A/N

So, as of lately I have been down the Outlander rabbit hole. AGAIN. Re-reading the first book and watching the show. I love the same age and the no-Frank trope and since there are not enough fanfics out there which combine both, I thought I write my own version of it.

Claire is around Jamies age when she falls through the stones in 1945. She never met Frank nor is she married. She met a young Highlander during her time in France, though, and the aftermath of that encounter brings her to Inverness.

I intend this to be a longer, multi chapter project, though it's only going to deal with the story and plotpoints of book 1 and season 1. There are also original characters, who have an importan part in the first two to three chapters. Probably no Claire/Jamie action until chapter three.


Chapter 1: Inverness


Dear Miss Beauchamp,

My name is Mary Ann Wakefield. This name means nothing to you, nor does the name William Thomas Wakefield. At least I don't think it does – not in the way William would have liked. As terrible and rude as this sounds, I think you appreciate my frankness. We are both combat nurses after all. We speak plain or we don't speak at all.

My brother William served as a paratrooper in the British 6th Airborne Division. He was injured at the Capture of the Caen Canal and once more at the Battle of the Bulge. I don't mean to inundate you with questions or to assume the nature of your and William's association, but as I understood it from his letters, you were one of the field nurses that looked after him during his recovery at the 12th Evacuation Hospital. William spoke very fondly of you. 'The woman mother always warned me about has finally materialized. The bossiest wee lassie', he wrote, 'with a mouth on her that would make even the most battle hardened bastard blush, but a kind touch. The kind of touch, that would make any man gladly jump into the depths of hell'. He did have a way with the lasses. Even if you don't recognize his name, I'm sure you remember his smile and the sound of his laughter. I disregarded his words about you as nothing but the musings of an injured, heavily medicated soldier, who took it as fact that he was about to marry the first bonny lass, who tended to him and made the war a little bit more bearable. Even if everything he wrote about you and the conversations you shared, were nothing more than William's fever dreams, I am still grateful that he got to know someone as kind and funny as you in these dark times.

By now you must have realized that William never made it home to us. The C-46, which was supposed to take him to England after his second injury was shot down over the Channel. His belongings arrived three days ago. Among them a piece of paper with your name and address written in a hand writing I didn't recognize. There was also an unfinished letter, dated Dec. 22th, which he started with that he was back in the field hospital and that he was owing you a dance. He was planning on inviting you to Inverness once the war is over.

If it's not too much to ask and if you're not preoccupied elsewhere, I would like to extend my brother's invitation to you. I know that my mother and father are keen on talking with you about William, since you're one of the last people who spoke with him, but don't feel pressured to accept out of duty. William wrote to me a total of four letters about his time in France. In all of them he talks about you. If it wasn't just a fever dream and if you need a place and time to make sense of all of this, then please, Claire, visit us. The flowers are about to bloom soon enough. The birds started with their nesting in the old hedge around the house. It's quiet here. Almost as if there hadn't been a war at all. We can arrange for your transportation from Edinburgh to Inverness. A room and bed has been offered by Mrs. Baird, an old friend of the family, who runs a bed-and-breakfast establishment.

I hope this letter finds you,

Mary Ann Wakefield

Inverness, March 20th 1945

~oOo~

Wild flowers were blooming. Carpets of Ramson or perhaps Wild Garlic. Even some Bluebells turned the lower slopes of many hills into an early blue.

A most unusual early blue, as Mr. Reynolds had pointed out, once we had left the outskirts of Edinburgh behind. The way he said it, made it seem like a bad omen to ask as to why early Bluebells were of the "most unusual" kind, so instead I opted for the harmless and utterly time consuming topic about the weather, which soon turned into a undergrad lecture about seasonal Scottish plants and flowers, since, as Mr. Reynolds had informed me, his family had been in the flower business since 1888 and famous throughout the Highlands.

