Chapter Fourteen

“Supper last night was indeed a solemn affair without your presence.”

Claire MacWilliam spun around, her hand on her chest, and nearly fell into Reilly’s lap. He stood and easily righted her. Once he ensured she was well, he carefully pushed his sword further onto the table at his hip. He’d been sharpening the blade when he saw her breeze into the great hall from the stairway; he was grateful she fell onto him instead of the sharp steel.

She threw her arms around his neck in a most un-lady-of-the-castle way and squealed. “Oh, Ry, I’m delighted you’re here! I’ve missed you so.” She released him and stepped back, peering at his tunic for, he well knew, signs of a specific present. “Did you perhaps bring me anything?”

“Spoiled wench,” Reilly replied with a smirk, but it faded quickly. “Alas, I apologize for the disappointment, but nay, I haven’t any of what you seek.”

Being, of course, Nutella. Claire had developed a fondness for the thick paste years earlier, and Reilly made it a point to bring her a jar each time he visited.

This time, though, he obviously didn’t have time to stop at the local Tesco and grab her any.

He didn’t explain why to Claire, though. The less the headstrong lass knew about time travel, and how it was or was not working for him, was best. The saints only knew what sort of plan she’d devise to attempt to fix his current misdirection.

He laughed lightly at her crestfallen face. “Cheer up, Lady Claire. I’ve brought you something even better.”

Claire pursed her lips. “I don’t believe there is anything better.”

“What about a visit with your friend Lady Gwendolyn?”

Claire blinked. “You brought Gwen here? I thought she was in France with her parents. Lady Erin is determined to marry her off to some French nobility.”

Reilly had almost forgotten that the MacWilliams’ closest friends and allies, Donovan and Erin Maguire, named their daughter Gwendolyn.

Reilly may have suggested that name, once upon a time, to the couple after having been newly introduced to Gwen of the modern variety.

“Nay, the other Lady Gwendolyn. The one who is well acquainted with Lady Eleanor and Sir Colin…?”

Claire’s eyes almost bugged out of her head. “Nay, you jest!”

He shook his head. “I do not. She has yet to rise, but she is staying in the east wing, in the chamber adjacent to mine.”

Claire gave him a strange look, but he merely raised an eyebrow at her. For all Claire’s boisterous ways, she did draw the line at questioning Reilly’s decisions. She understood that if he had a reason for keeping Gwen close to him, ’twas a good reason, and that was enough for her.

Smart lass.

“So before you rush off in haste to wake her, perhaps you can tell me why you secreted yourself away in your chamber all evening, with instructions to all that you weren’t to be bothered?” he asked mildly.

Claire wasn’t fooled. She took up her normal stance—one of immediate defiance—but then paused. Slowly, she unfolded her arms, dropped her shoulders, raised her head, and clasped her hands demurely in front of her stomach.

Reilly was instantly suspicious.

“I take many nights to myself, reflecting upon my life choices.”

He frowned. “Do your clansmen actually believe that pathetic bit of drivel?”

She smiled easily at him. “’Tis easy to believe when ’tis the truth. I’ve many difficult choices ahead of me. And very soon, I’ll have to decide which path to take. So I’m using my time wisely to reflect on how my life has been, and how I’d like my life to be.”

“Your da presenting you with ever more suitors?”

“Always.”

Reilly shook his head. “You’ll make someone very happy someday. Unbalanced in the head, perhaps, but happy nonetheless.”

“Reilly!” she exclaimed, giving him a light punch on the shoulder.

Actually, Reilly thought, that punch was a bit more than light. “Have you been training?”

Her face lit up. “Aye!” Her expression changed to one of concern. “Oh! Did I injure you?”

He snorted. “Nay. But I certainly did feel a difference. You’re stronger. Does your sire know about this?”

“You know he wouldn’t approve.” Claire twisted her hands into her dress. “But I’ve no idea what the future holds for me, and Mami has always told me to hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. So I’m preparing.”

