“Fight or flight?” Evelyn said jokingly, but a tiny bit serious about running away, letting these damned Scots take care of their own ancient magical problems. Dry old Dilbert had never seemed so enticing to her at that moment.
Piper sighed. “Fight,” she said, and they returned to the sitting room.
Mellie was curled up in the corner of the loveseat, asleep. Lachlan was sitting in his chair looking absolutely dejected, and sicker than a dog to boot, his skin like melted candle wax. Piper rushed to him and asked him quietly if he needed anything. He shook his head.
Sam was pacing, pinching the bridge of his nose and muttering. When the girls returned to the room, he turned and looked at Evelyn, his eyes bright and glittering as if he too had a fever. This is so not good, she thought. Everyone’s falling apart.
“Hey, remember that diary? The old leatherbound one? Whose was that?” he asked.
“Edwina Macauley,” Evelyn said promptly, remembering the young houseguest’s excited entry about the infamous murderer who had been caught on the estate. And who was on the loose here and now. She shivered.
“Aye, right,” Sam continued. “And the other one, the ledger. Edwina said a fierce murderer was caught on the same day the steward recorded the capture of a cattle thief.” He waved a hand at Lachlan, who scowled.
“We were merely crossing the land. Perhaps one of the lads may have let a few beasts follow him, but it was pure bad feelings over the broken marriage contract that made old Oswald Glen take me. And now look.”
“Yeah, fine.” Sam shook off the distraction. “But the point is, we thought it was one and the same person, and the lass was just being dramatic.” He looked at everyone in turn, excited now. “But say it was really two people, Lachlan here the cattle thief, and Brian Duncan the deranged murderer in Edwina’s diary. It may have been poor reporting or just confusion that both didn’t get recorded in the ledger. Having two prisoners escape, or disappear, or whatever they thought happened. Quite hectic for them. But Lachlan and Brian might have been here on the property at the same time.”
“Not possible. I would have seen him. The tower is where prisoners are kept and I was the only one up there.”
“No,” Evelyn said, finally recalling it all. “Edwina said he was in the barn. They had him chained up in the barn.” She clasped her hands in front of her, not daring to hope they might have come across a helpful piece to this puzzle. “Have you been in the barn at all?” She turned to Piper who was wrinkling her nose in concentration.
“Yes, but I think it was before Sunday. It had to have been. There wasn’t much out there but some old tack, and the place was remarkably clean so we just decided to leave it alone and get to the upper floors instead.” She held out her hands. “I don’t think we brought anything into the house from out there.” She looked at Mellie, who was still asleep on the loveseat. “Mellie might remember.”
Sam stopped pacing. “No, don’t wake her. I’ll go have a look at the barn.” He seemed doubtful that he would find anything, but it was the only lead they had that hadn’t been checked yet.
“I’ll go with you,” Evelyn said. She smiled encouragingly at Lachlan and Piper. Lachlan stood up to join them but staggered on his feet. Piper pushed him back down onto the armchair, admonishing him to stay put. She rushed over to Evelyn before she left.
“He’s getting worse,” she said, her voice thick with anguish. Evelyn nodded.
“We’ll go over the place with a fine tooth comb,” she said. “We’ll find something.” She gripped Piper’s hands, which were freezing, and nodded.
Piper turned to go back to Lachlan, fluttering around him like a mother hen. It broke Evelyn’s heart to see it and she stood in the hallway watching them until Sam took her by the arm.
“Let’s go,” he said.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The barn was a broad stone building, modernized and fitted with electric lights. It was cavernous on the inside, and like Piper said, remarkably clean. The floors were new brick tiled, with tidy drains in them every few yards for easy cleaning. The stalls were roomy hotel suites for horses, each with a built in trough, pneumatic stall doors that swung open at the press of a button, well lit and equipped with both a ceiling fan for hot days and a heating vent for the winters.
