She laced her boots back up, remembering what Kieran had said about dinner being served. Sure enough, there came a timid little tap on the door, and when she opened it, she found a wide-eyed servant waiting on the doorstep for her, huge blue eyes fixed on her face.
"Good evening, ma'am!" the girl squeaked. She couldn't have been much older than eighteen or nineteen, and Sarah found herself smiling back at her, which seemed to put her a little at ease. What did the locals make of all this? she wondered. If some stranger from four hundred years in the future came to visit her… well, she'd be taken aback, that was for certain. "I've been asked to invite you down to dinner –"
"Great, thanks," Sarah said with a smile. "I'll head down now."
The girl bobbed a few nervous curtsies then scurried away down the hall, leaving Sarah smiling after her. Oddly, she felt a lot more at ease knowing that people around her were also unnerved by her. Well, the feeling was mutual. It occurred to her that that girl was born, lived a full life and died hundreds of years before Sarah's own birth… and the wave of dizziness that that thought brought on was enough to make her shake her head firmly. First, she was going to head downstairs and have a full, hearty meal. Then she'd think about confronting weird and frightening thoughts like that.
The guard on her door didn't interfere with her trip down to the dining hall, she noticed with a huff. Good. She'd certainly have a few choice words for Kieran if his guard got in the way of her dinner. Her stomach was rumbling furiously by the time she made it to the dining hall, but she hesitated, unsure of where to sit. Thankfully, it wasn't long before she spotted a familiar face in the crowd – Maria sought her out and took her by the arm to the high table at which she and the Laird were sitting. There was a plate of food already prepared for her – meat and gravy, a selection of roast vegetables, and a plump bread roll that looked freshly roasted. The food was absolutely delicious – maybe because she was so hungry, but she had a feeling it was more than that, too. And as overwhelmed as she'd been feeling by everything around her, eating a hearty meal helped more than she'd expected it would to settle her nerves.
Maybe she could get used to a place like this after all.
Chapter 6
The meal was delicious. But Sarah found herself growing sleepier and sleepier as she listened to the talk at the table, Maria and Cameron discussing details of the castle's food supplies. She knew she should be paying closer attention, trying to figure out this strange new world she'd found herself in… but for some reason, she was utterly exhausted. Maria glanced over at her as they were getting to the end of their meals, and the woman smiled at her softly, a look of recognition and amusement in her eyes.
"Getting tired, huh?"
"I spent the whole afternoon asleep, I really shouldn't be this knocked out," Sarah said, a little annoyed with herself for letting on how sleepy she was feeling. What had gotten into her?
"I was the same when I got here. So were the others," Maria reassured her. "It's something about the time travel that really takes it out of you. Be kind to yourself for a few days, at least."
Sarah couldn't help but chuckle at that. It was advice she'd heard more than a few times throughout her career. "I've heard that one before. I'll do my best." But something Maria had mentioned did remind her of a question she'd been meaning to ask. "Who are the others?"
"Oh, you'll meet them soon. Tomorrow, I hope," Maria said with a smile. "Edith arrived a little after I did – her husband Bran is Cameron's tanist, his second-in-command. And Carissa came third. She's married to our stablemaster Hugh, Cameron's cousin."
"Does everyone who arrives here get married straight away?" Sarah asked, raising an eyebrow. "All three of you, already married?"
"And the other two are expecting," Maria agreed with a broad grin. "Coincidence, I think. Or maybe something more? Not that there are really enough of us to make predictions about patterns, but all four of us have been young women, and … well, the three of us were single when we arrived. What about you?"
Sarah shook her head, grinning. "Does being married to the job count?"
"Well, I'm not going to make any predictions," Maria said with a shrug of her shoulders. "But I wouldn't be surprised if you met someone interesting…"
Sarah shook her head. "The only man I'm interested in is DeBeers," she said firmly, her mind straying back to him.
Cameron started, his eyes widening a little as he leaned in closer. "DeBeers? The man who came through the gate with you?"
"That's him," Sarah said, frowning. "Why? Has something happened?"
"I was speaking with the Captain earlier," Cameron said heavily, and the look on his face made Sarah bite her lip. "It seems he's no longer in our custody."
"What do you mean?" Sarah leaned forward. "Not in your custody – what happened?"
"They're looking into it," Cameron reassured her. "There's nothing to worry about –"
"How did he escape?" She gritted her teeth, frustration and fury raging through her. Kieran had locked her up in her room, forced her to sit there twiddling her thumbs, all the while letting her quarry get away. "Never mind. I know how. Probably talked his way out. I warned him! Why didn't he listen to me!"
Maria was chuckling, though she looked sympathetic. "He's a stubborn man, that Kieran MacLeod."
"Downright stupid, I'd say," Sarah said darkly… but Cameron frowned at that.
"He's a good man, Sarah. The Captain of my guard, and a trusted kinsman. I'd advise you to tread carefully there."
She bit her lip, torn between her rising frustration… and her knowledge that she was a guest of Cameron's, that the roof over her head and the food on her plate were as a result of his kindness. Still, she couldn't help but seethe with frustration. Had DeBeers already gotten away when Kieran had had a guard posted on her door? She was going to get to the bottom of this if it killed her… but as another wave of exhaustion crashed over her, she decided it would be wisest to get a good night's sleep first.
