“And this,” his sister continued, her eyes locked on his, “is the current MacKillican laird, my brother, Alexander. Those two hulking behind him are Finn MacCormack, who you saw earlier, and Jamesy MacCulloch.”
The pleasantries be damned. Of all the concerns bubbling in Alex’s mind, one sat in the forefront.
“Was it this man yer to wed, this Peter Gordon, who beat you and locked you in our arbor?” Alex asked.
Or, more likely now that he thought upon it, a family member who wanted to force a wedding between the clans to halt the aggressions between them. “You’ve no need to fear the one who did this to you, no matter who he is. We’ll see to yer safety, of that I give you my word.”
Whatever grateful response he expected from their guest as a result of his rash offer, he didn’t get it. She was completely unimpressed with his pledge, his title, or even with him.
“I don’t know what you think you’re up to here,” she said, her hands on her hips and a frown wrinkling her brow. “But I’m not having any part of it. You guys are free to stay here and do whatever you want, for as long as you want, but I’m done. Now, if you’ll just show me where the arbor is, I’ll find my own way back to the cottage from there.”
The one time in his life he acted on impulse rather than taking the time to thoroughly investigate the situation, and this is what happens. He offered protection and she demanded he return her to some cottage, like she had the right to demand anything of him. That was what he got for acting without deliberation.
“What in the name of the saints are you talking about, woman? I know of no cottage around here other than those occupied by our own people on the castle grounds.”
“Look. I just want—” She stopped speaking on a sigh, her eyes flashing with what looked like anger. “Forget it. I’m out of here. I’ll find my own way back. You keep the sweater and skirt. My suitcase should have been delivered by now, so I don’t need them anyway.”
With that, she turned and walked out of the room.
Alex shared a look with his friends, both of whom appeared as flummoxed by the conversation as he felt. The woman might as well be speaking a foreign language. Though for the most part he understood the words she said, the way she put them together made absolutely no sense to him at all.
“What in the name of all that’s holy is that woman blethering on about?” Finn asked.
Lissa shrugged, shaking her head. “It’s their way of speaking, I suppose.”
“And who are they, exactly?” Alex asked, regretting the question the second he asked it.
“The Fae, of course,” Lissa said, a look of irritation flitting across her features. “No matter how you deny their existence, even you must acknowledge she’s no’ of our world.”
“Bollocks,” Alex growled, striding across the room to follow the woman.
No woman, whether Gordon or Shaw, was going to saunter into his keep and out again, carrying the secrets of the MacKillican defenses. Not on his watch. He wasn’t having any part of his sister’s Faerie blether, either. Especially not in front of Finn and Jamesy.
With his two friends, he’d recently confronted situations that clearly had no explanations grounded in the mortal world. They’d even met a woman who claimed to be a Faerie. But among the three of them, they’d agreed not to speak of it again. Acknowledging such would also mean acknowledging the possibility that their brush with the other world would have some lasting impact on their lives, and they were having none of that. They were men in charge of their own destinies. And his destiny right now was to see to the safety of Castle Dunellen.
Annie had made it out the door and started down the steps by the time he caught up with her.
“And just where do you think yer going?” he demanded, grabbing her elbow to slow her down.
She jerked away from him, eyes flashing, and this time, there was no question that it was anger he saw reflected there.
“Home,” she said, in a way that brooked no argument as she pointed an arm straight ahead of her. “I’m going out that gate and I’m going to find that damn arbor. And then I’m going back to my cottage, where I plan to pack my things and catch the next plane home. This is all way more weird than I want to deal with.”
“Catch the next plane,” he repeated, at a total loss as to what she could possibly be talking about.
If only she spoke French, or Latin, or even Greek, he could hold his own through a conversation with her. But, once again, though the words were of his own language, it was as if they meant something completely foreign.
She hurried down the steps and all but ran, lifting her skirts as high as her knees in her haste to reach the gate. Once there, she came to a stop, her hands fastened around the bars of the portcullis.