Here I was, basking in the warming spring sun, letting my unruly curls be tugged at by the wind and listening to Mr. Reynolds about the satisfaction of helping wee plants thrive, of the quiet sense of pleasure in caring for growing things. He was a gentle man, with the bluest, warm eyes. And although his suit looked worn, it was clear that he liked to put an effort into appearing presentable. He looked older than forty two years but so did I. War had that peculiar talent to rob you off your years in more ways than one. His daughter, Elspeth Reynolds, had been running the flower shop in Inverness ever since his son had gone to war.

Although the sun was positively searing, I felt a familiar chill engulfing me. If there was such a thing as an end to war, I had yet to experience it. There was an unspoken uneasiness now, which had creeped into every conversation, every glance, every time eye contact was made with strangers and friends alike. What's his name? Was he alive? Have you heard of him? What happened to him? I didn't dare to ask.

William's easygoing smile popped into my head, his hand playing with my fingers while singing The Bonnie Lass o' Fyvie in a low voice as to not wake Mark in the bed next to his, long hours of not knowing whether he was in fact on the C-46 that had been shot down, the silence in the days and weeks afterwards.

"Are ye cold, Miss Beauchamp? I brought extra blankets, just in case. You never know when a Scottish spring turns into a Scottish winter again. Especially when there's still snow to be found on the mountains. It's in the backseat. Irish wool. The warmest material you'll ever know."

I put on a smile that didn't fool anyone and draped my jacket closer around my shoulders. "Thank you, Mr. Reynolds. That's very kind of you but it's just the chill of a passing cloud."

He didn't say anything for the next couple of minutes. The car took a long stretching turn to the left in between two steep climbing hills. Once we passed, a large range of mountains, grass and hills appeared in the distance, the snow on their tops glimmering in the late morning sun.

"Have you ever been to the Highlands before?"

Here we go. I wondered when the interrogation would start. An unmarried English woman from London with no apparent ties to a Scottish family, is invited by said family to the point that people in the community are being asked for accommodation and transportation of said English woman. Yes, how could there ever be raised eyebrows? I knew how it looked like. Mr. Reynold's glance at my ring finger as well as at my stomach, no matter how discreet he had tried to be about it, had said enough. I didn't know what Mary did or didn't tell Mr. Reynolds or Mrs. Braid about the reason for my visit, but it would look suspicious either way no matter how you worded it.

"No, unfortunately not," I said. Only in stories. And hushed songs. And some soft spoken Gaelic words against my hair when nobody was looking. "Not even to Scotland. First time," I added almost apologetically.

"You're in for a treat then." He gave me a brief but friendly smile. "We are a proud and stubborn bunch. Easy to please as long as there is enough drink and food to go around. But we're also fierce and loyal. We share what little we have as long as you have great stories to entertain us with."

"I imagine, me coming to Inverness is the story."

He laughed, a deep, infectious sound and I smiled back. "Aye, 'tis. You've earned yourself a full months supply of food and bed and breakfast." He caught the look on my face and added quickly: "Dinna fash. It's been a long war. We haven't seen as many people come and go as we used to. Certainly not a young English woman, a combat nurse at that, who was stationed in France. A lot of the lads were sent to Normandy, ye ken."

There was so much hope nestled in these words. Delicate. Too bright for a direct look. They threatened to suffocate me. All those eyes lightening up, hoping that maybe, for some reason, with some luck or divine interference, I might be able to tell them something, anything about their loved ones. I met William. It stood to reason to assume there had been others. One of the reasons why I thought against coming here.

"So, Mary told you?" It didn't sit well with me. Being in a disadvantage. Not knowing what was common knowledge. Playing guessing games.

This time Mr. Reynolds made a guttural snort. "A young feller doesn't talk to his sister about a lass he cares nothing for and a sister doesn't go out of her way to get said lass to visit the family if she thought the lass indifferent."

