Chapter Eighteen
For the next several days, Anna made no attempt to disguise her misery.
She no longer hurried. When she wished to stop and wash the dust from her face in a stream, she did so without apology.
When he asked for something, she helped, but she no longer looked for ways to make herself useful before he had to ask.
She’d once gathered fresh grass for the gelding, pleased to contribute, but now she didn’t bother.
Nor did she make any effort to reduce the inconvenience of her own presence.
She sat where she pleased in the saddle instead of unconsciously trying to leave Bram as much room as possible, and if her shoulder rested against his chest or her hair blew into his face, she no longer found herself apologizing for it.
Let him be uncomfortable. He had, after all, survived far worse than an errant lock of hair possibly annoying him.
At night she made her bed at a respectable distance from his, rolled onto her side with her back toward him, and closed her eyes without so much as wishing him goodnight. Sleep seldom came quickly, but she was determined he should never know that.
Sure, it was all petty and maybe childish, but she simply decided that she needn’t pretend to be anything she wasn’t, and that she owed him nothing. Yes, he’d saved her life, maybe more than once, but he’d broken her heart, and ridiculous or not, she considered them even.
The truly infuriating part, however, was that none of it seemed to matter.
Bram neither objected to the distance she deliberately placed between them nor appeared relieved by it.
He simply accepted it with the same quiet stoicism with which he accepted rain, hunger, or another weary day in the saddle.
He didn’t ask why she’d stopped helping with the horse, didn’t ask for anything actually.
He didn’t remark upon the silence that now stretched between them from dawn until dusk.
He didn’t appear troubled at all about her present detachment.
The more indifferent he appeared, the more miserable she became.
She had rather hoped—as if hoping had done her any good in this century—that he might miss the woman she’d been before that night of the quiet storm.
Instead, he seemed perfectly capable of traveling beside this newer, colder version of her as if he wasn’t troubled at all.
This, she reminded herself daily, only confirmed what he’d told her, that the kiss had mattered only to one of them.
As they rode north, the gentle English fields gave way to a rougher, untamed country.
The hills grew steep, clothed in pine and birch.
Stone walls vanished, then farmsteads, until whole hours passed in silence.
Mountains that had once been distant shapes on a calendar grew into towering, blue-gray sentinels watching over the land Bram called home.
She saw the rugged beauty in the purple heather spread across the high ground, but the emptiness of the landscape only mirrored her own.
She had long since lost track of how many days had passed since she’d stumbled into the fourteenth century. Two weeks, perhaps a little more. Time had become strangely meaningless when every morning began in the saddle and every evening ended beside another campfire beneath another unfamiliar sky.
Then, one quiet afternoon, Bram spoke for the first time in hours.
“Craig na Coille lies only a few miles ahead.”
Until that moment, his home had remained a vague destination somewhere beyond the next hill, distant enough that she hadn’t truly allowed herself to think about it.
Now it abruptly became real, and with that realization came a slow, uncomfortable tightening in her stomach that only worsened over the next hour.
What exactly was waiting for her there? If the people of Craig na Coille resembled Bram in temperament, she suspected she was about to spend the foreseeable future surrounded by an entire village of people who communicated primarily through silence, considered a raised eyebrow an extravagant display of feeling, and would make her feel perpetually as though she had said something faintly ridiculous without ever quite telling her what it was.
The country continued climbing steadily over the next hour, until, after rounding yet another stand of towering Scots pine, the trees abruptly fell away.
Anna sat up a little straighter, staring at the scene ahead of them.
Nestled within a broad Highland glen lay the first true settlement she’d seen since arriving in the fourteenth century. Beyond it, occupying a low rise overlooking the valley, stood what she presumed was Craig na Coille.
She had only ever seen castle ruins, tidied up for tourists with little signs.
This was no ruin. This was a living thing, its dark stone walls rising from the hillside as if they’d grown there.
Smoke curled from chimneys inside, and the helmets of guards caught the dying light as they moved along the battlements.
It was dense and alive, a place of purpose, not history.
A small village lay between them and the castle, a cluster of cottages scattered along a winding dirt track.
As they drew closer, she saw the details: low fences of woven branches, roofs thick with straw, and patches of garden with neat rows of leafy plants she couldn’t name.
Lines had been strung between wooden stakes, where rough-looking cloth shifted in the breeze.
The road itself was worn into deep grooves.
A handful of chickens scratched industriously among scattered straw, and two geese wandered between two small cottages.
Beside one cottage a tethered goat had stripped the bark from a fence post to a height of about three feet and was working on a fourth.
Two shaggy Highland cattle stood motionless in a stone enclosure, their horns improbably wide, their eyes slow and dark and entirely unbothered.
As they approached, her eyes looked everywhere, taking it all in.
Bundles of firewood stood neatly stacked beneath overhanging eaves, protected from the weather.
An elderly woman sat upon a low stool peeling vegetables into a wooden bowl balanced in her lap.
Two men worked together to right an overturned cart, pausing now and again to wipe their brows before lifting once more.
A young mother stood in an open doorway bouncing a baby upon one hip while speaking to another woman across the lane, their conversation so ordinary that Anna found herself listening simply because it sounded comforting, though she understood only fragments.
No one had noticed them yet.
The smell of woodsmoke and something faintly sour—vinegar, maybe, or old leather—hung in the still afternoon air as voices murmured somewhere nearby.
Ahead, a steady clink of metal—so regular and unhurried that Anna guessed someone was hammering something heavy, though she had no idea what tool he held or what he was shaping.
From just beyond a squat stone cottage came the sharp, delighted peal of a child’s laughter, instantly cut off by a stern reprimand in a language she couldn’t place.
The echo of laughter still sounded in the lane when a small boy came skidding around the corner.
He looked no older than six, all elbows and scuffed knees, gripping a crooked branch between his legs that served as an imaginary horse.
He dashed straight toward them, brought himself to a skidding halt only yards from the gelding, and stared.
Anna felt the horse shift beneath her and slid a hand down its mane for balance.
The boy’s eyes widened, his mouth opened in a single sharp cry—an odd, foreign word—then his face lit up like sunrise.
A woman appeared at the same corner, her bare feet dusty.
She opened her mouth to call him in, but her eyes landed on Bram and the words died.
Confusion flickered across her face, then astonishment.
Her hand flew to her mouth, stifling a sob, and she stumbled back into the cottage, her voice a sharp cry for someone within.
Within moments, a second woman hurried out, her cheeks flushed with work, and stood silent as she too watched Bram. Then the word raced along the lane from door to door, carried on exclamations Anna didn’t understand.
One by one, villagers appeared. An older man dropped a length of fencing, straightened carefully, and squared his shoulders. Two girls halted mid-step, buckets dangling from their arms.
The first boy scrambled forward, telling Bram something in rapid-fire speech she couldn’t understand.
He swayed with excitement, his grin stretching ear to ear.
Bram’s reply was soft and melodic, the foreign words falling in gentle waves, accompanied by the slightest nod.
Whatever he said set the boy off again, and he darted back to join the others, jabbering at top speed.
More faces spilled into the sunlight. An elderly woman grasped Bram’s rough hands between her own lined, trembling ones while tears glistened on her cheeks. Another crossed herself, tracing the sign in the air above him with solemn reverence.
All the while, Anna sat forward on the horse, gripping the pommel, entirely ignored by these villagers who clearly saw only Bram.
A handful glanced her way with mild curiosity, but no one whispered, and no one scowled or speculated as far as she knew.
Her legs, bared as they were from the knee down to her sandals, were occasionally given a second glance, but that was all.
In truth, she faded effortlessly into the background, a neutral presence at this joyous reunion.