Chapter Seventeen
“I have to tell you,” Anna said, the words coming out in a shaky rush once Bram had finally reined the horse in from its frantic gallop.
The farmstead, with its deceptively peaceful, thatched roof and curling hearth-smoke, was a good ten minutes behind them now, lost to the dense weave of trees.
She tried for a light tone, a weak joke to mask the tremor in her voice.
“This century isn’t exactly winning me over. ” But the attempt fell flat.
The horse’s sides still heaved beneath her legs, its sweat-damp hide warm against her skin, and her own heart hadn’t yet gotten the message to slow down. It hammered against her ribs, a wild, frightened drum keeping time with the animal’s slowing breaths.
“Nae doubt,” Bram said after a moment, sounding indifferent.
“You, um, seemed irrationally calm back there,” she said next.
“Calm?”
“Yes, like you were more upset—showed more anger, anyway—when you saw that my skirt had been cut—”
“Jesu, lass, but there were bairns at the table.”
Okay, so he was upset that those weirdos meant to kidnap her or keep her, or whatever, but he’d controlled his temper for the sake of the children.
Maybe she believed him, she wasn’t sure.
Honestly, after how cool he’d been to her for three days, she rather thought he’d only been frustrated at the inconvenience of it, to have his meal disturbed, but not much else.
“I might say the same of ye, lass,” Bram remarked after a long pause. “Ye held yerself in guid stead.”
She shrugged, a gesture that felt disconnected from her body.
A sudden, sharp need to cry burned at the back of her throat.
“I was so shocked... I didn’t understand what was happening.
And you... you always seem to know what to do.
” She shook her head, the words tumbling out.
“I shouldn’t get used to that. It’s not a good idea, relying on you to fix everything. ”
“Nae,” he agreed.
She didn’t know what to make of his mood, what seemed an utter and inexplicable disinterest, when her heart still pounded in her chest. Sure, she’d seen plenty of violence in this century, but this was different.
This wasn’t the detached duty of soldiers; it was the hungry, possessive way the old man had looked at her.
Whatever those people had intended, she knew with sickening certainty it began and ended with her suffering.
She fought against tears still, but could no longer hold them off.
Her entire body sank, shoulders, arms, and head drooping with despair.
The tears came then, hot and sudden, spilling over before she could stop them.
Her nose burned and her chest tightened, as if the air inside her lungs was choked.
She swiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand, but the tears kept coming, stupid and relentless.
I can’t do this anymore.
She’d been holding on—or rather blindly following along—telling herself she could endure this century, this danger, this man who’d kissed her and then acted as if it had never happened.
But now, after the farmhouse, and with Bram speaking to her with an infuriating detachment, something inside her snapped.
“I just—” Her voice broke. She swallowed hard, trying to steady it. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”
The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. Bram was quiet behind her, as rigid as the tree trunks they passed. The horse’s steady gait did nothing to soothe the storm inside her. She pressed her lips together and stared at the horse’s mane, but the tears kept coming anyway.
She was utterly, completely alone.
The realization washed over her with a crushing weight she had somehow managed to avoid until now.
From the first moment she arrived in the forest, in the fourteenth century, there had always been something more immediate demanding her attention.
She had been too frightened, too confused, too exhausted, too busy simply surviving to allow herself to think much beyond the next hour.
But now, in her misery, she dwelled upon the enormity of it. What if this was her life now?
What if there was no way back?
Her parents. Dear God, by now they had to be beside themselves.
She pictured her mother pacing the kitchen floor, telephone clutched in one hand while dialing yet another friend, another hospital, another police officer who most certainly wouldn’t be able to offer any answers.
Her father was incapable of sitting still on a good day.
He would fly to England, she imagined, organize searches, insist something must be done, something had been overlooked, that his daughter could not simply vanish into thin air.
Mallory... Mallory would be terrified. She would be trying to reassure their parents while privately imagining every horrible possibility that could have befallen her little sister.