"It doesn't matter now." The thought slipped passed my lips before I could get a hold of it. A cruel thing to say. It was the loneliness and the prospect of emptiness that lay ahead that made me say it. I felt embarrassed in an instant. I am not the only one who was suffering. Worse had happened to others. "I'm sorry," I said, forcing myself to look at him.

Mr. Reynold's face softened unbearably, but he didn't take his eyes off the road. "It did. It still does. Nothing of the past has been lost. It will always be there. You've lost what could have been. T's unfair. Will was a good lad. Always the first to help, always smiling. Nothing was able to dampen his spirits. Very popular with the lasses, too."

The eye-twinkling was evident in his voice. I snorted but couldn't hide my smile. "So I have been told." Feeling emboldened I added: "Do I have to brace myself for all the cold looks and behind-the-hand remarks from some of his old flames?"

"Aye. From both now married and unmarried ones I wager."

"Well, lucky me I guess."

I hadn't wondered before but I wondered now how many of the girls in Inverness had found their way into Will's arms on a Friday night dance and afterwards into a secluded alley, sharing glances and kisses. Maybe even more. I had no claim on him then. It was silly to get worked up about something which had happened before the war had forced our paths to cross. And yet: I found that I strongly disliked the image of Will kissing other girls. Just as I had disliked the appreciative looks and eager smiles some of my co-nurses had given him when I wasn't the one tending to him. As battle battered, pale, one arm in a cast, a ringing in both ears, a bayonet wound on his thigh and dark circles under his eyes as he had been, he still had drawn in the lasses like bees to a honey pot. And I couldn't fault them. Sharp, straight nose, high cheekbones and those grey-green eyes that always held a certain softness to them whenever he regarded you. I had no claim on him during that time either. Only hopes.

"It'll be fine, lass," he said in an almost fatherly manner. "Mary Ann will see to it. She has a certain reputation, ye ken. If she approves of you then all the others will fall in line. They might still talk about you behind your back but they are not going to bother you openly."

"I'd rather have them do it openly. At least then I know what I'm up against."

There was another soft laugh. "T'is easy to see why the lad fancied you."

A flush came unwillingly to my cheeks and I tried to crane my neck as far away from Mr. Reynolds as possible.

"Why did you sign up for the nursing corps?"

"I'd like to think because of the same reason most did," I answered and shrugged. "I couldn't stand the thought of sitting around, doing nothing, feeling helpless. Just waiting to get bombed in the Blitz. I thought I could do something Nothing the history books will ever mention but little things. And maybe those would account to something to someone. That…that had seemed like a goo idea to me." I took a deep breath, focusing on the hills around us, naming every plant and flower I could. Faces I hadn't thought about in a while flashed before my eyes. Some more focused than others.

"Don't go there, lass," said Mr. Reynolds. "Stay here. We still have one more hour to go before we arrive. Tell me about your family."

And so I did. I talked about my parents. About Uncle Lamb. The curious circumstances of my upbringing. The Middle East. South America. All the places around the world I thought of as an almost-home. Consequences of what Mr. Reynolds was going to do with all of that information in a small Scottish town where everybody knew everyone be damned.

~oOo~

"Oh, ye are beautiful!" was the first thing Mary Ann said. It was laced with so much genuine surprise bordering on wonder that it made me question the language William must have used to describe me.

The first thing I noticed about her were her eyes. They were the same. Not just in colour. There was that life and warmth in them as she took me in and as they did, it only seemed to enhance their beauty even more. Suddenly I understood what Mr. Reynolds meant when he said, the other girls would fall in line if Mary Ann said so. There was fire and she knew perfectly well how to use it.

Mr. Reynolds next to me, holding my suite case, couldn't contain his amusement as the bundle of wavey golden hair and moss green dress rushed towards us.

"Miss Wakefield – " I managed to say before she catapulted herself straight into me. I caught us just in time before she tumbled us both to the ground. I stiffened, not knowing what to do with such a welcome or most importantly with my hands, so I held on to her elbows.

