Page 55 of A Scot on the Rocks

“You have no idea.”

“Mayhap I should see it for myself one day.”

He said it lightly, but the words caught Olivia somewhere beneath the ribs.

For an instant she saw him in South Boston, ducking through the pub door with rain in his dark hair, inspecting the brass rail and old hinges before Grandma Bennett had even decided whether she approved of him. Grandma would feed him enough for three men, pretend not to like him for at least an hour, then interrogate him about his intentions before Olivia had figured them out herself.

But he’d never see any of it, never hear the T beneath the street, sit at the bar where she’d done her homework, or meet the woman who’d raised her.

Olivia looked away before the thought could show too clearly on her face.

When she glanced back, Jamie’s smile had softened. He didn’t ask, and Olivia was beginning to understand and respect that about him. For a man curious enough to take apart her boots if given the opportunity, he seemed remarkably capable of leaving another person’s secrets and thoughts to themselves.

“You can barely see them,” Olivia pointed out as she turned in a circle.

Morag collected her shawl. “Come along before the pair of ye spend the whole day talking about shoes.”

Outside, the storm had softened into mist. Dunarraidh’s wet stones shone dark behind them, and the glen below stretched away in green slopes, low cottages, chimney smoke, sheep, and muddy tracks that bore little resemblance to the modern roads Olivia knew.

Morag showed her how to lift just enough of her skirts to clear the mud while still being respectable.

“There should be instructions for this.”

“There is. It’s called being five years old.”

Jamie laughed beside her.

“You’re both very supportive.”

They started downhill, Morag ahead and Jamie beside Olivia, while she adjusted to the weight and movement of the skirts. Her boots gave her enough traction that she quickly found a rhythm, and once she did, she began noticing everything else.

A woman shook a cloth outside a cottage while two children carried a basket between them. Chickens scratched near a wall. Shaggy cattle stood in a stone enclosure with rain darkening their coats, and somewhere a baby began crying from inside one of the cottages while a woman called back without interrupting whatever work occupied her hands.

She’d visited enough historic distilleries to recognize the polished version of the past, the careful tools, reconstructed rooms, tidy barrels, and strategically romantic lighting designed to make visitors picture themselves there.

This wasn’t that.

Smoke caught in her throat, mud clung to her boots, wool warmed around her legs as she walked, and people stared at her without pretending otherwise.

Morag glanced toward two children watching from beside a wall. “They’ll have half the village out before we reach the first cottage.”

Olivia looked down at herself. “Because of the clothes?”

“Nay,” Jamie said.

She followed his gaze toward the hem of her gown and sighed. “The boots.”

“They’re memorable.”

“I’m starting to regret saving them.”

Jamie looked genuinely alarmed. “Dinna say such things.”

Morag clucked her tongue. “Because yer a stranger. They canna even see the boots.” She rolled her eyes at Jamie.

The wind shifted, carrying a familiar scent through the air beneath the smoke from the cottages.

She stopped, sniffing. It was malted barley. There was peat smoke with it, but it wasn’t the heavy medicinal character modern drinkers often assumed belonged automatically to old Highland whisky. Here the smoke sat closer to the grain, softer and earthier, threaded through with warmth and a faint sweetness that made it part of the malt rather than something laid over the top.