Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
Dawson woke to firelight and the smell of dried herbs.
For a confused moment, he thought he was in the eco-lodge in Costa Rica, or maybe the cabin he’d rented in Norway last winter.
Then the details sorted themselves—stone walls instead of timber, bundles of plants hanging from low rafters, the soft crackle of a fire in a small hearth.
The air was thick with scents he couldn’t quite place.
Something sharp and green, something sweet, something that reminded him of the tea his grandmother used to make.
He sat up. Pain lanced through his skull, sharp enough to make him wince.
“Easy.” A woman’s voice filled his ears, cool and composed. “You’ve been unconscious for hours.”
Dawson turned his head carefully. The woman from the beach sat on a stool beside him, her expression unreadable.
In the firelight, she was striking—dark auburn hair pulled back in a simple braid, pale skin, and gray eyes that studied him with the detachment of a naturalist examining an interesting beetle.
No. Not detachment. He looked closer and saw something else beneath the careful blankness. Wariness. The kind that came from expecting disappointment.
His gaze drifted past her to the small hearth, where fabric hung on a wooden frame, steaming gently as it dried.
The Campbell plaid. Green and blue with fine lines of black and yellow—the tartan Fletcher had given him, the one he’d been wearing when he rode out on Bridie.
It looked incongruous against the rough stone, a splash of color amid the dried herbs and clay jars.
“Elspeth,” he said, the name surfacing from memory. “You helped me off the beach.”
“I did.” She reached for a clay mug on the floor beside her, and he found himself watching her hands—long-fingered, capable, with small scars across the knuckles that spoke of years of work with sharp things. “Drink this.”
He took the mug. The liquid inside was warm and bitter, tasting of herbs he couldn’t name. He drank it, both because his throat felt like sandpaper and because something in her tone suggested refusal wasn’t an option.
“Where am I?” He glanced around the small room—shelves lined with jars and bottles, a worktable covered with mortar and pestle, bundles of dried plants hanging everywhere. It looked like an apothecary from a history book.
“The stillroom. At Bronmuir Keep.”
“And that’s...?” It couldn’t be that old ruin he’d seen on his ride, because that heap of stones didn’t have a roof. “Is this part of the retreat? Did Fletcher send someone to find me?”
Elspeth’s brow furrowed slightly. “Fletcher?”
“My instructor. At the sword fighting retreat.” Dawson tried to push himself more upright, ignoring the way his head swam. “Big guy, former Royal Marine, runs the Highland Warriors program. He must have sent someone when I didn’t come back—maybe one of the locals took me in?”
The confusion in her eyes deepened into something else. Something that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
“I do not know anyone named Fletcher,” she said slowly. “And there is no... retreat. You washed up on the shore. I found you half-frozen, clutching your sword, with burns across your hands that look like lightning.” Her gaze flicked to the plaid drying by the fire. “Wearing Campbell colors.”
The way she said it made his stomach tighten. “Is that a problem?”
“On MacLeod lands?” Her laugh was short and humorless. “After Glencoe? Aye, ’tis a problem. The clan is already asking questions about a stranger who washed up from the sea wearing the tartan of murderers.”
Dawson’s mind raced as he tried to remember what he knew about Scottish history. Glencoe. The massacre. Why would that matter now?
He stopped cold as time travel movies flashed through his brain.
“I’m not a Campbell,” he said, pushing the thought away. “The plaid was—it was given to me. I didn’t know—”
“I believe you.” Elspeth’s voice was flat. “But others will not be so easily convinced. Connor has vouched for you, for now. But you would do well to find something else to wear.”
Dawson looked down at his palms. There were marks there, branching patterns like red ferns traced across his skin. Lichtenberg figures, his rational mind supplied. The signature of lightning strikes. He’d seen photos of them before, on survivors who’d been struck and lived to tell the tale.
The storm. That damned sword. And the woman who had appeared from nowhere, speaking words that made no sense.
It wasn’t real, he told himself firmly. Lightning does strange things to the brain. Hallucinations. Confusion. That’s all this is.
“How long was I out there?” he asked, keeping his voice level. “Someone from the village must have seen the storm, called for help—”
“No one called for anything. I walk along the shore each morning. I found you by chance.” Elspeth’s tone remained calm, but something flickered in her eyes. “Bronmuir Keep is home to Clan MacLeod. It’s as close to a home as you’re likely to find tonight.”
