Chapter Twenty-Two #2
Anna lowered her chin onto her folded arms again, suddenly finding the water considerably easier to look at than her new friend.
She could lie. She could laugh it off, insist that of course she liked Bram well enough, considering he'd brought her safely all the way here. But Etta had offered her friendship so easily and sincerely that Anna found she didn’t want to repay it with dishonesty.
“Yes,” she admitted quietly. “I like him.”
Etta’s smile grew.
“Don’t.”
“I said naught.”
“Your face did,” Anna accused.
Etta laughed and nudged her lightly with one shoulder. “I only wondered because I’ve seen the way Bram looks at ye.”
Anna’s smile faded slightly. “Bram looks at me like he’s mentally measuring me to know how big to dig the grave.”
Etta frowned at her, not comprehending. But she was hardly bothered by it, but sifted another handful of sand through her fingers, and said, “He does follow ye around with his eyes, and I’ve never kent him to take much interest in any lass.
These last years, 'twas Scotland and the war that occupied him. Little else.”
Anna looked toward the water again, refusing to let the small flare of hope take hold. Etta hadn’t been there on the journey north. She hadn't seen how completely Bram had withdrawn from her after the kiss. She hadn’t heard the things he’d said to her.
“He brought me here,” she said instead. “He feels responsible for me. That's probably all you’re seeing.”
Etta considered that but seemed unconvinced. “Mayhap.”
“Definitely.”
“If ye say so.”
Anna scratched her name into the wet sand, doodled flowers—more like spiders—and wiped it all away.
She traced a crescent moon and scattered stars, reflecting on how Etta’s friendship had made her fourteenth-century exile bearable—laughter and conversation that eased her homesickness more than Etta’s brother ever had.
Still, Anna had borne her impossible past alone: she’d fallen backward seven hundred years.
Bram knew but never pressed—he didn’t truly believe her—and warned her to stay silent.
Etta, however, was different. Anna watched her friend dig a tiny trench, chatting about the coming harvest festival.
Hovering over another star, she weighed confessing her impossible truth, braced for Etta’s inevitable questions—Where did you come from?
What’s your world like?—and dreaded losing her if Etta deemed her crazy.
Not yet, Anna decided. Maybe someday she’d tell it all—but not today.
So when Etta finally stopped talking and asked, “What are ye thinking about?” Anna gave her a small smile.
“Home.”
Etta’s expression softened, but blessedly she asked only one question.
“Do ye miss it terribly?”
Anna looked toward the sea. “Yeah,” she said after a moment. “I really do.”
***
Anastasia didn’t become aware of his approach until he was nearly upon her. The wind coming off the sea was brisk, driving the waves against the shore with enough force to drown out most lesser sounds, while the soft sand beneath his boots gave little warning of his approach.
She remained where she was, stretched out upon her stomach and idly tracing something in the sand with one finger.
Bram had seen from above that Etta was no longer with her, though he knew the two had spent much of the day together.
He’d spotted them earlier among the women working the fields and had watched for a time as Anastasia abandoned the weeding to occupy several restless bairns with some peculiar game that involved sitting them in a circle and tapping each upon the head.
Whatever the purpose, the children had enjoyed it immensely.
Anastasia had as well. Though he’d been too far away to hear her laughter, he’d seen it plainly enough in the animation of her face, in the way she’d thrown back her head at one point. He’d stared unabashedly for quite some time.
Now, however, she seemed much quieter.
Bram slowed as he approached, noticing the aimless movement of her finger through the sand and the pensive set of her face as she stared beyond it toward the water.
“Etta abandoned ye, then?”
Anastasia startled and twisted around. “Oh. I didn’t hear you.” She pushed herself up onto one elbow and glanced toward the path. “Your mother sent someone looking for her about ten minutes ago. Apparently she was supposed to help with something and forgot.”
“That sounds like Etta.”
Anna pushed herself further upright and sat with her legs folded to one side, brushing sand from her forearms. “She didn’t actually forget. She said she was hoping your mother had.”
Bram smiled. “That sounds even more like Etta.”
Anastasia smiled too, though hers was brief. She looked back toward the water, and Bram was left standing several feet away with the vexing realization that he’d come down here with no other purpose than to see her. But now he thought he should have prepared some conversation before approaching.
“Ye are guid with the bairns,” he said at length.
