Rachel pulled Maggie off to the side at one point and whispered, “Where did you find this guy? In a cave?”
“The people who live up in the mountains of the Highlandsare, er, a little sheltered from modern life.”
That seemed to make sense to her friend, and Maggie saw her whispering to the twins a few minutes later, no doubt bringing them up to speed on the curious hunk their sister had brought home.
Allie and Ellie managed to get her alone in the kitchen and, giggling, encouraged her to stay in Scotland as long as she wanted.
“This guy’s a keeper,” Allie said. “Stay as long as you need! We’ll come back for the wedding!”
Ellie was not quite as effusive in her praise. “But don’t forget about us while you’re tripping the light fantastic with Mr. Hunk, okay?”
Then Rachel and the girls discreetly excused themselves,citing “dates” in town, and left the two lovers alone. Quinn and Maggie curled up on the couch together and watched a “movie” called The Princess Bride, and though he didn’t quite understand all of it, he loved hearing Maggie laugh.
“Such incredible inventions,” he said solemnly when it was over and he got up to examine the television. “How in the world is it possible?”
“I have no idea,” Maggie said, standing and stretching her arms over her head. “Sorry.”
He stood, too, and slid his arms around her waist, bendinghis head to take her mouth with his.
“That’s oh-kay,” he said, when they broke apart after quite a long interval. “I don’t have to know how everything works.” He slid his hands down to her hips and pulled her against his. “I know how this works, though.” Her eyes widened, and she pulled away.
“As tempting as that sounds,” Maggie said, “I think we need to get back to work.” She glanced down at the pile of library books on the floor near the couch.
Quinn’s smile faded. “Aye.” He turned away from her. “How easily I forget my friend, my duty, my honor.” For a moment he felt as though he couldn’t breathe.
“No, love,” she whispered, moving to put her arms around him. “You haven’t forgotten Ian, nor your honor. You’re just human, like the rest of us. Besides, I have a feeling that this is the day we will find our answers.”
They “researched,” as Maggie called it, for hours, when suddenly, Quinn caught his breath. On the page before him was Ian’s name—and the details of his death. Hanged on July thirty-first, at the hand of James Graham, Duke of Montrose.
“Ye were right,” he whispered, “but ’tis not the answer we were hoping for.”
Maggie leaned over and read the page, then rested her head against his shoulder. He could feel her trembling.
“I must go back. ’Tis still a chance I could stop it from happening.”
Maggie slipped away from him and stood, pulling him to his feet beside her. He gazed down into her ashen face.
“I am sorry, lass,” he said.
“Dance with me,” she said, the words barely audible.
Without a word, he took her in his arms and they began to move together, swaying back and forth, waltzing across the room. And as they danced, the reality of leaving her seized Quinn. His fingers tightened around her waist as he suddenly stopped in the middle of the room, unable to move.
“Quinn,” Maggie said.
“Maggie, I—”
Then there were no words, there was only that singular moment, and as the pain of their coming parting and the grief of leaving her pierced him like a knife, suddenly Quinn needed her as he never had before. She was there for him, as she always had been.
Cupping her face between his hands, he kissed her, knowing it might be the last time. As their passion deepened,he was tortured by the thought of living without her, and his touch grew more desperate, rougher, but Maggie’s response equaled his own. He walked her backward until they were pressed against the wall, the feel of her skin against his, the knowledge that it might never be again, giving fire to his touch.
Maggie pushed him back and he almost groaned aloud, but it was only so she could shimmy out of the tiny scrap of fabric she called underwear. Then she reached out, and unbuttonedhis jeans and released the hard length of him into her eager hand. Quinn caught his breath and picked her up. She wrapped her legs around his waist and he slid hot and hard into the sweet center of her body. Her breath was ragged, her eyes half closed, as he pressed her against the wall and pumped himself into her hard and fast, urgent with need, desperate with a despair that had been building inside of him for days.
Quinn possessed her, lifting her with each hard movementthat grew faster and stronger until he cried out her name, and she shuddered and whispered his.
“That felt like good-bye,” she said, her voice hollow.
He could not deny it. “Aye,” he said softly. “It did.” Then he picked her up in his arms and carried her up the stairs to their bed, where he made love to her again. But afterward,when he held Maggie in his arms, she lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at him, her blue eyes dark in the shadow of their room.
Maggie sat up and lifted herself over him, her long auburn hair spilling across his chest. She ran her fingers lightly over the still-raw tattoo on his thickly muscled arm. The tri-spiral gleamed with his blood. A promise to her, written in his own blood.
“I don’t want to say good-bye,” she whispered.
“Aye,” he said again. “And so we will not.”
They made love once more, and then talked through the night, telling each other things they had meant to confide. They rushed now to say it all. Maggie explained about her “panic attacks” and how she had learned to control them, told him that her favorite color was teal and that her dream was to travel around the world, discovering ancient artifacts.
In turn, Quinn shared the loneliness he had felt until she came into his life, that his favorite color was blue—the blue of her eyes—and his dream was to be the piper of a clan, and compose his own music.
