Match Made in the Highlands

by Pam Binder

  Logan’s soft laughter echoed over the walls. “Critters it is, then. Do you want to turn back and…” His last words were drowned out by the muffled shouts of men’s voices.

  “Stay close,” Logan said as he advanced. His voice had deepened, and his lips compressed into a thin line.

  “Who do you think they are?”

  “Could be the castle staff.”

  She heard the doubt in his voice as they reached the last step. It opened into a circular stone room with high ceilings. A neglected fire pit lay in the center, its dying embers giving off enough light to illuminate a bank of cells on the right.

  Logan raised his torch. “What’s Sam doing here?”

  At the far end, Sam was unlocking one of the cells. Three men poured out and glanced in Irene and Logan’s direction. Irene recognized the three men at once. They were the same men who had harassed Bridget in the Matchmaker Café.

  Logan pulled Irene behind him as Sam advanced toward them. The three men spread out to their left and right.

  “Hey, guys,” Sam said. “What’re you doing down here?”

  “Lost.” Logan’s voice was devoid of emotion. “Care to point the way out of here?”

  “The only way out is the way you came in,” Sam said. “Clever builders, these Scots. One entrance in or out assured their prisoners stayed put. But I can’t allow you to leave. We’ve had a little misunderstanding with the sisters we have to sort out, and you’d spoil the surprise. Can’t risk you telling the sisters what you’ve seen.” Sam jangled a set of keys. “I apologize in advance. I don’t think you’ll like your new accommodations.”

  Logan’s voice was deadly calm. “Let me get this straight. Your plan is to lock us in a cell?” His manner reminded Irene of how he’d been in the café earlier today.

  “Nothing personal. Just until we get what we want.” Sam motioned to the three men he’d released. They moved in toward Sam.

  Logan kept his focus on Sam. “The men you released are the ones I dealt with in the café. Poor choice in friends. But I’m curious—do you think there are rats and spiders in the cell?”

  Sam looked confused. “I think so…”

  Logan shrugged. “Well, that’s going to be a problem. Being locked up doesn’t work for me. Not a fan of cramped spaces, and Irene doesn’t like rats or spiders.” Logan glanced over his shoulder toward Irene. “You don’t, do you?”

  She shook her head slowly. Irene had no idea where this was going except Logan’s expression looked like it was forged from iron. He handed her the torch. Then he winked and mouthed, “Get ready to run.”

  He turned back to Sam. “Sorry, by the way.”

  “For what?”

  “For this.” Logan rolled his fists, hit Sam in the jaw with one and in the stomach with the other. The three men rushed forward, but Irene swung the torch back and forth, keeping them at bay. Logan grabbed the moaning Sam and shoved him into the three men. They all toppled over into a heap like bowling pins as Logan grabbed Irene’s hand and ran.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The staircase didn’t look familiar and neither had the corridors they’d just left. Somewhere along the way, in escaping Sam and his comrades, they’d made a wrong turn, and instead of going back up, they were going down again. As though she and Logan ran from bad guys on a daily basis, she took the lead, and he made sure they weren’t being followed.

  When the staircase made a sharp turn, and widened, there was a cluster of narrow windows. She didn’t remember seeing those on their way to the library or in the secret passage to the dungeons. So much for her foolproof way of not getting lost.

  The ceiling over the staircase lowered abruptly. She ducked her head and shouted over her shoulder. “Logan, watch your…

  A split second later she heard a loud thunk, followed by a muffled curse as a thin mist of powdery rocks and mortar rained down on them.

  “Too late,” Logan shouted back, rubbing his head.

  Irene brushed the fragments of rock from his hair. “Are you okay?”

  “Are you?”

  She knew they weren’t talking about the bump on his head. “I think I’m still trying to process what happened. It seems odd that the men from the café were locked up. I thought they were just asked to leave. I’m unfamiliar with the laws in Scotland, but locking them up seems extreme under the circumstances, and what was Sam doing releasing them, if the sisters did have them put there in the first place?”

