by L. L. Muir
He used the torch to light candles on the mantle and quickly laid a fire that took its sweet time catching. Its light and heat were nothing compared to the burn in his chest, however. White-hot pain overlaid a warm knowledge that this, at least, was the right thing to do. It had been a long time since he’d been this sure of his actions.
The shutters were already secured against the night and for once in nearly two weeks of wanting it, he would have Jillian in his arms without a soul to disturb them.
He turned to face her, grateful to find a happy smile, and he tried to return the same. There was nothing to say, and everything. He took her face in both hands and looked into the depths of her eyes, willing her to know how completely he loved her, only to find she was willing him to know the same.
He lowered his mouth to hers, gently, then not so gently when the need came to meld her mouth to his own.
Perfection. The taste, the plump resistance. Heaven help him!
He had to break away, choking on a sob. To know her taste would be to torture himself with the memory of it, and he knew with a certainty he would not survive more torture.
Fearing what she must be thinking, he turned back to find tears streaming down her cheeks. Were they of a mind then?
He opened his mouth to speak, but she covered his lips with her fingers and shook her head once. He had no idea what he might have said but he kissed her fingers and sighed. He could still taste her, but it was not so painful. All was not lost.
Silently, they helped each other out of their clothing and stood warm flesh to unashamed warm flesh until Monty felt the passing of time was getting away from them.
He carried her to the bed. The sound of her breathing was a reminder that he must have a care not to pull her completely into his chest until she was trapped inside his own ribs, his arms wrapped about himself, never to let her go.
As they melded into one body, one soul, Monty imagined their hearts touching, then burying themselves into one another. Surely, they could not survive without each other.
He showed her a heaven that would cease to be without her, and together they brought a drop of it home to pulse through their veins for the rest of their days. When their souls shattered into fragments around them, there was no longer a way to identify and separate them. They would need to be content to share. It was possible, if they held tight until morning, someone would find a single body tangled and lifeless in the linens that vaguely resembled them both.
He was loath for the night to end, to let it cross the line and become a memory.
What a shame it was that this memory could not include long kisses or looking into each other’s eyes. Such indulgences were sharp as new blades in clumsy hands. Neither could survive them, so they stopped trying. None of their kisses would be repeated, practiced, or perfected, and they were far too poignant to be borne.
After all sense of time had fled, Monty lovingly dressed his wife in the near darkness. While he dressed himself, she looked on like a lost puppy and he wouldn’t have been surprised to hear her whimper.
He couldn’t help himself; he kissed her again, hoping against hope that it would be easier now, but it was not. Every kiss said fare thee well, and with but one tender press of his lips he pushed them both back to tears.
Jillian, his Jillian, cried in his embrace while a heavy-hearted moon mourned across the sky, pulling time behind it with leaden, but steady steps, until the sobbing subsided.
He wondered if she’d noticed the tremors that wracked his body in unison with hers. If they could barely survive coupling, how would they ever survive parting?
He stretched out upon the bed once more, pulling her back against him, wrapping his arms securely around her to wait for the coming of the dawn. But like a clang from the kirk bell, the truth jolted him. And he realized he could and would survive the morrow after all, knowing now what he must do.
When he was sure she slumbered, he tucked a plaid under her chin. “I’m sorry wife,” he whispered, “but an army could not take ye from me now.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Slipping out of her husband’s arms was the most painful experience Jillian could ever live through, not that she cared to live through it.
She’d heard him the night before, when he mistakenly thought she’d fallen asleep. How could he think she would snooze away the few hours she’d have in his arms? And how could he expect her to react any way other than cutting and running before she had a fight on her hands?
Didn’t he realize how hard it would be to leave him behind? And that arguing about it would literally kill her?
Her leather jacket was half-buried beneath his shoulder and leaving became as essential as leaving the man lying on it. If she stayed, he’d lose his soul and she’d eat herself alive over it. Morna and Ivar too.
She had to go. Nothing had changed except the breaking of her heart was so painful she could barely breathe…
And so Jillian found herself with no option that morning but to sneak into Morna’s bedchamber unannounced. She turned her head to the side, just in case, but found them both dressed. Ivar was seated on a chair with Morna sitting across his lap tucking his hair behind his ear. The look they exchanged was so close to the one Montgomery had given her when they’d reached his bedroom, Jillian couldn’t watch.
She had to be tough—Morna-tough. She had to steel her heart against those memories. For now.
She’d relive every moment after she was home again. Funny, how the word “home” stirred the fragrances of heather, peat moss, and cold stones through her mind. She’d never be home again.
“I hate to interrupt,” she whispered, “but I’m worried Montgomery’s changed his mind about letting us leave. We need to try before he’s awake. You see, I don’t think I can go through with it if he tries to stop us.”
Why weren’t they moving? Didn’t they understand?
“Jillian Ross, why are ye doing this for us when it is plain ye wish to stay?” Ivar stroked Morna’s arm with his thumb, showing her his happiness had little to do with Jillian’s decision. “We’ll not be parted now, sin or no.”
Jillian Ross. That’s who she was now. If she stayed... She shook her head.
