And peeking around it, wide gray eyes fixed on her face, was a little boy.
Chapter 4
“Hello,” Helen said. Or rather — she attempted to say. What actually happened was that she opened her mouth and mustered her voice — and fell immediately into a coughing fit the likes of which she’d rarely experienced. She shut her eyes, trying hard to get the rasping cough under control… it was a painful cough, rasping deep in her lungs, and she could taste the suggestion of blood when she finally stopped coughing. She must have caught a hell of a cold.
The little boy was still at the door, lingering as he peered at her curiously. Not afraid of her coughing fit, it seemed … had he seen her cough like that before? Now she thought about it, she could vaguely remember a fit like that in the recent, strange past… remember her lungs aching as she coughed and heaved up cold water… and later, as she fought through a fever, coughing and shivering in this very bed… she shook her head sharply, disoriented by this collection of half-remembered memories.
“You alright, Miss?”
The boy spoke, and for a moment she fought to understand what he was saying, so unfamiliar was his accent. She stared at him blankly until he repeated himself, and this time the words fell into place, lilting accent and all. Irish? Scottish?
“I think so,” she managed… but her voice was weak and rasping.
His gray eyes flicked from her face to the bedside table, and she followed that gaze — sure enough, there was a pitcher and a mug sitting waiting for her. Water. Thank God. She’d never felt such a powerful thirst in her life. She reached out with one shaking hand to pour herself a cup of water, surprised by how much effort it seemed to take, how weak her arm felt… how long had she been lying in this bed? Had her muscles atrophied from disuse, or something? Or was she just weak from whatever illness had taken hold of her? Infection, she wondered dizzily, from the wounds? Or some kind of chest infection from inhaling the river water?
She sipped at the water, feeling an odd and dizzy burst of half-remembered impressions of having a cup of water held to her lips when she was too weak to hold it herself… but the water felt good on her parched throat, and she drank more readily, draining the cup and considering pouring another before she cautioned herself to take it slowly.
The boy was still peering at her. “I thought you might be dead.”
“Oh,” she said blankly, not quite sure what to say to that. “Well. I’m not.” She’d been a little suspicious she was on her way to the afterlife… but everything around her felt a little too concrete for that to be the case. No, whatever had happened to her back there… she’d survived it.
But where was she now?
She had to find out. There was a child here — did that mean she was in someone’s family home? Whatever the case, she was going to need to figure out where she was before she could do anything about it. She pushed the quilt back, shivering a little as the cold, damp air reached her body. To her shock, she was wearing new clothing — gone were the comfortable jeans and shirt she’d been wearing for the stakeout. Instead, she was in some kind of long, grey nightgown. It covered her, at least, but she couldn’t help but feel strange about the idea of a stranger undressing and redressing her while she’d clearly been too out of it to even notice what was happening.
She sat up… and a rush of nausea came over her so abruptly that she had to lie straight back down again, her head pounding and her pulse singing in her ears. On the verge of passing out, she fought through the dizziness, feeling panic begin to rise in her again as she realized how weak she truly was. If she could barely sit up, how was she supposed to get out of bed? Why was she so weak? Just how long had she been lying here, anyway… and who had been taking care of her? If she was this sick, surely she should be in hospital… at the very least, an IV drip should be keeping her hydrated. She reached out for the water with a trembling hand and took another shaky sip.
The little boy was still peering at her, a look of slight concern on his face where those gray eyes peeped through a tangled light brown fringe of hair that was in sore need of a trim. He was a young child — Helen wasn’t great at judging ages, but she suspected he was maybe four or five years old. Definitely not old enough to be running around unaccompanied, not in a place where there were sick people lying around. Was this some kind of medieval-style hospital? Or was this just the guest room of a strange family that had pulled her out of the river?
“Are you still sick?” the boy asked brightly.
That accent again. She was pretty sure it was Scottish — she’d watched enough movies set in that beautiful place to tell the difference from other European accents. She didn’t know anyone Scottish. Why would she be in a stranger’s house?
“Yeah, looks like I am,” she agreed, a little distracted by the boy’s continued scrutiny of her. She didn’t really need the third degree from this kid right now. “Can you tell me where I am?”
“You’re in the Keep, of course,” the boy scoffed. “Why do you talk like that?”
“Talk like what?”
“Talk like what,” he echoed her, and she could hear him performing a childish, clumsy impersonation of her accent.
Despite her confusion, she couldn’t help but grin in amusement at the attempt… and the smile must have emboldened the boy, because he crept around the doorway and took a few steps toward her, leaving it ajar behind him. She tried to look through it from her vantage point, but it was too dark out there — she could see a distant glow of light, but not much else.
“It’s my accent. I’m from West Virginia. Where are you from?”
“Here,” the boy said blankly.
She couldn’t help but smile. Children were always so refreshingly direct when it came to cultural differences.
“Sure, but where’s your family from? Not America, I suppose.”
“Where’s that?”
