by Emma Prince
No, she was stuck with Callum on this damn horse—well, at least until he turned her over to Laird MacBean.
“So, what’s the deal with you and Laird MacBean, anyway?” she asked testily, breaking the heavy silence hanging around them.
Callum gave her a frown. “We dinnae have a deal—yet.”
“No, I mean…” She searched for the right words. “Why do you need to use me to bargain with him? And why were you and those other men fighting?”
The scowl on Callum’s face turned hard with anger. “Ever since I became Laird three years past, MacBean has been challenging me, encroaching on our border to see what he can get away with. It started with a few stolen sheep and cattle, but lately his men have been stealing crops and even attacking MacMoran farmers. We force them back whenever we can, but even spilling their blood doesnae seem to stop them.”
Callum huffed a breath as if to release some of his rising ire. “He can have ye back in exchange for his word that he will cease reiving my lands—at least until my alliance with the MacConnells, the clan that borders us both to the south, can be solidified.”
Caroline opened her mouth to respond, but hesitated. Though she didn’t like the idea of being traded to some other Laird, she had to admit that Callum’s motivations seemed honorable enough. In using her, he was trying to protect his people.
All the same, being a pawn between two warring medieval clans wasn’t exactly her idea of a good time—not when she needed to find a way back to the present. And her sisters.
Just then, the trees fell away and they rode out onto an expanse of rolling moorlands. In the distance, a ray of sun sliced through the clouds and glinted off a still body of water. Familiarity tugged at her.
“Is that…”
“Loch Darraig.” Callum’s deep, sure voice reverberating through her shoulder made her jump.
Caroline turned to gape at him. “Why didn’t you tell me we were coming back here? I need to—”
Ignoring her, Callum whistled, and suddenly the horse beneath them surged forward into a gallop along with the others. Caroline’s words turned into a shriek, and she had to fling her arms around Callum’s solid middle to keep her seat.
By the time he reined in his horse along the loch’s shore, she felt as though her brains had been put in a blender and her bottom had been paddled black and blue by the jarring sprint.
Loosening her hold around his torso, she touched shaky fingers to her face to make sure all her teeth hadn’t rattled from her head. But when her gaze fell on the calm loch waters once again, all thoughts of the wild gallop fled.
“Let me down. I need to get into the loch. It might take me back to my time.”
Callum leveled her with a sharp look, his eyes seeming to glow. “We arenae here to indulge yer madness, lass.” His gaze flickered over her head. “MacBeans,” he said, and the warriors around them instantly tensed. “Keep yer wits, men, and be ready, but dinnae make a move unless I give the order.”
Caroline followed the path of his eyes and found a band of a dozen or so mounted men in red and green plaid cresting the nearest grassy rise. It was much the same as it had been two days past—except this time Caroline was right in the middle of things instead of standing on the loch’s shore watching. At least no swords had been drawn—yet.
When the group was only a dozen feet away, the man at the front held up a fist and the mounted warriors behind him halted. The man, clearly the leader, appeared to be middle-aged. His black hair was heavily streaked with gray, though his eyes shone with a dark intensity that nearly made Caroline shrink back.
“Laird MacBean,” Callum said behind her, his voice guarded.
“MacMoran,” the sharp-eyed man replied.
“Let us proceed in English, if ye please, Laird,” Callum said.
MacBean’s eyes widened a fraction, then flicked to Caroline. Again, she had to resist the urge to flinch back. This was the man Callum was going to turn her over to?
“Verra well,” the Laird replied at last, though his eyes remained narrowed with suspicion. “Ye ken my son, Terek.”
For the first time, Caroline noticed a younger man just slightly behind the Laird. He appeared closer in age with Caroline than Callum—maybe twenty-four or twenty-five—but the family resemblance to Laird MacBean was undeniable. Though Terek did not yet bear his father’s barrel chest or stocky middle, he had the same dark, keen eyes and black hair.
Terek and Callum exchanged terse, silent nods before Callum shifted his attention back to Laird MacBean.
