It took forever, or at least it seemed to Pietro, whose fingers started to grow slippery with sweat. He was afraid he would drop the bottle and wiped his hand on his kilt, wondering if he should take a swig of the whiskey to fortify himself. He was struggling to get the stopper out when the man strolled back through the door. Before he could think, Pietro raised the bottle and smashed it over the man’s head. The bottle didn’t break, and the man grunted and staggered but didn’t fall to the ground like he was supposed to. Bugger, but he should have chosen the shovel! Panicking, he brained the man again, the force of the bottle hitting skull reverberating back up through his arm and rattling his teeth.
“Oh thank God,” he gasped when the man hit the ground and didn’t make a move to get back up.
He quickly dragged him into an empty stall, glancing apologetically at the horse who poked its head over the side. With his hands shaking, he unrolled the Glen plaid from the unconscious man’s body and stripped the deep red Ferguson kilt off his own, stuffing it behind a feeding trough. When he was suitably covered in the Glen colors, he tied up the man and stuffed a rag in his mouth, praying he would live, just not wake up for a good long time. The barn seemed to be closed up for the night, so no one should find him until morning.
Pietro scurried out the back of the barn and leaned over, grabbing his knees and feeling sick from the rush of adrenaline. He had been in fights before, but it was something else entirely to sneak up on a man and bash him over the head. He was beginning to think his love for Bella might be just this side of dysfunctional.
It took a few minutes to get himself under control, then he walked with what he hoped looked like the confidence of someone who knew where he needed to be, across the courtyard, right into the kitchen.
Two young maids were cleaning up at the basin and didn’t look up when he entered. Sitting at a long table kneading a lump of dough, a wizened old woman glanced at him, then at a small lad who was struggling to haul a bucket of water over to the huge cauldron set atop the flames of the fire.
Pietro put his head down, not knowing what to do. Damn his short hair. It set him apart from all the other men and gave him nothing to hide his face behind. He only hoped there had been a recent outbreak of lice or something that would give him the excuse for having such short cropped hair in this day and age.
The lad was spilling water all over the place and the old lady made a noise of irritation, looking at him again, this time as if she might rise from her place at the table. Should he help the kid with the water? His nerve endings were shouting at him to race from the room, but surely that would raise suspicion, if not an outcry. With a suppressed curse, he grabbed the bucket from the lad and poured it into the steaming pot, then handed it back with a curt nod, and forced himself to exit the room at a regular pace.
He paused in the hall, not having the first clue where to go. His heart was about to tear from his chest and he expected the old lady to start screeching for his return at any moment. He stood and leaned against the wall to catch his breath and decide what to do next.
He couldn’t believe he was in the castle. He had been in it exactly three times, twice to share a meal with Piper and Mellie, and once on the tour, which only covered the ground floor. He had never been upstairs, didn’t know how the bedrooms were set up, if Bella was even here. He almost sank to the rush strewn floor at that miserable thought.
All he could do was keep braving it out, and with a deep breath, headed toward the stairs. Most of the castle as he knew it wasn’t even built yet, and that was oddly comforting. It just made for less ground he would have to cover. He knew from the tour that there were multiple secret passageways, but of course, none had actually been pointed out. It certainly would have been helpful and he had the mad passing thought to let Piper know that if he ever saw her again.
The next floor up he came across a maid who curtseyed and glanced sideways at him, but didn’t start screaming, so he considered it a plus.
“I have a message for Lady Isobel,” he said in a deep voice. “From her father,” he added in an even lower rumble, then wanted to kick himself. What an idiot he was being. He sounded like Darth Vader. And did they even call her Isobel? Should he have gone with Bella? He nearly lost his salted beef from all his tumultuous thoughts, until he realized the lass was walking away from him. He followed her to a door, which she knocked on once, then opened.
“Yer father has a message for ye, Bella,” she said, rolling her eyes at Pietro.
He pushed his way past the impertinent maid and Bella’s eyes widened with shock when she saw him. He gave her a pleading look.
“Ye may go,” she said to her maid. “And close the door.”
The maid gave him a crosswise look before slowly drawing the door closed behind her.
“Bloody chit,” Bella complained. She shook her head at him, frowned, then tossed herself at his chest. “Are ye well?” she asked as she kissed his neck and jaw and face.
He sat down on the edge of her bed, glanced at the door which he expected to be thrown open at any time, and moved to a chair. “Not so well, no. I was afraid they had taken ye against your will.”
His blatant stroll through the castle had cost him, and he leaned over, resting his elbows on his knees, head spinning as he concentrated on slowing his madly beating heart. When he felt Bella rest her hand on the back of his neck, he jerked his head up and glared at her.
She recoiled. “D’ye want to strangle me, then?” she asked.
He did, he really did. Instead, like the insufferable fool he was, he wrapped his arms around her voluminous skirts and hugged her, resting his forehead against her bodice.
“Just tell me what happened,” he said against the stiff wool.
She tentatively stroked his hair and knelt down in front of him, glancing at the door. He imagined if anyone came in at this point he would just offer up his head to be chopped off. He was so very worn out.
“When I recognized my father’s man, my first instinct was to holler and run, try and send Catie for help.”
