The Pocket Watch

by Ceci Giltenan

He nodded. “I did and I will.”

  Maggie leaned over and kissed him. Oh Dear God how she loved him. She couldn’t stop herself and she feared it might be the last time he accepted a kiss from her if he didn’t believe her or, worse, thought her a witch.

  His eyebrow went up and he smiled. “Does this truth have something to do with kissing? Because I’d be happy to show ye what I know to be true first.”

  She smiled. “Nay, it doesn’t have to do with kissing, although I wish it did. It has to do with time.”

  “Time?” he looked incredulous.

  “Aye, time. We think of time as fixed. Yesterday is always behind us, tomorrow is always ahead of us.”

  “Because it is.”

  “Nay, Logan, it isn’t. Time is not linear. There are ways to cross from one time to another. Essentially it is possible to go backwards and then forwards again.”

  He frowned. “How do ye know this?”

  “Because I did it.”

  To her dismay, he stiffened and pulled away from her slightly, dropping the hand he held. “How is this possible?”

  Well at least he was still listening as he had promised. “I don’t understand it all myself. I have no idea how it works, and there may be more than one way to do it, but the method I know about is called ‘soul exchange.’ A soul is pulled from one time to another and enters the physical body of someone who is about to die, but the new soul is able to prevent that death. That’s what happened to me. My soul entered Margaret’s body just in time to rein Robin in and prevent the accident that seemed certain to occur. I went to sleep at night, and woke up clinging to Robin’s back.”

  He stared at her in disbelief, but he still listened so she continued, “I was terrified. I had never ridden a horse. I acted on instinct to stop him. I know now I pulled much too hard on his reins which is what caused him to rear and throw me. The reason I know things Margaret didn’t know is because I am not Margaret. I know other things too. I understand complicated mathematics, I can read and speak English, although it has changed a lot over time. I know things about the nature of the world that mankind won’t discover for more than two hundred years.”

  “Ye are asking me to believe that ye lived two hundred years in the future and yer soul entered Margaret Grant’s body just as she was about to die?”

  “I’m actually from more than seven hundred years in the future, but aye, my soul entered Margaret’s body just in time to stop the accident. It’s why at that moment, I became a completely different person from the Margaret ye knew.”

  He looked grim. “That’s what ye meant that first day. About not wanting to be Margaret. What happened to her soul?”

  “It was an exchange, her soul entered my body in the future.”

  “Did ye choose to do this? To meddle with souls and time?”

  Maggie sighed. “I did, but only because I was trying to prove that it wouldn’t work. Ye see, most people in the future don’t even know this is possible. I met an elderly woman named Gertrude who I thought wasn’t in her right mind. She insisted that soul exchange was possible. In the future I’m a…healer. I wanted to get help for her but the only way she would accept it, was if I tried what she told me and it didn’t work. Logan, I firmly believed it wouldn’t work.”

  “What did ye have to do to make this unnatural thing happen?”

  The derision in his tone hurt. She feared this wasn’t going to end well, but she had started and had to see it through. She pulled the chain from around her neck and showed him the watch. “She gave me this.” Maggie knew mechanical clocks hadn’t been invented yet. “Do ye remember me not understanding what ye meant by prime and sext and so on?”

  He nodded.

  “That is because in the future we have mechanical clocks that mark the hours. A clock that is small enough to wear or carry is called a ‘watch’. This looks like a kind of watch called a ‘pocket watch’ but it isn’t a normal pocket watch. It is the conduit that brought me back in time and it marks the number of days I’ve been here. Gertrude told me to put the chain around my neck before I went to sleep and it would take me back in time. I don’t believe in magic and with no other explanation for how it could work, I didn’t believe it would. I thought she was touched in the head.”

  “But ye want me to believe it worked.”

  She looked into his stormy gray eyes, praying with all her heart that he would. “Aye, I do. Because I am here.”

  He snorted. “And why are ye telling me this now? Is it time for ye to go home? Did ye make me fall in love with ye, only to have Margaret Grant return and make the rest of my life miserable?”