She glanced up. “Oh, you must have seen... I didn’t see you.”
Bram regretted mentioning it, which essentially announced that he’d been watching her. “I was crossing the yard.”
“And stopped to watch?”
There was no accusation in the question, only mild surprise, but he found himself needlessly clarifying, “For a wee bit. I was attempting to discover what ye were about.”
Anastasia studied him for a moment before looking away. “I was trying to teach them a game, Duck, Duck, Goose.”
“Smacking heads and running in circles is a game?”
The faintest smile touched her mouth, and Bram experienced the ridiculous satisfaction of having put it there.
Anastasia shrugged. “They seemed to enjoy it.”
Bram lowered himself onto a flat rock nearby. “Aye, they did. The squeals carried for miles, nae doubt.”
A soft and small smile touched her mouth but didn’t stay long.
“Ye are... ye seem melancholy today.”
Anastasia scratched her finger in the sand again. “I’m fine.” She drew another line through the sand and confessed, “I was thinking about home.”
For several moments there was only the quiet rush of water over the stones. He looked toward the sea rather than at her, remembering another evening beneath a darkening sky when Anastasia had clung desperately to his arm and thought for sure something decisive was about to happen.
“Have ye felt it again?”
She knew immediately what he meant. “No. And... now I’m afraid I won’t ever again. I don’t even know why I came here in the first place, or what made it happen or why it almost seemed to happen again that night and then... didn’t. So how am I supposed to know whether it ever will again?”
He had no answer for that.
Anastasia wrapped her arms loosely around her bent knees. “What happens to me if I can’t?” she asked, sounding dangerously close to tears.
She was watching him now, and the shattering weight of the query struck him. She was asking what became of the entirety of a life displaced by seven centuries, and Bram could offer her nothing.
“I dinna ken,” he admitted.
“Yeah.” She looked away. “Neither do I.”
“Ye have a place here for as long as ye want it.”
“I might have guessed you would say that. And don’t get me wrong, I am grateful.”
“But?”
Her mouth twisted. “But what? I want to go home.”
The words should not have surprised him, he realized.
Of course she wanted to go home. She had parents who loved her, a sister and niece and nephew she spoke of with great affection, children she taught and a life she had neither abandoned nor willingly left behind.
Only a selfish man would expect a few weeks in his company and several days of Highland hospitality to outweigh all of that.
Still, the words rankled.
I want to go home.
Away from Craig na Coille. Away from Scotland. Away from him.
Aye, but what reason had he given her to want otherwise?
Bram rubbed a hand across his jaw and looked out over the water, disliking the answer.
“Aye,” he said finally. “I ken.”
Anastasia bent her head, resting her chin upon her knees.
“Nothing against you personally,” she was kind enough to qualify.
“Or Craig na Coille. Your family has been wonderful to me, Etta especially. And this is the first place where I actually feel safe.” She paused and rubbed her knuckle against the bottom of her nose. ”But they’re not my family.”
“Nae.”
“And this isn’t my life. My parents cannot possibly know...
anything.” Her voice thinned, and she paused before continuing.
“That’s the part I keep trying not to think about.
They don’t know I’m alive. My mom will imagine the worst—she’ll think I’m dead, and it breaks my heart to imagine her grief. ”
She stared at the sand again, blinking more often than necessary, and something twisted painfully inside him. Somehow this quiet sadness was harder to witness than any other emotion he’d seen from her.
“I am sorry, Anastasia.”
Her eyes shone, though she managed a small shrug. “It’s not your fault.”
“Nae, but I would give ye the answers ye desired if I could.”
Something in her face softened. “I know,” she said quietly.
Bram held her gaze another moment, then pushed himself to his feet. The sun had sunk considerably while they talked, leaving the beach in the long shadow of the cliffs, and somewhere above them Craig na Coille would already be stirring toward the evening meal.
“Come,” he said, brushing the sand from his hands. “We should go up. Supper will be soon.”
Anastasia nodded and accepted the hand Bram extended to her.
He closed his fingers around hers and drew her smoothly to her feet.
Anastasia came upright close to him, then released his hand and turned slightly away to brush the sand from her skirts, sweeping both palms several times over her hips and backside before giving the hem a brisk shake.
When she straightened again, the wind caught several strands that had escaped her braid and blew them across her cheek and mouth.