“You’re not joking there.”
Iain chuckled. She had a strange language, but even if he didn’t know what she said most of the time, he still loved the sound of her voice.
She sat up and looked at the sky.
“It’s going to rain, isn’t it?” She faced him, and her luscious lips formed a pout. “It’s going to be miserable, isn’t it?”
He laughed. Wherever she came from, rain must have been scarce. “Aye. But we can collect clean water in that bowl there.” He pointed under the back bow.
Abigail picked up the pot and turned it over, gazing at it. She stared into it. “I don’t want to know what it was used for before.”
“I think it was used for cleaning fish.”
“I said I didn’t want to know.” She sniffed the pot. “Well, at least whoever had it cleaned it.”
Placing the pot on the floor between her seat and the bow, she said, “You don’t look so hot.”
“I am no’ hot. I am a little tired, though.”
She leaned forward and placed her palm on his forehead. “You’re right, you don’t have a fever, but you can’t be sitting out here in the rain and cold.”
“We don’t have a choice. We have to get to Rum.”
The rain fell lightly but never stopped the whole day and night. It was a continuous exasperating drizzle. Sometimes it was so light, Iain thought it had stopped altogether, and at other times, enough fell that they were both soaked to the skin.
He used his plaid to keep as much water off Abigail as possible during the night, but during the day, he thought it better to wear the thing, just in case they were spotted by someone from the shore.
By the third morning, Iain spotted Rum appear and disappear through the gray mist rising from the ocean on the horizon.
Abigail awoke coughing. Iain bent to feel her forehead before she could get to his brow. She wasn’t feverish. “Ye are unwell.”
“Nah.” She smiled and swatted his hand away. “It’s just a bit of a cold, that’s all. I’ll be right as soon as I’m dry, warm, and fed.” She gazed at the wet dressing. “I can’t change that out here.”
Iain shrugged. “The wound is healed enough that a wet bandage won’t hurt it.” He nodded his head to his left. “Look there. Do ye see?”
Abigail gasped. “I see it.”
He wished he could kiss the droplets of water off her nose, her eyes, her lips. No. He had to stop thinking that way. Once he sent word to her grandparents, she would leave. And although Iain didn’t want to think she would board a boat andsail away, he knew in his heart, if not his head, that she had told him the truth. She didn’t belong in his world. She was out of time, and once she remembered how to work that device, she would disappear from his life, from his time.
A thought struck him then. Once she returned to the future, he would have been long dead and buried. Would she grieve him?
He let out a long, slow breath. It was all much too complicated. He pulled the oars toward him.
She sat on the seat opposite Iain. “Let me row for a while?”
Iain shook his head.
“Stop being such a stubborn goat and let me row. Your arms must be killing you.”
As if making their agreement with her known, the muscles in his arms cramped. He groaned. “Aye.”
They swapped seats, and Abigail pulled the oars slowly through the water. Iain rubbed and then shook his lead-filled arms to try to bring life back to them. They would not get to Rum until nightfall if she rowed the whole way.
As if she’d read his mind, Abigail tilted her head and shook it. “Fine. I’ll row for half an hour, and then you can take over again. Okay?”
“Okaay.”
They both laughed, and Iain followed her eyes to her orb. He swallowed hard, needing to dislodge the pain in his chest, and gazed at the island growing before them. He reveled in the thought that Abigail would soon be in his home. His keep wasn’t as grand as some, but it was comfortable, and his people were happy.