The place was empty except for a few saddles and bridles hanging from an equipment wall. When Sam snapped on the lights, and they walked into the barn, Evelyn realized it was the first place in the whole estate that wasn’t the least bit creepy. It was so well lit, she actually had to squint for a moment.
“Horses had it good here,” she said, taking in the palatial surroundings. All the metal gleamed and the brick floor didn’t have the tiniest speck of dust on it.
“Yeah, Fenella kept horses here up until she left about three years ago. They had some real thoroughbreds here, expensive. They had people up from London for a hunt every year back in the day, when I was little. We’d come and hide behind the wall up yonder and watch them ride out in their fancy clothes.” He turned in a circle, taking in the pristine surroundings. He raised his eyebrows at her. “Do you think there’s anything here?”
“I don’t know,” she said, thinking there couldn’t possibly be, but unwilling to give up after all but promising Piper they would find something. “The barn wouldn’t have looked like this all those years ago, right?”
“The structure’s the same, but the inside would have been different, aye.” He began walking around, opening stall doors and poking his head into each one.
Evelyn went in the opposite direction, scanning the walls, the ceiling, the floor, searching for anything at all. There was a closet of some sort at the back of the barn, at the end of the row of stalls. She passed her hand over the saddles as she passed them, breathing in the leather smell. The closet door opened without a squeak to reveal a neat row of brooms and buckets. Sighing, she closed the door and turned around to join Sam, thinking maybe something would turn up in the yard outside.
The overhead fluorescent lights flickered and she paused, waiting to see if they were going to be plunged into darkness, almost expecting the worst now. They wavered a little but remained on, and as she continued toward the other end of the giant barn to find Sam, something glinted on the floor by the nearest stall. Squatting down for a closer look, she saw one of the bricks making up the barn floor was broken, part of the brick crumbled away to leave a hole in the floor near the stall door. In the hole, the thing that had caught her eye gleamed gold and shiny. She leaned closer, trying to pull the rest of the broken brick out of the floor, to see more clearly what could be in the hole. She heard Sam walking up behind her and turned to smile triumphantly.
“What did you find?” he asked, squatting next to her. She reached into the hole in the floor to retrieve the golden object.
“It looks like the pendant Piper found,” she said eagerly, digging behind the broken brick to pull it out. “The one with the design on it.”
She pried it free and held the pendant up by its chain. A sudden nausea started to overtake her and the chain grew unbearably hot, but she found she was unable to drop it. She started to fall over, and alarmed, Sam grabbed her shoulder. The pendant felt like it was setting her hand on fire and she couldn’t feel her legs at all.
“Ouch,” she managed to get out before she fainted.
Chapter 14
Sharp pieces of straw were jabbing her in the neck when she came to, lying in a heap on the hard packed dirt floor of the barn. She edged herself up onto her elbow and tried to see clearly through the gloomy dim. The overhead lights must have finally given out completely because the only source now was the weak, wavering sunlight filtering through the front doors, which seemed a million miles away.
Pushing herself to a sitting position and brushing off the dirty hay with distaste, she inspected her burned hand, which throbbed but didn’t have a mark on it. The pendant was gone. She felt around in the hay, raising a cloud of dust from the dirt flo
or, but the pendant was nowhere to be found.
For that matter, where was Sam? Did he run for help when she passed out? That didn’t seem like him. He seemed more the carry her back to the house sort. A niggling realization was starting to descend over her, something at the back of her mind. She crawled a few feet away from the corner where she had fallen, scuffling through the straw to try to get into better light.
The nearest stall door was slightly ajar and she saw Sam’s booted foot just inside. Overcome with fear for his safety, she scrambled into the stall, having to shove the heavy wooden door open on it’s creaky hinges, the strange feeling that something was very wrong growing exponentially.
Sam was sprawled on his back in a pile of hay. A bored looking brown horse stood at the back of the stall, gazing at them out of one large eye. She gasped at the sight of it and it raised its ear and turned away, possibly offended. Stars started to sparkle in her forward vision, her peripheral vision closing inward like elevator doors, and she felt herself start to keel over onto Sam. Why was there a horse? She viciously slapped herself and her vision began to clear, but her skin was crawling as if she’d fallen into an ant pile and she was pretty sure she was going to hyperventilate.