"T'is Mary for ye," she said, stepping back. "Let's not treat like strangers."

Seemed as if corresponding two times while a war was raging and bonding over lost loved ones was enough these days for people to form a friendship.

"Mary it is then. I'm Claire. Thanks for having me. And thanks for sending Mr. Reynolds to pick me up." I smiled at him. "We had a wonderful ride here."

"The lass is too polite. By 'wonderful' she means to say, I dropped into my passion for herbology and amateurish botany knowledge and she humored me." He inclined his head courteously in my direction.

"Oh, you didn't," laughed Mary. "Well then, I guess you can count yourself as one of us now, Claire, because there is no one left in Inverness or the Highlands for that matter, who hasn't been forced to sit through one of Kenneth's lectures."

"It wasn't a bother at all," I insisted. "It's one of my fields of interest too, after all. Besides, Mr. Reynolds had to listen to an hour of me babbling on about religious practices in ancient Egypt."

"Mary, did you know that they not only mummified their kings but also animals as an offering to the god whom the species represented?"

Mary shook her head. "I did not but by the sound of it the old Egyptians had some common sense to them."

That surprised me. "That's the first time I've heard anyone refer to ritual sacrifice as a practice of common sense."

There was a twinkle in her eyes. It spread and sparked. "Ah, did ye think of us as a bunch of goody-two-shoes church-goers?"

Baffled and slightly embarrassed I looked from her to Mr. Reynolds and back again. "Well, yes?"

"The church is the church, but around here we believe in the Old Folk and in tales of magic. More so than anywhere else in the world. Though Kenneth will go out of his way to persuade you that this spot is reserved for the Irish."

A drizzle of good solid Scottish weather, as Mr. Reynolds put it, set in and compelled Mary to hush us from the driveway into the house at once while Mr. Reynolds kept talking about his Irish roots. Apparently his great-grandfather had been born somewhere on the southwest of Ireland in a small town called Kenmare. He left during the great famine, didn't like the rest of England and ended up in Scotland. He married and his second son later got into the flower business.

As Mary introduced me to the housekeeper Mrs. Graham, a tall, string woman with three strands of artificial pearls round her neck, who insisted on unburden me from my jacket, it hit me like a sudden burst of summer rain that it was William's home I was standing in. Just like the high glass windows and thick stone walls from the outside had suggested, the Wakefield family home had withstood the stern judgement of time.

It felt full. Full of stories. Full of life. Full of merriment. The wooden floor was breathing with every step. There was a lived-in warmth coming from the walls and carpets which made me feel as if I did belong. In every corner a reminder of the generation which came before could be found. Mrs. Graham walked ahead, pointing at several family heirlooms in the hallway as she did, some of which reached back to the 1750s, while Mr. Reynolds nodded politely, offering an ensemble of ohs and ahs. Mary smiled when she caught me starring at the paintings. She could have told me the people in them were famous or royalty and I would've believed her. We passed the door that led to the living room and the adjoined kitchen and the corridor opened up to a spacious room furnished with more than one old wooden desk, book cases that ran from ceiling to floor, a couple of comfy looking stools, two sofas, a table and a fire place. No one was there, apart from a wobbly pile of books and a mass of tattered papers scattered on a desk by the far wall, joined by a lone cup.

I let out a breath I didn't know I had been holding. Mary hadn't mentioned her parents again after the initial letter. I was glad and disappointed at the same time. Maybe it was better like this. I still didn't know what to say or how to say it when we meet.

Mr. Reynolds sat my suite case down next to the sofa. "Will you be fine on your own from here on, lass?" he asked, crinkling that soft smile again.

"Claire was in France," Mary said matter-of-factly from the side. "She'll be fine."

Mr. Reynolds smile didn't falter. "I promised Elspeth I would be helping her with the Beltane preparations this afternoon."

"Beltane?" I asked, eyebrows raised. "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you."

