by Jessi Gage
A sigh burst from Darcy’s nose, and his warm breath stirred her hair. He abruptly released her and fumbled in the saddlebag until he pulled the box free. Placing it in her hands, he stepped back and pet his horse’s neck, murmuring to the animal. Seeking comfort? Communing with a friend who wouldn’t leave him?
Guilt twisted her heart. “What are you going to do when I’m gone?” she asked. “Will Steafan try to bully you into marrying someone else?”
“He canna. He will likely pressure me to null the contract, but I willna do so. He will be forced to leave me be. Mayhap he’ll name Edmund his heir.”
She doubted Steafan would permit himself to be forced into anything he didn’t want to do. She also feared what kind of “pressure” he might put on Darcy. But she shouldn’t worry about him. She had enough problems of her own. Like impending time travel.
Would she get dizzy like when she’d left Charleston? Would she fall down and black out? Would she remember Darcy, or would all this fade like a dream?
None of that mattered. She had to get home. Every minute she stood here thinking about it and sympathizing with Darcy, was a minute lost from her life.
Swallowing past that persistent lump, she said, “Well, good luck. Thank you for taking care of me while I was here.” I will miss you, her heart whispered. She turned her back on him and strode to the standing stone, cursing herself for not having the courage to give him a proper kiss for his trouble.
The box hard and cold in her hands, she stepped into the stone’s black shadow and repeated her wish, turning the box and waiting for the telltale sounds that would precede her magical trip home.
Nothing happened.
Tears pressed at her eyes as she tried again, and she couldn’t tell if they were tears of frustration, exhaustion, or relief. “Please,” she begged the box, uncertain what, precisely she was asking it for.
Maybe that was the problem. The history around her was warm and alive, intoxicating in its vibrant proximity. What if her fascination with this place, and perhaps with a particular man, was keeping her from making a sincere wish?
No. She refused to consider that. She loved her parents, her friends, her job, being an American, enjoying twenty-first century privileges of freedom, equality, medicine, and convenience. Getting home was non-negotiable. It was most definitely a sincere wish. She tried again, voicing her wish while she imagined her mother’s round face, surrounded by gracefully styled, shoulder-length, blond hair, her father’s bearded, smiling face as he opened his arms to hug her.
Still nothing.
“No,” she whispered, tears splashing onto the rosewood finish. “Please don’t abandon me here. I’m afraid. I want to go home.” The inlaid pattern on the box’s lid twinkled with night-blackness as she shook it.
Her last few grains of hope slipped through a sieve and blew away on a brisk Highland wind.
* * * *
Darcy couldn’t tear his gaze from Malina as she bent over the meddling bit of wood and metal that would take her away from him forever. He wouldn’t take for granted a single moment he had left with her. Vulnerable as a flower cowering from the night, she knelt at the base of Berringer’s marker, bowing her crown of silvery hair over her mysterious treasure.
His fingers tingled with the memory of her curving waist, still narrow as her unborn bairn made no more than a gentle swell beneath her gown. As he’d held her, the inner edges of her eyebrows had tipped up in regret, no doubt over the marriage he’d forced her into, but the regret was hers alone. His only regret was that he was not enough to entice her to stay.
A sob cut through the night. Then another. Malina bent forward to press her forehead to the ground.
Pain squeezed his heart. The next thing he kent, he was kneeling beside her, gathering her to him and soothing her with words his mother had used when he’d been a wee lad and his favorite mutt went over the cliffs to chase a stick he’d thrown too far.
“Let the tears come, Malina. Let them come. They wash away what we canna bear.”
Her shoulders shook with silent sorrow, and he wished he could bear the pain for her. He kissed her forehead before he realized what he was doing. The sweet scent of her heather crown filled him with longing until he ached to hold her closer. He resisted the urge, letting her go instead. She didn’t need a clumsy oaf crowding her.
He straightened to a crouch a respectable distance away, his body immediately missing contact with hers. Swallowing thickly, he held out a hand. “Let me try it. Mayhap I can get the contrary thing to work.”
