He laughed a little, then tilted his head toward his shoulder. “Then I won’t argue with you tonight. Lay your head and be at peace.”
“You don’t want me to go?” she murmured.
“Nay, lass,” he said very quietly. “I don’t.”
Well, he had risked life and limb to come and fetch her away from her murderous kin, so she supposed he meant it.
She considered, then brought his hand close and kissed it.
She was the first to admit it was awkwardly done, but his breath caught just the same. He squeezed her hand, shifted a bit closer to her, then rested his cheek against her head.
“Sleep, Mairead,” he said quietly. “You’re safe.”
The saints preserve her, she thought she just might be.
Twenty-one
Oliver stood inside Moraig’s cottageand eyed the front door warily. It hadn’t done him dirty so far that morning, but the day was still young.
That day had begun for him a pair of hours earlier with a quick run up the meadow from Jamie’s, a shower and change of clothes, and a quick rummage in the fridge for a few carbs which someone had very thoughtfully left for him in the form of a full order of his two favorite foods. Unfortunately, all those successes had left him standing where he was: facing off with a doorway and hoping he could get back out it as easily as he’d gotten inside it.
He supposed he might as well admit that he was fretting over a doorway because he was avoiding thinking about the events of the past forty-eight hours. He was still gobsmacked it had all worked, though given the skill sets both he and Ewan possessed in that sort of skulduggery, perhaps it wasn’t a surprise. What had been a surprise was finding out that in a dodgy spot, Ewan’s mind worked a great deal like Derrick’s. Obviously, they’d been misusing his gifts.
What he absolutely couldn’t bring himself to face, though, was his past, never mind wondering why it was that he could remember Mairead’s presence running like a beautiful silver thread through his entire existence yet at the same time he knew he’d never had her there in the first place.
On the other hand, he had very vivid memories of her as a ghost over the past handful of days. He could hear her speaking modern English as if she’d never spoken anything else and bring to mind the details she’d given him about his own past.
He knew, in a way he couldn’t quite lay his finger on, that her being a part of his life over the course of hisentirelife had somehow now become nothing more than an echo of her presence there, but he wasn’t sure that he’d so much lost his memories of her as he’d had them simply fade beyond where he could hold them any longer. Changing the future couldn’t possibly change the past, but her future had changedinthe past, which had surely changed his own past in the future.
The loss was, he had to admit, a bit devastating.
He understood on an entirely new level why Sunshine Cameron was careful with Moraig’s threshold.
But if he didn’t put all that emotion behind him and move on with things, he would likely spend the rest of his days simply standing in the middle of Moraig’s gathering chamber, either weeping from events that floated in and out of his memory like so many ghosts, or trying to catch his breath over the fact that he actually had Mairead MacLeod in the same century as his own poor self and that she seemed slightly fond of him. And when looked at in that light, what he’d lost was so much less than what he’d gained.
He allowed himself one deep breath, then he did what he always did with things that didn’t serve him. He shoved them behind the door in his mind he reserved for that sort of thing and got on with his life.
He took hold of his good sense and opened Moraig’s front door. The stoop wasn’t cluttered up with angry Highlanders in Renaissance dress, calling him names and threatening to drag him off to the stake, which was a good thing. There was, however, a manila envelope lying there, which might be something else entirely.
He retrieved it because his damnable curiosity was too strong to resist and opened it to find a new section to insert in his book entitledWooing Ideas for the Perpetually Helpless. He wastempted, as usual, to fling it a very long way away from himself, but he found himself hesitating. The truth was, he wasn’t precisely overflowing with those sorts of ideas at the moment. Though he had himself, Mairead MacLeod, and delicious takeaway in the same century, that might not be enough to win the day.
He considered that for a moment or two. Surely there was a way to help her acclimate herself to the present day whilst leaving her feeling as though she might like to have him along for the trip. He went inside to dig around in Moraig’s junk drawer where he unearthed a sticky tab and made himself his own section entitledThings that Haven’t Changed Over the Years.That useful section at least labeled, he locked up Moraig’s cottage, then started off toward Jamie’s. He considered the facts of the case lying before him as he walked, just to make himself feel more in charge.
First, he was a man of mature years with a rich and varied history of first dates. He could walk up to James MacLeod’s front door, knock, and present himself as a very desirable dating partner without bollocking it up.
Second, he was dressed nicely in trousers and a black polo neck jumper, the latter of which would serve the dual purpose of setting off his fair hair to perfection—Emily promised that was the truth—and hiding his neck where enthusiastic swallowing might be interpreted as gulps of unease. A black jacket covering that and sensible Docs on his feet hopefully would provide a trustworthy if not slightly slick and attractive aura of, again, dating desirableness.
He was also a Man with a Plan and that plan, very sensibly to his mind, centered around making sure that a certain MacLeod clanswoman was properly introduced very slowly and carefully to the current century. Nothing too startling at first, nothing more modern than what could have been found in Jamie’skitchen with perhaps a brief foray into Elizabeth’s library for Regency reading material that would also be acceptably calming and soothing. He would keep his lady corralled in the past-places that were located in the same future-places so she would see that nothing much had changed. He imagined not even four hundred years of four hundred different types of Scottish precipitation could have altered the landscape all that much.
Finally, the truth was that even though she’d been given the chance at a new life with family in the persons of Jamie and Elizabeth and Patrick and Madelyn and even Sunshine and Cameron—delightful souls who would love and care for her properly—he wanted to be at the beginning of the queue.
He found himself standing on Jamie’s front stoop without remembering entirely how he’d gotten there. He hardly expected any renegade witch hunters to pop out from behind a shrubbery, but he was also accustomed to going through his life making detailed mental notes of his surroundings and planning accordingly. He would have to get hold of himself and quickly before he did something eejit-worthy.
The door opened before he could get his hand anywhere close to it which was a little alarming, but he gathered his wits about him and nodded deferentially to the laird of the hall.
“I’d like to take Mairead out on a date,” he said politely.
Jamie stroked his chin. Not a rousing initial endorsement, but Oliver was prepared for some resistance from that quarter.
