Page 27 of The Scot Who Loved Me (A Scots Through Time #3)

Chapter

Nineteen

A s darkness fell, fires bloomed across the camp like earthbound stars.

William had been called away yet again to talk about plans with the prince and others.

Various men gathered in circles, sharing what food and drink they had.

Songs rose into the night air, some joyful, others haunting with loss not yet experienced but somehow anticipated.

After helping serve the meager soup, Harper retreated to a quiet spot to write in her journal. The day’s events filled one page, while questions occupied another. How much could she interfere? Should she warn them of the disaster waiting at Culloden? Would they even believe her?

A shadow fell across the page. Angus stood before her, uncharacteristically hesitant.

“The lads and I were wondering...” He shifted his weight. “That is, if ye wouldn’t mind...”

“What is it, Angus?” Harper prompted, closing her journal.

“Could ye look at Dougal’s hand? The cut’s gone bad, I think, but he’s too stubborn to ask.”

The request surprised her. After her success with a few wounds, she’d treated a few minor injuries, but the men generally remained wary of her methods.

There was a healer who traveled with them, but she was always in demand, so after following her around for a week, the woman said Harper could help with the minor scrapes and such.

Thank goodness she wasn’t squeamish by nature.

“Of course.” She tucked away the journal and followed Angus to where a group of men huddled around a fire. Among them sat a young man cradling his hand, pain evident in his drawn face.

“Let me see,” Harper said gently, kneeling beside him.

Reluctantly, Dougal extended his hand. The cut across his palm had swollen, red around the wound.

“I need hot water, a clean cloth, whisky, and my herb pouch,” she called out, grateful her memory was excellent as she’d watched the healer work.

The men scrambled to fulfill her requests, their earlier skepticism forgotten in the face of their comrade’s suffering. Harper drained the infection, cleaned the wound thoroughly with whisky, and applied a poultice of the herbs the healer had helped her identify for their antiseptic properties.

“Keep it clean and dry,” she instructed when finished bandaging it up. “Come find me tomorrow so I can check it.”

“Thank ye, mistress,” Dougal murmured, the relief evident in his voice.

As she packed up her supplies, William stepped from the shadows into the firelight, his tall figure drawing the attention of nearby men as he was taller than most, a good six three, if she had to guess.

“You’ve learned well from the healer,” he said quietly, crouching beside her. “Dougal might have lost that hand without your care.”

She secured the last of her herbs in their pouch, making a mental note to go gathering tomorrow. “I just cleaned it properly. Nothing miraculous.”

“The men are noticing.” His voice lowered, meant only for her ears. “They no longer see ye as an outlander.”

She glanced up, meeting his intense blue gaze. “Not all of them. Some still cross themselves when I walk by.”

His mouth quirked into a half-smile. “Give them time. Highlanders are slow to trust but loyal once you’ve earned it.” He reached out, briefly touching her hand.

Later, unable to sleep despite her exhaustion, she wandered to the edge of camp.

The rain had stopped, leaving the night air fresh and cool.

Stars glittered overhead, brighter than she’d ever seen them in her time without all the light pollution.

She pulled out her journal again, using the moonlight to see the pages.

August 22, 1745, she wrote. Today I watched Charles Stuart pick the white rose that would become the symbol of his cause.

A simple gesture that history would remember.

How strange to witness these moments that textbooks reduced to mere sentences.

These aren’t historical figures, they’re people with dirt under their nails and hope in their hearts.

I don’t know what I’m doing here. Every day I spend in this time makes me question further. Am I meant to change things? To preserve them? What happens if I interfere? If I don’t?

William suspects something. He watches me when he thinks I’m not looking, puzzling over my slips and strange knowledge. Sometimes I want to tell him everything about Culloden, about the clearances, about how this rising ends in blood and exile. But would that make things better or worse?

I’m in love with him. I know I shouldn’t be. He belongs to this time, and I belong back in mine. But when he looks at me...

I should tell him the truth. All of it. But what if knowledge of the future only ensures it happens? What if my presence here is already changing things in ways I can’t predict?

History records that the Jacobites will be destroyed at Culloden in April 1746.

The prince will flee. The government will dismantle the clan system.

The Highland way of life, their language, dress, their very culture, will be systematically destroyed.

William’s world will end in blood and fire on a cold moor, and those who survive will face exile or execution.

He deserves to know what he’s marching toward. They all do. But would the truth save them or condemn them? And if I change the past, what happens to the future, to my future? To everyone who ever lived after this moment?

I don’t belong here. But I don’t know how to get back. And yet with each passing day, I’m less certain I want to.

“Ye shouldna be wandering alone,” William’s voice interrupted her thoughts. He stepped out of the shadows, materializing like a specter. “It isn’t safe, even in our own camp.”

She hastily closed the journal. “I couldn’t sleep. Too many thoughts.”

He nodded, understanding in his eyes. “I’ve got the watch, anyway. Walk with me if ye like.”

They moved in companionable silence along the perimeter of the camp. The sounds of snoring men and the occasional whinny from the horses filled the night. In the distance, an owl called, its cry echoing across the glen.

