Chapter 14
Forgive him? He seriously needed to ask?
“You’re forgiven,” Elodie said, feeling the tension inside her ease a little. “Besides, you weren’t the only one being an arse.”
She’d been stewing over their argument ever since he’d walked away from her.
That’s why she’d come here to sit by the stream.
She had needed to think. At first she’d been annoyed and hurt by what he’d said but as she’d calmed down, she’d realized that he was right.
She expected him to tell her the truth about himself when she wasn’t prepared to do the same.
And she’d also come to realize that the danger outside the valley wasn’t the only thing threatening them. The secrets between them were too.
She took a deep breath. Then, staring straight ahead so she wouldn’t have to see his reaction, asked, “You still want to know the truth about me?”
She felt rather than saw him nod. “I do, lass. I want to know everything about ye.”
“You might not like what you learn.”
His hand settled on her arm, feeling deliciously warm and reassuring. “There is naught ye can tell me that will change the way I feel.”
Are you so sure about that? Elodie thought. I’m not.
“All right,” she said, turning to look at him. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She steeled herself. “There’s a reason I’ve been so secretive and it’s not because that blow on the head gave me amnesia. It’s because the truth is, I’m from the future.”
He said not a word, but he stiffened, and the color drained from his face. In a rush, she carried on speaking.
“I shouldn’t be here. What I mean is, I wasn’t born here. Actually, I was born here. Just not now. Not for many years yet. Oh God. I sound crazy, don’t I?”
Ronan said nothing and now Elodie didn’t seem able to stop the words tumbling from her lips.
“I told you I had a job, right? I was working on a housing redevelopment project.” She shook her head. “No—that doesn’t matter.” She took a breath. “What matters is that I stepped through this shimmery portal thingy and it brought me here. From the twenty-first century.”
She forced herself to stop talking and look at him. Ronan was watching her with an indecipherable look on his face. Disbelief? Confusion?
“I know it sounds mad,” Elodie continued.
“I know it sounds impossible. But I swear to you I’m not crazy and I’m not lying.
It all started when I met this old woman called Irene MacAskill.
She said some strange things and I thought she might be a bit unhinged.
But right after I met her I stepped through this shimmery portal thing and it brought me here. ”
She finally ran out of words. Silence descended. The only sounds were the distant noises of the Steading and wind in the trees.
Elodie wrapped her arms around herself. “I know how ridiculous it sounds. I wouldn’t believe it either.”
When no answer came, she turned her head and forced herself to look at him again. He was frowning now and Elodie braced herself for his disbelief. His anger.
So she was more than a little surprised when he said, “Ye met Irene MacAskill?”
Elodie blinked. “Wait. I’ve just told you I’m a time traveler and your first question is about Irene MacAskill? Some dotty old woman?”
“Ye dinna understand,” he breathed, shaking his head. “Irene MacAskill isnae just ‘some dotty old woman’. And right before I found ye, I met her too.”
RONAN STARED AT ELODIE in shock.
The breeze whispered through the trees and somewhere overhead a blackbird sang as though nothing remarkable had happened at all.
Yet everything had changed.
She had come from...the future? How was that even possible? It wasn’t. It just wasn’t. On any other day, or had any other person uttered such impossible words, he would have assumed the blow to the head had rattled their wits.
Instead...he found himself believing her. Every word.
“Hang on,” Elodie said. “You...you met Irene MacAskill? That’s not possible. I met her in the twenty-first century. She couldn’t be here too.”
“Could she not? Ye’ve just told me ye traveled through time. Is it really so difficult to think Irene MacAskill might have done the same?”
Elodie snapped her mouth shut. Ronan blew out a breath then scrubbed a hand through his hair. The future? Elodie was from the future?
He took a deep, steadying breath, and then met her gaze. “Irene MacAskill was at the waymeet the day I found ye. She said some very strange things. Then, on my way home, I found ye.”
He plucked a long piece of grass and began shredding it. As he did so, he talked. He told her about his encounter with Irene MacAskill and what she’d said.
Ye are a long way from home and traveling further every moment. Yet the balance needs ye, Ronan Campbell, more than ye could know. If ye travel too far from where ye are meant to be it will tip even further out of kilter.
All the while Elodie’s face grew paler and paler and she hugged her arms around herself as if cold. Finally, he fell silent and waited for her reaction.
“This makes no sense,” Elodie said. “How can she be involved in any of this?”
“Because,” Ronan said carefully, “I suspect Irene MacAskill is far more than she seems.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been trying to place her ever since that meeting. There was something about her that stirred a memory, but I couldn’t quite figure out what that was. Now I think I have.”
He looked beyond the trees, searching memories that reached back to childhood.
“My father loved histories. He used to read them aloud of an evening. Most of my brothers found them tedious. But I preferred them to sword drills.” He looked back at her.
“Some of my favorite stories were those about the Order of the Osprey.”
“The what?”
“They were an ancient order of guardians.”
She pursed her lips in thought. “Like knights or something?”
He shrugged. “In a manner. They protected the realm—not merely from armies, but from darker things. Folk spoke of ancient magic, sacred places, hidden doorways between worlds.” He looked away. “As a lad I thought they were only stories.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m speaking with a woman who claims to have crossed centuries.” He smiled wryly. “I find myself more willing to reconsider old tales.”