She sniffed and handed him the box. The look in her moist eyes was nothing he could name. It wasn’t quite hope, but nor was it despair.
Forcing his gaze to the box, he turned it over the way he’d seen her do. He rotated it, even shook it gently. It did nothing.
“Did it do aught that was special when you came here?” He was nervous to ken how her magic worked, but willing to dabble in it if it would help her.
Another sniff. “I had just read the inscription on the bottom and was turning it back over when it made some soft mechanical noises like a cuckoo clock about to engage. Then the lid just popped open. I didn’t even get to look inside before I wound up here, lying on my back in the grass.”
He studied her. Convinced she was telling him as much as she kent, he flipped the box over to read the date as she’d described, then righted the thing. It did nothing. He inspected the tight seam. It lacked any sort of hinge or clasp. He tried to wedge the blunt nail of his thumb along the seam to search for a hidden catch, but his nail was too thick. Always, he was too large.
He took up one of her soft hands, inspecting her neatly trimmed nails that were much thinner than his. “Try running your fingernail along here.” He guided her hand to the seam and she did as he asked. “Do you feel a catch? Aught out of place or uneven?”
She shook her head. “It’s no use. It’s not going to work.” She raised her tear-streaked face and her lips pressed into a sad smile, the sight filling him with a hollow burn. “It looks like you might be stuck with me after all, Darcy Keith.”
His heart jumped. She would stay with him.
But not by choice. His poor Malina hadn’t chosen to marry him, either. Well, he supposed she had, but he’d pressured her just as Steafan pressured him. He couldn’t stand to see her choice taken away again.
His hands surrounded hers and the box for the second time that night. He rubbed his thumbs over the cool satin of her skin. “Mayhap for now,” he said. “But we shall keep trying. We’ll come back at all times of the day and night until it works.” In many of the stories he’d heard, women appeared by the stones on the eves of Samhain or Beltane. Beltane, the first of May, was only a few days away. Mayhap the magic would work then. “I willna rest until you are returned to your people.”
She shook her head and slipped her hands from his to leave him holding the box. “That’s sweet. But I’m not sure I should get my hopes up.” Using his shoulder for balance, she pushed to her feet. Her posture sagged. “I’m so tired,” she said. “I can’t think about it anymore tonight.”
“Will ye come back to Fraineach with me and rest for what’s left of the night?”
“Only if you promise I can sleep late tomorrow.” Had that been a wisp of humor he heard in her voice? What a resilient woman his Malina was. And not so mistrustful of him that she coulda bear to stay under the same roof with him tonight.
“You may sleep as long as ye need,” he said roughly, his gut flopping wildly at the idea of her sleeping in his parents’ long unused bed with him down the hall in the room he’d slept in since he was a bairn.
Och, he’d have to change the dusty linens before she could lie down. And she might require a light meal before bed–didn’t pregnant women get hungry more often? Urgency to see to her needs pulled him to his feet. He swept her and her recalcitrant box up into Rand’s saddle and cantered home, eager to make her feel welcome at Fraineach.
It was her home, after
all. As long as her box forced her to stay.
* * * *
Anya laced up her dress, smoothed her glossy chestnut hair, and slipped from the stables after Aodhan had gone. But she didn’t head for the cottage she shared with her ageing da. She turned onto the road up to the keep. She wished to tell Steafan about Big Darcy in time for her laird to send someone after his deceiving nephew and catch him in the act of disowning his wife.
’Twas shameful enough for a man to be so poor a husband that his wife wanted to leave him, but to go so far as to help one’s wife run away, ’twas inexcusable. Surely Steafan would release the man as his heir, and she would have that much more leverage to convince him to put away his useless Ginneleah and take her to wife instead.
The sound of hoof beats distracted her from her musing. ’Twas late for anyone to be about the village ahorse. Tiptoeing between cottages, she looked in the direction of the sound and saw Big Darcy on his big horse coming up the lane to the stables. Alone.