“Sam,” she said urgently and too loud. The horse whickered and took a step backwards. She held her hand out placatingly to it and shook Sam’s shoulders, trying to wake him. Why was there a horse in here? Why was there hay on the floor, the dirt floor? Where were the neat bricks and tidy drains? She swiveled her head to look at the ceiling. Wooden beams, no fluorescent lights.
She shook Sam some more, rattling his teeth, and tried desperately to find a pulse, but she’d never been good at first aid, and her own heart was pounding so fiercely that all she could feel was her own pulse in her fingers. She leaned over and placed her ear to his chest and tried to stop panicking. There it was, Sam’s heartbeat, steady and strong in his chest. She sobbed with relief and closed her eyes for a moment, then felt his hand brushing her hair back from her face. She sat up and grabbed his hand.
“Oh my God, you’re awake,” she breathed, squeezing his hand, unable to keep a tear from splashing down onto his shirt. He blinked a few times and pushed himself to a sitting position. His eyes cut from left to right, saw the horse and widened. He lifted a handful of straw and let it flutter back to the ground.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, much quicker on the draw than Evelyn was with observational skills. He looked to Evelyn for answers and she shook her head.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I think we got sent back. I think that damn necklace sent us back.” Her voice was rising with every word from barely restrained hysteria.
Voices arose from the barn entrance and footsteps started scuffling their way. Evelyn felt like she was going to scream from the terror of it all, and must have started to look like she was actually going to do it, because Sam clapped his hand over her mouth and dragged her behind the stall door, squeezing them into the corner behind it and holding her tightly in front of him. He very slowly started to take his hand away from her mouth and she nodded, in control enough not to make any noise. They stayed as still as stones, praying the horse would continue to ignore them. As the voices drew nearer, Evelyn made out that they belonged to a man and a woman. They seemed to be arguing. The couple stopped in front of the stall they were in. Evelyn could see their shadows under the crack in the open stall door.
“Bloody Fergus, he should be whipped,” the woman said, reaching into the stall. Sam was holding onto her so tightly she could barely breathe let alone make a noise. “Good thing old Meaghan here is such a tame lass.” The woman took a step into the stall. Evelyn could feel every muscle in Sam’s body behind her tensing.
“We’ve no time,” the man said angrily, pulling the woman back.
She pulled the stall door shut as she retreated. Sam slowly relaxed and Evelyn let her breath out as slowly and quietly as she could. They continued to sit frozen in the corner of the stall until they could no longer hear the couple’s voices and after a moment of nerve wracking silence, Sam let her go and leaned back against the wall. She scrambled around to face him.
“We need to go,” she said, not knowing where they needed to go, but not wanting to be in this stall with old Meaghan another minute.
He nodded and motioned for her to stay put, getting up and crouching over to the door and pulling it back open with a creak. He stopped and made a face, swearing quietly. When everything remained silent on the other side of the door and no one burst into the stall, he pulled it open enough to slip out. Evelyn started to follow him but he sliced his hand through the air in a stay put motion and went out alone.
“Like hell,” she whispered, glancing at the horse. Old Meaghan seemed to want her to go as much as she wanted to be gone, so she followed Sam out of the stall. He was standing near the wall, craning his neck to see further in the gloom. When she stopped next to him he glanced down at her and rolled his eyes.
“They went through there,” he said, pointing to the broom closet.
“That’s just a closet,” she said. He shook his head and furrowed his brow.
“I don’t think so, not here. I think it’s an exit now.” A tremor ran over her skin at his words. It couldn’t really be happening. He held her by the shoulders and pressed her against the wall. “Stay here. Don’t move. I mean it.”
She scowled but stayed against the wall as he walked quietly to the door and pressed his ear against it for what seemed an eternity, then motioned for her to come join him.