  “Nothing good.”

  “Agreed. Thank you for saving me, by the way.”

  He grinned. “All part of a knight’s duty to his lady. But the way I see it, we were a team. You were pretty fierce.”

  “Not sure I know where that came from.”

  “I do.” He paused, then added, “We should keep going.”

  Warmed by his compliments, she continued down the stairs. “Remember to keep your head low.”

  “I guess when this castle was built, people weren’t very tall.”

  “For the most part you’re right,” Irene said, remembering an entry in her mother’s diary. “But William Wallace was over six feet tall, and I think Mary Queen of Scots was five feet eleven. The real reason for the low ceilings and uneven steps was to slow the enemy down. The placement of the rope hand railing was also strategic. Most people are right-handed, so the hand railing was placed on the right side going up, so anyone attacking and running up the stairs would have to shift their weapons to their left hand, giving the castle guards advancing from above an advantage.”

  He chuckled. “Having you along is like having my own personal tour guide.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. You’re passionate about history. I can hear it in your voice. I’ll bet you’re a great teacher.”

  For some reason she didn’t want to correct him. As a child, she would line up her dolls and teach them about the great queens and women warriors of ancient and modern times. She’d make crowns and swords out of cardboard and wrap them in tinfoil. When she was older, she’d abandoned her dream of teaching, and to this day she wasn’t sure why. Funny, she hadn’t thought about that part of her life in a long time.

  “Both my grandmother and mother were teachers,” she said, knowing she really hadn’t answered his question—or her own, for that matter.

  “Do you know why this place was so important to your mother?” He paused. “Or more to the point, to you?”

  Irene continued down the stairs, not sure how to answer his question. Before she left Seattle, her goal had seemed easy: find out why Stirling Castle figured so prominently in her mother’s diary. A major part of her believed that her mother had made it all up. Louise hadn’t liked that theory, probably the reason she’d done everything she could to get Irene here, short of pushing Irene onto the plane. Now that she was here, more questions kept bubbling to the surface, like why did her mother and the woman in the portrait look so much alike? Were the earrings connected? And then there was the birthmark. Did they really have a lookalike relative? Too many coincidences. Some people didn’t believe in coincidences. Her mother had been one of them. The biggest question still remained. Who was Connor?

  She reached out to the wall for balance as the staircase took another sharp turn. “My sister and I thought we knew everything there was to know about our mother. After her death, her diary was included in the paperwork we received along with her will. For some reason, she couldn’t share her secrets with us while she was living, and my sister and I wanted to know the reason why. Our stepfather thinks we have unresolved mother issues. The classic ‘she didn’t spend enough time reading bedtime stories’ or ‘she expected us to be perfect.’ And the big one, ‘she died so we felt abandoned.’ Except the only one of those scenarios that came close was the last one. My sister and I miss her every day.”

  “This is going to sound odd, but in a way I know exactly how you feel. Yes, my mother is still alive, but because of Alzheimer’s, there are times when I feel she’s already
left me and my dad. I want to try and reason with her not to leave. To stay. To see me. If I thought she’d also kept secrets, I’d be curious, if only to get closure to unanswered questions. Why do you think your mother left you the diary in the first place?”

  Irene paused to look over her shoulder toward him. Light and shadow reflected off his features. The smoke and age-stained walls faded into the background until the only clear image was of Logan.

  She turned to face him in the tight confines of the staircase. He was so close his breath warmed the chilled air. She’d not expected to feel so much in such a short span of time. Her journey here was about closure. Instead it had opened up a flood of emotions. “I wish I knew the answer. But other than my sister, you’re the only person who’s asked me that question. My sister and I knew our mother only in her role as mom. She never lived long enough for us to have the chance to become friends. When she knew she was dying, I think she felt the same sense of loss.” Irene’s words trailed off.