Then there was silence except for the sound of Maggie’s quiet breathing. Quinn kissed her on he forehead and slipped out of bed. He stood watching the beautiful lass sleep for a moment and then turned and disappeared into the darkness.
sixteen
Quinn took another drink of his whiskey and stared at Rob Roy sitting across from him. Rob Roy stared back. The two men sat on benches at one of the rough-hewn tables insidethe Clachan Inn. Rob had agreed to meet him there and talk, but now Quinn wished he had chosen another place.
The inn no longer seemed itself after he had visited it in Maggie’s time. Everything now seemed rough and unpolished,the people dirty and unkempt, and he recoiled from it, even as he berated himself for his sudden snobbery. He felt strange, as if he didn’t quite belong anymore. He had been back in his own time for but a day, and already he missed Maggie so much he could feel the pain down to his marrow. He moved his right hand to rest it upon his left upperarm, pressing down just enough to make his tattoo ache, just enough to remind him that he was going back to Maggie.
“Why have ye asked me here, Quinn? Ye know my answer.”
“I am not here to ask for yer help,” Quinn said. “Well,” he corrected, “not yer help in rescuing Ian.”
“Then what?”
“If I am killed trying to save him, or hanged with him,” he said, speaking in a low voice, “will ye come and claim our bodies?”
Rob leaned back in his chair for a long moment. “Aye,” he said. “I will. Are there any MacIntyres I should summon,in that event?”
Quinn shook his head. “I’m sure there are other MacIntyresto which I am related, but I dinna know them.”
Rob nodded. “Aye, I will do what ye ask. But I willna accept the death of my favorite cousin,” he said and leaned forward on the table, his weight on one elbow, “nor yers. Decide to live, Quinn MacIntyre, and a way out of this mess will present itself to ye.” He shook his head. “I dinna think yer sweet lassie will want to live her life without ye warming her bed.”
“Aye,” Quinn agreed, “but time grows short.” He drew in a ragged breath and stood, holding out his hand. “Give Mary my love,” he said.
Rob stood and clasped his hand, half smiling beneath his red beard. “Ye know, I have always suspected that ye had a wee affection for my wife. I’m glad ye have yer own lassie now.”
Quinn shook his head and released his hand. “As if Mary would give another man a second glance.”
Rob stood there a moment, then leaned closer, lowering his voice. “Live, Quinn MacIntyre, that ye might continue to love yer lass. There must be a way to free Ian other than a straight-on assault.”
“That’s what Maggie keeps saying,” Quinn admitted.
Rob slapped him on the upper arm and Quinn bit back a cry of pain as Rob’s hand connected with the raw tattoo. “Then listen to her, lad,” the man said. “Mary always says that men dinna give women respect for their minds and ideas, and damn if I think she isn’t right. Ask Maggie what she would do, were she planning this escapade. A woman’s ways are more subtle than a man’s.”
“Aye,” Quinn said thoughtfully. “I will think upon yer words, Rob.”
Rob pushed open the heavy door and looked back at him. “Just dinna get dead if ye can help it, laddie. And bring Ian home safe to us.”
“Aye.” Quinn said. “I will do my best.”
Maggie spent the next two days staring at the ceiling. Rachel and the girls returned, and she pled exhaustion to keep from having to face them. When she could no longer avoid their questions, she told them Quinn had been called away on a family emergency and would be back as soon as possible. She congratulated herself silently for sticking to the truth, and knew Quinn would appreciate the little private joke.
Sensing something was wrong, her sisters and Rachel had hovered around her, until that morning, when Maggie’d practically pushed them out the door just to have a littletime alone to think.
She had done quite a bit of moping throughout the morning, and cried a few self-pitying tears, but around lunchtime she began to feel claustrophobic. Rachel and the twins had taken the rental car, but there was no reason she couldn’t take a walk. Once her mind was made up, Maggie changed into her green jogging pants and jacket, with a T-shirt underneath, and pulled on her Skechers.
Heading across the living room, she was intent on findinga key to the front door, when all at once, she saw the pile of library books she and Quinn had borrowed. The volumeslay under one of the end tables, forgotten.
Maggie sat down on the floor and smoothed her hand over the cover of one of the oldest books. It was entitled, MacIntyre’s Lament: A History of the MacIntyre Clan. She didn’t remember checking it out; maybe Quinn had. On impulse, she picked up the thick book and flipped through the pages, looking for Quinn’s name. Her hands trembled a little.
She was reading idly, half of her mind thinking about Quinn, half of it gliding over the names of people who were his ancestors, when suddenly her eyes stopped.
There it was. His name. Quinn MacIntyre, born April 10, 1685, died August 1, 1711.
With a little gasp, Maggie backtracked to where the chapter subtitled "MacIntyre’s Revenge” began. After readingfor several minutes, she leaned against the chair behind her and closed her eyes.
Quinn had not saved Ian. He’d been captured while tryingto rescue his friend. The two men had been executed two days later.
Maggie stumbled to her feet. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. She walked blindly to the front door of the cottage, still holding the book. She jerked the door open. It was anothersoft Scottish day, the sky a hazy blue gray, clouds gathering for yet another rain. It registered but she didn’t see it. All she could see was Quinn dangling from the end of a rope, dying in the past.