“Then why didn’t ye?” he asked plaintively. “Why did ye pretend not to recognize him?”
She sighed and her hand stilled in his hair. She briskly pushed back onto her heels and forced him to look at her.
“I dinna know exactly why,” she started and he closed his eyes. “I think my situation is no better when I am with ye as no’.”
“Bella.” His voice came out cold and hard. “Do ye want to be with me or not?”
She winced. “It’s no’ as simple as that, do ye no’ see? What would we do? Would we live on Ferguson land? As much as it pains me, I am a Ferguson now. But I dinna like how Quinn looks on me as if I am a charity case, just because his brother decreed we are important somehow, all on the word of the witch he beds.”
It was the second time he’d heard Piper called a witch. Bella spoke dispassionately, with no malice behind her choice of word. He began to think perhaps it was true. How else had he ended up here, all tangled up in this impossible scenario? He decided right then and there, that he was done with the impossible. Nothing that had happened to him up to this point should have been possible and yet, here he was. Maybe it was his fever giving him a sense of false hope before he dropped dead, but he felt confident and strong.
He took Bella’s hand and studied her face. All desire to strangle her left him, though he was sure not forever. He kissed her knuckles and pressed her cool hand to his heated brow.
“Listen,” he said. “Let’s leave here and go to Edinburgh like we originally planned. If we ever find Lachlan again, we’ll get your damned marriage annulled, and if we don’t, we’ll have him declared dead or file for abandonment. Whatever we have to do, we’ll do. And to hell with the Fergusons and your father.”
“D’ye mean it?” she asked, his heart breaking at her beautiful face, not quite daring to hope. “It willna be easy.”
He laughed. “Where I come from ye can turn a tap and get hot water. It ta
kes fifteen minutes to get to the village from here. Nothing is easy about this time. Not to mention my head has been trying to split open these past few days.”
She sniffed and turned away. “If ye’d rather go back …”
He dropped his head in his hands, wondering if he had any such choice. For the most part, he considered himself fortunate. All the things he’d wanted in life, he’d gotten. He flew planes and trained horses, had a nice enough truck and a tidy apartment. He’d been in some truly dire situations and always came out unscathed.
But his love life sucked. The girls he knew growing up were more like siblings to him than anything else. The one girl he thought he might love had trampled his heart thoroughly, and the women he’d met while in the service had been interesting enough, but he’d never felt a spark. It was as if he somehow knew all along that he was meant to be with Bella. He ran his finger down the curve of her cheek and his heart beat faster. Now that he was with her, the choice was clear.
“I would not rather go back,” he said so loudly they both jumped and nervously watched the door. He leaned close to her and lowered his voice. “I’ll take the pain and the cold water and the bad roads, Bella. I just want to be close to ye.”
He watched a hundred thoughts flicker behind her expressive deep brown eyes. He waited with baited breath for her to tell him off and shout for a guard. So much time seemed to pass that he was ready to get up and go turn himself in, sure there would be no way to get back out the way he’d come in. No one could have so much luck twice. But then she was kissing him, pulling herself up to press against him, and whispering endearments.
He returned her greedy kisses and wrapped his hands around her waist, gripping the edges of her bodice. He was going to have to figure out all the fastenings of this time.
A scuffling from the hall caused them to break apart as if they’d both been burned. Gasping, Bella hurriedly got to her feet and began grabbing things and stuffing them into a satchel.
“We must go at once. I shall send my maid on an errand to get her out of the hall.”
Pietro pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to drive back the burning that raged behind his eyes.
She pulled his hand away and kissed him between his eyebrows. “Poor man, ye’re still sick aren’t ye?” Her eyes welled up and she sighed. “And yet ye still came for me.”
“Aye, I’m romantic like that,” he said impatiently. “But it’s not just my head. We’ll never get out of here. Doesn’t your father have you under guard?”
“I canna go anywhere without my maid, no, but like I said, I shall send her away and we shall be gone.”
He shook his head at her, wondering if he’d missed a critical observation regarding her intelligence. “And someone will see ye with me and not your maid, and I’ll end up in the tower.”
“If that were to happen, ye’d end up dead, no’ in the tower,” she assured him, her lip starting to twitch in a maddening way. She strode past him and swung open her door, ordering her maid to fetch her a long, detailed list of things from the kitchen. Then she added that she wanted some new books from the library. “If my father is going to keep me prisoner in my own room, I shouldna have to be bored and hungry,” she complained. “And ye,” she said, pushing Pietro out the door as the maid sullenly headed toward the stairs. “Go report back to my father that ye gave me his foul message.”
Confused, Pietro started slowly walking after the maid, but as soon as she had rounded the corner to the stairs, she grabbed him back, pulling him by the sleeve in the opposite direction. At the end of the hall she ducked into another bedroom that appeared to be occupied by some of the many guests who had come for the feast. Bella shoved a valise and an overflowing bandbox out of the way and squeezed behind a glossy, dark wood wardrobe.
“Can ye help me?” she grunted.
