“I don’t think you’ve consumed nearly enough ale,” she said with a snort, then she had to smile in spite of that. “I don’t think they make any sense, but I’ll take comfort in them just the same.”
Ambrose’s smile faded. “Is he worth it to you, Mairead?”
She would have taken a deep breath if she’d been able to. Since she wasn’t, she simply looked at her nephew and nodded. “Without question.”
He tossed his mug into oblivion, slapped his hands on his knees, and rose. “Well, now that we’ve solved that, I’ll be on my way.”
“’Solved that,’” she echoed. “What in the world are you talking about?”
“I was just curious where your heart was.”
“You already knew,” she said darkly.
“And so I did.” He put his hand on her head and started toward the door. “A good e’en to you, Mairead.”
“You won’t wait for Oliver?”
He paused and looked over his shoulder. “I’ve business in the south with a pair of lads who are definitely my most challenging cases yet. You and your man will sort yourselves without my aid, though I’ll happily attend your wedding if I’m invited.”
She rose and followed him to the door. “You know you would be, along with Fiona and her irascible husband. Can Fulbert avoid fighting with Hugh McKinnon long enough for a wedding blessing, should that miraculous day ever occur?”
“I’ll see that they both behave.” He smiled again, but a graver one. “Don’t give up hope, Auntie. One step farther than you think you can walk might hold what you’re longing for.”
“More thoughts from the bottom of your cup?” she asked grimly.
“Wisdom from, if you can fathom it, John Drummond.”
She shuddered. “I’m unsurprised and terrified at the same moment.”
“Along with most of the northern territories of the Colonies and quite a few of his descendants,” Ambrose said pleasantly, “but a shade does what he can with the tools he has to hand. The advice still stands.”
“Did you offer me advice?”
He smiled, that sunny smile she’d enjoyed from him for the whole ofhislife, then walked through the door, whistling a cheerful tune. Mairead rolled her eyes, then walked back across the great room and resumed her seat by the fire. It was beginning to die out, but she didn’t add anything from her own imagination to it. Her discomfort was too great for that.
She imagined that if Oliver succeeded, she would know, though how she would know was a mystery. He would lose his memories of her as a ghost, but she would lose four hundred years of being a ghost and watching the world turn before her. She had seen things she never could have otherwise, come to know kin of herown who had also taken their turns as players in the drama of life, and spent endless years wandering over her homeland.
She quite fancied the shore, if she were to be honest.
But she would trade all of it in a single heartbeat for a lifetime with Oliver Phillips.
She rested her head against the back of her chair and closed her eyes to wait.
He came inside an hour later, drenched, silent, and grim.
She stood up and moved away from the hearth. “Build a fire, my love,” she said quietly.
He nodded, then knelt down by the hearth and restarted his fire. He fed it for quite a while in silence, which she understood. He was, she knew after having known him for so long in a manner she’d never expected, a man of many words when it suited him, but comfortable with silence when it didn’t.
She watched him heave himself up onto a stool facing her, look at her, then go very still.
“Are you thinking of me in short pants?”
She laughed before she could stop herself. “I try not to, actually, though you were absolutely precious.”
“Please, Mairead,” he said with a shudder. “Concentrate on me as a man, if you would.”
She made motions of putting something in a box and shutting the lid firmly, then smiled. “Done.”