Claire was one of the mightiest women he knew; Reilly often thought it such a waste for her to be born the only daughter of a powerful laird. She was destined to marry for clan alliance more than love, though Brianagh was trying for both.

Hence why Claire had been allowed to turn so many suitors away, though Reilly knew Nioclas faced pressure to marry her to one of the Maguire lads. Erin and Donovan had six sons, but Claire had been brought up like a sister to them.

“I’ve the utmost faith in your abilities to make the correct choice,” he finally replied.

She smiled widely at him. “That means much, Reilly. My thanks.” She threw her thumb over her shoulder. “I’m going to find Lady Gwen.”

Reilly gave her an indulgent smile, and she hurried off, waving to people as she went.

Aye, Lady Claire was a special young woman. Reilly only hoped that her future husband did not attempt to clip her wings.

• • •

Gwen pulled the woolen cloak tighter around herself, warding off the chill coming from the ocean. Up here, on the battlements, she had space to think, and to breathe.

It was the first time she’d been out of Reilly’s presence for days, and she was both elated and sad. Her emotions, she admitted, were all over the place.

The sea glittered in the weak sunlight, and in the distance, there was nothing but the horizon line and a few puffy clouds.

“There you are!”

Gwen turned, surprised, as a figure emerged from the battlement steps, huffing. “Claire!”

They embraced, and Claire blew out a breath, frosting the air. “’Tis uncommonly cold today for October, isn’t it? Reilly said you were in your chamber. I’ve been looking for you for over an hour, and my feet are fair to freezing off!”

“I’ve been up here the whole time,” Gwen replied, tucking her numb fingers back inside her cloak. She shivered. It was colder than the day before. “Do the trees change color here?”

“Oh, aye. ’Tis a wonder.”

The women looked across the ocean again, as a few birds dipped and flew over the waves.

“It is beautiful here,” Gwen said wistfully. “It looks much the same on my side of the sea. If you were to travel mostly west and a little south, on the other side of the horizon lies my country.”

Claire shook her head in wonder. “My mother has told me of such things, but I confess to not quite believing it.” A moment of companionable silence passed. “If I were ever given the chance, I would but love to see such a thing.”

Gwen half-smiled. “There’s so much about this time that’s good, too, though. The simplicity. The anonymity or the notoriety, if you want it. The sound of the rain, the smell of the earth. In too many places in my time, these have all been lost.”

“How can one lose the sound of the rain?” Claire asked curiously.

Gwen glanced at her friend, who was almost the spitting image of her mother. “Imagine thousands of cows within your village, and they are all constantly mooing. Now put them in the rain, but don’t stop the moos. The sound of the cows becomes all you hear.”

“You have that many cows in the future?” Claire asked, wonder in her tone.

“Not quite,” Gwen hedged, wondering if she could explain horns and cars and buses. She opted not, and instead added, “But it’s similar to that.”

“The adventures you must have,” she murmured.

The Venezuelan jungle rose in her memory, and she swallowed hard. Determinedly, she focused her eyes on the swooping gulls, the waves crashing in the far distances, and the uncommonly blue sky.

All good things. All soothing sights and sounds. Just blue, blue, and more blue. Gwen breathed through her nose and exhaled slowly out of her mouth. In again. Out again.

Claire continued, her voice melodic, and her bearing relaxed, as though she was remaining calm so she could lend some of it to Gwen. “’Tis wondrous, the place I find myself in now. For the entirety of my life, I’ve watched my mother unite people. Good people, ones who might never have thought to be with the other. They marry and lead happy lives together. I was brought up to believe that one day, I would share that same fate. I would meet a man and fall in love. The tales my mother used to spin were so romantic!”

“Did your brothers roll their eyes a lot?”