She blinked, a little surprised by that. How could this boy not know the name of the country he was in? Most children knew that almost before they could talk… and while it was possible that that wasn’t the case for kids from overseas, surely he was old enough now to know the name of the country he and his family were presumably living in? “America. It’s where we are now.”
“Is not,” he challenged her stridently, with supreme confidence. “We’re in Scotland. On Loch Ness.”
She laughed. Was this some kind of a game? “Oh, are we? I suppose the Loch Ness Monster is nearby, too.”
“Aye,” the boy said seriously. “But I’m not allowed to play with her. Da said.”
She was amused… but there was a dull pounding headache behind her eye that wasn’t going away with the water she was trying to sip at, and she found herself wishing that this little boy would leave her to rest a little more. She lay back against the pillow, taking a deep breath. The little boy crept a little closer to her, his gray eyes full of curiosity.
“Are you going to die?”
She fought the urge to laugh. “I hope not.”
“I heard Da talking to the healer. She said you breathed in the whole Loch, just about, and it had frozen up your insides.”
It was a vivid image. She fought the urge to cough. “Is that right?”
“I’m Eamon,” the boy said now, clearly satisfied that they knew each other well enough for introductions. “Eamon Grant.”
“My name’s Helen Washington.” She suppressed a cough. “Eamon, are your parents around?”
“Mama’s dead,” he said abruptly, in that frighteningly cold way children had of talking about tragedies.
Helen shut her eyes for a moment, not sure what to say. “I’m very sorry, Eamon.”
“You look like her,” he said, peering at her curiously. “She had brown hair too. But hers was long, much longer than yours.”
But just as she was struggling for what to say — how did you talk to a child you’d just met about the death of his mother? — the door swung open again, and she and the boy were no longer alone.
There was an enormous man in the doorway — he was tall and lean, with a pair of bright blue eyes and an unmistakable resemblance to the little boy who was now leaning against the side of Helen’s bed. She stared up at him, a little shocked by this larger-than-life figure in tartan.
“Eamon, you little terror,” the man scolded the boy, his voice deep and rich with the same rather delightful Scottish accent the boy spoke with. “I told you not to bother our guest.”
“You told me not to wake her up,” Eamon corrected him imperiously, bouncing on his toes with the force of his conviction. “I made sure I didn’t. She was already awake when I came in. Wasn’t you! Wasn’t you, Helen, tell him —”
She couldn’t help but laugh. “He didn’t wake me up, that’s true.” She coughed again, trying to suppress the urge to lapse into a fit, and the tall man frowned with unmistakable worry on his face as he shooed the boy, gently but firmly, out of the room and back into whatever halls lay beyond the wooden door. Then he turned to Helen.
“Sorry about him. A more curious creature never roamed God’s green earth. My name’s Niall Grant. You’re safe in my chambers. How are you feeling?”
Helen took a breath, feeling the urge to cough recede a little. “Honestly, I’ve felt better. My chest feels like it’s been in a vice for a week and I’m barely strong enough to sit up, let alone get out of bed. How long have I been here?”
Niall was frowning down at her. He pulled the rocking chair from the wall over closer to the bed and took a seat in it, lowering himself a little closer to her level. Yes, up close her suspicions were confirmed — he was a very handsome man. A little older than her, perhaps, but that had never been a problem when it came to the kinds of men she was attracted to… not that she’d ever acted on any of those attractions. “About ten days, all told. We were growing worried you’d never wake up.”
“Well, here I am,” she said. “Ten days? God. I’ve got to call my father, he’ll be worried sick. Was my phone on me when you found me?”
Niall was looking at her blankly. “Your what?”
“My phone — it should’ve been in the pocket of the jeans I was wearing. Unless it fell out in the crash… God, the crash, I didn’t even ask. What happened?”
“I don’t know about any crash,” Niall said, still frowning at her for all the world as though she was speaking another language. “All I know is that we pulled you out of the Loch ten days ago and barely saved your life from drowning.”
Helen frowned. His accent was thick — did all Scottish people call lakes lochs? And where had a lake come into it? She’d crashed into a river, not a lake. But there were more pressing questions. “What about the man who was in the vehicle with me? Did he survive?”
“Man? Vehicle? Lass, I think you’re a little confused,” Niall said gently, reaching out to pat her shoulder through the quilt. “I tell you what — you get a little more rest and I’ll fetch the healer to check on you.”
She frowned as he left the room, feeling torn between relief at being alone again (he was right — she was desperate for a little more rest) and frustration at not having learned hardly anything about where she was and what had happened. Resolving to get more information out of this healer when they came, she let herself drift off to sleep again, figuring she could use whatever strength she could get.
One way or another, she was going to get to the bottom of all this.
Chapter 5
She drifted deliriously through half-dreaming, half-waking visions in which the walls moved, and the fire seemed to shift and wiggle like a living thing. The fever and delirium were well and truly taking hold of her when she heard the door open again, and she sat up with some difficulty, trying to reclaim her mind from the strange wandering it was doing. Was it Niall again, the handsome Scottish-accented man who’d so thoroughly failed to explain anything at all about where she was or how she’d gotten here? No — this time it was an older woman, tall and graceful, with a pair of shining silver eyes and a smile on her face that made Helen feel oddly safe. Even without knowing this woman at all, she had the feeling she was in good hands here. Was that instinct, or just the delirium talking? She was beginning to worry a little about how profoundly disoriented she was feeling.
