by Jane Stain
So she woke up. The dawn shed just enough light through her arrow slit window that she could see everything in her castle sleeping chamber clearly.
Relieved to see her clothes and her backpack (she had long since taken her jeans off and put them in her backpack, so it was just her period clothes) but a little worried that someone might have taken a look in her backpack and seen some odd things, she quickly dressed and had a look in her bag.
Satisfied that at least nothing was missing, she threw her bag over her shoulder, rushed down to the kitchen and grabbed a roll, and quickly thanked Sorcha for it as she ran out the door toward Alfred’s entrance to the underground castle.
Even with gobbling her breakfast as she ran over the bone jarringly hard paving stones, she was in front of the new guards before she realized she should’ve thought about what to say to them. Might as well be direct.
“Hail and well met. I’m Kelsey, o Tavish Macgregor’s clan. Did Tavish and Seumas and Alfred gae doon thare?”
The one guard was eating an apple and he turned and spat out a seed.
The other guard gave her a puzzled look as he gestured with his thumb behind him down the dark stairs.
“Aye, and they are doon speaking to some feller. They said tae expect ye and tae allow ye tae gae after them, but I dinna see how ye can without a torch, lass.”
Right. A torch. She thought of just going down there anyway in the dark and then grabbing her flashlight out of her bag, but she really shouldn’t let anybody see that. She made an ‘oh silly me’ face at the guards and then ran back to the kitchen and came back with a torch, huffing a bit for breath.
“Can I light it off yer lantern?”
The guard held out his hand and she gave him the torch, which he lit for her, moving altogether too slowly.
And then the other guard took a bite of his apple and spoke to her between chews and spitting out seeds.
“Have a care on the stairs, lass. Perhaps we should call someone to escort ye.”
As if she’d wait around for that. She pushed through them with her shoulder, holding the torch with one hand and her skirts with the other in order to get down the stairs without breaking her neck.
“Nay, I thank ye. Howsoever, I’ll just catch up with Tavish and them.”
As soon as she was out of their sight, she grabbed two handfuls of skirt at arm’s length and tucked them in through the top of her belt to make the going much easier and then ran to Brian’s sleeping chamber.
She heard Alfred and Seumas and Brian’s and many other voices coming from the chamber when she got near, and she paused to listen.
Alfred was saying—rather nonchalantly, “…sae yer only choices are tae leave the realm or tae stay on in Laird Malcomb’s service.”
Someone grabbed her hand from behind, and Kelsey gasped, half turning to do one of the self-defense moves she’d halfheartedly learned and then only feeling somewhat relieved to find that it was Tavish. Why did he have to be holding her hand? It still made her melt inside, even now that she knew he’d just been using her.
He tugged on her hand, pulling her toward the entrance and whispering.
“I’ve got the ring and the scepter.” He showed her the ring on his hand and patted the scepter where it lay concealed inside his bloused plaid. “We need to leave before they realize you’re down here or that I’ve gone.”
For once in what seemed like a long time, she agreed with him, and they made their way down to the docks and then up the other way until they got to the special corridor.
Once inside its relative safety, to her horrified embarrassment she swooned in Tavish’s arms.
“Sorry. I guess now that I’m safe, it all caught up with me.”
His strong arms and firm body supported her while his voice said otherwise.
“Uh huh. Come on. We just need to get down to the end of this corridor, and you’ll be Dr. Ferguson once more.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, even as he took her hand and walked her down to the end of the corridor.
“It’s not like I ever stopped being Dr. Ferguson.”
He didn’t even look at her, just raised his eyebrows while he put his arm around her and raised his ring hand up and took hold of the ring with his other hand.
“Yeah, I guess that’s true.”
Kelsey knew in her mind that his arms were just around her now so that his ring would transport her along with him, back to their time. So it mostly just made her mad, the way her juices started flowing when they were near like this. Mostly. Even still, it took all of her concentration not to sink into his embrace while he was still close to her.
“Just get us home already.”
His body stiffened, which should’ve helped her withdraw, but ironically it made that even more difficult. He was so… manly.
“As you wish.”
She was rolling her eyes at his sappy response when the world started spinning really fast, making her need to hold onto him so that she wouldn’t fall. Darn him and his stubbornness. Why couldn’t he hold on to her so that she wouldn’t fall? He had to be such a gentleman all the time, making her choose to cling to him.
The world stopped spinning, and then she knew she was back in her time. It smelled different, for one thing. Not as … natural.
“Give me a minute. I’m so dizzy.”
“A minute is exactly as much time as we have before they get here.”
She had forgotten that ‘they’ were on their way and would get here soon. Sure enough, she heard the same voices she’d heard just before the two of them escaped to the past. Those familiar voices. Only this time, she saw ‘them’.
There were five, all her parents’ age or older. At first glance, they looked like anyone you would see outdoors: jeans and parka or hoodie, hiking boots or sneakers, backpack or shoulder bag, water bottle.
But then she looked into their faces as they came down the secret corridor. Wise but cunning eyes. They had never seemed creepy to her before, but she had never been the subject of their study before. These were the top echelon of professors at Celtic University. She had heard them lecture. She had looked up to them.
