Sunshine paused with her just inside.
“Door open or closed?” she asked gently.
Mairead wasn’t one given to weakness, but she was heartily tempted to simply give up and faint.
“I don’t know,” she managed.
She found Oliver’s hand suddenly under her elbow and his beautiful face closer to hers than was good for her wits.
“Come and sit for a minute first,” he said quietly. “I’ll make you a fire. You’re perfectly safe here with us.”
The saints pity her for a fool, she couldn’t help but believe that. She walked—or was helped, actually—across the wee croft and put into a chair that was covered in the finest weaving she’d ever felt. It also seemed as though the fleece from surely a dozen of her finest sheep had been stuffed beneath that fabric to fashion a seat that surely even the King had never enjoyed beneath his royal backside.
She watched Oliver quickly bring the fire back to life and move her, chair and all, a bit closer to that warmth. She looked up at him quickly.
“Fire makes me uneasy.”
He moved her back to her previous spot without delay and without comment, then squatted down in front of her. He was just so gloriously beautiful, she could hardly stop herself from reaching out her hand to put it against his cheek—something she realized she’d done before she thought better of it. She pulled her hand away, but he caught her hand and held it in both his own.
“You’re very cold.”
“I’m terrified I’ll catch the pox from you,” she managed.
Oliver shot her a quick smile, then stood up and made certain Sunshine was seated comfortably before he went to busy himselfin a different part of the croft. She supposed by the sound of things that he was rummaging about to make them something to eat.
At least he was properly dressed, which was remarkably soothing. It occurred to her at that moment that Sunshine was wearing long-legged trews and a generously sized shirt, both in a cheerful color of blue she had never managed to achieve in all her years of dying wool and cloth.
Mairead sniffed before she could keep herself from it. Whatever it was Oliver had in his stew pot smelled better than anything her father’s cook had ever prepared. She stared at the things loitering there in that part of the croft that seemed as though they belonged in the kitchens. Bowls on shelves, cups, crockery that might hold very useful bits of herbs and dried roots. There were also things, shiny things, that made her uneasy, so she turned away and looked back at the lady Sunshine.
“The croft was empty yesterday when I looked inside it,” she said hoarsely.
Sunshine only nodded. “I imagine it was.”
“And all these things inside,” Mairead managed. “They have all been added in your year?”
“Perhaps a bit of the furniture,” Sunshine conceded. “The walls and the hearth have been here for centuries, I would imagine.”
“I’ve never been inside,” Mairead admitted, “but it looks the same from the outside. Perhaps something added to the back. And the rock of the walls is more worn.”
“Very likely. Oh, Oliver, what did you make?”
“Soup that I didn’t make myself, which you know given that you brought it for me,” Oliver said dryly.
Mairead accepted a bowl of something that smelled so good, she almost swooned. She had been convinced she wouldn’tmanage a single spoonful, but she realized only after there was no more that she’d eaten the whole thing.
“More?” Oliver offered.
She shook her head. ‘Twas Future food, that soup, and who knew what it might do to her form?
A knock startled her. She watched Oliver go and open the door, then watched as a man ducked a little and came inside.
“My husband, Cameron,” Sunshine said happily.
Mairead helped her up, took their bowls to the wee kitchen and set them on what she hoped was the appropriate spot, then returned hesitantly to the hearth. The Cameron, if that’s who he truly was, made her a slight bow.
“My lady tells me that you’re a MacLeod lass,” he said.
He spoke her tongue without any trace of an accent, which she found both comforting and alarming. She was certain she’d returned an equally polite greeting, refrained from remarking on his clothing which was definitely more modest than Oliver’s pox-marked trews but not at all like the garb Giles’s sire would have worn, and soon found herself outside the croft with her companions. The Cameron seemed to find something slightly amusing about the glares Oliver was sending his way, which she thought rather brave on Oliver’s part given who he was glaring at.