“I dinnae take kindly to being beckoned to our border without an explanation, MacMoran,” the Laird said, glaring at Callum. “Especially no’ after ye and yer men nearly killed one of my best warriors two days past.”
Caroline could feel Callum tense behind her. “Mayhap ye’ll want to stop stealing sheep and cattle from MacMoran land if ye dinnae like being brought to task for it, then.”
The air suddenly grew thick with aggression. Several of MacBean’s men shifted in their saddles and brought their hands to their sword hilts. In response, the MacMoran warriors around her did the same, muttering about bastard MacBeans.
Oh shit. Caroline was about to be in the middle of another battle—one that had nothing to do with her and her mission to get back to her own time.
This was all too much. Falling through time. Losing her sisters. Getting kidnapped and held hostage in a medieval castle. And now she was probably going to die in some stupid fourteenth-century clan war without ever finding Hannah and Allie again.
No. This was not how things would end. To hell with Callum. To hell with 1394. To hell with it all. Caroline was going back to her own time, and back to her sisters, damn it.
As the tension around her continued to mount, her gaze shot to the loch. Maybe it was some sort of portal to Leannan Falls, or to the present day. There was only one way to find out.
Just as Callum opened his mouth to speak, Caroline drove her elbow straight into his ribs. Whatever he’d been about to say turned into a grunt and he started to fold over her. She only had a heartbeat of opportunity. She used it to slip from the horse’s back.
She bolted straight for the loch, Callum’s plaid falling away from her shoulders as she ran. She heard a commotion behind her, but she didn’t bother looking back. Callum and the others would probably catch her in another twenty feet, but that didn’t matter because the loch was only ten feet away.
Caroline plunged into the shallows, paying no heed to the rocks biting into her slippered feet below the surface. She plowed deeper, her wool skirts dragging heavily as they became waterlogged.
When the water reached her chest, she dragged in a deep breath, said a prayer to whatever god or demon or spirit had sent her here, and dove under.
Chapter Six
“What the bloody hell is going on?” Laird MacBean murmured in Gaelic under his breath.
Callum wouldn’t mind knowing the answer to that, either. He sucked in a lungful of air against his aching ribs and swung down from his saddle.
“Laird, do ye want us to—”
Callum held up a hand to cut Bron off. “Nay. I’ll fetch her.” Again.
As he began to tromp toward the loch, Laird MacBean called, “Is that dunderheaded lass a MacMoran, Laird?”
“I thought she was a MacBean,” Callum muttered through clenched teeth.
MacBean’s gaze fixed on Caroline and he lifted an eyebrow as she began splashing into the water. “Never laid eyes on the likes of her before.”
With a curse, Callum picked up his pace. Damn it all. Not only had his plan to trade the lass to MacBean in exchange for a temporary truce just fallen apart, now he was stuck with the addle-brained woman.
The addle-brained woman who had just dived completely underwater.
Cursing again, Callum tossed aside the plaid on his shoulder and strode into the loch. He didn’t bother removing his boots or trews, for if the lass had a death wish, the cold waters could claim her bef
ore he’d finished.
He waded to where she’d ducked under and began fishing with his hands for her. In only a few moments, he bumped into her arm. He clamped his fingers around her and dragged her up. She broke the surface, sputtering and sucking in breath.
Shoving the wet veil of dark hair from her face, she blinked. Her eyes focused on him, then shifted to the waiting group of MacMorans and MacBeans.
Despair swept over her delicate features like a storm cloud.
“Nothing happened. It didn’t work.”
“Aye, of course no’, ye daft woman,” Callum snapped. “This is just a loch, no’ some magical gateway to a waterfall near Edinburgh or the future or wherever the hell ye think ye’re going.”
He scooped her up, and though she was slight, the weight of her waterlogged wool gown made his progress back to the shoreline slow. As he stomped toward his horse, he bent and scooped up first his discarded plaid and then hers, muttering all the way about water in his boots and wet trews that were bound to chafe on the ride back to Kinmuir.
