by L. L. Muir
There, at the bottom of the hill, was she laughing at him still? Was she only pretending not to remember so she could add another two days of insult to the hundred thousand days she’d already had?
His chest constricted around his heart like a fist of sharpened blades, but it wasn’t the everlasting years on the moor that brought the pain—it was the lies she’d told him at Dunvegan House. For those declarations of her love had been his spirit’s only sustenance. It had given him peace to know that somewhere, someone had loved him.
And now that peace was gone.
~
Ian climbed into the driver’s seat. Jacky hopped into the back of the truck and sat upon the side, and they were off. Assa’s cousin didn’t complain about the heat, though she’d lost track of just how hot it had become while her mind wandered in and out of strange memories.
Her big cousin noted her face when they pulled back onto the road that led to the house. “Something’s amiss?”
She shook her head. “I’ve been remembering…”
“Nothing good, I assume.”
“No. Not really. I can’t tell if I’ve dreamed these things, or if I lived them.”
“Have you remembered anything about him?” He didn’t need to use a name. They both knew who he was talking about.
“Yes. That’s the problem.”
Ian’s alarm deepened the furrows on his brow. His long hair and the fall of darkness couldn’t hide it. “He’s part of the bad memories?”
She shrugged. “I thought he was just part of the bad dreams. But now he shows up, in the flesh, and I realize those can’t just be dreams.”
“Well, once he’s gone,” Ian grumbled, “maybe they can go back to just being dreams.”
“But… But what if I don’t want him to go?”
Her cousin gave her a sharp look, watched her for a moment, then nodded. “Then I take it he’s part of some better dreams, as well.”
She took a deep breath, tried the truth on for size, then nodded.
Ian forced a smile, though his brow had yet to clear. “We’ll see what he’s made of then, shall we? If he treats ye well, we’ll have no quarrel with him. And when he gets ‘round to explaining how the two of ye ken each other, we’ll see how ye feel then.”
They got to the house just as the horse appeared from the side yard. Jamie slid off the back and ran up to her window with a grin on his face. “Were we in time?”
Ian nodded. “Aye. A few wet nets are hanging up to dry. The rest we moved in time. Hughie’s tending a barrel fire.”
Jamie’s eyes lit up. “A fire!”
“How bad is the dike?”
“Two large logs were topsy turvy, but Ross pulled a miracle out of his sporran, ye might say, and saved the day. It will need serious repair tomorrow.”
Ian nodded. “Go on with ye then. Hughie will welcome the company.”
Jamie leaned close and nodded toward Gerard, who was still on the horse. Though the rains had stopped, he still looked like a drowned rat in the headlamps. “Careful, now. He’s in a mood.” He opened Assa’s door for her and took off in the direction of the storehouse.
Ian climbed out and approached the horse and rider. “I owe ye a debt, Ross.”
The other man shook his head. “Jamie probably won’t tell you, but I nearly killed him up there.”
“On purpose?”
“Accident.”
Ian shrugged. “Then no harm—”
“I have to go.” He finally looked her way, and though she’d been moving closer, his stare stopped her in her tracks. He was obviously angry with her, specifically, though she couldn’t imagine why.
“What is it?” she asked. Jamie was safe. She couldn’t imagine any bad news he might have for her, but she felt as if a sharp blade hung over her head, poised to fall.
“I can’t believe… All that time…” He stared at her face as if seeing her for the first time. Then he grimaced. “How could I have not seen it sooner?”
He was making about as much sense as her memories at the moment, so she hurried to his side, to touch his leg, to offer comfort. “Ye are real, are ye not, Gerard Ross?”
He looked down at her with such a fierce combination of hurt and hate she was tempted to back away. But she couldn’t. If he was hurting, she wanted to fix it.
“Aye,” he hissed. “For a wee while yet, I am real. No matter how much I regret it.”
She shook her head. “Gerard, please! Tell me! What has happened?”