Claire smiled in memory. “Nay, not at all. Mami told great tales of knights and warriors, full of chivalry and bravery. Men who would march proudly into battle, thoughts of protecting their clan at the front of their minds. They were defenders of women and children, with fierce outsides and soft underbellies. Romantic words fell from their lips as easily as a battle cry.”

“We have fairy tales like that, too. Unfortunately, knights in shining armor are scarce where I’m from.”

Claire gave her a sad smile. “Do their mothers never tell them all that they can be?”

Gwen paused. “I don’t know. If they don’t, they should.”

“Mothers are important. But so are sires. My own told me tales of brave ladies who, while the men fought the battles to ensure the enemy never reached the castle, the women did the job of both. They raised the children to be fine clansmen and protected the castle if an enemy attacked. They used their wits and what resources they had to save their children and themselves. They were sisters first, coming together whenever the need called, to ensure the greater benefit for the clan.” She sighed. “But marriage and children were always their main purpose. And I grew up with these tales in my head, believing that I, too, would love nothing more than to do just that.”

“What changed?” Gwen waited, curiously, for the answer.

Claire drew her eyebrows together. “I’ve been asking myself the same question. I can tell you when I noticed it, though. It was a few years back, when I was in the village, delivering some food to one of our sick clanswomen. She was coughing, then asked me to make a tonic for her with the herbs she had on her table. I did as she said, but when she told me to put meadowsweet in it, I hesitated. I picked up nettle instead, and I somehow just knew that would stop her coughing. Meadowsweet relaxes the muscles in the stomach,” Claire explained, “but nettle actually heals it. So I put it in, instead. She knew when she drank it that I’d used something else, and she was quite angry. But she drank it, for she had no other choice, really. And, when I’d finished my rounds a few hours later, I went back to her home. She wasn’t coughing, and she told me she was feeling remarkably better. In fact, she was walking around, which she hadn’t been able to do for days. When she took my hands and told me I had a gift, I felt lightheaded. And when I left that cottage, something in me had changed.”

“Wow.” Gwen gave a slight shake of her head. “Claire, that’s a really special gift.”

She grinned. “Aye, ’tis! And I want to use it. But each man my sire has brought forth has refused to allow me to continue my healer ways, so I’ve rejected them. And he’s lost patience, and he will force me to marry someone soon. I very much doubt whomever that is will allow me to continue, either. It’s strange, isn’t it, that when you’re forced to look at yourself because of new experiences, that you’re not the person you once thought you were?”

Gwen froze, Claire’s words striking a distant chord in the back of her mind.

She’d always thought of herself as a worldly sort, having seen some terrible situations and human living conditions, but there was nothing in her repertoire like what she’d experienced in Venezuela. In fact, the thought of going to another country to volunteer again had her simultaneously terrified and, oddly, disappointed in herself.

Gwen didn’t want to feel that kind of fear ever again, but she had made it a point to dedicate her life to helping others. She thought of all the people she knew who had also seen truly terrible things, just as she had, and went on to volunteer more, give more, do more.

She always thought she’d be one of those people if she ever had a worst-case scenario. But when she held the reality of a worst-case up to the idea of a worst-case, everything was so much more complicated than she thought it would be.

“Does that make sense?”

For a moment, she’d been so lost in her thoughts that she’d forgotten Claire was sitting next to her. Gwen nodded slowly. “More than you might know.”

Claire looked at her curiously, her eyes holding compassion and insight far greater than her years. “Some adventures seem better in our imaginations than in real life, aye? But then, as my sire tends to remind me, imagination stems from reality. We can use our minds to make things better, or worse. But rarely are those two ever the same.”

“Your father is a wise man.” Gwen shuffled further against the wall as two guards marched past, their helmets glinting. They gave a deferential bow to Claire before continuing on their way.

