“Remember that thought.”
She smiled at him. “I don’t think I’ll need to.”
He pushed himself to his feet, groaning a little as he did so. “I think that may be all the kneeling I can do for a bit. If I propose on my feet, that’s why.”
“I won’t remember it.”
He laughed softly and moved to bank the fire. “I’ll remind you.”
She watched him finish his work and put the rest of Moraig’s house to bed. It was scarce noon, but she felt as if she’d been awake for years.
Which, she supposed, she had.
Oliver picked up his phone when it chirped at him, then looked at her. “Cameron’s sending a helicopter.”
“I think I’ll just wish myself to his front door and save myself the trip with you, thank you just the same.”
He shook his head, but he was smiling. “I don’t think I want to know how. Will you at least walk with me to the meadow?”
“And keep you far from the gate? Aye, of course.”
He smiled. “Everything will be all right, Mairead.”
The saints pity her for a lovesick fool, she actually believed him.
She walked with him through the woods and found that there was indeed a helicopter swooping down from the sky like aterrifying bird of prey. She imagined such a thing wouldn’t have been able to fit through that gate in the faery ring, but she couldn’t help but wish it could have and she could have watched Kenneth faint from his terror over the sight.
She suspected she might have a bit of work still to do on forgiving a few souls in her past.
Oliver stopped and looked at her. “You’ll meet me there,” he said, pinning her to the spot with the force of his gaze alone.
How could she not? She nodded. “I will.”
“If you get there before me, please wait for me.”
She could only nod.
She watched him climb into the little glass ball, then continued to watch as the blades attached to its top spun madly and lifted the beast off the ground. She watched Oliver hold up his hand to her and she returned the gesture.
She closed her eyes and pretended to take a very deep breath, then let it out slowly. She had been waiting four hundred years for time to bring events back to a place where she might have what she so desperately wanted in the person of a courageous, honorable, beautiful man.
She imagined she could wait a few more whilst he did what he needed to do to have her in his arms.
Nineteen
Oliver walked around the cornerof Cameron Hall and was more grateful than he likely should have been that his most recent trip in Cameron’s natty whirlybird had been made whilst he’d been unfettered. He was also pleased to think that his zip ties and sundry were still safely tucked away in James MacLeod’s hall where they would absolutely be used in the future, and not on him.
He came to a skidding halt on the gravel drive there in front of the hall and wondered when it had happened that he’d so completely fallen into something when it came to a certain woman of his acquaintance.
Something that felt a great deal like love.
Mairead was leaning back against the hall with her hands tucked behind her, watching the sky, a look of such peace on her face that it was all he could do not to trot over to her, drop to his knees right there in the rocks, and ask her to marry him.
In fact, that sounded like the best idea he’d had all day, so he wasted no time in approaching, then attempting the second. Or he would have if she hadn’t held out her hand and stopped him.
“The rocks are sharp.”
He stopped halfway to his knees, then straightened. “How do you know?”
