Page 43 of I Loved You Then (Far From Home #12)

Cards on the Table

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For a moment in the shattering silence, she nearly forgot about Ciaran, until he let out a low, rough sound—half curse, half groan.

He lowered himself heavily beside her, knees bent, forearms braced on them.

Then, with a sharp exhale, he flopped backward onto the tall grass, staring up at the slate-colored sky, looking like a man who’d taken a blow.

He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes, possibly trying to rub away the memory of the woman’s voice and the sight of her vanishing into mist. He growled his frustration and for once, he wasn’t the aloof, indifferent laird, the medieval warrior who never faltered.

He looked like a man trying to wrestle sense from something that made none.

Claire fell backwards next to him, her hair spilling out around her in the grass.

“Good Lord,” she breathed, still trying to comprehend...all of it, which was nothing really, so little to know in the grand scheme of things. She stared at the moving sky, gray clouds rolling by.

They sat like that for quite a long moment, the only sound between them the crashing of water into the cliffs below.

“So this wasn’t chance,” she said finally, just loud enough to be heard. “Someone did this. Someone wanted me here. But why? For what? You don’t even like me. You don’t trust me or believe me.”

Ciaran didn’t respond.

“So tell me now,” she said, more firmly. “About when and where you saw me before? You lied about not knowing me, didn’t you?” Claire turned her face toward him, and lifted her hand to mat down the tall grass between them so that she could see his face.

“Aye, ye’re goddamn right I lied,” he seethed, then let out a breath that was almost a laugh, sour and short. “I lied because it made nae sense to tell ye. Because if I said it plain—what I kent.... Aye, but I kent ye before ye came to Caeravorn on the tinker’s cart. Or one who wore yer face.”

He turned his head, looking out over the cliffs. His voice, when it came, lacked its usual hard edge.

“?Twas at Berwick, at the beginning of the war, nine years past. I was green, naught but a...I wasnae ready for what I saw—Christ’s bones, it wasnae battle, but slaughter.

Men cut down by the score, aye, but women too, bairns, graybeards.

Screaming and fire and the river choked with blood.

” He stopped, jaw tight and lip curled. “I found her after. She’d crawled to the trees, half-dead, torn near in two, but she’d dragged herself away with the last of her strength.

Hair nae different from yers, eyes the same clear gray.

She was bleeding out—there was naught I could do.

” His breath caught, uneven. “She...I dinna ken, but she seemed to calm when I held her. She dinna blink,” he said, his voice raspy. “She said, I’ve been waiting for you. ”

Claire’s stomach twisted, her pulse a rush in her ears. That was what she had said to him. Word for word.

He swallowed. “She stayed with me. I thought that was all soldier’s memory, the things a man keeps from a life of fighting and killing. But nae other face ever stayed with me, nae like hers did.”

He’d kept the woman’s memory, same as Claire had clung to the man on that dark road with her that night.

“You thought I was her,” she guessed, “when I came to Caeravorn.”

“Aye. Same hair, same look,” he admitted, his voice as soft as she’d ever heard it.

“Nae only similar, but exact.” He spat these words as if they tasted bad.

“Down to the blue in the gray of yer eyes.” He chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment, his gaze still on the sky above.

“The woman at the ford—whatever she was— spoke as if she ken all this, too. She said she made sure we crossed paths again, said she’d taken trouble.

If it be true, it’s... black magic, Druid matters, or worse.

If it’s nae true,” he said, turning his face to meet her rapt gaze, “then how are ye here with me now?”

Claire shook her head against the grass, the answers of the last half hour only generating more questions.

“I don’t know.” She did know, however, that his confession had changed the shape of what they were, and for the first time since Ivy had left, she felt less alone in the impossible weirdness of it.

Ciaran had carried part of the same burden, in his own way.

She rolled over, onto her stomach, lifting herself onto her elbows, now within inches of his thick shoulder and arm.

“Ciaran... do you think that woman died so I could—well, not live, I was already living nine years ago... but so that I could come here? Nine years ago is when I had my car accident, when I saw you. That can’t be only coincidence, right? ”

“ Jesu , Claire—I dinna ken,” he snapped impatiently, and then sighed, and gentled his tone. “I dinna ken any more than you. Naught makes sense.”

