“They send people all over looking for unusual treasures—”
“Who are ‘they’?” he asked quickly. Perhaps she was innocent, but perhaps the men she’d mentioned were not.
“My employers.” Her gaze flickered to his, then away.
He narrowed his eyes and studied her thoughtfully. Why had she averted her gaze? She seemed to be making a genuine effort to communicate with him. Although he saw no sign of outright deception, he sensed strong emotions in her; there were things she was not saying. As he pondered the direction of his inquisition, she stunned him by saying “So how do you send me through time? Is it magic?”
Circenn released a soft whistle. By Dagda, how far had this lass come?
LISA SAT ON THE BED ANXIOUSLY AWAITING HIS REPLY. She found it difficult to look at him, partly because he frightened her and partly because he was so damn beautiful. How was she supposed to think of him as the enemy when her body—without even briefly consulting her mind-had already decided to like him? She’d never felt such a visceral, instant attraction. Lying beneath his overwhelming body, she’d been flooded with a frantic sexual desire that she’d hastily attributed to fear of dying; she’d read somewhere that happened sometimes.
She forced herself to remain motionless so she would betray neither the panic she felt nor her unacceptable fascination with him. In the past few minutes she’d been transported from fear and rage that her life might end so inauspiciously, to astonishment when he’d kissed her. Now she settled into wary numbness.
She realized—the man had some seriously intimidating body language—that he was in complete control, and unless she could catch him unaware, she didn’t have a chance of escaping. She had already blown her best opportunity to catch him off guard when she’d ambushed him at the door. He was well over six-and-a-half-feet tall, more massive than any professional football player she’d ever seen, and she wouldn’t have been surprised if he weighed in at three-hundred-plus pounds of solid muscle. This man didn’t miss a thing; he was a natural-born predator and warrior, scrutinizing her every move and expression. She fancied that he could smell her emotions. Didn’t animals attack when they scented fear?
“I see I must approach this from a different angle, lass. When are you from?”
She forced herself to look at him. He’d lowered himself to the floor and was leaning back against the door, his powerful bare legs outstretched in front of him. The jeweled handle of his knife protruded from his boots. There was blood trickling down his temple and his lower lip was swollen. When he wiped absently at it with the back of his hand, tendons and muscles rippled in his forearm. “You’re bleeding.” The inane comment slipped from her mouth. And wearing a tartan, she marveled. An actual plaid, woven of crimson and black, draped about his body, carelessly revealing much more than it concealed.
The corner of his lip curved. “Imagine that,” he mocked. “I was ambushed by a spitting banshee and now I am bleeding. I was tripped, bashed in the head, rolled over broken stoneware, head butted, kicked in the—”
“I’m sorry.”
“You should be.”
“You were trying to kill me,” Lisa said defensively. “How dare you get mad at me when I was mad at you first? You started it.”
He ran an impatient hand through his hair. “Aye, and now I am ending it. I told you I have decided not to kill you for the moment, but I require information from you. I have fifty men outside this door”—he gestured over his shoulder with a thumb—“who will need reasons to trust you and let you live. Although I am the laird here, I cannot keep you safe all the time if I doona give my men plausible reasons why you are not a threat.”
“Why do any of you want to kill me in the first place?” Lisa asked. “What have I done?”
“I am in charge of this inquiry, lass.” With deliberate leisure, he folded his arms across his chest.
Lisa had no doubt that he’d struck the pose to make a point. It made all the muscles in his arms bunch and reminded her how small she was compared to him, even at five feet ten inches. She’d just learned another lesson: He could be courteous, even demonstrate a droll sense of humor, but he was always deadly, always in command. “Right,” she said tightly. “But it might help if I understood why you consider me a threat to begin with.”
“Because of what is in the flask.”
“What’s in it?” she asked, then berated herself for her incessant curiosity. Unchecked curiosity had created this situation.
“If you doona know, your innocence will protect you. Doona ask me again.”
Lisa blew out a nervous breath.
“When are you from?” he asked softly, circling back to his initial question.
“The twenty-first century.”
He blinked and cocked his head. “You expect me to believe you are from a time seven hundred years from now?”
“You expect me to believe that I’m in the fourteenth century?” she said, unable to conceal a note of peevishness in her voice. Why did he expect such madness to be any easier for her to deal with?
A quick smile flashed across his face, and she breathed more easily, but then the smile vanished and he was again the remote savage. “This conversation is not about you, lass, or what you think or what you believe. It is about me, and whether I can find a reason to trust you and let you live. Your being from the future and your feelings about being here mean nothing to me. It is irrelevant where or when you are from. The fact is that you are here now and you have become my problem. And I doona like problems.”
“So send me home,” she said in a small voice. “That should solve your problem.” She flinched as his intense gaze fixed on her face. His dark eyes latched on to hers and for a space of time unmeasured, she couldn’t look away.
“If you are from the future, who is Scotland’s king?” he asked silkily.
She drew a cautious breath. “I’m afraid I don’t know, I’ve never followed politics,” she lied. She certainly wasn’t about to tell a warrior who was fighting over kings and territories that seven hundred years from now Scotland still didn’t have a recognized king. She might not have a college degree, but she wasn’t a complete fool.
