She supposed the present moment wasn’t the right moment to feel a bit pleased that he found her at least amusing, but she was hearing things that were beyond ridiculous yet somehow reasonable in light of the things she found herself remembering.
Things from her future as something slightly less corporeal but undeniably still her own self.
“Tell me, if you would,” she said hoarsely, then she cleared her throat and attempted a smile. “I’m braced.”
He squeezed her hand, then continued on with her. “It all goes back to Moraig’s doorway, unfortunately.”
“The same place that separated Sunshine and the Cameron,” she noted.
He nodded. “And as for what happened to us, here’s the absolute truth. After I woke in Moraig’s house the first time and realized that I’d failed you, I went back to a different point in time and tried again.”
“As you did when they were pushing me to the stake by the hall, before the heavens exploded in fire?”
“Exactly that.” He stopped and turned her hand over, then shot her a quick, uneasy sort of smile. “This is how it was explained to me. If you think of time as a straight line—” he drew the same on her palm, “and here is where you and I were separated. I went back through the gate a bit before that point.”
“And it worked?” she asked, then she held up her free hand. “Obviously it did or I wouldn’t be here.”
“It doesn’t always work,” he conceded, “so we’re actually very fortunate it worked for us. I went back and waited for us to come through the forest where my plan was to rescue you after I’d fallen into Moraig’s house but before your cousins carried you off. Unfortunately, I failed twice for various reasons, then Ewan came with me this final time and was a pair of hands when I needed them.”
“And were those other two yous wandering around at the same time?”
He nodded.
“Did I see any of these other yous?”
He shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” He looked at her closely. “Want to walk some more?”
She nodded, because she had to move or find herself caught up in thoughts that were so mad that not even Lachlan MacLeod could have invented them after his most robust night of cozying up to the largest ale keg in the cellar.
She looked down at her hand in Oliver’s as they walked, at the imaginary straight line he’d drawn across her palm, and a thought occurred to her that was so odd, she hardly knew how to put it in words. She stopped, then turned Oliver’s palm over and traced that line on his hand. If what he was saying were true and she had lived as a ghost—
She looked up at him. “How many years was I a ghost?”
“Over four hundred, if we’re counting,” he said carefully.
How was it, then, that she could have lived for centuries as a ghost yet still have it be in her memories whilst living an entirely different lifetime? It was as if her lives were threads, looping over each other, stacking on top of each other so they covered the same things again and again. Or perhaps ‘twas more like yarn wrapping around a spindle, beginning at the same place on the wood with each round, winding each round separately but covering the same circle and in the end making up one entire whole.
It sounded completely daft, but there was no denying that she remembered things she absolutely hadn’t lived through—as a mortal woman, that was.
She traced a loop over that imaginary line on Oliver’s hand, going over the same pattern a time or two, feeling a little as if she were walking over her own grave, then she looked up at him.
“What if time isn’t linear?”
He looked at her, open-mouthed. She realized she was looking at him the same way.
“Where did that come from?” he asked weakly. “And you realize that was a modern English word, don’t you?”
She laughed a little because it was either that or howl. “I have no idea.” She took a deep breath. “I’m tempted to run, but the bairns might think we’ve abandoned them.”
He took her hand and tugged. “We’ll just walk a bit more, then.”
She thought that might have been one of the better ideas either of them had had so far that day. She walked with him along that glorious stretch of sand, finding it in her to pay attention for a change to the lapping of the water against the shore and the wind in her hair and the smell of the breeze. She found herself sighing several times and with each time, she felt the frustration and unease dissipate a bit more until she was simply walking with a man who was handsome and kind and had braved the wilds of her era to rescue her from a fate she had been willing to accept but had to admit was glad she’d escaped.
“Please tell me Master James met a terrible end,” she said as they neared the end of the stretch of shore before them, “and that I watched it to the bitter end.” She looked at him quickly. “Sorry. I’m not a fan.”
He smiled. “You’ve been talking to Patricia.”
“Robert, actually. He’s a large fan of very fast automobiles.”
