Page 5 of So Close To Heaven (Far From Home #11)

Ivy gasped. So much had happened just in the last thirty seconds: death acknowledged so coolly, the brute’s jarring touch, the dried blood on the hand of the pointing kid, this blatant insinuation that she’d been knocked up by—what?

one of the dead men? His touch ! Oh, right, she’d already mentally logged that.

Slapping her hands on her hips, she said indignantly to the kid with the bloody hand, “I don’t bed down with anyone, thank you very much. I had a relationship with a man—a Scottish man, by the way, not that it’s any of your business. And not that he cares about his baby, but I’ll have you know—”

She was interrupted by the brute, though what he said was unclear, since he spoke in Gaelic again. In response, the redhead nodded, the blue-eye youth smirked and scoffed vocally, and the wiry kid frowned and jerked his gaze to Ivy’s face.

“What? What did you say?” she asked him.

He shook his head as if it were of no importance—though clearly the responses of the youths said the opposite was true —and turned around, dismissing Ivy once more as he walked away.

That is, until the redhead called after him.

“What’s to be done with her?”

The question turned him back around, ten feet away, his frown returned.

“With her?” He challenged, a bit of heat in the query.

“We’ve wounded to see to, and dead to bury.

Stores to sort and count, wagons to strip, blades to clean, and loot to move ere the flies settle thick.

” His eyes flicked briefly to Ivy. “She’s nae my concern. ”

He’d addressed the first part of his answer to the redhead and—rudely— turned his attention to Ivy to deliver the last bit, his cold tone making it perfectly clear he didn’t give a damn what became of her.

Great.

Before he resumed his exit, the brown-haired kid with the kind eyes challenged him.

“We canna just leave her—”

He stopped when the brute’s glare intensified, settling on him with enough force to quiet the kid.

“I only need directions,” Ivy said quietly, almost pleading now.

“That’s all I’m asking.” She hadn’t yet begun to fully process the fact that she’d seen actual dead bodies or figure out what in God’s name was going on, but a part of her shuddered at the thought that his answer could have been something far worse.

Put her to the blade, or whatever terrifying phrase men like him used.

Men like him?

No. Inconceivable. Ivy had never in her life encountered a man like him.

Five minutes in his company had shown her much, all of it setting him apart from any other man she’d ever met.

Not just for the obvious reasons—the sheer size of him, or the sword strapped across his back, or the way his presence seemed to shift the very air around him—but because everything about him felt carved from another world.

But not just foreign, not even something old-world, but something deeper than that.

There was no softness to him, no trace of hesitation in the way he looked at her.

He was commanding without speaking, dangerous without doing a single thing, and his eyes—those sharp, assessing eyes—held not even a flicker of the usual kindness or curiosity Ivy was used to from strangers.

He didn’t gawk or leer, didn’t employ charm or kindness.

He studied her the way a general surely studied the enemy, cold and calculating.

And still... beneath all that steel, there was something else. She’d felt it when he’d jumped to her side, when he’d steadied her. Not compassion exactly, but the ghost of something, maybe something he’d tried to bury long ago.

“But ye’ve yet to ask the way to any place that exists near here,” the brute pointed out, his voice like gravel and ice.

Ivy blinked. “What? I—of course I have. You must know where a road is—any main road that’ll get me back to Great Trossachs Path or Loch Katrine. Surely that’s not too difficult a task, to point me in the right direction.”

That did something. His jaw tightened, and without warning he closed the space between them in long, heavy steps.

He didn’t touch her, didn’t raise a hand, but the sheer size of him, the grim set of his mouth, and the storm brewing in his eyes was enough to make Ivy stumble a step back and suck in a sharp breath.

When he spoke, his voice was low but hammer-hard.

“Katrine is forty miles from here. Ye mean to walk it, do ye? In yer state?” His gaze dropped briefly—pointedly—to her belly before rising again with unflinching judgment.

“I dinna ken ye will. Or can. I said to ye already—had I nae?—to get moving, follow the trail o’ yer company.

They’ll be moving slow, with wounded and broken wagons.

If ye make haste, ye should catch them ’fore nightfall.

Or nae. Either way, it’s nae my concern. ”

He turned from her then, the conversation—if it could be called that—clearly finished.

Rude! she thought, though she was still holding her breath.

Her lungs expanded again only after he’d fully turned away, his heavy steps already crunching across the summer—dry ground.

But it was no use pretending her heart had returned to a normal rhythm.

