Chapter 16
Chapter
Sixteen
Sleep wouldn’t come. Exhaustion pulled at my bones, made my eyes burn, but my mind kept circling back to Brodie’s words. There was never a question. Never a choice. What exactly did he mean by that? And why did hearing it make my chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with fear?
Tomorrow meant hiking through the mountains. Avoiding the hunters. Running until we collapsed, or they caught us. But tonight—
Tonight I was done hiding.
For almost two months I’d carried this secret, terrified of what would happen if anyone knew the truth. But Brodie had risked everything to get me here. Had held my hand in that cellar and kept me from breaking.
The least I could give him was honesty.
“Brodie?” I whispered.
A pause. “Aye?”
“Are you awake?”
“Can’t seem to sleep.” I heard him shift slightly. “Too much thinking.”
“Me too.” I took a breath. “I said I would. It’s time. I need to tell you something. About who I really am.”
The silence that followed felt heavy with possibility. “All right.”
Just that. No hesitation, no doubt. Just an invitation to speak.
“Remember when the servants were gossiping about me surviving the shipwreck? Saying I asked what year it was?”
“I remember.”
The words started tumbling over each other. “I didn’t know what year it was, what month, where I was. Not because I hit my head or forgot or was in shock. And you were right, I wasn’t on that ship. I don’t know what happened to Millicent Carter, the real governess. I’m Maddie Carter.”
I felt him go very still beside me.
“I’m not from Philadelphia. I’m not from anywhere you’d recognize. I’m from...” How did I explain this? How did I make the impossible sound real?
“I’m from the future. Over three hundred years in the future.
I was born in 2002. It’s 2025 in my time—or it was, when I left.
I came here by accident. It was my birthday, and my friends and I were in Jamaica to celebrate.
We went on a tour of Rose Hall.” A laugh that sounded unhinged even to my ears escaped.
“There was this garden, and a stone with strange markings, and I touched it and—”
“Maddie.” His voice was gentle. “Are ye fevered? Did ye hit your head when we were running?”
“No. I know how it sounds. I know you probably think I’m insane or lying or—”
“I don’t think ye’re lying.” He sat up, and I heard him moving. A moment later, his hand found my forehead, checking for fever with the gentle efficiency of someone who’d tended the sick before. “But head injuries can be strange. Make ye confused about—”
“I’m not confused.” I sat up too, pulling back from his touch even though part of me wanted to lean into it. “Listen to me. Please. In my time, there are carriages that move without horses.”
His silence felt heavy.
“Machines that fly through the air carrying hundreds of people. Boxes you can talk into that let you hear someone’s voice from the other side of the world. We have lights that don’t need fire—”
“Maddie.” His hand found my wrist, steadying me. “Ye’re talking about magic.”
“No. Science and technology. Things that will be invented over the next three hundred years.” The words kept coming, faster now.
“I worked at a place that brought tourists to historical sites. Old plantations, museums, places where they could see what life was like in the past. There was an old woman. She said she was called the Cailleach, I think. She had eyes like silver, and she told me to be careful, but I touched the carved stone anyway and—”
“Wait.” His grip on my wrist tightened. “An old woman with eyes like river stone? In the garden?”
“Yes. You’ve seen her?”
“On the beach. The night Renard sold me to the widow.” His voice had gone quiet, thoughtful. “She gave me a black feather and told me to pay attention to who walks through the door. I thought she was daft. I still have it—kept it all this time, though I didn’t know why.”
“She’s not daft. She’s... I don’t know what she is.
But she knew. She tried to warn me, and I didn’t listen, and then the stone was calling to me, and I felt like I was falling, and when I woke up I was here.
September 1693. The widow’s plantation. A world where everything I knew how to do was useless and everything I took for granted didn’t exist yet. ”
The confession poured out in a rush now, words I’d held back for weeks spilling into the darkness between us.
