Page 8 of So Close To Heaven
Incredibly, her chest loosened, her spine straightened. Something about their offer—so practical, so unceremoniously kind—emboldened her. Encouraged her.
“Oh,” she breathed, then found her voice. “Thank you. I—I promise I won’t be any trouble. I can be helpful,” she offered, with a burst of inspiration. “I can tally stuff or ...clean weapons. Or carry things and—whatever you need. I can tend horses,” she added, a flicker of purpose returning. “I’m a veterinarian. Or will be, officially, once I sit my boards.”
They smiled—not mockingly, exactly, but with a kind of quiet amusement, like older brothers indulging a younger sibling’s grand but foolish plans.
Ivy didn’t care. She didn’t want to be left behind, not between one wrecked army and another victorious one, not forty godforsaken miles from anywhere, not alone and pregnant and entirely out of her depth. How the hell had she ended up forty miles from Loch Katrine? Surely the laird had been exaggerating. He must have been.
“C’mon then, lass,” said the wiry one. “we dinna need ye to labor, though. Best to keep ye quiet, out of sight.”
“I’ll be quiet as a church mouse, I promise,” she added, hopeful now. “The laird won’t even know I’m there.”
That made them laugh—cheerful and warm, but clearly unconvinced—and Ivy was left with the impression that little escaped the laird’s notice.
Chapter Three
The forest swallowed them whole.
They moved slowly, away from what Ivy now deemed a battlefield, and deeper into the crags and wooded hills beyond. A slow-moving line of Highland warriors, stained with blood and mud, their bodies tired and their faces grim, melted into the shadows like ghosts. She expected victors to be jubilant—or at least relieved—but whatever they’d won back there didn’t seem to bring much satisfaction.
Ivy stumbled along behind the walking men, breath ragged, legs screaming with every step after many hours of hiking non-stop. In the last few minutes, her chest had even begun to protest the long march.
The terrain was merciless. Slick moss coated everything. Jagged stones jutted from the ground like broken teeth. Roots rose from the soil like hidden snares. She’d never hiked anything this rugged in her life—not even on her most ambitious trail days. And now she did it six months pregnant, with still no clue where she was or how any of this was real.
Worse, she’d lost her phone—dropped in her blind flight when she’d first stumbled onto the edge of the battle. That was the only reason she’d gone back toward the smoke and carnage at all, the only reason the brute had found her—she’d been hunting for her phone. And God only knew where the rest of her belongings had ended up. At some point in the chaos she’d shed her knapsack too, though she couldn’t even remember when. She hadn’t realized it was gone until she’d reached for it and found nothing on her shoulders.
She had yet to ask herself—or anyone—the proper, likely questions, about what had happened. She was still coming to grips with the fact that she’d witnessed what truly felt real, thatdusty, bloody, incredible battle. More than once, her brain had suggested in different ways that what she’d seen belonged more to another century, a very long-ago century. The absurdity of that had her dismissing such an idea as ludicrous. She certainly wasn’t about to ask. She wasn’t going to pull aside one of these men—killers, possibly all of them—and casually inquire why they dressed and spoke and acted like they’d fallen out of a history book. Were they... some kind of undiscovered Highland tribe, like those rare groups deep in the Amazon who’d never made contact with the outside world?
It was almost laughable. Except nothing felt funny.
Alaric MacKinlay remained at the front of the column, a looming figure on horseback, his broad back like a wall of stone atop a magnificent black stallion that looked like it belonged in some mythic painting. Every once in a while, the laird rode by, checking on his army she guessed, going from the front to the end of the line, and back to the front again. On none of these occasions did he glance at her.
He hadn’t spoken to her again since he’d agreed—grudgingly—to let her come with them. Actually, he hadn’t spoken to her then either. When she’d emerged from the woods with the three younger soldiers hours before, it was the redhead who’d spoken, boldly declaring that they’d see to her, that they’d agreed only to take her as far as the Roman road. The laird hadn’t objected, but then he didn’t need to voice what his face was saying. The look he’d sent in her direction could have soured milk. His entire posture had stiffened with annoyance he hadn’t bother to hide.
