by Allie Mackay
He blinked, his gaze flitting to Kira, then back at the woman. “Heir?”
The woman’s gaze dipped pointedly to the bulge at Kira’s middle. She said nothing, her red lips simply curving in another slow, intimate smile.
A nasty, catty smile that lasted only until Maili materialized beside her, a huge tray of stewed oysters and cooked herring balanced on one hand—a hand that flicked just enough to the side to send the tray’s wet, steaming delicacies spilling into the beauty’s lap.
“Ohhh!” The woman leapt to her feet, her eyes snapping with fury. “You careless chit!” she cried, swiping at her ruined skirts, her scoldings and jigging drawing all eyes.
Then, before Kira knew what was happening, two strong hands were lifting her to her feet, releasing her almost as quickly to thwack Aidan roughly on the back, then give him a great shove toward the deep shadows at the back of the dais.
Tavish, she saw, barely catching her breath before he yanked back a tapestry and swept open a door she’d not known existed. “Fair means or foul,” he said, practically pushing them through it, into the cold, sleety dark of the bailey.
True to the end, he’d created a diversion for their escape.
Then the door slammed behind them and they were alone, running hand in hand across the deserted courtyard, the swirling night mist so thick around them that Wrath Castle and its sturdy walls already seemed little more than a long-ago dream.
Somewhere, muffled and distant, a dog whined and howled, but otherwise the night was eerily quiet. Great rolling curtains of mist damped all sound, even the pounding of their feet on the bailey’s dark, rain-slick cobbles. Then, as they reached the gatehouse, for once emptied and silent, its heavy oaken doors closed and barred, the impassable iron portcullis lowered to keep out any unexpected intruders, even the dog’s howls faded away, dwindling until not even a faint echo remained.
What did remain was a ladder, tucked into the deepest shadows in the concealing lee of the curtain wall and giving access to the top of the gatehouse arch.
Looking at it, so real and waiting, Kira felt her mouth go dry and she began to tremble.
“Aidan…” She pulled him back when he grabbed hold of the ladder, his foot already on the first rung. “I know you ordered men to take turns on the battlements,” she said, scanning the wall-walk but seeing only swirling mist and thin curtains of fine, slanting rain. “What if one of them sees us?”
“They won’t.” He kept his hands on the ladder, already ascending. “They know to keep their eyes trained on the cliffs and the sea. No’ on the empty bailey and the gatehouse arch behind them.”
Even so, Kira cast a last glance at the top of the curtained walling, so difficult now to see in all the thick, whirling mist. And even if she could make out the battlements, somehow she doubted she’d see any men there.
Not now.
The queasy feeling in her stomach and the prickles at the back of her neck told her it was already too late.
Aidan’s men were gone.
Blessedly, he was still there. On top of the arch now, and reaching down for her, encouraging her. “Come, Kee-rah, give me your hand and I will pull you up.”
Kira blinked. She hadn’t even realized she’d already scrambled nearly all the way up the ladder. Her heart pounding, she felt his hand grasp hers even as the ladder rung seemed to vanish from beneath her feet.
“Oh, God!” Her breath caught as she hovered just a split second in thin, empty air. But his arm swept around her like a band of steel, his strong hand heaving her up onto the arch top with him. “I think it’s happening already,” she gasped, clutching at him. “The ladder disappeared beneath me.”
“Aye, lass, I know.” He kept his arms locked around her, holding her so tight against him she could hardly breathe. “I canna see much through all this mist, but I think more has disappeared than the ladder.”
Kira wrapped her own arms around him, clinging to him just as fiercely. She pressed her head against his chest and closed her eyes, not really wanting to see whatever it was he’d meant had disappeared.
It couldn’t be helped that they’d find Wrath in ruin if indeed they returned to her time, but she’d come to love the real Wrath and didn’t want to watch it dissolve before her eyes. It would be difficult enough to see Aidan’s face when he saw what had become of his proud home.
She winced.
That was something she should have thought about before. Something she might not have to worry about now because nothing was happening.