“Hello there, dear,” the woman said in a soft, lilting voice — with an increasingly familiar accent. Helen’s eyes widened.
“Is everyone here Scottish?”
The woman chuckled knowingly. “Aye, dear, more or less. How are you feeling?”
“Pretty terrible, but that’s not my biggest question. Who are you, and where am I? What happened, and why am I not in the hospital?”
“My name is Maeve,” the woman said softly, taking a seat in the rocking chair beside her bed and reaching out with one slender and finely wrinkled hand to touch Helen’s hand through the bedsheets. “You’re in Castle Urquhart, in the chambers of Niall Grant, a well-trusted member of Clan Grant. As to your other two questions… well, those get a little complicated, I’m afraid.”
“A castle,” she said blankly. Were there castles in West Virginia? She knew of a few pretty elaborate old houses and hotels that were built to look like castles, but nobody actually called them that. “I’m in a castle, you say. A castle in West Virginia.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, lassie,” Maeve said gently. “You’re not in West Virginia anymore. And if you were there… well, you wouldn’t recognize it anymore. You’re in Scotland, dear. And it’s the sixteenth century.”
Helen gazed at her for a long moment, waiting for the punchline. But Maeve just gazed earnestly back at her, the conviction in those silver eyes giving Helen the creeping suspicion that this woman honestly believed that it was the sixteenth century. She took a deep breath, not quite sure how to approach this clearly unbalanced woman. “Okay. Sure.”
But Maeve just laughed. “I don’t expect you to believe me, dear. Not straight away. It’s rather a lot to just take at face value, after all. But I’m telling you the truth. You’re not the first woman to become lost in time after an awful accident.”
That caught her attention. “Accident? What about my accident?”
“What was the last thing you remember?” Maeve asked gently, her silver eyes calm. “Before you woke up here?”
“I — I was taking this man to the police station. But he — he’d cut the brake lines in my car, or something. I lost control — we careened down the side of the mountain, straight into the river. I felt the water rushing in, and then…” She frowned. “Then my memory gets all weird. A bunch of dreams, I guess about the accident, and then… then I was here. I kind of remember people looking after me, but not much more.”
“What kind of dreams did you have?” Maeve looked keenly interested in this.
Helen decided to humor her. Maybe she’d get some answers if she just played along with this time travel nonsense. “Just some weird stuff. Cold water, trying to swim… some big glowing figures made of light staring down at me…”
Maeve clapped her hands together in clear delight, surprising Helen. “That’s them! That’s the Sidhe.”
“The what?”
“The Sidhe are the people who brought you here, Helen,” Maeve said softly. “It’s difficult to explain… but they’re friends and allies. They exist in a world outside of our own… and they have a way of knowing exactly where people need to be.” Maeve smiled. “I have a few people I think you should meet.”
Leaving Helen confused, she rose to her feet and crossed to the door, murmuring a few words to someone on the other side. And before Helen knew it, she was surrounded by women — five of them, including Maeve, though the newcomers were all much younger. They introduced themselves to her one by one — Anna, a short woman with a tough exterior but a brilliant smile, Nancy, a younger blonde who squeezed her hands tightly, Elena, who looked at her closely as they were introduced, her long red hair pulled into a severe braid, and finally Kay, who seemed most excited to meet her. A little confused, Helen peer
ed up at Maeve.
“Why are they all dressed like historical re-enactors?”
A murmur of laughter went up from the women. “That’s exactly what I asked when I first got here.” Anna chuckled. “Welcome to the family, Helen.”
“We’re all like you,” Nancy said softly, reaching out to squeeze her hand. “We got stranded in time, too — brought through by the Sidhe.”
“They do what they do for a reason,” Elena told her firmly. “You’ll understand it eventually. We all figured it out.”
Helen was reeling. “Okay, I — say I believe you,” she said cautiously, giving them all a suspicious look. “How — how on Earth did I get — “ But a storm of coughing took hold of her before she could finish the question.
Maeve frowned, shooting all the women a worried look as she moved a little closer to Helen’s bedside. Placing a cool hand on her back, she instructed her to breathe in — Helen did, but the coughing took her again, making her head pound and her body feel dangerously weak and dizzy.
“Pneumonia,” she managed to choke out once the coughing had subsided a little. “I think this is pneumonia. My brother had it once —"
“That’s not good,” Kay said softly, giving Maeve a worried look. “We don’t have antibiotics or anything to treat a serious chest infection like that—”
“We’ll just have to bring in a specialist,” Maeve said firmly. “I’ll go now. You four stay with Helen. I’m sure she has more than a few questions to ask.”
Needed By The Highlander: A Scottish Time Travel Romance (Highlander Forever Book 5) Page 3