“He is. But being wise does not always mean knowing what is best. He wants me to marry and have children. And maybe I do want that, some day. But right now, I want so much more. I have skills with herbs; healers come to me for advice. And I’m not quite sure how I know so much, but when I see or smell a plant, in my mind, I can almost picture what it can do to help. I’ve eased the pain of a difficult birth, and healed deep hunting wounds. I can be so much more than the lady who approves menus from Cook. And I want more than those maidens in the tales he would tell me at my bedside.”

Gwen wrapped her arms around herself. “We all have a purpose. It’s the finding of it that is challenging.”

“Aye, ’tis the truth. I wish…”

Gwen turned fully to Claire. “What do you wish?”

Claire smiled, a faraway look on her face. “I wish to do more for this world. I’m not sure what that means, exactly, but I wish for adventure. To see the best and worst of what people are, and somehow make things better. However…I am but a woman, and my world does not see me as much more than chattel. ’Tis why I would love to go to your time, when women are freer to do things that men can.”

“Claire…” Gwen wasn’t really sure what to say. She had reservations about the reality of Claire’s ability to assimilate to all the advances made from now until the future.

But didn’t Claire just say that reality and ideas never really matched up? Gwen glanced at her friend. If anyone could succeed in the future, it’d be the young, determined woman next to her. Who was Gwen to judge?

And who was anyone to judge Gwen? If she wanted to be done with volunteering, she could be done with volunteering. It didn’t make her less of a person. It just made her a different one.

She wanted something different now. A vision of a home, with children and a husband, flitted through her mind.

The promise of forever. Someone who wouldn’t always leave her and their family to go out rescuing the world.

She swallowed hard. Oh, God. She knew what she wanted. She didn’t want to be someone’s second-best. She wanted to be important to someone, and have that person be just as important to her.

“I know,” Claire continued, oblivious to Gwen’s inner turmoil. “I’ve heard it all before from Mami. She is certain I’d be overwhelmed, but she tends to forget that I am her blood. There’s a part of her that makes up a part of me, and I need to explore that. I need to find out what I can do.”

Gwen reached out from her cloak and impulsively hugged Claire, and said fiercely, tears burning her eyes, “Then you do that. If we’re only given this one life to live, then you live it the best way you can. If you do get a chance to take that adventure, then do it. But do it knowing that things change. Ideas change with experience, and sometimes, those grand plans become living nightmares. Don’t be too proud to decide it was all a learning experience, and return to a simpler life. Make the choice that best fits what you want, Claire. Because you’re important, too.”

“Thank you,” Claire whispered, tightening the hug. “Thank you for understanding.”

• • •

Reilly stood quickly as Gwen and Claire entered Brianagh’s private solar. They removed their cloaks and handed them to a waiting servant, who murmured something to Claire.

Claire smiled at Reilly. “Apparently, my parents need speech with me in my sire’s solar. Another potential husband, no doubt. I’ll return when I can.”

A few seconds passed after Claire left the room until Gwen glanced his way.

The sadness in her face ripped him apart.

She slowly made her way over to him. “I’d like to go home, Reilly.”

He frowned. “Is something wrong?”

She refused to meet his eyes. “Can you take me back?”

“I can try,” he replied slowly, “but I’m not yet sure why I was sent here.”

She took a shaky breath. “I don’t think we came here for you.” She raised her eyes to his, the unshed tears making them shimmer. “I think we came here for me.”

He shook his head. “I doubt that, lass. We’ve—”

“I’m not a lass,” she interrupted. She stood taller. “I’m a full-grown woman, Reilly. Stop calling me a child.”

He stepped back, surprised. “’Tis a term of endearment.”

She firmed her lips. “I don’t want your terms of endearment anymore. What I want is to return home.”

His gut tightening. “What does that mean, you don’t want my terms of endearment anymore?”

She straightened her shoulders, and Reilly felt a moment of pride for her. Whatever she was about to say was going to take a lot of courage, though he wasn’t sure why she needed courage to speak to him.

