They did not ride on the wind, but he kept his mount at a slow trot, enjoying the feel of her against his heart. It had been a long, torturous eternity since he held anyone so close to that sacred place. When he had told her he would die clutching a Campbell heart in his hands, he truly had no idea that heart would be hers. He had not been prepared, and doubted he ever would have been, to hand his heart over to her in return. Aye, he had tried to make her loathe him in order to save her life. For her life meant more to him than his home, his kin, his name. He had no doubt he would give up all for her. But ’twas his soul he had been trying to protect, also. He had lost it once because he loved. To lose it again terrified him. Losing Kate terrified him even more. Along the coastline on which they traveled, frothy whitecaps crashed in a rolling crescendo against the low, jagged cliffs, launching sea spray twenty feet into the air. Kate watched it, thinking how very much Callum was like the ocean, all turbulent and raging and powerful.
