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Back on the path, Olivia caught her palm against a rough edge of stone. She hissed and glanced down at the shallow scrape before closing her hand around it.

“Let me see.” He took her hand.

“It’s barely a scratch.” She rolled her eyes. “I swear you can see in the dark.”

He took a clean strip of linen from his coat and handed it over.

Olivia wound it around her palm. “You carry bandages everywhere?”

“Twine, linen, a small knife, sweets for Catrìona if I remember them. You never know what the day will demand.”

By the time they joined the others, Ewan had brought his ponies up from the lower route, and the men were checking the lashings before moving on to the hollow. Nothing had been lost, and none of the officers had climbed the ridge. Jamie spoke quietly to Ewan while Olivia helped remove a damp cover and put it back so the water ran away from the staves rather than pooling between them.

Alasdair inspected her work, tugged at one corner, and nodded. “That’ll do.”

It wasn’t extravagant praise, but she was beginning to understand that from Alasdair it was practically a declaration of affection.

The casks went into the hollow behind the gorse, screened by stone and covered with the peat turves Jamie had arranged earlier. The ground remained firm despite the rain, just as he’d promised. Olivia looked toward the slope where the abandoned sheep fold stood somewhere beyond the dark. If they’d used her suggestion, they’d be spending the night fishing whisky out of a flooded enclosure. When she’d made the suggestion, instead of arguing, he’d taken her to the sheep fold when it was raining and showed her how the water flooded it, then showed her the hollow and how it stayed dry even with the rain. The guy didn’t even say, I told you so.

He caught her looking and raised one eyebrow.

“I nearly drowned a small fortune in whisky,” she admitted.

Ewan made a sound that might have been a cough and might not. Jamie sent him off to check the road, which served him right.

They reached Dunarraidh, cold and weary, with the ponies fed and their loads safely concealed until they could be collected. Morag had left broth simmering on the hearth. Olivia hung their cloaks to dry by the fire, each going about their tasks.

Neither of them spoke about the almost kiss. Jamie poured water into a basin so she could wash the mud from her hands, then moved aside to give her room.

“You’ve hurt your hand,” she said when she caught sight of his knuckles.

“Only a scrape from the rope.”

She tipped his hand toward the light and saw the thin red mark across the skin. He held still while she cleaned it, though his amusement at being fussed over was plain enough.

“You can let go now,” he said quietly. Olivia realized she was still holding his hand, and released it a little too quickly.

He ladled broth into two bowls and sat opposite her. Olivia listened as he told her what Ewan had said about the patrols, grateful for the ordinary conversation and troubled by how much she wished she could give him the same easy truth in return.

Chapter 17

Jamie

Jamie had eaten in worse places than the half-mended chamber at Dunarraidh, with rain coming through holes in the roof, smoke stinging his eyes, and men bleeding quietly into their plaids while insisting they were perfectly well.

He’d eaten cold oatcakes in a ditch with excisemen riding close enough to hear the horses breathe. He’d eaten standing up, riding, hiding, bargaining, and once on the back of a cart while Ewan held the reins and complained that every bump in the road was Jamie’s fault. None of that had prepared him for Olivia sitting across from him with her hair loose around her shoulders.

The fire had burned low in the hearth, red at the heart and gray at the edges, and morning had found its way through the broken wall in pale strips that made the dust look almost pretty, which was a grand trick for a room that still had one corner open to the weather and a rook nesting somewhere above the old stair. The kettle muttered beside the embers. A wooden bowl of porridge sat between them, along with yesterday’s bread, a crock of butter, and the small jug of milk Morag had left outside the door. She’d also brought half a loaf and instructed Jamie to eat something besides porridge before he dwindled away.

Olivia had laughed when he brought it in. She sat wrapped in one of his spare plaids, her sleeves pushed to her forearms, hair already escaping its pins. A chestnut curl lay against her cheek, and she blew at it impatiently as she reached for the milk. Her boots stood by the hearth where she had set them to dry, and a blue ribbon she used to tie her hair back lay beside his knife on the table. Jamie had spent several minutes that morning pretending he needed the knife rather than admitting he liked seeing her belongings among his own.

He made himself look at his bowl.

“Your ghost eats better than some of the living,” Olivia said, reaching for the milk.

“Aye, and does considerably less work.”

“You could put him to work fixing the roof.”