“Here you are. Take it slowly now,” the woman cautioned as the thick rim of a mug touched Annie’s lips.
One huge gulp later, she understood the need for caution, sputtering and choking on what tasted like a bitter, diluted version of flavored vinegar.
“What is that?” she said, fully awake at last. “It’s awful.”
“Mulled wine, of course,” the old woman answered, her face wrinkled in indignation. “And one of our better batches, if I do say so myself.”
“Sorry.” Annie shook her head, keenly aware of the heat rising in her face. “I didn’t mean to insult your cooking. Or brewing. Or whatever you do to make that stuff. It’s just…I expected water, you know? Just plain old water. May I have some, please?”
“Water?” a male voice scoffed. The man in the corner, the one who’d leaned over her earlier, spoke this time. The one with the intense eyes. He approached the bed again, his arms crossed in front of him. Arms that would put most football players to shame. “Yer barely returned to yerself and you’d have us hasten another illness upon you?”
“Hush yerself, lad,” the old woman said. “I can send a boy down to the stream for a bucket if you’d like to wash up. Or perhaps they have some heated in the kitchens.”
What was wrong with these people? Water didn’t make a person sick. Although, come to think of it…
Now that Annie actually paid a little attention to her surroundings, it did appear as though she was somewhere pretty primitive. The walls were made of stone with what looked like rugs hanging on them and the windows were little more than holes placed high up in the walls, with wooden shutters on either side of them. Was it even possible that there were places in Scotland that didn’t have running water?
And if so, were those places this close to her cottage? If not…
“Where am I?” she asked, pushing away from the pillows to sit upright in the bed. “Who are you people?”
“Who are we?” the big man echoed, his handsome face a mask of arrogant indignation. “That’s only one of the questions you should be answering. Who are you and who’s responsible for locking you in our arbor?”
“Your arbor?” Apparently it was her turn to play echo chamber. “Oh, I don’t think so.”
Were these people squatters, living in the abandoned castle on her grandmother’s property because Ellen had come here so irregularly? That might explain the primitive nature of their surroundings, if they were living here without permission and totally off the grid. She could almost accept that explanation, except for the fact that these stone walls were standing and solid, and the ones she’d walked through earlier today on her way to the arbor had been little more than crumbled ruins.
“What is this place?” she asked again, her heart pounding in her chest.
“Everyone out!” Lissa breezed into the room, a large tray in her hands and a young boy carrying a large bucket trailing behind her. “Wonderful! You’ve come back to yerself. I was fair worried over you after you collapsed again.”
Seeing Lissa felt almost like finding a friend in a roomful of strangers. Annie’s first thought was relief that the young woman had survived their attackers. Her second—the more rattling of the two—was that those same attackers were in this very room and were, even now, meekly heading toward the door on the orders of the petite redhead.
Lissa was one of them?
She must be. The larger man stopped beside her, dipping his head to share a whispered conversation. Annie found herself feeling more than a little envious of the hand he placed on the woman’s shoulder before Lissa shooed him out the door behind the other one, leaving only the two of them and the elderly woman who sat on the foot of the bed.
None of this made any sense. Not who these people were, not why she was here and sure as heck not why she’d have any sort of feelings other than complete dislike when it came to the man who’d just left the room.
“I’m so confused,” Annie muttered, lifting a hand to her head and wincing as her fingers brushed over her cheek, sending shards of pain strafing up the side of her face.
“Put yer worries from yer breast, fair lady, and old Agneys will see to all yer aches and pains,” the older woman said, rising from the bed to rummage through the small clay pots on the tray Lissa had brought in. “Ah, this is what we need.”
“Wait.” Annie pulled back from Agneys as the healer dipped her fingers into the pot and lifted a slimy substance toward Annie’s face. “What is that?”
The old woman clucked her tongue and pushed Annie’s hand away. “Just you sit quietly and let me do what I’m best at and we’ll have that nasty swelling down in no time. As to what I’m using, it’s naught but a salve to help the wound upon yer cheek. A bit of yarrow and mallow with some balm mixed in, along with a few other things. Secrets of my trade, you ken,” she said with a wink.
Annie sat patiently as Agneys smeared the concoction over her cheek, trying not to let her imagination run wild thinking about what other things might be included in the smelly goo. She even managed to stay quiet until the older woman sat back, clearly pleased with her handiwork.
“Thank you,” she said, realizing that Agneys was doing her best to be helpful. “I honestly do appreciate your trying to help me. But if you really want to help me, you can tell me where I am and who all of you people are.”
Lissa neared the bed, her head tilted to one side as if she studied a strange creature such as she’d never seen before.
“A barter, then,” Lissa said, her lips curling in a beautiful smile. “An answer for an answer. Let’s see… To answer where you are, yer in my bedchamber at Castle Dunellen. Now it’s yer turn. Why have you come here now?”
Annie waited for a moment, trying to grasp the answer she’d been given. Though Lissa had told her where she was, she actually knew no more now than she had before she’d gotten her answer. But if a deal was the only way to get answers to her questions, a deal was a deal, and she owed Lissa an answer. Problem was, Lissa had asked a question to which she had no answer.