"Ah, dinna worry. T's an ancient Celtic holiday. It celebrates the beginning of summer and the renewed fertility of the coming year."

"We gather around huge fires to feast and dance. For the most part," Mary added and Mrs. Graham in the back let off a conveniently placed cough. "But some lasses and lads still heed to the old traditions and come together to focus on the fertility part with the utter most care and vigor." Mary winked at me.

Oh. OH. Heat rushed to my neck and ears.

"Dinna let your uncle hear of this," said Mrs. Graham, but Mary waved it off.

"He knows. He canna afford to be seen taking too much interest in these rituals but he knows."

I must have looked even more confused because Mary turned to me and explained: "My uncle is the vicar. You won't catch him talk about the local druid groups but he is too curious a man to ignore it altogether."

I've had heard of druids before. Of some of their practices. It hadn't been Uncle Lamp's main focus of research but some of his colleagues. They liked to discuss their findings in terms of similarities and linked them back to Carl Jung's archetypes. No wonder Reverend Wakefield was interested: Christianity in all it forms had its share of behavioral patterns universally recognized by people of different believes and cultures as well.

"So, your daughter is organizing the fires this year?" I asked.

Mr. Reynolds nodded. "Her and some of her friends. First time since the war has started. They thought against it for a long time but ever since they had heard that the Americans and Russians have surrounded Berlin, they want to bring back some normality."

I smiled at the notion. Something normal. We all had learned the hard way that the world was a merrier place when things were just normal. It was more than enough.

"It's still two weeks away but they are having troubles to gather enough helping hands to erect the fires. I'm thinking about sending for some old friends from Nairn and Muir of Ord."

My smiled disappeared. The young men were gone. Only the women and old ones remain. Waiting. Hoping.

"I'll be back by seven," he continued, "and then drive you down to Mrs. Baird's bed and breakfast, if that sounds suitable to you."

"Very much so. Thank you."

Mrs. Graham, who had been pouring tee into one cup after the other on the table, swirled around, teapot in hand and said: "Ye canna leave now! I've prepared a wee bit of refreshment for ye and Miss Beauchamp."

The 'wee bit of refreshment' included a plate of sandwiches, an equally large mountain of butter biscuits, scones with thick clotted cream, tee, sugar and milk. The war truly was coming to an end.

Mr. Reynolds fished one of the biscuits off the tee tray and plopped it into his mouth. "Mmm, thank you. It's been awhile since I had them. You have outdone yourself, dear Mrs. Graham. But if I don't go now, I'll never hear the end of it."

"I'll see ye to the door then," Mrs. Graham answered, still slightly muffed but also pleased that her efforts were appreciated. Mary wished Mr. Reynolds goodbye, thanked him and tasked Mrs. Graham with the mission to pack some of the shortbread for Mr. Reynolds and that he was not to leave the house before he had received them. The pair made their way down the corridor, their voices fading away.

We were alone. It could go either way now.

"Let's sit down and eat some of her refreshments before she comes back and finds that we haven't touched anything," I heard Mary say. "She has been baking and preparing since yesterday."

I followed her to the sofa, feeling slightly uncomfortable by the trouble these people were going to for me. I thought about grabbing one of the stools for a moment, but Mary patted the place next to her with a mildly amused smile.

"Ye need not be scairt," she said as she placed one cup of tee right in front of me. "I didn't plan on ambushing you the moment we are alone. Scones?"

"Yes, please."

She filled my plate with two scones and a generous scoop of cream.

"I didn't think you would," I said, sipping away at the tea. It was green, hot and fragrant. Bits of leaf were swirling through the liquid. "It's delicious."

"Don't let Mrs. Graham catch you with an empty cup, though. Unless you're keen on a reading."

I sat my cup down. "She reads tea leaves?" I asked, amused.

"Aye. She couldna get the right tea during the war. She canna tell you anything if the leaves fall apart too fast, ye know."

