Page 60 of Beloved Enemy
He wasn’t a fool. He wouldn’t allow himself to be again. Not like he’d been with Elspeth. And yet... it was maddening how holding Charlotte didn’t feel like holding a spy, a traitor. It felt... right. And that only made him angrier.
There were too many questions. Too many loose ends. He was sure of only one thing: he couldn’t trust her.
The furious, proud man that he was wanted her thrown into the dungeon at Kingswood, charged and tried for her crimes against him, against the Nicholsons. The laird and leader that he was wanted answers and knew that locking her up wouldn’t get him those. No, he’d have to play this carefully. Keep her close, watch her every move, and figure out who she was working with—and why.
For now, she would remain free, but never out of his sight.
Reid’s eyes darkened as he turned his focus back to the path ahead, still furious at his own madness.
Charlotte O’Rourke had spun her web, and like a damned fool, he had walked right into it.
Half an hour later, he reined in the horse in front of Una’s cottage.
***
The water was cool against Charlotte’s skin, lapping gently at her thighs as she crouched beside Una, both of them in theirlinen shifts. Lilias and Thomas splashed nearby in the water that was no more than a foot deep, their laughter rising in the quiet morning air, but Charlotte could hardly focus on them. Her mind was elsewhere, circling back to the events of the night before, trying to understand what had changed.
Una hummed a soft tune as she held Effie in her arms and bathed her with a square cloth of linen, her motions utilitarian. Charlotte watched her for a moment, absently running her hands through the water, trying to shake the weight of her own thoughts.
She couldn’t forget the look on Reid’s face when he had dropped her off at Una’s cottage late last night. His touch had been cold, as if a wall had gone up between them, one she couldn’t see but could feel in every rigid line of his body. His gaze had barely met hers, his usual gruff but solicitous demeanor replaced by something far more remote.
Charlotte dipped her hands into the loch again, splashing water over her arms, trying to push away the nagging questions. Had it been the near-attack? The looming army of horsemen that had sent them fleeing into the mountains? Surely, that would explain his coldness—his mind was still on the danger, still bracing for a fight that might have come any moment. It made sense.
But the longer she thought about it, the less certain she became.
Was he angry at her? Was this all because she had bugged him relentlessly to take her up the mountain, insisting that she needed more time, foolishly hoping that somehow, against all odds, she’d be whisked back to her time? Maybe he blamed her for their close call with the army. She had practically dragged him up there, into harm’s way. It would be reasonable for him to be furious with her, wouldn’t it?
A greater concern presented itself to her, wondering if Reid had closed himself off, regretting that he’d exposed even that small scrap of hope to her, admitting that he wasn’t entirely indifferent. He was hard and ruthless and maybe he hated that he’d hinted at even that tiny vulnerability. Charlotte’s mouth opened in awe, recalling what Reid’s sister, Fiona, had said to her, that he kept that scrap of cloth attached to his belt almost as a talisman against any attachment, believing thatlove was a fool’s hope.
"Ye’re nae happy to be returned, I gather," Una’s voice pulled her from her thoughts.
Charlotte looked up to find her friend watching her with a concerned frown, Effie squirming in her arms.
"I don’t know," Charlotte answered slowly, forcing a smile to accompany her ambiguous response before deciding to expound upon her answer. "Actually, I thought I really wanted to go home, but then...well, I wasn’t too disappointed when I...couldn’t." At least not at first.
Una raised an eyebrow, but she didn’t press, and Charlotte didn’t offer anything else. Una handed the wriggling child off to Charlotte. "Here, take this one. She’s clean enough, I suppose."
Charlotte took the infant, holding her close as she got to her feet, goosebumps rising against the cool air. Effie stared with unblinking blue eyes, but Charlotte’s mind wandered back to Reid.
Something had shifted by the time she’d woken in his arms as they’d arrived at Kingswood. His protective warmth had vanished, replaced by that cold aloofness that made her feel like she was little more than a burden. Was it just the stress of the attack? Or had she done something—said something—to make him pull away?
She let out a quiet sigh, pressing her forehead to the child’s damp hair as she made her way out of the water to wheretheir dry clothes waited. Maybe she was reading too much into it. Maybe everything would be fine now that the threat of the English was further behind them. Or maybe she’d lost him before she’d ever really had him.
When she lifted her head, the child in her arms found and focused on the amulet around Charlotte’s neck, her small finger tentatively reaching for the necklace.
Charlotte covered the silver and stone with her hand. “No, sweetie, you don’t want to touch that.”
A sudden thought dawned on her, one that should have terrified her but strangely did not. After yesterday’s unexpected encounter with that army that had seemed to be coming straight and purposefully for them at Ben Nevis, it was unlikely that Reid would risk returning there. Presuming, as she had, that she needed to be there if she stood any chance at all of getting home, Charlotte guessed that her chances of returning to the twenty-first century had just been drastically reduced.
As Charlotte dried the baby on the banks of the loch, her mind wandered far beyond the present moment. She couldn’t help but wonder if anyone who traveled through time had ever managed to return to their origin year. Was it possible to go back, to step out of one century and return seamlessly to another as though nothing had changed? Or were time-travelers forever altered, lost between worlds?
The thought deepened, and a frown tugged at her lips. Were there people in the twenty-first century who had been lost in time, silently slipping out of history without a trace? Had she ever met one? She imagined them scattered across different centuries, trapped in places that were never meant to be theirs, blending in or standing out in ways that might seem unremarkable but hid a much deeper truth.
If she couldn’t go back, would she become just a lost soul—forgotten in time, erased from her own life as if she’d never existed?
If her feelings for Reid—her infatuation, her growing awareness of him—led to something real, would she even care if she never returned home?
But was that even possible now, she wondered, after the way he’d dismissed her last night?
