He’d made promises to himself, he knew that, but if he continued to stay so close to her like this, then he wasn’t sure how long he’d be able to keep them.
Remember, she wants to leave. This betrothal isnae real. Ye’ll never have a weddin’ night with her, and ye cannae risk lyin’ with her unless ye’re wed.
It was a small mercy that they weren’t sharing a bedchamber, or he’d have had no hope of keeping a clear head.
“Ye dance very well,” he said as the last notes of the song drifted across the Great Hall and the spectators erupted into rapturous applause.
Breathing hard, Nancy smiled. “I took it up… as a hobby… a few times. Never stuck with it, but… I always liked it when I found the time.” She tightened her grip on his shirt, as if trying to steady herself. “I find it… helps with my work.”
“What work?” he asked, confused.
“I… tell stories,” she explained. “I write stories about things that are happening, and people read them. Dancing… seems to help me make… connections, and?—”
Just then, a glass shattered, the chime of it rippling through the room like a barked command.
People turned to find out who’d dropped what. Hunter’s eyes quickly found the source.
A thin woman with a shock of curly gray hair stood in the center of the Great Hall, several winking shards at her feet. She might have been very beautiful once, but the years had weathered her. Indeed, she looked as if she’d just wandered in from the mountains, dressed in a longer form of the men’s belted plaid, with a pale purple shirt. Not quite what was expected at a cèilidh.
She didn’t seem to notice the disapproving stares all around her, for shewas entirely focused on Nancy. The slender, blue-veined hand that had dropped the glass trembled violently, her startling, feline eyes wide in disbelief.
“This can’t be,” she rasped, in a strange accent that wasn’t quite Scottish and wasn’t quite English, but somewhere in between. “Nancy, is that you?”
Hunter glanced down at Nancy, just in time to see the color drain from her face. His arm held her tightly, fearing she might faint despite her assertions that she wasn’t the type, as a familiar name slipped past her lips.
“Mrs. Crimmins?”
CHAPTER 24
Nancy wonderedif Hunter had twirled her around one too many times as she stared at a face she hadn’t seen since she was nine years old, being manhandled into the back of a rusty old minivan by two women from social services. A face that had wept for her and insisted she could stay if she wanted to, her words falling on the uncaring ears of the authorities.
“You be good, Nancy. You keep your head up,”was the last thing she remembered hearing before she was thrown into the foster care system.
She broke away from Hunter, every stirred-up spark of passion extinguished in an instant as she ran toward the woman she’d once looked to as a surrogate grandmother.
She’d told Mrs. Crimmins that once, and the old woman had pursed her lips, replying,“I’m not nearly old enough to be your grandma. A kooky old aunt, maybe, but not your grandma.”
Even now, Nancy could remember the scent of Mrs. Crimmins’ apartment—an eclectic mix of the dried herbs that hung all around her kitchen, with a sweet undernote of the gingerbread cookies Mrs. Crimmins always made for her, and the delicate hint of mint tea.
“What are you doing here?” Nancy croaked as she grabbed the old woman’s shaking hands and led her out of the Great Hall, into the relative privacy of the hallway beyond.
“You were… gone, Mrs. Crimmins,” she continued, too overwhelmed to wait for a reply. “I came to your apartment when I was sixteen, and you were gone. I thought… I thought you were dead or something!”
Mrs. Crimmins pressed a hand to her chest, drawing in a few deep, meditative breaths to steady herself.
Clearly, it was as much of a shock to her to see Nancy as it had been for Nancy to see the woman who used to take care of her while her mom worked. Someone who had once been like family to her.
“Not dead, just… wandering,” Mrs. Crimmins replied. “And you’re too old to call me Mrs. Crimmins. Plus, it’s not my name.”
Nancy blinked. “What?”
“I’m Eileen Crow.” A sad smile crept onto Mrs. Crimmins’ lips. “Mrs. Crimmins is just the name I used when I was in your time.No one bothers to question an old widow. Now, how is it thatyouare here?”
It took Nancy a few moments to realize she was supposed to answer. She was too stunned by the fact that her old friend was really here, standing in front of her, looking a little worse for wear but still mostly the same. And speaking in that same lovely, lilting voice that she remembered keenly. It had seemed exotic to her back then, but now she realized it was just a very faint Scottish twang mixed with an English accent.
Drawing in a nervous breath, adrenaline pumping through her veins, Nancy began to tell the story of how she had ended up in 1710.
“What about you? You didn’t answer me,” she pressed, after she wrapped up her tale.
