Claire smirk a bit. “Bizarre, as in unusual? Apparently not, according to my fixation with Ciaran.” She chewed her lip for a moment and then revealed, “I told him, by the way. About how he was familiar to me, that the man who appeared to me after my car accident looked exactly like him.”
“You did?” Ivy questioned, shock in her tone. “What did he say?”
“He dismissed it,” Claire answered thoughtfully, reviewing their earlier conversation. “But I swear even now, though he swore he never saw me or knew me before I arrived at Caeravorn, that for a moment, I saw the lie behind his eyes. I swear, Ivy, we’re not wrong, believing he thinks he knows me from somewhere. Or sometime.”
Silence stretched, but not for long.
“It is fascinating, isn’t it? I mean, it begs one to consider fate and destiny, and...everything like that. Right?”
Claire turned her head against the cushioned back of the chair. “Do you imagine that fate brought you to Alaric?”
Ivy shrugged and made a face suggesting she didn’t know for sure. “I mean, apparently, anything is possible, so why not?” She laughed lightly. “But honestly, couldn’t they have brought him to the future instead of sending me to this time?”
“Right?”
They were quiet then, and Claire wondered if Ivy was trying to imagine Alaric dropped into the twenty-first century, same as she was trying to picture Ciaran navigating the modern world.
At length, their gazes met, each revealing a knowing smile, thinking of how badly that would go.
***
Claire hesitated at the threshold of the long, low outbuilding, the smell of damp straw and sickness wafting out to meet her. The events of two days ago returned to give her second thoughts, recalling the doctor’s reaction to her attempted intercession, and then Ciaran Kerr’s reaction to that.
I’m not here to start trouble, she reminded herself.I’m here to apologize for the trouble I started.
But still she hesitated, nervous, until she saw the young kid who’d been hauling water buckets the other day, the one who’d translated the gist of the doctor’s angry tirade. Here he was again, his skinny arms once more made taut by the weight of the bucket he carried. He stopped with the bucket at the side of each wounded man—Claire counted twenty-three while she’d been cowering at the door, trying to talk herself into entering—doling out a ladleful of water to each man. Another practice that would have to stop, she determined, as that was hardly sanitary either, having them all share the same ladle.
She waved a bit whenever the kid happened to glance her way, but it took several times before he realized her presence and the fact that she was trying to get his attention. His eyes widened when he saw her, and then his light brows dropped and he glanced around, probably wondering if the doctor had seen her, too.
Claire waved him toward her and removed herself completely from the open door, standing just to the left so that the doctor would not then see the kid talking to her.
He stepped outside a short moment later, still wearing a frown, this time with a question attached to it.
“Hi,” she said, “I didn’t want to simply barge in—I’m honestly not here to cause trouble,” she began. “But you speak some English, right?” At his wary nod, she continued, “Would you help me?”
He shifted, now more wary. The kid’s eyes were a gorgeous blue, and his skin neither pale nor tanned but youthfully unblemished, which had her guessing him to be maybe ten at most. Both his tunic and his short boots appeared too large for his thin frame, and she wondered if he wore someone’s castoff clothing, or hand-me-downs. There was a streak of dirt that went from his nose to the middle of his cheek, as if he’d wiped his hand or sleeve across a runny nose, dragging snot and grime across his cheek.
“My name is Claire, by the way,” she said. “And I wondered if you would help me apologize to the doctor.”
His answering frown suggested less wariness than a lack of understanding.
“I want to say I’m sorry to the doctor,” she explained, “but I’m afraid he might take one look at me and start shouting again.”
“Doc-tor?” He questioned.
“Oh, um, the healer?” Claire corrected. “No, wait—Ivy told me he was called the barber-surgeon.” That had been when Claire had related the entire ugly episode to Ivy shortly after it had happened.
“Diarmad?”
Claire shrugged. “Sure, if that’s his name. Can you translate my apology to him?” He appeared confused again, prompting Claire to clarify. “Can you repeat the words I speak in English to him in your language?”
And now he understood. His thin brows completely relaxed.
“Aye, but dinna speak fast—too hard.”
“I see. Okay, I’ll talk slowly and you say it as best you can.”
He nodded.
