“Should not,” Jamie said. “I’m sure you know how Zachary and I tried to rescue that little Puritan girl across the Pond.”
“At least you attempted it,” Oliver said pointedly.
“And yet we failed.”
“But youtried.”
“Andfailed,” Jamie stressed. “We never should have tried because events needed to proceed as they should have, which they should here as well.”
“But what if Mairead took Deirdre’s place?” Oliver said desperately. “I can’t let her die. Iknowher!”
“And others will die just as tragically who you do not know. You cannot save everyone.”
“But I could saveher.”
Jamie studied him in silence for a moment or two. “I’m not sure I want to know how you’ve come to know her so well.”
Oliver sensed a stab at a distraction coming his way, so he made Jamie a brisk bow. “Thank you, my laird, for the pleasant excursion. I’ll be on my way now, if you don’t mind.”
He turned and walked away before he had to see the expression on Jamie’s face. He was definitely doing Elizabeth’s husband a favor by preventing the man from seeing the one on his own.
He didn’t hear anyone following him, which he supposed boded well for his continuing to breathe. He permitted himself a single look over his shoulder once he reached the edge of Moraig’s forest and caught sight of a lone figure walking down the meadow. There was a solemnity to the sight that Oliver simply refused to put his finger on because any emotion at all would get in the way of what he intended to do. He turned away and started to run.
He ran until he came to an ungainly halt directly in front of Patrick MacLeod’s front door. He lifted his hand to knock, but the door opened before he could. He took a deep breath.
“I need a computer.”
Patrick simply stepped back out of the way. Oliver nodded to him and strode into his great hall, then realized he wasn’t quite sure where to go. He also found that Madelyn was standing in the middle of that same great room, watching him with concern.
“Something to eat?” she ventured.
He manufactured the smile that she deserved but he could scarce feel. “I’m fine, but thank you.”
Patrick walked past him. “Follow me.”
Oliver made Madelyn a slight bow, had a grave smile in return, then followed after the lord of the hall to what he assumedwas the man’s study. Patrick pulled out a chair, logged into his laptop, then stood back from that as well.
“Make yourself at home. I’ll go get you water.”
Oliver nodded absently and almost sat down before he realized he was still wearing his sword. He took it off, propped it up against Patrick’s desk, then sat down with a sigh. He wasn’t quite sure how long he’d been unplugged from the world, but it had been long enough that hopping onto the most convenient search engine that came to mind and typing instead of trying to draw vegetation with a mini-golf pencil left him feeling very strange.
He forged ahead, though, because he was accustomed to doing what needed to be done without fretting over the cosmic ramifications of his actions. He searched, he drank an entire glass of water before he thought to ascertain the potential for poison, then realized he wasn’t going to get anywhere with the tools he had at present.
He rubbed his hands over his face, then sat back and sighed deeply. He looked at Patrick who was leaning back against a bookcase.
“Nothing online,” he said flatly.
And then he realized that perhaps there was something to knowing a member of a clan who lived on his family’s ancestral lands and perhaps had had enough time on his hands to do a little research on that clan. He knew Patrick had written a book on medieval warfare—he had read and been unnerved by it—but whatever else the man had in his library was a mystery.
Patrick reached behind him without looking, then held out a slim volume.
“You’ll find the details here.”
Oliver closed his eyes briefly because he couldn’t help himself. He set aside all the things he likely had no business feeling and took the book. Opening it, though, was another thing entirely.
The only decent thing he could find to note about the little book—A History of Highland Witch Trials—was that it had chapters demarking the terrible contents, not tabs. He scanned the chapter headings so usefully provided on the initial pages of the book, noted the journey through history those chapters would offer him, then hoped he wasn’t making a terrible mistake by skipping straight to the penultimate chapter that listed in chronological order those souls who had paid the ultimate price for what he could charitably call mass hysteria based on superstition. He wasn’t at all comforted to find that men had been burned as well as women, especially when he came to a particular name.
Mairead MacLeod, 1583.