She stared at him, stunned by the sharpness of his tone, then felt her own frustration rise and then fall just as quickly.

For the first time it struck her that the strangeness which upended her life had upended his, too, to some degree.

For a man like Ciaran Kerr, who clung to certainty as tenaciously as he gripped his sword hilt, who was always in control—of himself and everything around him—having neither certainty nor control must be as terrifying as waking in another century was for her.

He was lashing out at her, but in all likelihood he was angry at being helpless against something he couldn’t fight.

Claire lowered her chin, staring at the grass between them. Her anger ebbed into something else—an odd, unexpected sympathy. She felt as if they were both flailing in the same dark water, neither able to see the shore.

“I dinna mean to bark,” he said then. “I just... I have nae answers, Claire.”

“I know.”

***

Claire paced the length of her chamber, the MacKinlay plaid slipping from her shoulders.

Though it was cold outside, her chamber was toasty since she’d kept a good fire going while she’d bathed.

She’d hoped the bath would have soothed her, helped her sleep, but hours later, she still felt restless.

Her hair was damp yet, and cool against her neck but she gave it no thought.

For two nights now she had lain awake, her thoughts circling the same maddening mysteries, what she did and didn’t know, struggling to process all of it—the strange woman Ciaran had seen at the river and her cryptic message; Ciaran finally admitting the truth to her, that she was familiar to him; that unexpectedly open conversation she’d had with Ciaran at the cliff top; and, as always, the time-travel thing.

Not another word had passed between them about it, any of it.

He went about his day as if nothing had changed, his face the same impassive mask, while she grew anxious with the not-knowing, and for all the questions that surfaced after they’d spoken.

She could not bear it another night.

Reckless, barefoot, wearing only her shift and the heavy plaid, she crossed the cold floor and slipped into the corridor.

This was probably frowned upon in this century, seeking out a man in his bedroom in the dead of night, but she wanted answers, or at least some further discussion, about what Ciaran was thinking, what any of it might mean.

In truth, because of his silence on the matter, she began to imagine that he simply dismissed all of it, refusing to entertain the idea of witchy old women, ghosts from the past, and traveling through time.

Sure, it was extraordinary, but Claire was struggling to live with it and needed answers, couldn’t simply brush it off as easily as he seemed to do.

She lifted her hand and knocked lightly at Ciaran’s door before her courage abandoned her.

A moment of silence followed before his voice came, low and steady through the door: “Enter.”

Claire pushed it open, stepping across the threshold.

A week ago, she’d entered with purpose, unashamed, tending to Ciaran while he’d been laid low with the fever.

This was different, of course, and to be honest, while she needed to see him and talk to him about all this, she dreaded the conversation, knowing she would feel adrift if he had indeed, decided to ignore everything that he couldn’t control—what did it really have to do with him, after all?

The fire in the hearth was banked low, painting the stone walls with a soft orange glow.

Ciaran sat in a chair near the blaze, one arm braced on the armrest, a wooden cup in his hand.

He wore no shirt—that might be a problem, trying to have a conversation with him without ogling his naked chest—and his boots were unlaced though he hadn’t removed them yet.

He didn’t look particularly surprised to see her.

Claire hovered near the door, her hands behind her, holding onto the latch, just in case he did not welcome her intrusion. “I wondered if we could talk,” she said.

“Aye,” he said after a moment, then tipped his head and nudged the chair opposite him with his boot. “Sit, then.”

Her pulse quickened as she let the door swing closed and crossed the chamber, tugging the plaid closer around her thin shift. She sank into the chair opposite his, pretending she wasn’t aware of his fierce gaze following her every step.

“Nae easy to sleep these days,” he said, his voice quiet, his gaze fixing on the small dancing flames in the hearth.

Claire pressed her lips together, her throat tight, and gave the smallest nod. “No, it’s not.” She had a hundred words pressing against her tongue, but wasn’t sure how to start.

Ciaran lifted the cup he held, then set it aside and reached for the pitcher at his elbow. “Wine?”

She hesitated a heartbeat. “Yes. Thank you.”

He poured slowly, the quiet splashing filling the silence, then held the fresh cup out to her.

The cup was warm from his grasp. She sipped to steady herself, though her eyes never left his face.