Wild Highland Rose (Time Travel Trilogy, Book 2)

by Davis, Dee

  "1468?" The question was pitched so low, she had to lean close to hear him. "Are you sure?"

  "Of course I'm sure." She spoke slowly, enunciating each word.

  His eyes locked with hers, the naked anguish there tearing at her heart. "It's seems, then, that I was right. I'm a long way from home."

  CHAPTER 4

  1468.

  Cameron closed his eyes and then opened them again, taking in the stone room, the chamber pot peeking out from under the bed, the open window with its wooden shutters and the woman standing by the bed.

  1468.

  His head swirled, reality twisting in on itself, the truth slamming home with a finality that left him breathless. He wasn't just inexplicably in Scotland. He was inexplicably in fifteenth century Scotland. And this woman thought he was her husband.

  Terror flooded through him, his mind desperately wanting to reject the facts, but categorically unable to dismiss them. He wasn't just a man without identity. He was a man with the wrong identity. A stranger in body and time. Or perhaps Marjory was right. Maybe he was just crazy.

  In some ways the latter was more comforting. At least it was quantifiable. Scientifically possible. But he knew it wasn't the truth. He was sane. It was the world around him that was certifiable, a madhouse worse than anything Lewis Carroll could have possibly imagined.

  Another horrifying thought occurred to him, and he closed his eyes again, trying to envision his likeness. A picture popped automatically into his head, and he was flooded with relief, but only for a moment. If he was right, then the face existed only in his mind.

  "I need a mirror." The words came out on a croak, and he swallowed, his eyes meeting Marjory's. She stared back at him, his own horror reflected in her eyes.

  Obviously, she thought him unbalanced, or maybe possessed. Which unfortunately was all too close to the truth. "I've no notion of what it is you want." She, too, whispered, as if their discussion needed to remain private.

  He scrambled for another word, something that would explain to her what he required. "A looking glass." Her face was still blank. "Something that will reflect my face. Marjory, I need to see myself."

  She raised an eyebrow in question, but nodded, turning to a chest in the corner. Opening it, she pulled out a flat piece of metal polished to a high shine. A shield of some sort. Still silent, she handed it to him.

  He held the improvised mirror out from his face and, heart pounding, took a look. The man in the mirror was sun-bronzed and heavily muscled. His hair was long, somewhere between blonde and brown. His face was hard, his skin toughened by life in the outdoors. The face was young and old at the same time. There weren't any wrinkles, but there also were no laugh lines.

  The faint white pucker of a scar ran across one cheek, tracing a thin line from his ear to his chin. Even with the imperfection of the reflection, he could see that his eyes were the same color as his hair. A lion, the man in the mirror was a lion—and a perfect stranger.

  This, then, was Ewen Cameron.

  Cameron stared at the face in the mirror, his mind recoiling at the enormity of what was happening. He was looking at himself, and yet it wasn't his reflection. Not his face, not his century. He was certain of the fact. His life, if he still had one, belonged with dream induced memories of rainy nights and a car with a leather interior, and the blonde.

  But if all that was true, then there were some pretty overwhelming questions to be answered. Like how the hell he'd gotten here and how in the world was he going to get back? For that matter, what had happened to the real Ewen Cameron? Was he dead? Was he roaming around in someone else's body? Cameron's body?

  The questions built up one after another until Cameron felt as if his head would explode. God, he wished his memory would return.

  He blanched as another unwanted thought planted itself firmly in his brain. What if he never remembered? What if it was part of the nightmare? What if he was always caught in some sort of limbo between glimpses of who he really was and tales of who he was not?

  No.

  He simply could not, would not accept that. His memory would come back. Amnesia was seldom permanent. He latched onto that thought, forcing himself to ignore the accompanying thought that traumatic head injury didn't send its victim five hundred years into the past.

  "I shouldn't be at all surprised that you'd spend the better part of the day admiring yourself. But I've work to do and no time for lollygagging about with you."