After saying her goodnights to the Laird and Maria, she headed up the stairs, already looking forward to the next day with a grim determination. She'd do whatever she had to do to get that stubborn jackass guard captain to let her help get DeBeers in custody where he belonged. She was also interested in meeting the two women Maria had mentioned, the other time travelers who now made their home here in the castle. Strange, the idea of settling down, getting married and having children hundreds of years before her own time… but all of that seemed like another world entirely. All she cared about right now was getting hold of DeBeers, making sure he faced some kind of justice for his crimes. Once he was safely locked away, then she could focus on getting him back to their own time and dragging him before a court to finally face some kind of penalty for his crimes.
Lying in bed, she couldn't stop herself from dwelling on the case, going over pieces of information that she'd spent so much time thinking about they were almost second nature. DeBeers was a particularly aggravating kind of criminal… the kind that came from centuries of privilege. Old money – the oldest. He was from a very wealthy English family with several claims to titles and royalty dating centuries back – definitely not the kind of thief who was driven to steal things to support himself. No, from everything she'd gathered from his profile, he stole for fun. He'd been a high society gentleman his whole life, moving in rich circles… he'd started stealing as a way of getting back at his peers for slights, real or imagined, and it had clearly become a kind of obsession. It wasn't about the money, or the social status… he had more of both than he knew what to do with. It was all about the rush of the crime itself.
And that rush had led him to do all kinds of awful things. At one time, he'd actually killed a woman who'd discovered that he was behind a string of thefts – she'd been a young police officer assigned to the case, and he'd shot her in cold blood when she'd discovered him rifling through a jewelry safe in the dead of the night. Somehow, his lawyers had managed to get him out of paying for that part
icular crime… they'd made some kind of argument about the evidence being tampered with or mishandled, something so miniscule that even the press – usually so sympathetic to the handsome, charismatic jewel thief who'd been giving them so much to write about – was forced to admit it was tenuous.
But this crime… this was the one, she knew it. He'd gotten sloppy, or overambitious, or something. Something about Agnes had made him bite off more than he could chew… had he been especially angry with her? she wondered. Perhaps slighted in a more personal sense than the usual… a rejected proposal, perhaps? There was plenty of gossip to that effect in the circles DeBeers moved in, but all of it was hearsay and conjecture, nothing solid that could be relied on. But this theft was his biggest yet… and one where he'd left an uncharacteristic trail of evidence. The final detail of his attempt to hide the diamonds in the ruin… that would have been all she needed to really put him away for good this time.
And somehow, he'd managed to slip out of it again… she ground her teeth, tossing and turning in bed, unable to sleep despite her exhaustion. It was maddening. He'd literally gotten out of it thanks to magic this time. What if he was out there somewhere, starting a new life? What if he was never brought to justice, never forced to answer for his crimes? She couldn't let it happen. She wouldn't. First thing in the morning, she was going straight to the guard house to give Kieran a piece of her mind for letting her quarry escape…
Finally, she drifted off to sleep, that resolution giving her just enough peace to soothe her racing mind. But her dreams weren't peaceful. In them, she hunted a shadowy figure through streets that kept blurring and shifting between old-fashioned cobblestone and sleek, contemporary bitumen… the horizon warped and blurred between skyscrapers and castles until she wasn't sure whether she was in Boston or Skye, whether it was the sixteenth century or the twenty-first. And all the time, that figure was just ahead of her, taunting her, winking at her as he peered back over his shoulder… and when she finally did catch him, she felt him pull her into his arms, felt an uncharacteristic spike of desire deep in her gut…
And then he was gone. She sat bolt upright in bed, swearing like a sailor, utterly discombobulated and disoriented – where was she? This wasn't her bed, this wasn't the bus, this wasn't her apartment back in Boston… there was a trickle of gray daylight coming through the window and as her heartbeat settled she remembered where she was. Right. The tiny little room that had been assigned to her, the fire burned out in the grate… she took a few deep breaths in and out, wary of aggravating her asthma. She'd checked her pockets last night, and to her great dismay found that they were empty. No gun, no phone, not even the packet of mints she'd slipped into her pocket the morning they'd visited Dunscaith Castle's ruins… and no inhaler. That was a worry. She had a suspicion it would be a little while until the complex mix of steroids that soothed her attacks and opened her airways got invented again…
It was okay. People had been surviving asthma for hundreds of years. She could adjust to this. After all, what choice did she have?
Feeling a little shaken from the dreams still, she got out of bed slowly, wrinkling her nose as the cold stone touched her feet. She needed a new set of clothes … these were getting a bit unpleasant. She'd talk to the women today about borrowing a gown or similar – they weren't exactly her style, but when in Rome… But that was later. Right now, she had a quest in mind that wasn't going to wait. She had to track down Kieran and give him a piece of her mind.