“I didn’t know how to curtsy or how to use a chamber pot or why everyone wore so many layers or what language the enslaved workers were speaking when they looked at me.
I knew history from books, but living it?
I had no idea. Every day I was terrified someone would realize I didn’t belong, that I was too strange, too wrong.
That they’d think I was a witch or possessed or—”
His arms came around me then—both of them, pulling me close. “Breathe.”
I did, gulping air that tasted of herbs and earth and fear.
“The things ye’ve said.” His voice was measured, but I could hear something shifting in it.
“The strangeness I saw in ye. The way ye look at common things like ye’ve never seen them before.
The way ye know letters but not how to sew.
The way the wee mosquitos never bother ye when they eat everyone else alive. ”
“I healed fast in my time too. Modern medicine, antibiotics, clean water—our bodies work differently.”
“And the questions. The way ye asked what war we’re fighting, what the king’s name is, what year it is.” A pause. “I thought ye were addled from the shipwreck. Or hiding from something. I didn’t think—” He stopped.
“You didn’t think I was from over three centuries in the future. Because that would be insane.”
“Aye. That would be insane.” Another long pause.
“But I saw that woman on the beach. Saw the storm that came from nowhere, struck exactly where it needed to, and vanished, saw her standing on top of the sea. My sister Elspeth used to say the old magic was real, that the Cailleach walked the highlands in storm and snow. I thought they were tales for children.”
One of his hands found mine, fingers intertwining. “But then ye appeared. And everything about ye was wrong in exactly the way that made no sense until now.”
“You believe me?” The words came out breathless.
“I’m trying to. It’s—” He stopped, and I heard him take a breath. “It’s impossible. Everything ye’re saying is impossible.”
“I know.”
“But so is a woman surviving a shipwreck that killed everyone else. So is healing from scratches so quickly. So is the way ye look at the world like ye’re seeing it for the first time but also like ye know secrets no one else does.
” Another pause. “And it explains much. The fear in your eyes that first day. The way ye’ve been performing, pretending to know things ye don’t.
The way ye flinch when the widow studies ye too closely. ”
“Because she knows something’s wrong with me. She’s been suspicious from the start.”
“Because ye’re not from here.” His grip tightened. “Ye’re from another time entirely. And that stone—the one in the old garden where Mrs. Browne found ye—”
“Must be some kind of portal. Doorway. Threshold between times, I don’t know. All I know is I touched it and it sent me here, and I have no idea how to get back. Or if I even can.” The admission hurt more than I expected.
My voice broke on that last word. His arms tightened around me—not a romantic embrace but comfort, support, the kind of hold that said I’ve got you, you’re not alone. I pressed my face into the rough linen of his shirt, breathing in his scent, and let the tears come.
“Ye gave up everything,” he said into my hair. “Your whole world. Everyone ye knew. Just by touching that stone.”
“I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know what would happen.”
“But ye did it, anyway. Walked through a door that couldn’t be undone.” One hand moved to my back, steady pressure. “Ye’re stronger than ye credit yourself, Maddie.”
“It’s not strength if you don’t have a choice.”
“Ye’ve had choices every day since. Ye could have told the widow the truth, thrown yourself on her mercy, begged to be sent back to that garden.
Ye could have broken down, given up, let the fear win.
” He pulled back enough that I could feel him looking at me.
“But ye didn’t. Ye learned the rules of this world fast enough to survive.
Ye stood up to Philippe when he was cruel. ”
The words settled between us, warm and solid. I wiped at my face with the back of my hand, feeling wrung out but somehow lighter. The secret that had been crushing me ever since I’d arrived was finally spoken. He knew. And he believed me.
“I’m in love with someone from three hundred years in the future,” he said, and the quiet wonder in his voice made something in my chest shift and expand.
I pulled back far enough to stare at him, even though I couldn’t see his face. “You’re—what?”
“In love with ye.” He said it simply, like it was just a fact.
