All The Time You Need

by Melissa Mayhue

  Shy, quiet Emily had always been Annie’s favorite cousin, though she was a couple of years younger than Annie. But not even that favored status would allow the young woman to understand how Annie really felt. No one knew the hollowed-out emptiness eating away at her.

  Apparently, the expression she wore conveyed what she was thinking.

  “Okay, so maybe I don’t know exactly what you’re going through,” Emily acknowledged as she crossed the room, her arms crossed protectively under her breasts. “I haven’t been maneuvered into getting engaged to someone I don’t really want to marry. Not yet, anyway. But my mom is your mom’s sister, and they’re both cut from identical material. I do know that the pressure to be perfect, to conform to whatever their idea of perfect is, never ends.”

  Of all the people in the world who could even come close to understanding, her cousin was probably the best one.

  “Thanks, Emmie,” Annie said, reaching out to take her cousin’s hand to lead her to the window seat. “I appreciate your concern. I’m completely exhausted, but I’m okay. At least, I will be in a couple of days when I go back to Scotland.”

  “You’re not staying here?” Emily’s eyes rounded with surprise. “That’s going to go over about as well as your last big announcement.”

  Annie chuckled in spite of herself in response to her cousin’s major understatement. “You got that right. But whether it’s something you can understand or not, I need to make this change. I need to be away from all this.”

  “Oh, I understand.” Emily’s responding smile was more sad than anything. “Why do you think I jumped at the chance to come here to help your mom out while you were away? No matter what I had to do, being able to escape my mom for a few weeks was totally worth it. Escape has always been my friend.”

  “I’m not escaping,” Annie corrected. She’d given up escape as a means of dealing with life. “Escaping only delays the inevitable. Somewhere along the way, you have to confront your problems to change them. I’m just finally making a change.”

  “Good for you,” Emily said, giving her a hug before rising to stand. “I’ll let you get some rest now.”

  “Thanks for coming up to check on me. I appreciate it.”

  At the door, Emily stopped and looked back. “I really am proud of you for taking charge of your life, Annie. I only hope that one of these days I can be brave enough to follow in your footsteps.”

  Silence echoed in the room after Emily left, and Annie pulled back the covers to climb into bed, not bothering to change her clothes. A few hours of sleep and she’d be good as new, ready to face all she needed to do to prepare for her big move.

  She felt confident about her decisions. Confident about her choice to confront the situation head-on before she made the changes she’d decided upon. Though her broken heart guaranteed that she’d never be completely happy again, at least she now faced a life that would give her contentment.

  “Contentment’s good enough,” she muttered defiantly, snuggling down into the soft covers, eagerly anticipating the approaching bliss of sleep.

  Though she might settle for simple contentment in real life, sleep allowed her more. Sleep brought dreams, and dreams returned her to the place where she experienced true happiness, safe and secure in the arms of the man she would always love.

  Chapter 25

  “Go away!” Alex roared in response to the knock at his door, hurling an empty tankard toward the offending noise to punctuate his demand for isolation.

  Three days had passed since Annie had left him. Three of the longest, most miserable days of his life.

  He’d spent the first determined to stop that which had already happened, tearing apart the arbor, looking for any sign that his Annie wasn’t really gone. He’d spent the second and third here, staring into the cold, empty fireplace in his bedchamber. Their bedchamber only three short days ago.

  Another knock.

  This time he chose to ignore it.

  He didn’t want their food. He didn’t want their drink. He certainly didn’t want their company. The only thing he wanted from anybody was to be left alone. Alone with his memories of the woman he’d loved and lost.

  If only he hadn’t been so arrogantly sure of himself. If only he’d listened and understood. Three little words. It was all she had wanted from him. Three little words that, in his arrogance, he’d not given her.

  I love you.

  She’d said the words to him. She’d asked for them in return. And he, great worthless fool that he was, hadn’t been smart enough to understand that those three little words were all that stood between happiness and utter despair.

  I love you.

  He understood now. He’d gladly shout those words from the mountain-top or the town square in Inverness at high noon on market day if it would bring his Annie back to him. But he was too late. It was beyond his loudest battle cry to reach her ears where she’d gone. Nothing he could do or say could bring her back to him—back from seven hundred years into the future, where the Faeries had taken her.

  “I love you,” he whispered into the gloom, and reached for his tankard of ale.

  The same tankard that he’d emptied hours earlier. The same tankard he’d pitched across the room. He turned his eyes in that direction in time to see the door open a crack and his sister’s head pop inside, followed by the whole annoying rest of her.

  “Good,” she said, a wide smile creasing her face. “I was hoping I’d waited long enough that you were out of things to throw my direction.”

  “Go away, Lissa,” he said quietly, suddenly too tired to summon his anger. “I just want to be left alone.”

  “Of course you do,” she said, hurrying to where he sat and plopping herself on the hearth next to him. “You want to wallow in yer misery, beating yerself about the head for not telling our Annie that you love her. Am I close to the truth of what yer doing in here?”

  He mustered enough energy to glare at his sister. It was the best he could manage right now.