Pulling her boots on, she wrapped her jacket around her shoulders and set out, striding quickly down the hallway. The servants she encountered seemed a little more comfortable with having her around – a few of them smiled and waved, a considerable improvement on the wide-eyed stares she'd received the day before, though she was aware that their eyes still lingered on her unusual clothing. Well, let them stare. There was a lot more about her that made her strange than her clothing.
Sarah took the stairs quickly, hastened across the entrance hall and marched across the courtyard, tugging her jacket a little closer as the chill wind from the sea picked up her hair and tossed it behind her. She didn't even know what season it was, she realized dizzily — there was no guarantee it was the same time of year now that it was when she'd left. It threatened to overwhelm her for a lurching moment, the knowledge that she didn't know what year it was, what season, what era… and instead of letting it overwhelm her, she set her jaw.
First she'd deal with DeBeers. There'd be time to worry about everything else later.
Chapter 7
The guardhouse was a low building set in the castle wall, on the opposite side of the castle to the stables. Ignoring the curious looks of the men milling about outside, she strode through the door, glancing around the space she found herself in – several large tables surrounded by chairs, presumably a kind of break room for the guards to use while they were waiting for their shifts on the walls to begin. She wondered just how big the military operation at the castle was. From the looks of the guardhouse, and from the number of men she'd seen around the castle in armor, she suspected there were quite a few men on rotation.
There was a door leading from the main area through to a smaller office with a desk – where a familiar face was glowering up at her, already tensed for confrontation. Kieran MacLeod, his armor unbuckled, glowering over what looked to be guard rosters.
"Good morning," he said cautiously, but she could tell by the look in his eye that he was expecting trouble from her already.
She couldn't help but suppress a grin at that. She'd always had that kind of reputation back home… it was nice to see that though her whole world might change, her dogged approach to her work wouldn't.
"How are you feeling?"
"Much better than yesterday," she said smoothly, though the truth was that she still felt a little shaky and not quite adjusted to the strange new world she'd found herself in. But Kieran didn't need to know that. He'd just use it as an excuse to stop her from getting after DeBeers. "And yourself?"
"Aye, well enough." He sat back, stretching. "Can I assist you with something? Women don't tend to spend much time in here," he added, giving her a pointed look. "You know how men are."
"Oh, I do, and I don't care," she said brightly, pulling up a chair, not missing the way his shoulders sagged a little at the realization that she wouldn't be that easy to get rid of. Good. Let him understand, well and truly, that she wasn't the kind of woman who'd be scared off by idle threats of men… doing what? Being creepy? Catcalling her, whistling at her, making inappropriate comments? Her professional life had been dogged by that kind of treatment almost since it began. Did he really think his guards were special? "I wanted to talk to you about DeBeers."
"This man again." Kieran sighed, rubbing his forehead. "He's been released, Sarah. I know you were after him, but we had no cause to hold him."
She suppressed her flare of temper, appreciating the fact that Kieran was at least being straightforward with her… though she filed it away for later reference that she'd had to outright ask what had happened to her prisoner before he'd told her the truth. "You had no cause to hold him, no," she said, keeping her voice calm but direct. "Which is why I insisted on holding him myself – something you refused to let me do."
"You'd just traveled hundreds of years through time," Kieran pointed out, narrowing his eyes. "You were in no state to –"
"I think I'm a better judge of what I was or wasn't in a state to do, thanks," she snapped coldly, cutting him off. That ruffled his feathers, she could tell by the way his shoulders were tensing up – but she wasn't done. "That man is a jewel thief and a murderer. I've been chasing him for months, and I won't be stopping – despite the significant setback of your releasing him."
"He's gone, Sarah." Kieran shrugged, looking at her with his hands spread. "He could be miles away by now."
"Then I hope you're in pursuit," she snapped. "Or must I go after him by myself? I'm more than happy to work alone. I've been d
oing it all my life."
"We're not pursuing a man who's committed no crime on our soil," Kieran said firmly, looking meaningfully across the table at her. "And don't go getting any ideas about charging off in pursuit of him yourself. You're not leaving the castle grounds," Kieran said, shaking his head. "I'm far too busy to assign anyone to mind you."
Her temper flared again. "I'm not a child in need of minding," she snapped. "And we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place if you hadn't assumed that you knew better than me about my captive –"
"This conversation is over, Sarah," Kieran said, narrowing his eyes at her as he rose abruptly to his feet. "I've a great deal to do and no time to be indulging your –"
"Indulging? What kind of narrow-minded, backwards, sexist –"
"That's enough," Kieran said firmly, striding over to hold the door to his office open for her. "Don't make me set another guard on your door, Sarah. I don't have the spare men."
She stared at him for a long moment, weighing her options as quickly as she could. As tempted as she was to simply stay in his office, making a scene in the hopes that he'd eventually give in and give her what she wanted, she had a suspicion that the stubborn, hard-headed man she was dealing with wasn't going to give in that easily. And as much as she hated to admit it… he held more cards than she did here. Grinding her teeth with frustration, she got to her feet, glaring daggers at him as she walked toward the door.
"This isn't over, Kieran MacLeod," she said, narrowing her eyes. "You've unleashed a dangerous criminal on the people around here. It won't be long until he's up to his old mischief… and you'll come crying to me to help deal with him."
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