She was still a bit dizzy, clinging to Tavish. It was making her lean away from them.
Their leader’s eyes were giving her a knowing smile even as he was clearly speaking to Tavish.
“Did you get it?”
Still keeping her firmly in his left arm, Tavish fumbled in his bloused plaid for the scepter.
Relieved to take her eyes off their leader, Kelsey turned toward the scepter and got it out.
Tavish took it in his right hand and extended it toward the professor, turning so that he stood firmly between her and them.
Their leader took the scepter and immediately examined it, then gestured to the others, who brought equipment out of their backpacks and bags.
Kelsey knew what they were doing and followed along, half in fascination at just how powerful the magic scepter was—let alone that magic actually existed at all outside of Celtic Fairy Tales—and half in dread of whatever it was they planned to do with it.
After several minutes, they packed everything up and their leader put the scepter in his bag. He looked from Tavish to Kelsey and back again, including both of them in his upward nod.
“We’ll be in touch.”
All of the professors turned around and confidently headed out.
Kelsey moved as if to follow them, but Tavish held her.
“Let’s give them a few minutes.”
She pushed against his arm.
“Fine, but give me a little space.”
He let go immediately and stepped away from her, still looking up the corridor where they were disappearing around the corner.
“Yes ma’am.”
She took off her backpack and set it on the floor, squatting to dig through it. First she found her jeans and pulled them on under the voluminous skirt of her Scottish plaid dress so that she could take the darn thing off. She stood the
re holding it for a moment, unsure what to do with it, before she decided to stuff it into her backpack—after she grabbed her phone and her sweatshirt and put it on, stuffing her huge linen sleeves into the sweatshirt sleeves.
Once she was dressed as she had been when she came into the caves just an hour ago, Tavish’s hand closed around the wrist of her hand that held her phone.
“Remember, you can’t tell anyone any of this.”
She pulled away from him.
He let her, but he was still looking up the corridor, not at her.
She powered up her phone, glad she hadn’t used it much and had kept it off most of the time.
“I’m calling my client. You know, the guy who owns this whole place—including the artifact you just gave those creeps.”
He started walking up the corridor, glancing back to tell her to follow him but not meeting her eyes.
“You just called him a few minutes ago, remember? You probably don’t want to pester him. You were waiting for him to call you back.”
Ug, why did he have to be so sensible? She put her backpack on but kept her phone in her hand, looking down to watch it update every few seconds as she trudged a few feet behind him up on out of the underground.
“So it’s okay for you to give a golden scepter probably worth millions to those creeps, but you give me hell for wanting to upload a few photographs?”
He still didn’t look back at her, didn’t meet her eyes, but he took a deep breath as he kept walking up the corridor, and let it out.
“There’s no way you can upload the photographs you took while we were back in the old time, Kelsey. You can’t be that stupid. You know what they would do to us if you did that? You’d be accused of being a quack at best, but if anyone at all thought we were serious, they would take away any privacy we ever had a chance at having, much worse than those creeps. Yeah, they make me get them stuff, but number one, I don’t have a choice, and number two, at least I do get to have a life still, unlike what would happen if you posted those photographs—”
She interrupted him, almost yelling at his back.
“I’m not talking about back in the old time, Tavish. I can’t believe you think I’m that stupid. I mean the ones I took before we went, in the storage room.”
They went up the stairs and out through the root cellar and across the castle way in the early morning darkness of Scotland’s brooding clouds. Tavish waved to a few of the other construction workers, who were just coming out of their trailers as he and Kelsey neared Mr. Blair’s trailer.
They toasted him with their tea mugs and gave her tentative smiles, which she returned.
There was a flash of lightning.
All the men glanced up at the sky casually with their eyebrows raised, sipping their morning cup of tea and visibly wondering if they were going to get a day off for rain. Poor guys. They still had no idea what a vast underground network they were going to need to buttress so that it could be catalogued safely.
Tavish turned around then to face her, but he was still looking at the guys when he spoke.
“Well you need to wait and talk to Mr. Blair first before you do anything like that.”
Kelsey put her hands on her hips and squared off against Tavish.
“I know full well what I need to do, and I don’t need you telling me what that is.” She hit her chest with her thumb. “I’m the senior contractor here, not you, and I will be in the owner’s trailer minding his and my business until he gets here.”
She was just about to turn and storm up to the door of the trailer when there was a loud crack of thunder. It made her jump a little, and stumble.
Tavish caught her before she fell, but she pushed off of him—and then did everything she could not to run into the trailer or slam the door, which she nonetheless closed behind her and locked just before the rain started hammering down.
Fichead
Kelsey looked at her phone for the time. Eight on a Saturday morning. Was that too early to call Sasha? Nah.
She called, but she had to leave voicemail.
“Sorry to bug you so early. Call me when you get this, okay? Bye.”
She thought about calling her mom, but she really didn’t want to discuss Tavish with her. And what was she going to say when she talked to Sasha, anyway? They had just spoken last night, and so far as her friend knew, nothing much was going on.
