She kept up her riding lessons with Marianne, too, getting more and more comfortable astride the black mare that had become her favorite. Marianne was encouraging but strict about form — she applied herself diligently, and Marianne even let her try a faster gait once or twice. Trotting was harder than walking, and she woke each morning with her legs sore in places she didn't even know she had muscles.
On the third day, Brendan took the seat next to her at breakfast. Pleased to see him, she shifted over to make room, trying not to let her face flush with how pathetically excited she was to spend some time with him… the crush, it seemed, had not eased up after a couple of days of distraction.
"I was wondering if you'd do me a favor," Brendan said thoughtfully over his porridge.
She lifted her eyes, curious. "Yeah?"
"My ward, Jamie — he's a curious young man. I think he'd be fascinated to learn a little about what you do. Would you be willing to spend the day with us?"
That was right — she remembered, now, why she hadn't seen much of Brendan lately. He'd been busy with his ward, the boy he was a tutor to… Audrina's son Jamie. She had to admit, she was a little curious about the boy. "I'd love to meet him."
"Great." Brendan smiled. "We'll head up to my quarters after breakfast, then? I've a room there we use for lessons," he explained hastily, making her grin.
After breakfast, they climbed the stairs together, Brendan sticking close at her side. She couldn't help but compare their heights — as a tall woman, she was always aware of whether men were taller than her, and as far as she was concerned Brendan was a perfect height. Just tall enough that she'd be able to wear heels and still have him be taller than her… but not so tall that she couldn't reach up and kiss him if she wanted to… she blushed crimson at that thought, annoyed with herself for thinking it and extra annoyed at herself for blushing about it. Thankfully, he didn't seem to notice — or if he did, he was too much of a gentleman to ask why she was blushing.
His quarters were neat and tidy, she noticed with approval — the room he'd mentioned using for lessons was pleasantly airy, with a window overlooking the moors as well as a couple of comfortably large desks with books stacked high. "He'll be here in a minute or two," Brendan said, offering her a seat by the window. She took one of the books, curious about the strange diagrams on its pages, and he smiled.
"We've been studying local herbs," he explained, leaning over to look over her shoulder at the diagrams… she could feel the warmth of his body close to her and did her best not to shiver, resisting the urge to lean into his space. "The annotations are from his mother, Audrina — she was some kind of healer in her own time, so she has some insight into this work."
Sure enough, the pages were covered in notes made in a different hand, neat and careful. She smiled as she read Audrina's explanation that willow bark was still used as a remedy for pain in the future, but in a more concentrated form called aspirin. "Amazing," she said softly. "So many of the remedies we use are so old…"
"Audrina's told me a little, but I'm no expert," Brendan said with a shrug. A tapping on the door distracted him, and he called out for them to come in, smiling as the door creaked open. "Here's the expert!"
Jamie wasn't what she'd been expecting at all. Audrina had said that her son was fifteen — Jamie barely looked twelve. Small for his age, it seemed, with a shock of blond hair that was the same white-blonde as Donal's… the family resemblance was clear. He was bright-eyed and energetic, though she noticed he moved a little carefully — a skinny, fragile child. Audrina had explained that the boy had some kind of seizure disorder. She wondered what it was… and whether he'd have survived this long without the careful ministrations of a nurse from the future.
"Oh! I didn't realize we had company!" Jamie said brightly, a smile spreading across his face as he sketched her a neat little bow. "You must be Helena!"
She nodded, bowing her head a little, not sure of the etiquette here — but before she could worry about getting up he'd hopped across the room to take a seat beside her, his eyes glowing with curiosity.
"You're from the future like my mother, yes?"
Brendan chuckled. "Don't interrogate the poor lass, Jamie."