None of them would ever imagine the truth—how could they?
There would never be a body to bury, never an explanation, and never even the smallest measure of peace.
Somewhere, seven hundred years in the future, life would continue without her.
Birthdays would come and go. Christmases would pass.
Her parents would age quickly now, and maybe struggle to find joy.
Her students would grow up, scarcely remembering the teacher who had disappeared when they were third-graders.
New families would move into her apartment.
Someone would pack her belongings into cardboard boxes.
Her life would slowly become a collection of photographs and unanswered questions.
And she would still be here.
The tears came harder then, supposing she might never again hear her mother’s voice or her father’s laugh. She might never hug either of them again, never sit around the dinner table listening to the easy, familiar conversations she’d possibly taken for granted in the past.
She had spent the last week ignoring the larger picture, focusing only on getting through each day.
It had never truly occurred to her that there might be no miraculous return home—that this impossible journey might simply be the rest of her life.
The loneliness of that possibility was a weight that threatened to crush her.
She swallowed a sob, but it clawed its way back up, raw and ugly.
The horse’s hooves thudded dully against the damp earth, a slow, relentless rhythm that only made the silence between them heavier.
Anna’s chest ached, her ribs pressing in as if trying to contain the storm of tears that refused to stop.
She didn’t bother wiping them away anymore. What was the point? Who cared?
The forest blurred around her, a smear of green and gray, the scent of wet pine and rotting leaves thick in her nose.
She swallowed another sob, her throat raw.
The weight of it all pressed down—this place, this man, the way he sat behind her, unmoving, as if her breaking was nothing more than the wind rustling the branches.
Then, at last, Bram’s voice cut through her tears.
“Dinna weep, lass.” His voice was quiet, almost awkward, as though he had no more idea what to do with a crying woman than she had any idea how to stop crying. “The danger’s past.”
Anna laughed through her tears, the sound sharp and entirely without humor.
“Oh, well... great.” She scrubbed impatiently at her eyes. “Sure. Everything’s better.”
“I only meant there’s nae cause for tears now.”
She sighed, too weary to explain now what she cried about, even as she knew for certain that he bore some share of the blame as well, after having kissed her with such astonishing tenderness that she’d allowed herself to believe that perhaps she wasn’t quite so alone in this strange world.
Would she even be crying now if he hadn’t kissed her?
If he hadn’t proven to be just another cold, self-absorbed man who wasn’t interested in her after all?
“You’re right,” she conceded with resignation.
“What’s the point? Crying won’t return me to the twenty-first century.
Crying won’t remove the fear and dread my parents are knowing at this moment.
Crying won’t make the fourteenth century any friendlier.
” She drew an unsteady breath, trying to regain some measure of composure before continuing.
“I might never get home,” she said, stiffly now.
“I might never see my parents or my sister again. They’ll never know what happened to me.
They’ll spend the rest of their lives wondering, having no idea of the hell I’m going through—lost in time, chased by a medieval English army, nearly kidnapped by some...
some backwoods cult leader, and stuck with you, when clearly you wish I’d have landed in any century but yours—so forgive me if I need five minutes to cry about it. ”
Bram was silent for several moments as the horse continued its steady pace through the growing darkness.
“I canna undo what has befallen ye, Anastasia,” he said. “But I can see ye safely north.”
Anna released a weary sigh, hating the small, traitorous part of her that warmed at the sound of her name on his lips, at the formal way he always said the whole thing. She rubbed her eyes once more, feeling utterly spent.
“Going north solves your problem,” she said. “Not mine.”
The words sounded harsher than she’d intended.
She regretted them but let them stand. It wasn’t his burden to get her home; she knew that.
But his answer laid the truth bare: he had a destination, a purpose.
She was just a passenger with nowhere to go.
Her grief over her family was a vast, crushing weight, but tangled within it was the smaller, sharper pain of the hope he had given her with that kiss, then snatched away.
She lacked the strength to separate one heartbreak from the other.
They rode on without another word.