Not after that —the nearness of him, the cold fire in his eyes, the way his presence seemed to swallow up all the air between them.

God, he was intense . She hadn’t meant to notice, but in that brief, electric moment—when he’d loomed in front of her like some furious mountain—she had seen him.

Really seen him. Up close, his eyes weren’t just brown.

They were golden and strange, ringed in darker shades that bled into lighter flecks, like whiskey backlit by flame.

His lashes were thick and unexpectedly long, almost too pretty for a man like him.

His skin, darkened by sun and weather, was rough in places, his stubbled jaw sharp with tension, his cheek marked with what looked like a faint scar just beneath one eye—old, pale, but unmistakable.

And somehow, amid the raw terror of being barked at by a very large, very dangerous-looking man, a ridiculous thought crept in: he smells like smoke and pine and leather.

What the hell was wrong with her?

She shook her head hard, willing her brain to reboot.

She was lost, maybe concussed—she prayed she had a concussion, it would explain so much— probably dehydrated, definitely terrified, and she had no business being distracted by the accidental hotness of some medieval dictator with serious attitude problems.

And yet... even as she watched his broad back retreat, muscles shifting beneath the worn fabric of his tunic and leather straps and sword, a small, maddening part of her brain whispered, Some people don’t just enter your life—they crash into you, like omens or storms. And you know it.

Instantly. There was no thunderclap or dramatic swell of music, but something in her gut said: you’ll be remembering this guy.

Ivy was disturbed by the thought that somehow it didn’t feel wrong. Not even a little.

Shaking herself mentally, she blinked and found the three youths staring at her.

Before they, too, departed she asked for some guidance.

“I was not with those people—that other group. I assume now they’re English, your enemy for some archaic reason.

But do you...” she paused and winced a bit, “do you think I might be safer with them? Because I...well, because I sound English, anyway?”

“Ye ken ye’re nae safe with us?” Asked the redhead, mildly affronted.

“No,” she was quick to protest. “No, not at all.” She was, after all, not bleeding, not dead. “I didn’t mean it like that. I should have said welcome . Do you think I’d be more welcomed by them?”

They conferred silently with each other, exchanging speaking glances before examining her—specifically her face and pregnant belly—before the wiry one replied.

“Ye approach a ruined army deep in the wilds, with nae man, and lass,” he said, and inclined his chin and eyes, indicating her middle, “there’s nae anything to stop them from taking what they’ll ken ye’re offering.”

“Only one reason a woman seeks out a marching army, ye ken,” added the wiry one.

Ivy tilted her head, confused—until the meaning hit. Her mouth fell open in a silent oh , the implication crawling over her skin like ice water.

Once again, her shoulders sagged under the weight of it all.

Tears welled and clung stubbornly to her lashes, blurring the faces before her.

Lately, she cried at anything—thank you, pregnancy hormones, or so the internet had warned her.

This was different, however. This was earned.

She was lost in a place she didn’t recognize, with no understanding of how she’d arrived or how to get back.

She’d witnessed what appeared to be an actual battle—real weapons, real blood, real corpses.

Not actors, not a reenactment, not pretend, she’d just been told.

She was alone, dangerously confused, mildly panicked, and beginning to fear that whatever had happened to her was more than bizarre, but possibly unfixable.

“That’ll nae be a concern with the MacKinlays, lass. Neither Cap’n nae the laird would stand for it, any abuse of a lass.”

It was the brown-haired, kind-eyed kid who spoke, drawing Ivy’s watery gaze to him.

“That,” she asked hesitantly, hitching her thumb over her shoulder toward the retreating brute, “was the captain?”

The redhead frowned as if she’d just asked whether water was dry. “That was the laird. Alaric MacKinlay, lass. Son of Torcull. Laird to all MacKinlay kin. Mormaer of Braalach.”

“Oh.” Actually, that made perfect sense. Of course he was in charge. He didn’t look like a man who took orders from anyone.

Still, Ivy looked back to the kind-eyed boy, uncertain why he’d said what he did. The laird had made it perfectly clear she wasn’t his concern. “I appreciate you saying that about your leaders not tolerating abuse, but I’m afraid it doesn’t help me much if he’s not—”

“We’ll take ye in,” he said evenly, as if it were already settled. “See ye as far as the auld Roman road in the Trossachs area. That should carry ye where ye need.”

She blinked. “But he just said—”

“He said ye were nae his concern,” the redhead cut in with a shrug. “Dinna want the chore of ye. But he’ll nae stop us taking ye as far as the road, especially in yer condition.”

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.