He used what little strength he had to shove the heavy piece of furniture enough that he could slip behind it with her. With a an impish grin she pounded on the wall panels, revealing a door that opened onto a narrow stairway leading down. Once in the stairwell, she kicked the panels back into place and took his hand. Halfway down it, she dropped to the ground and started digging at the mortar around the base of the stone wall.
Pietro saw to his amazement that a crack was opening up into a passageway in the wall. When they had wedged it open enough to squeeze through, she beamed at him. “We shall have to hurry as someone will think of this eventually, but it goes all the way to the lake.”
He kissed her on the nose when they were safely inside the darkened passage and had the wall shut up again. “I’m sorry I thought ye were daft,” he said.
She shrugged. “I do like to tease ye,” she admitted.
Chapter 14
Piper opened her eyes. She was lying flat on her back, several yards away from Lachlan. Chills seeped into her throbbing back as if she’d been forcibly tossed onto the cold ground. A sliver of moon showed through the treetops and she was glad it was still night. It seemed somehow safer under the cover of darkness. She crawled over to Lachlan, who was rubbing the back of his neck.
“Are ye all right, love?” he asked. “I feel as if we were thrown about that time.”
She nodded. It had been rough, but they had made it. She was certain of it this time, knew she had navigated perfectly.
“Do you smell smoke?” she asked, standing up to test her legs.
“We are no’ far from the castle,” he reminded her. When he stood up, he turned in a circle, his head back. “But I do smell it, and I think it’s no’ coming from the castle.” He pointed into the forest to the north and started heading that way.
“Wait, do you think we should go in that direction?” she asked. If pressed for a better idea, she would have to admit she didn’t have one. She had rather foolishly hoped Daria would be standing there waiting for them. “Maybe we should go to the castle, and uh, ask around.”
He gave her a long look and held out his hand. Reluctantly, she forced her feet to move and they walked carefully through the underbrush, trying to be as quiet as possible. Her nerves were rattling, she was deeply shaken, and not just from the rocky tumble through time, but from a sick sense that something was wrong, something beyond Daria stealing the baby.
Just the other night Piper had been overwhelmed with the need to go into the crypt to look for bones. The memory of her attempted tomb raiding made her shrink into herself with shame, but at the same time knew the compulsion was too strong for her to have overcome. She simply hadn’t been in control. As with the first time she had followed the strange urge into the crypt, she knew this time Daria must have been behind it as well.
But why? Her intent in wanting the bones had been to destroy Daria by either going to her or calling her to them. There seemed to be no logical reason for Daria to want to help her meet that goal. There was nothing logical about any of it. Piper hated feeling out of control, like she was being led around for some unknown purpose.
As they trudged toward the smoke, her sense of foreboding grew. Her feet became heavy, moving slower and slower until she had stopped completely, Lachlan only noticing when he was forced to tug on her hand from ahead of her. He stopped and looked at her questioningly.
“Are ye frightened?” he asked, his voice hushed.
“No,” she said, matching his low voice, which only served to heighten the eeriness. “I mean, yes of course. But, do you think she’s trying to get us to find her?” Lachlan looked at her like she was an idiot and she continued, not sure how she could make him understand. “The other night. I didn’t just want to visit Fenella in the crypt. I was called there.” She looked down, unable to watch the emotions that were crossing his face, see the fear in his eyes. If he was afraid of her, of what she might be capable of, she couldn’t stand it.
“And ye think it was Daria that called ye?” His voice was carefully neutral and she didn’t know if she was grateful or if she would have rather heard the fear, horror, revulsion— whatever he was
feeling.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Who else?”
“What else?” he corrected.
She outwardly shivered and jumped the two steps that separated them to cower in his arms. She held onto his waist, shaking in the cold night air. A breeze blew the smell of the smoke over them and she knew they were close. He stroked her hair and pulled her shawl more tightly around her shoulders.
“It may no’ be a bad thing,” he said. “Perhaps what speaks to ye, is different than what speaks to her. And different yet from what I am allowed to do. I believe what Agnes taught me. What is in yer heart is what is strongest.”
That sounded like a load of hogwash mixed liberally with wishful thinking, but Piper wanted to believe it as much as Lachlan sounded like he did. He and Agnes found a way to travel across time without being plagued with strange visions or being ordered about by sinister whispering voices. Good for them. But she had failed.
She gritted her teeth together as her pulse raced. Pressing her face against Lachlan’s strong chest, she fought the fast rising tide of anger that threatened to drown her. He murmured soft words into her hair and she worked to relax and shake off the rage. She didn’t want to seek out the maker of the fire deeper in the woods, but stay here huddled with him against the wind and all other bad things that seemed so eager to have a piece of her.
“We must go find Magnus,” he said finally.
She pulled away and gasped, feeling like the most selfish person on the planet, of all time. She did not have the luxury of having an emotional breakdown when Magnus was with a madwoman.
“Stop.” Lachlan placed his finger between her furrowed eyebrows. “Ye must stop torturing yerself.” He ran his finger down her nose. “When I was in the village with Evelyn to get yer gift, we went into Sam’s book shop. There were a lot of books about positive thinking that I found to be most interesting. That is what we must do, aye?”
Revenge (Book 3 of Lost Highlander series) Page 13