Entertained know I tilted the cup a little bit to see the leaves at the bottom. "Do tell, are you not going to meet a tall dark stranger who whisks you away to an adventure of epic proportions?"

Mary echoed my amusement with a slight smile. "There are strangers, a'right? But she couldn't tell if man or woman. Though she was sure that they disappear from my life just as quickly as they came into it."

My amusement dissipated. For a moment we sat in silence. Not eating. Not drinking. I concentrated on the folded hands in my lap.

"I was mad at you at first," she suddenly said. "There he was hundreds of kilometers away, in the most dangerous and horrible place on earth and all he did was telling me about some British girl he had met twice and for the most part of your encounters he had been drugged."

He did talk to me about the horrible things. Joking with his comrades in one moment, watching them die in the next. The weight pressing down on your ribs as if you are underwater and drowning. He was drowning when he was awake. He was drowning in his dreams. Collecting dog tags. Closing eyes forever. Wrenching stiff fingers off guns and ammunition one by one. The screams. The silence. Why would he write about that? And to his sister?

"Why did you write to me then?" I asked.

"For one: I was sure you wouldn't reply or that the letter wouldn't find you," she said, as though to herself. She paused. Eyes looking somewhere I couldn't follow. "I even considered that you might be still in France or the Netherlands or wherever they would've sent you next. Maybe you died. In a bombing. A freak accident."

Mary looked at my hands first, then up to my face. There was no escape.

"It was my responsibility to at least try to contact you."

By her tone and gaze it was clear she was insinuating something. Something malicious. Something she might have been suspicious of but was finalized upon seeing me. I felt the blood boiling and rising to my face. I took another sip of my tee to extinguish it.

"You already know what happened," I said coldly, unable to hide the anger in my voice. "After William I thought about my choices: seeing it through till the end or going back to England, to Portsmouth maybe, and care for the guys they send back. Around February talks about the end of the war started to become more frequent. I asked to be send back to England and when I arrived I put in a formal request for sick leave, which after an examination was granted."

I locked eyes with her.

"I think you owe me truth, Claire."

"I see. Is that the reason why you wanted me to come?" I said hotly. "To make sure I wasn't carrying your nephew or niece?"

Mary Ann grasped my hands in hers and instead of anger, she looked at me with an intensity that filled me with the need to be here, with her, in that moment. To not run away. "No. Will was a decent lad. He would have wanted to do right by you. He wouldn't have put such a burden on you as long as he was in the field … or without marriage."

It was like a hit in the pit of my stomach. I was struggling to draw air into my lungs. "Then," I cleared my throat, "I don't know what it is you're suspecting me of."

She stood and walked over to the desk next to the window that lead to the patio in the garden. She picked up one of the photographs and came back. Without a word Mary placed it in front of me, sat down and watched my reaction.

My hands started shaking when I tried to pick it up. Two times it slipped through my fingers.

William and Mary in front of what looked like a stone circle. It was summer. Will was wearing shorts. Mary another lovely cotton dress. Their smiles were contagious. William's hair was longer. A single lock of golden hair was in danger of dropping low on his forehead and he had kept his sides combed but not as short as when I had first met him. He looked like a rebel in the making. I touched him. His smile. The eyes. A bird started fluttering in my chest. It stretched its wings and when it tried to escape a cold hand reached out.

"It was the summer before we enlisted," I heard Mary say close to me. "We were so young back then. So foolish."

I sat the photograph back down. The welling in my chest became to much and I took a deep breath. It didn't stop my eyes from getting glassy.

"I can't stop thinking about the last thing I said to him," Mary said, the saddest of smiles tugging at her lips. "It was some nonsense. I don't even remember what it was exactly."

She was drowning. And I was about to drown with her.

"The harder I try to remember the details the more he slips away. I…it scares me. A-and sometimes, just for a moment, I forget that he isn't here anymore. I would run to get the post and I expect to find one of his letters."

Mary was still looking at me. Thinking. Assessing. "It's the first time you've seen him since saying goodbye, isn't it?"