She gasped and crouched behind a rain barrel as he went past. What happened to his wife? She’d thought he was helping her run away. She’d assumed such an activity would take several days at least. But here he was, back at Ackergill after no more than two hours away.
Wending through the tight alley to the back of the stables, she stepped up on a crate and peered through a barred window. Inside, Big Darcy lit a lantern but kept it shuttered so the dim orange glow gave him just enough light to store away his tack and brush down his sweaty beast.
She took a moment to appreciate the strong line of his shoulders as he worked. He still wore the crisp new plaid and fine shirt he must have gotten married in. His shoulder-length sandy hair was swept back from his face so his proud cheekbones and the clean-shaven angle of his jaw gleamed in the lantern light. She could see why Steafan had named him heir. He was an impressive man, if one went by looks alone. But his overripe sense of honor and his timid nature would make for a terrible laird. Besides, she lusted to give birth to Ackergill’s future laird. Steafan wouldn’t need his nephew once she succeeded in seducing him.
She watched the man closely, looking for some sign of what might have become of his wife, but nothing stood out as unusual as he put his horse away, except mayhap the swiftness with which he worked. Only after his jogging footsteps faded into the night did she steal around to the front of the barn and make her way to the tack room for a more intimate investigation. Mayhap she would find some evidence of treachery in his saddlebag.
Kenning the tack room as well in the dark as her own bedroom, she quickly found Big Darcy’s saddle and flipped open the leather flap on the attached bag. Inside, she found not a weapon but an exquisite rosewood box with a broad border of silvery decoration that glinted in the meager light coming through the window. She had never seen the box’s equal. ’Twould be worth quite a lot, a wee treasure like this. Might he have stolen it from his wife? What if he’d murdered her for it?
No. That made no sense. He didn’t need to steal. His mill was profitable, and his home was grander than any other in Ackergill except for the keep. He’d even given his wife a pouch of gold, alerting Anya to just how well-off the big Keith was. Had she kent the extent of his wealth when she’d been a girl and that a skirmish would take Steafan’s only child and leave Darcy as heir, she might have wooed him to wed her, rather than embarrass him publicly.
But the past was past. Ever since Steafan’s first wife had died, Anya had been determined to share the laird’s marriage bed. Something nefarious had occurred here tonight that she could twist to her advantage. She was sure of it. She just had to find proof.
Hoping the box hid something incriminating, she tried prying the thing open, but the lid wouldn’t budge. She turned it this way and that, searching for a latch or some kind of trigger for the lid. No means to open the box revealed itself. Huffing with frustration, she lit a lantern to study the thing more closely. Writing on the bottom caught her eye. She read the date and frowned. What kind of wood-worker would date his creation twenty-five years anon?
As she stared at the date, she recalled something Big Darcy’s wife had said that she’d thought odd. “I need to go back to my time. My being here is a mistake.”
She had thought mayhap “back to my time” was a saying of the woman’s people, but what if the woman was truly from the future? What if she was a witch and she and this box had come here by magic?
Oh, sweet saints, what if the woman had tried to hex Big Darcy and he’d slain her to defend himself? If he’d killed the witch, the saints might withhold their curses on the Keith for accepting her as one of them, but if she yet lived, the woman posed a danger to Ackergill. She needed to take this box to Steafan immediately and alert him to the abomination he’d unwittingly welcomed into their midst.
A noise at the barn door made her heart leap into her throat. The box slipped from her hands. Only her deer-skin-sheathed toe kept the thing from making a racket as it hit the floor. She bit back a curse as the corner bruised her foot.
Not wanting to be caught lurking in the stables lest her best place for fornication be lost to her, she blew out the lantern and dove under the workbench to hide among the saddle blankets. A moment later, Big Darcy strode into the tack room. His plodding steps came to a stop when his boot nudged the box on the floor. Stooping, he picked up the wicked contraption and dusted it off with his sleeve.
“What are ye doing on the floor, ye wee conniving devil?” he asked it.
She tensed at the familiar way he spoke to the object. ’Twas almost as if he expected it to understand him.