His face softened for a moment and he glanced away. “If ye don’t remember, ye’ll not understand. So there’s no sense in explaining. I mistook ye for…someone else is all. Fare thee well, Nessa Kennedy.”
He spurred the horse and led it around her. Then he was gone.
Something in her chest shifted and crushed the air out of her lungs. Something true and familiar. Something too horrible to bear.
Nessa.
Violence itself. Hateful revenge. Mindless rage. All those were inferred by the Irish name. The very opposite of Assa. And yet…so familiar. How could it feel so familiar?
“Ian!” She reached out to him, but her cousin was already backing away.
“I’ll get Jamie. We’ll find out what happened up there.”
Jacky caught her around the shoulders and led her into the house. But once inside, she pushed him away. Alone, so alone, she stumbled to the couch and collapsed upon it in a whimpering, weeping mess. She was collapsing upon herself like a crumbling old house with no hope left to prop her up, sure there would be nothing left of her by the time her cousins returned. Her mind and her heart were turning inside out. How could the rest of her survive it?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
When he was well away from the farm, Gerard gave the horse his head. If it happened to return him to the Muir sisters, fine and well. If it carried him off a cliff, he cared not at all. As long as he was away from Kennedy—duplicitous, cruel Kennedy—he was content.
Tears splashed down his face like rain and he laughed at himself. What a fool! How could he have never seen the resemblance before? He’d been within half a bloody mile of her for two hundred sixty-nine years and he’d never taken a good look? He’d never noticed the curve of her cheek? The tilt of her eyes? Nothing?
And now, in the harshest turn of all, he was robbed of any satisfaction. How could he call her out for something she couldn’t remember? If, in fact, she couldn’t remember? And if that bastard, Wickham, had taken her memories away when he’d removed her from the moor, Gerard would have to wait outside the gates of Hell if he wanted to read the sins in her eyes, to make her confess to what she’d done.
To make her explain…
God help him. What an idiot he must have seemed.
Had the choice been hers to remain on the moor? Like some troublesome Puck watching from the trees for her own amusement? Watching him pine away for her without a thought to end his suffering?
No. That wasn’t true. She couldn’t have known his thoughts, couldn’t have known how obsessed he’d been those first few decades. But she could have guessed.
After all the play-acting at Dunvegan House, she must have followed him along to the battlefield, only to get caught up in her own prophecy. Perhaps anger over that twist of fate had kept her there.
If he could, he’d damn her back to Culloden, to wander another three centuries, for her betrayal. Only this time, she’d have no Gerard Ross to amuse her.
“Come for me, Soncerae! I beg ye!”
~
When the boys returned, Assa managed to pull herself together for the sake of her brother and cousins. Jamie was careful to explain the details of what went on between himself and Gerard Ross up at the dike. There was nothing more helpful than the fact that Ross had believed her to be Assa MacKay and was surprised to learn she was actually a Kennedy. There was no history of a feud between the families, so there was no telling what might have upset the Highlander, or why he had then called her Nessa.
&nbs
p; If the pair of them were destined to suffer insanity, she wished they could have suffered together.
In any case, she’d calmed down enough to assure the lads she was finished weeping for the night. In truth, she was more fatigued than she’d ever felt in her life—what little of that life she could remember. Though she suspected her soul was bleeding, there was nothing she could do to stem it. All the wailing and all the tears her body had produced had done nothing to improve matters. Her only hope was that a few hours’ sleep would give her strength to face another day.
A Gerard-less day.
Jacky swore he would find the man in the morning and get the truth out of him—without the use of force, or so he claimed. She pretended to believe him, but the look Gerard had given her, as if she’d betrayed him to his worst enemy, gave her little hope the man would answer to her brother.
In her bones, she believed she would never see her Highlander again. He’d walked out of her dreams and into her life, and out of her life once more. All in a day, and all without her understanding why.
