snatched us out of those situations and brought us here.”
“And just doing that took a tremendous amount of magic. And here, we can live. Our fates here are different — our lives, our deaths can be different. I’m hoping to die at ninety, surrounded by grandchildren,” Anna said with a hint of a smile. “But if I went back to the twenty-first century… that would be the fate that was waiting for me. A man with a gun. And it’s the same for you, Helen. I’m sorry. There’s no way of going home.”
She took a deep breath, taking this in. “I — I guess I hadn’t realized how much I was… relying on the idea that it might still be possible to get home,” she said softly. There was a long silence as they sipped their wine, Anna giving her time and space to process the grim news. Then something occurred to her. “Wait. Niall said something this morning about — about me wanting to stay with him of my own free will. Does he know about this?”
“Aye, he does,” Anna said, nodding. “He came to speak to me about it not long after you arrived, in fact.”
She sighed, her mind racing. “That fool of a man. What was he trying to prove? He wants me to stay — here, in Scotland, of my own free will? I can’t. I can’t choose it if I don’t have a choice.” She took a deep breath, shaking her head. Anna squeezed her hand.
“He wants you to choose him,” she said softly. “That’s all. He wants you to want him because you want him — not because you don’t have any other options.”
“Of course I have other options,” she said irritably. “I’ve been alone all my life. I can be alone in Scotland just as well as I was alone in West Virginia. But I don’t want to be anymore. I want to be with him — not because I don’t want to be alone, but because I prefer being with him.”
“Then you should tell him that,” Anna said simply.
“Not until I’ve got about four apologies for his conduct this afternoon,” she said darkly.
Anna laughed, taking another sip of her wine.
“Absolutely. But if it helps… it sounds like in his own strange way, he was trying to be respectful. That doesn’t excuse his conduct today, of course,” Anna added sharply. “But… I’d talk to him, if I were you. I have a lot of time for Niall Grant. He’s a good man. If he works at it, he might even deserve a woman like you,” she added with a twinkle in her eyes.
Helen sighed. Anna was right — she needed to go back down and talk to Niall about all this. Maybe he’d have had time to calm down, to get his head on straight. Maybe they could finally figure out what they meant to each other — and start to plan a future together.
“Thanks, Anna,” she said firmly. “I think I know what I need to do.”
Chapter 52
They finished the wine, talking and laughing a little more about inconsequential things as they did. She’d had vague intentions of going straight down and giving Niall a piece of her mind, but she found herself lingering in Anna’s company… and once she had had a few glasses of wine, she knew that it was inadvisable to try to have any serious conversations until she’d sobered up a little. So they stayed in, giggling and laughing, sharing stories of the old world they’d both come from… and that they’d both left behind. Anna confided in her that she still missed it sometimes, no matter how much she loved her life and her family here. There were certain things about home that you would always miss, it seemed. It felt good to talk about it in depth — almost like a funeral, a kind of memorial for the good times associated with home. She found herself weeping tears of sadness as well of tears of laughter, the wine easing any stress she might have felt about seeming so vulnerable in front of Anna.
At some point, Anna send a servant to fetch them some food, which Helen was grateful for. It was likely that Niall would be in the dining hall, and she didn’t want to face him just yet. Not until she’d had time to calm down a little, to get her head on straight and plan the conversation she wanted to have with him. Besides,