Page 81 of Here in Your Arms
Brody stopped before him, cutting off Tiernan’s view. “I still ken ye should wait another day or two,” Brody said, “and give yer shoulder time to heal.”
Tiernan let his eyes linger on Brody’s wife, since Brody had intercepted his view of Rose. There was something about her—something subtle but off-kilter, the same as with Rose. It wasn’t the way she dressed or even how she carried herself; it was in the way she looked at things, as if she were constantly taking in more than what was in front of her. Her posture was confident, aye, but not in the manner of a woman raised to curtsy and defer. She stood differently, held herself differently—like someone always half-ready to move, half-expecting the world to shift beneath her feet. She wore her self-possession like armor, not grace. The way she moved, the way her mouth pulled in thought, even the odd turns of phrase he’d heard from her in the short time he’d known her—it all had the same... wrongness Rose carried. Not wrong in a dishonorable way, just... misplaced. As if she didn’t quite belong to the time she stood in.
Just like Rose.
Tiernan’s brow furrowed. He shifted his gaze to Brody. “Do ye believe what they claim?”
“What’s that?” Brody wondered.
“This...business about another time.” The words were foreign. He didn’t like the way they felt, and sounded, or that he’d said them aloud.
Brody didn’t hesitate. “I do.”
“How?” Tiernan asked simply.
Brody shrugged, but it wasn’t a careless gesture. “Because it’s her truth—nowtheirtruth. And because... after a while, it stopsmattering whether it’s possible. I see the way Emmy looks at things, the questions she asks, the way she reacts to things nae one else finds strange... here. I’ve listened to her describe places I can’t imagine and speak of things I’ve never heard of—and nae once has she faltered. She dinna weave tales for sport. She’s just trying to make sense of where she landed.” He paused, shifting slightly. “She dinna try to convince me. Dinna force it on me. It’s simply her reality. And so I made it mine.”
Tiernan was silent, his brows drawn low.
Brody studied him. “I dinna need to understand it,” he added, quieter now. “Loving her dinna require that I ken the how or the why of it. I just ken that she is who she says she is.” His eyes narrowed as he considered Tiernan carefully. “I ken I’d be a damned fool to turn my back on something like that just because it dinna make sense to me.”
The words landed heavy between them.
Tiernan’s lips pressed into a hard line. Without acknowledging anything, he said, “Rose is better off here.”
Brody gave a grunt that could’ve meant agreement, though Tiernan didn’t suppose that it did. “Aye. If that’s what ye believe.”
“She dinna belong at Druimlach,” he added.
“Aye.”
Tiernan exchanged farewells with Brody, thanking him for the escort of six men, and saw Emmy and Rose approach as Brody turned away.
He did not know Brody’s wife well to know for sure, but he thought her smile was false, mayhap forced as she stopped before him.
“Safe travels, Laird MacRae,” she said politely, her tone cordial, though her eyes flicked once to Rose, then back again.
Tiernan inclined his head. “Mistress.”
She turned to Rose then, pulling her hand from the crook of Rose’s elbow. Emmy squeezed Rose’s arm gently, a touch meant to comfort, perhaps to steady, then murmured something too low for Tiernan to hear before she stepped away.
And he stood face to face with Rose, looking down at her upturned face.
She spoke first, rushed out the words as if she wanted her peace said before he might have spoken.
“I pray you travel more safely today than we did yesterday,” she said, her voice steady but cool. “And... I want you to know I’m not ashamed of what we did. And for me, it wasn’t... nothing.”
Her chin lifted ever so slightly—a small, defiant tilt that only made the strain behind her composure more visible. Though her words were measured, her posture betrayed the truth of it—the way her shoulders pulled tight, the way she gripped the edge of her plaid as if she needed something to hold her together.
“I’ve survived being thrown hundreds of years into the past,” she continued, her tone sharpening like a blade sliding from its sheath, “mistaken for a woman who died before I got here, rockslides and armed bandits, and all without shedding a tear.” Her eyes met his, burning now, not with rage, but with something quieter—deeper. “So don’t worry that I’ll cry any over you. Over a man who used me to forget someone else.”
The words landed hard, carved from pain she clearly didn’t mind him seeing. Inflicting a small bit of punishment, he presumed. Tiernan stood motionless, the full force of it pressing into his chest. There was something in her voice—some fragile, furious sadness—that made him ache with the need to set it right.
He could have at that moment, but chose not to.
“God keep ye, Rose,” he said instead, his voice low, roughened by emotion he fought to keep in check.
There was a shimmer in her eyes, tears mayhap, a flash of something too raw to hide, a fresh wound, but before he knew for certain, she turned and walked back into the hall without another word.
