Chapter 16
The excitement that followed Ronan’s announcement buzzed through the evening air over the Steading.
Despite the coming dusk, the place was as busy as a kicked anthill.
People hurried between cottages carrying bundles of cloth and sacks of grain.
Several of the older children were already collecting lengths of rope and sorting tools into neat piles. Everyone had found something to do.
Everyone except Elodie.
She knew she ought to be helping organize things, but she didn’t join in. Everything that had happened today—first to David, then between her and Ronan and then with the villagers agreeing to leave—had sent her into a spin. Now she felt dazed and listless, unable to settle.
Ronan had gone off with Eamon. Faye was instructing a group of helpers how best to pack her supplies. Everyone else was busy with something or other. So Elodie wandered through the village, alone. The busyness of the inhabitants washed over her like a tide but left her untouched.
She wasn’t sure what was making her feel this way.
But then, as she watched everyone preparing to leave, it suddenly dawned on her.
The Steading, this safe, closed community was all she’d known since she came here.
Now it was being pulled away from her and she suddenly felt unsteady, even a little frightened.
And, she realized, if she went with them, she would be traveling even further from a way home.
She found herself outside the barn that Faye had turned into her infirmary. She hesitated at the doorway before quietly stepping inside. The room smelled of herbs and smoke, with the sharper scent of vinegar beneath it.
David lay asleep on the bed nearest the fire. His face had lost some of its frightening pallor, though the dark circles beneath his eyes showed how much strength the wound had stolen from him. One arm lay outside the blanket, his fingers twitching occasionally as though he were dreaming.
Sarah sat beside him, gently wringing out a cloth in a bowl of cool water before laying it across his forehead. She looked up as Elodie entered and gave a tired smile in greeting.
“How is he?” Elodie asked quietly.
Sarah glanced at her husband. “Faye says he’s improving.”
Elodie crossed the room and rested a hand lightly on Sarah’s shoulder. “He looks better than he did earlier.”
“I think so too.”
For a while they simply watched him sleep. The only sounds were the crackle of the fire and David’s slow breathing. Eventually Sarah spoke.
“I heard what Ronan said. That we’re leaving.” She stared down at the cloth in her hands. “But how will we move David safely? He’s only just stopped bleeding.”
“We’re not leaving for several days and when we do, we’ll take it slowly,” Elodie said. “Faye will know what he can manage.”
Sarah looked at her. “What if she’s wrong?”
“Sarah—”
“What if his wound opens? What if he gets a fever? What if he dies halfway there?” Her voice cracked on the last word.
Elodie instinctively reached for her hand. “I understand, Sarah.”
“Do ye?” Sarah asked, her voice shrill and on the verge of panic. “Twice now I’ve almost lost him. First when our village was attacked and now here. I canna go through it again. I just canna.”
“I know,” Elodie said softly.
“I thought...” Sarah laughed shakily. “I actually thought we’d made it. When we found the Steading I let myself believe we were safe.” She gave a tiny, humorless smile. “That was foolish.”
“It wasn’t foolish.”
“No?” Sarah looked back at her. “When we got here, I finally slept through the night again. And now we’re running. Every time I think we’ve reached somewhere safe the world reminds me there isnae such a place.”
Elodie felt something tighten painfully inside her.
She wished she knew what to say, wished she could give her friend the reassurance she so desperately needed.
But she couldn’t. The truth was, she had no idea what waited for them beyond the borders of this valley.
She had no idea what the true reality of this time might involve.
She knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about what the lives of the Steading’s people had been like.
For the first time since coming here she felt like a true outsider.
Sarah wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and looked at Elodie. “Tell me this new place will be different.”
Elodie wanted to promise peace and quiet lives. Children growing up without fear. She wanted to promise David would recover completely and that nobody else would be hurt. But she couldn’t.
“I can’t,” she whispered.
Sarah looked away, wiping at her eyes.
Elodie squeezed her hand. “But I know Ronan. I know he wouldn’t ask anyone to leave unless he believed it was our best chance. I know Faye will do everything she can for David. I know every single person here will help carry him if they have to.”
After a long silence Sarah managed a tired smile. “Ye are right. I know ye are right. It’s just that, God help me, the thought of losing him terrifies me.”
Elodie thought of Ronan and knew exactly how her friend felt. If anything should happen to Ronan... Dear God, she didn’t know how she’d survive it.
Sarah sighed and stood. “I need to fetch more water. Will ye stay with him?”
“Of course.”
Sarah nodded then slipped quietly outside. Elodie pulled the stool closer to David’s bedside. He didn’t wake but his breathing remained slow and steady. She hoped that was a good sign.
She looked out of the little window where the western sky had begun turning gold with sunset. They were leaving. They were going out into the wide, dangerous world of the seventeenth century.
Elodie swallowed thickly. She had always assumed that she would find a way home somehow. But how was she supposed to do that if she willingly walked away from her only link to the twenty-first century?
There is always a way for that person to find their true path if they have the courage to retrace their steps and choose another.
Irene’s words returned with startling clarity. Why would she think about that now? The infuriating old woman had dropped her here without any kind of guidance whatsoever. Elodie would be damned if she’d give her words a moment’s thought!
Unless...
Unless she didn’t just drop me here without guidance, Elodie thought. Unless I’ve just not been listening properly.
A way for a person to find their true path.
Was that it? Was that why she’d been brought here? Was that her true path? To help Ronan and the people of the Steading? Was that what Irene had in mind for her? And if so, would she send her home again once her task was completed?
Home.