“Open it,” she said when he reached her side. “You have no right to keep me here against my will. Trespassing is no big deal. Kidnapping, now that’s a whole different kind of crime, and one that you’re going to regret if you don’t let me go now.”
“It’s no’ safe,” he began, but stopped as she pounded her fists against the bars.
“Please,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper, her eyes filling with tears. “Please. I have to see for myself. I need proof. I can’t accept what’s happened unless I see for myself. Please.”
He wasn’t the kind of a man who was susceptible to the tears of a woman. Or, at the very least, he never had been that kind of man before. Why it should affect him now was beyond him.
But it did. Crawling inside his defenses and forming a cold, hard lump in the center of his chest, this strange emotion wouldn’t allow him to ignore her plea.
“Give me a moment to gather some men and ready our mounts and we’ll take you out to see whatever it is that you need to see. Will that satisfy you?”
She nodded her agreement to his proposal, her eyes big and glassy as, slowly, she slid down to sit in the dirt with her back to the gate, like a woman who feared letting go of her only path to freedom.
It was clear to him that Annie was no more than an innocent. Not a mythical creature as his sister would have him believe, but a woman half out of her mind with fear. That someone, possibly one of his own kinsmen, could have done this to her sickened him. When he found the man responsible for what this woman had endured, he intended to personally see to it that the man paid and paid dearly for what he’d done to her.
Storming toward the castle, his head bowed in thought, he very nearly ran into his friends who had followed after him.
Good. They could help him prepare for their short jaunt into the countryside.
“We’ll need—”
“I’m on it,” Jamesy said, sprinting toward the stables, calling over his shoulder. “Mounts for ten? Fifteen?”
“Ten to ride guard with us,” Alex called back. Venturing out with any smaller party would be inviting disaster.
“It could be a trap,” Finn said, his eyes, dark with suspicion, cutting to the woman and back again. “You must acknowledge the truth of this, my friend. Someone had to have locked her into the arbor for a reason, aye?”
Finn was likely right. His words made sense enough. But Alex had no choice. He’d offered to take her beyond the gates to see for herself whatever it was that she needed to see. He could only hope that what she needed to see wasn’t his capture.
* * *
This couldn’t be happening. None of it. It defied everything Annie had ever known or believed.
She sat atop an enormous horse that Alex had assured her was a gentle animal. And though it may well be gentle, when it reared its head to look back at her, she was pretty sure it had taken her measure and knew it had the best of her.
She ducked her head to avoid a low-hanging branch as they made their way through some rather closely placed trees, recognizing where they were when she looked up.
“This is what you wanted to see?” Alex asked.
It was the arbor, only it wasn’t quite right. Here, the gate hung securely on
its frame, not rusted and propped against a crumbling rock wall.
Maybe it was only a similar arbor. A reconstruction that looked very much like the one on her grandmother’s property. She needed to go inside to see for herself to be sure.
With her hands clenched around the edge of the saddle like her life depended on it, she swung her leg over and began to lower herself. Large, strong hands clamped around her waist to take her weight before her feet could touch the ground. She knew it was him without turning to look.
“I have to go inside,” she said, hoping he’d be willing to allow her to do just that.
Without a word, Alex pulled a key from the sporran he wore around his waist and opened the gate wide for her to enter.
It was the same, but different, too. Different in a way she could hardly let herself begin to understand. Her shoes were there, lying at the base of the stone bench, exactly where she’d dropped them when she’d fallen. Though her bag appeared to be missing, the bench was the same. Even the initials carved into the stone were exactly as they had been when she’d first entered. Like her purse, the stone heart had gone missing.
She ran her finger inside the heart-shaped hole before climbing up onto the bench.
“Have a care,” Alex cautioned, but she waved away his outstretched hand.
The branch was within her reach as soon as she stepped up onto the arm of the bench. She felt all around in the crook where the branches joined together, but found nothing other than dirt and leaf debris.