“Because,” she said, her voice catching slightly, “I’m not yours to endear. I want to go back and live my life the way I want to live it, Reilly. I know it’s not a popular thing to want anymore: the husband, the two-point-five children, the dog and white fence. But I do want it. I’m tired of living this life, trying to prove some point. I don’t even know what that point is!” The tears fell down her face, unchecked.

He offered a smile. “’Twould be my privilege to give all that to you, Gwendolyn.”

“No,” she said quickly. “No, it won’t.”

His lungs seemed incapable of drawing in air. She continued on, as though she wasn’t breaking his heart and stomping on it with daggers attached to her slippers.

“I want a husband who loves me, Reilly. I want to love someone who can love me back.”

“And you think I don’t love you?” he managed, his breath coming in short gasps.

She looked at him incredulously. “You said yourself that you were destined for one woman only, and that you’d already claimed her. So no, I don’t believe you love me. Not in the same way I love you.”

“Would you claim me, Gwen, if you knew you would bind yourself to me for all time, regardless of how I felt for you?”

She furiously wiped at her face. “Don’t you see, you foolish man? That’s what I did for years!”

“I can’t live without you,” he said hoarsely.

“You don’t have a choice,” she whispered.

He grasped her arms and gave her a small shake. “I can’t live without you,” he said, more desperately this time. “Please, Gwen, answer me. Knowing me as you do, knowing me, the man, not the Protector…would you claim me?”

She sobbed in earnest now and wrenched herself away. “No, Reilly. I would not.”

He roared, and she jumped backward as he picked up a stool and chucked it at the wall behind him.

“You don’t get to do this!” she cried out angrily. “You already have your soul mate, Reilly! Let me go, so I can find mine!”

Brianagh and Nioclas burst into the room, Nick with his sword drawn.

“Are you all right?” Brianagh asked, her eyes wide as she took in Gwen’s tears, Reilly’s fury, and the now-broken stool laying uselessly on the ground behind him.

“He needs to let me go,” Gwen said unsteadily.

“Did he hurt you?” Nioclas asked, his sword pointed at Reilly.

In any other circumstance, Reilly would’ve laughed at the idea that Nick would run him through. But at this moment, when Gwen had so fully rejected him, he would gladly stand with his arms open as his brother-at-arms ran him through.

“He did not,” she said, her voice still shaky. “And he won’t. But I want to go home.”

“Not until we fix this,” he growled. “You are my soul mate, Gwendolyn!”

She clenched her jaw. “No, I’m not.”

“I’m confused.” Brianagh looked between the two of them as Nioclas bolted the door shut.

“She refused to claim me,” Reilly explained curtly. If it came out as more like a wheeze, Brianagh was certainly kind enough not to point it out.

Bri covered her mouth with her hand, but Gwen clearly wasn’t having that be the only explanation. “I’ve lived my life for everyone else for too long.” To Reilly, she said, “I’ve loved you for too long, and I got swept up in the madness of thinking you loved me back. But the truth is that you didn’t want your backup to abandon you, too. Right?”

He shook his head. “Backup?”

Her mouth dropped open. “Are you serious? For eleven years, I follow you around like a damn puppy dog. I can’t have a normal adult relationship because I’m so blindly in love with you that I can’t see straight. So I decide it’s time to move on, and you know what? I find someone who loves me. Someone who wants to be with me. And that is conveniently when you decide to make your move.”

Nioclas folded his arms and frowned fiercely. “Poor form, O’Malley. Poor form.”

Reilly ignored him. “Nothing is convenient about this!” he snapped.

Brianagh blinked. “Reilly, watch yourself. You’ve never even yelled at me like this.”

He turned to her, his eyes blazing. “Perhaps that’s because you weren’t damning me to an even longer eternity of hell!”

He could actually feel Gwen freeze, and he knew he’d slipped up. He swore silently, then glanced at her.

Oh, aye. He was in for it now.

“What did you just say?” she asked softly. So softly, that he had to strain to hear her.