By the time he reached the others, her teeth had begun to chatter, though he wasn’t sure if it was from the cold loch waters or shock that her attempted escape had failed.
He set her on her feet beside his horse and grudgingly wrapped both plaids around her. At least she stood docilely rooted in place as he remounted and pulled her up across his lap. Mayhap her impromptu dunk in the loch had taken some of the fight out of her.
When he was settled once more, he found Laird MacBean watching him with those too-keen eyes.
“Ye said ye thought the lass was a MacBean,” the Laird said, his voice overly calm. “Let me guess—she is the matter ye wished to discuss with me. Ye thought to trade her back to me in exchange for—what? Coin? Grain?”
“Peace,” Callum replied through gritted teeth. “A promise from ye to leave my lands and people alone.”
Laird MacBean stiffened, his eyes narrowing. “What ye now call yer land belonged to the MacBeans for generations.”
“That doesnae give ye the right to raid and terrorize the MacMorans who peacefully live here now,” Callum shot back. He drew in a breath to calm his rising anger. “My father and yers redrew the border decades ago. Both clans agreed to it. Ye have no grounds to go back on that agreement now.”
“My people have every right to feed themselves,” MacBean bellowed in return.
Just when it seemed that a clashing of swords was inevitable, Terek MacBean placed a hand on the Laird’s arm. “Father,” the young man murmured.
The simple word brought MacBean back to himself. He huffed a breath, the angry color that had risen to his face abating slightly.
“Yer wee scheme has failed, MacMoran,” he said, his temper turning back to shrewd restraint. “The lass is naught to me, so ye have naught to bargain with.”
The Laird leaned forward in his saddle then, fixing Callum with a cold stare. “Worse,” he went on, “instead of exploiting my weakness, ye’ve revealed yer own. Yer plan can be used against ye now.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Callum demanded, unease coiling in his gut at the gleam in MacBean’s dark eyes.
MacBean lifted his thick shoulders, a coy smile playing around his mouth. “Ye meant to hold something of value against me, but mayhap ye ought to worry that someone might do the same to ye. Take the lass, for example. Ye seem fond of her—fond enough to fetch her from the loch, to wrap her in yer plaid, to hold her close so that she cannae escape again.”
Callum realized he was clenching his hands so tight that his knuckles ached. “Is that a threat?” he asked quietly, staring MacBean down.
“Just an observation,” MacBean replied casually. “And a warning. I’d be careful if I were ye, Laird. I wouldnae let such a bonny wee thing out of my sight—else someone might find her and do to ye what ye aimed to do to me.”
MacBean’s eyes slid to Caroline, and Callum fought the urge to draw his sword and run the man through for threatening her. Nay, he had to keep his wits about him. The last thing his clan needed was for him to plunge them into an all-out war with the MacBeans over a lass he hadn’t even known two days past.
Still, MacBean’s posturing couldn’t go ignored. Callum would have to put extra men along their border—men needed for the harvest season, not warfare. Bloody hell, what a mess he was in.
“Is she English, then?” MacBean asked, still eyeing Caroline.
“She speaks English,” Callum muttered, suddenly feeling weary. “I dinnae ken what she is.”
MacBean snorted. “Besides daft, ye mean?”
At that, Caroline stiffened in his lap. “I’m not—”
“Hold yer wheesht, woman,” MacBean snapped.
The last of Callum’s patience evaporated. “I thought ye said ye had no claim to her, MacBean,” he growled. “The lass is my responsibility now—which means ye have no place admonishing her. She is under my protection. Threaten her again and find out just what it means to challenge the honor of a MacMoran.”
Not waiting for MacBean’s reply, Callum dug his heels into his horse’s flanks and jerked on the reins, sending the animal careening back toward Kinmuir. His men instantly fell in around him, and they rode hard for home.
Callum nearly lost himself in the rhythm of his horse’s long, pounding strides, but he couldn’t quite flee a niggling voice in the back of his head.
