"I shan't forget."
Nell inclined her head and stepped out the doorway.
"Nellie."
She froze, her back to him. The man hadn't called her Nellie in years.
He cleared his throat. "Have you done something different with yourself?" When she didn't reply, he cleared his throat again. "You look… er, that is you look rather…" He trailed off, as if regretting even beginning.
Nell spun back around to face him, her brows drawn together, lips pursed. He opened and closed his mouth several times, his gaze drifting over her face. Might he truly have noticed the wee change she'd made? She thought he never noticed her. And if he did, would he think she was a silly old woman fussing with herself? "Rather what?" she demanded.
"Er… I do believe… the word might be… fetching." Softer somehow, he thought, his gaze skimming her up and down. Ye Gods, but the woman was temptingly soft to begin with.
"Have ye lost yer mind, old man?" she snapped, thoroughly discombobulated, and when Nell was thoroughly discombobulated, she wielded crankiness like a sword. "I look the same as I do every day," she lied. Straightening her spine, she forced herself to glide regally out the door.
But the moment she knew she was out of sight, she rushed down the stairs, skirts a-flying, hair rumbling loose, hands to her throat.
She patted at the wispy strands of hair she'd snipped shorter that morn—similar to the wee lass's, admiring the look. If such a minor change drew—by God, a compliment!—from Silvan MacKeltar, she might just stitch herself that new gown of softest lapis linen she'd been considering.
Fetching, indeed!
* * * * *
Gwen awakened slowly, surfacing from a montage of nightmares in which she'd been running around nude (naturally, at her heaviest weight, never after a week of successful dieting), chasing Drustan, and losing him through doors that disappeared before she could reach them.
She took a deep breath, sorting through her thoughts. She'd left the States because she despised her life. She'd embarked upon a trip to Scotland to lose her virginity, see if she had a heart, and shake up her world.
Well, she'd certainly accomplished all her goals.
No simple cherry picker for me, she thought. I get a time-traveling genius who comes with a world of problems and sends me back through time to fix them.
Not that she minded.
She'd decided the words soul mate and Drustan MacKeltar were synonymous. She'd finally met a man who made her feel with an intensity she'd never imagined, was brilliant, yet wasn't cold in his brilliance. He knew how to tease and be warm and passionate. He found her beautiful, and he was a phenomenal, erotic lover. Simply, she'd met the perfect man and lost him, all in three days. He'd awakened more emotions in her in that short time than she'd felt in her entire life.
Slowly, she opened her eyes. Although the room was dim, the muted golden light of a fire spilled about the chamber. She blinked at the profusion of purple surrounding her, then recalled Drustan's fascination with the purple running suits in Barrett's. His insistence on purple trews or a T-shirt, a request she'd refused.
That sealed it. She was definitely in Drustan's world now.
A sumptuous violet velvet coverlet was tucked beneath her chin. Above her, a lavender canopy of sheer gauzy stuff draped the elegantly carved cherry bed. A lilac sheepskin—oh really, she thought, I know there are no lilac sheep—was spread across her feet. Purple pillows with silver braided trim were strewn about the headboard.
Small curio tables were draped in orchid and plum silks. Brilliant plum and black tapestries in complicated patterns adorned the two tall windows, and between them hung an enormous ornate gilt-framed mirror. Two chairs were arranged before the windows, centered around a table that held silver goblets and plates.
Purple, she mused, with sudden insight. Such an electrifying, energetic man would naturally choose to surround himself with the color that had the highest frequency in the spectrum.
It was a hot color, vivid and erotic.
Like the man himself.
She pressed her nose into the pillow, hoping to catch his scent in the linens, but if he'd slept in this bed it had been too long ago, or the coverings had been changed. She turned her attention to the frame of the exquisitely carved bed in which she lay. The headboard had numerous drawers and cubbyholes. A sweeping footboard was etched with delicate Celtic knotwork. She'd seen a bed like it once before.
In a museum.