  “From the look upon yer face, it appears that I do have the right of it.” She patted his back as she might one of the goats in the stables. “But you’ve no need to continue to fash yerself over the mess you’ve made of things, dear brother. I ken what it is you need to do to set things to rights.”

  “If you know so much, why dinna you share this earlier?”

  For that matter, why hadn’t she thought to point out to him at some point over the past few weeks that a simple I love you would have prevented all his problems?

  Lissa shrugged. “Simple enough, that answer. In wasting all my energy being angry with you for driving Annie away, I forgot the one part of Grandda’s story that might be of use to you now.”

  Alex fought to tamp down a growing sense of hope. His Grandda’s stories had been just that—stories. Hadn’t they? And yet Annie had come to him just as his Grandda’s love had in those stories. She’d left him in the same way, too.

  Hope bloomed, beyond his ability to rein it in.

  “I’m willing to try anything. Tell me what to do.”

  “It’s the hearts Grandda carved. We’ve both seen them, so you ken them to be real enough, aye? They were still there in Ellen’s time. They had to be in order for her to have gotten the metal heart that Grandda made for her. And we ken that Ellen got it because Annie wore it on a chain around her neck. Just like I wear the one Grandda made for himself on a ribbon around my own neck.”

  He’d long known that Lissa wore a trinket of some sort around her neck. He’d seen the ends of the ribbon but had never questioned what lay beneath his sister’s bodice at the ribbon’s end. When she lifted it out for his inspection, his breath caught in his throat.

  How many times had he seen the twin of this trinket dangling against his Annie’s soft skin as she’d lain beneath him wearing nothing else?

  “The one she wore was adorned with a fancy-cut jewel that caught every shard of light.”

  Lissa shrugged and tucked the metal hea
rt back beneath the neckline of her shift. “So it did. But it was the same heart, nonetheless. And she told me herself that it had belonged to her grandmother, Ellen, given to the woman by someone named Aiden. Do you not see what this means, Alex?”

  In the story Grandda Aiden had told, he’d fashioned the small hearts with his own two hands, one to keep as a reminder of his beloved Ellen, and one for her. He claimed that he’d placed hers into the stone seat in the arbor and carved a message upon the big rock she’d favored while she was here. When he’d gone back to check the arbor a few days later, the trinket was gone and he’d known in his soul that his Ellen had gotten his gift.

  “Yer saying I have a way to send a message to her.”

  “That I am. It may not be too late to tell her how you really feel. You’ve but to believe and take action.”

  Believe and take action. Toss sanity to the wind and plunge ahead as if every Faerie story he’d ever heard was true?

  “The devil take it,” he muttered at last, rising to his feet.

  Sitting here feeling sorry for himself certainly wasn’t going to bring his Annie back. Why not go all in? After all, with Annie gone, it was as if he’d lost his heart, his will, his reason to go on. He had nothing left to lose.

  Chapter 26

  Almost home.

  The words rang in Annie’s head, weaving a cocoon of happiness around her heart as she sank into the back seat of the big black taxi. Staying at the airport hotel the first day she’d arrived back in Scotland had been a good decision. Now she was fully rested and ready to begin her new life.

  The landscape zipped past her window, and Annie forced herself not to think about the differences between the here and now and the much older version of this place where she really longed to be—the place she truly considered home.

  When at last the driver pulled into the long, graveled drive, she could hardly wait for the car to come to a complete stop before she stepped out to breathe in the fresh air.

  The minutiae of beginning her new life felt as though it was taking forever. She waited as patiently as possible for the last of her luggage to be hauled out of the taxi’s big trunk and deposited on the gravel next to where she stood, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

  “Will you be needin’ a receipt then, lassie?”

  Annie smiled at the winded request and shook her head as she handed over the money for her fare.

  “No, thank you,” she said, slipping a few extra bills into the driver’s hand at the last moment.

  The elderly man had already done more than enough, navigating the narrow roads on the trip here from the hotel. And then there was the loading and unloading of all her heavy suitcases, not an easy task for a man of his years.

  With a word of thanks and a big smile, the driver got back into his car and pulled away, leaving Annie alone at last, standing in front of Bield Cottage.

  She was home.

  Or, more correctly, she was almost home. This place, in this time, would be as close to home as she could get. A vision of Alex danced through her mind, and she did her best to banish it. He was never far from her thoughts, no matter how hard she tried to keep him away, always lurking there in the shadows, just waiting for an opportunity to jump out and send her heart flip-flopping in her chest.

  With a sigh, she unlocked the cottage door and began the task of hauling all her luggage into the little house, hoping to get them all inside before the gray sky opened up and dumped rain on them. The first bag she dragged all the way back to the bedroom. The other four she left sitting just inside the door. It wasn’t good enough that she’d spent a fortune to bring all of them with her on the plane. Now she faced putting out her back trying to lift them and drag them back to the bedroom.

  “Maybe I’ll just unpack them right here,” she announced to the empty cottage.