His eyes narrowed and she suffered the uncanny sensation that he was gauging far more than her facial expressions. Finally he said, “I accept that. Few women follow politics. But perhaps you know your history?” he encouraged softly.
“Do you know yours from seven hundred years ago?” Lisa evaded, quickly intuiting where he was headed. He would want to know who won what battle and who fought where and the next thing she knew she’d be all tangled up in screwing up the future. If she really was in the past, she was not going to participate in instigating world chaos.
“Much of it,” he said arrogantly.
“Well, I don’t. I’m just a woman,” she said with as much guilelessness as she could muster.
He regarded her appraisingly and the corner of his lip lifted in a half-smile. “Ah, lass, you are decidedly not ‘just’ a woman. I suspect it would be a vast mistake to deem you merely anything. Have you a clan?”
“What?”
“To which clan do you belong?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “Do you have clans in Cincinnati?”
“No,” Lisa said succinctly. He certainly didn’t have to worry about someone trying to rescue her; she hardly had a family anymore. Hers was a clan of two, and one was dying.
He made an impatient gesture with his hands. “Your clan name, lass. That is all I am after. Lisa what?”
“Oh, you want to know my last name! Stone. Lisa Stone.”
His eyes widened incredulously. “Like rock? Or boulder?” No half-smile this time: A full grin curved his lips, and the impact was devastating.
Her fingers itched with the urge to smack it off. Enemy, she reminded herself. “No! Like Sharon Stone. The famous actress,” she added at his blank look.
His eyes narrowed. “You descend from a line of actresses?” he demanded.
What o
n earth had she said wrong? “No.” She sighed. “That was my attempt at a joke, but it wasn’t funny because you don’t know who I meant. My last name is Stone, though.”
“How foolish do you think I am?” he echoed the exact words she’d said to him about his name only hours ago. “Lisa Rock? That will not do. I can hardly present you to my men, should I decide to, as Lisa Stone. I may as well tell them you are Lisa Mud or Lisa Straw. Why would your people take the name of a stone?”
“It’s a perfectly respectable name,” she said stiffly. “I’ve always thought it a strong name, like me: capable of enduring calamity, mighty and able. Stones have a certain majesty and mystery. You should know that, being from Scotland. Aren’t your stones sacred?”
He mulled over her words a moment and nodded. “There is that. I had not considered it as such, but aye, our stones are beautiful and treasured monuments to our heritage. Lisa Stone it is. Did your museum say where they found my chest?” he coolly resumed his inquisition.
Lisa reflected, trying to recall the discussion she’d overheard as she’d hidden beneath Steinmann’s desk. “Buried in some rocks near a riverbank in Scotland.”
“Ah, it begins to make sense,” he murmured. “It did not occur to me when I cursed it that if my chest went undiscovered for centuries, the person who touched it would have to travel through both terrain and time.” He shook his head. “I have little patience for this cursing business.”
“It would also seem you have little aptitude for it.” The words tumbled from her mouth before she could stop them.
“It worked, did it not?” he said stiffly.
Shut up, Lisa, she warned herself, but her tongue paid no heed. “Well, yes, but you can’t judge something simply by its outcome. The end does not necessarily justify the means.”
He smiled faintly. “My mother was inclined to say that.”
Mother.
Lisa closed her eyes. God, how she wished she could keep them closed and maybe it would all go away. No matter how fascinating this was, how gorgeous he was, she had to get out of there. Even as they spoke, somewhere in the future the night nurse was being relieved by the day nurse, and her mother would have expected her home hours ago. Who would check her medicines to be certain the nurses had gotten the doses right? Who would hold her hand while she slept so if she slipped away she wouldn’t die alone? Who would cook her favorite foods to tempt her appetite? “Curse me back,” she pleaded.
He regarded her intently and she again suffered the sensation of being examined on a deeper level. His gaze was a nearly tangible pressure. After a long silence he said, “I cannot send you back, lass. I doona know how.”
“What do you mean you don’t know how?” she exclaimed. “Wouldn’t touching the flask do it?”
He jerked his head in a sharp gesture of negation. “That is not the flask’s power. Traveling through time—if indeed you did—was an incidental part of the curse. I doona know how to send you back home. When you said you were from across the sea, I thought I could put you on a ship and sail you home, but your home is seven hundred years from happening.”
“So curse something else to send me back!” she cried.
“Lass, it does not work like that. Curses are wily little creatures and none can command time.”
“So what are you going to do with me?” she asked faintly.
He rose to his feet, his face devoid of expression, and he was once again warrior-lord, icy and remote. “I will tell you when I have decided, lass.”
She dropped her head in her hands and didn’t need to look up to know he was leaving the room and locking her in again. It offended her that he was so much in control of her, and she felt an overwhelming need to have the last word, childish though the impulse was. She decided that making small demands early on might strengthen her position.
“Well, are you going to starve me?” she yelled at the closed door. She’d also learned years ago that mustering defiance could prevent tears from spilling. Sometimes anger was the only defense one had.