It was all the same as it had been when she’d first entered, only different. Newer. Younger, as if it hadn’t yet weathered the centuries of neglect. Even the tree was smaller than before.
When she turned to climb down, Alex was there, concern reflected in his expression as he took her hand and lifted her back down to the ground. He waited silently as she slipped her feet into her shoes, her mind churning all the while.
“Satisfied now?” he asked quietly, his gaze holding no sign of accusation.
“Not yet.” It all could be a replica. Someone could have moved her shoes here, though why anyone would go to such trouble to fool her was beyond her ability to understand. The missing purse bolstered her hope that her fear was completely off base, but she had to know for sure, and there was only one way she could think of to confirm her bizarre suspicion. “I need to see the cottage. Will you take me there?”
“I know of no cottage, my lady. If I did, I would gladly take you there.”
He held her gaze as he spoke, his eyes filled with honesty and…pity? Please, not pity. Coming from him, that could easily be her undoing.
“I know the way. If you’ll allow me to show you?”
“A fine opportunity for a trap,” Finn said from his spot at the open gate. “I could no’ devise a better one myself. If yer determined to do this, at the very least, carry her upon yer mount with you. Brook her no opportunity to escape should an attack come.”
Alex nodded, considering his companion’s advice before turning back to her. “You will consent to this arrangement?”
“I will,” she agreed.
What difference did it make? After all, if she found what she feared at the cottage’s location, it wasn’t like she’d have anywhere to escape to.
She accepted his help up onto the back of the big horse he rode, grateful when he climbed on behind her. His arms on either side of her made the distance to the ground seem somehow less intimidating. As a means of transportation, this was many times better than riding solo on a beast that she’d been sure was only waiting for the perfect opportunity to toss her over his head.
They traveled in silence, the men surrounding them on alert as they made their way through the forest. Annie doubted herself on every turn, more than once questioning the direction she chose. Had it been only this morning when she’d last walked this path? It was familiar, but different. The trees, the foliage, all of it somehow different, as if a landscaper had been here and changed out all the plants for younger ones.
“There should be a clearing where the cottage is, just up ahead,” she murmured, not realizing she spoke aloud until the sound of her own voice startled her.
“Though I hate to disagree with the lady, I have no choice.”
Jamesy shook his head, and she did her best to ignore him, even when he quietly shared with Alex that he’d been through this way with a patrol only yesterday and the trees continued on for a great distance. No clearing and most certainly no cottage.
He had to be wrong. There had to be some mistake.
She ran the denials over and over in her mind, attempting to settle the worry in her heart until, just ahead of them, she spotted something that stopped the denials in their tracks.
“Let me down,” she said, her eyes fixed on the big rock they neared.
Alex drew his horse to a halt and dismounted, reaching up to assist her down. She broke into a run the instant her feet hit the ground, ignoring the sounds of men shouting and drawing their weapons behind her. She came to a stop when she reached the stone outcropping, her stomach somersaulting as she reached out to touch it. A single massive stone that had been weathered by time to look almost as if it had been carved into a stone seat. And there, under her fingers, just as it had been this morning, a rough-hewn double heart chiseled onto it.
“Oh my God,” she breathed, her voice catching. “This is the right place. This is where it’s supposed to be.”
This was the very spot where her grandmother’s cottage had stood only hours ago. Or, more to the point, where it would stand in roughly seven hundred years.
She sank to her knees and rested her head against the stone, her eyes drifting up to scan overhead. Not a single vapor trail marked the cloudless blue sky. Why hadn’t she noticed that before? No cigarette butts on the ground, no wrappers or bits of trash blowing in the wind, no hum of cars in the distance. Nothing but the sounds of nature.
Denial pounded at her head, unwilling yet to accept. It had been quiet this morning, too.
Only then it had been a different kind of quiet.
A memory of this morning brought with it a sure way to prove it to herself, one way or another.