It was as if the Universe was testing her—only she didn’t understand the test.
~
Gerard stopped the horse for a moment before they crossed a wide road. And as he watched, a car crested the small rise to the right, so he waited. But the car didn’t pass, it slowed, pulled off the carriageway, and stopped only twenty feet from him.
To his pleasant surprise, it was just the person he wanted to see, but he only realized how dearly he’d wished for that meeting when he recognized the face of Wickham, Soni’s uncle.
The man switched off his headlamps and got out of the car. After a firm slam of the door, he nodded. “Ross.”
“Wickham.”
“I came straight away. It seems ye’ve botched things. And I’ll hear no end of it from the womenfolk.” Wickham stripped off a pair of driving gloves as he spoke. “So I’ve come to thank ye.”
Gerard chuckled and slid off the horse. “I’ve a few things for which I’d like to thank ye as well, witch.”
Wickham laughed. “I’m afraid I’m going to enjoy this much more than I should.”
“Auch, dinna hold back on my account, auld man.” He had to be at least twenty-six to Gerard’s twenty-four.
Wickham’s grin widened. “I don’t intend to.”
They circled for a bit, taking each other’s measure. Gerard finally stepped forward, ducked, then punched Wickham in the gut. It was a very firm gut at that, but it still forced a bit of breath from the man’s lips.
“That’s for laying hands on Kennedy,” he said, then stepped away again.
Wickham seemed in no hurry, and when they came together again, he gave a jab to Gerard’s left ribs was all. Gerard failed to connect with the man’s jaw, and when he inhaled again, he realized the witch’s blow had done more damage than he’d thought, so he stepped away to recover and fill his lungs again.
The next time they engaged, Gerard finally got another taste of satisfaction when his left hand caught Wickham square in the chest. “That was for stealing her memories.” He ignored the fact that the punch had cost him a busted lip.
The next time, Wickham came at him so slowly he was sure he could defend himself, but before he could get his arms up, he’d been struck in the temple on his left, and whacked across his jaw on the right. His head tried to go both directions at the same time.
“That was for leaving the lass after ye promised to stay,” Wickham snarled.
“Wait a bloody minute,” Gerard barked, once he’d gotten his lips back together again. “Fight fair, damn ye. None of yer time tricks!”
Wickham laughed and dropped his hands, then narrowed his eyes. “I have no time tricks, Highlander. I am time.”
And while Gerard watched and waited, his hands raised to defend himself against whatever the man might throw at him, he felt an explosion of pain against his face—all while Wickham stood five feet from him. Not so much as a finger had twitched, and yet Ross felt himself falling to the ground, sure he would never rise again, just as he had on Culloden so long ago.
Somewhere overhead, a low buzzing noise transformed into Wickham’s voice. “Dinna feel too bad, laddie. At least one of Culloden’s ghosties was bound to fail his quest. I just didna expect it to be the one with the simplest task.”
“Ungh?”
The man tsked. “That barrier I placed around Assa’s memory? Thin as a butterfly’s wing. Ye might have blown it away with a whistle, ye bampot. But it’s too late now.” He tsked again. “I’ll send Soncerae for ye in the morning. If I were ye, I’d think upon my sins.”
~
In the wee hours before dawn, Gerard awoke to the snort of an impatient horse whose lead had been looped around his boot. By some miracle, he managed to untangle the beast and climb upon its back without his head splitting open and his brains falling out.
The horse did, indeed, return him to the Muir sisters. Despite the hour and the darkness, the women seemed to be awake. Light seeped out of the cracks in the stone walls and, combined with millions of yellow blossoms, created a warm halo around the house in the middle of the field.
Gerard took the horse into the paddock and brushed him down as well as he was able before approaching the door. For the life of him, he didn’t know how he was going to explain his change of heart since the sisters had seen him last, anxious to be reunited with his Assa.
Assa was dead to him. Nessa had killed her. Simplest terms were all he could handle at the moment.
