Page 1 of I Loved You Then (Far From Home #12)
Berwick-on-Tweed, Scotland
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The air stank of blood and smoke. Ciaran Kerr picked his way across the trampled fields that had once been Berwick-on-Tweed, his boots sinking into churned mud slick with bodies—men, women, and children, too—who only days ago might have filled the streets and market squares.
Broken carts lay scattered, thatched stalls reduced to splinters, and what remained of the town’s halls and houses smelled of smoke and charred flesh.
Groans rose from the ground in places, broken cries from the not-yet dead, mingling with the harsh caw of circling crows and the distant clang of English steel.
The invaders had been thorough. In the span of a day and a half, Edward’s soldiers had erased thousands of souls from the face of Scotland’s most prosperous port.
Judging from the depth of the blood and the pace of their rampage, far more had perished than even the worst had feared.
The invaders had been thorough. Their steel had cut through Scotland’s hastily gathered host as a scythe through grain at harvest.
Ciaran had thought himself ready. He was Kerr-born after all, trained with bow and blade since boyhood, hardened by skirmishes in and around Caeravorn.
But nothing in his twenty-two years had prepared him for this, the eerie stillness that clung to the field, broken only in fragments, the sheer sprawl of fallen men, women, and children, nor the stench of iron and charred flesh.
It had begun with the siege: Edward’s army crossing the Tweed only days ago, pressing onto the walls of the town with overwhelming numbers.
The English showed no mercy. Women, children, clergy, even worshippers within the churches were cut down or burned, sanctuary and all.
Blood flowed through the streets like river-water, and now Berwick lay in ruin, a grim stage for the onset of war.
His stomach turned as he stepped around a man with his throat laid open, the man’s glassy eyes fixed forever on the gray sky. He passed a boy scarcely fifteen, his freckled face slack, his fingers still curled around a dagger far too small to have saved him.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this, he thought, overwhelmed by the sheer number of bodies littering the earth.
Just outside the useless wooden palisade, what remained of it, at the field’s edge, where heather grew outside a thicket of trees, he caught sight of yet another body.
A woman lay crumpled among the bent grasses, her ash-blonde hair matted dark with blood.
Part of her skull was crushed, and there was a deep gash across her back where an axe had struck.
At first he thought her only another of the dead, having been felled as she’d run for the cover of the trees.
But then she moved—fingers clawing weakly at the earth, dragging herself a hand’s breadth as though sheer will might carry her from the carnage.
Ciaran’s chest tightened. Jesu. Her gown, once pale, was torn and muddied, the hem snarled in brambles at the field’s edge. One slipper dangled from her foot.
He approached slowly, hardly able to believe she lived yet, and wary, as though afraid his touch might chase the last spark of life from her.
He had seen the bodies of men gutted open and had not faltered, but something about this lone woman’s struggle to move, to yet escape, made him pause.
She seemed both fragile and defiant, determined to crawl from death’s reach even as it claimed her.
Dropping to his knees beside her, he hesitated before reaching out.
She lay half on her stomach, her arms clawing weakly at the earth.
Carefully, he slid a hand beneath her shoulder, easing her onto her back so he could see the breadth of her wounds.
The shift drew a low, ragged sound from her throat, and he stilled, whispering a quiet oath under his breath.
She was too far gone to stiffen with any further fright, even as she wouldn’t have known who touched her now, friend or foe.
She sagged against his arm instead and he grimaced at the gash in her cheek, deep enough to expose bone.
With as much care as his rough hands allowed, he slid the other arm beneath her legs, meaning to lift and carry her.
If she could be saved, he would try. And if not, at least she would not meet death alone.
But then her eyes fluttered open—startling gray, shockingly alive despite the certainty of death.
The force of her gaze staggered him. Instead of rising with her in his arms, Ciaran sank back onto his heels, holding her rigidly, caught fast by the intensity of her stare.
He opened his mouth but said nothing, only wondering how she was still alive at all.
They were not simply gray, he realized, but gray striped and dotted with flecks of blue, like shards of sky piercing storm clouds. He had never looked so hard into another’s eyes, never felt so wholly undone by their color alone.
Her breath rattled as she tried to speak. When he made to shift her, she gave the faintest shake of her head. He froze, arms braced around her slight frame, every nerve stretched taut.
The noise beyond them seemed to fall away.
The crows, the cries of the dying, even the smell of smoke and iron—all of it dimmed until there was only her and the unrelenting pull of her gaze.
Ciaran froze, unsure what to do. He held himself still, afraid that any movement might drive her last breath from her chest. Yet the longer she stared, the more uneasy he grew.
Her look was too steady, too knowing, as though she were trying to force something into him without words.
His skin prickled. Was she seeing someone else as she looked at him?
Was she trying to tell him something without words?
He had never known a gaze could feel like this—like a hand gripping tight around his ribs, leaving him hollow and unsettled. She seemed to strip him bare with her eyes, and beneath that strange scrutiny, Ciaran felt younger still, not ready at all for the war he’d just met.
Slowly, the tension in her face eased, and a strange calm stole over her, as though she had found what she had been crawling toward. Her lips trembled, and the words came out in a whisper.
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
The sound of her voice lodged like a blade in his chest. Before he could ask what she meant, her eyes closed, and her body slackened in his arms.
For a long time, Ciaran did not move. He stared down at her bonny, still face, gutted and yet hushed by the weight of what had passed between them.
The moment lingered in him, strange and unaccountable.
She was no kin, no friend, only a stranger met upon a field of ruin, and yet her death pressed upon him as though it had stripped something vital from his own soul.
I’ve been waiting for you.