She wasn’t certain if she heard a rumble of laughter or if she imagined it.
LISA WOKE WITH SORE, KNOTTED MUSCLES AND A KINK in her neck from sleeping without a pillow—sensations so tangible they shouted, Welcome to reality. She was surprised she’d managed to fall asleep at all, but exhaustion had finally overcome her paranoia. She’d slept in her clothes and her jeans were stiff and uncomfortable. She was cold, her T-shirt was twisted around her neck, her bra had come unsnapped, and her lower back ached from the lumpy mattresses.
She sighed and rolled over onto her back, stretching gingerly. She had slept, dreamed anxious, eerie dreams, and awakened to the same stone chamber. That sealed it: This was no dream. Had she any residual doubts, they disintegrated in the pale light of dawn that lined the edges of the gently blowing tapestries. No nightmare could have conjured the nauseating food she’d choked down late last night, nor in any dream would she have subconsciously surrounded herself with such primitive amenities. Fertile though her imagination was, it was not sadistic.
Although, she reflected, Circenn Brodie was indisputably the stuff of dreams.
He’d kissed her. He’d lowered his mouth to hers and the touch of his tongue had sent heat lancing through her body, despite her fear. She’d trembled, actually shaken from head to toe, when his lips had bruised hers. She’d read about things like that happening but never thought to experience it. Before she’d fallen asleep last night, she had filed every detail of the kiss away in her memory, a priceless artifact in the barren museum of her life.
Why had he kissed her? He was so intent and controlled, she had imagined that if he ever touched a woman it would have been with a disciplined caress, not such a kiss as he’d given her—one that had been wild, hot, and uninhibited. Bordering on savage, yet infinitely seductive. Made a woman want to toss her head back and whimper with pleasure while he ravished her. He was skilled, and she knew she was out of her league with Circenn Brodie.
It must have been a strategy, she decided; the man dripped strategies. Perhaps he’d thought to seduce her into compliance. Given his appearance coupled with the dark sexuality he exuded, he’d probably controlled women all his life in such a fashion.
“Somebody—anybody—please help me,” she whispered softly. “I’m in way over my head.”
Pushing the memory of his kiss far from her mind, she stretched her arms over her head, testing for bruises from their skirmish last night. When she heard a scrabbling at the door and the sound of the bolt being slid, she squeezed her eyes shut, pretending she was asleep. She was not ready to face him this morning.
“Well, come on with ye, lassie! Ye willna escape by being a lie-about in bed all day,” said a mischievous voice.
Lisa’s eyes flew open. A boy stood beside her, peering down. “Och, aren’t ye the bonniest lassie!” he exclaimed. The lad had auburn hair, a gamin grin, and unusually dark eyes and skin. His chin was pointy, his cheekbones high. Quite a fey-looking child, she thought.
“Come! Follow me!” he cried. When he darted from the room, Lisa tossed back the covers and dashed out the door behind him without a second thought. Heavens, the boy was quick! She had to stretch her long legs to keep pace as he skimmed over the stones toward a door at the end of the dim corridor. “Here, quickly!” he cried, as he ducked through the doorway.
Had it been anyone but a child she would never have blindly followed, but waking up and being granted a chance to escape by an innocent child overrode her common sense, and she found herself trailing him into a small turret. As she ducked in, he closed the door swiftly. They stood in a circular stone room, with stairs winding both up and down. When he grabbed her hand and started to pull her down the stairs, Lisa’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. Who was this child and why was he intent on helping her flee? She resisted his grip so suddenly that he stumbled backward.
“Wait a minute.” She held him by the shoulders. “Who are you?”
The boy shrugged innoce
ntly, dislodging her grip. “Me? Just a wee lad who has the run of the keep. Dinna fash yerself, lassie, no one notices me. I’ve come to help ye escape.”
“Why?”
The boy shrugged again, a hasty up-and-down of thin shoulders. “Does it matter to ye? Dinna ye wish to flee?”
“But where will I go?” Lisa drew several deep breaths, trying to wake up. She needed to think this through. What would escaping the keep accomplish?
“Away from here,” he said, peeved by her obtuseness.
“And where to?” Lisa repeated, as her sleepy mind finally started functioning with a semblance of intelligence. “Become one of the Bruce’s camp followers? Go talk to Longshank’s son?” she said dryly.
“Are ye a spy?” he exclaimed indignantly.
“No! But where am I going to go? Escaping the keep is only the beginning of my problems.”
“Dinna ye have a home, lassie?” he asked, perplexed.
“Not in this century,” Lisa said, as she sank to the floor with a sigh. Adrenaline had flooded her body at the prospect of escape. Vanquished by logic, it now fled her veins as swiftly as it had arrived, and its sudden absence made her feel limp. Judging by the coldness of the wall behind her back and the chilly draft circling through the tower, it was cold outside. If she left, how would she eat? Where would she go? How could she escape when there was no place for her to escape to? She eyed the boy, who appeared crestfallen.
“I dinna ken what ye mean, but I thought only to help ye. I ken what these men do to the lassies. ‘Tisna pleasant.”
The Highlander Series 7-Book Bundle Page 66
