Fifteen

O liver woke.

The first thing that occurred to him was that he'd obviously been unconscious. That was alarming, but that was what happened to a man when he was 6'2" and not precisely made to nip in and out of vintage Scottish crofts. He wondered how it was that Cameron who was even taller than he was had managed to get himself inside Moraig's so neatly, but then again, the man had been sporting a dagger in his back and suffering from half his skull being crushed—

He sat up with a start, clutched his head, then heaved himself to his feet and staggered to the open doorway. He flicked on the lights, grateful than there were lights to turn on, then spun around to look for Mairead.

She was standing next to the hearth.

He wasn't sure what sort of sound came from him, but he hoped he never had to make the same again. He propelled himself across the cottage at something not quite a dead run and threw his arms around…

Nothing.

He staggered back and looked at her in shock that soon turned to something very close to horror.

"No," he said, his voice hoarse in his own ears. "Please, no—"

She smiled gently. "It's all right," she said, in perfect modern English. "It's all right, Oliver, my love."

He continued to stumble backward until he felt his head make contact with that bloody doorway yet again. The pain was almost enough to do him in. Or perhaps that was the shattering of his heart. He wasn't sure and he didn't want to know. What he did know was that the first thing to do was fix what he'd botched so thoroughly—

"Oliver."

He was halfway out the door before it registered that Mairead was calling to him. He pushed himself away from impulsiveness that he had trained out of himself, then slowly turned and looked at the woman across the chamber from him.

"Build a fire, my love," she said gently, "and let us have speech together."

At least she still had her Gaelic accent. He was tempted to ask her to speak it, but couldn't bear the thought of missing anything. He was the first to admit he was absolutely not at his best, though that was perhaps the understatement of the century. Centuries. He hardly knew how to quantify it, though trying helped him bring his rampaging emotions under control.

He shut the door, locked it out of habit, then forced himself to put one foot in front of another until he'd taken himself all the way to the hearth. He didn't allow himself to look at the woman he could absolutely see out of the corner of his eye, the one wearing the same rustic dress he'd last seen her in, the one who was standing just beyond where he could have reached out and touched her.

Centuries beyond that, apparently.

He built a fire because it was something to do with his hands. He excused himself to nip in and out of the loo, wondering if things would change if he shaved and showered, then decided nothing so stupid and simple was going to change the fact that he had tried to save a woman's life by bringing her out of her time and to his.

And he'd failed.

He dragged his hands through his grimy hair, then walked back out into Moraig MacLeod's little great room.

Mairead was sitting on a hard wooden chair near the fire. He walked over and sank to his knees in front of her.

"I can fix this," he said quietly.

She reached out and put her hand against his cheek. He didn't feel it, which was one of the more difficult things he'd had happen to him over a lifetime of difficult things—

He looked at her in surprise.

Because suddenly, he remembered.

He jumped to his feet and backed away, looking at her in ... again , horror wasn't the right word, neither was dismay because neither had anything to do with what he was feeling. Shock, yes. Profound surprise, yes to that as well.

He almost went down to his knees again for a far different reason.

"Oliver," she said quietly.

He realized he was looking at her, yet not seeing her. He shook his head sharply, then dropped to his knees again right where he was because he wasn't entirely certain he wouldn't fall there anyway with the force of the realizations that were crashing over him like storm-propelled waves against the shore.

"You were there," he whispered.

She smiled. "What do you mean, my love?"

"For me," he said thickly. "My whole life, you've been there."

She looked as if she might have been weeping, though she was still smiling. He didn't want to ask, though he was ridiculously and no doubt inappropriately curious as to why he could see her.

Though he had in the past, as well.

Almost.

Memories layered themselves on top of each other, one by one, as relentless as those same waves of the sea. First was the memory of the first night his parents had dropped him off at boarding school when he'd been six. He'd had a special dispensation, of course, because his father was who he was and his mother had been eager to get him out of the house and away from her other more tractable children.

"It's more complicated than that," Mairead said softly.

He looked at her in surprise. "Can you read my mind?"

She smiled. "I can see the thoughts crossing your face, but I've been looking at that face for years, so perhaps I know you better than anyone else. Your mother is a difficult woman."