Aye, Caroline was his responsibility—and he would damn well ensure her safety now that MacBean saw her as a way to strike at him.
But what the hell was he to do with the English-speaking, nonsense-talking, dangerously bonny lass?
Chapter Seven
Once they’d crossed through the castle gates, Callum set Caroline on her feet and dismounted without a word. From the hard set of his jaw and the tightness around his honey-colored eyes, he was furious, but he remained silent, merely taking her by the elbow and guiding her back into the tower.
Caroline held her tongue as well, but not out of anger.
She’d failed. It had been a long shot, but some part of her had held out hope that returning to her own time and reuniting with her sisters would be as easy as simply diving back into the loch she’d appeared in two days ago.
Numb disillusionment threatened to swallow her whole, yet she still had one last chance to get back home. Somehow, she had to convince Callum to let her return to Leannan Falls. That was where this nightmare had begun, and maybe it would end there as well.
She let him pull her up the stairs toward her room, but once they were inside with the door firmly shut behind them, she drew in a breath, gathering her wits.
Yet before she could get the words out, he rounded on her.
“What the hell were ye thinking, jumping in the loch like that?”
She blinked. “I told you already. I need to find my sisters and go back to—”
“No’ this nonsense again,” he muttered through clenched teeth.
That had her bristling. “I didn’t make you come after me, you know.”
“Should I have let ye drown, then?”
“I know how to swim.”
“Verra well, but ye didnae have the sense to try, did ye? Ye simply sank underwater like a stone.”
“I was looking for—”
Caroline’s rising voice was cut off when Tilly pushed into the room. The woman’s hazel eyes widened as she took in first Caroline’s and then Callum’s dripping, disheveled appearance.
“Tilly, would ye kindly fetch another of Thora’s dresses for Caroline?” Callum said in a tight voice. “In fact, bring all my sister’s old clothes—Caroline will be staying here indefinitely.”
“What?” Caroline snapped.
Tilly hastily bobbed a curtsy and fled, either to do her Laird’s bidding or simply to escape the mounting argument, Caroline wasn’t sure which.
She turned back to Callum, matching his cross-armed stance. “I can’t stay here. I want to go to Leannan Falls. That’s the best chance for me to get bac
k to where I belong.”
To her surprise, he let a long breath go and dragged a hand through his wet hair. “I cannae allow that.”
“Why not?” she demanded. “It’s obvious I’m only causing you problems. If you let me go, then you can get back to…whatever it is you were doing before I got here.”
“It’s no’ that easy. I meant what I said about ye being under my protection now. I cannae spare a contingent of men to escort ye—no’ when I need every last one of them either watching our borders or bringing in the harvest. And I cannae simply send ye on yer way alone.”
“Why? I’ve done plenty of backcountry hiking and camping. Just give me a horse and some supplies, and I’ll be on my way.” An image of riding a horse for a week rose in her mind and she frowned. “On second thought, backpacking my way to the falls might be better.”
“What is ‘backpacking’?” he asked, scowling.
Caroline exhaled. “My point is, you don’t have to be responsible for me. I can take care of myself.”
Callum shook his head slowly. “MacBean will be looking for ye. If he comes across ye wandering around the Highlands, he’ll take ye and try to ransom ye back to me.”
“His threat doesn’t hold water, though,” she countered. “The only reason he thinks he can use me against you is because he believes I mean something to you—but I don’t.”
She waited for his agreement, or even just a nod of acknowledgement for the point she’d made, but all he did was stand there like a stone statue before her, his gaze cutting through her and his jaw locked stubbornly.
What the hell did his silence mean? He couldn’t possibly be implying that…that she wasn’t nothing to him, could he?
Tension crackled like electricity around them as the laden silence stretched. At last, he broke their stare, turning to stand over the flickering embers in the brazier.
“I need to think of my clan first,” he murmured. “I cannae risk being manipulated by the likes of Laird MacBean. And I cannae have distractions from my duty.”
