The laugh that broke from Claire was bitter. “Obviously, that’s not possible.”
“I wouldn’t have thought so either—until three weeks ago.”
Her stomach dropped, fury rushing to fill the void. “Okay, no. This isn’t funny. I don’t know what you’re trying to do here, but—”
“I’m not making it up,” Ivy pleaded. “Oh, how I wish it weren’t true either.”
“Stop.” Claire’s voice cracked like a whip. Her hands trembled. “It’s ridiculous. Where is my phone? I had it when I was separated from my husband. I want it. I need to—”
“Claire, first I swear to you, you had no phone on you,” Ivy said quickly, her tone soft but unyielding. “And you simply can’t use a twenty-first century phone in the fourteenth century.”
Claire’s breath hitched, a raw sound tearing from her chest. “Stop,” she begged, voice frayed.
Ivy’s shoulders slumped. “I know how it sounds. I know it’s—”
“Enough.” Claire lurched back, every muscle taut. Anger sparked, hot and sharp. “Thanks, but I think I’ve heard plenty.”
She spun, stumbling on the uneven ground, gathering the hem of the stupid gown in both hands. Fury and disbelief tangled until she could hardly see. She half-ran, half-stumbled back across the yard, the borrowed fabric snapping around her legs, leaving Ivy—apparently a freak!—in the shade of the tree.
Chapter Four
Shards of Reality
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From the ridge, Ciaran Kerr narrowed his eyes at the sight below. The English column stretched along the lochside track like a lumbering serpent—three thousand men, armored and armed, oxen bawling against their yokes, wagons groaning with their plunder. The reek of leather and horseflesh, of men themselves—piss, sweat, and unwashed bodies— clung to the damp air, as foul as the men who made it.
He edged his destrier up until his stirrup brushed Alaric’s. Mist slicked his hair and plaid and was heavy enough to gather in the stubble of his beard.
Even as he stared down upon the enemy, his thoughts strayed. It had been four days since the tinker’s cart had rattled through Caeravorn’s gate, bearing a stranger half-dead beneath in its bed. Ciaran had told himself she was no concern of his, that the midwife and Ivy would see to her. And yet, he’d found his steps turning back to that chamber again and again the day she arrived, as though pulled by an invisible cord.
The first time, he only cracked the door. The woman lay still upon the bed, her hair pale against the pillow, her breath shallow but steady. Ivy dabbed at her brow with a damp cloth, humming low under her breath. Ciaran had shut the door at once, unsettled by the odd weight in his chest.
Later, passing again, he paused. His hand had rested against the door’s latch for quite a while before he pushed the door open. The fire had been banked low now, the chamber dim. Ivy dozed in the same chair. The stranger stirred faintly, lips parting though no sound came. His throat had tightened, andhe’d turned away before Ivy might have woken and noted his presence.
By nightfall he’d looked in three times. Too many.
“What claim has she on ye?” he’d muttered to himself then. She was naught to him. An unknown woman, fevered, found half-dead in the mountains. She could be a beggar, a slave, a madwoman for all he knew. Her attire was odd, he’d realized much later—he hadn’t given it thought in the first hours, too struck by her face. Only later did he wonder at the cut and make of the cloth, unlike any he had seen.
Too often, though, his mind returned to that first moment in the yard, to the shock that had struck him like a crack across the cheek. He was tormented by her face, her hair, the angle of her jawline, and ultimately, by the echo of another woman’s dying gaze.
He’d been almost relieved when the message came, warning of a large English force moving steadily north—an army on the march, a campaign in motion, or a garrison bound to relieve another at one of the many English-held Scots castles. Relieved, aye, because it put him back where he belonged, blade in hand, enemy before him. Pleased, too, for the distance it would create between him and the woman. Better to measure English steel and lose himself in the familiarity of war than to wrestle with the uncanny likeness of her face and the unease it stirred within him.
He wasn’t entirely surprised to realize that distance between him and her had not effectively removed her from his thoughts. Frustrated, Ciaran dragged a hand down his face now and forced himself to concentrate on the enemy below.
“We canna break that head,” he muttered, frustration tight in his throat after three days of trailing the beast. “But a tail that long—aye, it bleeds easy.”
Alaric’s gaze stayed fixed on the moving column. “Aye. But when? Where?”
As if on cue, a scout scrambled from the bracken, muck dried near to his thighs. “Laird! A choke half a mile north. The track pinches hard to the water, birch on the slope, bog to the west. Wagons’ll have to slow for a burn crossing—rotten planks, slick stone.”
“Guid,” Alaric said, and his eyes cut to Ciaran. “We make our cut there.”
Ciaran nodded once and gave a sharp whistle. Officers converged—Mathar and Mungan, the captains, and others who commanded individual units.
Alaric’s orders came crisp and spare. “Mathar, take your archers up through the birches. Arrows first, then steel when we spring. We break them at the crossing. Ciaran—ye want the wagons?”
“Aye,” Ciaran answered. “We’ll cut the traces, drive the oxen uphill into the gulley. They’ll drag the carts with them and bog the lot. Nae heroics. Ruadh will hold the far flank and cut down any who try to form lines.”
