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He looked up toward the roof with a thoughtful expression. “After two hundred and forty years, I suppose a man shouldna complain if a few stones have fallen.”
“People still know about it.”
“Do they?”
“Very much so. It’s supposed to be haunted.”
His eyes returned to hers, and for the first time that evening she saw genuine delight break through his careful composure. “My ghost?”
“Well, I don’t know if there’s a different ghost on the payroll, but the stories are certainly familiar. Some say a ghost protected smugglers. Others say it chased excisemen away from the castle.”
Jamie leaned back, looking enormously pleased with himself. “Two hundred and forty years of honest work, and folk remember the bedsheets. Morag will be insufferable when she hears.”
Olivia laughed before remembering that he might never want her to speak of this to Morag, and the laughter faltered. Jamie noticed, and the delight faded from his face.
“Do they remember the people?” he asked. “The men and women who lived here?”
“I don’t know much about them. I knew the ghost stories, and I’d seen the ruins, but I hadn’t come across your name or any others before I met you.”
He considered that for a long while, the way he considered a damaged beam before deciding whether it could bear another winter.
“History has room for kings and battles. I expect there’s less room for the fellow who repaired the roof.”
“Then history has terrible taste.”
“Aye, lass.” His expression softened, though his eyes remained troubled. “On that point, I believe ye without difficulty.”
Olivia wished she could reach across the table and hold his hand. She didn’t, because the kindness he’d shown her for weeks wasn’t something she could claim as her right after confessing what she’d done with his trust.
Jamie turned his chair a little farther toward her. “There’s something I canna understand. If this world of yours can carry folk through the air and send words across an ocean, why would ye choose to stay among leaky roofs, wet boots, and men who have to hide their whisky beneath a chapel?”
“I haven’t chosen,” she said. “I don’t know how to get home. The woman hasn’t appeared again, and for all I know the tunnel will never open. I’ve been trying to build a life here because I may have to.”
“And if it does open?”
Olivia thought of Grandma alone above the pub, and then of Jamie beside the hearth, a man who had offered her his own hard-earned money so she could leave him.
“I don’t know. Part of me wants to go home so badly I can hardly stand it, and part of me is afraid of what I’d be leaving here.”
He waited, but she couldn’t say more without asking him to forgive what he hadn’t yet begun to understand.
“Do ye know for certain the old woman sent ye here?” he asked. “Or that anything ye’ve told me about this future is true beyond what ye believe?”
“I know what I saw. I know the year I left and what my world was like. I can’t explain what happened in the tunnel, and I can’t prove it to you. If I could, I’d have done it the moment I arrived.”
“But ye didna tell me when ye arrived.”
“No.” She made herself hold his gaze. “And that’s the part I can’t excuse. I was afraid you’d think I was mad, or a witch, or that you’d turn me out. By the time I knew you wouldn’t harm me, I was afraid you’d hate me for lying. I let you go on believing you were helping a widow find passage to America when I knew a ship couldn’t take me where I belonged.”
Jamie was quiet for so long that she heard someone outside leading a pony across the yard, its hooves striking the stone at uneven intervals.
“I dinna know whether I believe any of this,” he said finally. “I’ve heard tales of an old woman, a goddess called the Cailleach since I was a bairn, and I’ve no doubt there are things in these hills beyond my understanding. But two hundred and forty years, Olivia? Folk flying to the moon? Ye must understand what ye’re asking me to accept.”
“I do.”
“And even if I come to believe every word, I’ve still to decide what to do with the fact that ye thought so little of my judgment ye couldna trust me to hear it sooner.”
She couldn’t argue with him. Jamie had given her shelter, his loyalty, and a place among people who depended upon him. She’d responded by deciding for him how much truth he could bear.