  Marjory's voice drew him sharply back to the present—the past actually. He grimaced, and lowered the mirror, trying to hide the turmoil. Until he knew who he could trust, he wasn't about to share his thoughts. Especially with Marjory.

  "I thought it might trigger memories," he shrugged. "But there's nothing." He handed her the shield, forcing himself to breathe normally, there was no sense in panicking. If he was going to make sense of this nightmare, he had to get out of this bed, and to do that he had to hold his cards close to the vest.

  Marjory was staring at him through narrowed eyes, her expression somewhere between pity and contempt. "Grania says they'll come back."

  They'd covered this territory before, but this time Cameron was determined to get more information. "Until then, I have some questions." He tried to make his tone pleasant. To keep at least a semblance of normalcy. "Please stay." He patted the bed next to him in what he hoped was an inviting manner. In truth, his head was pounding and what he wanted most was to be alone, but that wouldn't get him answers.

  Marjory glared at him suspiciously and then, apparently making up her mind, ignored the spot he'd indicated, and sat instead in the chair vacated by Grania. He sighed. The woman had a will of her own.

  "What do you wish to speak about?" She sat perfectly straight in the chair, poised on the edge, obviously ready to make a hasty retreat if necessary.

  He wondered what Ewen had done to make her so wary of him. "Maybe we should start with why you hate me so much."

  She flinched, obviously not expecting the question. "'Tis mutual."

  It wasn't an answer, but it spoke volumes just the same. "Whatever I felt before I don't feel it now. You're a stranger to me. And I can't move forward with my life until I at least have a rudimentary understanding of who I was before I fell."

  She looked as though she didn't believe him, which given the circumstances was perfectly reasonable, but he was oddly disappointed nevertheless.

  "So if we hate each other, why the marriage?"

  She eyed him distrustfully. "You're a Cameron and I'm a Macpherson. Our families are enemies and, in their infinite wisdom, they decided a marriage between our clans would lessen tensions."

  "You, I mean, we," he amended, "were the sacrificial lambs, I take it?"

  "Aye."

  "Did it work?" The situation sounded like something out of a macabre fairy tale. "Did your marriage to Ewen ease the tension between your clans?"

  "You speak as if you are not he." Her expression held both fear and puzzlement.

  He cursed his choice of words, he'd have to be more careful. If these people perceived him as insane, his chances for escape were nil. "I'm sorry, it's just that hearing all this is like listening to a story. Someone else's life."

  She sighed, her expression softening. "I can imagine the way of it."

  "So did the marriage solve the problems between our clans?" He pulled the focus of the conversation back to the past—his past in some weirdly twisted way.

  "Nay." she shook her head. "The sacrifice, as you call it, was for naught."

  "I see." He paused, looking down at his hands, or more relevantly Ewen's hands.

  She followed his gaze, staring for a moment and then looking away in seeming embarrassment. Without thinking, he reached out and touched her hand. Electricity flew between them almost as if there were actually a current of some sort.

  She pulled her hand away, anger sparking in her eyes. "I've no more time for blathering blethering ," she snapped, jumping up from the chair. "There
's work to be done and it won't take care of itself. Your father," she spat the word as if it were a curse, "will be here soon. Whatever it is you need to know, you can learn it from him."

  Without giving him time to answer, she fled, leaving Cameron with the uncomfortable feeling that she'd taken the sunshine with her.

  *****

  "I dinna know what it is, Aimil, but he is no' the same." Marjory raised the linen to her lips and snapped the embroidery thread.

  Aimil frowned. "Not with yer teeth. Ye were raised to be a lady no' a stable boy. And change or no', the mon is still a Cameron and in my books that makes him the enemy. Have ye forgotten so quickly then what his family did to yours?"

  Marjory bit her lip in concentration as she tried to thread the small needle. Finally, in frustration, she handed it to Aimil who deftly threaded it and handed it back. Marjory sighed, failing to see the importance of being able to thread a needle. There were far more critical things to worry about. And best she could tell, there was no one at Crannag Mhór who cared at all if she could embroider tapestry. Well, no one except Aimil.