“If we stay, Montgomery will find a way to kill Morna’s husband, to make the way easier for you. He wants to make up for what he’s done, and he’d lose his soul to do it.” She felt that steel begin to warm and start to give, but she threw some cold water on it. “And besides, there are a couple of old ladies who just might be accused of my murder if I don’t show up again. I wouldn’t wish those two on other inmates.”
“I dinna understand—” Ivar started to say.
“The Muir sisters. Lorraine and Loretta, if I remember rightly.”
Jillian spun to face the door. The fifteenth century version of the sisters had snuck into the castle again. But thankfully, they’d been quiet about it.
“We’d best move this discussion to the tunnels, aye?” Margot and Mhairi stepped aside and gestured to the hallway.
Half and hour and some pulled muscles later, the hole beneath the tomb was open again. Montgomery, and probably Ewan, had gone to a lot of trouble to discourage anyone from trying to reach it. But with the five of them, they’d been able to make a path in short time with little noise. Thank goodness these Muirs were as wiry as their descendants.
Standing beside the barrel they would use to get into the tomb, Jillian went over what she knew. “If it’s like last time, anything attached to me should go with me. My clothes came through, so I’m hoping if the two of you hang on to me really tight, we can go through together.”
All heads nodded in agreement.
“Also, I think I came through as soon as I put on the torque, right when I laid it on my neck.”
“No.” Margot smiled and shook her head. “It has naught to do with the necklace, lassie.”
“She’s right,” said her sister. “Isobelle wanted to be sure the torque stayed in the tomb, so we enchanted it;
it cannot leave. The power to remain is the only power it has.”
Jillian stood still for a minute and waited for her brain to catch up. “If the necklace wasn’t what brought me here, then how did I get here?” Her voice had risen, but she couldn’t help it. She needed to do one noble thing here—leave—so she could live with a clear conscience. Now, they weren’t saying her flight was cancelled, they were saying planes couldn’t fly.
“Easy, Jillian,” Mhairi said. “Ye will still get where ye are going.”
“Ye’ll get there the same way ye came. It’s the tomb, ye ken? And it wasn’t Muirs that wrought it. It was Laird Ross himself.”
“Oh, we had a wee hand, sister. Dinna forget the prophecy. Not worth more than a pile of stones without the prophecy.”
“There is no time for this,” Jillian hissed. “Just tell me what to do.”
The sisters looked disappointed. No kidding, they both stuck out their bottom lips.
“Sorry. Go on.”
Bottom lips disappeared.
“Well, it’s not every day we get to tell it, ye ken?” Excitement was good. Excitement made them talk faster. “The tomb was wrought with Love and Sacrifice. Simple as that.”
“Yes, ye see ye only need Love and Sacrifice to make it work for ye.” Mhairi, possibly, gave her a pitying look. “Unfortunately, ye are the one to make the sacrifice, both last time and this.”
“The first time,” the other chimed back in, “ye had a fear of closed spaces, and yet ye went in the tomb to try to help people ye had never met. A lovely sacrifice.”
“And I believe it was the hope of reuniting Ivar and Morna’s love that was the other element,” Margot said.
“This time, their love will be that same element, but the sacrifice ye make will be quite different, we think.”
As knowing as these two seemed to be, they couldn’t possibly understand what Jillian was giving up or why.
She turned to the couple. “I think you two should go in ahead of me. If I go first, I may be gone before you get inside. If you grab me as soon as I’m through, I shouldn’t leave without you.”
Ivar nodded and hopped onto the barrel and into the hole. Morna climbed onto the barrel and Jillian handed her the water, axe, and candle she’d thought to bring along.
Once Morna was inside, Jillian leaned on the barrel but couldn’t manage to lift her leg.
Holy crap. This is it. I’m really going.
Would she be able to come back? If the Muirs were correct, there would need to be some sort of sacrifice, and hers would be all used up. Coming back would be for selfish reasons alone. What would she be sacrificing? Toilet paper and flushing toilets?
Not too noble.
“We need ye to give this Lorraine and Loretta a message, Jillian. Can ye do that for us?”
Mhairi and her sister were looking rather smug. When they neared eighty, Jillian knew just how they’d look. Like Muir rats.
“What’s the message?” Getting away from those two made scrambling for the hole a lot easier.
“Tell them they’re not quite finished yet,” one said.
“We believe they will understand.”
As Ivar pulled Jillian into the darkness, Morna’s hands gripped on to one of her arms like an insta-vice.
From below, the voices of the Muir twins murmured together in what sounded like a chant but there was another noise. Someone large and angry was clamoring down the passage toward the room.
“Get ye gone, Jillian. He’s coming!”
Jillian closed her eyes and prayed that she would be gone before Montgomery could order her to come out. She wouldn’t be able to defy him to his face.
God was watching. He had to be. She believed in the worth of Montgomery’s soul more than anything she’d ever believed in before, and God would make it right. She couldn’t continue to breathe and believe otherwise.
The workroom door crashed into pieces.
Forward. Home. Lorraine. Loretta. Please!
