Chapter 12
“What did you use?” the healer asked without preamble, her voice slightly muffled behind a surprisingly familiar mask that she wore over the lower half of her face.
It seemed to be made of some kind of canvas, with strings that tied it around the back of her head. A few dark locks of hair spilled out of a headscarf.
This healer clearly knew a thing or two about medical hygiene; she wore white gloves. And her accent wasn’t Scottish, though it carried a lilt, hard to place.
“I used medicine,” Nancy replied. “A… uh… herb I knew about from my mother.”
The last thing she needed was someone else thinking she was a witch, but she couldn’t very well explain modern medicine to a healer from the 1700s, no matter how much this woman seemed to respect hygiene standards. Something that Nancy had assumed didn’t exist until much, much later.
The healer squinted her eyes, as if she wasn’t sure she was hearing things properly. “What herb?”
“I… um… don’t know the name.”
A few creases lined her forehead as she frowned, probably just as confused by Nancy’s lack of a Scottish accent as she was by the healer’s.
“What did it look like?” the healer asked.
Nancy cleared her dry throat, thinking of the Epi-Pen that was likely still buried under Freya’s blankets. “Green,” she rasped, her heart rate skyrocketing. “It was green.”
She couldn’t bring herself to meet the healer’s eyes. As a reformed liar and troublemaker, she’d gotten rusty, no longer at ease with dishonesty. Still, if it spared her from a one-way trip to a stake and a very hot fate, then she’d struggle through.
The trouble was, everywhere she looked, there was another pair of eyes she didn’t want to meet: Isla, who knew everything; Hunter, who knew she was strange but not the full truth, and had just given her the crushing disappointment of a lifetime; Jack, who still had a flicker of wariness in his eyes.
And here I am, just trying to survive in a place I don’t belong.
Hunter’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, though he didn’t say anything about the Epi-Pen that he’d seen with his own eyes. Isla said nothing either, though she must’ve known there was no herb.
The room they were in looked like it once belonged to a resident healer, with several beds arranged in neat rows along each wall. Shelves were stuffed with vials, bottles, jars, books, and scrolls, while dried herbs hung from every available space, the scent an assault on the senses.
The healer came around to Nancy’s side of the bed, where Freya had been placed, tucked up in a nest of pillows and blankets. She looked particularly tiny and so very vulnerable, her partially swollen face making Nancy’s heart ache.
“What’s your name?” the healer asked, tilting her head to the side as if trying to figure out what was wrong with Nancy.
“Nancy,” she replied.
The healer nodded. “What clan do you come from, Nancy?”
“I’m not from Scotland.” Nancy smiled, though she feared she probably looked maniacal.
“Hmm…” The healer crossed her arms over her chest and just stared at Nancy for what felt like an eternity, no doubt seeing every white lie etched on her face.
Clearing her throat again, Nancy gestured to the little girl, who thankfully hadn’t died today. “Is everything all right with the baby, then?”
“Oh, aye, aye!” Isla chimed in, with a hand to her heart. “Lady Gibson said there wasnae much more she had to do after what ye did to help wee Freya. Ye must remember what herb ye used; I daresay it could be useful.”
The healer, apparently a Lady, looked at Isla with such warmth in her almost golden-green eyes.
Astonishingly beautiful eyes, honestly, and though Nancy couldn’t see much of the rest of the woman’s face, she could sense that the healer was wholly beautiful, inside and out.
Being a healer in these times, she would need to be.
“Please, I told you to call me Adeline. Our alliance might be fresh, but I consider all of my allies to be friends,” the healer said.
Nancy felt the entire world around her screech to a halt.
There were coincidences, and then there was whatever the heck this was. Another weirdness to add to the collection. Another clue on a map she was struggling to navigate.
“Adeline?” she squeaked. “Your name is Adeline Gibson?”
The healer chuckled. “No, Gibson is my husband’s title.
It took me a while to get my head around it, too.
” She seemed to smile behind her mask. “I’m Adeline Clark.
Well, Adeline Anderson, technically, but when I’m practicing, I use my maiden name.
I always tell my husband I was the one who did all the studying, the long hours, the hard work, and the exams to get to where I am, so when I’m being a doc—healer, I’m Adeline Clark. ”
The others might not have noticed the little slip-up, but Nancy did. Then again, it didn’t matter much if Adeline had made a little mistake, considering she’d just given her name. The same name that Nancy had been searching for. The same name tied to the apartment in New Jersey.
Nancy grabbed the back of a nearby chair to steady herself. She was on the brink of losing it, her mind trying to decide whether to scream with joy or sit down and sink into the madness of all of this.
The missing woman was here. No wonder there’d been no trace of her in 2026, every lead turning cold. You couldn’t find someone who’d been gone for three hundred years.
Unless…
No, there was no way that this was a pure coincidence. The woman with the surprisingly modern face mask and firm grasp of basic hospital hygiene wasn’t someone who happened to have Adeline’s name and vocation. It was her. There could be no denying it.
Of course, there was still the faintest chance that this was all a dream and Nancy’s dying brain was feeding her a solved mystery in the strangest of ways, but that kiss in the dungeons was too real, too intense for her mind to be able to conjure.
She decided to sit down, pressing her palm to her forehead as her mind swam.
“Are you okay?” Adeline asked, pouring a cup of water from a pitcher. “Don’t worry, it’s filtered.”
Nancy reached out a shaky hand for the cup. “Adeline, do you have any siblings?”
She had to hear it. She knew it already, but she had to hear it for it to be the satisfying conclusion she’d hoped for.
But how am I ever going to write about this? And if she’s stuck here, when she vanished three years ago, then that must mean…
Her heart sank, a wave of dizziness assailing her.
“I have a sister,” Adeline answered in a voice brimming with concern.
“Jane,” Nancy whispered, nodding.
The healer recoiled as if she’d been struck, her golden-green eyes wide to the whites, her mouth clearly hanging open in shock behind her mask. Around them, the other three in the room seemed curious, though Hunter’s gaze burned the brightest.
“I need some fresh air,” Nancy murmured, spilling some of the water as she rose to her feet. “I think I just need some fresh air.”
Adeline caught her by the arm to steady her. “I’ll take you to that private room over there. There’s a door that opens out into the gardens. I can examine you, make sure you weren’t affected by the bee, while you get some of that fresh air in your lungs.”
She began to lead Nancy away, her hand trembling on Nancy’s arm, but Hunter followed. Apparently, that man was determined to ruin all of her soaring moments today.
“No offense to you, Laird Lochlann,” Adeline said, her tone firm, “but this will be a private examination. As you have no affiliation to Nancy that I’m aware of, beyond her being your daughter’s nursemaid, you’ll stay out of the room.
I don’t allow employers to be present when women are being examined. ”
Hunter’s eyes flashed with obvious irritation, but if there was one person who leveled every playing field and had to be heeded by everyone, from a royal to a goatherd, it was a doctor. Particularly a good one, which Adeline seemed to be in this world, just as much as she had been in the future.
He growled and stalked off to tend to his daughter, leaving Adeline and Nancy to slip into the private room and close the door behind them.