Page 24 of Blood of the Thistle

“Hush,” whispered Bram with some urgency.

“But why are—” she tried again, keeping her voice very low.

“Keep, lass,” he commanded, tugging her hand to make her sink even lower behind the wall.

Anna thought his caution was overblown. The group of riders, which included one creaky and lumbering wagon, she noticed, and eighteen men that she counted, was yet about twenty yards away, walking their horses along the fringe of the trees in which she and Bram hunkered down. Her earlier hope vanished completely, replaced by a cold, dumbstruck anxiety as the bizarre parade moved across her line of sight.

Unease heightened and hope dwindled yet more as the party paused, directly in front of them, just beyond the edge of the trees.

Bram growled something low and unintelligible, which she surmised was some grumbling about the party stopping right there.

She sank into the cool grass, her back against the wall, the dampness barely registering. Her mind raced, frantically trying to connect the pieces. Museum Street. Ryan’s hand on her arm. The wind. The forest, a man in shackles, distant campfires... and now this.

An armed company straight out of a history book, standing twenty yards away.

Anna lifted her hand to still the trembling of her lips, as she began to wonder if, in fact, she was the one who was untethered to reality, and not Bram. Heat gathered behind her eyes and before she knew it, tears blurred her vision. Slowly, she shook her head back and forth, wanting to refuse and refute this information but unable at the moment to do so.

So lost was she in her meltdown of fright that she was only vaguely aware that the party remained where they’d stopped, and that people were speaking—the words muted but maybe familiar, and yet wrong somehow. She was unable to focus enough to know for sure.

A small whimper escaped her—how could she not have known she’d lost her mind before this moment?

A hand clamped over hers, the one lying idly on the bag in her lap. Anna stared at Bram’s hand as it covered hers. He didn’t pull or try to move her, but simply folded his hand around hers and squeezed, while he crouched next to her on one knee, facing the opposite direction.

Mutely, frozen, Anna stared at the contrast between their hands. His hand was broad across the knuckles, the skin roughened and thickened in the way of a man who’d spent his life working with his hands. Dirt lingered beneath his nails, and his skin bore tiny, fresh cuts, possibly gotten somewhere along their trek yesterday or this morning. Yet his thumb moved once across the back of her hand with surprising gentleness.

Her gaze traveled higher and settled upon his wrist. She had noticed the marks before, but never closely enough to understand how bad they were. A thick band of raw, abraded skin circled his wrist, crossed by darker grooves where it seemed rope had bitten deeply enough to leave ugly ridges and half-healed wounds. The sight filled her with a quiet sadness she wasn’t prepared for and only added to the confusion already crowding her thoughts. Whatever else was true—whatever was happening to her—someone had done that to him.

She closed her fingers around his without thinking.

Perhaps he was real—perhaps he wasn’t. Perhaps none of this was.

But in that moment, with her own mind having just convinced her she saw a group of soldiers from another era resting only yards away, the warmth of his hand was the only thing that felt real. And whether he was a frightened fugitive, a hallucination, or the only sane person in their group of two, she found herself clinging to him fiercely.

He didn’t move except to stroke the back of her hand with his thumb, remaining on one knee, still bent low so he was not overtly visible above the stone. He simply held her hand while he kept an eye on that fantastic sight, those medieval looking soldiers, while Anna slowly went crazy, or rather, realized that she already had.

Eventually, he bowed a bit in her direction, whispering, “They are only waiting on someone to catch up and will be gone then, it seems.”

Anna didn’t even bother to nod, quite certain it didn’t matter, that nothing mattered. If this was all some elaborate creation of her own fractured mind, then the outcome hardly seemed important. She lowered the hand that had covered her mouth and rested it atop his, the one that held hers. It was strange how real he felt. His hand was warm and solid beneath her fingers, so convincingly alive that she found herself sliding her hand slowly upward until her fingers circled the scars on his wrist. And the mind was astonishing in its ability to deceive, she decided, for she could have sworn she felt the steady beat of a pulse beneath his skin.

A short while later, the sound of an approaching rider reached them. Apparently, whoever the company had been waiting for had finally arrived. One of the soldiers laughed loudly at something shouted in greeting, a horse answered with an impatient whinny, and the murmur of conversation rose as several voices began speaking at once. To Anna, hardly paying attention, their voices sounded strangely distorted.

But then Bram’s thumb stopped moving, and he seemed to stiffen at her side. The steady, absent stroke against the back of her hand simply ceased, and the muscles beneath her fingers tightened until his wrist felt rigid in her grasp.

She turned to look at him, expecting he would rise, and pull her with him, and they would run again.

But, no. His gaze remained fixed on the men beyond the trees, but the hard vigilance that had marked his features almost every moment since she’d met him seemed to drain away, replaced by an expression she hadn’t yet seen on him. His jaw slackened, and a deep line carved itself between his brows. It wasn’t fear or anger. It was the raw, empty shock of a man who had just taken a blow he never saw coming, leaving him frozen and dazed.

Quick enough, however, his features twisted almost imperceptibly with something that looked very much like grief, or his version of it, using every ounce of strength to hold it back.

Anna searched his face, momentarily forgetting the soldiers and her own quiet horror. Whatever had just been said had reached him with devastating clarity, and she tightened her fingers around his.

Only a few more minutes passed before the party moved again, on their way, the quiet rumble of hoofbeats growing quickly distant.

Bram finally released her hand and turned on one knee before sinking heavily onto the grass beside her, close enough that his thick arm struck her shoulder. The strength seemed to leave him all at once. He slumped against the wall, his body gone strangely slack, and stared blindly ahead in much the same way Anna had only moments before.

“What is it?” she whispered. “What did they say that—?”

“Wallace has been executed,” he said, his voice conveying stunned disbelief.