Chapter 7 #2
“You did well,” Kate said. “Better than I expected, actually.”
“I had some training before I came through. Not enough, apparently, but some.”
“You built on it today. Got up every time they knocked you down.” Kate’s smile was knowing. “That’s what matters.”
Maddie nudged his arm. “We’re taking a walk to the village. Want to come? I have about a thousand more questions about what we’ve missed.”
Dawson shook his head. “Maybe later. I need to...” He trailed off, his eyes drifting toward where Elspeth had disappeared.
“Go on, then.” Kate’s voice was gentle. “Just... be careful with her, she’s been through more than most people could survive.”
He nodded, and the women left him standing in the empty training yard, wooden sword still clutched in his aching hand.
He found Brodie waiting for him at the well, arms crossed, expression serious.
“A word,” Brodie said. It wasn’t a request.
Dawson approached warily. The easy camaraderie from training had vanished, replaced by something harder. “What’s on your mind?”
“My sister.” Brodie’s voice was low, meant only for Dawson’s ears. “I’ve seen the way you look at her. The way she looks back when she thinks no one’s watching.”
“Brodie—”
“Let me finish.” Brodie held up a hand. “I like ye, Dawson. You work hard, you don’t complain, and you’ve earned your place here.
But Elspeth...” He paused, choosing his words carefully.
“She’s ruined. In the eyes of the clan, in the eyes of any man who might have wanted to wed her.
What Alasdair did—what Malcolm says about her—it follows her everywhere. ”
“She told me.” Dawson kept his voice steady. “About Alasdair. The baby she lost. About all of it.”
Brodie’s eyebrows rose. “She told you?”
“In the stillroom. A few nights ago.” Dawson met Brodie’s gaze squarely. “And I’ll tell you what I told her—where I come from, none of that matters. She made a choice based on lies someone else told her. That doesn’t make her ruined. That makes her human.”
“Where you come from.” Brodie’s laugh was hollow. “Aye, and where’s that exactly? A world three hundred years hence, where everything’s different and nothing carries weight? Things are different here. Here, her reputation is ruined. Here, no man of standing would touch her. Here—”
“Here, I’m not a man of standing.” Dawson cut him off. “I’ve got no clan, no family, no wealth, and no position. I’m a stranger who washed up on your beach with nothing but the clothes on my back. If anyone’s beneath notice, it’s me.”
Brodie stared at him for a long moment. Then, slowly, his expression shifted—the hardness melting into something almost like respect.
“You mean that.”
“Every word.”
“And if the door opens again like Maddie and Kate said? If the Cailleach offers you a way back to your carriages and your talking boxes and your world where nothing’s impossible?”
The question landed like a blow, but Dawson didn’t flinch.
“Then I’ll have a choice to make. But I won’t make it lightly. And I won’t make it without considering what—who—I’d be leaving behind.”
The silence stretched between them. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. Wind rattled the bare branches of the trees that lined the courtyard.
Finally, Brodie nodded. “Hurt her, and I’ll kill you myself. Connor won’t even get a chance before I cut ye down where ye stand.”
“Fair enough.”
“And you’ll tell no one we had this conversation. Elspeth would have my hide if she knew I was meddling.”
Despite everything, a smile tugged at his mouth. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Brodie clapped him on the shoulder—hard enough to make his already-bruised muscles protest—and headed toward the keep. “Clean up. Supper’s in an hour, and you smell like a horse.”
“Thanks for the feedback.”
“That’s what brothers are for.” Brodie paused, looking back with a grin. “Aye, and that’s what you are now, like it or not.” His expression sobered. “So act like it.”
Then he was gone, leaving Dawson standing by the well with his wooden sword and his collection of bruises and something that felt dangerously like hope.
That evening, the keep came alive with Candlemas preparations.
Evergreen boughs were strung across the rafters, winter’s last stand against the coming spring. Candles blazed in every alcove, their light a promise of longer days to come, and the great hearth roared with the oak log they’d hauled in days earlier.
Dawson found himself pulled into the festivities despite his exhaustion, butchering Gaelic songs until Kate laughed until she cried.
But through it all, he was aware of Elspeth.
She moved through the hall like a shadow, quiet and efficient. She retied his bungled garlands without comment, corrected the younger women’s herbal decorations, and somehow managed to be everywhere at once while never quite joining in the celebration.
She didn’t laugh at the jokes or join in the singing. She simply worked, her face serene and distant.
It made his chest ache.
When the call came for supper, the clan gathered around the long tables with the easy familiarity of family. Dawson found himself seated between Brodie and young Tavish, who’d apparently adopted him as a source of endless entertainment.
“Is it true,” Tavish whispered loudly, “that ye swam in the ocean with sharks?”
Dawson caught Kate’s eye across the table. She shrugged, clearly the source of this particular piece of information.
“Yes, and they didn’t try to eat me.”
Tavish’s eyes went wide as saucers. “Are ye a faerie, then?”
“No, I don’t think they were hungry.”
The boy made a sound in the back of his throat and went back to eating.
More food arrived—venison stew, dark bread, neeps and tatties swimming in butter. Dawson ate gratefully, his body demanding fuel after the day’s exertions.
Then the blood pudding appeared.
Dawson’s stomach lurched at the sight of the glistening dark rounds. He’d managed to avoid them for days, but his luck had apparently run out.
“Problem?” Brodie asked innocently, already helping himself to a generous portion.
“No problem at all.”
A foot nudged his under the table. He looked up to find Elspeth seated across from him, her gray eyes glinting with suppressed amusement.
“Tavish,” she said casually, “you look hungry tonight.”
The boy perked up. “Starving!”
“Dawson seems to have more than he can eat. Perhaps you could help him?”
Tavish’s gaze locked onto the untouched blood pudding like a hawk spotting prey. “Aye, I could do that.”
The transfer was executed with the same smooth efficiency Elspeth had demonstrated before—misdirection, timing, and a hungry accomplice. Within moments, Dawson’s plate was clean and Tavish was happily stuffing his face.
Their eyes met across the table, and something passed between them—recognition, understanding, the beginning of something neither of them was ready to name.
A short while later, whispers rippled through the hall—someone had returned from the village with news. Malcolm MacKenzie had been seen at the inn, holding court, telling tales. Elspeth’s expression shuttered like a window slamming closed.
She rose from the table without a word and slipped out of the hall, leaving Dawson staring after her with his heart sinking.
He wanted to follow. Wanted to find her and tell her that Malcolm MacKenzie’s poison tongue meant nothing, that the past was the past, that she was worth more than the shame others tried to hang on her shoulders.
But Brodie’s warning echoed in his mind. So he stayed at the table and ate food he didn’t taste and laughed at jokes he didn’t hear, all while counting the minutes until he could escape and find her.
Later. He’d find her later.
And maybe, if he was patient enough, if he earned her trust inch by careful inch, she’d let him past the walls she’d built.