I nodded. "He…he said something in Gaelic to me. I can't recall what it was and I still don't know what it meant. They had him on a stretcher and I threatened to chain him down if he didn't stop wiggling around. He joked, that there was enough room for me under the blanket and that he could smuggle me on board with ease."

A small, amused laugh escaped me.

"What?" Mary inquired.

I shook my head. "Nothing. Just…teasing me with what a scotsman really wears beneath his kilt."

That made Mary laugh as well.

"That's it," I said slowly, "That's the last thing we talked about. He said that he would write to me and that he was saving me a dance."

I felt my mouth twist, fighting against the welling in my chest. I closed my eyes and counted in my mind along to my breaths. I made it barely to five before a hand touched my shoulder.

"Claire, you're allowed to cry."

"No, I'm not," I shouted, voice cracking. "It bloody sucks that I am here and he isn't! That I get to see you and his home and he doesn't. All of this is filled with memories of the people that he loved and– I…I don't know how you do it. I've only known him for such a short time."

I wasn't able to cry back in January, when I heard the news of William's death. But here, I sank into Mary's arms. She stayed with me, cradling me against her, muttering soft Gaelic in my ears.

"You've known him in every way that mattered", she whispered, her own voice filled with tears. They dropped against my cheek. We wept bitterly. I apologized over and over again, though for what exactly I didn't know. Slowly I began to quiet a bit, lulled by her heart beat and body warmth. Mary started to take deep and long breathes and together we surrendered to the calmness of our minds, tired by the weight of our hearts.

That's how Mrs. Graham found us.

"Should I prepare the guest room?" she asked and I felt Mary nod.

"No, it's fine," I said, backing away in a hurry. "I can walk or I wait for Mr. Reynolds or – "

"Claire," said Mary and the tone of her voice quenched all and any attempts at false bravado. "You are not a burden. Let me take care of you. Just this once."

I wanted to shy away from her gaze, but found it comforting instead of embarrassing. That alone almost made me cry again. She helped me to my feet and I nodded. It had been a while since someone had taken the liberty to look after me.

"It's just … I hardly know you. I hardly knew Will."

She smiled. "Ah, sometime it doesn't matter, does it? With some people you just know."

She offered to help me with my suite case but I declined. I followed her up the stairs, noticing on the way up that one step that always creaked and made it impossible to sneak down to the kitchen undetected, just as William had described and found myself in another long, beautifully decorated corridor. Mary took me left down to the last door on the right.

Mrs. Graham had already covered the four poster bed with fresh linen and rushed passed us to fill the ewer with water. The floral wallpapers were decorated again with paintings but this time they portrayed landscapes. I recognized the one with the stone circle.

"Craigh Na Dun," Mary explained as she noticed my curiosity. "It's were we took that photograph. It's not far from here. We can go there if you like. Or you can take a guide if you want to know more about this area."

I turned to her. "I'd like that. Thank you."

She smiled. "I leave you to it then. Just one more thing: my parents won't be back till Friday. I told them you would arrive on April 22nd. I thought you might want to have some time to adjust. It's a lot to take in."

I stepped towards her, not quite sure whether it was appropriate to hug her so I took her hands into mine. "Thank you, Mary." I got quiet. She waited. I took a breath. "I'm not pregnant. Not by William or any other man, if that's what you think how I got my request granted. It was granted because after William I had developed some sort temporary blindness. They said, it was most likely a stress response but they wanted to make sure and transferred me to a specialist in London."

She shook er head. "That's not it. I was unsure of your feelings for my brother. I guess, I just need to make sure that he truly was with somebody that cared deeply for him before he died. Everything else – " Her voice cracked. "I wouldn't have been able to stand it, ye ken?"

I did. Mrs. Graham left the ewer on the dresser and I wished both of them a good night.

I waited for their steps to fade away before I sat down at the desk in front of the window.

I stared.

Then I cried some more.