"It's okay. Yeah, I'm from the future." That felt utterly ridiculous. Helena had never been any good at all with children. Her sister was great with them — she remembered how Bec had always played with their baby cousins, always drawing them into whatever ridiculous fantasy world she was constructing… a pang of grief rippled through her at the thought that she might never see Bec again. No, she thought firmly. She wasn't going to let that happen. She was going to find her way home, no matter what.
"What part of America did you come from?" Jamie asked, his eyes intent. "Mother's from a place called San Francisco, she said."
"Oh, really?" Helena blinked. It seemed Audrina's hometown wasn't too far away from hers. "I'm from Los Angeles. It's —"
"Down the coast from San Francisco!" Jamie interrupted her, eyes shining. "Yes, Mother drew me a map. It's fascinating. What was Los Angeles like?"
She sighed, trying to figure out how to describe the place to someone with absolutely no frame of reference. "Big and busy," she said with a shrug. "Lots of sunshine, lots of people and buildings and cars…"
"Mother's told me about cars, too," he said brightly. "When I'm older I'm going to see if I can't figure out how to make one."
She blinked, glancing up at Brendan. "Is that really a good idea?" she said, a little hesitantly. "What if something… goes wrong?"
"Fiona thinks it's a good idea," Jamie said, lowering his voice in a conspiratorial kind of way. "She said she'll help me get the things I need so long as I wait a few years before I try it."
Helena couldn't help but laugh at that. Trust Fiona to encourage that kind of experimentation. "I meant if you succeed," she said, warming to this strange, highly intelligent little boy. "If you successfully make a car hundreds of years before the car was invented… I mean, that might do some damage to the space-time continuum, mightn't it?"
His eyes went as wide as saucers. "The what?"
"Something my sister told me about once," she said, grinning to herself as she remembered Bec's science fiction phase. The girl had read just about every sci-fi novel in the library, staying up late into the night to come up with her own baffling theories about time travel and theoretical physics. Helena, a few years older, had been studying physics at school at the time, and had offered to lend her little sister her textbooks — but Bec had turned her down, preferring her own esoteric mix of science fiction novels and vastly complicated website about theoretical physics that Helena suspected Bec understood maybe half of. It was a shame she hadn't paid closer attention to her little sister's projects… but how could she have known that she herself might have been a time traveler some day? It should have been Bec in her place, she thought with a sigh.
"Your sister? Is she a scientist?"
"She's more of … a student," Helena said thoughtfully, thinking of her little sister with a fond smile. "She loves studying more than anything. She has trouble sticking to one subject, she's so excited to learn about everything that she can…"
"Sounds like Jamie," Brendan said with a broad grin, reaching over to ruffle the boy's white-blond hair. "We can barely stick to one subject at a time, he's so interested in everything else. As you can imagine, he's interrogated every single one of you time-stranded women —"
"I don't interrogate," Jamie objected stridently, his eyes bright. "I just — I just ask questions, that's all! I tell them to send me away if I get annoying," he added reproachfully.
"An inquisitive spirit is something to be commended," Brendan said with a smile. "Helena here is a geologist. That means she studies rocks, and land forms, and how the world itself is put together."
That was rather a poetic way of putting it, and Helena couldn't help smiling at Brendan as she realized how closely he'd listened to her nattering on about her job. That fe
lt good, that he'd cared enough to listen closely, even though he didn't understand… but it wasn't long before she was completely absorbed by Jamie. The boy was full of questions, hundreds of them — intelligent questions, most of them, questions that spoke to a greater intellect than a lot of the undergrad students she taught back home. He had a little notebook that he was scribbling in with a pen, and she grinned when she saw him stretching his hand, which was clearly cramping up with the speed he was writing at.
"Sorry," he said breathlessly. "Sorry if I'm asking too many questions, too, it's just so interesting —"
"You're the best audience I've ever had for a lecture," she said with a grin, thinking back to the bored undergrads she'd lectured on more than one occasion. Having a kid like Jamie in the front row would have made those classes fly by a lot faster, that was for sure… and the questions he was asking probably would have taught his older classmates a thing or two, too. "Can I take you back home with me?"
