It was not possible to conceptualize the experience as a dream. That was beyond her now. All that there was, was panic, fear, a huge surging wave of it. Any emotion she’d successfully suppressed in her life — a skill she’d prided herself on, once, self-control — was like a ripple in a duck pond. This was a tidal wave. This was a tsunami. This was apocalyptic, this was the end of things. Her mind circled and shrieked inside her skull like a caged bird beating itself bloody on the bars. All she knew was the desperate, keening need to get out, get out, get out, the desperate hope of freedom too acute to articulate in words or to allow yourself to think —
The blankets and quilts finally shook free of her body and it realized that running was an option that somehow, miraculously, it had been made whole — and she was up on her feet and running before she knew what was happening, dashing wildly through the dark, abandoned corridors of the castle. As she ran, she bit down hard on the screams that had continued to bubble up from the dark place beneath her lungs, though none of her terror had ebbed — to scream would be to be found, to be located, to be imprisoned again and hit and torn at…she dashed away the tears that were standing in her eyes and obscuring her vision, and on a panicked impulse burst through a door at complete random.
An empty chamber, thank God, a chamber with a pile of old chairs stacked haphazardly in the corner, but when she turned to slam the door shut her breath froze in her body because there was a man there, a man standing tall and broad and strong, a man with a stick of wood in his hand and all of the breath went out of her — no power left even to scream — here it came, here it was, she’d been a fool, so long she’d had to do away with herself and she’d squandered the opportunity and now he was going to make her regret every wasted instant, he was going to make her a prisoner of her tortured flesh again and —
“Cora?”
“Ian?” The word wrenched itself out of her mouth almost without permission. Cora became abruptly aware of what she must look like — hair and clothing askew, tears streaking her cheeks, hunkered in the dark like a caged animal about to strike at its tormentor in desperation and fear. She straightened her back, breath rushing back into her lungs, then staggered as the wild sprint through the castle caught up with her.
But Ian’s eyes weren’t on her — they were scanning the hallway outside, wildly, fingers clenched around the stick in his hand. A torch, she saw now, an unlit torch, not a truncheon like the wicked thing wielded by the men from before — she still couldn’t call it a dream, she couldn’t weaken the experience like that. If that was a dream then she was insane, and Cora Wilcox was not giving up on her sanity that easily.
“Who’s after ye? Have the walls been breached?”
She took another deep, steadying breath. “No. No. I was asleep. A — a vision. A memory. Something. I — God —” Her voice was shaking like a leaf in a storm and she felt the tears surge back to her eyes, hot and immediate.
“You put up that racket because of a dream?” he asked, disbelief strong in his voice. “You howled half the castle down, lassie. It’s a miracle you didn’t wake the whole keep and the village besides. It’s okay,” he said sharply, turning his head to address someone down the hallway. “Back to bed. Belay the alarm.”
Something about his voice — the tone of command — sent shivers crawling down her spine and she sobbed again, hating herself, hating the weakness of it but still the dream was so real, the men with their weapons, the way her soul had craved death so desperately that it hardly dared think of it —
She staggered, and would have fallen, but for Ian swooping in to support her. His arm was strong and reassuring around her waist and she leaned into him, abandoning all pretense that she had her wits about her. “Now then, lass,” he murmured into her ear, again and again, held her as she shook and sobbed, waited for the storm to pass. “Now then. Now, now.”
Eventually — and it was a long time — Cora began to come back to her senses a little. She discovered that Ian had gently eased them into a sitting position, and she was cradled in his arms. It would almost have been nice if her heart hadn’t been beating like a drum. She stiffened a little and he released her immediately, almost as though he felt guilty about holding her like that — she sat up, trying to gather her wits back about her.
“Can you tell me what happened?” Ian asked, his voice gentler than she’d ever heard it.
“Bellina,” she breathed, knowing before she even spoke that it was the truth. “I dreamed — I dreamed of Bellina. The end. Her death. They — they burned —” and there it was, the memory burning as vividly in her mind as if she’d experienced it herself, of the bones of her ribs cracking under high heat, the flesh peeling back from her bones as life itself left her body…
“Shh, lass, shhh —”
She realized that she’d started whimpering like a wounded animal again, and Ian had reached to her, pulled her against his broad chest again. She took a deep, steadying breath, and the scent of him filled her head and made her dizzy.
“That confirms it,” she murmured, eyes downcast. “I’m — her. I must be. I remember — I can remember, now. I can remember her. I remember being her.”
Ian looked at her for a long moment, his face almost impossible to make out in the gloom. Seemingly satisfied that she wasn’t going to lose her mind again, he stood, offering his hand to pull her to her feet as well.
“Come on, now. I think you could do with some fresh air.”
But instead of leading her to the courtyard, he pulled a key out of his pocket and unlocked a door she’d assumed was an armory or storeroom or similar. At her look of confusion, he winked. “Donal got up here one too many times. We locked it for his poor mother’s peace of mind.”
