Page 24 of Stolen Hours

“THE FENCLANS ARE ALLgood stock. Fine people. Nice boys, all of them. They bring gifts of salmon and venison regularly, even though it’s long, long ago that the custom of offering the local ‘wise woman’ a gift to avoid her wrath faded from this area. I couldn’t say about other areas, mind.”

Farrah paced, a long, shapeless sweater around her summer dress. It did nothing for her lean figure, and her maternal grandmother, who lived in Connecticut, was always quick to point that out. “I was reaching for this branch, Gran, and my hand landed on his arm. But he snapped the branch for me, Gran, like this.” Farrah pulled the branch out of her sweater pocket. She hadn’t put it down, even hours after she’d come home and dried off.

“Ohhh,” her grandmother peered over her spectacles and let out a little cry of knowing. “That’s your man, then.”

“What? I ... No! We just met.”

Her grandmother’s eyes glinted silver under spectacles, and she shook her head. “You’ll meet again. Again and again, if I know my signs, and I do. That’s your man, and you’ll bear him twins. And that’s what you want, my girl. You haven’t known what you wanted ever since you landed on my doorstep, all jumbled up inside, waiting. Wanting. Unsettled. And that man, that big Orc of a man, settled your heart and spirit—but not your boots. Go take a walk by the water, love. Think on it. You know I’m right.” Her grandmother kissed her cheek. “I’m always right. You fell for that boy with a single glance.”

Farrah chuckled, but she didn’t argue. Maybe her grandmother was right. They didn’t call her the local wise woman for nothing.

But it was scary. The instant pull and connection she felt towards Ian was like nothing she’d ever experienced. Magical. A soul bond. She had felt like sobbing when she parted from him earlier, and yet she’d been hugging herself and dancing in her bedroom as she’d changed out of her muddy clothes, elated inside because she’d found him. Found him at last, her heart said, as though she’d been looking for a long, long time.

Well, maybe if her heart and spirit were properly settled, she’d know it herself soon. Maybe she’d ask for a sign.

“Farrah?” A soft, deep voice said her name uncertainly, almost as if the speaker couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

She whirled in the pebbly sand, face lighting up and heart leaping with a strange kind of joy she had never known. “Ian!”

“I couldnae settle at home. I wanted to walk by the water—but mainly because I hoped to see you,” he confessed, big form stepping closer, dwarfing her. His head ducked bashfully, and he pulled at the plait draped over his shoulder. “Would you... Would you like to come to tea tomorrow? Ask your gran to come along, if she’d like. My mother’s baking a Madeira cake.”

“Gran loves those.”

“I know, we give them to her every winter.”

“The Falkirks and Fenclans have been friends for ages, by the sounds of it.” Farrah smiled and took his massive arm easily when he offered it.

“Aye. Always good friends.” He rested his other hand on top of the one nestled in the crook of his arm, sandwiching her in protective muscle and strong fingers.

I feel safe with him. Happy with him. Settled. “I’d love to come to tea.”

THEY WALKED FOR ANhour before the wind picked up, and his Farrah shivered. He knew where the caves were, the ones that would fill with water by morning, and the ones that would stay dry. He knew how to make a fire. He knew how to do everything but keep from talking and making a bloody fool of himself when they went inside the mouth of a dry (well, damp) cave, out of the chill and wet wind, and he sat her on one of the old broken boats that was upturned and covered with sacking, a favorite hiding place when he brought the bairns in his clan to the seaside to fish or picnic.

“D’ye ken an old place in Pine Ridge, just outside of town, that hasn’t been lived in for fifty or so years? Old broken-down place?”

“There are a few of them in Pine Ridge. Some are haunted. One is owned by a golem, and it’s not so much broken down as it has an air of ‘abandoned’ even though he lives here. I think I know the one you’re talking about if it has a ton of land and it’s pretty overgrown? The forest is kind of reclaiming it,” Farrah said, making room for him to sit beside her.

When he did, she snuggled up closer and leaned into his side, making his heart hammer in his chest. “I’m asking my family if I can go to Pine Ridge. The clan lands have had no steward for years, not on site, as it were. I’d go and fix up the place. Make it a proper home for a wife and bairns. Expand the land. Build other cottages on it. Or lodges. Even a big, sprawling place if she liked—but not touch too much of the forest around it. So many places for her to garden. Grow acres of herbs. Plant sacred trees. Places for the little ones to play...” Ian tried and failed to stop talking by clamping his teeth together.

No luck. “I would hunt for her, of course, and take a job if need be, but then... Then I thought about renting out those lodges and cottages.We’d always own the land. I mean, the Fenclans. But maybe, someday, there would be more, maybe.”

Ian swallowed and poked the fire, waiting for Farrah to laugh at him, to point out how mad he sounded, rambling on about all these cottages and lodges, about building a big future when his assets totaled one dilapidated old house, a shack maybe, on the edge of town.

Or to notice that he’d slipped into using the word “we,” because she was already there in his mind, his mate, his other half, building a future with him.

Instead, Farrah leaned her head on his shoulder. “Some outbuildings around the main house would be amazing. Maybe a firepit? A smokehouse, a greenhouse, a kitchen garden, and then a herb garden for my spells and potions. There’s a little magic shop in town, Madge’s Magic. She’s young, around my age, and the shop is brand new. It’d be nice to have another witch around, maybe have our amulets and charms in her shop...”

“Aye, and you could go spend the day in her shop sometimes, or she’d come to us while I was out in the woods and hills, and you wouldn’t be lonely.”

“With the twins coming, I wouldn’t be lonely for long.”

“Aye, well, depending on how soon they get here.”

Ian went silent, realizing how easily Farrah had drifted into the conversation with him. As if she knew what was in his head, because it was in her head, too. She slid her hand into his, a small smile on her face.

“Sorry. I get carried away. Magic, I guess. It’s not like I can talk about this with most people. And you! You have to be among people who look right past you and don’t even see you, or don’t see the real you. It must drive you crazy. I mean, mad. There’s that half-American slang slipping in,” she laughed.

“You’re grand to talk to, Farrah,” he whispered, for the first time feeling too big and bulky in his own body. Next tothis beautiful, slender willow of a sprite, a woman who might as well have been a Fae Queen, he felt clumsy and dangerous, as if he’d ruin things with a single touch out of place.