  Maggie sighed. “Margaret won’t return, ever. She set a course of events in place that inevitably would have ended in her death. On the other hand, I have a choice to make. I told ye this pocket watch marks the number of days I’ve been here. Before sixty days is up, I can leave anytime I wish simply by saying a particular word. But if I do that, Margaret’s body here will die, as it would have on that day, and I will return to my own body, in my own time.”

  “Ye said ‘if’ ye do that.”

  “Aye, I did. I can choose to stay. If I don’t say the word before my time is up, I will stay here forever.”

  “Ye have just admitted practicing magic to me. I could have ye burned as a witch.”

  “I don’t believe it is magic. It might be, but it might be something from even farther in the future that I don’t understand. In any event, if I stay beyond six more days, any magic that existed is gone. But, Logan, if ye intend to burn me as a witch, I’ll leave now.”

  The pain in his expression tore at her heart. “I don’t intend to burn ye as a witch, Maggie.” He pulled her into his arms, holding tight. “Sweetling, these things ye are saying…they’re hard to believe. In fact, I’m not sure I do believe them. But I do love ye and one thing is for certain. Ye can’t tell this story to anyone else or ye will be accused of witchcraft.”

  She returned his embrace. “I won’t tell anyone else. I needed ye to know, to understand.”

  “To understand? I—” his voice broke with emotion, “—I don’t understand. Are ye telling me ye’re leaving me? That ye’ll die soon? I won’t believe that. We are to be married in four days.”

  “Aye, we are to be married and I love ye with all my heart. I want to marry ye. I want to stay here and grow old with ye.” Logan visibly relaxed a little. “But if ye are going to marry me, I need ye to understand who I really am and what the consequences of this decision are for both of us. I am going to ask ye to set aside yer disbelief for a moment. I want ye to pretend that everything I’ve told ye so far is true. Please, Logan, I want to tell ye who I really am.”

  ~ * ~

  Logan stared at the woman he loved with his whole heart. What she asked him to believe was at best a sign she was touched in the head and at worst the work of the devil. In truth, he didn’t think she was either crazy or wicked, but the only option left was that her story was true. She begged him to set aside his disbelief and listen. Perhaps if he did, it would all be clearer. She was right—wicked, crazy, or a soul from the future—he needed to know before they were married.

  “All right, Maggie. For the moment, I will believe ye. Tell me who ye are.”

  She seemed relieved. “My real name is Magdalena Mitchell. I’m called Maggie at home. That’s why I asked ye to call me that.”

  Maggie launched into her story, with such exquisite detail it became harder and harder not to believe her. She described her family and her childhood. She talked about her mother’s illness and the role Maggie had taken in caring for her. When she cried, he gathered her in his arms to comfort her.

  This was not an act. She firmly believed everything she told him, and gradually he became convinced her story was true. Lasses studying just like lads as younglings? Going to universities? The same universities no less? She couldn’t make up something that ridiculous.

  Still, that she wanted to go so badly and hadn’t been able to, c
aused his heart to ache a little too. That she had given the opportunity to her sister, rather than taking it herself made him…proud. This one detail, above all others sealed his faith that she was not and had never been Margaret Grant.

  “Ye are a good lass, Maggie Mitchell.”

  “So ye believe me?”

  “Aye, I do. I don’t pretend to understand it. But I do believe ye. So, how did ye meet Gertrude and why did she give ye the pocket watch?”

  Maggie sighed. “I have left out one rather important person in the story of my life. His name is Elliott.”

  A man? A husband perhaps? Logan feared the worst. “Please, tell me ye aren’t married to him?”

  She smiled but shook her head. “I’m not. He was my very best friend. We grew up together. Everyone expected us to get married.”

  “But ye didn’t? Was he not yer father’s choice? Was yer da not able to provide a sufficient dowry due to his finances?”

  Maggie laughed. “Nay, nothing like that. Marriage is different in the future. In most parts of the world, men and women choose their own spouses and there are no dowries. Most people marry for love. They spend a long time, sometimes years, getting to know each other before they decide to marry.”

  “How is that possible? How are alliances made? If ye must know someone for years first, ye could only marry within yer clan.”

