Page 67 of Blood of the Thistle

Anna searched his face, though the darkness and the distance between them revealed little. His expression was as unreadable as ever, his gaze fixed steadily upon her, and she wondered whether he had followed because he feared something might happen to her in the woods or because some part of him had been unable to simply stand there and watch her disappear.

She wasn’t foolish enough to ask.

Neither of them moved for several seconds.

“It didn’t work,” she said finally, and hated the smallness of her voice. “Nothing happened.”

He regarded her in silence, inclining his head slightly. At length he said, “Then ye are bound for Craig na Coille.”

Anna gave a sharp, shaky nod. “But don’t think it’s because I want to go with you,” she managed, her voice tight. “It’s just... I have nowhere else to go.”

Bram studied her for a moment before giving a single, almost imperceptible nod. “Aye.”

She was convinced she absolutely did not see any softening in his hard gaze.

Chapter Eighteen

For the next several days, Anna made no attempt to disguise her misery.

She no longer hurried. When she wished to stop and wash the dust from her face in a stream, she did so without apology. When he asked for something, she helped, but she no longer looked for ways to make herself useful before he had to ask. She’d once gathered fresh grass for the gelding, pleased to contribute, but now she didn’t bother.

Nor did she make any effort to reduce the inconvenience of her own presence. She sat where she pleased in the saddle instead of unconsciously trying to leave Bram as much room as possible, and if her shoulder rested against his chest or her hair blew into his face, she no longer found herself apologizing for it. Let him be uncomfortable. He had, after all, survived far worse than an errant lock of hair possibly annoying him.

At night she made her bed at a respectable distance from his, rolled onto her side with her back toward him, and closed her eyes without so much as wishing him goodnight. Sleep seldom came quickly, but she was determined he should never know that.

Sure, it was all petty and maybe childish, but she simply decided that she needn’t pretend to be anything she wasn’t, and that she owed him nothing. Yes, he’d saved her life, maybe more than once, but he’d broken her heart, and ridiculous or not, she considered them even.

The truly infuriating part, however, was that none of it seemed to matter.

Bram neither objected to the distance she deliberately placed between them nor appeared relieved by it. He simply accepted it with the same quiet stoicism with which he accepted rain, hunger, or another weary day in the saddle. He didn’t ask why she’d stopped helping with the horse, didn’t ask for anything actually. He didn’t remark upon the silence that now stretched between them from dawn until dusk. He didn’t appear troubled at all about her present detachment.

The more indifferent he appeared, the more miserable she became. She had rather hoped—as if hoping had done her any good in this century—that he might miss the woman she’d been before that night of the quiet storm. Instead, he seemed perfectly capable of traveling beside this newer, colder version of her as if he wasn’t troubled at all.

This, she reminded herself daily, only confirmed what he’d told her, that the kiss had mattered only to one of them.

As they rode north, the gentle English fields gave way to a rougher, untamed country. The hills grew steep, clothed in pine and birch. Stone walls vanished, then farmsteads, until whole hours passed in silence. Mountains that had once been distant shapes on a calendar grew into towering, blue-gray sentinels watching over the land Bram called home. She saw the rugged beauty in the purple heather spread across the high ground, but the emptiness of the landscape only mirrored her own.

She had long since lost track of how many days had passed since she’d stumbled into the fourteenth century. Two weeks, perhaps a little more. Time had become strangely meaningless when every morning began in the saddle and every evening ended beside another campfire beneath another unfamiliar sky.

Then, one quiet afternoon, Bram spoke for the first time in hours.

“Craig na Coille lies only a few miles ahead.”

Until that moment, his home had remained a vague destination somewhere beyond the next hill, distant enough that she hadn’t truly allowed herself to think about it. Now it abruptly became real, and with that realization came a slow, uncomfortable tightening in her stomach that only worsened over the next hour.

What exactly was waiting for her there? If the people of Craig na Coille resembled Bram in temperament, she suspected she was about to spend the foreseeable future surrounded by an entire village of people who communicated primarily through silence, considered a raised eyebrow an extravagant display of feeling, and would make her feel perpetually as though she had said something faintly ridiculous without ever quite telling her what it was.

The country continued climbing steadily over the next hour, until, after rounding yet another stand of towering Scots pine, the trees abruptly fell away.

Anna sat up a little straighter, staring at the scene ahead of them.

Nestled within a broad Highland glen lay the first true settlement she’d seen since arriving in the fourteenth century. Beyond it, occupying a low rise overlooking the valley, stood what she presumed was Craig na Coille.

She had only ever seen castle ruins, tidied up for tourists with little signs. This was no ruin. This was a living thing, its dark stone walls rising from the hillside as if they’d grown there. Smoke curled from chimneys inside, and the helmets of guards caught the dying light as they moved along the battlements. It was dense and alive, a place of purpose, not history.

A small village lay between them and the castle, a cluster of cottages scattered along a winding dirt track. As they drew closer, she saw the details: low fences of woven branches, roofs thick with straw, and patches of garden with neat rows of leafy plants she couldn’t name. Lines had been strung between wooden stakes, where rough-looking cloth shifted in the breeze.

The road itself was worn into deep grooves. A handful of chickens scratched industriously among scattered straw, and two geese wandered between two small cottages. Beside one cottage a tethered goat had stripped the bark from a fence post to a height of about three feet and was working on a fourth. Two shaggy Highland cattle stood motionless in a stone enclosure, their horns improbably wide, their eyes slow and dark and entirely unbothered.