The air went dead around her. And if not for Morna’s hold on her, Jillian’s soul would have leapt free from her body in answer to the receding echo of an anguished roar...from very, very far away.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The circle of light at their feet had gone dark. No one moved.
Jillian heard breathing, so Morna and Ivar were alive, at least. She never wanted to let out that final fifteenth century bit of air. But a few loud, pounding heartbeats later, it came out with an unholy howl. When it was gone, she dropped to the floor like a sack of Idaho potatoes.
Breathing. Nothing more. No one seemed inclined to speak.
Ivar began pounding on the wood that plugged the modern-day floor, but it sounded odd. She knew they had arrived in her own time; she could smell the dust and decay that had been missing those long hours she’d waiting for Montgomery, in a year-old tomb.
No, she wouldn’t do that now. She wouldn’t go there now. Later was always a better time to cry.
She slowly got to her feet and realized it wasn’t Ivar pounding on the floor. He and Morna were still breathing, somewhere in the darkness, and very close to each other. The pounding was from the outside.
“Jillian dear! Are you there?” The muffled squeak of a woman’s voice was familiar enough to make out the words.
Wonderful. A Muir welcoming committee.
“Step off the door, dear. Pull it up inside.”
Ah, yes. She remembered how this worked.
Her mind and body seemed to be functioning well enough while her soul hemorrhaged. God must not have read the memo yet, the one about her will-to-live account maxing out its overdraft.
She found the edges of the contraption and got her fingers beneath it. Ivar was there helping her lift it away.
Lorraine and Loretta were below, fluffing dust out of their blue hair. “Did you bring anyone with you, dear? Any luck—” A blue veined hand froze mid-fluff. Left hand, Lorraine.
Ivar’s blond head popping into the hole must have been answer enough, and Jillian felt a gleeful sense of vengeance when both Muir’s swooned into a blue, decidedly unlady-like heap.
Walking into the great hall once more, without the smells of food and pine-flavored wood smoke, Jillian was cold, no matter what the temperature. She’d never feel warm again and it was not all due to the fact she’d left her leather jacket in the past.
She stepped around the space that had once been filled with the worn wood table. Monty had stroked it solemnly while he told her about watching his father and grandfather build it with their own hands. All things that had once been a part of living here and breathing this giant cube of air were now encased in glass and velvet, unmoving, beyond her reach.
She stepped closer to the great cabinet opposite the hearth. The light danced off the corners of silver weapons, gold leafed trinkets, and Windexed glass.
Bones. She was staring at the bones of lives gone by. And she could only wonder where Monty’s bones now lie. She felt like she should lie down with them. With him.
Awareness prickled the back of her neck. She knew without looking that Quinn stood just inside the doorway behind her, watching and waiting with a patience his ancestor wouldn’t have shown.
But no.
He wasn’t the one whispering from her immediate left. Remembering what did wait for her attention, she hesitated, not sure she could handle looking at it again, knowing what she knew.
She turned and glanced past it, a bit further left, at the tomb from which she’d just been taken. Odd how much one could hate an innate pile of stones, but she did. A guilty monstrosity is what it was, and she wished she had the heart to wrench every rock from its place so it couldn’t ruin any more lives.
That was it. That was just the boost of hard emotion she needed to brace herself before looking to the right.
Amid the ricochets of bright morning light, her eyes sought and found that face she’d left in the past with her jacket. Although the sculpture had gone from smooth, pale gray to
a mottled, pocked slate, the image stood out clearly.
To the sides of the torso, the stone had been chipped away, but the lower body of the kilted laird was still held fast in time, his plaid suspended mid-flutter, and she wondered if a good blast on Highland pipes might break the spell. Hands on hips, Monty seemed to be leaning ever so slightly forward, as if his determination alone would free his lower half. A slightly irritated brow was the only hint the man was not pleased to be posing for such a statue.
Jillian laughed at him. But the statue did not turn toward her and join in. Maybe if she laughed harder...
By the time Morna and Ivar joined her, she was hysterical. They took her away to the manor house, bathed her, choked her with enough food down a throat clogged with tears, and tucked her into bed. She watched it all in fascination. Detached, like a spirit hovering in the rafters.
It was full-on night when she once again looked through her own eyes, and he was once again before her; her grey Montgomery, slightly irritated, but in good humor, the flashlight accentuating the deep grooves of his smile.
How could he be so flippant when she was in such a state—pieces of Jillian Ross, broken into small chunks, loosely contained in her borrowed nightgown?
How could he possibly be so oblivious to her presence when he’d called her back to him?
He had called her back to him, so loud and clear it had wakened her from a nap that had gone from late morning into the dark of night.
It had been easy enough to get in. The door broken by the Muir Sisters had not been completely repaired yet. And she knew the path to the great hall well enough, once she was through the more recent additions.
“I brought you some water, and a candle, just in case,” she told Stone Monty. “Don’t know if you can figure out the flashlight, even if you do get your huge hands free.”
“What are ye about, Jillian?”
She turned and found Quinn standing near the dais, one boot resting on the edge, his left hand braced against his bent knee, his right holding a flashlight trained on the floor near her feet.