Taking hold of the door handle, he looked down at her before he turned it. She grabbed his free hand, pressing her lips together to keep from making any of the many terrified noises she’d been wanting to make. He turned the knob and the door swung open noiselessly, causing them both to sigh in relief.
It wasn’t a broom closet, but a corridor with another door at the end of it, presumably the exit that Sam had guessed it to be. About halfway down was a heavy wood door with a large iron panel across it, with a lock that hung open on its ring. It was closed tightly but Evelyn could see flickering light coming from underneath it and muffled voices rose in an odd singing from behind it.
Sam shook his head and they barreled out the back door, into the stable yard. He dragged her to the side of the barn, pausing beneath a shuttered window to lean over and grab his knees, breathing hard. Evelyn sank to the ground, resting against the wall. She felt like she’d just run a mile at a breakneck pace, sweat popping out on the back of her neck. She rubbed it away and shivered in the cold air. They were in a large round practice ring, enclosed with a low whitewashed fence.
Sam straightened and pointed to the window. It was too high for either of them to try to see anything. He made a boosting motion with his hands.
“Are you crazy?” she hissed. He reached down and grabbed her hand, pulling her to stand next to him.
“Just take a look. See if you recognize anyone.” He clasped his hands together and held them down low for her to place her foot in them.
She hesitated, but adrenaline was still coursing through her and it seemed as good an idea as any. She stepped onto his cupped hands and he lifted her up to the window, overshooting a little and almost causing her to crash into the shutters. He quickly stepped back and she gently grabbed onto the stone sill, trying to see anything through the cracks in the wooden shutters.
After moving her eye from crack to crack, she finally found the source of the light. A small oil lamp was set on the floor, the man and woman kneeling across from each other next to it. The man was huge, as big or maybe even bigger than Lachlan. He took up most of the small room. His hair was dark red, long and greasy, tied in a severe ponytail at the nape of his neck. He wore a dark shirt and was wrapped in a tartan kilt, with a smaller plaid than the one she remembered Lachlan wearing. She thought maybe it was mostly dark green or blue, Lachlan’s had more red and gold. They weren’t from the same clan. Evelyn wished she knew what Piper’s ancestor�
�s clan tartan looked like. Maybe this was one of them.
The woman was small and had golden brown hair that trailed down her back in voluptuous waves. She had on a long dress with some sort of apron or dirndl over it, and a little kerchief was wrapped around her head to keep her hair back. The woman pulled the lamp closer to them, and took a bag from her waist. Evelyn had to restrain herself from gasping and felt a little thrill of emotion to see that the woman looked almost exactly like Piper. She wasn’t as miniature as Piper, and her hair was lighter, but in the bad light this woman could be a dead ringer. Evelyn was so upset she nearly lost her grip on the window sill. Sam was beginning to struggle and started to lower her back down but she made urgent motions to let her stay and keep looking.
The woman, Fake Piper, placed several objects from her bag on the floor in front of her, what looked like several little twigs, and then Evelyn felt she shouldn’t have been shocked to see that the final object was the gold pendant. The light of the oil lamp winked off of its shiny surface. The woman raised her hands over the items on the ground and said something Evelyn could barely hear and didn’t understand at all. Then she leaned over and gave the red haired Highlander a passionate kiss on the mouth, her hand trailing down his chest. The man reached over and took her by the neck, feverishly returning the kiss and disrupting the little pile in between them.
“My beloved,” Evelyn heard him say to Fake Piper as he ran his hand up her back.
Evelyn was scared she was going to see more than she wanted and was about to get Sam to let her down, not at all interested in witnessing any Scottish barn porn, when the woman abruptly broke off the kiss and shoved the man away. He returned meekly to his kneeling position on the other side of the sticks and pendant, which the woman calmly rearranged, then took out a wicked looking curved knife and held her arm out over the pile.
“No,” Evelyn clapped her hand over her mouth, the word coming unbidden from her throat as she watched in horror as the woman sliced across her arm, under her elbow.
Lost Highlander Page 13