This one was as new as anything one might find in a modern-day furniture gallery. Raking her bangs out of her face, she continued surveying the room. Knowing she was in the sixteenth century and seeing it were two very different things. The walls were fashioned of pale gray stone, the ceiling was high, and there were none of those moldings or baseboards that always looked so out of place in "renovated" castles frequented by tourists. Not one outlet, not one lamp, merely dozens of glass bowls filled with oil, topped by fat, blackened wicks. The floor was planked of honey-blond wood, polished to a high sheen, with rugs scattered about. A lovely chest sat near the foot of the bed, topped with a pile of folded blankets. More cushioned chairs were arranged before the fire. The fireplace was fashioned of smooth pink stone, with a massive hewn mantel above it. In it, a peat fire steamed, sheaths of heather stacked atop the dried bricks scenting the room. All in all, it was a deliciously warm room, rich and luxurious.
She glanced at her wrist to see what time it was, but apparently her watch had wafted off into the same quantum foam that had devoured her clothing and backpack.
She was momentarily distracted by the garment she was wearing: A long, sheer white chemise edged with lace, it looked positively old-fashioned and frivolous.
She shook her head, swung her legs over the edge of the bed, and felt painfully short when her toes dangled a foot above the floor. With an exasperated hop, she dropped down out of the high bed and hurried to the window. She pulled the tapestry aside to find the sun shining brightly beyond the paned windows. She fumbled with the latch a moment, then pushed it open and breathed deeply of the fragrant air.
She was in sixteenth-century Scotland. Wow.
Beneath her stretched a lovely terraced courtyard, enclosed by the four inner walls of the wing of the castle she was in. Two women were beating rugs against the stones, chatting as they kept an eye on a gaggle of children kicking a lopsided sort of ball about. She peered at it, squinting. Eeew, she thought, recalling that Bert had said he'd read that medieval children had played with balls fashioned from bladders of animals and such.
She shook herself abruptly. She needed to know what the date was. While she stood gaping out the window, peril could be drawing ever nearer her Highland lover.
She was about to tug the coverlet off the bed and don it toga-style when she noticed a gown—lavender, of course—lying across the stuffed armchair near the fire, aside a miscellany of other items.
She hurried to the chair, where she fingered the items, trying to decide the order in which she was supposed to put them on.
And there were no panties, she realized with dismay. She could hardly be expected to swish around, bare-bottomed beneath her gown. She glared at the clothing, as if irritation alone might conjure a pair of panties from thin air. She glanced about the room with an entrepreneur's eye but reluctantly concluded that even if she snatched up a table covering, she'd have to knot it about her like a diaper.
She slipped off her nightgown, then slid the soft white undergarment over her head. A simple shift, it clung to her body and fell to midankle. Over it went the gown, then the sleeveless overtunic of darker purple, embroidered with silver threads. Stunned that it didn't drag on the floor, she plucked up the hem and snorted when she saw it had been neatly sheared off. Apparently people had already noted how short she was. She tied the laces on the overtunic beneath her breasts.
The slippers were a joke, sizes too big, but would have to do. She swiped the silk swath from a table and ripped the sheer fabric. As she was balli
ng it up and stuffing it in the toes, her stomach growled mightily, and she remembered that she hadn't eaten since yesterday afternoon.
But she couldn't just stroll out into the corridor without a plan.
Order of the day: a bathroom, coffee, then at the earliest possible opportunity find Drustan and tell him what had happened.
Tell him… what danger he is in was probably what he'd been saying before he'd melted in the circle of stones. Show him… had obviously meant her backpack. She sighed, wishing she had it. But Drustan was a brilliant man with a fine logical mind. Surely, he would see the truth in her story.
In retrospect, it infuriated her that Drustan hadn't told her the whole truth. However, she grudgingly acknowledged, chances were good that if he had told her, she would have, with infinite condescension, debated the implausibility of time travel for however long it had taken her to drive him to the nearest psychiatric ward.
She would never have believed he knew how to move in the fourth dimension. Who and what was this man to whom she'd given her virginity?
