Chapter 6
Ronan drove another nail into the warped doorframe and stepped back to judge the fit.
The cottage leaned slightly to one side, its thatch patched with turf and its walls showing the scars of years of neglect.
The door itself was little more than salvaged boards lashed together with iron straps.
Still, once it hung properly, it would keep the weather out, and for folk who had spent days sleeping beside the road, that was enough for now.
Eamon braced the frame while Ronan adjusted the hinges. “Think it’ll hold?” the younger man asked.
“It’ll hold until I can do it properly.”
“So...maybe a week?”
Ronan snorted. “Cheeky bastard.”
Eamon grinned and handed him another nail. Around them, the settlement hummed with unusual activity. New voices. New people. New problems. Thirty-five more mouths. Ronan hammered the nail home harder than necessary. How were they going to feed them all?
The valley could support the Steading as it stood, but not if refugees kept arriving in numbers like this. He’d been stretching stores for months already, trading tools and labor for grain, sending foraging parties farther afield than he liked.
And for what? So another village could be burned while the great men argued about crowns and kingdoms?
He’d spent years trying to keep clear of such troubles. He’d surrendered land rather than shed blood for it. Walked away rather than drag his people into another feud.
Yet trouble kept finding him anyway.
He raised the hammer again. “If this goes on much longer, we’ll be building cottages in the trees.”
“That might be fun,” Eamon said. “We could have rope swings between them all.”
“Remind me never to put ye in charge.”
Eamon laughed.
A shadow fell across the doorway and Ronan looked up to find Elodie standing behind him.
She wore the same borrowed dress Faye had given her yesterday, her hair was coming loose from the braid she’d tied it into, and her hands were dirty.
The boots she wore under the dress looked wholly out of place and yet on her they looked... right.
“Eamon,” Ronan said, “run to the smithy and fetch another pouch of nails. The big ones.”
The younger man glanced between him and Elodie, clearly sensing he was being dismissed, but wisely chose not to comment. “Aye, chief.”
Once he was gone, Ronan set the hammer aside. “Come in, lass.”
Elodie stepped carefully over the threshold, studying the half-repaired cottage. “This is for the new arrivals?”
“A family with four children.”
“It looks better already.”
“It looks less likely to fall on them. That’s not quite the same thing.”
That earned a brief smile from her.
Ronan wiped his hands on a rag. “I wanted to thank ye for helping those folks last night. For bringing them here and then helping organize them when they arrived.”
She looked almost uncomfortable at the praise. “What else could I do?”
“Ye could have continued on yer way and left them to fend for themselves. Many would have.”
Where were ye going, lass? he wanted to ask. Why did ye leave without even telling me ye were going?
But he didn’t. Most folk who ended up here had a past they’d rather keep hidden, him included. He sensed Elodie was the same.
She shrugged and Ronan found himself gazing at her. She had the deepest brown eyes, rich and earthy like forest loam.
“And as for yer little adventure last night.” He picked up a loose board and turned it in his hands. “I will take ye wherever it was ye were trying to get to. There was no need to sneak away.”
Color touched her cheeks. “I wasn’t sneaking!”
“No?”
She huffed out a breath. “All right, fine. Maybe I was. A little.”
“Well, ye shouldnae. It isnae safe out there on yer own.” He kept his tone calm, though worry still sat heavily in his chest. If anything should have happened to her...
“Ye have a healing head wound. Ye could have walked off a cliff, fallen into a bog, or met folk less friendly than the ones ye found.”
She opened her mouth as though to answer. For a second he thought she might reveal something: where she’d come from or where she’d been trying to get to. But the moment passed.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
No, he thought. Ye were thinking very clearly. Just not about anything ye are willing to tell me. Who are ye, Elodie MacNeil?
His eyes dropped to her wrist where the strange timepiece had been. It wasn’t there now though, only lighter skin to mark where it had been. So, she’d removed it. Why? he wondered.
She fiddled with the sleeve of her dress. “This place,” she muttered. “It’s so... different to everything I’m used to. I’ve never been anywhere like this in my life.”
If Faye was right and she was a noblewoman, then of course she would never have been to a place like this. It would have been far below her station. Yet he suspected that wasn’t what she meant.
He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “Aye, well, ye aren’t the only one. I’d never been to a place like this before either. When I first came here, there was almost nothing. An abandoned croft, a few crumbling walls. And Faye, of course.”