Jamie's eyes lit up. "Yes, yes, yes!"
Brendan chuckled. "First things first," he said. "You've got to finish learning what you can here before you go traveling off to the future."
"Is that even possible? I thought it was a one-way trip," Jamie said.
Helena bit her lip. "We're not sure," she said softly, shrugging. "But I'm going to see if I can find a way home."
Brendan was looking at her — but when she looked up, he looked away. Was that a look of sadness on his face? She shook it off, determined to focus on the matter at hand — which was Jamie, already full of questions again, this time about how she'd gotten here.
"There are really caves in those cliffs?" he asked curiously when she explained what she'd been doing before she'd been brought here.
She nodded, looking up at Brendan, who was still gazing out of the window across the moors. Had she offended him by mentioning that she wanted to find a way home? Why? Did he want her to stay? Her pulse accelerated and she forced herself to focus on what she was saying… but part of her was vitally curious about what Brendan was thinking right now.
"There are. A bunch of them, from what I could see when I looked around. It's strange — nobody around here seems to have found them. I love caves, though," she said with a grin. "I was actually on holiday over here — partly because I wanted to see Scotland, but mostly because I wanted to explore those caves."
"You can just go on holiday to the other side of the world in the future," Jamie said softly. "That sounds amazing. So you explore caves as a hobby?"
"Yeah. It's called spelunking."
He wrote that word down, his eyes shining. "And you fell asleep in the caves and woke up here? Do you think that if you go back into the caves and fall asleep again, you might wake up back in your own time?"
"I have no reason to think that will work," she admitted, shrugging. "I mean, nobody else we know of who's been brought back here has been able to get back home. But it's worth a shot."
"If the caves are even still there," Brendan pointed out, raising his eyebrow. "I mean… nobody's seen them or heard of them. Have you considered there simply might not be caves in those cliffs?"
"They were there," she said irritably. "I told you, I went into them."
"Maybe they were carved out between now and then," Brendan suggested.
Why was he arguing with her? She gritted her teeth, not wanting to snap at him in front of his student… it had always made her so uncomfortable when her professors got snappy with each other at college.
"No, I dated some of the carvings inside the cave. They're thousands of years old at least. It's more likely that the entrance is covered over. I'll just uncover it. Easy."
"There might be strange things in there," Jamie said softly, his eyes glowing. "Strange animals… monsters, maybe, that live in the dark!"
"Maybe." She chuckled. "Creatures do like caves." A flash of her dream… the memory of walking through the fog and realizing slowly that she was inside the cave… then seeing the monster lurching up ahead of her, the sick sheen of its black eyes, the blood on its metallic talons… she shivered a little, trying to take her mind off it.
"It's certainly mysterious," Brendan said thoughtfully. "If you'd like, I'd be happy to accompany you once the area's safe. We can look around together. You might need help," he added, "if the entrance is covered as you suspect."
Was he trying to make an excuse to spend time with her, she wondered, feeling the blood rise to her face? Or was he legitimately interested in the cave? It was hard to tell… and at any rate, it was best to play it safe, especially in front of his student. So she nodded as though it was a simple request, giving him a quick smile. "That would be great. Thanks, Brendan. It'll be much easier to go together."
"Can I come?" Jamie said immediately.
Brendan ruffled his hair again. "When you're older, alright?" he said softly. "And when we know a little more about your condition."
"I know, I know," Jamie said heavily.
Helena blinked, confused, and the boy sighed.
"I'm sick. I've been sick since I was little — nobody knows what's wrong with me. I get these — fits. Seizures, Mother calls them. But I'm going to study hard with Brendan and with Mother, and eventually I'm going to figure out what medicine stops me having the fits, and then nobody will be able to stop me from doing anything I want to do."
Helena laughed, admiring the boy's pluck. "I bet it's only a matter of time before the whole world is your oyster, Jamie."