“It’s time for us to go,” Bri said quickly. Nick, bless the man, threw the bolt on the chamber door, pulled her out, and slammed it shut behind them.

If fire could fly, Gwen would be shooting him with sparks from her eyes. Her voice lowered more than he’d ever heard it before. “Reilly O’Malley. Explain yourself immediately.”

He closed his eyes, his nostrils flaring. When he opened them again, she’d taken steps closer, until she was nearly upon him.

“You told me,” she continued in a measured tone, “that you knew your soul mate the moment you met her. Were you lying?”

He shook his head, unable—unwilling—to say the words. The devastation on her face was killing him.

He did that to her.

He had deeply hurt the one person he loved above all others. The pain in his chest was physical.

“I asked you. I asked you point blank. Why? Why would you deny it?” she asked softly, her teary eyes searching his.

He tried to answer her, but he was rendered mute. He didn’t have any words to make this better; his mind was swirling with too many thoughts, too many reassurances, too many questions. His normally glib tongue deserted him.

“You’ve kept me on a string, knowing how I felt about you?” Her voice rose in pitch. “Knowing I was desperate for any of your attention? I was so stupid! Were you waiting until I had to make a choice? Did you enjoy seeing me suffer?”

“Nay—” he started.

“I can rationalize a lot of it away,” she barreled on, her hand fumbling for the chamber door as she gazed at him with a blazing emotion in her eyes.

Disgust? Pity? Hard to tell through the tears.

He felt ill.

“Sure, you didn’t trust me with your secret. That hurt a lot. But I accepted it without holding onto any anger about it, Reilly. Because that’s what I do. I forgive those I love.” She bit her lip. “And I went out to make a life for myself, thinking that you didn’t want me. And I did that, Reilly! I did it, and I was ready to get married to someone! Have a family and live my own life! And it’s then that you step in? Then? Years after you knew we were meant to be together?” She stifled a sob. “Who the hell do you think you are, screwing with me like this?”

“Gwendolyn…”

With an obvious effort, she drew in a deep breath, then pulled the door open. Brianagh stood against the far wall, looking unsure. “Can you travel through time?” Gwen demanded.

Brianagh hesitated.

“Is Reilly the only one who can get me home?”

“I am,” he answered for Brianagh.

“He’s not,” Brianagh said in a quiet voice. “There is one other.”

“Who?” Reilly demanded.

Gwen looked steadily at Brianagh. “Can you arrange for him to take me home, please?”

“Absolutely not.” Reilly’s entire body tensed at the thought of anyone taking Gwen from him.

Gwen dragged her eyes back to his, and Reilly felt it like a slice in his gut. The mixed emotions all over her face made him want to weep for being the cause of it, but he couldn’t say anything.

What was there to say?

“It’s all just a game to you, isn’t it?” Before he could voice protest to that, she held up her hand and shook her head. “It’s over, Reilly. I’m done playing. I want to go home.”

“I’ll take you,” he said hoarsely.

A tear escaped her eye. “No, thank you. I’m choosing option B, whatever—no, whomever—that may be.” To Bri, she added, “Please send him to my chamber.” To Reilly, she said firmly, “If you ever cared for me at all, let me go. And believe me when I say I never want to see you again.”

She swept out of the room.

Reilly was left staring at a shocked Brianagh. She twisted her hands and glanced at him, anguish in her eyes.

“Did you claim her, Reilly?”

He nodded mutely.

“Then why didn’t you say anything?” she whispered, horrified. “You could’ve told her you were a fool, you were stupid, you made a mistake. You could’ve apologized. But you didn’t say anything! You’re losing her!”

“I suspect,” he said with a deathly quiet as a desolation swept across his soul, “that I already have.” He flexed his hand, then loosened his sword. “Don’t send anyone to her chamber. If you do, I’ll never return here again.”

He heard Brianagh’s gasp as he strode down the hallway.

Gwendolyn was right.

He had played a game, and he had just lost everything.