“Have been since that first day in the courtyard when ye held those practice swords and looked at me like ye could see straight through all my masks. I told myself I was being a fool. Told myself love was a weapon that had already destroyed me once. But ye kept surprising me. Kept being brave when ye had every reason to fall apart. Kept choosing to fight when ye could have chosen safety.”
His thumb brushed my cheek, wiping away a tear I hadn’t realized was there.
“And now ye’re telling me ye came through time itself, and I think—” He stopped, voice rough with emotion.
“I think that was fate. Ye fell through three centuries and ended up here. With me. What are the odds of that unless it was meant to happen?”
“I don’t know if I believe in fate,” I whispered. “In my time, we believe in science. In explanations for everything. But science can’t explain that stone. Can’t explain the Cailleach. Can’t explain why I touched it at all when I knew—I knew—something was wrong.”
“And here, we believe in the Cailleach and old magic and doors between worlds.” His forehead came to rest against mine. “Ye’re here, Maddie. However it happened, whatever brought ye—ye’re here. And I’m grateful for that, even if it means ye lost everything to make it happen.”
“I haven’t lost everything.” My hands found his face, tracing the angles I’d memorized from stolen glances—the sharp line of his jaw, rough with stubble, the hollow beneath his cheekbone. “I found you.”
His breath caught. For a heartbeat, neither of us moved. Then his hand came up to cover mine, pressing it against his face like he was memorizing the touch.
“Maddie.” My name was barely a whisper. “If I kiss ye now, I willna be able to pretend this is anything but what it is.”
“What is it?”
“Everything.” His other hand slid into my hair, gentle but sure, tilting my face up toward his. “Ye’re everything.”
The kiss started soft—tentative, asking permission. His lips brushed mine once, twice, testing. Then I made a sound low in my throat and pressed closer, and something in him broke open.
He kissed me as if I were air, and he’d been drowning.
Like I was the answer to a question he’d been asking since Edinburgh, since the slave ship, since the first moment our eyes met across that courtyard.
His hand tightened in my hair while his other arm came around my waist, pulling me flush against him until there was no space left between us.
I tasted the bitter tea Ruth had given us, and under that something darker—smoke and want and three hundred years of distance closing to nothing.
His mouth moved over mine with a tenderness that made my chest ache, but there was heat underneath it, a carefully banked fire that made me forget about hunters and mountains and everything except the way he touched me like I was precious. Like I was his.
When we finally broke apart, both of us breathing hard, his forehead came to rest against mine.
“That was—” I couldn’t finish. Couldn’t find words for what that was.
“Aye.” His thumb traced my jaw, my throat, the racing pulse at the base of my neck. “It was.”
I could feel him smiling in the darkness, and it made me want to kiss him again, to forget about dawn and danger and just stay here in this moment where nothing else mattered.
“We should sleep.” But his voice had gone rough, and his hand was still in my hair, still holding me close.
“We should.” I didn’t move either.
He made a sound that might have been a laugh or a groan. “Maddie Carter from three hundred years in the future.” Another brush of his lips against my forehead, my temple, the corner of my mouth. “What am I going to do with ye?”
“Kiss me again?” I suggested and felt his smile against my skin.
“Dangerous lass.” But he did, slower this time, sweeter, like he had all the time in the world instead of just a few stolen hours before dawn.
When he finally settled us both back down on the mattress, his arm came around me, and I let myself lean into him. Let my head rest against his chest, letting the steady beat of his heart become the rhythm that steadied my breathing.
“Brodie?” I whispered.
“Aye?”
“Thank you for believing me.”
“Thank ye for trusting me with the truth.” His lips brushed my forehead. “Sleep, Maddie. Mayhap tomorrow ye would tell me more of your time?”
The next thing I knew, pale light was seeping through the cracks in the shutters.
And Ruth was shaking my shoulder, her face tight with worry.
“They’re coming back. You need to leave. Now.”