Page 94 of Scotlander

There weren’t real standing stones on the farm, but one of the set builders from Outlander had brought along some dummy versions and set them up on a small knoll a short distance from the loch. Cleverly painted polystyrene slabs weighted down by internal sandbags.

Loads of folk had been posing for photos by them, and last night Jules had led some sort of firelit Wiccan ritual in advance of All Soul’s Night which wasn’t too far off now. One poor woman had eaten some ‘wild’ mushrooms that turned out to be a bit too wild for her digestive tract and had ended up in A&E. She was fine now and, mercifully, the only real casualty over the week.

Unless you counted whatever was coming to an end between him and Willa.

He forced himself to stop the pity party. Regroup. Instead of being all O! Woe is me, he needed to pull up his bootstraps and get on with his life. He’d been living in a holding pattern for years now and he’d be damned if he did it again.

He braced himself against the weather and headed up to the fake stones.

Someone had beaten him to it. He recognised her silhouette instantly.

Willa.

Her hands were pressed to the largest of the stones, her head bowed as if in prayer. She was clicking her heels together and, if he wasn’t mistaken, chanting, ‘There’s no place like home,’ on repeat.

When she heard him approach, she threw him a sharp look. Instead of screaming at him to back the fuck off and give her space like she was well within her rights to do, she gave one of those sweet, self-deprecating laughs of hers and said, ‘You caught me.’

‘Was it working?’

She dropped her hands from the stone, her features only slightly visible courtesy of a strip of moon. ‘The Wizard of Oz and Outlander matrix doesn’t appear to be working tonight.’

‘Were you hoping to open your eyes and find yourself in LA?’

‘Something like that.’

It wasn’t a yes. And it wasn’t a no.

A rumble of thunder vibrated low and dangerous through the air.

She tugged her shawl closer round her shoulders.

He wished he had a candle. Or a torch. Something, anything, so that he could read whatever it was in her eyes that she wasn’t telling him.

A huge crack of lightning flared across the sky.

That worked.

Unfortunately . . . he hadn’t liked what he’d seen. There was a coldness in her expression – or maybe it was more of an absence of the warmth he’d been so certain about a few days ago.

She turned to go.

He reached out and grabbed her hand.

She pulled it loose with a growled, ‘Don’t do that. This isn’t the olden days when you can just grab what you want and have it.’

He held his hands up. ‘I’m sorry. Willa, I just— For what it’s worth . . . I think you make a fine match to Balcraigie.’ And to me.

She laughed but it wasn’t a tinkly, happy sound. ‘Yup. Sounds about right. Like I said, I’m always useful to have around. But you don’t offer a paycheque at the end of the week, so . . . sorry, bud. My skills are going elsewhere.’

‘Hey, now. You know I didn’t mean it like that.’

‘Do I? Because there wasn’t much room for interpretation in your word choice, Finlay. I’m handy. You got what you wanted. Now if you don’t mind, I’m getting wet, and I’d like to go.’

The rain had started and he hadn’t even noticed.

‘Willa—’

‘Finlay—’ She mimicked his plaintive tone, and tied it off with a sneer that seemed so unnatural, so unlike her, he wondered if there was yet another version of her he’d not yet met. ‘Look,’ she began, the rain coming down more heavily now – tiny, excruciatingly painful daggers punctuating each word coming out of her mouth. ‘I’ve got a new job to go back to. A promotion that I have literally worked for years to get. This is your world, Finn. The land, the cows, the castle. All of this is literally yours. My world? It’s made of the same stuff as this.’ She punched the standing stone with surprising force and her fist shot straight through to the other side. ‘Illusion. Facades. Nothing is real. You breathe pure Scottish air. The air I breathe at home? Helium. Anything you don’t pin down just blows away in the breeze, never to be seen again. So if I don’t go back and accept this promotion, they’ll find someone else and that person won’t have earned it.’ She stopped, looked away and then, more gently said, ‘You need someone who wants to be here permanently, Finn. Put down roots. That’s not me.’