"And my father an utter arse."

"Well," she said, conceding the point with a nod, "aye. Your father is, however, a lord, which has perhaps left him a bit more arrogant than he might have been otherwise."

"He's only a viscount," Oliver said, trying not to weep. "Hardly worth saving him a decent table at supper."

His father's title had been enough, though, to win him that early entrance to boarding school which had led to some unpleasant hazing from the older lads. If he had made especial note of those same lads whilst considering doing business with them—it was odd how those deals had always fallen through at the most inopportune moment—it was likely best to leave those memories behind that door in his mind where he locked his less palatable thoughts.

"A title you don't want," Mairead added.

He shook his head. He would have said more, but he was suddenly awash in more memories that he hadn't thought about in years, memories he wondered if he hadn't had before, yet somehow he now knew he'd possessed them the whole of his life. He looked at Mairead and wondered if the agony showed on his face.

"You were there," he said hoarsely. "That first night at St. Margaret's."

She smiled faintly. "Was I?"

He would have glared at her, but he couldn't bring himself to. "You sang me to sleep." He paused, then shivered. "I can still hear the melody."

She smiled in truth that time. "You have a good ear."

"It makes pub crawls a misery."

"Fortunate are you, then, that I can string along a proper tune. And aye, I was there when they dropped you off at St. Margaret's and told you they'd be back for you in a few hours." She smiled gravely. "I also sat with you all night after the first time you ran afoul of the headmaster's birch switch."

Oliver wanted to stop her there, mostly because he preferred not to think about that first incident. He'd been but a lad of eight summers with more of a mouth on him than was appropriate and a finely honed sense of fairness that tended to inspire more words than he should have said. That first time had led to regular visits to the headmaster's office.

There were times he wondered how he'd managed to wind up as any decent sort of man.

Perhaps the answer was there in front of him.

Then he remembered, suddenly and with a clarity that left him completely unbalanced, what had happened to him on his eleventh birthday.

"Tell me."

He looked at her. "I'll weep."

"I will weep with you."

He pushed himself to his feet and decided that perhaps he could be forgiven if he spent a few minutes doing everything in his power to avoid thinking about that day. He walked over to the kitchen, poured himself a substantial glass from a bottle of whisky he was actually surprised to find lurking behind a curtain under the sink, then tossed it back without flinching. It cleared his head, but it did absolutely nothing for the state of his heart. He set the glass in the sink, then leaned on the worn wooden counter and looked out the window.

He couldn't see anything, of course, because it was pitch black outside. He imagined that was exacerbated by the fact that Moraig's was surrounded by trees, but the sight of the dark chilled him just the same.

He should have seen how many men there had been there all those centuries ago. He should have known ahead of time that Mairead's kin wouldn't give up their prey that easily. Hadn't Patrick warned him? Hadn't Jamie warned him? He supposed he could take the coldest of comforts in the knowledge that Mairead would have lost her life even if he hadn't intervened.

But he couldn't bear being the cause of her death.

He pushed away from the sink and walked back across the little cottage to pull up a stool and sit down in front of the fire. He looked at the woman sitting there, looking as corporeal and real as anyone else would have, and wished he'd done things better.

"I'm so sorry," he said quietly.

She shook her head and smiled, a gentle, beatific smile that held no bitterness at all. "No need, my love. It was a gift to be there for you during your youth."

He rifled back through his memories and was stunned to realize that at the worst of times when he'd thought he'd been all alone, he hadn't been.

That woman there had been with him.

"On my eleventh birthday," he said, grasping frantically for the thread of what they'd started to discuss and hoping the mere act of giving voice to his memories would keep him from weeping over them. "On my eleventh birthday," he repeated carefully, "I had snuck out the back of school, expecting to see my governess's sign that the way to her house was clear and I wouldn't be marked as missing."

"You went there often."

"She stocked my favorite chips in her pantry," he said with an attempt at a smile, "and she was a first-rate chess player."

She had also been a fabulous conversationalist with a head stuffed full of an esoteric knowledge of history and philosophy and other things that had led him to his own study of things that had completely changed the way he viewed life and what he valued.

