Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Bloody hell,” Cian grumbled, and lifted the woman higher in his arms. He’d seen her eyes roll when she’d stretched out her hand for the chair, and he knew full well she would fall.
He’d reached her in time to keep her head from hitting the floor and might have saved the rest of her had she not clung to the bloody furniture between them.
Stubborn, intrusive…liar.
He couldn’t risk believing she was aught else.
“Dinnae dawdle,” the witches had said. “Hurry home.” Because they knew the lass was lying in wait for him. But to what purpose? To distract him until the traveler could come? To seduce him? To break his heart and make him wish to return to Culloden? To make him welcome death?
He’d seen the way the lass had eyed the ropes in his hands. She was fearful he would restrain her until she confessed. Aye, that was the way of it. So of course, that was what he should do. But he would have to wait until morning, until she recovered from her faint.
At least she wasn’t pretending there.
He carried her to the bed and noticed the blankets already spread.
He tucked her between them and scooted her to the wall.
The only way to keep her from escaping before he learned the truth would be to lie beside her.
He was used to sleeping in a quiet house.
If she tried to get to the door, he would know it.
A sound plan. Reasonable, even. But he didn’t feel completely reasonable when he looked into that still-visible face.
Lie beside her? Was he mad?
Since the wind’s fury had only grown stronger since he’d come inside, he would simply rely on her self-preservation to keep her put through the night.
He would sleep in the old stables, build a fire there, and spare himself any temptation.
Taking the lass’s skis and foolishly meager jacket should help him rest easy.
If she left without her things, the fault would be hers.
She would never live long enough to locate the traveler.
And come morning, he would have plenty of time to gather his things and get far away from Balnacoorie.
If she stayed, he would get the truth from her tongue before noon.
I woke in near darkness, but a candle burning on a table fifteen feet away helped my eyes adjust and brought me back to the present. It was the only proof that I hadn’t dreamt the Yeti-man, because I never left a candle burning, ever.
Lying perfectly still, I scanned what I could see of the large room, but unless he was hiding under the bed, I was alone.
For a split second, I worried he might be behind me, but there wasn’t room.
I was bundled up tight and my back was nearly to the wall.
And no matter how many layers of furs that beast removed, the man within had been massive.
The memory of that thigh came to mind. So long. So powerful. So red…
Yeah, I was alone. He’d abandoned the safety of his warm house to me, an intruder.
The wind pounded on the door, trying to get in, and I realized how dangerous it would have been for him to go back outside. Was he huddled in one of those other houses, with gaping holes in the roofs and doors? How could he possibly keep a fire burning?
I climbed off the bed, pulled the blanket around me, and hurried to the little window.
It was pitch black out there. Though the wind blew, the feeble light of the candle behind me only lit up the closest snowflakes as they flew past the glass.
Everything beyond a few feet out was a mystery.
The road, the line of houses, all invisible.
The branches had to be dancing wildly. I imagined the trunks of the towering pines swaying like an army of drunks in the forest, somewhere to the left.
But I might as well have been wearing a blindfold.
If it wasn’t for the constant whir and howl of the blizzard, I might have believed the bothy had been picked up and taken to some other place in time.
Wasn’t time travel a Scottish thing?
I headed for the window on the wall where the tools hung. The little sled was gone. The chair was back in its original place. Only a faint glow of red outlined the metal stove door. When I pressed my forehead to the pane of glass, I finally saw something.
Shards of orange and yellow fluttered between gaps in the wall of an outbuilding fifty yards away.
He’s okay! He won’t freeze to death!
He hasn’t left me…
I couldn’t say which detail was the bigger relief. Apparently, even a dangerous Scottish Yeti was preferable to being alone in this place. No matter where it was. No matter when…
The thought hadn’t completely developed in my mind before I was shaking my head, trying to keep it from fully forming. But it was already there.
Time travel…
I opened my mouth to laugh, but nothing came out. And I knew in a fraction of a second that I would absolutely lose my mind if I didn’t find proof, immediately, that it wasn’t possible.
First, I lit every candle I could find. Not one of them had a fragrance—at least not a good one. They weren’t just homemade. They were lumpy and inconsistent, like they’d been crafted by a Yeti-man with furry mittens.
The metal candlesticks were well-made and uniform, but they were rough and black, and there was no telling what century they might be from. Same with the pans and tools hanging on the walls. Even the nails and hooks that held them were black and rough.
There were no tags on the blankets or pillows. No signs anyone had broken the law by removing them.
I opened the cabinet and hoped for better luck. A utensil with an engraved logo? A sticker on a vegetable claiming it was organic? A plastic sack from a grocery store?
No, no, and no.
What kind of house didn’t have a little marketing lying around?
The kind of house that didn’t have running water or plumbing of any kind, apparently.
The kind of house that was built by a shepherd and maintained by a Bothy Society.
Or the kind a hermit-Yeti-type man would inhabit, one who liked his privacy and treated any visitors as suspect, even if they were just trying to survive bad weather.
But that didn’t signify a date.
Just beyond the candlelight, those shelves hung in the shadows.
Books and boxes. If there was any proof that I was still living and breathing in the twenty-first century, it would be there.
So, I moved all the candles to the table, pulled down a few books, and sat in the lone chair.
My hand dragged along the edge of the table and the texture caught my attention.
I brought a candlestick closer to study it.
An intricate, Celtic pattern wove seamlessly all around the edge with no mistakes. No dead ends. The pattern was perfect, and I realized, after staring at the same space for a couple of minutes, that there was a name hidden in the weave.
Hannah.
Because the name was a palindrome, it hid easily inside the pattern. I found it centered on each of the four sides of the table. Hannah’s table. But when did Hannah live here?
Inside the bible, I found the printing date at the bottom of the title page. The name of the printer was faded, but I recognized Edinburgh. The last number of the date was faded too, but the first three were 165. After a page filled with hand-written names in tints of fading ink, I found Hannah’s.
Hannah Oliphant married James MacInnis, Perth, Scotland. The Year of Our Lord, 1684. That entry was followed by a list of their children, first names only, and small scribbles of names surrounding half of those. Grandchildren, maybe?
If Nick and I had a family bible, the list of names would end with Nicholas Gaines, who married Matilda Danner, Sugarbush, Vermont, 2014. Children: The Last Chair on Bridge.
Very sad.
There was a book of poems with a blue silk cover, published in 1716, with hand-drawn pictures in the empty spaces. A puppy, a ragamuffin doll, a little boy with a stick, all drawn in the same style.
I couldn’t read the words since they were written in a language I couldn’t guess, and that I absolutely couldn’t have pronounced if my life depended on it. The only reason I knew it was poetry was because of the layout of titles and stanzas, followed by a name.
There was a dedication, though, just inside the front cover. I could only read the names.
Cian at the top, and after a message, Hannah. Though I searched, there was no date, no name of the printer or the city in which it was printed. And when I looked at the imperfect edges of the pages, I realized the book had been made by hand.
It was crazy to think such antiques would be left for centuries in this house with a shaggy roof.
Crazy…unless they hadn’t been left behind…because Hannah and her husband James still lived here…