Sunshine smiled briefly. “My husband was laird of the clan Cameron in the year 1375,” she said carefully. “That would make him, if the genealogy holds true, the uncle several times removed from the current laird—what did you say his name was?”
“Alistair,” Mairead managed. “But, my lady, that is madness. We’re in the year of our Lord’s Grace 1583.” She had to take a restorative breath or two. She thought waving away Oliver’s attempting to hand her another cup was very wise. “How is it possible that he would be born in such a year? ‘Tis two hundred years ago!”
Sunshine nodded carefully. “From the year 1583 it certainly is. But there are more years than 1583, aren’t there?”
Mairead opened her mouth to argue that there certainly were not, but she found herself suddenly considering things she hadn’t before. In her book, in the very beginning of it, there had been a series of numbers that she had assumed were perhaps the number of bottles of port the Duke had consumed, or chickens the kitchen maid had slain, or pistol balls either of the pair had sent winging toward a foe.
But what if the numbers 1823 weren’t any of those things, but instead a date?
Some 250 years after her time?
She looked at Sunshine. “What is the year in this place?”
Oliver pushed away from the house, though his hands were still in plain sight. She scowled at him.
“I won’t filch your blades, ye wee pox-marked fiend.”
Sunshine laughed and it was again as if the sun had come out from behind a cloud. “You, Mairead MacLeod, are a properly fierce Highland lass. And the current year in this place is 2009.”
Mairead attempted a snort, but it didn’t go very well. Those were numbers that made even less sense than the lady Sunshine’s delusions about 1375. Men lived and died in their proper sphere and their proper time. Anything else was something only her uncle would have believed.
“I know it’s difficult to imagine,” Sunshine said quietly.
“Not difficult,” Mairead said. “Impossible.” She considered, then hit upon a perfect way to prove her point. “Who is king presently?”
“Queen,” Sunshine said gently. “We have a queen, and her name is Elizabeth.”
“In Scotland?”
Sunshine hesitated. “That’s a bit complicated. Scotland doesn’t have a ruler any longer.”
“Of course we do and his name is James,” Mairead said firmly. “They have a queen down in that wasteland in the south and her name is indeed Elizabeth, so forgive me, Lady Sunshine, but that proves nothing.”
Sunshine looked at Oliver, but he only held up his hands in surrender. Sunshine smiled briefly at him, then turned that same gentle smile on her. “Ours is the second one,” she offered.
Mairead frowned because there was no way of confirming that and it seemed a bit too easy. She looked at Oliver. “Do you believe this?”
He nodded solemnly.
Mairead looked back at Sunshine. “Perhaps we’ve all been struck upon the head whilst we were sleeping and now are sharing the same fantastical dream.” She cast about for something else that made more sense than people leaping overyears with the same ease as they might have a pile of horse dung. “My uncle claims there are faeries and sprites in these woods that carry off the occasional unsuspecting MacLeod when it suits them. Perhaps that happened to you and your husband.” She paused. “Perhaps it happened to me as well.”
“Do you believe in faeries and sprites?” Sunshine asked with a faint smile.
“’Tis utter rubbish,” Mairead managed. “As is a man stepping across a threshold and finding himself elsewhere.”
“Or stepping in a faery ring in the grass,” Sunshine said gently, “and finding himself in a different time entirely. That would be something, wouldn’t it?”
Mairead had to concede it would be, but she did so silently. She looked at Oliver who was standing there, leaning against the wall of the croft, his head touching the thatching where it ended above the wall, but he was only watching her, grave and silent. She turned back to Sunshine.
“It seems ill-mannered to ask,” she began slowly.
“For proof?” Sunshine smiled. “It isn’t, though I don’t want you to regret starting down a path that may lead you places you don’t care to go.”
“My lady Sunny, I’m well down the path already. Another league or two won’t change things.”
Sunshine laughed a little, but uneasily. “I suppose not. Let’s go inside, then, and you can see if that’s proof enough. There may be things there that are startling, though.”
Mairead was somehow unsurprised to find Oliver stepping forward the moment Sunshine moved to push herself out of her chair. She was surprised, though, to find him offering her the same courtesy. She also decided it might be best not to comment on how Sunshine had hold of one of her hands and Oliver the other as they crossed the threshold into the healer’s croft.Whatever the truth might be in its whole, there was obviously something to Sunshine’s unease about that doorway.