  She picked up the piece and earnestly began to stitch. "Of course I haven't forgotten, Aimil. I live with that legacy every day of my life. I was only saying that I think Ewen has changed." Her body fairly sang at the thought of the physical changes. But that wasn't all of it. There was something more, something she couldn't put her finger on. Something she was hesitant to even think about, let alone believe.

  "Ye sound as if yer taking an interest in the man." Aimil shot her a concerned look over the top of her tapestry frame.

  "I couldna do such a thing." Marjory felt heat rising in her cheeks. She bent her head to her work, hoping Aimil wouldn't notice. "No' with all that lies between us." And she meant the words. At least on most levels. Still, she couldn't deny that there was something about Ewen now that was more than what he'd been before. Something that called to her in the age old way of men and women.

  If she'd felt anything at all for the old Ewen, it was revulsion, but try as she might she couldn't seem to recapture that feeling. It was almost as if he truly was another man. Saints preserve her, now she was one who was daft.

  "Marjory Macpherson, I've known ye since ye were a bairn and I know when yer no' telling me the truth. Ye are feeling something fer him."

  Marjory met Aimil's eyes, her own gaze clear and strong. "Only pity, Aimil. Ewen has clearly gone a wee bit soft in the head. And the least I can do is make sure he's well taken care of until Torcall Cameron comes to take him home."

  "And what if Torcall Cameron doesna want him the way he is?"

  "Then he'll just have to stay here at Crannag Mhór." Aimil was silent, but Marjory knew she was holding her tongue. "Out with it, Aimil. I know you've something to say to me."

  Aimil smiled. "Ah, child, ye know me too well. 'Tis just that I dinna want ye to get any more involved with the man than ye already are."

  Marjory laughed, but the sound held little humor. "I married him. I dinna know how much more involved I can get."

  "Aye, but when ye married him, he wasna injured and he didna want to be here. He only came now and again in the hopes o' getting ye with child, and when that failed, he hightailed it back to his father's house and his mistress."

  Marjory opened her mouth to speak, but Aimil cut her off with a wave of her hand. "Nay, I'll no' dance around the fact that he has a mistress, maybe scores of them for all we know. And it'll do ye good to remember the fact. A cat canna change his ways, Marjory. He will always roam, and this one is worse than most. He's a Cameron. Dinna let yerself care fer him, child. It canna bring ye anything but heartache. And more than likely, it'll bring ye harm."

  They sat in silence, sewing almost in rhythm. Aimil was right. Marjory knew it in her mind and her heart had long been closed to anything that even resembled feeling. She ought to be safe from the charms of her half-brained husband.

  But she wasn't. Marjory touched the back of her hand, feeling again the strange warmth his fingers against her skin had invoked. No matter what her practical mind said, her body would not, could not deny that his touch had woken a part of her she had long thought dead.

  She shook her head. She knew better than to open herself up to someone, and particularly to a Cameron. With a strength of will built from the pain of a destroyed childhood, she forced herself to picture her parents' bodies. The horror of the image washed over her like icy water. The man upstairs was an enemy. No matter what he said or did, he was still a Cameron. And she hated the lot.

  *****

  Cameron shifted in the bed so that he was closer to the window. From this vantage point, he could look down into the courtyard of Crannag Mhór, people below him going about their daily chores, scurrying here and there, each intent upon his or her task.

  One girl, wrapped in a brightly colored plaid, looked up at his window. He waved. She blushed a bright crimson, quickly averting her eyes, and continued on her way without an answering gesture. Obviously, she had been warned about the infamous Ewen.

  There were several outbuildings directly across from him. He had no idea what purpose they served. One billowed smoke and so he figured it was probably a blacksmith of some kind. His knowledge of fifteenth century craftsmanship was limited to television and movies. And everyone knew how accurate they usually were.

