“Not our clan’s, but a pretty pithy saying just the same. You don’t want Ewan cutting ahead of you in the queue, do you?”
“Perish the thought,” he said with as much of a gasp as he dared attempt.
She hesitated, then sat down on the coffee table in front of him. “How are you, really?”
Oliver glanced at Mairead, then looked at Sunny with a raised eyebrow.
“She’s asleep,” Sunny whispered. “Unless she’s as good at faking as you are.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” he whispered back. “And I feel a little like I’m sleepwalking, if you want the entire truth.” He paused, then supposed there was no reason not to be frank. “Do you ever worry?”
“That Cam will go on a run and run into a different century?”
“It happens.”
“That’s experience talking there, I know.” She took a deep breath, then shook her head. “We have one of Jamie’s maps, of course, and Jamie updates it more regularly than Elizabeth’s probably happy with, so while we don’t deliberately tempt fate, we just don’t worry about it. I assume Cam will come home without incident and we’ll all be fine. Worrying about the alternative won’t help.”
He sighed. “I’m a contingency sort of lad, you know.”
“But once all that’s accounted for, what do you do?”
“Plan for the worst, expect the best,” he muttered, then he smiled at her. “Point taken.”
“What’s your favorite quote?”
“Something pithy about revenge on mates who sent me on holiday, I’m certain.”
“Actually, I think somewhere in your tiny little office in London you have something on the wall that says, ‘What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?’”
“I was suffering from too much green drink when I pinned that up there.”
“Iput that on your wall because you saw it in my kitchen in London and said you felt a deep kinship with Mary Oliver who wrote it. And if you’ve forgotten what you said when I hung it up for you, it was an extremely pithy, ‘best fill it with good things, then, what?’” She smiled. “That’s pretty good advice, don’t you think?”
He took a deep breath. “You know I’m going to weep now, don’t you?”
She smiled, then dug in her pocket for something that she then held out toward him. “Here’s a distraction.”
He pulled his hand out from under the blanket and took back his phone. “I see I have them properly intimidated if you’re still delivering things to me.”
“I volunteered,” she said. “Had to make sure you were warm enough. It’s actually charged, if that makes any difference to you.”
“I’m terrified to admit that it doesn’t.”
She stood up, reached over and brushed his hair out of his eyes, then smiled at him. “Nighty night, brother. The hall’s secure and you and your girl are safe. Sleep in peace.”
He nodded in gratitude, then rested his cheek gently against Mairead’s head, unable to even bring himself to swear silently to stave off a bout of ridiculously tender emotion. He indulged in several deep breaths to get hold of himself, propped his feet up on the coffee table, and decided to distract himself by thinking about a few things he hadn’t had time for earlier.
The first thing that came to mind was their success in finding Mairead’s manuscript along with several other authorly items of note in the old McKinnon kirk. He would happily leave to Cameron the finessing that would need to happen with the current clan chief over their find, but for his part he was merely relieved Mairead’s document had survived. It had been cooling its heels in a decently fashioned stone box, which had helped, though many things survived in less ideal spots.
Not, however, in the boles of trees, which likely spelled the end of the first half of the Duke of Birmingham’s infamous adventures. The location of the second half of that book was still a mystery, but he was certain it couldn’t have survived for long in the wilds of 16th-century Scotland.
He wondered who had nicked it to begin with. It had to have been someone with easy access to Elizabeth’s library, who could read, and who was interested in a bit of tame romance. He suspected one of Jamie’s boys, but he’d been wrong before.
The final thing on his list was the identity of the lad who’d stabbed Ewan on their way through the gate. The knife could have belonged to anyone, so no joy there. He wasn’t sure if having the dirk in the future was going to upset the balance of the world, but he hardly wanted to ask Jamie for his opinion on the same.
He also didn’t want to make a final trip to 1583 to tie up any loose ends, though he was beginning to think he might need to. He’d never blamed Sam for wanting to keep Derrick in the future, but he could understand on an entirely new level why she wasn’t keen on her husband time traveling. A brief foray to a Regency house party, perhaps, but the wilds of pre-Victorian Scotland?
A dodgy business, that.