Fearing what she’d find almost as much as she feared not knowing the truth, she pushed herself up to her feet and lifted the long skirt she wore to scramble up onto the massive rock, up to the exact spot where she’d stood this morning before she’d set out on her exploration. Reaching its peak, she scanned the distance in all directions, finding not one single sign of man’s hand on the unmarred landscape. No houses, no cars, and not a single trace of the long gray ribbon of highway she’d traveled to reach this place yesterday.
Well, not this exact place. The place this would become centuries from now.
Her hand shook as she lifted her fingers to cover her trembling lips, knowing that the weakness in her stomach was the result of much more than her normal fear of heights.
There was nothing left for her to do but to accept it. She had, by some unbelievable quirk of bizarreness, ended up in the thirteenth century.
“Are you unwell?” Alex stood beside her, scanning the countryside as he placed one hand on her shoulder. “You’ve gone completely pale.”
“I’m fine,” she lied.
Fine, that is, for someone who’d just done the impossible and managed to get herself lost in the wrong century. She tried to climb down, but all her muscles quivered and her legs didn’t seem to have the strength to hold her.
Alex reached for her hand and pulled her toward him. She didn’t have the presence of mind to resist when he slipped one arm around her waist and the other behind her knees, lifting her from her feet as if she were a child. Snuggled against his shoulder, his heart pounding against her chest, she could feel the color he’d claimed she’d lost returning to her face with a vengeance as he stepped back down onto level ground.
“We’ll get you back to Dunellen and have Aggie take another look at you, aye? She’ll ken what to do for whatever it i
s that ails you,” he said, striding to his horse and climbing up onto his mount without so much as shifting his hold on her.
Annie nodded her reply, though it was clear to her that neither the old healer nor anyone else at the castle could help her with what ailed her. Like Alice, she’d fallen down a rabbit hole and had not a single earthly idea how to find her way back home.
Chapter 6
“I’ve already told you no, haven’t I? Okay then, here it is again: no! How many times do I have to say the same thing over and over again before it finally sinks in with you guys? Nobody put me inside that arbor. I walked in there under my own power, of my own free will. Nobody hit me or forced me to do anything. Nobody else was even anywhere around for miles.”
Annie stared at the expressionless faces of Alex and his two friends and knew they still didn’t believe her. He continued to badger her for the whole of the truth, as he called it. As far as she knew, the whole truth was that all of this was some giant cosmic joke, playing out at her expense. He said they wanted the whole truth, but what he didn’t understand was that if she did tell him what she believed to be the whole of the truth, none of them would believe her anyway. They’d probably believe her even less than they did now. They’d think for sure she was crazy.
What did they do with crazy women in the thirteenth century, anyway? Lock them up? Banish them into the wilderness? Maybe it was time for her to discover the answer to that question.
If the whole truth was what they wanted, it wasn’t like she had anything to lose in telling them everything she knew. She was already stranded in the wrong time, so things couldn’t possibly get much worse for her. So what if they didn’t believe her? They already didn’t believe her, so there’d be no change there.
“Fine. You want me to tell you everything about my being here? Okay then, here’s everything I know about my being here. Yesterday morning I woke up in my grandmother’s cottage. After I showered and packed a lunch, I hiked over to the arbor and everything was fine until the earthquake hit. I remember being knocked off my feet and I can only assume I hit my head, because the next thing I knew, Lissa was on the other side of the bars, telling me she was going to get me out of there. Only, and here’s where it gets really weird, when I went inside the arbor, in my time, in the twenty-first century, the gate was rusted and off its hinges, hanging loose. There was physically no way anyone could lock it. And yet, when I woke up, in your time, in the thirteenth century, I was locked inside the arbor. What am I doing here? You tell me. I’m not supposed to be here. I don’t belong in this time. Does any of that make any sense to you yet? Because it doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t understand any of this, so, you tell me how all that happened. You tell me how I got here. Because I sure as hell don’t understand any of it.”
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