“It took me a long time to figure it out,” Callum said. “At first I didn’t realize the thing would have to wind all the way around him—stupid of me, in retrospect. But the tack maker and I finally got it right, I think. Albie seems to like it, in any case.”

“It’s ingenious,” she said, impressed despite herself. “I can’t believe you found a way to replace his missing leg.”

“Don’t give me too much credit. Pirates really are the ones to thank in this instance,” he said, his eyes twinkling.

She stood. “Pirates?”

“Because of the peg legs.”

Margaret shook her head and looked down at the dog to hide her smile. In these moments, it was hard to remember that Callum had lied about knowing Miss Daisy Knope. She’d given up her greatest fear—that Daisy had somehow urged Callum into courting Margaret to set up one grand, terrible reveal—but she still didn’t understand why he’d denied knowing the lady.

Callum looked up at the cloudless sky. “Looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day.”

Margaret hummed noncommittally, bending to pat little Albie’s fluffy head.

He chuckled. “You sound decidedly unimpressed by the weather.”

She frowned up at him. “Should I be? Impressed, I mean?”

“We have a different view of the sun where I’m from. We treasure every warm ray of it, for sometimes we go long spans without seeing any at all.”

“You came to England to find sunshine?” She exhaled a laugh. “Doubtless you are dreadfully disappointed.”