Page 94 of A Scot on the Rocks

“Aye. So do I.”

He opened the castle door for her, and she stepped inside, thinking of the little experimental run waiting for them in the morning and the money locked safely in Jamie’s keeping. She’d come to Glenbrae for a whisky that nobody in her own time knew how to make. Now she was here in the past, closer than she’d ever been, and the man helping her find it believed that success would send her home, but she hadn’t seen the Cailleach since she’d arrived, and had no idea if or how to get home.

Chapter 19

Olivia

By noon the next day, Olivia had tasted the small batch and decided it was worth another attempt. Alasdair had allowed that the spirit was promising, which from him amounted to a standing ovation, and Jamie had been on his way to tell Ewan when someone came running up from the lower road shouting about a broken cart.

Jamie set the cup down without finishing it. “Whose?”

“Ours. The one bound for the coast. The axle’s gone beside the burn.”

That brought half the still house to the door. Olivia went with them, partly because she’d spent the morning hauling water and welcomed an excuse to get outside, and partly because the moment Jamie heard somebody needed help, he was already reaching for his coat.

The cart had stopped at the worst possible place, on a narrow stretch of the path with a steep bank on one side and the burn running fast on the other. One wheel had collapsed inward. The horse stood trembling in the traces while Ewan held its head, and a frightened boy of about ten clung to the hedge with both hands. Three casks lay on their sides in the mud. A fourth had shifted dangerously against the cart’s broken rail.

“Easy,” Jamie murmured to the horse as he approached. He took the reins from Ewan and stroked the animal’s wet neck, speaking quietly until she stopped pulling against the traces. “There now. You’ve done your part.”

“I tried to hold her,” the boy said, sounding close to tears.

“And ye did well. Now stand with Mistress Olivia where I can see ye.” Jamie glanced at her. “Would ye mind?”

“I’ve got him.”

She brought the child a little way up the bank and tucked him beside her while Jamie sent Finlay for a length of timber and had Alasdair fetch rope from the pack pony. No one argued, and no one stood about waiting for the obvious instructions that Jamie was already giving. He knew which cask had to be shifted first, how to keep the horse from being dragged sideways, and exactly where to place the timber beneath the cart so the remaining wheel wouldn’t slide into the burn.

The boy watched, wide-eyed. “Is the whisky ruined?”

“Not if we can help it.” Olivia brushed mud from his sleeve. “What’s your name?”

“Dougal.”

“Well, Dougal, you can tell everyone you survived an attack by a vicious cart.”

He gave a startled laugh, then stopped when the loaded cart groaned.

Jamie had put his shoulder beneath the rail while Ewan worked a rope around the upper cask.

“When I say, pull steady. Dinna jerk it.” He waited until Finlay had braced the timber before giving the signal, and the men eased the weight down onto firm ground while the cart creaked and settled another inch. Olivia held her breath until they were clear.

An hour later the damaged wheel lay in the grass, the casks were secure beneath a tarred cover, and Jamie was on his knees fitting a temporary brace to the axle so they could move the cart without losing the rest of its cargo. Dougal had been pressed into service carrying pegs, an honor he took so seriously that he counted them twice before handing them over.

“Ye’ll know how to mend one yourself next time,” Jamie told him.

“I’d rather there wasn’t a next time.”

“Aye, lad. That’s the wisest thing said here all morning.”

Olivia laughed with the others. She’d wished, back in Boston in her own time, for a man who could actually do something useful with his hands. Apparently the universe had interpreted that request with an enthusiasm she hadn’t anticipated.

Jamie could make a frightened animal stand quietly, coax a broken cart back onto the road, teach a child while working, and still find time to ask whether anybody had eaten. She watched him accept a crust of bread from Ewan without pausing in his work and wondered how a man could be so completely unaware of the effect he had on her.

They reached the coast later than planned. The road dropped between wet fields and stone cottages toward a small harbor where fishing boats rocked against the quay. Ropes creaked against wooden posts, gulls fought over scraps near the fish stalls, and the air was sharp with salt, tar, wet nets, and the smell of herring. Beyond the warehouses, sails moved against a pale strip of sea.

Olivia would have happily spent an hour watching everything. Men rolled barrels toward a low stone storehouse, women called prices across baskets of fish, and two children raced along the quay until a sailor threatened to throw them into the water if they knocked over his tackle. The harbor was nothing like the preserved historical sites she’d visited in her own time.

Jamie brought the repaired cart to a yard behind an inn and left Finlay with the horse.