Page 20 of Alec

Olivia instantly imagined asking Alec to be her lover, and her face blazed so hot she ducked her head to hide it. “Please let the girls know that I’m not planning to marry or offer myself to anyone. Oh.” She looked down at the vase of flowers Inga had handed her. “Do you need me to take these somewhere?”

The chatelaine smiled. “They’re for your room. The castle has adequate ventilation, but I find the sight as well as the scent of flowers help brighten my mood.”

She did look a little sad, so Olivia decided to change the subject. “I wonder, is there anything I can do to help out in the gardens? I do love working outdoors.”

“You should speak with the head gardener about that,” Inga said. “You should also give yourself a little more time to adjust. No one expects you to adapt to a twelfth-century lifestyle and start working overnight.”

Olivia thought of her aunt, whose expectations had been almost impossible to meet. “Thank you.”

The only place she wasn’t permitted to go was the garrison hall, which Ava explained was off-limits to women. Because the men of the clan had their private quarters there, females could only enter by invitation after dark, and had to be escorted by the clansmen they wanted to visit.

“Generally, the gals go there for one reason only: so they don’t have to sleep alone,” the laird’s wife said over breakfast one morning. “About half of our female population do prefer clansmen as lovers because there aren’t any strings attached. Of course, our ladies do the choosing, and regularly switch partners.”

Olivia had already noticed the imbalance of males to females. Since the stronghold had been imprisoned for nearly a thousand years, the culture must have evolved in order to compensate. There was one question that she wanted to ask, but it seemed rude. Then something else occurred to her.

“Will I be required in the future to take a lover or marry someone?” she asked.

“Absolutely not,” Ava said. “If you’d like to have a lover or husband, I’m sure the boys would line up for you. That said, several men and women here for their own reasons have chosen to abstain from all relationships or liaisons.”

“Which we don’t have to talk about if we want to keep that private,” Ben said as he came to sit with them. “I haven’t taken any lovers yet.”

“There you go.” The laird’s wife gestured at him. “Our chief abstainer.”

Olivia turned to him. “Don’t you get lonely, Doctor?”

“Oh, of course I do—and please, call me Ben.” He smiled at her. “Being trapped together in a world we can never escape can be stressful, but you don’t have to be alone unless you want to, Ms. Gibson. There’s always friendship, too. If you ever want platonic company, come find me. I can get you in all kinds of trouble.”

She really liked Ben, who in a strange way reminded her of Jack Riley. “Would you mind calling me Gibs? It was my nickname at work.”

“You got it, Gibs.” He offered her an oat cake covered with a brown spread. “Want to try my latest attempt at apple butter?”

Olivia sampled the concoction, which needed a little more apple and less honey in her opinion, and then listened as Ben described his determination to recreate all his favorite foods from their time. She also enjoyed the clan’s dishes a great deal. Although only two meals were served each day in the morning and evening, they had turned out to be so substantial she didn’t grow hungry at all during the afternoon or at night.

“You are doing much better than I did during my first week,” Ava said as they helped the maids clear the tables after the last of the clan had dined. “I knew this was all real, but I still hoped I’d wake up and it would all be a bad dream.”

“Is it really all that terrible?” Olivia asked and saw the look the other woman gave her. “Of course, I’d like to go back to our time, but here we can live forever. It’s kind of hard to give up the chance to be immortal.”

The fact that she had this new body here didn’t hurt, either.

“If you had to spend forever in one place, not by choice, and relive the same events over and over, you might find it gets a bit tedious.” The laird’s wife stacked some bowls. “Only here it’s downright scary, especially when the MacBren shows up with his thugs. Those giant caterpillars someone sent in to attack us weren’t much fun, either. By the way, if you ever hear a horn blow, come to the great hall immediately. That’s where we gather all the ladies before we hide them from our enemies.”

She hadn’t considered that there might be danger waiting for her. “I will.”

“There are also the families that folks have left behind in the real world. Inga, our chatelaine, had a husband and young daughter back in our time. That was seventy-odd years ago, so her man is probably gone now. If she’s still around, her little girl is in her fifties, and never knew what happened to her mama.” She gave Olivia a curious look. “Did you leave some family behind in our time?”

“None that I know of,” she said, which was the truth. “I’m an only child, and I’ve been on my own since I was seventeen.”

“You were younger than me.” Ava’s smile vanished. “I don’t have any folks, either. I left home when I was eighteen, and my folks died shortly after that in a fire.”

“I’m sorry.” Olivia sensed it was not a topic she wanted to discuss. “After we finish here, could I borrow some other clothes?”