The flights of stairs seemed to go on forever. Just when Cora was beginning to suspect Ian was trying to exhaust her body enough to send her unprotestingly back to bed, they came out on the battlements of the castle — and Cora gasped at the spectacular sight spread out before her. She ran to the very edge of the parapet, heedless of the height or the freezing wind that whipped her hair behind her, drinking the sight of the countryside in and letting it banish the hideous memory of the cell, and the dank corridors, and the courtyard through the flames…she could see only trees, farms, cultivated fields dotted across the natural beauty of the landscape. If she hadn’t believed she was back in time before, this removed all doubt — the village in the distance could never belong to her twenty-first century home. But it wasn’t the village she was staring at — it was the wild moors, stretching as far as her eye could see and further.
“Oh, Ian, this is beautiful,” she breathed.
He had moved up beside her, and she could see out of the corner of her eye that he was smiling too. “I come up here to think. It helps me get perspective on the crazy old world sometimes.”
The sky was gray, and the horizon was beginning to lighten. As she stood, the first sliver of orange appeared above the treeline as the sun began to rise. There was a strange noise distracting her from the majesty of the view — after a moment’s thought, she realized with a start that her teeth were chattering. She was freezing.
And gently, as though he’d been planning it all night, Ian wrapped her in the folds of the fabric that was draped around him — a kind of extension of the kilt he wore, in MacClaran colors. It was incredibly soft, and she let herself lean against his strong chest, warmed by the heat of his body. Her teeth stopped chattering almost immediately.
“Cora, I don’t know what to do about your dreams, or your connection to Bellina, or even how to get you home. But I know that you’ll figure it out. You’re an astonishing woman, Cora Wilcox. And if I can stand at your side and fight off your foes, it would be an honor.”
His heart was beating hard against her back and she could feel how deliberately still he was standing. The warmth of his body against hers — the beauty of the sunrise — the soft sensation of his breath ghosting across her ear…for once, she let herself stop thin
king, stop planning, stop analyzing.
And as though it was the most natural thing in the world, she turned her head a little — and found his lips waiting to claim hers in a kiss that lasted as long as the sunrise.
Chapter 15
It was incredible how quickly the days passed by now that Cora had duties and responsibilities within the castle walls. She was helping out with the new babies — one baby alone was enough work for an army, and with two of them to contend with, well, the work was never done. And when she wasn’t doing that, she was chasing Audrina around the castle. The cursed woman had insisted she was fine to get out of bed and move around, and even the strident instructions of her husband the Laird couldn’t keep her bedbound any longer.
“Maeve MacClaran, if you pick up a single piece of cutlery I will have you thrown to the dogs, you hear me?”
Her voice rang out across the dining hall in a tone that made the servants flinch and look around, utterly shocked to hear anyone dare to speak to their lady that way.
Audrina, by contrast, threw her head back and cackled, stuffing the last of her breakfast into her mouth. “Fine, you domineering old cow! But instead of helping with the cleanup, you have to let me come up to the tower. Come on! It’s been a week, I haven’t checked any of my supplies, and God only knows what that Ian did to my organizational system when he went gallumphing up there last week...”
“He did that to save your life, you daft thing,” Cora rejoined tartly. “Who knows what would’ve happened if I hadn’t had the supplies I did have. But he probably did make a pig’s ear of it, now I think of it. He was in an enormous rush.”
Audrina whined. “Please, Cora. Please. I’ll take the stairs slowly, I’m just losing my damn mind down here — and I’ve been wanting to show you what I’ve made up there ever since you got here!”
“Alright, alright. I can’t stop you, don’t know why you pretend I’ve got any say...”
They found their way up a staircase that Ian had told Cora was off-limits — but with the Lady of the Castle at her side, she wasn’t too worried about breaking that rule. Just as promised, there was a room in the tower — a room dominated by a huge cabinet that was full of the kinds of little bottles of salves and tinctures that Ian had brought to her in a huge armful.
Audrina was making distressed noises and sorting through the pile — Cora laughed as she realized that a pile had been left politely by the door. “Well, at least he returned the ones he left me...”
“He what? Oh, that ridiculous man,” Audrina said crossly, her arms full of bottles and pouches of herbs. “Honestly, this will take an hour at least to put back in order…provided he hasn’t broken or damaged anything, of course,” she added, darkly. “You’ll have to have a word with him.”
“Hmm? What me?”
A sly look came across Audrina’s face. “No reason.”
But Cora had other things on her mind than Ian. She hadn’t told her friend yet about the harrowing dream she’d had a week ago — the time had never quite seemed right. She was always either busy, or tired, or holding a baby in each arm, or surrounded by family or servants…it felt wrong to just chime in with a ‘by the way, I dreamed I was tortured to death, did that happen to you too?’
But now they were alone in the tower, and Audrina wasn’t occupied by anything too distracting, and Cora found the whole story rushing out of her almost completely unfiltered.
“ — and Audy, honestly, it was so real. So deeply, frighteningly real. I know — I know what it feels like, to be burned alive. I swear to you, I remember it as clearly as if it had happened to me last week. If not for dying at the end of it, I’d honestly think I had been transported to Italy and tortured overnight —”
“Italy?” Audrina said sharply.