Chapter 12
They spent another few hours talking before Jamie's energy started to flag. Brendan seemed to catch on more quickly than Helena did — there was a wariness to him, and he suggested gently that Jamie head down for some lunch, but the boy was deeply invested in Helena's explanation of the difference between metamorphic and igneous rocks and waved Brendan away. Helena didn't understand why the man looked so tight-lipped and worried… until Jamie's face fell slack and he suddenly slumped over in the chair. Alarmed, she looked up at Brendan, not sure what had happened — only to see him shaking his head, knowing and grim.
"He gets like this," he said softly, moving to lift the boy gently in his arms. Jamie's eyes were closed, and his body was shaking — Brendan took him swiftly through a door that led to the rest of his quarters, and Helena followed, feeling oddly responsible for what was happening. Carefully, Brendan shuttered the windows and settled the boy in his bed, sitting by his side for a few minutes and murmuring soothingly to him as he shook. Eventually, the shudders stilled, and Brendan heaved a sigh.
"What's the matter?" Helena whispered, not wanting to disturb the boy now that he finally looked like he was at peace.
"We don't know," Brendan said simply. "He's had fits like this ever since he was a small child… his mother doesn't know what it is either, though she says if she had certain machines from her own time that she'd be able to find out. From what we can tell, the fits come on when he's overexcited or overstimulated. They used to be a lot worse, though, ever since they changed his diet, they've gotten better, but he's not healed," he added softly, stroking Jamie's hair. The little boy looked fast asleep now, his chest rising and falling, but Helena bit her lip.
"How long will he be like this?"
"A few days, usually. He'll be tired and have a headache — we've realized the best thing is for him to rest, then ease back into regular life."
"I'm so sorry," she said, biting her lip. "I can't help but feel like I had something to do with this —"
"You didn't," Brendan said firmly. "Absolutely not. Don't blame yourself, Helena. He's had this condition for a long time."
"But I was the one who was overstimulating him —"
"And he was the one who was getting over-excited, even though his mother's taught him breathing exercises and all sorts that he's supposed to do when he gets too elevated," Brendan said firmly. "So that's the last I'll hear of it."
"At least let me help look after him?" she offered, rising to her feet to follow him out of the r
oom. The door closed gently behind him, he turned to her, raising an eyebrow.
"You'd do that?"
"I mean, I'm not a nurse or anything, but — yeah, let me help. Whatever I can do."
"Honestly, the most difficult part is usually getting him to stay in bed," Brendan said with a rueful smile on his handsome face. "If you're willing to come and sit with him as he gets better, I'd imagine that will go some way to easing his recovery."
"Definitely," she said firmly. "I'll tell him everything I know about geology. That'll bore him right to sleep."
Brendan laughed. "I think you're underestimating his inquisitive spirit, there. But maybe we'll ease off on talks about monsters living in caves. I think that might have gotten him a little over-excited."
She nodded, feeling a flare of regret that she'd indulged that line of conversation. "I don't really think there are monsters living in that cave, by the way," she told him, and he laughed, his face crinkling in a broad smile.
"I know that. But you never know, around these parts," he said with a shrug.
They headed down to lunch together after checking that Jamie was soundly sleeping. He looked much more frail and fragile lying there asleep, with none of the bright, inquisitive energy that was so infectious bouncing around on his face. She could see why Audrina's husband Colin had retired from his position as Laird to take care of the boy — it was clear that he wasn't well at all.
"It's a shame," Brendan said softly as they shared a meal. He'd let Audrina know the boy was unwell — they'd run into her on their way into the dining hall. She'd been dismayed, but not too upset — clearly this was something that had happened before and would happen again. She was glad to know that both Brendan and Helena were there to take care of him, at least. "The poor lad was determined to be a soldier just like his dad."
Highlander Hunted: A Scottish Time Travel Romance (Highlander In Time Book 8) Page 9