She held her breath, hoping she’d arranged the blankets well enough to hide herself. She’d never been afraid of him before, but he frightened her now. He might have done murder tonight. He spoke to an object mayhap created by the devil himself. She itched to clean her hands of the vile touch of the box, but she forced herself to remain still.
“You arena happy enough to bring trouble to my doorstep?” he asked the thing. “Ye must leap around stables, too? I should chop you into bits and bury you in the forest where ye canna tempt me with things I am nay meant to keep.”
She gasped, then clapped her hand over her mouth. Is that what he’d done to his wife? Chopped her up and buried her in the forest? And what did he mean by accusing the box of tempting him? Did the thing speak to him as he spoke to it? Had it incited him to murder?
Big Darcy stiffened, and she held her breath. Her lips moved with a silent prayer that he wouldn’t hear her pounding heart.
The man turned his great head in her direction. He scented the air like a hound from hell, his eyes searching the dark. She resisted the urge to whimper.
His gaze passed over her hiding place without stopping. He turned on his heel and left, tucking the box under his shoulder wrap and darting guilty looks from side to side.
Once he’d gone, she released her breath in a whoosh. But the relief didn’t last. ’Twas plain to see Steafan’s heir was involved in wickedness. ’Twas her duty to inform the laird. Mayhap in his gratefulness, he would reward her with a visit to his bedchamber. She dashed up to the keep fast as her legs would carry her.
Chapter 8
Anya awaited the laird in the library, a richly-appointed turret room, dark at this hour except for a lone candle lit by a sleepy maid. At the sound of Steafan’s approaching footsteps, she fluffed her bosom and spread her hair over her shoulders. He strode through the door in naught but a nightshirt and a wine-colored robe, but carried himself like a man clad in his best finery.
She curtsied, which was not required but would stroke his sense of importance. “Laird Steafan, thank you for seeing me at such a late hour.”
“Speak, woman. For what have ye made Hamish pull me from my bed?”
She stepped close enough to scent the smoky sweetness of whisky on his breath. “’Tis your nephew. Big Darcy. I couldna sleep, so I went for a walk and passed by the stables.” She ignored the roll of Steafan’s eyes, but stored it away for l
ater consideration; if Aodhan was blabbing to the laird about their arrangement, she’d find a way to humble the proud war chieftain. “While I was out, I saw him ride away with the strangewoman ye married him to. He spoke of helping return her to her home in a most blatant betrayal of his marriage contract. I thought that was bad enough, but a short time later, he rode back to the stables. Alone. Without his wife!”
Steafan’s gaze sharpened with interest, and she preened under his scrutiny. “After he left, I poked about in his saddlebag and found a wee, fancy box that must belong to the woman. ’Twas made of rosewood and had silvery markings, which is odd by itself, but there was somat even more strange about it. ’Twas dated 1542.”
His eyes widened, then narrowed in skepticism.
She pressed on urgently. “Your nephew spoke to the thing as though it had a mind to understand, and he accused it of tempting him.”
She took another step, bringing herself close enough to kiss him if she were to tilt up her chin. In a low tone, she said, “I dinna ken for cert what it all means, but I fear the woman may be a witch. Kenning your nephew, he has either slain the woman for being wicked or has let himself be pulled under her spell. Either way, I thought ye should be aware.”
His handsome, dark eyes pinned her as he considered her words.
She parted her lips, inviting affections.
The man took a long step back and scoffed, “Nonsense. Ye had Hamish rouse me from my bedchamber for this?”
His look of disdain cut her pride. Anger made her next words sharp. “’Tis nay nonsense. Recall where the men met the Gunn this afternoon. Berringer’s field. There are standing stones there.” She raised her eyebrows, willing him to see reason. “Ye’ve heard the stories. Women appearing from out of nowhere spouting stories of being from strange lands and distant times. What if they arena just stories? What if Big Darcy’s wife is one of those women, one of those witches who come to stir trouble for peaceable clanfolk? I heard her speech. She isna from Scotia or any place nearby, that is for cert. Did ye even ask her where she was from before ye opened your arms to her?”