  Logan reached out for her hand. She nodded and let out a breath. “I’m okay. I’m starting to think my mother’s diary was a way for her to bridge that gap. I just wonder why she felt she had to keep her time here a secret.”

  Her words caught in the air and lingered. Irene continued the rest of the way down the stairs in silence broken only by the sound of her footfalls and the lingering question in her thoughts. What if the real reason her mother had kept the truth a secret was that she was afraid of what her daughters might discover?

  With each step the passageway narrowed and the closer it came to the ground floor. When Irene neared the last step, the air chilled and her breath frosted the air. The staircase ended at a thick door rounded at the top and studded with iron rivets. A crossbar lay horizontally across the door and was secured in place by metal hooks.

  “We keep getting lost,” Irene announced.

  “We could retrace our steps?”

  “Except we’re lost.”

  Logan grinned and blew on his hands. “Well, there is that. I’m actually enjoying this adventure. The best things happen when you’re not looking.”

  Her first impulse was to look for sarcasm in his expression. Instead, she found something unexpected. Smoldering like a banked fire was desire. Had a man ever looked at her in that way before? She shook her head, answering her own question. Her skin flushed. “You are weird.” Irene groaned at her response. She sounded like a teenager talking to her first crush.

  He winked. “Not the worst thing I’ve been called.”

  “I’m not going to ask. But unlike you, I don’t like feeling this way. I mean…feeling lost.”

  “You mean feeling out of control?” he joked.

  She didn’t really know if that was what she’d meant. She did know that she loved their easy banter. She anchored her hands on her hips in mock protest. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be in control.”

  He raised his hands in surrender. “Don’t misunderstand. I understand completely what you’re going through. My dad thinks I invented the label ‘control freak.’ One of the issues on my list of things to fix.”

  Irene fought back a smile. “Sounds like you have a long list.”

  “You have no idea. So what’s the plan?”

  Pausing to take in how well he’d come to know her in such a short time, she said, “You’re supposing that I have a plan.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Of course. Just testing.” Irene nodded toward the door. “I suggest we open the door and go around to the front of the castle and enter through the café and changing rooms. From there it seemed like a straight shot to the Great Hall.” Irene tried the door handle beneath the crossbar, but it was locked. “How good are you at picking locks?”

  Logan removed the crossbar and placed the palm of his hand against the wood, giving it a testing push. “I could break it down?”

  “Really? These doors are solid oak. At least six to eight inches thick.”

  He arched an eyebrow and grinned. “Your point?”

  She knew he was joking. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. So far, this was a very unorthodox tour experience, to say the least.

  Logan ran his hand over the wood panels. “All kidding aside, you’re right about the door. I thought it would be weaker because it was at least three or four hundred years old, but the panels look almost brand new and the iron hinges newly forged.”

  “The brochure said most of the castle was restored.”

  “Have you wondered why there always seems to be a logical explanation?” he said absently. Logan turned the handle. It wouldn’t budge. “If the builders replicated the locks exactly as they were from the thirteenth century, picking it shouldn’t be that difficult.” Logan reached under his belt and produced a Swiss army knife he’d attached by a cord. He flipped open the nail file.

  “The sisters would be upset if they knew you brought something from modern times.”

  He cast her a sly grin. “You needed your mother’s diary, and I never go anywhere without my knife.” Logan knelt down, inserted the nail file in the lock, and turned it. There was a clicking sound. He pulled back and put his knife away. “Moment of truth, as they say.” He turned the handle and pulled the door open slowly.

  Wisps of snow drifted through the opening on a current of cold air.

  Surrounded by the swirling snow, Logan stood as still as the statues of the knights that guarded the Great Hall. His muscles tensed. “Something’s not right.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  A blast of ice-cold air forced the door open wider. It banged against the wall. Drifts of snow continued to rush in as Irene and Logan fought to close the door. The wind pushed back. Logan let out a roar of his own and slammed his shoulder against the door, sealing the entrance. Irene braced to hold the door shut while he pushed the crossbar down on the metal hooks. When it was secured, Irene leaned with her back against the wall, catching her breath.

