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“Jamie. Do ye trust her nose?”
Jamie turned from where he’d been speaking with Ewan near the door.
“Aye.”
Alasdair nodded toward the wash. “She says we shouldna leave this another day.”
Jamie glanced into the tun, then back at Olivia. “She kens that better than I do.”
Olivia stared at him as Jamie reached for a clean cup as though nothing unusual had happened.
“You’re not bothered?”
He looked up, a puzzled expression on his face. “By what?”
“That I know more about this bit than you do.”
Jamie frowned. “Why would that fash me? I ride better than ye.”
Finlay made a choking sound behind them.
“Alasdair makes better whisky than I do,” Jamie continued, “Ewan kens the hills better in the fog, Morag can cure half the things that would kill the rest of us, and ye can smell things in a cup I wouldna notice until the second or third taste. A man would spend his entire life being miserable if he needed to be the best at everything.”
There was no hesitation in it and no need to prove anything afterward. He simply knew what he knew and didn’t appear troubled that she knew some things better than he did.
That was unexpected. She’d spent years around men who could tolerate a knowledgeable woman right up until her knowledge exceeded theirs. Some competed. Some corrected. Others changed the subject until they reached safer ground. Daniel had explained peat to a woman whose career depended upon understanding whisky.
He held out the fresh cup. “Now tell me what ye smell before Finlay decides to put salt in it.”
“I wouldna,” Finlay protested.
Olivia took the cup, pointing at Finlay. “You’ve lost your tasting privileges.”
She brought the spirit beneath her nose and let the room fade around her. Honey came first, still raw beneath the alcohol, followed by toasted grain and green apple beginning to deepen toward dried fruit. Peat smoke stayed close to the barley rather than overwhelming it, and underneath everything she caught the mineral note again, faint but increasingly recognizable now that she had the spring, the rain-cut burn, and Sorcha’s warm stone after rain in her mind.
This wasn’t the legendary whisky yet, but it was definitely the beginning of it. The living ancestry of something people in her century would spend years trying to reconstruct from scraps of paper and old tasting descriptions.
Olivia lowered the cup.
“What?” Jamie asked.
She looked around the hot, smoky room where nobody knew they were making history because they were too busy making whisky.
Alasdair came closer as Olivia handed him the cup. “Taste it.”
They argued for another half hour. By the time Olivia stepped outside, her shoulders ached, her hair was falling down, and barley dust clung to one sleeve of the blue gown. The cold felt good against her face while Jamie settled the cloak around her shoulders.
“Ye look verra pleased with yourself.”
She glanced back toward the low turf-covered building where Finlay was still complaining about Boston widows.
“Thank you for showing me.”
He shook his head. “Strange woman.”
“I’m beginning to think you like strange women.”
Jamie’s eyes met hers long enough for heat to spread across her chest and neck before he looked down and checked Mally’s girth.