Nothing at all.
Even the light patter of the fine, misty rain was no more. Total silence swelled around them, almost like the proverbial quiet before the storm, a thought that made her shudder, then cry out when her foot slipped on the slick stone surface of the arch top.
“Hold, lass!” Aidan’s arms tightened around her, righting her before she lost her balance. “Try no’ to move, Kee-rah. Just hold on to me.”
“I will—Iieeeee…” Her foot slipped again, this time plunging knee-deep into a mossy, fern-lined crack in the arch’s stonework.
Crumbling, ancient stonework, grass-grown and riddled with cracks—just as she remembered.
Equally amazing, her tartan picnic rug and her backpack were wedged in a clump of ferns near her ankle.
“Aidan!” She pulled her foot from the crack, her heart thundering. “We’re here! My things, too!”
Her entire body shaking, she reached into the crevice, her fingers closing around a strap on her backpack just when all hell broke loose. An earsplitting boom shattered the quiet, knocking the breath from her as wave after wave of brilliant white light flashed across the arch top, ripping away the mist and darkness until every tiny age line and lichen pattern stood out in bold relief on the ruined stone.
Then the world went black.
Total darkness.
Even the cold was gone. The fine, sleety rain. She felt and heard…nothing.
Until a great blaring blast pierced her ears and she slammed down onto the stone again, this time landing on her buttocks with a hard, bone-jarring thunk.
“Bloody hell, woman! Have you gone daft?”
Kira jerked, a man’s angry voice ringing in her ears.
An angry Scottish voice, burred and all, but so unpleasantly startling it took her a moment and a few mad eye-blinks to realize that the owner of the voice was standing beside the open driver door of a bright red car.
“Damned tourists, anyway!” He glared at her, tapping his temple with a forefinger. “I could’ve hit you! Flying across the car park like there was no tomorrow!” he huffed, jumping back in his car and roaring off.
Car park?
She blinked again, only now fully grasping that she was in a car park and not on Wrath’s gatehouse arch. Far from it, she was sitting right smack in the middle of a large paved and graveled car park crammed full with cars, square-shaped recreational vehicles, and tightly packed rows of coach tour buses.
Her stomach beginning to do funny things, she recognized the place as the Spean Bridge Mill, a popular tourist trap on the scenic A-82, just north of Fort William and not far from the turnoff to Skye.
This was definitely her time, but something had gone wrong.
They weren’t supposed to return here.
Nor was it autumn anymore, but late spring or early summer. She’d lost six or seven months. Her palms starting to dampen, she hoped she hadn’t lost more.
Aidan was gone.
Trying not to panic, she pushed to her feet and looked around, searching for him. Her backpack was still clutched tight in her hands and her tartan picnic rug lay a few feet away, unharmed. But her medieval clothes were gone, as was he.
“Aidan!”
A family of four turned to give her weird looks. She scowled at them, not caring what they thought. “Aidan!” she called again, her mouth going dry now, blood starting to pound in her ears.
There was no sign of him anywhere.
Only other people.
Lots and lots of other people. Mostly American and English tourists, from the looks of them. They streamed in and out of the mill-and-tea shop, weaving through the parked cars, and crowding the pretty arbored walkways. An especially noisy bunch blocked the entrance to the mill’s busy public restrooms.
Separated from the main gift shop by a flower-lined walkway and a series of dark-wooded pergolas, they were the cleanest and finest public restrooms along the entire A-82. An insider tip for those in the know, complete with a lovely view of the Spean River’s rushing, tumbling rapids.
They were also where she needed to go. Now.
Not for the usual reason, but because panic and dread were making her ill. Gorge was rising in her throat, hot, bitter, and scary. Worse, she was finding it increasingly difficult to breathe.
She needed to splash cold water on her face and calm down.
She needed to think.
Find a way to find Aidan, wherever he’d landed. Or get back to him if he was still standing on his gateway arch top, possibly just as panicked and looking for her!
