Chapter Twenty-Six #3
She would go back to her own time, he thought, if he did not make it.
She would be lost to him forever, and he would never again hear her quick, sharp laugh or feel the press of her body against his, or watch her mouth form his name with that mixture of exasperation and longing that still seemed impossible, even now.
The loss was so sharp it felt like a blade in his gut.
Anastasia first. He needed to get to Anastasia.
“Anastasia!” He roared into the wind.
***
For weeks Anna had wondered if the impossible thing that brought her here might happen again. She had wanted it to happen, had imagined being returned to York and everything she understood, to her parents and Mallory and the life that had vanished in an instant.
Now the possibility terrified her.
Bram was gone. She couldn’t leave. Not now, not with the memory of their argument a raw wound between them. She had to see him one more time.
A sound reached her beneath the strengthening wind.
Hooves.
Anna turned toward the landward side of the keep. For a moment she could hear little more than the wind and the pounding of her own heart, but then it came again, the unmistakable rapid beat of a horse being ridden hard.
Crossing the wall walk as quickly as she dared, Anna reached the front battlement and went straight to the parapet. The road beyond the village lay empty except for one rider coming toward Craig na Coille at a gallop.
Bram.
Relief struck first, so powerfully that tears came instantly. He was alive. He was safe.
Then confusion followed—he was alone.
Anna searched the road behind him, expecting to see the rest of the men he'd taken in pursuit, but there was no one.
No MacCailin riders followed him, and there was no sign of Raghnall's retreating force in the distance.
There was only Bram, bent low over his horse as he drove the animal through the abandoned village toward the open gates.
He looked up.
Even across the distance separating them, Anna knew the instant he saw her. Bram straightened abruptly in the saddle, his gaze lifting to the wall where she stood with the wind tearing at her hair and clothing.
“Anastasia!”
His voice barely carried above the wind.
She leaned farther over the parapet. “Bram!”
He was close enough now that she could see his face, and the alarm there was so open, so unguarded, that Anna spun from the parapet and ran for the stairs.
She took them quickly, one hand skimming the stone for balance, and reached the bailey just as Bram swung down from his horse. He had scarcely turned before she collided with him.
Bram caught her against him, his arms closing fiercely around her as Anna threw hers about his neck.
She pressed her face against him, breathing him in, feeling the solid warmth of him beneath her hands and the violent pounding of his heart against her own.
He smelled of horse and sweat and smoke, his clothing damp beneath her cheek, and she clung to him with a relief so overwhelming that nothing else seemed to matter.
“You’re all right,” she breathed.
“Aye.”
“God, Bram.”
He pressed his mouth hard against her temple, his hand tangled in her hair.
The wind tore at them, whipping her skirt and sending straw skittering across the bailey like frantic insects.
It was stronger now, that impossible pressure gathering around them, a charge in the air that hummed with the energy of York.
Anna drew back as the question she had forgotten in the relief of seeing him returned suddenly to her. “Why are you here? What happened with Raghnall?”
“Domnall is still on his trail, I expect.”
“You expect?” Her brows drew together. “Why aren’t you going after him?”
Bram’s hands tightened on her waist. Now that she could see him properly, Anna realized the fierceness in his eyes wasn’t the remnant of battle—it was desperation. His hair blew wildly around a face streaked with another man’s blood, his chest heaving.
“The wind came—I couldnae let ye go.”
“Bram—you had him! They said you had him on the run! You’ve wanted this for months!”
“He doesnae matter. Only ye.”
He released her with one hand and reached beneath his tunic, fumbling briefly at the pouch secured beneath his belt. When his hand emerged again, Anna stared at the small white rectangle caught between his fingers.
A photograph—the one she'd taken of the two of them inside the collier’s hut, when Bram had regarded the miraculous appearance of their likenesses upon a piece of paper with considerably more suspicion than wonder.
“How did you—why do you have that?” Anna shouted, looking from the photograph to him.
“I kept it, lass.” Bram raised his voice against the wind, his fingers tightening carefully around its edges. “Even then, I wanted something of ye with me.”
Anna’s throat tightened.
Another gust tore through the bailey, hard enough that she staggered, and Bram caught her arm and drew her closer. He glanced toward the sky before his gaze returned immediately to her, and Anna saw then what she had somehow failed to understand. He was afraid.
This man who had stood upon his walls that morning staring at hundreds of men come to kill him, who had ridden through the gates after the enemy who had betrayed him into English hands, looked at her now with fear in his striking blue eyes.
“I felt the wind come,” he shouted. “I feared ye would be taken away—or that ye would walk into it willingly, wanting to go back to yer time.”
Anna stared at him, the photograph still held between them, and something hurt and angry rose inside her.
“Then why did you tell me to go before? You told me I didn’t belong here!” She had to nearly shout the words now, the wind snatching at her voice. “You told me you’d kissed many a lass, like I was just another one of them. You made me think you didn’t even care!”
His expression tightened. “I lied.”
Anna’s mouth opened in disbelief.
“I kent ye might have the chance to return to yer own time.” His voice was rough, raised against the storm. “I wouldnae have ye remain because I made leaving harder for ye.”
“So you made me believe I meant nothing to you?”
His jaw tightened, a muscle flexing sharply beneath the skin, and for a moment he could not meet her eyes. “I thought it kinder.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Nae.” His answer came without defense. “It wasnae.” Bram stepped closer, the wind tearing at his hair, his face fierce and miserable before her.
“I wanted ye greatly at the lochan. Before it, if I speak truth. And every day thereafter I wanted ye more.” His gaze held hers.
“But ye have a life waiting for ye, Anastasia. A family ye love. A home—things I couldnae promise ye, safety I couldnae be certain of. What right had I to ask ye to surrender all of it for me?”
Anna swallowed against the ache in her throat. “You could have let me decide.”
“Aye.” Regret moved plainly across his face. “I should have.”
The wind surged again, shrieking around the keep and whipping Anna’s hair across her eyes. Bram reached for her, brushing it impatiently from her face as though he could not bear even that small obstruction between them.
“Now I find I am nae so honorable a man.” Bram took her hand, setting the picture there, and closed his and her fingers around it.
“I dinna care what I ought to want for ye. I dinna care what is fair or honorable. Ye are safe—I vow to ye. I will make it always so. I want ye here. With me.” His grip tightened. “Dinna go, Anastasia. Stay with me.”
Anna was speechless, her pulse pounding. That morning, she had asked for something he hadn’t known how to give her. She’d wanted words, some admission that what existed between them reached deeper than desire or duty or the honor he had tried so disastrously to offer her in place of his heart.
The argument, the clumsy proposal—none of it mattered anymore. His actions were the only words she needed to hear.
Raghnall was somewhere beyond Craig na Coille, fleeing the justice Bram had pursued for months, and Bram had let him go. He’d turned his horse around and ridden back alone because the first breath of this impossible storm had made him believe that she might disappear from his life.
Bram had chosen her.
And standing within the same gathering storm that had once torn her from everything she loved, Anna knew—simply, without argument—that she had found something here, with him.
“I love you!” she shouted over the wind, the words torn from her.
The gale faltered, the oppressive pressure easing as quickly as it had come. The unnatural storm was over. In the
sudden, ringing silence of the bailey, her words seemed to hang in the air between them.
Bram’s fierce expression softened, the desperation in his eyes giving way to a profound relief. He lifted a hand to her face, his thumb brushing away her tears.
“And I ye, Anastasia,” he said, his voice low and raw. “I imagine I have from the moment I first saw ye.”