Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
Istood in the doorway of the great hall, my basket of willow bark pressed against my hip, and watched Dawson charm half the keep—several clansmen who should have known better.
Moira had given him a bowl of porridge, and he was eating it like a starving man while simultaneously making Old Tam laugh—Old Tam, who hadn’t cracked a smile since his wife died three winters past.
“And then the camel spit in my face,” Dawson was saying, his green eyes bright with self-mockery. “Right there in front of the entire delegation. I’m trying to negotiate a trade agreement, covered in camel saliva, and the sheikh is laughing so hard he can barely breathe.”
Tam slapped the table, wheezing. “A camel, ye say? With a big hump on its back?”
“A very opinionated camel.” Dawson grinned, scraping the last of his porridge from the bowl. “Turns out, wearing the wrong color is an insult in some circles. Even to livestock.”
I found myself studying him differently now, after what I had learned in Connor’s solar.
Every strange word, every bewildered pause when someone mentioned something commonplace—it all made a terrible kind of sense.
He wasn’t merely foreign. He was more than three hundred years out of place, grieving a mother who would never know what became of him.
He hadn’t said anything about a woman, but a man like him, wealthy and charming, must have had a woman he’d left behind.
The thought made me narrow my eyes, though I didn’t have a reason.
Not everyone was charmed. Angus MacLeod—Tam’s eldest son, a man built like a boulder and twice as immovable—stood apart from the group with his arms crossed and his jaw set. He had been watching Dawson since dawn with the kind of suspicion usually reserved for English soldiers and thieves.
“Pretty stories,” Angus said loudly, cutting through the laughter. “Any man can spin a tale. Doesn’t make him trustworthy.”
The hall went silent. Dawson turned to face Angus with an expression of mild curiosity rather than offense.
“You’re right,” he said easily. “Stories don’t prove anything. What would?”
“Work.” Angus stepped forward, using his size to intimidate. “Real work, not this stable mucking Brodie’s set ye to. A man’s worth is measured by what he can do when the task is hard and the reward is small.”
A smile broke across Dawson’s face. “Name it.”
Saints, the man was bonny. Even from across the hall, I could see the way his shoulders filled out the borrowed linen shirt, the corded strength in his forearms where he’d rolled the sleeves.
His jaw was square and stubborn, shadowed with a day’s growth of beard that made him look less polished and more real.
The sun had left its mark on him—his skin was bronzed in a way that spoke of time spent outdoors, and there were fine lines at the corners of his eyes that suggested he smiled often, or squinted into bright light.
His hair was dark blond, shot through with lighter streaks as if he’d spent considerable time beneath a fiercer sun than Scotland ever saw.
Angus bared his teeth. “The south pasture fence needs mending. Posts are rotted through and need replacing before the next storm. It’s a two-day job for a man who knows what he’s doing.” His smile widened. “Should only take ye six days.”
I expected Dawson to flinch, to make excuses, to fall back on that easy charm. Instead, he stood and inclined his head in what looked almost like respect.
“I’ve finished my delicious porridge. Point me to the tools.”
Angus’s eyes narrowed, clearly not expecting compliance. “Ye’ll freeze before midday.”
“Probably.” Dawson’s smile was thin but genuine. “But I’ll be a trustworthy frozen corpse, at least.”
Someone snorted—Brodie, trying to hide it behind his hand. Even Tam’s weathered face twitched toward approval. But Angus just grunted and stalked away, unconvinced.
Kate appeared at my elbow, silent as always. She followed my gaze to where Dawson was helping clear the breakfast things, moving with an efficiency that suggested he was used to fitting in wherever he was.
“You’re watching him,” she said quietly.
“Aye, I’m trying to understand him.” I kept my voice low. “Last night, in the solar—the things he said about his mother, about his life. He lost everything.”
“We all did.” Kate’s expression was thoughtful. “The not-knowing is the hardest part. Wondering if the people you left behind are searching for you. If they’ve given up. If they’ve moved on.”
My chest tightened. Another lost soul, then. Another person who did not belong, who might leave the moment the magic that brought him here decided to reverse itself.
“He willna be here long,” I said.
“Maybe not.” Kate’s expression softened. “Or maybe he’ll surprise you. I certainly surprised Connor.”
Across the hall, Dawson caught me watching. He smiled—not the easy grin he had been using on the others, but something smaller and more uncertain. As if he remembered too, the weight of what had passed between us in the solar.
I looked away before I could smile back.
“I have work to do,” I said, and left before Kate could argue.
By midday, Dawson had managed to earn grudging tolerance from most of the keep—and outright hostility from a select few.
I found him in the stables, mucking out stalls under Brodie’s supervision. His face gleamed with sweat despite the cold. He was singing something under his breath, a tune I didn’t recognize, while Brodie leaned against a post and watched with barely concealed amusement.
“You’re doing it wrong,” I said from the doorway.
Dawson looked up, startled, and then grinned when he saw me. “Well, if it isn’t my rescuer. Come to tell me I’m holding the pitchfork backwards?”
“You are holding the pitchfork backwards.”
Brodie laughed. “She’s got ye there.”