“That was good work ye did with Dougal,” William said finally. “Where does a geologist learn such healing? Ye only spent a sennight with the healer.”

The question caught her off guard. “Field expeditions can be dangerous. We all learned first aid. Following the healer around has taught me a great deal.” She nudged him with her shoulder. “You know how I like to ask questions.”

“Aye.” He smiled. “First aid,” he repeated the unfamiliar term. “Another of your strange phrases.”

She tensed, realizing the slip. “It’s what we call immediate treatment for injuries.”

He was silent for several steps. “Ye know, in the Highlands, we believe some people walk between worlds. They have knowledge others don’t, see things others can’t.”

Harper had no answer for that, anything she said would give her away. They walked in silence until reaching a small rise overlooking the sleeping camp.

“Do you ever wonder what you’re fighting for?” she asked suddenly. “Beyond restoring the Stuarts?”

He considered her question carefully. “Home,” he finally answered. “The right to live by our own laws, speak our own tongue, follow our own ways.” He gazed out at the dark hills. “The English would make us forget who we are.”

“And you think the Stuarts would protect those things?”

“I think they’d have less cause to destroy them.” His voice hardened. “King George sits in London, caring nothing for Scotland except what wealth and men he can extract from it. At least James Stuart has Highland blood.”

Harper wanted to tell him that history would judge the Stuarts harshly too, that the clan system he cherished would be systematically dismantled regardless of who won this conflict. But the words died on her lips. What right had she to rob him of hope?

“What of you?” William asked. “What do ye fight for? Ye’re far from home with no stake in our quarrel.”

The question caught her off guard. What was she fighting for? She’d been thrust into this time without choice, swept along by events beyond her control.

“I’m not fighting,” she said finally. “I’m... surviving. Learning. Trying to understand my place in all this.”

William studied her face in the starlight.

“I wonder if there’s more to your story than a Boston widow seeking a new beginning.

” His voice dropped lower. “Sometimes I think ye’re running from something or someone.

A husband, perhaps? Not dead as ye claim, but cruel enough to flee from?

” He touched her arm. “Did he beat ye, lass?”

Relief flooded through her. For a moment she thought he’d somehow guessed the impossible truth. “No. I have no husband.” She met his gaze in the moonlight. “My past is my own. Some stories aren’t meant to be shared.”

He made a particularly Scottish noise in the back of his throat. “And ye write in that wee book of yours each night. What tales do ye tell, I wonder?”

“Just... observations. Thoughts.” She hesitated. “Things I don’t want to forget.”

William nodded slowly. “We all have our secrets, I suppose. Even I.”

This admission surprised her. “What secrets does William MacGregor keep?”

A shadow crossed his face. “Some burdens are too heavy to share, even under stars like these.”

Something in his tone stopped her from pressing further. Instead, she gazed upward as a shooting star streaked across the sky, leaving a trail of silver light.

“Make a wish,” she said automatically.

“Is that a colonial custom?”

“I... yes. When you see a falling star, you make a wish.”

William looked thoughtful. “And what would ye wish for, if wishes held power?”

“Home.” The truth rose to her lips unbidden. “To know where I belong.” The admission felt raw, exposing a vulnerability she usually kept hidden.

He reached for her hand then, his fingers warm against hers. “For tonight, ye belong here,” he said simply. “Perhaps that’s enough for now.”

The tenderness in his voice undid her. When she looked up, his eyes reflected the starlight, and the longing she saw there matched her own. He stepped closer, his hand rising to brush a strand of hair from her face.

“William,” she whispered, a question and permission in the same breath.

He bent his head, and this time when his lips found hers, there was nothing tentative about it.

Unlike their other kisses, this was a claiming.

His arms encircled her waist, drawing her against the solid warmth of his chest as her hands found their way to his shoulders.

The kiss deepened, and Harper felt herself falling into it, into him.

For one suspended moment, time itself seemed to stop, past and future irrelevant against the urgent present of his mouth on hers, his heartbeat against her palm.

When they finally broke apart, both breathless, William rested his forehead against hers. “I shouldn’t have done that,” he murmured, though he made no move to release her.

“Why not?” She asked, her voice unsteady.

“Because now I’ll want to do it again.” His thumb traced her lower lip. “And there’s a war coming. I have no right to start something I canna promise to finish.”

She closed her eyes against the truth of his words and the greater truth she couldn’t tell him, that his war was already lost. Instead, she leaned up and pressed another quick kiss to his lips.

In a soft voice, she said, “We’ll make the most of every moment.”

They continued their circuit of the camp, hand in hand, while overhead the stars wheeled in their ancient patterns, indifferent to the small human dramas playing out beneath them. Tomorrow would bring another day of marching, another step closer to Edinburgh and the battles that awaited.

Later, alone in her small tent, Harper listened to the sounds of the camp, fingers tracing her lips. Somewhere nearby, a man softly played a lament on a wooden flute, the melody speaking of loves lost and battles yet to come.