There was only one way to find out. Find him and talk to him.
Yo, Drustan. You don't know me, but a future you will be enchanted, wake up in the twenty-first century, and send me back to save you and keep your clan from being destroyed.
She frowned. It wasn't something she'd believe, if a man showed up in her time with such a story, but Drustan must have known what he was talking about. It was clear that he'd wanted her to tell the "past" him the truth. There was nothing else he could have been trying to say.
She was starved, both for food and a glimpse of Drustan.
And it was urgent that she discover the date. Jamming the slippers on her feet, she hurried out into the corridor.
* * *
Chapter 13
Sleeping past sunrise was not a thing Drustan did often, but troubled dreams had disrupted his slumber and he'd slept until long past dawn.
He'd pushed the vague memories away and concentrated instead on the pleasant thoughts of his upcoming wedding. Silvan longed to hear the castle filled with voices again, Nell would be delighted by wee ones scampering about, and Drustan MacKeltar wanted bairn of his own. He would teach his sons to fish and calculate the motion of heavenly bodies. He would teach his daughters the same, he vowed.
He wanted children, and by Amergin, he would get his bride to the altar this time! No matter that he knew naught of her. She was young, of child-bearing age, and he would lavish her with respect and courtesy. Double it, for having him.
And mayhap one day she might come to have feeling for him. Mayhap she was young enough that she might be… er, trainable like a young foal. If she couldn't read and write, she might like to learn. Or she could be weak of sight and not notice the eccentricities of the occupants of Castle Keltar.
And mayhap his wolfhounds would take to sailing longboats across the loch, sporting Viking attire. Waving flags of surrender. Ha.
Anya was his last chance, and he knew it. Because they were Highlanders who kept much to themselves, because of the centuries of rumors, because of the string of broken betrothals, fathers of well-bred young ladies were loath to pledge their daughters to him. They sought for their daughters safe, respectable men to whom rumors didn't cling as tenacious as burrs on a woolen.
Yet the Elliott, laird of an ancient clan of noble lineage, had decided to overlook it all (for two manors and a fair amount of coin) and a match had been promised. Now Drustan merely had to hide his unusual abilities long enough to make Anya Elliott care for him, or at least long enough to get a few bairn. He knew better than to hope for love. Time had taught him that well.
Love, he mused. What would it be like to have a woman look at him with admiration? Appreciate who he was? Each time he'd begun to believe a woman might care about him, she'd seen or heard something that had frightened her witless and abandoned him, crying, Pagan! Sorcerer!
Bah. He was a perfectly respectable Christian. He just happened to be a Druid too, but he suffered no conflicts of faith. God was in everything. As He'd granted His beauty to mighty oaks and crystal lochs, He'd also brushed the stones and the stars with it. Absorbed in the simple perfection of an equation, Drustan's faith deepened, not weakened. Recently, he'd begun regularly attending mass again, intrigued with the intelligent young priest who'd taken over the services at the castle. Endowed with a gentle manner, a quick wit, an addled mother for whom he couldn't be blamed, and an open-mindedness rare in men of the Kirk, Nevin Alexander didn't condemn the MacKeltars for being different. He saw past the rumors to the honorable men within. Mayhap in part because his own mother practiced a few pagan rites.
Drustan was pleased the young priest would be performing the wedding ceremony. Work restoring the lovely chapel in the castle had been accelerated, to have all in readiness.
In anticipation of his future wife's arrival at Castle Keltar, he'd taken precautions. Not only had he warned Silvan and Dageus about unusual displays of talent and mind-boggling conversations, but he'd had the "heretical" tomes removed from the library and toted up for secure storage in Silvan's tower chamber. God willing, she'd be so busy with her aunts and maids who were to accompany her that she wouldn't notice anything odd about any of them. He would not make the same mistakes with Anya Elliott as he'd made with his first three betrotheds. Surely his family could present their best boots forward for only a fortnight!
He would not fail this time, he vowed optimistically.
Unfortunately, no one else in the castle seemed optimistic this morn.