“I’ve come here because, I guess…because you brought me here. Last thing I remember, I’d gone into my grandmother’s arbor. And then, after the earthquake, you were there.”
Lissa tapped a finger to her lips, her eyes narrowing. “Aye, you mentioned the earth moving before, did you no’? But let’s stick to the practical for now. The arbor I found you in is no' yer grandmother’s. It belongs to the MacKillican clan, built by my own grandfather when he became laird. What’s yer full name, Annie? Who’s yer clan?”
Sorting her thoughts, Annie tried to decide on her best course of action. It would appear these squatters were the family members of someone who had done the construction work on her grandmother’s property. Though that theory didn’t explain how they’d managed to hide this apparently massive structure when she’d walked for as far and as long as she had without having seen any sign of it. Still, that theory did give her something to go on, and though she suspected quibbling over facts with people like these wasn’t the smartest thing to do, there was right and there was wrong.
And what Lissa claimed as fact was just plain wrong.
“My name is Analise Shaw. Does the name Shaw sound familiar? It certainly should. As far as that arbor goes, your grandfather might have been the workman who constructed it, but this property has belonged to my grandmother for the last forty years. She left it to me when she died last month.”
All neat and legal, with a stack of paperwork signed by a ton of lawyers and witnesses.
“Forty years?” Lissa snorted, leaning over a large chest and pulling out a variety of garments, which she held up to study, one piece at a time. “I beg to differ. My grandfather was granted this land by Alexander II himself, for payment of services rendered in defense of the king. There’s even a scroll attesting to it kept in a place of honor in the laird’s solar. Ah, here we go. This one should work just fine for you. It belonged to my mother, so it’s no' so new, but she was closer to you
in height.”
“Wait a second,” Annie said, trying to fit her mind around all the impossible things Lissa had just claimed.
King Alexander II?
Annie’s mind rummaged through what little history she knew about Scotland while Lissa held up a costume similar to the one she wore. There had to be something she was missing in this conversation. Either that or she’d hit her head a lot harder than she’d thought. Had these squatters moved in here because of some ancient land grant they’d stumbled upon? Surely they had to know those things held no legal power. They were little more than historical artifacts. Interesting and cool, and maybe even worth cash to a museum, but that was about it.
Or maybe they didn’t know that at all. In which case, she’d need to tread even more lightly until she could get out of here and get the authorities to sort through all of this.
Although… Lissa had specifically said the land had been granted to her grandfather. Perhaps it was only a twist of the language difference. Maybe she used the term grandfather to mean all her male ancestors. Though in the context she’d used it, it didn’t seem as though that was what she meant.
“I think I’m misunderstanding what you meant,” Annie said at last. “Because what I thought you said isn’t making any sense to me. I may be just another American tourist who doesn’t know a lot about your history, but I do remember reading about King Alexander, and I do remember that he ruled in something like twelve hundred. So obviously there’s no way your grandfather could have dealt with him.”
“Aye, but he did.” Lissa tilted her head to the side, a confused smile lifting the corners of her mouth, as if her confusion was as great as Annie’s. She also seemed equally determined in the accuracy of her claim. “As a young man, Grandda served the good king as one of his private guardsmen. In the year of our Lord twelve twenty, this land and the castle standing upon it was granted to my grandfather to be home to Clan MacKillican, to remain so for as long as any MacKillican descendant survived. As such, three generations of our people have occupied these lands for more than seventy-five years. Yer forty years are hardly a match to that, aye? Up with you now, Annie, and off the bed. Let’s get you out of these strange things yer wearing and into something more presentable.”
Seventy-Five years? How could that be? Well, simply, it couldn’t be. Not unless…
“What year is this?” Annie asked, her voice little more than a strangled whisper as she pushed Lissa’s helping hand away. “Answer my question first.”
“Twelve ninety-five, of course,” Lissa answered, one eyebrow raising as she turned to share a look with the old healer.
Agneys shook her head, once again making the clucking sound with her tongue. “Don’t be looking to me in surprise, Alissaundre, daughter of the MacKillican. What did you expect from a woman you pulled out of yer grandfather’s Faerie haunt?”
Twelve ninety-five.
The date played over and over again in Annie’s head, rattling around like a loose marble, as she allowed Lissa to pull her from the bed and help her lift her sweater up over her head.
“Where’d you get this?” Lissa lifted the pendant hanging around Annie’s neck.
“It was my grandmother’s,” Annie answered without thought, feeling as if she’d just climbed off a roller coaster after hanging upside down for an hour.
Twelve ninety-five?
If she were the type of female who slumped into a faint at every little shock, she’d be a puddle on the floor at this very minute. She almost wished she were that type. Anything to escape the insanity of the world she found herself in right now.
Twelve-freakin’-ninety-five!
Her mind reeled at the idea as she struggled to put everything that had happened into some sort of reasonable pattern. No matter how she considered the facts, she could find no reason, no pattern. Only the stark possibility of something that couldn’t possibly happen loomed larger than life.
“She’ll need slippers for her feet,” Agneys said, staring down at the floor. “I don’t suppose you’ve any of yer mother’s old ones, have you? Yers are no' likely to fit her.”
