Page 36 of Beloved Enemy
“What say ye, lass?” Kinnear asked.
Charlotte stood frozen for a moment, her eyes widening in surprise. Her cheeks flamed a deep crimson as her gaze flitted nervously from one expectant face to another. Overwhelmed by the sudden spotlight, it seemed her mind raced to catch up with the unexpected attention.
“Oh...um, well...that is very flattering, sir,” she stammered, “but I must decline, thank you very much. I’ll be leaving soon, and well, I...I have someone waiting for me back home.”
A general but quiet sigh of disappointment murmured through the crowd.
And while Reid was pleased by Charlotte’s discouragement, he found himself rankled by what she’d just revealed.
Someone waiting on her?
Charlotte was...in love? Spoken for?
A fleeting tightness clutched at his chest, his reaction now tenfold what it had been to Kinnear’s vexing request.
Chapter Ten
To her amazement, Charlotte found that she was too busy to dwell on her predicament. This century didn’t seem to allow for much fretting—there simply wasn’t time. She wasn’t too keen on the lack of naps, though. My God, these people never rested. They worked from dawn until dusk, with no downtime. Didn’t anyone need a break? Weren’t they tired? What about the infamous mid-day slump? But no, Charlotte didn’t notice Una dragging around two-thirty in the afternoon as she did.
Una was constantly busy, and so Charlotte was too, barely afforded a moment to herself. If they weren’t cooking, they were hunting or foraging for what they might cook. If they weren’t mending clothes, they were washing them. If they weren’t cleaning something, they were making a mess with some other chore that would eventually need to be cleaned. It just never stopped.
The children were delightful, really sweet—especially baby Effie, who Charlotte could have just gobbled up, she was so precious. But there was no privacy, no bedroom to retreat to, no moment that wasn’t filled with some task, leaving her never truly alone. This wasn’t her life, not what she knew or was accustomed to. In her real life, she went to work and had free periods every day when her class of kindergarteners went to music or Spanish lessons. She loved her five-year-olds, but she loved the break too. She went to the gym regularly, not with any serious fitness goals but simply to have something to do. But even there, she’d put in her earbuds and listen to podcasts, avoiding any possibility of meeting new people. She grocery shopped late at night to avoid crowds or running into someone she knew. For every ten events or gatherings her friends invited her to, she might show up at one or two.
She was a lonely loner, and she rather liked it that way.
Of course, she could attribute it to her childhood—really, her entire life—but the truth was, she wasn’t sure she wanted to change. She avoided relationships and connections, and she didn’t need a psychology degree to understand why: a deep-seated fear of abandonment.
Charlotte often wondered if her life might have turned out differently if her childhood had been anything but what it was. She couldn’t help but think that if her parents hadn’t divorced, if her father hadn’t moved to Phoenix, and if her mother hadn’t met Bill Worthington—shacked up with him,as her grandmother used to say—she might have different attitudes about people, relationships, and everything else. Her mother’s supposed one-week vacation to San Diego with Bill, whom Gram always called “Bill the Bum,” had stretched into a seventeen-year (and counting) absence. Sandra O’Rourke had simply never returned, had never picked up her daughter from her mother’s house, never called, never wrote—she just vanished.
In those early days, Gram had held out hope, making desperate phone calls to hospitals, morgues, and the police, searching for any trace of her daughter. Charlotte later imagined that Gram must have discovered something or perhaps even spoken to Sandra directly. Because one day, the hopeful reassurances stopped. Gram no longer said, “Of course your mother didn’t forget you” or “She’ll be back soon.” Instead, she sat Charlotte down and said, “Now, Charlotte, it is what it is, and it’s got nothing to do with you. Your mother’s lost her mind, and she’s not coming back. And you know what? You’re going to be okay.We’regoing to be okay. You got that?”
After that, any mention of her daughter, Sandra O’Rourke, would cause Gram’s lips to press into a thin line of anger. It wasn’t long before she’d snap, “Don’t even say her name in my house.”
Charlotte had learned long ago how to cope with the unknown. It wasn't that she was unfeeling or indifferent or that she wasn’t worried—it was survival. Growing up, she’d spent years burying the pain, fear, and unanswered questions about her mother. When no answers came, she eventually stopped asking. Now, faced with the unimaginable—being thrust seven hundred years into the past—she found herself relying on those same coping mechanisms: with no answers forthcoming, she stopped asking.
“Leave it be,” her grandmother used to say whenever Charlotte asked about her absent mother. “It’ll work out.”
That phrase had become a mantra of sorts, guiding her through life’s disappointments—a missed bus, a failing grade, an unrequited crush, even job rejections. None of it ever distressed her too much.
Leave it be; it’ll work out.And most times, it had.
This situation was a calamity beyond anything she’d ever faced, but it didn’t change the fact that she had no idea how to fix it. So, just as before, she let go of the questions she couldn’t answer and focused on the present.
But holy shit, the grueling pace here in this century. Day in and day out, hour after hour, never a break.
After five days, Charlotte had had enough. Sure, if she were forced to remain here in this time, she might have to get used to it, the lack of privacy and being constantly in the company of another. Even her first bath here in this time—tragically in a freezing lake of water—had been in the company of Una and her children. They’d not waded into Loch Ness for their bath but had gone to another smaller lake, which had required that they walk what Charlotte figured was more than a mile to the east.
But for now, she yearned for a bit of time to herself and had said as much to Una just a few minutes ago.
“I’m sorry, Una, but I won’t be around this morning for a few hours. I have something I need to take care of.”
Thatsomethingwas her own mental health, which given her circumstance was precarious at best. So even as she realized she might have lost her mind days ago if shehadn’tbeen kept so busy, Charlotte assured a clearly confused Una she’d be back by noon, and now walked toward the big house, as she’d come to think of Kingswood, but which wasthe keepto Una and others.
Another smallersomethingwas the issue of Una’s crush on Lachlan, the barber-surgeon. Of course, the occasions when they saw him were few and far between, but yesterday during that most enlightening court session inside the hall and then last night at supper. Charlotte had been keenly aware of how often Una’s gaze strayed to the young man.
Lachlan was handsome in a benign sort of way, Charlotte supposed. Though he possessed something that seemed to be rare in this time—the ability and desire to smile—he was otherwise average in appearance, lacking any striking features that would make him stand out in a crowd. Certainly, he could not be compared to Reid Nicholson, but then no one could in Charlotte’s mind. Reid was in a league of his own, a man who commanded attention the moment he walked into a room. He was dynamic and vivid, a force of nature that seemed to pull everything and everyone into his orbit. Reid didn’t just exude confidence; he radiated a raw, almost primal energy that seemed to hum in the air around him.
Reid might be the first person she’d ever met who truly exemplified the term "animal magnetism." There was something undeniably masculine about him, something that went beyond his rugged good looks. It was in the way he moved, with grace and power and, as Charlotte had determined, without any true idea how handsome he was. It was in the way he looked at her, his gaze intense and piercing, as if he could see straight throughher fear, her defenses, and any attempts of false bravado. There was a dangerous edge to him, a sense that he was a man who was always in control, always aware of his surroundings, and more than capable of handling whatever came his way. He had the looks and persona of a bad boy, which never in a million years would Charlotte have suspected appealed to her.
