“I’ll just bet he is,” Oliver agreed, then his smile faded. “Apparently you and a few others watched Master James meet his appropriate end atop a pile of wood.”
She nodded, finding that to be a bit more satisfactory than it likely should have been.
“Let’s turn around,” he said quietly. “But we can walk up and down the beach as many times as you like.”
She nodded and continued to walk with him, his hand warm and secure around hers, the smell of the sea lovelier than she would have expected it to be. She considered what she truly wanted to know until she thought she could ask it casually.
“And you weren’t content to live with me as a ghost?”
His look of surprise was somehow very satisfying. “Of course not,” he said, then he smiled quickly. “Well, I would have if that had been our only choice. We did try living as we were, human and spirit, but I pestered you until you agreed that I should try one more time.”
“Did you pester me?” she asked seriously.
“Endlessly,” he said, his expression suddenly serious. “Mairead, I wanted you here in this time as a woman, and I was willing to—”
“Wait,” she said, stopping suddenly and looking at him in surprise. “But if you rescued me from the stake, I wouldn’t have been there to watch over you as a spirit.”
He nodded slowly. “That was what we discussed several times.”
“But Oliver,” she said faintly, “I can’t believe I agreed to it. How could I have left you alone at St. Margaret’s after your parents—”
She stopped speaking because she realized she couldn’t finish. The memory wasn’t a memory but something more like a wisp of mist that lay against the mountains in the morning only to simply disappear with the turning of the day. She looked at the man standing in front of her, rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand, and watching her with his pale, solemn eyes, and realized what he’d given up for her.
“You were alone.”
He smiled gravely. “You were worth the trade.”
She suspected they had had some variation of their current conversation before because she could feel the echo of it. She was equally sure she’d wept and not entirely sure he hadn’t as well. She could only breathe carefully and look into his eyes that were full of memories and grief and something that looked quite a bit like hope.
“You, Mairead MacLeod, were worth it to me,” he repeated very quietly.
She cleared her throat roughly. “Get on with ye, ye wee fiend,” she said, hoping beyond hope that that would ease the ferocious burning in her eyes. She started walking again, pulling him with her.
He stopped her, turned her to him, and pulled her into his arms. She suspected it might be becoming a bad habit for her,that clinging to him as if he were all in the world that held her together, but he seemed to be clutching her to him with equal fervor.
And if she felt her tears hot against her cheeks where they fell, and if she wasn’t entirely sure she didn’t feel a tear or two of his fall onto her hair, well, who was to know? She realized he was breathing just as carefully as she was and she suspected it was for the same reason.
She felt him ease his embrace a bit finally, pull away just a bit, then smile and kiss her on the forehead. His eyes were very red, but she imagined hers were too.
“Let’s speak of something less tender,” she said, then she had to clear her throat. “Did I frighten anyone during my years as a specter? My brother? A collection of annoying Fergusson lairds?”
He laughed a little, though she could hear the roughness in his voice as well. “You didn’t tell me any of that, but you did write your memories down.”
“That damned Victorian fop,” she grumbled. “He was here writing a series of travel notes, you know, to publish… in… London.” She took a deep breath and looked at him. “I definitely think I might need to sit today.”
“Now?”
She shook her head. “Not yet.” She glanced at him. “I want to make light of this and claim ‘twas something foul I ate, but I find I cannot.”
“I have the feeling we might both have that experience more often than not.”
She supposed there was no reason not to have things, as she was certain she’d heard someone say at some point in her existence that apparently spanned more years than she was comfortable with, out on the table. She considered their hands linked together there, then looked in his eyes.
“Are we going to be having those experiences?” she asked, then she had to take another deep breath and gather her courage to blurt out what she realized might be bothering her the most. “Together?”
He smiled very faintly. “Haven’t we discussed this before?”
“My memory fails me. Either that, or we discussed it when I was under duress.”
