I gulped it down and then turned to face Susan. “What the hell?” I gasped. “You could have scarred me for life!”
She grinned at me. “How’s yer head?” she said, and took a bite of her first roll.
I sat back down, feeling the charred insides of my mouth with my abused tongue. Everything seemed to still be in place, if completely singed. But my head—my head was filled with the buzzing of a thousand bees.
“So, you’re looking for historical monuments, are yeh?” she said. “Yeh do know we’re jes’ a stone’s throw from Culloden?”
I nodded gingerly, hoping the bees would quiet themselves. I watched her wolf down the first roll. “Yes, I was planning to go there, but a bit later in my trip. I’m sort of tracing a route I’ve planned out.”
“Yeah, yeah, agreed. But if ye’re planning to go, why not now? Save yerself a trip back to this godforsaken hole.” She bit deeply into her second roll, and sighed before taking a long drink of her coffee. “I’m goin’ there today, meself. Ye’re welcome to join me.”
“I guess so …” I said.
The bees seemed to be settling at last, and she launched into a vivid description of all that could be seen and enjoyed on the nearby battlefield.
After about five minutes of that, she looked at me inquiringly, and I thought of my own carefully constructed plans. My explanation would involve admitting to the annotated map inside the cover of my OUTLANDER book. I decided I didn’t really care to tell this very practical woman that I was in search of a mysterious red-headed warrior who was destined to sweep me away to happily ever after.
Especially after the episode with Rabbie.
“Let’s do it,” I said, making up my mind on the spot. “Is it a long taxi ride from here?”
She jumped up, wiping her face with the back of one hand. “Who needs a feckin’ taxicab?” she said, grinning. “The sun’s shining! We’re goin’ by bike.”
And so as Susan went off to arrange for a second bicycle rental for me, I went up to pay for her coffee. Turns out she’d forgotten to look after her breakfast, so I added the bill to my own, thinking of the money saved on cab fare. After all, I’d planned to tour Culloden near the end of my trip, and Susan had promised to show me where the secret graves of a rogue band of Irishmen who had fought alongside the Scots lay. I’d never find anything like that on my own.
I stepped outside the coffee shop to find Susan already half a block ahead of me.
“Bike shop’s just up the street here,” she called, and I limped along as fast as my sore knee would allow, cursing her cheeriness every step of the way.
But damned if my head didn’t hurt any more. At all.
She stood with a hand on the door to the shop. Outside three or four bicycles of assorted sizes stood propped in a rusting iron stand.
“Right. You have a look out here and decide which bike is the best for you. I’ll go in and take care of the deposit, yeah?”
“I can come in—you shouldn’t have to pay my deposit, Susan.”
She waved me off. “Ach, it’s jes’ five quid to rent. Yeh pay the bulk of it when ye return ’em. We’ll even it out then.”
With that, she turned on her heel and marched inside to the tinkling of a little bell tied to the door. I slowly walked along the line of bikes, trying to judge which one would suit me best. My knee was pretty sore, so I wanted something that was the right size so as not to aggravate the weird knee injury I had acquired while escaping Rabbie. I had my hand on a flashy little green number when a young man stepped out the door.
“Right—yeh like that one, do ye? ‘Fraid it’s a bit too small a frame for a big girl like you—howse aboot yeh try this one?”
I dragged my big girl ass over and tried sitting on the black utility number he held out to me. “It’s got a nice lamp on it for the evenin’,” he said, encouragingly.
“I have no intention of riding after dark,” I said, coldly. ”But it’ll be fine. I’ll take it.”
He smiled blandly back at me, oblivious to my attempts to cut him dead with my eyes. “Early in the year for you American girls to be out touring the country,” he said.
I was about to point out to him that only one of us was American, when the bell tinkled again and Susan came out of the shop. She threw her leg over the green bicycle and the young man nodded. “Looks about right,” he said. “See yiz later, eh?”
I declined to wave goodbye.
As the young man walked back into the shop, Susan wheeled her bike over beside me and nudged me with her elbow. “He were a feckin’ looker, weren’t he?” she hissed. “I’da bent my ass over the countertop with him if we weren’t on the go today, I tell yeh.”