When at last he looked away, though he held her still, sounds and smells pierced his awareness. But he barely registered anything, naught save the image of her gray eyes, and the strange pull they had stirred in him.
***
Conshohocken, Pennsylvania
March 2016
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“Grow up, Claire,” Jason had snapped, his face flushed in the glow of the dashboard light. “You think everything’s about you. One day you’ll figure out the world doesn’t bend to your moods.”
She’d shoved open the car door before he could say more, slamming it hard enough that his voice was cut off mid-word. She didn’t want to hear it. Not again. She’d heard it a hundred times already in different shapes: selfish, immature, too much.
She knew she should’ve stayed home tonight.
Jason Dean, her boyfriend for almost a year—the guy her friends insisted was perfect for her—was steady and ambitious, already burying himself in pre-med courses and talking about residencies as if they were just around the corner and not years away still, while she still felt half-formed, restless, testing her wings.
Handsome, confident, and a go-getter, he looked good on paper—he was everything she should have wanted.
Sadly, too often she wondered if he really felt the same.
He said he did, but in truth Claire had her doubts.
Jason made time for his classes, his friends, his family—always them first. For her and her world, he spared only what was left over.
Tonight had been no different, and as always, her daring to mention it had annoyed him.
He’d told her she was being unreasonable, that he couldn’t stretch himself any thinner, that she needed to understand.
She, raw and defensive, had thrown it back that maybe she didn’t want scraps.
Maybe she wanted something else, she’d said. Maybe someone else.
“Then go find him,” had been Jason’s parting shot before Claire had stormed off and slid behind the wheel of her own car.
Now, her knuckles were white on the steering wheel as the headlights cut through the black curves of Gladwyne’s winding roads, trees crowding close on either side.
In daylight the drive might have been pretty, but at this hour the scenery was nothing but shadow and shifting shapes in the beam of her lights.
She turned up the radio but barely heard the music playing, too busy being stung by Jason’s indifference.
She pressed her foot down on the gas.
“Screw you, Jason Dean,” she grumbled. Her mother was right. She deserved better, someone who would make time for her, who wanted to.
The turn came quicker than she expected. She jerked the wheel, too late. Tires screamed against gravel, the car fishtailed, then skidded off the shoulder. Trees and darkness blurred together before the world slammed to a stop with a shuddering crash of metal against wood.
For an instant there was nothing—no sound, no thought, only black.
When awareness returned, she realized first that her head was pounding.
She was briefly confused until she realized that the burning in her chest had been caused by the airbag, striking hard, knocking the breath from her lungs.
She gasped, trying to draw air into bruised lungs, and tasted blood where she had bitten her lip.
The world outside her shattered windshield was silent, eerily so. She heard no cars, no sirens, no sign of anyone. Maybe it had only just happened? She had no idea how long she’d been blacked out. Maybe not so long, she decided, aware next of the acrid reek of smoke and rubber.
She tried to move, but pain ripped through her shoulder and down her leg, which felt trapped beneath the crushed driver’s side. Panic surged, sharp and dizzying.
“Help!” Her voice cracked in the dark. She tried again, louder, though it came out more like a sob than a shout. “Somebody—please!”
Her phone. She fumbled blindly at the seat beside her, her hand patting at empty fabric where her purse had been. Nothing. Heart pounding, she twisted awkwardly, searching the floor, the back seat, anywhere—but the effort sent another stab of pain down her side and left her gasping.
She pressed her head back against the seat, vision blurring.
The thought hit her hard: no one knew she was here.
It was past dusk, end of winter, on a quiet section of road that likely didn’t see much traffic, and her car had skidded off the road into a fairly deep gully or ditch.
How would anyone see her? Would they see the headlights, still glaring, though angled downward, into days’ old snow.
Her eyes drifted closed again. When they opened, she blinked in surprise.
Someone was there, a figure standing just beyond the spiderweb of shattered glass, tall and broad-shouldered, his outline sharp against the dark.
For one disoriented moment she thought it was Jason, come after her.
But then he stepped closer, into the sweep of her headlights, and she saw him clearly.
It was definitely not Jason, and not anyone she knew, and yet no prickle of unease troubled her.
His face was cut in angles, like something drawn in comic book style, square jaw and harsh lines. His hair fell dark over his brow, his jaw was shadowed, and his eyes locked on hers with a steadiness that should have unnerved her.
And yet she wasn’t afraid, she was relieved someone had found her. More relieved, because she had the strangest sense that there was something familiar about him, maddeningly so, though she was certain she had never met him before. Clearly, she would have remembered meeting so striking a person.
He wrenched opened the door with a groan of metal and crouched beside her.
One strong arm slid behind her, between her back and the seat.
He didn’t speak, didn’t do anything but stare at her, and strangely, Claire was still not alarmed.
His eyes met hers, dark and intent, and she felt the world narrow to that gaze.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said. She’d not meant to say that, but then she wasn’t sure what she’d intended to say. The words hovered between them, strange, almost irrational. And then she wasn’t sure if she had said them aloud or only thought them.
His expression didn’t change.
Time stretched. Sirens did not come. The road remained empty. She floated in and out, always returning to his steady presence, the heat of his arm around her, the intensity of his gaze. She tried to ask him who he was, but her voice didn’t come, and the efforts dissolved into a ragged breath.
And then at last, red lights cut through the night, voices shouted, and paramedics swarmed the wreck. In time, she was pulled from the twisted metal and laid onto a stretcher. She turned her head anxiously, searching for him, desperate not to lose sight of him.
But he was gone.
Later, she was told she must have imagined him, that shock, concussion, or trauma might have conjured him. Yet the memory never faded. The face, the silence, the way his very startling presence had calmed her.