The word made her pause. It no longer felt as straightforward as it once had.
She pictured her apartment with its clean white walls and sparkling kitchen.
She pictured her laptop sitting on the dining room table.
Emails. Meetings. Construction schedules.
She thought about the boardroom of Cross Construction and other companies like it.
About executives discussing profit margins while families waited years for decent housing.
She thought about coming home late. Heating a microwave meal.
Answering work emails before bed. Getting up the next morning to do it all again.
It had seemed like a life. But now it felt strangely distant, like someone else’s memories.
Then other memories came. Ronan laughing as she ignored his instructions and climbed onto the roof beside him. Ronan dancing awkwardly until she teased him into relaxing. Kissing her beneath the trees. Looking at her as though she were the only thing in the world that mattered.
David stirred in his sleep, mumbling something unintelligible. Elodie adjusted the blanket over him then sat back once more.
Outside, she could hear people talking as they prepared for the journey south. Her heart felt pulled between two centuries.
And for the first time since stepping through that arch, she no longer knew which one held her future.
RONAN EMERGED FROM the trees with Eamon and the other guards following close behind, talking in low voices about sightlines and patrol routes.
“So if we put Tam and Alec on the western flank,” Eamon was saying, “and Sean and Dougal on the eastern, we’ll have warning from both sides. They can range out some distance and give us plenty of time to prepare if they spot trouble coming our way.”
Ronan nodded. “Aye. And the second group holds close to the line of march. Eamon, ye’ll take the rear with two others and I’ll lead up front.
I’ll give ye one of my pistols.” The younger man grinned hugely at this.
“No heroics, mind,” Ronan told him. “It’s better as a deterrent than an actual weapon.
And I’ll need to show ye how to fire the damned thing first.”
Eamon nodded enthusiastically.
“We’ll need signals,” Ronan continued. “Three horn blasts if there’s trouble from the west. One long blast if it comes from the east.”
“And if both happen?”
Ronan snorted. “Then we pray.”
The conversation faded as they finished their inspection of the perimeter and the Steading came into view. Ronan spotted Faye waiting at the side of the road, her hands tucked behind her back.
Ronan turned to Eamon. “Take the others on. I’ll catch ye up.”
“Aye, chief.”
Ronan approached Faye. “Has something happened to David?”
Faye shook her head. “No. He’s still asleep.”
Ronan let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “But no worse?”
“No worse. Sarah’s with him. And Elodie.”
He nodded. “Good.”
For a few moments they simply stood together, watching as the Steading settled down for the night. A pair of women were hanging damp blankets over a fence. Somewhere a hammer rang rhythmically against timber.
Faye studied him with the shrewd look he’d come to know so well. “I didnae come to speak about David. I came to speak about ye.”
“What have I done now?”
Faye raised an eyebrow. “Ye dinna need to look so worried. I’ve actually come to tell ye that I’m proud of ye.”
Ronan blinked in surprise. “Ye are?
“Aye. For what ye said at the meeting.”
He looked away. “I only told them the truth.”
“And that,” Faye said softly, “is exactly why I’m proud. I know that wasnae easy for ye.”
He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. At length he said quietly, “I’ve hidden who I was for so long that saying it aloud...” He searched unsuccessfully for the right words. “I dinna know. It almost felt like becoming someone else again.”
“Aye. It’s a difficult thing ye are doing, lad. Just remember that nobody can turn ye into something ye dinna want to be. Ye always have a choice.”
He snorted softly. “Do I?” He watched Skye chasing a butterfly through the grass. “I never wanted people following me because of my name.”
“They dinna.”
“But they will.”
She shook her head firmly. “Ye still havenae learned that lesson, have ye? Nobody here cares a damn who yer father was. They dinna follow ye because ye are the son of some earl they’ve never heard of.
They lost faith in any lord to protect them a long time ago.
” She fixed him with a hard stare. “They follow ye because they trust ye. Just like I trust ye.”
Her words settled somewhere deep inside him.
He wasn’t certain he deserved such trust. What if this all went wrong?
What if, when it came down to it, he couldn’t protect any of them?
He was not such a fool that he thought his brother would just hand everything back.
Bryce had fought too hard to claim every inch of their father’s inheritance.
Would he really surrender part of it now?
Ronan looked towards the southern horizon, though the hills hid everything beyond. “I still don’t know how this ends.”
Faye followed his gaze. “None of us do but that’s life, isnae it? Nobody can truly know what tomorrow might bring.”
It was precisely what tomorrow might bring that was bothering him. Far from a quiet life at the Steading, his future was now like a dark road without any lights.
He’d walked away from his inheritance, from his family, because he had refused to fight. He’d refused to become the kind of man he’d always hated. But now? If Bryce threatened these people, if he threatened Elodie? He already knew what he would do and that frightened him more than anything.
He realized that his hands had unconsciously clenched into fists and slowly relaxed them. “If Bryce forces my hand—”
Faye laid a hand gently on his forearm. “Then ye’ll do what ye’ve always done.”
He looked at her. “What?”
“Protect people.”
It sounded so simple when she said it. He wasn’t convinced it would feel that way when the time came.
Faye gave him an affectionate pat on the shoulder. “Come on. “We’ve preparations to make.”
Together they began walking slowly back through the Steading, Bran and Skye trotting along behind.
People called greetings as they passed. Someone asked where the timber should be stacked.
Another wanted advice about packing grain.
Ronan smiled to himself. Despite the circumstances, life carried on as normal.
Yet the question rose in his mind before he could stop it. For how long?