  “Things are very different and alliances as ye know them aren’t necessary. I will tell ye more about that another time. For now ye’ll just have to accept that in my time most people marry for love.”

  That was a sobering thought. “Then ye and Elliott loved each other?” Just asking the question was more painful than he could have imagined. He didn’t like the idea of anyone but him loving Maggie, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer.

  “Aye, we did. That is, I thought we did, until he went away to university and met someone else.”

  Her tone of voice sounded so melancholy. It was obvious, this man, Elliott, had hurt her deeply. “He set ye aside?”

  She nodded. “He said he would always love me but that it was different with Amanda.” She gave him a sad half smile. “He told me I would always be his best friend.”

  Logan couldn’t believe any man in his right mind would choose another over Maggie. “What a roaring arse.”

  Maggie gave a genuinely happy laugh. “I agree. But on the day I met Gertrude, I hadn’t quite sorted that out. I had attended his wedding to Amanda and I thought my heart was permanently broken. Gertrude found me crying.

  He caressed her cheek. “I’m sorry he hurt ye, Maggie.”

  Maggie leaned into his touch. “I’m not. If he hadn’t I would never have met Gertrude…or ye. I told Gertrude the whole sad tale and she offered me a chance to live another life. As I said, I didn’t believe her, but I thought I could help her. So I did what she said to do, to prove her wrong. Only…she wasn’t wrong…it worked.”

  “It seems that it did.”

  “Ye believe me?” She asked incredulously.

  “Aye, Maggie, I do. The tale ye tell is simply too fantastic for Margaret to have imagined.” But even as he admitted believing her, he feared he was about to lose her. He had never imagined what it be like to choose his own bride, but given the option, he would have chosen Magdalena Mitchell. “What are ye going to do?” he asked tentatively.

  “Staying here means leaving my father and my sister forever.”

  By all the saints, he didn’t want to lose her. He understood the importance of family. His family and clan had been his focus as long as he could remember. How could he ask this of her? And yet…how could he not? “Maggie, ye know I have always put the needs of my clan and family first. As my father’s heir, and now the laird, it is the responsibility I was born to. It seems ye have always done the same. Over the last few years, as little more than a lass, ye have sacrificed yer own dreams and happiness, first to care for yer dying mother and then to ensure the wellbeing of yer family. I have no right to ask ye what I am about to, but for once, I am thinking solely of what I want and I have never wanted anything more. Maggie, please stay. I love ye. Be my bride and, at my side, help guide this clan.”

  ~ * ~

  Dear God. Maggie had never wanted anything more either. Logan had listened to her story, believed it, and knowing full well who she really was, he had asked her to marry him and stay. She thought back to her last conversation with Paige. Her sister had said, if you don’t wake up in the morning, while I’ll be sad and miss you forever, I will know someone worthy earned your heart. Maggie realized that some part of Paige had believed it possible. She would understand Maggie’s choice and help Dad understand it too.

  Maggie looked into Logan’s stormy grey eyes, and knew her decision was made. “Aye, Logan, I’ll marry ye. I’ll stay.”

  Logan let out a breath and pulled her back into his arms, kissing her until she could no longer think straight.

  When he eventually broke the kiss, she rested her head against his chest. “I think I finally understand what Elliott meant when he said he loved me, but it was different with Amanda. I loved him. I still do. But what I felt for him is not remotely like what I feel for ye. Logan, I love ye with everything I am. I can’t imagine going back and living the rest of my life without ye.”

  Chapter 11

  The rising tension that Maggie had felt for days was gone. Making the choice to follow her heart had freed her. Now she could look forward to the wedding. Perhaps more importantly, she also felt she could face meeting Margaret’s father, knowing that he was, in fact, coming for her wedding and not her funeral.

  Representatives from most of Logan’s allies began arriving that afternoon and shortly before the evening meal was to be served, the Grants arrived. After the watch announced their approach, Maggie waited to greet them in the inner bailey with Logan and Lady Davina. As they rode through the gates, Maggie’s attention fell on an older man with reddish hair and a graying beard. Suddenly various images of the man flashed through Maggie’s brain—it was like a montage of tiny snippets from a movie. Gertrude had said some memories might surface over time. Clearly Margaret knew this man.