She walked outside. The rental car was gone. Right, Rachel and the twins had taken it. Maggie stood there, dazed for a moment, and then spun on her heel and started walking, striding up the dirt road that led to the secluded house.
She didn’t know where she was going. It didn’t matter. Tears blurred her vision. She stubbed her toe on a loose rock and dropped the book. Angrily, she kicked the offendingstone to one side and picked up the book, then kept walking.
How could she have let him go back? Maggie stumbled to a stop and doubled over, sobbing uncontrollably until she sank to her knees in the middle of the road. It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be. She shouldn’t have let him go back. She should have gone back with him. A hundred things she should have done. A million she shouldn’t. None of it mattered.Quinn was dead.
Her mind was filled with terrible images. The book hadn’t said how Quinn was executed. Suddenly she saw him under the headsman’s axe, and next facing a firing squad, and yet another scenario where he was hanging from a gallows, his face blue and bloated.
“No!” she screamed, her fingers twisting in the dirt beneathher, her hair hanging over her face like a widow’s veil. “No,” she whispered. Maggie got up. She had to keep walking.
She walked as fast as she could, humming the last tune Quinn had played for her on the bagpipes. She didn’t rememberthe name of it. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was filling her head with something that would drive out the picture of Quinn dying beneath the Highland sky.
Maggie didn’t know how long she trudged across the Highlands, but when she looked up from the ground again, she was only a dozen yards away from the cairn. Usually there were people milling around, but today the mound was deserted. Then she remembered: Alex had gone to Edinburghfor a few days.
Days. The book said Quinn and Ian had died on August the first. Today was July thirtieth. So far, from what she’d been able to figure out, the rhythm of the days in the past and the days in the future seemed to be the same. She had gone back in time on June 27, 2008, and had ended up sometime in June in 1711.
She didn’t know the exact date had been when she arrived.But she knew the date she came back, because Jenny had mentioned that morning that it was James’s birthday, July twenty-fourth. And she knew that when she returned to 2008, the date was July twenty-fourth, because she had asked Rachel.
So if the dates remained the same . . .
Maggie stopped breathing.
Then right this minute, in the year 1711, Quinn and Ian were still alive.
She climbed to the top of the hill and went inside the cairn, where dry-eyed, she waited for dark.
Quinn sat staring into the fire at the cottage, thinking. He had one day before Ian would be hanged.
Think of a subtle plan, Rob had said. Quinn leaned his head in his hands. He knew only how to fight directly, sword to sword, man to man. He sighed. He was weary, tired of thinking. His mind drifted to his favorite daydream—he and Maggie married, living together in Scotland.
He could see her, holding his son in her arms, gazing down at him with love in her eyes. When he was older, she would tell him stories. Quinn would tell him stories, too, legends, and the history of the MacIntyres and their friends, the MacGregors, just as his father had once told him.
Quinn began to pray.
Maggie was caught in a spinning vortex, the light within so bright that even with her eyes closed, it blinded her. She cried out for release and relief, but there was none. The other times it had not taken this long to reach the other side. Then it happened, what she had feared and dreaded.
No. No!
Her silent scream echoed around her as she felt her spirit, what made her Maggie Graham, separate from her body and fly upward. She looked down and saw herself below,encased in a sphere filled with light, as she watched from the vast blackness surrounding the orblike enclosure. And then she began to drift, farther as farther away, as her mind grew languid and fuzzy.
The thought of Quinn and her sisters and Rachel was all that saved her. One fleeting moment of seeing them in her mind, wishing she could say good-bye, spurred Maggie to fight her way back to her body.
She concentrated on returning to her body, on feeling it around her once more,
and then suddenly she was flying, rushing downward like a comet across the universe as she reached for the ball of light in the midst of the darkness.
Her speed increased, plunging her faster and faster towardthe woman below, and in the brief second before she rejoined her body, she saw her own face and her own dull eyes, just before everything inside of her and outside of her shattered into a billion crystal shards of radiant light.
Maggie regained consciousness slowly, so slowly it seemed that one cell at a time was coming back “online” in the computer called her brain. When she was finally able to open her eyes, she couldn’t move.
Panic overwhelmed her for a moment, until she rememberedher breathing techniques. Her chest was moving up and down. Air was going in and out of her lungs. She could breathe. She could control her breathing. She closed her eyes and thought only about breathing.
After a while, she became calmer and opened her eyes, only to feel the panic begin again. Above her was the bonny blue sky of Scotland, a few wispy clouds drifting across the broad expanse. She wasn’t inside the cairn. Somehow, this time, she had ended up outside! How had that happened?
It’s okay, it’s okay, Maggie reassured herself silently. You’re alive. You’ll be able to move in a minute. Just keep breathing.
She kept doing her slow breathing, and after a few minutes,she could move her fingers and toes. A few minutes after that, she was able to bend her arms and legs, and finally, after almost an hour, she sat up. She tried to stand, but her legs were like gelatin, and she sank back down, her heart thumping in fear.
Highland Rogue Page 24