"She was a very accomplished woman," Mairead agreed. "As well as being cannier than everyone around her."

"Especially my headmaster," Oliver said, coming close to taking a bit of pleasure in that thought. "She somehow always managed to make it so he had no choice but to engage her over whatever bait she'd set before him, which had the benefit of distracting him long enough for me to slip past him and back inside the gates." He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. "On that day, though, our sign wasn't there, which for some reason seemed unsettling."

"And?"

"I bolted toward the school's front gates only to find her neighbor speaking to the headmaster. My governess had died that morning and her neighbor had come to tell me. The headmaster sent me away immediately, insisting that I go back inside and attend to my studies." He paused. "But you know that. You were standing behind me when I heard the news."

She nodded. "Aye, I was."

"I think he wanted to beat me the next week for skivving off to attend her funeral."

"He did," Mairead said mildly. "I believe he brought to mind the threats your governess had casually dropped in conversation, ones about how he was being watched in ways he would never discover."

Oliver found it in him to smile faintly. "I wondered why he seemed to leave most of us alone—" He looked at her in surprise. "How do you know that?"

"How do you think I know that?"

He would have smiled, but his heart was in shreds and all he could do was ignore the tears rolling down his cheeks. "Thank you."

"It was my pleasure, believe me. We might speak of it at length later, if you like. But carry on with your tale."

He took a deep breath. "Her neighbor slipped me a note at the funeral, something my governess had asked her to give me if something happened to her."

"What did it say?" she asked gently. "I know you can still see it in your mind."

He could. It was as fresh in his memory as if he were looking at it there in front of him.

"She told me that she was actually my father's youngest sister." He had to take a deep breath. "She had given up everything to buy a leaky, terrible council house next to the school so she could give me refuge."

"She was a very good woman," Mairead agreed. "And she loved you like a son."

He nodded, because he suspected that was true.

"And what was her signal atop that rock wall, my love?"

"A green house slipper," he said quietly. "She had to spend her tuppence on several pairs as the squirrels kept carrying them off."

"Oh, Oliver."

He managed some species of smile. "She finally took to wedging them under a rock in that decrepit wall that was barely standing between the sorry hovel she could scarce afford and my luxurious school that I loathed. Yet somehow she always had a lovely supper waiting for me whenever I managed to escape to visit her." He cleared his throat roughly. "I had planned to have a great deal of money some day and buy her a cozy cottage somewhere in gratitude for her care of me."

"She knows."

He didn't want to know how Mairead knew that and he most definitely didn't want to see anyone else out of the corner of his eye. He decided the best thing he could do for his sanity was to change the subject to something far less tender.

"The headmaster never threatened to hit me again after that."

Mairead inclined her head. "I won't take credit for that entirely, but I'll admit that I can be very inspiring under the right circumstances. He is also a man whose terrible thoughts showed on his visage, so it wasn't hard to distract him from them when they were so easily read."

"He had many such thoughts to be distracted from—" He sat up and looked at her in genuine horror. "You didn't watch my thoughts, did you?"

She laughed a little. "I left you your privacy, of course."

"Thank heavens," he said fervently. He considered, then looked at her. "You didn't watch anything else, did you?"

"What sort of saucy maid do you take me for?"

He smiled because even though she was speaking modern English, she still sounded so much like herself that he would have forgotten their terrible situation if he didn't remember it every time he was tempted to reach out and take her hand—

He blew out his breath and shook his head sharply, but that only set his head to pounding again. He looked around desperately for something to talk about that had nothing to do with what was before him, but all he could do was think about that horrible time in boarding school and how his memories of it had somehow…

He forced himself to think about how it had been. He had, regardless of his current memories, still been dropped off as a child and left to his own devices. It hadn't taken him but a pair of years of misery to completely mentally divorce himself from his parents. They'd made that easier by always leaving him at school during holidays and over the summer, consigning him to an existence that had lain somewhere between the grimness of a Bront? novel and a genteelly austere piece of Dickensian squalor.