“I think so. They were yelling at me in Italian, I think — not that I speak it,” she added, a little guiltily. Her Italian grandmother had tried to teach her a few words as a young girl, but she’d been more interested in chasing their elderly cat around the dining room table. “Recognized the Latin, though.”
“God, Cora, I’m so sorry. I know — I know what those dreams are like.” Audrina sighed, glancing out of the tower’s narrow window. “I remembered Maeve’s death through dreaming, too, and it wasn’t a pleasant way to go.”
“Let’s never die,” Cora joked, though it fell a little flat in the quiet of the room. A silence fell between them, solemn, though not uncomfortable…and then that look crept across Audrina’s face again, and she cast a glance at Cora from underneath her eyebrows. Instantly on her guard, Cora narrowed her eyes.
“You do that face when you’re up to something. What are you up to?”
“Oh, I just heard a few things. A week ago. You know, how you hear things — kitchen staff, the maids that have been looking after the babies, that Margaret is a wicked gossip —”
“Margaret is a perfect saint and I will not have her good name dragged through the mud to justify you being a tricky cow. What’s going on?”
“Rumor has it,” Audrina said thoughtfully, “that a certain handsome young tanist spent a certain romantic sunrise wrapped in the embrace of a certain dark-haired beauty from a foreign land...”
“Audrina James, you terrible gossip,” Cora said with as much dignity as she could muster when her face had blushed bright crimson to the roots of her hair. Curse that pale skin of hers! Why couldn’t she have inherited gorgeous olive skin from her Italian forefathers?
“Is it true? Are you two — you know, a bit of a thing?” Audrina demanded, eyes aglow and the medicine bottles forgotten.
Cora waved her arms noncommittally, completely at a loss for what to say. “I don’t know! Honestly, I haven’t spoken to him since we — you know.”
Audrina shrieked. “What! What did you do!”
“Kissed! We kissed, you filthy-minded — what did you think we did on the freezing castle roof?”
She subsided into a fit of giggles. “Oh. Still — kissing’s still good!”
“Thank you for your approval.” Cora rolled her eyes and Audrina sidled over to lean against her side and pull her into an affectionate half-hug. She was impossible to stay cross with — but Cora ruffled her hair up, just to prove she wasn’t that much of a pushover.
“Well? Do you think it’s serious?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want it to be?”
“Maybe?” She felt Audrina muffle a squeal of delight, and sighed. “It’s complicated, and stupid, and absolutely not something I have even the least bit of spare time for at the moment. But he’s — he’s kind, and good. And he tells good stories,” she added, smiling as she remembered the tour of the castle he’d given her.
Audrina was beaming at her. “Listen, Cora, he’s one of the good ones. Really. I’ve known him a couple of years and I couldn’t name a more loyal, dependable man — well, except Colin, but he’s spoken for.”
“Too tall anyway,” Cora said matter-of-factly, and Audrina thumped her in the arm in mock outrage.
“How dare you.” Her expression softened. “Cora, if something’s there, explore it. What’ve you got to lose? Worst case it goes badly and you can just —”
“Go back to twenty-first century San Francisco to avoid him,” Cora finished the sentence for her, grinning a little. Audrina hit her on the arm again, but she was grinning. “You stop it. You just want us to be sisters-in-law with hundreds of Scottish babies running about under our feet.”
“Ooh, you two would make some gorgeous babies. I’ve always loved hazel eyes.”
“Audy, we kissed once, please stop visualizing our children.”
“Okay. Okay. But promise me you won’t shut it down like you always do because you’re afraid of having feelings of your own?”
The woman had always had the knack of hauling out her deepest insecurities and anxieties like so much clean washing that needed to be dried. Cora heaved a deep and long-suffering sigh, which was their secret code language
for ‘fine then, but you have to leave me alone about it now.’ Humming happily to herself, Audrina returned to organizing her herb collection — and Cora watched her work, lost in conflicting thoughts of the cold, awful cell from her dream, and the warm, thrilling embrace of Ian MacClaran.
What a stupid time to get a crush like this. What a deeply inconvenient thing to happen to a person. What an absolute thrill, thinking of his warm hands and the gentle way he called her ‘lassie’. That first night on the road, how she’d hated it! Hated him — hated everything that was happening to her. Of course, back then she hadn’t known how close she was to reuniting with her best friend, to meeting her beautiful children and handsome husband, to exploring the magnificent castle she lived in... Hard to believe it had only been a week ago. So much had changed. She had her best friend back, and she was doing the work she loved. Compared to where she’d been in San Francisco a week ago, she had to admit that medieval Scotland wasn’t too bad. Perhaps she’d been a bit rash in deciding she was going to leave as soon as she could…she could stay a few months, at least. Maybe even longer. Long enough to see the babies toddling, maybe.
And hey, maybe Colin and Audrina would decide to have another one. They certainly couldn’t seem to keep their hands off each other. Could she really trust a trainee to handle a job of that importance — even a trainee she’d mentored herself? Of course not. She’d better stay — just a little longer. Just to see what was happening with her dreams, and to make sure Audrina was alright…nothing to do with a certain handsome young tanist who had been making eyes at her across the breakfast table since the morning they’d shared a week ago.
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