Dawson looked around the stillroom more carefully, cataloguing details he’d missed before.
No electrical outlets. No light switches.
The fire in the hearth was the only source of warmth, and the candles on the worktable provided the only light beyond it.
Everything looked handmade, worn, ancient in a way that went beyond aesthetic choice.
Immersive historical experience, he reasoned. Some extreme reenactment group that took authenticity seriously. They probably have phones somewhere, electricity in another building. I just need to find the right person to ask.
“What day is it?” he asked, keeping his voice casual.
“The sixteenth of February.”
That tracked. He’d arrived in Scotland on December fifteenth. If he’d been unconscious for a while, lost some time to the storm and whatever medical treatment they’d given him—
He didn’t know what made him ask as the words fell from his mouth before he could stop them. “And the year?”
Elspeth’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Sixteen hundred and ninety-three.”
The words hung in the air between them. Dawson waited for the punchline, for the flicker of amusement that would tell him this was part of the act.
It didn’t come.
“That’s not possible,” he said flatly.
“And yet here you are.”
“No.” He shook his head, ignoring the spike of pain the movement caused. “No, this is—you’re committed to the bit, I’ll give you that, but I need to contact my family. My assistant. There are people who will be looking for me.”
He reached for his pocket automatically, desperately, searching for the phone that wasn’t there.
He patted his chest, his sides, the rough breeches and linen shirt someone had dressed him in while he was unconscious.
His eyes darted to the Campbell plaid drying by the fire—someone had changed him, had seen everything he’d been wearing, everything that marked him as out of place.
“My phone,” he said, and his voice came out strangled. “Where’s my phone? I had—there was a phone in my pocket, and my wallet, and—”
“You had nothing when I found you but the clothes on your back and the sword in your hand.” Elspeth’s tone remained calm, but something flickered in her eyes. “What is a phone?”
The question hit him like ice water to the face. Not where is your phone or we don’t allow phones here. But what is a phone, spoken with genuine confusion, as if he’d asked about something that didn’t exist.
“I need—” He was hyperventilating now, he could feel it, the edges of his vision going gray. “You don’t understand, I need to contact—my mother, my company, there are people who depend on me—”
He tried to stand, and his legs buckled. Elspeth was there before he hit the ground, her hands catching his shoulders with surprising strength. She pushed him back onto the pallet, firmly but not unkindly.
“Breathe,” she said. “Whatever you’ve lost, you won’t find it by working yourself into a fit.”
“You don’t understand—”
“I understand more than you think.” Her voice sharpened.
“I understand that a man washed up on the beach half-dead from cold and lightning, speaking nonsense about things that do not exist. I understand that you’ve clearly lost something precious to you.
But swooning on my floor won’t bring it back. ”
“I don’t swoon.” He made a face, ignoring how much his head ached.
Her gray eyes held his, steady and uncompromising, and somehow that steadiness anchored him. He forced himself to breathe—in through the nose, out through the mouth, the way his climbing instructor had taught him years ago when altitude sickness had nearly killed him on K2.
In. Out. In. Out.
The panic receded slowly, leaving him hollow and exhausted.
She doesn’t know what a phone is. The thought circled through his mind like a shark. She genuinely doesn’t know.
“Good,” Elspeth said, releasing his shoulders. She sat back on her stool, watching him with an expression he couldn’t read. “The mind plays tricks when the body’s been battered. Rest. Whatever happened to you, it will still be there in the morning.”
“The lightning,” he managed. “Did you see the lightning?”
“I saw the storm.”
“And the woman. There was a woman on the beach.”
“There was me.”
“No, before you. Someone else. Tall, wearing a cloak, standing on the water like—” He stopped, because even saying it out loud made him sound insane.
Elspeth’s expression hadn’t changed, but something shifted in her eyes. Caution, maybe. Or recognition.
“You should rest,” she said again, rising.
“Wait.” He caught her wrist without thinking, then immediately let go when she stiffened. “I’m sorry. I just—has anyone else ever appeared there? People who didn’t belong?”
For a long moment, she didn’t answer. Then, so quietly he almost missed it, she said, “Connor will speak with you tomorrow. He’ll have answers I cannot give.”