He'd quickly learned and then perfected his skills in being a ghost, extorting money from spoiled gits, and not talking about any of the bloody fistfights he'd engaged it. He'd never stolen anything, he'd never offered the first punch, and he'd never, ever walked away from a fight. He had spent all his time accumulating skills, knowledge, money, and nasty connections so he could one day walk up to his parents and send them into ignominity and despair.

Or he'd planned on that until he'd met Robert Cameron and his thoughts on many things had taken a much different turn. He hadn't noticed it at first, but there had been something about being trusted to do the right thing and valued for using his skills for a nobler cause that had changed him.

He also realized suddenly that there was a sweetness layered over all of his life, a deep, soul-soothing sense of having someone good love him just because he drew breath. His governess who had turned out to be his aunt Maud had certainly filled that role in his childhood.

Only now, he realized that the other constant in his life, the other stable, loving, unfailing sense of someone loving him for himself had been that woman there.

The one he could scarce see for the tears standing in his eyes.

"Thank you," he whispered.

"It was an honor," she said just as quietly.

He took a deep breath. "I'm not sure how to make this better."

Which, as it happened, was a lie. He knew exactly how he was going to make it better. He just imagined he was going to do so, as usual, less in true pirate fashion and more in superspy mode. He heaved himself to his feet.

"Oliver."

He didn't want to look at her. He wanted to be simply walking out the front door to do what was needful without fuss, without comment, without emotion getting in the way of the job to be done.

"Oliver."

He closed his eyes briefly, then looked at her. Words were simply beyond him.

She patted the chair across from her. "Rest now. Tomorrow will see to itself."

He sat only because he was half afraid he might fall if he didn't have ten minutes to simply breathe in and out and let the pain in his head ease up a bit. He looked at the woman facing him and sighed deeply.

"I can fix this."

"But at what cost?" she asked softly.

"I'll be in and out of the past, bringing you with me, in less than half an hour."

She shook her head. "You know I'm not speaking of that. I was given the chance to watch over you for the whole of your life. If you stop my death, you won't have that from me during your life."

"I'll trade that," he said without hesitation. "Not that I'm not grateful." He looked at her and hoped she could see that in his face. "I am."

"You'll need me then," she said firmly.

"I need you now more."

"But all those days," she protested. "There were so many—"

"Which I will trade without hesitation," he said firmly. He cleared his throat roughly. "I will trade all the days that came before for the days that lie ahead."

"But—"

"You are worth it," he said. "You, Mairead MacLeod, are worth it to me."

She sighed and shook her head. "Stubborn man," she said quietly. "Stubborn, braw, magnificent man."

"I think that's a compliment."

"What if you—" She stopped, then smiled. "I forget who you are."

"I won't fail."

She nodded. "I suspect you won't."

He pushed himself to his feet and tried not to have his heart lurch as she rose with him. She looked at him with what he wanted to believe was a dreadful hope in her eyes.

"I won't stop you."

"Will you regret it when I succeed?"

She pursed her lips. "I'm not going to tell you that now, ye wee fiend."

He smiled, though his heart still felt as if it were being ripped out of his chest by claws. "I'll look forward to many flowery sentiments later."

She nodded. "You'll have them."

He considered. "You don't remember anything about right now, do you?"

"How would I?" she asked with a puzzled look. "'Tis still in our future."

"Of course," he said. He considered, then looked at her. "I'll go now."

"But ‘tis full dark outside."

"The gate won't care." He paused. "I might be gone for a bit, so don't worry. I'll try to get back earlier in the day—earlier today, if that isn't impossible to believe—then rescue you after I've clunked my damned head on the threshold."

She didn't look any less worried. "Please be careful."

"I will be."

He suspected that if she'd been a different sort of woman and he'd been a different sort of man, she would have begged him not to go and he would have… well, he would have gone just the same. He very much suspected that if the roles had been reversed, Mairead would have been making one last visit to the loo to rebraid her hair before she'd bid him farewell and marched off to see to the business at hand.

He was fairly sure he might just love her.

"I'll wait for you," she said quietly.

"I'll be quick."

She only nodded, which he supposed said everything without saying anything. He would go and rescue her because the thought of living any of the days that remained in his life without her to hold as a living, breathing woman was simply intolerable.

She'd had four hundred years to get used to the idea.

He had no intention of doing the same thing.