He pulled back, and her entire body throbbed in protest as she stood there against the bars, trying to catch her breath. He, too, seemed a little breathless, his eyes still shining with hunger, but another step back and she knew the moment was over.
“I daenae ken how ye ended up here, lass,” he said thickly, his throat bobbing, “but I’m glad ye were here today. Ye have me gratitude.”
Nancy stared at him in disbelief, disappointment replacing the sweet pressure in her belly.
So, that was it. He’d kissed her out of gratitude, because he couldn’t just say,Thank you.A man of action, not words. A man who felt he ought to give her something in reward for what she’d done earlier.
Now, it felt like torture. The most incredible, singularly earth-shattering kiss of her life had happened with a man who lived three hundred years in the past, who was just happy that she saved his baby. And sure, she was overjoyed that Freya was alive and safe, but right now, she was more pissed off that he thought that was appropriate, to rile her up and then… step away.
“This cannae happen again.” He added insult to injury as he touched his thumb to his lips, as if he didn’t believe it had happened in the first place.
And I suppose he’ll accuse me of sorcery,she thought with no small amount of annoyance.
She’d waited twenty-seven years for a kiss like that, and to find out it would be the one and only was just a crap cherry on top of a crap cake of a day.
“Fine by me,” she said with a tight smile. “But next time I do you a favor, how about you just say ‘thank you.’ That ought to nip any misunderstandings in the bud.”
His expression darkened. “I told ye, lass, ye have me gratitude. Daenae squander it.”
“I wouldn’t know how,” she replied, telling herself that she’d just gotten carried away, that it was just because she was cold and dazed and, yes, needed some human contact after being thrown through time, far away from her best friend and the world she knew.
It had been comfort, nothing else. A symptom of all the excitement of the day, but now she’d had her jab of reality. If nothing else, she’d be able to tell Emily how the Hawk kissed. It was all just research, and Nancy was nothing if not a thorough investigator.
“Come on,” Hunter said gruffly, gesturing for her to leave first. “The healer is waiting to meet ye.”
CHAPTER 12
“What did you use?”the healer asked without preamble, her voice slightly muffled behind a surprisingly familiar mask that she wore over the lower half of her face.
It seemed to be made of some kind of canvas, with strings that tied it around the back of her head. A few dark locks of hair spilled out of a headscarf.
This healer clearly knew a thing or two about medical hygiene; she wore white gloves. And her accent wasn’t Scottish, though it carried a lilt, hard to place.
“I used medicine,” Nancy replied. “A… uh… herb I knew about from my mother.”
The last thing she needed was someone else thinking she was a witch, but she couldn’t very well explain modern medicine to a healer from the 1700s, no matter how much this womanseemed to respect hygiene standards. Something that Nancy had assumed didn’t exist until much, much later.
The healer squinted her eyes, as if she wasn’t sure she was hearing things properly. “What herb?”
“I… um… don’t know the name.”
A few creases lined her forehead as she frowned, probably just as confused by Nancy’s lack of a Scottish accent as she was by the healer’s.
“What did it look like?” the healer asked.
Nancy cleared her dry throat, thinking of the Epi-Pen that was likely still buried under Freya’s blankets. “Green,” she rasped, her heart rate skyrocketing. “It was green.”
She couldn’t bring herself to meet the healer’s eyes. As a reformed liar and troublemaker, she’d gotten rusty, no longer at ease with dishonesty. Still, if it spared her from a one-way trip to a stake and a very hot fate, then she’d struggle through.
The trouble was, everywhere she looked, there was another pair of eyes she didn’t want to meet: Isla, who knew everything; Hunter, who knew she was strange but not the full truth, and had just given her the crushing disappointment of a lifetime; Jack, who still had a flicker of wariness in his eyes.
And here I am, just trying to survive in a place I don’t belong.
Hunter’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, though he didn’t say anything about the Epi-Pen that he’d seen with his own eyes. Isla said nothing either, though she must’ve known there was no herb.
The room they were in looked like it once belonged to a resident healer, with several beds arranged in neat rows along each wall. Shelves were stuffed with vials, bottles, jars, books, and scrolls, while dried herbs hung from every available space, the scent an assault on the senses.
The healer came around to Nancy’s side of the bed, where Freya had been placed, tucked up in a nest of pillows and blankets. She looked particularly tiny and so very vulnerable, her partially swollen face making Nancy’s heart ache.