Moving fast now, Kira headed straight for the restrooms. If need be, she’d use her elbows, or even swing her backpack, to plow a way through the tight knot of tourists blocking the entrance.
She needed a clear head more than they needed to go.
But when she neared them, she saw they weren’t waiting to get into the fancy restrooms at all. They were taking pictures. Snapping away like mad, oooh’ing and ahhh’ing over something she couldn’t see.
Then two of them moved and she did see.
They were photographing Aidan!
He stood ramrod straight between two wooden barrels of spring flowers, the Invincible raised threateningly, and such a fierce glower on his face he would have scared her if she hadn’t known him. Unmoving and unblinking, he could have been a life-sized statue. The tourists apparently mistook him for a reenactor, posing for their benefit.
A little old lady on the edge of the crowd gave Kira a gentle tap on the arm. “He’s been standing there like that for at least ten minutes,” she gushed, aiming her diggy camera at him. “My granddaughters back in Ohio will swoon when they see his picture. He’s just the kind of wild Highlander they’re always dreaming about.”
Don’t I know it, Kira almost said.
Instead, she gave the woman a tight smile and pushed her way forward. “Aidan! There you are. Come, we’re late.” She laid on her most businesslike tone. “Your appearance at the Loch Ness Medieval Festival is in an hour.” She grabbed his arm, his muscles tight and tense and ready for battle. She flashed an apologetic smile at the crowd as she pulled him away. “We’ll just make it if we hurry.”
“Wait!” A family father with three little kids hurried after her. “There’s a medieval festival at Loch Ness today?”
Kira nodded. “All day,” she lied, praying Aidan wouldn’t contradict her.
Not that he looked keen on saying much of anything.
His mouth was still set in a firm, hard line, and he’d clamped his jaw so tight she wouldn’t be surprised if he never got it open again.
He also refused to let her pull him farther than a few yards from where he’d been standing. His scowl darkening, he sheathed the Invincible with such force, the English family father and the rest of the crowd scattered at once, leaving them alone on the walkway.
Others, those just now exiting the gift shop, made a wide circle around them.
“Wise souls.” Aidan spoke at last, eyeing them as they scuttled past.
Planting his legs apart and folding his arms, he assumed his most regal mien. A posture that lasted until one of the monstrous things he assumed was a coach tour bus rumbled past them, only to come to a shuddering, smoke-belching halt, then disgorge a small throng of chattering, oddly garbed people who looked very much like the ones who’d cornered him the instant he’d landed in this horrid, dreadful place.
One turned to gape at him—a female, and not unattractive, all things considered—but when she paused and aimed one of those little silvery objects at him, he smiled wickedly and whipped the Invincible a foot or two out of its sheath.
It was enough.
The woman ran away faster than he would have believed.
“Aidan, please. That was just a camera. She liked you and wanted to take your picture.” Kira put a hand on his arm. “You can’t do things like that here. Times are different. You’re scaring people.”
He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, trying to ignore the way the foul-smelling smoke from the tour bus tainted the pure Highland air.
“I am sorry, Kee-rah,” he said, the words costing him much. “I—”
“You aren’t sorry you’re here with me, are you?” She looked at him, the worry in her eyes lancing him. “Or…or mad at me?”
“Ach, lass.” He rammed the sword back into its sheath and grabbed her, crushing her to him and slanting his mouth over hers in a ferocious, demanding kiss that would surely set the gawkers’ tongues wagging.
Not that he cared.
Setting her from him at last, he straightened his plaid and tossed back his hair. “Sweet Kee-rah, where’er you are is where I need to be. I am no’ sorry, nor mad. Just…”
Terrified.
He couldn’t say the word, but he could see in her face that she knew. Her eyes filling with the tears she was e’er swearing she ne’er shed, her whole expression softened, and she slid her arms around him, pressing close.
“It will be okay,” she said, her voice thick, husky. “You’ll see. But we can’t stay here and I don’t think it’s a good idea to go to Wrath. Not yet, anyway.”
