Page 115 of Blood of the Thistle

This man who had stood upon his walls that morning staring at hundreds of men come to kill him, who had ridden through the gates after the enemy who had betrayed him into English hands, looked at her now with fear in his striking blue eyes.

“I felt the wind come,” he shouted. “I feared ye would be taken away—or that ye would walk into it willingly, wanting to go back to yer time.”

Anna stared at him, the photograph still held between them, and something hurt and angry rose inside her.

“Then why did you tell me to go before? You told me I didn’t belong here!” She had to nearly shout the words now, the wind snatching at her voice. “You told me you’d kissed many a lass, like I was just another one of them. You made me think you didn’t even care!”

His expression tightened. “I lied.”

Anna’s mouth opened in disbelief.

“I kent ye might have the chance to return to yer own time.” His voice was rough, raised against the storm. “I wouldnae have ye remain because I made leaving harder for ye.”

“So you made me believe I meant nothing to you?”

His jaw tightened, a muscle flexing sharply beneath the skin, and for a moment he could not meet her eyes. “I thought it kinder.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Nae.” His answer came without defense. “It wasnae.” Bram stepped closer, the wind tearing at his hair, his face fierce and miserable before her. “I wanted ye greatly at the lochan. Before it, if I speak truth. And every day thereafter I wanted ye more.” His gaze held hers. “But ye have a life waiting for ye, Anastasia. A family ye love. A home—things I couldnae promise ye, safety I couldnae be certain of. What right had I to ask ye to surrender all of it for me?”

Anna swallowed against the ache in her throat. “You could have let me decide.”

“Aye.” Regret moved plainly across his face. “I should have.”

The wind surged again, shrieking around the keep and whipping Anna’s hair across her eyes. Bram reached for her, brushing it impatiently from her face as though he could not bear even that small obstruction between them.

“Now I find I am nae so honorable a man.” Bram took her hand, setting the picture there, and closed his and her fingers around it. “I dinna care what I ought to want for ye. I dinna care what is fair or honorable. Ye are safe—I vow to ye. I will make it always so. I want ye here. With me.” His grip tightened. “Dinna go, Anastasia. Stay with me.”

Anna was speechless, her pulse pounding. That morning, she had asked for something he hadn’t known how to give her. She’d wanted words, some admission that what existed between them reached deeper than desire or duty or the honor he had tried so disastrously to offer her in place of his heart.

The argument, the clumsy proposal—none of it mattered anymore. His actions were the only words she needed to hear.

Raghnall was somewhere beyond Craig na Coille, fleeing the justice Bram had pursued for months, and Bram had let him go. He’d turned his horse around and ridden back alone because the first breath of this impossible storm had made him believe that she might disappear from his life.

Bram had chosen her.

And standing within the same gathering storm that had once torn her from everything she loved, Anna knew—simply, without argument—that she had found something here, with him.

“I love you!” she shouted over the wind, the words torn from her.

The gale faltered, the oppressive pressure easing as quickly as it had come. The unnatural storm was over. In the

sudden, ringing silence of the bailey, her words seemed to hang in the air between them.

Bram’s fierce expression softened, the desperation in his eyes giving way to a profound relief. He lifted a hand to her face, his thumb brushing away her tears.

“And I ye, Anastasia,” he said, his voice low and raw. “I imagine I have from the moment I first saw ye.”

Epilogue

From the church spire, Eilidh watched the American. Her form was little more than mist, but her impatience was a solid, familiar weight. For weeks, he’d returned to this same stretch of pavement, a ghost haunting the spot where the woman had vanished. He stared at the empty space as if it might confess its secret, never knowing the confession belonged to Eilidh. He was the one she’d meant to send across.

Thankfully, Moireach's eyes had grown dimmer, her attention scattered across too many threads, and the great witch hadn’t noticed Eilidh's failure. Or if she had noticed, she hadn’t cared to intervene. The nigheanan sgàil moved through time with less precision now, their passages growing wilder as their leading light’s power waned.

Eilidh had watched Anna Ellis find her way inside the past, had watched her stumble through the woods, frightened and confused, until the MacCailin had found her, and then had watched the strange attachment between them take root where none had been intended.

She’d tried once to correct the mistake, had created the opportunity. When the thinning came again and Anastasia stood beneath the gathering storm, willing herself home, Eilidh had opened the passage, reached for the woman across the centuries, and tried to return her to the moment from which she had been taken.