It was odd, wasn’t it, how useful a lifetime spent looking at a crowd of people and coming to immediate conclusions about how close that group of souls was to popping off into something untoward could be. He could say without hesitation that boarding school had been uniformly awful, but useful.
He also had to concede that he’d been blessed with a handful of tutors who had distracted him from utter yobbishness with lessons on music and art and fine literature, but that was as far as he could go with that. And though he’d loathed the rest of it, he had also learned early on how to read a room, identify the ones most likely to foment trouble, and keep himself far away from the ensuing chaos.
It was likely best to primly decline to hold up any mirrors so he might examine his own moments of raising hell, but he was discreet like that.
He cleared his throat with equal discretion when they were fifty feet from the front door where a crowd had gathered and was apparently discussing items of interest with raised voices. Perhaps Giles had had his own brushes with spotting trouble at a distance because he smoothly put Mairead behind him and waited for Oliver to come stand next to him.
“Don’t much care for that lad over there,” Giles murmured.
Oliver didn’t need to ask which one. The man dressed in black robes and wearing an officious sneer was quite obviously enjoying the attention he was receiving, though it would be foolhardy to hope he would be satisfied with only that.
“Have you seen his like before this far north?” Oliver asked putting his hand over his mouth as if he stifled a yawn.
“Nay, but I’ve heard tales.”
“So have I,” Oliver said grimly, though his were limited to reading about them from the comfortable vantage point of several hundred years after the fact. At least in his day, he had the ability to walk through any city on either side of Hadrian’s Wall and not worry about some stupid git pointing a finger and screaming himself hoarse over any imagined witchly deed.
What he knew at the moment was that whoever and whatever that man out there was, his wearing of clerical robes was hiding a serious amount of barely restrained crazy.
He glanced over the others gathered there and singled out a pair of men for further study. Mairead’s uncle Lachlan was looking very skeptical, which was encouraging, but he was also not laird in any sense of the word and had his own reputation for fanciful imaginings. There would be likely be minimal help in calming the clan coming from that direction.
Tasgall, on the other hand, was a possibility for becoming caught up in mayhem. Mairead’s older brother seemed to have no trouble lashing out physically at whomever was in front of him, which seemed most of the time to be Mairead. The delicate Deirdre always seemed to be upstairs with a headache or sour stomach, which could have indicated all sorts of things. But the acting laird having the temperament to cool things down before they burst into a bonfire? Not bloody likely.
No wonder both Jamie and Patrick had been concerned about the clan during the current time period. He deeply regretted not having been more prepared for his spontaneous trip to make certain Mairead got home safely. He was damned certain his own days of being unplugged and uninformed were going to come to an abrupt end when he got back home.
He considered, then looked at Giles. “I’ll keep watch out here.”
Giles nodded slightly, then turned and smiled pleasantly at Mairead. “Let’s go inside and find something to eat in the kitchen. I’m famished.”
Oliver watched them go, smiled briefly at Mairead when she looked back at him, his flower still in her hand, then moved to take up a place against the wall of the keep. He refused to waste any thought on the absolute improbability of leaning currently where he generally found himself collapsed in a different century, wheezing after a hearty workout with the lord of the manor. Time was a very strange thing.
He made himself comfortable and settled in for a decent bit of reconnaissance.
Supper was a torturous affair even by his very low standards for trying to eat whilst wondering if he might survive the meal. He would have been thrilled to stop making comparisons to his time at St. Margaret’s, that exclusive-yet-austere boarding school for the children of the ridiculously wealthy and richly titled, but he felt as if he’d resumed his identity as savvy yob of fourteen. He flattered Tasgall until he thought he might be ill, kept his gaze only where he wanted others to look, and avoided until the last moment possible any conversation with Master James, witch hunter extraordinaire.
If his disgust over the insane drivel he’d politely listened to hadn’t done him in, the fact that he owed his least favorite tutor at St. Margaret’s for his extensive knowledge of Scottish history—which allowed him to carefully name drop in a way that set Master James back on his heels a bit—came close to it.
All in all, a terrible evening that he would have preferred to forget as quickly as possible.
He managed to slip into the kitchens whilst everyone sorted their spots for the night and sat down on a stool next to the hearth, across from a woman he could only look at silently.He was simply beyond words. She seemed to have just as few herself, which he understood. The thought of leaving her behind with that kind of madness swirling around was almost unthinkable. The only thing he supposed would save her would be that she was as adept at making herself scarce as he was.
“Where is your book?” he murmured.
“In its usual hiding spot,” she said quietly.
That was definitely a piece of good fortune. He didn’t want to speculate on what would happen to either of them if Master James found them lingering over the image of the Duke of Birmingham printed by a 1970s publishing house.
“Uncle,” she said, looking up suddenly.
Oliver vacated his stool without hesitation and went to fetch Mairead’s uncle a cup of ale. He would have protested Mairead offering him her seat, but he imagined the less attention he drew to her, the better off she would be. He unbuckled his sword and handed it to her, had a brief smile for his trouble, then settled himself on her stool and prepared to listen to nonsense about faeries and bogles which would be less terrifying than nonsense about witches.
“Don’t like him,” Lachlan said quietly.
Oliver tilted his head just slightly toward the great hall.
Lachlan nodded, then studied Oliver for a moment or two. “Know him from Edinburgh?”
“I don’t associate with those types.”