Aidan nodded, his own throat tightening.
Hearing the name of his home spoken aloud in this strange place that his beloved Scotland had become pinched his heart just a bit more than was good for a man.
But he was a man. A fine, braw one, he hoped. So he drew another deep breath of the odd-smelling air, then braced his hands on his hips and looked round, once more assuming his lairdly airs.
“So-o-o, Kee-rah!” he boomed. “Where shall we go?”
She considered a moment, then beamed. “I think…I think south to Ravenscraig.”
“That MacDougall nest?” His brows snapped together—until he remembered she’d told him a Douglas now lairded it there. “To your friends?” he amended, silently thinking a journey to people she knew would be wise indeed.
“Yes. To Mara McDougall Douglas and her husband, Alex.” Still smiling, she looked down and opened her travel pouch with one of those infernal zip-hers, then plunged her hand inside it and rummaged about until she withdrew a tiny gold piece of parchment.
A thin, bright, and shiny thing that she waved at him.
“My credit card,” she said, clutching it as if it were made of gold indeed. “It will get us a rental car…I think there’s a small local agency somewhere here in Spean Bridge. Maybe Roy Bridge. If not, I’ll find one in Fort William and ask them to deliver the car.”
Aidan nodded again, trying his best to look…sage.
Truth was, he hadn’t understood a word she’d said.
He did, though, have a very unpleasant suspicion that getting to Ravenscraig—near distant Oban, by all the saints!—would entail a journey in one of the smaller tour-bus-looking things crowded so thickly across the Spean Bridge Mill’s busy courtyard.
He certainly didn’t see any stables about.
Indeed, horses didn’t seem to exist in her world. Which left his original notion.
The one that he didn’t care for at all.
Needing to know, he put back his shoulders again and cleared his throat. “Ahhh, Kee-rah, lass,” he began, pleased by the strength of his voice, “this rental car you mention? Would it be anything like these small tour buses sitting about here?”
To his dismay, she nodded. “Yes. Those are cars.” Then, starting forward, she added, “There’s a call box just down the way. I’ll phone Mara McDougall and let her know we’re com
ing. Then I’ll find us a car. Don’t worry—we’ll be on our way before you know it.”
Aidan nodded again, beginning to feel like a head-bobbing fool.
But he dutifully followed her down the road, away from the frightful Spean Bridge Mill and its horrors.
Hoping worse ones weren’t awaiting him.
If the speed of the rental cars whizzing past them on the road gave any indication, the journey to Oban would be a nightmare.
Something he became absolutely certain of when, a short while later, she stopped beside a tall, bright red metal and glass container and opened its door. Popping inside, she punched at tiny numbers on a metal plate, then spoke rapidly into a strange silver thing she pressed to the side of her head.
Just watching her made his head throb and ache.
When two earth-shaking, earsplitting flying machines zoomed past just overhead, he knew for sure this modern Scotland was not for him.
“They were RAF military jets,” Kira told him, stepping out of the red-and-glass box at last. “They fly over like that all the time. Even in the most remote parts of Scotland.” She smiled. “Just ignore them.”
Aidan gave the most casual shrug he could. “I scarce noticed them,” he lied, glad his knees hadn’t buckled when they’d sped across the sky.
“Anyway, we’re all set.” Looking pleased, she stretched up on her toes to kiss him. “Mara and Alex are delighted we’re coming and they can’t wait to meet you.”
He grunted. “And the rental car?”
“It’s called a ‘hire car’ here, and we’ll have to go back to the Spean Bridge Mill to wait for one,” she said, hooking her arm through his for the walk back to that awful place. “Someone will bring it up from Fort William shortly.”
Aidan harrumphed this time, having never heard of Fort William either.
“There’s just one thing you should know.” She stopped just before they reached the large courtyard with all the tour buses and rental-hire cars. “I’m not very good at driving on the left.”
“It doesn’t matter, Kee-rah,” he lied again.
Something told him driving on the left might be very important in this place.
Not that he was in a position to do much about it.
