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He crossed his arms over his chest. “Aye.”

Olivia studied the bubbles still breaking around the edges. “It’s active, but if you leave it too long, you may lose some of that fruit.”

The freckled younger man rested his stirring pole against the tun. “The widow thinks she can smell the whole run from there.”

Olivia turned toward him. “You changed something.”

He stared at her.

“The fruit’s sharper than what I smelled yesterday at Dunarraidh. If the dregs came from another ferment, you’re carrying whatever was happening there into this one.”

“There’s nothing wrong with it.”

“I didn’t say there was. I said it was different.”

Jamie had settled against the wall, arms folded, making no attempt to interfere as he watched.

Alasdair studied her for another moment before nodding toward the still. “Come then, mistress.”

That was as close to an invitation as she was going to receive.

He showed her the fire first, explaining how he judged it, then the sounds he listened for inside the copper and the way he watched the spirit as the run changed. Olivia asked questions and listened carefully, while she had words these men did not, such as, temperatures, compounds, fermentation science, yeast behavior, and two centuries of accumulated distilling knowledge, Alasdair knew the sound the copper made when the fire was off. He knew when fermentation had turned by the smell, and he knew where to make a cut because his nose and tongue had made that judgment thousands of times.

Modern language didn’t make her knowledge better than his. It simply gave her another way of describing what he already understood through long practice.

She crouched near the peat basket and picked up a piece when Alasdair nodded his permission.

“This is softer than I expected.”

He frowned. “Soft?”

“The smoke. Yesterday I noticed it coming through the glen. It isn’t as medicinal as a lot of peated whisky.”

“Medicinal?”

“A place with physicians,” Jamie supplied from behind her.

Alasdair gave him a grave look. “Poor souls.”

Olivia laughed, then looked around the room again and felt the humor fade as the pattern came together.

The copper. The wash. The peat. The spring water arriving by bucket. Men judging changes by taste and memory with no need to write it down.

The old woman had appeared in Boston, then again at Glenbrae, and then in the tunnel where Olivia had found a wooden quaich carrying the ghost of the whisky she’d crossed the Atlantic to reproduce. After that, the old bat had somehow sent her to 1786.

Not a year before or a year after, but to the exact year attached to Glenbrae’s most famous whisky.

Olivia didn’t believe in destiny, and she refused to become the sort of woman who saw cosmic meaning in every bird feather simply because an ancient goddess, or whatever she was, had rearranged her life. But she also didn’t have a clue how to get back to her own time.

The only thing that seemed to have a connection was the whisky, so maybe that was why she was here. Maybe if she figured out exactly how the infamous 1786 Glenbrae had been made, the old bat would show herself again, say something infuriatingly vague, and send Olivia back where she belonged. It wasn’t much of a theory, but it was more than she’d had yesterday.

“Olivia?”

Jamie was watching her as she realized she was still holding the peat.

“Sorry. I was thinking.”

She put the peat back and followed Alasdair toward the receiver with a new sense of purpose.