But everything had gone on. She’d made a fool of herself with Tavish, showing him just how much she really cared. And he had rejected her. Called her stupid. He didn’t appreciate all that she’d been through at Celtic University, all her hard study and her hard work. All that she knew now.
Well, he did appreciate it, but he had just used all her knowledge to get that magic scepter for those creepy modern druids he’d given it to. Well, good. They had what they wanted from him here, so he was free to leave. She would talk to Mr. Blair about getting a different foreman. That older man Gus should probably be the foreman anyway.
She plugged her phone in and brought up the pictures she’d taken on the sly, eight hundred years ago, putting her fingers in the venetian blinds to check the current layout of the area against them—hoping she didn’t see Tavish out there.
Wow, she was really glad she had the pictures. The layout had changed a lot, and all of her mental notes from the underground exploration in her dream were based on the layout in the pictures. She got her laptop out of her bag and made herself busy on the University’s inter-web, mapping her dream exploration of the Alba Palace compared to the photographs and the way the land looked now out her window.
It was an engrossing job, and it should have kept her mind off painful subjects, but every picture she looked at brought up memories of Tavish and questions about Tavish and worries about Tavish. How long had he been going to Laird Malcomb’s Castle? Would he be going back there? What if something awful happened to him in that time?
Her phone buzzed and she grabbed it, relieved that Sasha would be able to keep her company.
But it was Mr. Blair.
She took a deep breath to calm her nerves and hoped it made her voice sound stable and authoritative.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Dr. Ferguson. I got yer stupendous news, and I must say I’m quite surprised and o course delighted. Can ye shew me?”
“I’m emailing you right now with the photos of the storage room we found.”
“Good, good. I want tae see the storage room for myself before I decide which, if any, phootographs ye can post tae Celtic University’s password protected site, ye ken?”
“Of course, Mr. Blair.”
“Naught can be done i this storm, though. I’ll be oot there as soon as it lets up, an we can explore yer findings.”
“That sounds good, Mr. Blair. The palace is quite a bit more extensive than you thought, and I’m looking forward to showing you. To give you an idea just how much more extensive, I’m drawing up blueprints, because there’s no way I could simply explain it to you.”
“I’ve just received the phootographs, and I dinna quite see what ye mean. Sure, there are many artifacts in this room, but the room itself is rather small, is na it?”
Kelsey sighed. Tavish would know exactly what to say to Mr. Blair. It was apparent he had been here dealing with him for a long time.
But she didn’t need Tavish. She had been taught how to deal with clients—although admittedly not how to explain to them how she knew something she couldn’t have known unless she had traveled back in time…
She thought carefully about what she could tell him.
“When you get here, I can show you the many secret doors in that one passageway you’ve found. I’ve opened a few, and the language of the carvings tells me there are many, many more. Your construction crew will come in very useful making sure everything is structurally sound down there so that exploring can be safe…” An idea hit her, and she ran with it. “This project has grown in scope so much that I wish to bring in a colleague, Dr. S
asha Swain.”
“A colleague from Celtic University?”
“Yes, we were there together and both got our doctorates at the same time. She lives here in Scotland, so it wouldn’t take her long to get out here to the site, and I’m going to need her help. I just hope she’s available.”
Mr. Blair sounded excited on the phone, and she tried to focus on all the things that made this project exciting—except for Tavish.
“I’ll have tae see the secret doors ye’re talking about, o course, and this room full of artifacts whose phootographs ye’ve sent me, but if that all works oot as ye say, then I see nae problem with bringing in yer colleague—and perhaps a few more colleagues, just sae this dig does na take ten years tae finish.”
Now her training kicked in, and she was on more or less familiar ground, getting more confident with each sentence.
“We can make a spectacle out of the project itself, Mr. Blair. That can bring in some money for you off the tourist trade. Maybe you should build an inn nearby…”
A few minutes later, she hung up the phone, pleased with herself and really hoping Sasha would be able to come help.
Ooh, and there was a text from her friend:
“Almost there, talk then!”
She texted Sasha back:
“In the big gray trailer out front.”
Kelsey drew up one of the blinds and gawked at the pouring rain. Was Sasha even crazier than she remembered? Oh well, worrying wasn’t going to help. And having her friend here was just the thing she needed to get over her disappointment about… no, to get excited about this project. It was going to be so fun! This was both of their dream project, supervising a huge dig in Scotland.
But as she continued to create the blueprints, she wondered what Alfred and Seumas were saying to Brian the Druid and how Eileen would react when she heard Kelsey had fallen into the sea and been rescued by Tavish and Seumas…
Yeah, Tavish probably would be going back to the old time, and he was good at improvisation and could explain her absence in some way. Maybe say she was moping somewhere. She could envision his face as she told Seumas that, could envision Alfred rolling his eyes at the idea and then turning to appreciate Eileen for the sweetheart she was. And then Tavish would get them all excited about some other quest they needed to go on—so that he could verify the outside location of a room they needed to dig into here in the present…