“I always kenned the truth of it,” Lissa murmured, her features wrinkled in a thoughtful frown as her finger traced the outline of Annie’s pendant. Then she shook her head as if to clear her thoughts, and a semblance of her smile returned. “Slippers. Aye, you have the right of it, Aggie. She’ll be needing those and I’ve none that will fit. I suppose we’ll have to pay a visit to old Willie. Have ourselves a wee chat about how quickly he thinks he can make a pair for her.”
Shoes? Seriously? If what they were saying was true, Annie was somehow trapped in the wrong freakin’ century, and these two were worried about shoes? She wanted to scream at the women. She wanted to scream at the world around her, or simply scream, period.
Annie took a deep breath to calm herself, struggling to center her scattered emotions and regain her tenuous hold on reality. Obviously, her imagination was running wild. None of this was possible. And even if it were, hysteria wasn’t the answer. It made much more sense that these people were playing her in some elaborate con. That had to be it. She’d taken her share of science classes and loved to watch every science documentary that showed on television. She knew for a fact that time travel absolutely, positively was not possible. Time moved inexorably forward. In one direction only, like a raging river.
A memory of Syrie’s parting words crowded into her mind, shoving aside every other thought, demanding her attention.
It isn’t a river, flowing only in one direction. It’s a grand, swirling wind, blowing hither and yon.
No. She simply couldn’t accept that. She wouldn’t accept it. The conversation with her grandmother’s friend was merely a coincidence. A weird fluke. Nothing more.
“You’re making a big mistake,” Annie said at last. “I don’t know what you guys are trying to pull, but you’re not going to get away with it. I don’t belong here. Maybe you should just help me get back to my grandmother’s cottage, okay?” When the two women exchanged another look she couldn’t read, Annie tried again. “Never mind that. How about you just point me in the direction of the arbor. I’ll find my own way back to the cottage. My shoes are in the arbor, anyway. We won’t even need to bother your old Willie.” Whoever the hell that was.
“Alex is no’ likely to allow you outside the gates. He says it’s no’ safe,” Lissa said. “No’ with the threat of the Gordons lurking about.”
Someone here wouldn’t allow her outside the gates? They were keeping her prisoner? Wait! What had she said?
“Gordons? Peter’s family?” Even if Peter knew she’d been kidnapped by some oddball cult—which he couldn’t possibly at this point, because she was only now learning of it herself—he would hardly be the one to come looking for her. And his family? There was no way they’d be here. They’d much more likely be waiting for her family to cough up the ransom while they sought sympathy from all their wealthy friends at the country club.
“Peter is a Gordon?” Lissa asked, all trace of her smile gone. “And how is it that you know Peter of the Clan Gordon?”
How? Because their fathers had done numerous business deals together over the years. Because they belonged to the same social circles. Because her parents thought he’d make the perfect husband and their marriage would meld their family fortunes into one giant conglomeration worthy of a mention in one of the prominent business magazines.
“Peter is…” Annie paused, as she twisted the diamond ring on her finger, finding it as difficult to say the words now as she had from the moment she’d foolishly accepted his proposal. “We’re to be married.”
“I must say, that’s no' something I expected to hear.” Lissa stepped back from her, shaking her head. “And no' something I think Alex will be at all pleased to learn, either.”
This was the second time she’d mentioned this Alex person. Perhaps he was their ringleader. But regardless of who he was, if he thought she cared what he liked o
r didn’t, or that she was going to take this whole charade like some pathetic whiner, sitting back, waiting until…well, waiting for whatever it was he planned for her, then he’d better get himself a whole new set of thoughts. She wasn’t falling for any of this, no matter how convincing they all were.
“Who is this Alex you keep referring to? I want to talk to him,” she demanded.
“Alex is my brother and, for now, laird of the MacKillican,” Lissa said. “All things considered, I’d say this is yer lucky day, Annie. As it just so happens, he very much desires to speak with you, as well.”
Chapter 5
“Peter is the man she’s to wed.” Lissa arched an eyebrow. “And, to top it all, he’s a Gordon.”
Alex found his stomach drawing into a tight knot at the words his sister whispered into his ear before returning to her spot next to the stranger.
He’d waited in his solar for them to join him, his nerves strung tighter than he could rightfully explain. When he’d left his sister’s bedchamber, the one thing he’d instructed her to do was to find out who was this man whose name had been on Annie’s lips when she’d first awoken.
And now he knew. She was betrothed to a Gordon. That meant, for all practical purposes, she was a Gordon.
Betrothed but not yet wed, a little voice whispered in the back of his mind.
“A spy, perhaps?” Finn asked quietly from behind him.
The man had ears every bit as sensitive as those of the big dog at his side.
“There’s more,” Lissa said with that little smile of hers that forewarned of something big. “I’d have you meet our guest properly. May I present to you Analise Shaw.”
Shaw! The Shaws were pledged to the MacKillican clan. Though she was betrothed to a Gordon, she was as one of their own. One of their own, left beaten and locked in the arbor on their own lands. This was an insult that could not go unanswered.
All The Time You Need Page 6
