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She added two aprons so she wouldn’t get her new dresses dirty, added several yards of good linen and a packet of sewing needles for Morag, who had taken one look at a bedraggled stranger and proceeded to outfit her from her daughter’s wardrobe.
Mistress Kerr promised to have everything ready the following day and agreed to hold them until Olivia and Jamie returned from the coast.
Jamie was waiting outside when she emerged, and his eyebrows rose at the additional parcels.
“Have ye bought the whole shop, lass?”
“Not quite. I left her the curtains.”
“A generous woman.”
Olivia tucked the smaller parcel beneath her arm. “Don’t get excited. Some of this is for Morag.”
“And the rest?”
“None of your business.”
His grin widened. “A present for another gentleman? I’ll have to challenge him to a duel.”
“You’ll have to survive the journey home first.”
Jamie laughed and fell into step beside her, though his gaze returned to the purse she was fastening beneath her cloak.
“Ye’ve done well for yourself,” he said. “There’s enough there for yer passage, I’d wager.”
There it was. The question she’d known would come sooner or later.
“Yes,” she admitted. “I expect there is.”
“Then ye’ll no’ need the money I’ve put by.”
“No, Jamie. And I don’t want you spending another penny of your savings on me.”
He looked at her for a moment. “I’ll no’ have ye thinking ye must stay because ye owe me something.”
“I don’t.” She caught his arm before he could misunderstand. “But I promised Alasdair we’d finish those experiments, and I meant it. There are things I want to do before I make any arrangements.”
“And when the work is done?”
Olivia looked toward the harbor, where ships lay at anchor beneath a sky beginning to darken with evening.
She could afford passage now, could board a vessel, cross the Atlantic, and arrive in Boston two hundred and forty years before Grandma Bennett had ever been born. All the silver in Scotland couldn’t change that.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I’m still trying to work that out.”
Jamie studied her face, then offered his arm again.
“Then we’ll finish the whisky,” he said. “And ye can decide what comes after.”
Olivia slipped her hand through his arm, grateful that he hadn’t pressed her for an answer she couldn’t give. She’d found a way to pay her own way in Glenbrae, yet the man walking beside her was becoming more difficult to imagine leaving with every passing day.
Ewan appeared at the far end of the street before she could say anything. He crossed to Jamie without his usual smile and spoke too quietly for Olivia to hear. Jamie’s expression changed as he listened.
“The patrol’s early?” he asked.
“Two officers at the customs house, and another asking after boats at the quay.”
Jamie looked toward the harbor, where the tide had begun to turn and the little vessel meant to take their cargo would soon be coming in.