Upon awakening, hungry, and unable to a find a single kitchen lass about, he'd wandered down the corridor to the kitchens, calling for Nell, until she'd finally poked her head out of the buttery to see what he wanted.
What did any man want in the morning, he'd teased, besides an energetic tussle between the sheets? Food.
She hadn't smiled and teased back. Casting him side-wise and oddly scathing glances, Nell had complied, following him back to the Greathall and slapping down crusty, week-old bread, flat ale, and a pork pie that he'd begun to suspect contained parts of a pig he'd prefer not to think about.
Where were his treasured kippers and tatties, fried crispy golden? Since when had he, Nell's favorite, rated such meager fare in the morning? On occasion Dageus had been treated in such a poor fashion—usually when he'd done something Nell hadn't appreciated, involving a lass—but not Drustan.
So now he sat alone, wishing someone, anyone, even young Tristan, the bright lad they were training in basic Druidry, might saunter in with a hullo or a smile. He was not a man given to dark moods, yet this morning his entire world felt off-balance, and he couldn't shake a niggling sense of foreboding that it was about to get worse.
"So?" Silvan said, popping his head into the Greathall, skewering him with his intense gaze. "Where were you last night?" The rest of him followed at a more leisurely pace. Drustan smiled faintly. If he lived to be a hundred, he'd never get used to his father's gait. Headfirst, the rest of him trailing behind, as if he tolerated his body only because it was necessary to tote his head about from place to place.
He took a swill of flat ale and said dryly, "Good morning to you too, Da." Was everyone out of sorts this morn? Silvan hadn't even bothered with a greeting. Just a question that had sounded much like an accusation and had made him feel like a lad again, caught slipping back in from a nocturnal dalliance with a serving wench.
The elderly Keltar paused inside the doorway, leaned back against the stone column, and folded his arms across his chest. Too busy pondering the mysteries of the universe and scribbling in his journals to indulge in training or swordplay, Silvan was nearly as tall as Drustan, but much narrower of frame.
Drustan forced himself to swallow a mouthful of what he was becoming convinced was pig-tail pie. Crunch-crunch. By Amergin, what had Nell put in the thing? he wondered, trying not to look at the filling overmuch. Did she bake horrid things in advance to ply upon whomever upset her in some fashion?
"I said, where were you?" Silvan repeated.
Drustan frowned. Aye, Silvan was definitely out of sorts. "Sleeping. And you?"
He plucked an unidentifiable from his plate and offered it to one of the hounds beneath the table. Curling its lip, the animal growled and backed away. Drustan frowned dubiously at the pie before glancing back at his father. Silvan looked his age this morning, and that depressed and irritated Drustan.
Depressed him because Silvan was his age, all of three score and two. Irritated him because recently his father had taken to wearing his hair loose around his shoulders, which, in Drustan's opinion, made him look even older, and he didn't like to be reminded of his father's mortality. He wanted his children to have their grandfather around for a very long time. Silvan's hair was no longer the thick black of his prime, but shoulder length, snowy white, and possessed of a personality of its own. Coupled with the flowing blue robe he favored, he projected an unkempt, mad-philosopher look.
Tugging the leather thong from his hair, he tossed it at his father and was relieved to see his da was still spry enough to catch it with a hand above his head.
"What?" Silvan asked peevishly, glancing at it. "What would I be wanting with this?"
"Tie it back. Your hair is making me mad."
Silvan arched a white brow. "I like it this way. For your information, the priest's mother quite likes my hair. She told me so just last week."
"Da, stay away from Nevin's mother," Drustan said, making no attempt to conceal his distaste. "I vow, that woman tries to read my fortune every time I see her.
Ever creeping about, spouting gloom and doom. She's daft, Besseta is. Even Nevin thinks so." He shook his head and popped a crust of bread in his mouth, then washed it down with a swig of ale. The pork pie had defeated him. He shoved the platter away, refusing to look at it.
"Speaking of women, son, what have you to tell me about the wee one that appeared here last eve?"
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