  A winter storm was not unusual in late December. Her weather app, however, had predicted a light dusting of snow, not a full-blown blizzard.

  Irene rubbed her arms to get warm. “I wonder if the matchmakers will let us spend the night. My taxi driver promised he’d be here when the tour ended, but I can’t imagine he’d be able to make it out in this weather.”

  Logan’s eyebrows knitted together, and he nodded. His gaze was still locked on the closed door.

  When he didn’t respond she began to worry. It wasn’t like him to be so quiet. “What did you mean when you said that something wasn’t right?”

  Logan brushed the back of his hand across his forehead and stepped away from the door. “I must be seeing things. I think it’s this place. That whole incident in the dungeon with Sam and the men he freed…and the fact that the castle and all its furnishings and tapestries are new rather than hundreds of years old. This feels too real. It’s messing with my mind.” He gave a nervous laugh. “Does that make sense?”

  Irene knew that feeling all too well. They hadn’t talked very much about the men who’d tried to lock them in the dungeon. For her part, she hadn’t wanted to believe she and Logan had been in any real danger. She wanted to believe that it was all part of the tour experience the matchmakers talked about. But Logan had taken it seriously…

  “You think Sam really meant to lock us in the dungeon?”

  “And throw away the key,” Logan said.

  “I did some reading about this place and the elaborate reconstruction over the centuries. Yet there’s no sign of it anywhere. Does that seem strange to you?”

  “As strange as what I didn’t see outside just now. All the directional and informational signs that were visible when we came here earlier are missing.”

  “Maybe they’re covered in snow or blew over.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “But did I mention there were at least twenty horses and men with bows and arrows aimed at the castle?”

  She looked at him, trying to process what he was saying. “Perhaps they�
��re actors, planning a mock attack. The sisters talked about wanting to give our tour an experience we wouldn’t forget. Maybe it’s all part of the celebrations for Christmas Eve.”

  Logan shook his head slowly. “Those men didn’t look like they were in a holiday mood. They looked like they were planning to storm the castle.”

  “You’re overreacting. Maybe we both are.”

  He rubbed the shoulder he’d used to slam the door closed. “First, you don’t look like the type, and second, do I look like someone who overreacts?”

  “Well, no,” Irene said. “You look like someone who analyzes the pros and cons of any given situation.”

  He nodded. “My mother used to say it was both a flaw and a blessing. If I’m unsure about something, I’ll examine every angle before I rush in. On the other hand, if I’m convinced down to my toes that something is right, I jump in with both feet. And right now I’m in the examining-all-angles stage. What I do suspect is that somehow Sam and those men he freed are involved, and it’s not good. It’s time we took a closer look.”

  ****

  Irene and Logan had retraced their steps up the winding staircase to the landing where they had a clear view of the courtyard. Cold air seeped through the narrow opening before her, chilling Irene’s fingers. A storm raged, and the torchlight on the castle walls cast only a miser’s glow over the courtyard. Shadows moved and twisted in the strengthening wind, fueling her imagination. They looked like soldiers. Irene stamped down her overactive thoughts.

  “I think what you saw was a trick of shadows,” Irene said hopefully. “No one would be out in this weather.”

  “Only a person up to no good,” Logan added as he stood beside her.

  Pinpricks of light moved amongst the shadows. She peered closer as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. A flash of steel burned through the snowdrifts. The shadows increased in numbers as they moved toward the castle. The muffled sounds of marching moved with them. The shadows took shape. Men carrying torches were grouped together a short distance away. The men were armed with medieval weapons and shields. She might not understand what they were saying, but as they shook their fists at the castle, there was no denying their intentions. They were preparing for an attack.