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“That makes it part of the house.”
“Castle.”
“Your horse is inside your castle.”
“The stable has a sound roof.”
Olivia looked pointedly toward the enormous opening in the wall where cold Highland air and rain wandered in whenever they pleased.
He shrugged, and the horse exhaled through her nose as though taking Jamie’s side and withdrew.
Olivia looked after her. “You two deserve each other.”
“I’ll tell Bess ye said so.”
“Please do.”
Jamie pushed his empty bowl aside, and Olivia found herself studying him more carefully.
Small scars and burns marked his forearms where his sleeves were shoved back. His dark hair had dried into loose waves tied back with leather, and the throat of his linen shirt stood open beneath a dark waistcoat. Standing beside him earlier, she’d put him at about six-foot-one, tall enough to make her look up despite being five-seven herself.
Nothing about him looked like a reenactor or a guy on vacation, pretending to be a Highlander from the past.
Olivia had been to historical places preserved for visitors, places with information cards beside the furniture and ropes protecting anything too valuable to touch. Even ancient pubs had electrical outlets hidden beneath benches, smoke detectors tucked behind beams, and plumbing somewhere in the building.
Dunarraidh had no modern layer hiding beneath the old one.
The horn cup was simply a horn cup. The wooden bowl was worn smooth because someone had eaten from it for years. The iron pot hung above a fire because no stove waited in another room.
Outside there were no distant engines, no tires moving over wet pavement, no electrical hum threading beneath the rain.
Olivia had built her career by trusting her senses when they contradicted what people expected her to find. She could hardly abandon that principle because the answer had become impossible.
Jamie must have seen something change in her expression because he didn’t ask another question. Instead, he reached behind several books on a shelf and brought out a dark bottle sealed with wax.
“A dram,” he said, breaking the seal. “It willna fix whatever has ye looking like that, but it may make ye forget about the cold for a bit.”
The aroma reached her the instant he opened the bottle.
Olivia’s professional instincts took over so quickly that fear barely had time to object.
“What is that?”
“I thought ye had a good nose.” Jamie’s mouth curved. “It’s whisky.”
“I know it’s whisky.”
“Good. I was beginning to worry yer profession had been exaggerated.”
He poured a small measure into the horn cup and pushed it toward her.
Olivia lifted it beneath her nose, and for the first time since arriving in the past, she knew exactly what to do.
The whisky was young and rougher than anything a modern distillery would have bottled, yet the structure beneath that youth caught her immediately. Honey and apple skin came first, followed by toasted grain, while smoke remained along the edges instead of swallowing the fruit. Beneath it sat something colder and earthier, a mineral note with enough iron to pull her memory directly back to the old wooden quaich she’d held and smelled in the tunnel.
The cup had vanished. Its scent had not.
Olivia inhaled deeply. Honey. Toasted grain. Orchard fruit. Restrained smoke. Mineral. The foundation was unmistakably related to the profile Glenbrae had spent years trying to recover.