She let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “Fair point.”
“There’s more. Irene MacAskill’s name was mentioned in those tales. That’s why I recognized it.”
“But it can’t be the same person,” Elodie insisted. “That would make her hundreds of years old.”
“Aye.”
“That’s impossible!”
“So is traveling through time.”
She pressed her hands against her forehead. “Oh God. I need a drink. Actually, I need several.”
“Aye,” Ronan agreed. “Ye aren’t the only one.”
“So there you have it,” Elodie said eventually.
“I’m a time traveler from the twenty-first century and it looks as though some random old woman is responsible for bringing me here.
” She laughed shrilly. “I can’t believe those words have just come out of my mouth!
Perhaps that whack on the head was worse than I thought and this is all some kind of fever dream. ”
“If so, then it’s a shared fever dream.”
She looked at him. “How come you’re not angry?”
He frowned in puzzlement. “Why would I be angry?”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Oh, let me think? Perhaps because I’ve been lying to you from the beginning?”
He picked at a thread on his plaid. “We all have secrets.”
“I think my secret might be a bit bigger than most.”
He snorted a laugh. “Aye, lass, I’ll give ye that. It was definitely bigger than most.”
She had told him everything, laid out her vulnerability, trusted him with the truth about her. Could he not do the same?
“Ye asked why Faye and I have been arguing,” he began, his voice low and hesitant. “It’s not something I talk about easily.”
“It’s okay, Ronan. You don’t have to tell me.”
“But I want to.” He met her gaze. “It’s...
complicated. And linked to things I’d rather forget.
” He began picking at another thread on his plaid, trying to find the best way to frame his thoughts.
“Ye were right, I’m not a blacksmith. Or not just a blacksmith.
My father was Duncan Campbell, the Earl of Newborough. ”
Elodie inhaled sharply. “An earl? Your dad was an earl?”
He nodded. “It wasnae as grand as it sounds. I already told ye I had brothers. Four of them. So I was a spare and always marked for the military.” He tore the thread out of his plaid and tossed it away.
“But when my parents died, everything changed. My eldest brother, Bryce, inherited the earldom but the rest of the estate was to be split between all of us, every one of us getting our share. But that wasnae good enough for Bryce. He wanted it all. My lands. My brothers’ lands.
All of it.” He glanced at her. “I’m sure ye can guess what happened? ”
“You told me that you began arguing.”
He snorted. “That’s a polite way of putting it. There were meetings with lawyers. Threats. Accusations and counter accusations. Every week another quarrel.” His voice had become flat. Emotionless. As though recounting another man’s life.
“One day Bryce came to my lands, bringing armed men, and demanded I surrender everything. I refused.” He closed his eyes. “I remember drawing my dagger. Shouting. I remember...losing myself.”
His fingers curled involuntarily. “I stabbed him. I didn’t even know what I’d done until I saw him fall.”
Elodie said not a word but he could feel the weight of her stare even though he dare not look at her.
“Somehow I’d become exactly what I despised,” he continued.
“Land, wealth, power. They were never things I’d wanted.
And yet I’d almost killed my own brother in pursuit of them.
So I let Bryce take everything and rode away.
I wandered until eventually I found Faye.
Or rather, she found me.” He looked across the clearing.
“I swore I’d never lift a weapon again. And now look at me.
” He held out both hands and examined his palms as though he could see blood covering them. “They’re stained all over again.”
Elodie’s hand slipped into his. “Don’t do this to yourself. You don’t understand your own worth.”
He shook his head. “I understand it well enough.”
“No. You really don’t.” She shifted closer.
“I’ve watched you since the day I met you.
You rescue strangers. You build homes. You repair tools.
You carry burdens nobody else even notices.
” Her grip on his hand tightened. “You think stabbing your brother defines you? It doesn’t.
It was a terrible act, yes, but if you ask me, you’ve more than made up for it.
We all make mistakes. We all do things we wish we hadn’t.
I’ve met plenty of truly rotten people. They never lose sleep over their decisions.
They never question themselves. They certainly don’t abandon titles and fortunes just to avoid conflict. ”
His chest tightened painfully. “But I’ve failed these people. And I don’t know what to do to save them. That’s why Faye and I keep arguing. The Steading is no longer safe and Faye wants me to take our people away from here, wants me to reclaim my old lands and take our people there.”
“But you don’t want to?”
He shook his head. “No, I dinna want to. I swore I would never go back. I swore I would never live that life again, be that kind of man again. I...I dinna want to become him again, Elodie. I dinna want to become the man good for nothing but violence. The man who almost killed his own brother.”
“You’re not that kind of man,” Elodie insisted. “Why can’t you see that?”
“But I—”
She silenced him by placing a finger gently against his lips. “Do you think I would love that kind of man?”
The words slammed into him like a hammer blow. Ronan stared at her in shock.
Love.
Could that be true? Did she really—?
“Elodie...”
She smiled wryly then lifted her chin and met his gaze defiantly. “Oops. The cat is out of the bag now isn’t it? I don’t know when it happened, but yes. Ronan Campbell, I think I’m hopelessly and completely in love with you.”