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“She basically told me to be careful what I wished for.”
Olivia rubbed her palms against her skirt. “Which is an irritating thing to say to somebody without explaining what it means.”
“What had ye wished for?”
Olivia briefly considered pretending she hadn’t heard him, but she’d promised herself she was finished choosing which truths she shared.
“I’d been on another disappointing date, and I wished I could meet a man who could do something useful with his hands. Somebody who knew how to fix things and didn’t spend an evening explaining my own profession to me.”
One corner of his mouth moved despite himself. “And ye found a ruined castle with a smuggler living in it.”
“I was a little more specific about the man than I was about the castle.”
“A dangerous omission, lass. I’ve a great many roofs needing repaired.”
His humor faded almost as soon as it appeared. He looked down at her hands, folded so tightly in her lap that the knuckles had gone pale.
“Ye told me ye’d lost a husband.”
“I know.”
“I believed ye. There were times I wanted to take yer hand or kiss ye, and I stopped myself because I thought ye were grieving a man ye loved.”
“I know that too.” The memory of his restraint on the hillside and beside the fire burned worse now that he’d spoken it aloud.
“I was frightened when I arrived. Everything was strange, and I didn’t know what would happen if I told anyone the truth, not to mention a woman alone would be a problem. Then you were kind to me, and I kept thinking I’d tell you tomorrow. Every day I waited made it harder.”
“Ye trusted me to keep ye safe from the king’s men, to feed ye, to find a ship that would carry ye across the Atlantic. Yet ye didna trust me with the truth of who ye were.”
There was no anger in his voice now, and that made it impossible to hide behind an argument. “No,” she admitted. “I didn’t. Not enough, and not when it mattered.”
He rose and went to the hearth, staring into the banked coals while Olivia tried not to imagine him walking out of the room. He had every right to demand she leave. She could pay for a room at Mairi’s now, could work with Alasdair without living under Jamie’s roof, and might even manage to build something resembling a life in this century. None of those possibilities explained why the thought of losing him made her feel as though the floor had shifted beneath her.
“Last night at the harbor,” she said, “I stood in front of those officers and lied as easily as I used to talk my way around a drunk at Grandma’s bar. When we came home, everyone was worried about Finlay, and I realized I was still telling lies to people who’d put their lives in my hands. I couldn’t keep doing it.”
Jamie’s jaw tightened at the mention of Finlay. He’d sent two messages toward the coast since morning, and although the healer believed the young man would recover, neither of them would forget the blood on the stone steps or the skiff pulling away from the quay.
“So the passage money I offered,” he said. “Ye knew all along no ship would take ye where ye wanted to go.”
“Yes. I was grateful for what you offered, and I meant it when I said I wanted to earn my keep. But a ship could only take me to Boston now, in 1786. Grandma wouldn’t be there. Nothing I knew would be there.”
“And now ye’ve money of yer own.”
“Enough to pay for a voyage, if that would help. It doesn’t. I bought the gowns because I liked them, and because part of me has begun thinking about what it would mean to stay. I haven’t known how to tell you that either.”
Jamie looked at her over his shoulder. “Ye’re telling me a great deal tonight.”
“I know. I’m sorry I’m doing it all at once.”
He returned to the table and sat, though he left enough space between their chairs that Olivia felt it keenly.
“Then tell me the rest. If the world ye came from is so different, what’s become of Scotland? Is there still a king?”
She answered as carefully as she could. Britain still had a monarchy in her time, though its government was elected and the monarch no longer ruled as Jamie understood ruling. America had grown into a country of fifty states, with a president and a population so large that explaining the numbers made him shake his head. Trains crossed the countryside, cars traveled without horses, and enormous flying machines carried passengers over oceans in hours.
“People fly?” he asked, his skepticism plain. “Inside a machine?”
“Hundreds of people at a time, sometimes. I know it sounds ridiculous, but when you grow up with airplanes you don’t think much about them unless your flight gets delayed.”
