Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The wind had begun shifting for the past hour.
Elsie felt it before anyone spoke of it—a sudden cold sweep across the back of her neck, an unsettling brush of air that didn’t match the heat radiating from the ruins.
A moment later, the smoldering heaps responded as if sensing opportunity.
Embers brightened within the collapsed walls, tiny points of red that glimmered like watchful eyes.
Smoke curled upward in sharp, twisting ribbons that looked far too eager.
“Mind the east side!” a man shouted. “Wind’s turnin’. Mind th’ embers!”
Elsie clutched the basket of bandages Muirin had pressed into her arms and scanned for Halvard.
He stood farther down the lane with several men, his posture rigid as he lifted his face to the shifting wind.
Even from a distance, she recognized the tightness in his jaw—the look of a leader calculating new threats as they formed.
She had no time to dwell on it. She had been in near-constant motion since they’d arrived in the village—checking burns, washing soot from frightened children’s faces, binding cuts with whatever salve or cloth she had left.
Sweat clung to her hairline, her hands were streaked gray from ash, but the work kept her grounded.
Doing something, anything, kept fear at bay.
It struck her only now, how strange it was that she felt more herself in this moment than she had ever felt in England.
There, she had been taught to sit quietly, to smile politely, to fold her hands neatly in her lap and speak only when invited.
It had been a sort of performance, a shape she had been molded into.
Here—in the heat and chaos, with people calling her name because they needed her—she felt something else. Something startlingly close to belonging.
“Hold still, darling,” she murmured to a weeping girl whose small ankle had blistered when she stepped unknowingly onto a glowing ember pile. “This salve will cool it. I promise.”
The girl sniffled hard but nodded, and by the time Elsie tied off the bandage, two small soot-smudged hands clung to her skirt with a trust that pierced straight through her chest.
“Thank ye,” the child’s mother whispered. Her voice was tentative, but her eyes were grateful. “We… dinnae see many Sassenachs… doing so much fer us.”
Elsie managed a tired smile. “Pain doesn’t know borders.”
The woman’s expression softened, and the shift spread quietly through those nearby. Where villagers had earlier watched her with unease or suspicion, they now called for her with urgency.
“Me lady—over here! This lad fainted!”
“Lass, bring yer quick hands. The old man cannae breathe right!”
Elsie hurried from one crisis to another, her basket growing lighter with every step.
Halvard worked close by, sleeves rolled and commands sharp, yet every so often their paths crossed—passing each other with buckets, stamping out embers side by side—and in those brief seconds, their eyes met.
It was nothing more than a glance, but each one felt weighted, threaded through with something unsaid.
Unexpected intimacy in the smoke and fading afternoon light.
She was folding a final set of bandages when she overheard two older women dragging a broken table frame away from another ruined cottage.
“Bonnie’d ne’er have done all this,” one muttered, nodding in Elsie’s direction. “Mayhap the laird chose the better bride after all.”
Elsie’s hands stilled.
Heat rose in her cheeks at the unexpected praise, yet the name struck her with a cold note—Bonnie.
There it was again, drifting around her like a shadow she couldn’t place.
Not whispered with pity this time, but with comparison.
Comparison to someone she didn’t know, someone woven into Halvard’s past.
For a moment, she could hardly breathe.
She forced her hands to keep moving, tying the linen too tightly before catching herself and loosening it again. When she finished, she sought Halvard. He was only a short distance away, stamping out embers near the main path, shoveling dirt with measured force.
“Halvard,” she called softly as she approached.
He looked up, brows lifting briefly—until she spoke again.
“Who is Bonnie?”
He went still.
The change was immediate. His shoulders stiffened, the warmth she’d glimpsed in his eyes left them, replaced by something guarded, hard as stone.
“Nae now,” he said sharply, tossing another shovelful of dirt over the embers.
“People keep mentioning her,” Elsie said, trying to keep her voice even though her throat tightened painfully. “They speak as if she was… a choice. As if you had chosen between us.”
His jaw clenched. “I said nae now, Elsie.”
She stepped back, stung despite herself. She had not meant to provoke him, only to understand the comparisons being thrown at her from every direction. But a day filled with smoke and chaos had stripped away her defenses. Exhaustion unraveled her restraint.
The uncertainty of it—of who Bonnie had been, of what she had meant—gnawed at her like a quiet thorn.
Halvard didn’t look at her again. He strode past, calling orders to men who scrambled to keep the embers from catching anew.
She swallowed hard and tried to refocus on the bandages in her hands. Her vision blurred for a moment—not from smoke, but from the ache forming in her chest.
A sudden blast of wind tore through the clearing, stronger than the rest. It whipped her hair into her face, carrying sparks high into the air. Elsie’s head snapped up. Smoke twisted violently down the lane, carried straight toward the row of cottages everyone had believed were safe.
Before she could shout a warning, one of the untouched cottages ignited.
The thatch hissed and flared in an instant, flames racing across it with horrifying speed. The walls followed—thin lines of fire at first, widening into streaks that devoured wood. Smoke ballooned skyward as villagers screamed warnings and men grabbed buckets.
Then she heard it.
A child’s scream.
High. Terrified. Coming from inside the burning cottage.
“No…” Elsie whispered, breath catching.
Halvard heard it, too. He broke into a sprint before anyone else reacted, moving with frightening speed. He shoved past two men attempting to pry open what remained of the doorway and plunged through the collapsing frame without a second thought.
“Halvard!” Elsie screamed, stumbling forward.
He didn’t turn. Didn’t hesitate. He disappeared into the smoke like a stone dropping into water, swallowed completely.
Elsie’s heart slammed painfully against her ribs.
The world around her blurred as heat surged outward from the burning cottage. The flames climbed higher, lighting the lane with a hellish glow. Men ran with buckets, shouting in panic, but the fire was spreading far too quickly, feeding eagerly on the wind.
She moved closer without meaning to, as if distance itself might harm him. The air near the cottage was unbearable, searing her cheeks even from yards away. She covered her mouth with her sleeve against the smoke, eyes watering as the doorway crackled and sagged.
“Oh God,” she whispered, voice shaking. “Please… please come out.”
But seconds dragged. Each one longer than the last.
She could hear nothing inside. No shout, no cough, no movement. Just the roar of flame and the cold realization that he was alone in there. Alone with a terrified child. Alone while the roof beams groaning under their own weight.
Someone grabbed her arm, pulling her back as sparks rained down. She hardly registered the touch; her gaze was fixed on the doorway, on the flickering orange beyond it.
Too long, her mind whispered. It’s been too long.
Her breath hitched painfully. She thought of the argument—of her sharp question about Bonnie, of Halvard’s closed expression, of the sting she had felt in the moment he walked away from her. The absurd, childish resentment she’d felt only minutes earlier.
And now he was inside a burning building, risking everything because a child had screamed.
Because that was who he was. Reckless, stubborn, relentless.
A man who ran into fire while others stepped back.
The flames shifted suddenly as a portion of the roof gave way, sending a torrent of sparks into the yard. Villagers cried out, but Elsie’s voice failed her. Her hands shook violently, nails biting into her palms.
Smoke poured out of the doorway, thick and black and merciless.
But there was no trace of Halvard.