  Adjacent to the front of the tower was another structure. This one was surrounded by a pen of some kind. A barn, he figured. At least it looked like a barn. He frowned in frustration. A horse whinnied. A barn. He smiled with relief. Funny, how even the slightest shift in a man's sense of reality left him questioning even the most mundane observations.

  Not long ago, he'd had an ordinary life in the twenty-first century, or more precisely he thought he'd had such a life. And now…well now he seemed to be a man without a memory, stuck in some crazy time warp.

  He felt frustration rising again and tried to push it back down. It was only a matter of time, he reassured himself. His memories were already starting to come back. He'd remembered his car in the dream. And then there was the girl. The blonde. It was clear that she was important somehow, that she needed him. But why?

  He told himself that it would all come back. He just had to be patient and get well. Once that was accomplished he'd find his way back to the rockslide. Surely there, he'd find a way home. The little voice in his head insisted that it was a long shot at best, but he ignored it. If sheer will would get him home, then he'd soon be on his way.

  "Are ye all right?" Grania stood at the foot of the bed. He'd been so deep in thought, he hadn't heard her come in. He automatically reached for the sheet to cover himself, realizing as he did so that the gesture was unnecessary. Grania couldn't see him.

  "I think, even if I were no' blind, I would be too old for you to have to worry about modesty, but I thank ye for the thought." Her voice was filled with laughter. Somehow she must have guessed his actions. Her tone grew more solemn. "I passed Marjory outside yer chamber a bit ago. Did the two of you have words?"

  Cameron winced. If only it were that simple. "Believe me, words had nothing to do with it."

  "Cameron, ye see what ye want to see and naught more." With that enigmatic comment, she moved to open another window. "'Tis time ye were up and about, lad. 'Tis a beautiful morning." She handed him his shirt. "Dinna fash yerself about things ye canna change."

  Easy for her to say. Her life was ordered and as it should be. His was falling down around his ears. "I don't have the faintest idea what to do, Grania. I don't remember the person she thinks I am." Cameron didn't allow himself to stop and examine why it was Marjory in particular that he worried about. "To listen to her tell it I'm, at best, a self-centered bastard and, at worst, a hideous fiend of some kind with the devil for a father." He shifted uncomfortably on the bed as he pulled on his shirt.

  Grania sat patiently in the chair by the bed, her hands folded neatly in her lap. He was amazed at her ability for stillness. "I canna see, Cameron. By ne
cessity I must sit for long periods of time. I find 'tis easier to bear if I find a peace within."

  With uncanny accuracy, she had read his thoughts. "How do you do that?"

  She smiled at him. "Marjory would say I'm fey, but I think it's more to do with observation."

  "Without your eyes?"

  "There's far more to the world, lad, than what you can see. Tell me what ye remember of yerself."

  "Nothing significant. Only everyday things." He didn't mention that they were everyday things that hadn't been invented yet. That would surely throw even the unflappable Grania. Then again, maybe not.

  There was something about her that made him feel like she could see through him, even without conventional sight. He shook his head at the ridiculous notion. She was nothing more than she appeared. An old lady with good instincts.

  "Well, I wouldna worry o'ermuch. It will all come to ye in time. Besides, the past is ne'er as important as the present. And I've the feeling ye've something important to do here."

  "Me? I hardly think so. Even I can tell I'm not wanted here. Hell, without your help, I'm fairly certain they'd have left me to die. The one named Fingal would probably have helped me on my way, if you know what I mean."

  "Ach, lad, dinna go making things worse than they are. Marjory has had a rough time of it, and because o' that, she's closed off her heart, but she is no' a bad person and I dinna think she'd actually let any real harm befall ye."

  "Maybe not, but I'm still glad you're here. I don't think I like the idea of putting your theory to the test." He eased his legs off the side of the bed.

  "There now, what do ye think yer doing?"

  "You said it was time I was up and about." He slowly eased himself into a standing position. For a minute, the room whirled about him and his stomach did flip-flops, but he held onto the bed frame and the room soon took on its regular proportions. "There, see? I managed it all right." He winced at his choice of words, but Grania didn't seem to notice.