“She was here first?”
“Aye. I staggered into the valley half-starved. If she’d not taken me in, I’d likely be bones in a ditch somewhere.”
Elodie gasped. “Why? What had happened to you?”
He answered with a shrug. “Life.” He didn’t elaborate.
The memories were old and unwelcome. “This was a prosperous village once, long ago. But as the moorland encroached it became more difficult to farm and was eventually abandoned. When I arrived, there was only Faye, living here alone. She’d found it several months before, ever since she....
well, ever since she had a need of finding somewhere new.
” He didn’t elaborate on that either. Faye’s past and her reasons for being here were not his to share.
“I helped repair the roof and the walls of Faye’s house.
Then rebuilt and repaired the smithy. After a few weeks another family arrived.
Then two more.” He spread his hands. “Folk kept finding us. One cottage became five. Five became twenty.”
“And now?”
“Now apparently we’re a village.”
That earned a real laugh from her and he found himself absurdly pleased by it. The easy humor drained away, leaving something quieter between them. Ronan wanted to say something reassuring but words had never been his strength. He’d always been better working with iron than people.
“Listen, lass—”
The door banged open and Eamon hurried in carrying a leather pouch.
“I got the nails!” Noticing the heavy silence, he looked between the two of them. “Er... should I come back?”
“No, don’t worry,” Elodie said quickly, stepping up to the door. “I...I’d better let you get back to work.”
She paused at the threshold and looked back. For a moment, their eyes met. Then she was gone, leaving cool morning air and the faint scent of wood smoke behind her. Eamon watched her walk away and then turned to Ronan with a grin.
Ronan took the pouch of nails and tossed one at him. “Hand me the hammer and keep yer mouth shut.”
Eamon did as he was told, though the grin lingered long after the hammer changed hands.
THE EVENING SUN WAS beginning to sink behind the cliffs that sheltered the valley, painting everything in shades of gold and amber as Elodie walked back through the village. Smoke drifted lazily from chimneys and from somewhere she could hear the sound of laughter.
It was little more than a day since she’d arrived but already this place felt different. Less strange. Less threatening. More...normal. Perhaps that was simply because she’d been so distracted by helping the refugees today that she hadn’t had the time to think about anything else.
Or perhaps it was because of Ronan Campbell.
Despite all her efforts to the contrary, she found herself thinking about him more and more.
The more she learned about him, the more questions she had.
A blacksmith who owned a horse fit for a nobleman.
A man who carried pistols and swords but preferred repairing farm tools.
Someone who seemed uncomfortable with leadership and yet somehow managed to hold together an entire community of refugees.
And then there was the way he looked at her sometimes, as though he was trying to solve a puzzle. Which was fair enough, she had to concede, considering she was doing exactly the same thing.
Up ahead, she spotted Faye emerging from one of the barns carrying a large wicker basket filled with small glass bottles and stacks of dried herbs. The healer staggered a little under the weight.
“Here,” Elodie said hurrying forward. “Let me help.” She took one side of the basket, helping to take the weight.
Faye frowned at her. “Ye are supposed to be recovering. Have ye forgotten ye took a whack on the head only yesterday?”
“I’m fine,” Elodie replied. “Due to your expert care, obviously.”
“Hmph. Flattery will get ye nowhere.”
Elodie grinned. “Come on.”
Elodie studied Faye from the corner of her eye as they carried the basket. The healer looked exhausted. This was hardly surprising, of course. She’d spent the past two days looking after first Elodie and then the new arrivals.
Elodie found herself thinking of Ronan’s story of how he’d found Faye living here alone. What would drive a woman to come out here to the middle of nowhere? She suspected her story might not be all that different from the refugees’.
They reached Faye’s cottage and Elodie took the basket from her and placed it next to the fireplace.
“Sit,” Elodie commanded.
Faye blinked. “What?”
“Sit down.”
“I beg yer pardon? Are ye giving me orders now?”“
“I am.”
The healer folded her arms. “Now tell me, lass. Which of us is the healer and which of us is the patient?”
Elodie pointed firmly towards a chair. “Right now? I’m the healer and you’re the patient. You look exhausted. Now, sit.”
Faye looked like she would argue. Then, unexpectedly, the older woman snorted with amusement. “Ye’ve been spending too much time with Ronan. He thinks he can order me around as well.”