He knocked on the door twice and opened it. “Good morning, ladies.”
The twins faced each other across a round table, playing cards and smoking short cigars, if he wasn’t mistaken. The low-ceilinged room was lit with cheerful lamps. Ruffles and doilies were spread about the place with no trace of the dust from the previous day. The women themselves had little attention to spare him, and when they did glance up, they appeared none too happy to see him, and not concerned in the slightest that his head was now misshapen.
At least it felt misshapen.
“Thank you for seeing to the horse,” said the sister with her back to him.
“Not at all,” he replied. “Soni will be coming for me.”
“Not until morning,” said the other sister. “It’s been a long day. You’ll find a bed in the small room there.” With her stub of a cigar, she pointed to a slatted door and went back to her cards.
Unwilling to argue about the time, he ducked into the little room, grateful for a private space where he would be expected to converse with no one at all. The cot was short, but he didn’t mind. And with hope that morning would come swiftly, he slipped into a deep, mortal sleep.
The darkness swirled and parted. He was suddenly back at Dunvegan House, scooping Assa into his arms and sprinting up the stairs with her hanging onto his neck. He remembered every touch, every moment she sat on his lap and tried to convince him he was at her mercy. Of course he was at her mercy.
He relived the tender kisses that had carried him through thousands of sorry nights on the moor. Relived the moment when he’d left her standing at the larder door…
Those tears had been real. Her heartbreak too. She hadn’t been pretending.
Then why, oh why hadn’t she sought him out in spirit form? They might never have been able to relive those kisses, or the one on the ferry, but at least they would have been together. Even in silence, unable to touch, it would have been bliss itself just to have her near. He’d needed her!
He needed her still.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Assa rose in the darkness, and for the span of a heartbeat, she thought she was outside, lying on the moor where she’d fallen during the battle.
But what battle? The remnants of a dream? It made no sense otherwise, but it seemed like familiar ground. A small tuft of heather among the turf and mosses. It had been her own spot. The rest of them gave her a wide berth—but the rest of whom?
She closed her eyes for a moment and saw another
spot, off to the right, where the mud had been deep and cold, and the surface changed regularly. That was his spot. His. Gerard’s!
And beyond, a row of red flags…
Culloden!
She must have made some distressing sound because Jacky appeared at her bedroom door, still groping for the tie of his robe.
“Assa, what is it? What’s amiss?”
“I need to go to Culloden Moor,” she said, breathless.
“Now?”
“Now.”
He nodded once. “I’ll take ye. Give me a moment, aye.”
Culloden. The word sat comfortably on her tongue. And in the strange haze from her dream, she had the oddest, comforting sensation…that she was about to go home. But was it a beloved place because it was so familiar? Or was it beloved because Gerard Ross had been there too?
No. It only mattered that she was going. And she was sure, when she got there, her memory would be waiting for her like a forgotten parcel.
~
Gerard slipped his boots on quietly and reached for the small door that separated the end of the cottage from the rest. It opened silently on leather hinges, but it hadn’t mattered. The Muir sisters turned to stare at him as if he’d shouted good morrow.
The two wore matching expressions of displeasure, along with a pair of blue house robes and slippers. Their hair was wrapped around fat curlers atop their heads and a thin layer of something green on their faces.
The one he thought was Lorraine folded her arms and pursed her lips. “We don’t usually suffer fools, but we’ve promised to feed you breakfast before you go.” She pointed to a chair and turned her back, then produced a couple of heavy pans and slammed them on a stovetop in the corner that he was sure hadn’t been there the night before.
“I beg ye, stop. I need no breakfast. What I need—”
Lorraine pointed to the chair again.
“Is for one of ye to take me back to the Kennedys’.”
It didn’t matter that the Chinese food hadn’t lasted long in his belly, or that he could already smell the teasing taste of backbacon in the air. “I have to get to Assa before Soni collects me!”