He flipped the pitchfork around with a theatrical flourish and bowed. “Your wisdom is noted, Lady Elspeth. Though in my defense, I’ve never actually mucked out a stable before.”
“That much is obvious.” I stepped into the stable, setting my basket down on a clean patch of hay.
I had brought salve for the blisters I knew he would develop, along with a tincture for the muscle ache.
Foolish man, working like this when his body was still recovering from near-freezing in the sea.
“What gave it away?” he asked, returning to his work. This time, he scooped the soiled hay more efficiently, his movements still clumsy but improving. “The technique, or the complaining?”
“You have not complained once,” I said.
“Not out loud.” He shot me a sideways glance, and something fluttered in my chest—something I hadna felt in a very long time, and did not want to feel now.
“But my back is staging a full rebellion. I’m pretty sure my spine has filed a formal grievance with management.”
The phrasing was so strange, so utterly foreign, that I found myself biting back a smile. Three hundred years of different words, different ways of speaking. “I dinna know what that means.”
“It means—” He paused, and for a moment something flickered across his face.
Loss maybe, or frustration. His hand went to his hip as if reaching for something that wasn’t there.
“Sorry. Old habit. I keep thinking I can just... look things up. Calculate the exact amount of hay needed, or find a video on proper stable-mucking technique.” He laughed, but it sounded hollow.
I watched him carefully, seeing the grief beneath the easy words. “Your assistant. Margaret. You mentioned her last night.”
His movements slowed. “She’s worked for me for eight years.
Never gone more than a day without checking in.
She’ll have called my mother, the board, probably the authorities by now.
They’ll be searching—” His voice cracked slightly.
“And they’ll never find me. Because I’m here.
Shoveling horse manure in the seventeenth century. ”
I didn’t know what to say. His grief was too raw, too real to dismiss with mere platitudes. But I found I could not simply stand in silence either.
“There is a boy in the village,” I said finally. “Wee Hamish Forbes. He has a winter cough that will not ease, and his mother fears the worst. If you were a healer in your time, with all your... technological progress... could you have saved him?”
Dawson looked at me, his expression shifting from grief to something more focused. “A winter cough? Like bronchitis, or—no, you wouldn’t know that word. Is he feverish? Congested? Having trouble breathing?”
“Congested. Fussy. But no fever yet.”
“Humidified air would help. Steam. And elevation—keep his head raised when he sleeps so the mucus can drain. Honey for the throat, if you have it. And—” He stopped, frustration crossing his face again.
“And antibiotics if it gets worse. Which you don’t have.
Which won’t exist for another two hundred and fifty years. ”
“We have yarrow,” I said. “And elderflower. And steam tents made from boiling water and linen.”
He stared at me for a long moment, and then something shifted in his expression—a kind of wonder, almost. “You already knew all that. You’re already treating him.”
“Moira and I have kept more children alive through the winter than you might expect.” I kept my voice cool, but something warmer bloomed beneath my ribs at his surprise. “Your future may hold wonders, but we are not helpless here.”
“No,” he said softly. “No, you’re definitely not helpless.”
The way he looked at me then—as if I had revealed something unexpected and valuable—made my cheeks heat in a way I desperately hoped was not visible.
Brodie cleared his throat from the doorway. “Hate to interrupt whatever this is, but Connor’s looking for you, Dawson. Something about the south pasture.”
Dawson nodded, but his eyes lingered on me for a moment longer than necessary. “I’ll come to the stillroom later? For the salve you mentioned?”
“As ye wish.”
He left with Brodie, and I stood alone in the stable, breathing in the smell of hay and horses and trying to quiet the uneven rhythm of my heart.
The afternoon brought darker news.
I was in the stillroom, grinding comfrey root, when Kate found me. Her expression was carefully blank in a way that meant she was about to deliver something unpleasant.
“Riders were spotted on the north road,” she said. “MacKenzie colors.”
My hands went still. The pestle clattered against the mortar.
“How many?”
“Six, maybe seven. They didn’t approach—just watched from the ridge for a time, then rode on.” Kate paused. “Connor thinks they were on their way to camp for the Candlemas market. Malcolm’s party, most likely.”
Malcolm. The name hit me like a fist to the stomach. I had known he would be at the market—had been dreading it for weeks—but somehow the sight of MacKenzie colors on MacLeod land made it real in a way it had not been before.
“I cannot go,” I said. The words came out flat, final. “To the market. I cannot—if he’s there—”
“Elspeth.” Kate’s voice was gentle. “You don’t have to explain. I understand.”
But she did not, not really. She knew the broad strokes of my shame—everyone did—but she did not know how Malcolm’s voice had cut through the village square, loud enough for everyone to hear.
She did not know how I had stood frozen while he called me a whore, a disgrace, a MacLeod bitch who had spread her legs for his precious cousin and then dared to show her ruined face in public.
She did not know that sometimes, in my worst moments, I believed every word he had said.
“I’ll make your excuses,” Kate said. “Moira needs help with the Candlemas preparations. No one will question it.”
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
Kate hesitated at the door. “For what it’s worth... Connor may want an alliance with them to strengthen the clan, but he won’t let Malcolm near you. None of us will.”
She left, and I returned to my grinding with hands that shook only slightly.