  But not right now. After all, she had all the time in the world to put her things away. Or not. It really didn’t matter. This was her private retreat, just as the name indicated. She could do whatever she wanted.

  “Almost whatever,” she grumbled aloud, heading for the kitchen.

  Her whole life was turning into a giant almost. She’d need to make some changes if she was going to have any hope of heading off years of self-pity.

  And thinking of changes, she really needed to stop talking to herself. Either that or get a cat so that she’d have an excuse for talking to herself.

  “I could become the eccentric old Cat Lady of Bield Cottage,” she said, chuckling as she filled the electric kettle and turned it on. “Or a writer, maybe.” She’d read somewhere that writers often talked out loud to themselves, even when other people were around.

  With a cup of freshly brewed tea in her hand, Annie wandered outside and headed straight for the overgrown garden. During her time at Dunellen, she’d grown to love her morning walks in the gardens. Strolling through the fragrant plants had sent up a symphony of aromas, with each different herb joining in as her skirt had brushed against it. The wonderful scents would cling to her clothing, accompanying her through her day like a fragrant sachet.

  Those walks were only one little piece of what she missed about the small slice of life she’d enjoyed there. But, just maybe, they were the one little piece she could reclaim in this time.

  Could any of Dunellen’s herb beds have survived? She vaguely remembered having seen a tangle of vegetation gone wild that first time she’d made her way through the ruins. Perhaps in a day or two, after she’d settled in, she might be ready to face what was left of Dunellen. A trip to see if any of the original plants had survived the passage of time would be a good diversion. As unlikely as it was, if any had, she could transplant them here to her garden.

  “Or I could just clean out this mess and start fresh,” she murmured, stopping to sip from her tea.

  That was a much more plausible plan. Tomorrow she would tackle this garden. There was a shed out back. Chances were good that the gardening equipment would be out there. If she couldn’t find what she needed, she’d simply have to go into the village and get whatever she was missing.

  Having a plan of action made her feel better. Whether it was the act of laying claim to Bield Cottage as her own or simply knowing that she had something planned to keep her busy, she couldn’t say.

  With a lighter heart, she turned from the garden and strolled across the drive, listening to the gravel crunch under her feet. It was so beautiful here, with everything still the lovely green of summer. Once autumn made an appearance, the view should be spectacular.

  Annie turned her gaze to the distance, trying to imagine how beautiful it would be in just a few months. Her eye followed the gray ribbon of the highway until it disappeared into the valley below.

  The village lay in that direction. From what she’d been told, it wasn’t supposed to be too far. Maybe she could even walk there if it was close enough. If she were on higher ground, she might even be able to see it.

  She set her cup on the old wooden bench next to the front door and headed across the drive, out to the big rock at the yard’s boundary. Climbing up on top of that would offer her the view she sought. If she kept her eyes focused on the distance rather than on the height of the rock she climbed, she ought to be able to get to the top, have a quick look around for the village and then scramble back down before her fear of heights overtook her. She’d done it twice before; surely she could manage it one more time.

  Several feet away from the rock, something caught her eye. Something completely unexpected.

  “What the hell,” she demanded of her empty surroundings, stopping where she was, hands on her hips.

  A new line had been scrawled through the original heart that Aiden had so long ago carved there for her grandmother.

  That some stranger had trespassed on her property was bad enough. But that they’d had the audacity to deface something so ancient, so special to her, felt like a personal violation. She began walking again, her steps picking up speed until
she reached the rock. The vandals had added only a single line to the original carving, leaving her thankful that they hadn’t scrawled dirty words or their own names all over it. And, in spite of her indignation about someone having messed with her grandmother’s rock, she had to give them credit for authenticity. They’d actually carved the jagged line into the stone rather than taking a can of spray paint to it.

  “How odd. It looks every bit as old as the original,” she said, marveling at the workmanship as she ran her hand over the carving.

  The finger she’d traced along the marks came away damp from the moss growing in the groove. How could that be? She’d been away less than a week and yet this thing looked as weathered as the original carving.

  Every bit as weathered and perfectly aligned within the original.

  Annie’s breathing sped up, turning shallow as her heart pounded in her chest. She stared at the changes in front of her as her mind struggled to accept the meaning of what she studied. If she were a romantic dreamer, she might be tempted to believe that the line carved in the stone represented a broken heart. But that couldn’t be.

  Could it?

  Laying her hand flat against the carving, Annie let out a shaky breath and tried to organize her thoughts. There had to be some rational explanation for this, but, for the life of her, she couldn’t come up with one.

  “Please don’t let me be like this forever,” she whispered, turning away from the rock to walk slowly back to the cottage.

  She prayed that there would come a day when every single thing she saw wouldn’t automatically give her some false hope. She prayed that there would come a day when Alex would be only a fond memory instead of a sharp, stabbing pain ripping through her heart.

  After retrieving her cup of tea, she went back into the cottage, sidestepping the suitcases she’d left just inside the door. Once again she chose to ignore them. Unpacking didn’t sound at all like something she wanted to do. It was a mindless task that would give her too much time to think. She needed an activity that would fully occupy her mind.