  As if he saw the puzzlement on her face, Logan leaned close to her ear, confirming her suspicions. “That tall man in the middle is yer da.”

  The man dismounted and strode towards them. He stopped in front of her, “Margaret, ye’re looking well, lass. I trust ye have come to accept this betrothal?”

  Surprised that he didn’t greet her with a hug or some sort of show of affection, Maggie simply answered, “Aye.”

  Logan came to her rescue. “Laird Grant, there is something I need to tell ye.”

  “If my daughter has talked ye out of this marriage, think again, Carr. Ye have no reason to set her aside and I won’t listen to any nonsense.”

  Logan shook his head. “Laird, I fully intend to marry Margaret.”

  “Then what could ye possibly have to discuss with me that is so urgent it must be addressed on the steps of yer keep?”

  Lady Davina stepped in, “Alpin, ye are as hard-headed as ever, I see.”

  Laird Grant grinned at her, “And I see ye are as lovely…and bold as ever.”

  Lady Davina smiled. “Thank ye, Alpin. I assure ye, this is important. Margaret had an accident shortly after arriving here. She was thrown from her horse.” At his frown, she said, “She wasn’t seriously injured, but she hit her head and she has lost her memories.”

  He frowned at Maggie. “Margaret, what have ye done? Have ye led the Carr’s down this path hoping Laird Carr will send ye home? I assure ye, lass, if he does, I will not be pleased.”

  Logan rushed to defend her. “Laird Grant, it’s true.”

  “Then ye do want to set her aside?” roared Laird Grant.

  Logan actually laughed. “Nay, Laird, I don’t. We’ve grown very fond of each other and I fully intend to marry her. But she remembers nothing of her life before coming here.”

  Again Margaret’s fath
er turned on her, “Margaret, if ye’ve been lying, now is the time to tell me the truth and avoid disgracing me and yer clan even more.”

  Maggie was a bit taken aback. “I’m not lying…” Maggie wasn’t sure what to call him but settled on, “…Da.”

  “Da?” Laird Grant looked shocked. “Ye’ve never called me ‘Da’. Twas ‘papa’ when ye wanted something and ‘father’ otherwise.”

  Maggie didn’t know what to say. “I-I’m sorry. Would ye prefer I call ye ‘father’?”

  Clearly bewildered, Laird Grant shook his head. “Nay, lass, ‘Da’ is fine.”

  “I’m not lying, Da. I am sorry this happened. It was my fault. I ignored Logan’s warnings and brought about the accident myself.”

  Laird Grant looked dumbfounded.

  “Ye see, Alpin?” asked Lady Davina. “She’s…different.”

  He nodded in wonderment. “Aye. I’d say she is.”

  Lady Davina motioned toward the doors. “Join us in the hall then. I’m sure Maggie would like the chance to get to know ye better.”

  “Maggie?”

  “Aye, Alpin. Maggie. It suits her. Ye’ll see.”

  Her father leveled a glare at her. “Maggie?”

  “Ye can call me Margaret if ye wish,” Maggie offered.

  He looked at Lady Davina again. “I don’t understand this.”

  She smiled, “It took us all a while, but maybe seeing and talking with someone familiar will help her memory return.”

  “Aye, maybe.” Laird Grant gave Maggie one last confused look before offering his arm to Lady Davina. “May I escort ye in then?”

  Lady Davina smiled at him. “Certainly.” She accepted his arm, turning to walk into the keep.

  Logan took Maggie’s arm, leading her into the hall as well. He took his place at the head of the table, sitting Maggie in the chair to his right, and Laird Grant next to her. Maggie felt oddly uncomfortable as the meal progressed. Margaret’s father asked probing questions, as if he were trying to discern if he was being lied to. She met each question with as honest an answer as possible.

  Logan lost patience before she did. “Laird Grant, please, there is nothing to discover here. Maggie remembers very little of her past and she has changed. I adore her and I’m sure ye will find her charming. In fairness, do either of us have anything to complain about?”