“We’ll take her as far as Caol Glen,” he’d muttered after a moment, with an unexpected fierceness, directing his reply to the redhead and not Ivy. “Nae further.”
“Aye, laird,” agreed the redhead and the wiry one in unison.
The latter turned and winked at her, as if to say,told you so, while at the same time Laird MacKinlay scowled once more at Ivy before turning his back to her again.
As promised, she had tried to make herself useful—though how much actual help she offered was up for debate. The clearing—the scene of the battle—showed a hundred men, maybe more, busy with the aftermath still, and her arrival among them caused a ripple that never quite smoothed out. Obviously, being a woman in this male-dominated space turned some heads. And compared to how they were dressed, she imagined that her clothes—lime green jacket and pink summer sweater, her black leggings, and ankle-high beige nubuck hiking boots—must seem very bizarre to them.
The men stared, some openly. Others looked away as if not wanting to be caught gawking, but they all noticed. She heard muttering when she passed, or in some cases awkward silences. Some murmured to their neighbors, eyes flicking toward her and back again, as though trying to work out just what she was and how she had come to be here. Several gave her a wide berth, suspicion etched into their sun-darkened faces. One man had crossed himself.
Still, Ivy had tried to help.
The redhead, who by then had introduced himself as Kendrick, had shoved a worn wooden bucket into her hands and had pointed her toward a stream fifty feet away, charging her with fetching water. On her return, the three-quarters’ full bucket had been wrenched from her hands by a MacKinlay man who might have seen her struggling with the load. He’d yanked it gruffly away from her, scowling, muttering something she couldn’t understand.
She’d attempted to calm a skittish horse, murmuring soft reassurances as she reached for the animal’s halter—but was sharply warned off by a grizzled handler who barked somethingin Gaelic and pointed her away with a glower, as though she were a dog nosing around where it didn’t belong.
It was only after wandering the perimeter of the clearing that Ivy realized a sort of makeshift triage had been established on the far side. Almost a dozen wounded men had been gathered there, some lying flat on cloaks or animal hides, others propped awkwardly against tree trunks or wagon wheels. The sour tang of blood and sweat hung in the air, and muted groans rose like a background hum. One man winced and groaned as a gash in his thigh was stitched. Another was being hoisted carefully into a cart, his face gray and slack, his arm draped over the shoulder of a soldier who looked no older than fifteen. There were no uniforms, no IV bags, no antiseptic gauze—just ripped cloth, carved sticks for splints, and a handful of harried men who looked to be playing the role of doctor or nurse with whatever tools they had. She stood frozen for a long moment, the grim truth of it all sinking in. This wasn’t a movie set. There were no cameras, no paramedics waiting just out of frame. These men were hurt. One appeared to have passed on already, his eyes closed and his face colorless.
After being rebuffed twice already, Ivy had hesitated to offer further help. But then her gaze caught that of a wounded man slumped against a tree. He sat propped upright, struggling to draw each breath, his face pale beneath a smear of dirt and blood. One arm hung limply at his side, bent at an unnatural angle, the sleeve soaked through with red. In his hand, a leather flask trembled weakly.
Cautiously, Ivy had approached. She’d knelt beside him without a word and gently reached for the flask, her fingers brushing his. His skin was warm—feverish, maybe—and he hadn’t let go at first. But she’d kept her grip steady, slowly easing it from his grasp. Then, holding it to his lips, she’d tipped it carefully. He’d stared at her the whole time, his expressioncaught somewhere between suspicion and disbelief. At last, he drank—sloppily, noisily—never once looking away from her. Even after she lowered the flask and replaced the odd cap, he hadn’t said a word.
That was the pattern. Not hostility, not entirely. Just wariness and curiosity.
Presently, as it had been for hours, the mood of those she walked closest to was brittle. No one spoke to her, but she felt their suspicion. No one offered her water or anything to drink, hadn’t tried to converse with her, hadn’t acknowledged her at all but with guarded glances. Even when she slipped on a patch of loose shale and landed hard on her hands at one point, no one offered any help. She’d bit back a cry, more embarrassed than hurt, and scrambled up again, brushing her palms on her jacket.
