Page 107

“And the horses? Have ye done away with them entirely?”

“Rich people still keep horses. Mostly they ride them for pleasure, or use them on farms.”

“Mally would be delighted. A whole future full of people prepared to admire her while she eats.”

Olivia smiled, grateful that the familiar Jamie still existed beneath the injury she’d caused. He wanted to know whether women could vote and own property, and when she told him about universities, female doctors, and the professions open to them, he considered the matter before observing that Morag would have the government properly organized within a fortnight. The idea of Morag and Grandma Bennett in the same room made Olivia laugh for the first time without feeling guilty for it.

“And folk have learned to cure sickness?” he asked after a while.

“A great deal more. We have medicines that can fight infections, operations people can survive, and treatments for diseases that would kill someone here. Not everything can be cured, and people still get sick, but we have possibilities you don’t.”

He glanced toward the door as though picturing Finlay recovering under the care of a physician who could do more than watch for fever. “That would be worth seeing.”

“It would.”

Jamie asked about other inventions, and Olivia told him how people could speak across oceans in an instant, how cities could be lit at night without candles, about showers, refrigerators, indoor plumbing, ice cream and Chinese takeout, and how human beings had even walked on the moon. That last fact kept him silent long enough that she thought for sure he’d tell her to get out. She didn’t try to explain rockets, wasn’t entirely sure she could have explained one to a reasonably curious child in Boston, and had no intention of making up a description for him. She knew what those machines accomplished, which was quite different from knowing how to build one.

“So ye’ve made the world a paradise, then,” he said eventually.

Olivia shook her head. “We’ve made it more comfortable in some ways. There have been terrible wars, too, and people can still be cruel and foolish. Some things haven’t changed nearly enough.”

“Aye. I expect the foolishness of men would be difficult to cure, even with all yer astonishing medicines.”

“Grandma has a treatment for that. It generally involves telling them to get out of her pub.”

He smiled again, but this time he let the smile go without reaching for another joke. “Yer grandmother’s alive in this future?”

“Yes. She raised me after my parents died, and she’s the closest person in the world to me. She’s probably worried sick, and I can’t even send her word that I’m alive.”

“And there’s truly no husband waiting?”

“No husband. No children. I have my work and my friends, and Grandma, who’s spent most of her life making sure I never had to wonder whether someone loved me.”

Olivia looked up at the stars through the hole in the roof. “I had a good life, Jamie. I didn’t mean to leave any of it.”

“I believe that much.”

She heard the distinction and didn’t challenge it. He was listening, but that wasn’t the same as believing she’d traveled through time, and she couldn’t blame him for wanting proof that she couldn’t provide.

“And the Glenbrae whisky?” he asked. “Ye said the spirit became famous.”

“It did. The distillery still exists in my time, although the whisky everyone’s trying to recreate is from this year. People know the legend, but the original method was lost. That’s why I was hired.”

“How does a way of making whisky vanish when Alasdair would happily talk about it until we all died of old age?”

“Recipes can be written down and still leave out everything that matters. I’ve spent weeks learning that from him and from you. The water, the weather, the judgment somebody uses when the still is running—none of that fits neatly into a list of ingredients.”

“Ye’ll no’ tell Alasdair I taught ye anything. His opinion of himself is troublesome enough.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Jamie’s gaze traveled around the chamber, lingering on the repaired shutters, the patched hearth, and the damp mark above the doorway where the next section of roofing would have to go.

“And Dunarraidh? Does the castle stand in your time?”

She’d known he would ask, had seen the modern ruins from the distillery yard, studied photographs before she came to Scotland, and walked near the old tunnel while listening to stories about the haunted castle on the hill. She couldn’t bear to make up another comforting answer.

“Parts of it do. The towers and some of the walls are still there, but nobody lives in it. It’s a ruin, Jamie.”