“Nothing like that. I love Baltimore, but… no, it’s not like that,” she said simply, trying to summon up some homesickness for her hometown and failing utterly.
“Well. Not so bad to be stuck in the dark ages with me, now is it?”
They’d reached the bottom of the stairs, and she couldn’t help but grin at that, feeling her heart pick up at the way his steady gaze had settled on her. There was a strange tension in the silence between them, and she looked away, trying to think of something to say to break the silence but completely at a loss. Finally, he cleared his throat.
“Anyway. I’m late for my shift on the walls. Can I walk you back to your room?”
“I’m not sure,” she admitted, a little embarrassed. “I’m not actually sure where it is.”
He laughed, a sound she was already getting attached to. “Ah. Well, I’ll help you find Anna or Nancy, then. I’m sure they’ll be able to guide you back home. Dinner will be soon,” he added. “I’ll walk you back to the dining hall, I’m sure we’ll be able to find one of them there.”
As they headed down the stairs again, she was surprised to find them among considerable crowds of people, all clearly headed in the same direction they were. Dinner was a group event, it seemed. As they continued down the spiral stairs, she could smell the distant but delicious smell of cooking — fish, she suspected from this distance, a suspicion that grew stronger as they got closer and closer to the dining hall. Well, she loved seafood.
Brendan sketched a neat little bow to her in the hall, and she frowned. “You’re not coming in for dinner?”
“We eat on the walls,” he said simply, shrugging. “Blair usually sends some servants out with meals for us straight after dinner.”
“You do that every night?”
“Aye. Part of the job,” he shrugged. “It’s not so bad. Dinner with a view,” he added, grinning. “It was good to meet you, Elena Cross. I hope I’ll see you around the place — and if there’s any way I can help you settle in, let me know.”
What did he mean by that, exactly? she wondered as she watched him head across the hall to the cold walls outside. They’d been perfectly courteous words — but there had been such a strong flirtatious energy in his voice that she couldn’t help but try to read more romantic intentions into them. And to her surprise and chagrin, she didn’t mind at all… if anything, she liked the attention, the way her heart was fluttering at the way he’d looked at her. Get a grip, Elena, she scolded herself — not for the first time that day. She was still tipsy from the wine and overwhelmed by her journey. It was absolutely not the time to be thinking about romantic entanglements with men she’d just met… even if they were very handsome, very charming and just her type.
“Elena!”
She turned, surprised to hear her name in this strange place — and smiled to see Anna and Nancy, rushing up to meet her. Her eyes widened a little — Nancy had been sitting down when they’d met but standing up Elena could see the unmistakable outline of a small but noticeable baby bump on her slim figure. Nancy followed her eyes and laughed, one hand going to her belly.
“Did you not notice before? I suppose you had other things on your mind.”
“Congratulations,” Elena offered, blinking. “Did that… did that happen here?”
Nancy laughed again — it was an infectious laugh, crinkling up the blonde woman’s pretty face. “Yes! I got married — well, not long after I got here, was it, Anna?”
The dark-haired woman nodded, smiling. “Not long at all. So did I,” she added, shrugging.
“You’re next,” Nancy cackled, elbowing Elena in the ribs. She was one of those people who was automatically comfortable with physical contact — Elena found it charming, but she’d never been able to do it herself. Touch just felt too… intimate. Besides, a lot of police training was about avoiding contact if at all possible. It was easier to keep control of a situation from a distance.
“I can barely get a grip on where I am,” Elena rejoined, a little weakly. “Hey — I wanted to apologize, for how rude I was earlier.”
Anna waved a hand dismissively. “Absolutely no need, babe. We’ve both been there, remember? We get how overwhelming it is.”
“You weren’t that rude, anyway,” Nancy said happily, taking her arm. “But are you feeling better about it now that you’ve had some time to think?”
They headed into the hall together, Anna steering them toward the back of the room — and Elena realized with surprise that she was leading them to the table on the high platform, the one she’d assumed was for the Lord or the King or whoever. Were they going to sit with the King of Scotland? She looked down at her tunic, frowning — she had no idea if she was even dressed for the occasion or not. Nancy was wearing a dress — should she be wearing one too?
“I feel a bit better,” she explained once they were seated, not sure how much of her rather tumultuous afternoon she should share with her hosts. After all, they’d only just met… but at the same time, she felt like she owed it to them to be honest. They were the only women she’d met who knew where she was from, who seemed to have experienced first-hand what was happening to her. She wanted to keep them in the loop. “I have to admit… I did spend a bit of the afternoon drinking.”
Nancy giggled, covering her mouth with her hand. “That makes sense.”
“What did you drink?” Anna frowned. “Blair watches the cellar like a hawk.”
“Some kind of cooking wine from the pantry,” Elena admitted.
Anna cackled, clapping her hands over her mouth to stifle the sound.
“You’re a terror.”
“I was under a lot of stress! It won’t happen again,” she added. “Just needed to settle my nerves.”
“That’s completely fair,” Anna said. “Hey, I did my fair share of drinking when I got here. It’s a big adjustment.”
“Did you see much of the castle?” Nancy wanted to know. “It’s a big place. I was a little worried you might get lost, but —”
“No, I got a tour, actually.” She felt herself blushing a little — why was that? “One of the guards showed me around.”
“Oh, really? Who?” Anna was leaning forward, keen interest in her sharp eyes.
“Brendan?”
“Didn’t take him long,” Nancy murmured under her breath, and Anna elbowed her in the ribs, both of them clearly fighting to keep something off their faces.
“What? What are you both looking at each other like that?”
“It’s nice! It’s good that you ran into him. He’s a good man,” Anna said, a deliberately innocent expression on her face. “A good friend of mine, actually.”
“Yeah, he mentioned you a few times,” Elena said, trying not to sound as curious as she felt about the nature of the relationship between them. “I thought you two might’ve been —”
“Oh, no. My husband’s the Laird,” Anna explained. “Actually, speak of the devil…”
Elena followed Anna’s gaze, turning around in her chair to see a tall, well-built man with blond hair and clear gray eyes climbing up onto the raised platform to the table. He had a sword at his hip and wore a shade of tartan that Elena recognized from around the table, and his bright eyes were settled on her with open curiosity.
“Elena, this is Donal Grant, Laird of Castle Urquhart,” Anna said, a little formally.
Elena rose to her feet, extending her hand to shake through force of habit — then immediately regretted the gesture. Was that the traditional greeting here? She shot Nancy a worried look — should she have curtsied instead? But Donal simply took the hand in his, a smile on his face as he shook it.
“And this is Elena Cross, the latest addition to our merry band of time-orphaned woman,” Anna added with a laugh in her voice.
“A pleasure to meet you, Elena. You’re most welcome to Castle Urquhart. I’m sorry I couldn’t come to meet you earlier — business in the village,” he explained.
That delightful Scottish accent a
gain — Elena found herself lulled by the pleasant vowels (though part of her preferred Brendan’s slightly lower, rougher voice.) He moved past her, taking a seat beside Anna — but not before he’d pulled the slight woman into a hug and pressed a kiss to her forehead. They made quite the pair — he loomed over Anna, but somehow, despite her short stature, she managed to look perfectly at ease and at home by his side.
“Elena’s been on a tour of the castle this afternoon,” Nancy said brightly. “She’s settling in much better than I did.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Elena said, frowning a little. “It’s still such a huge shock… but thank you for your hospitality,” she added hastily, feeling awkward. How was one supposed to address a Lord? No, that wasn’t the word they’d used — Laird. He was a Laird.
“You’re welcome to stay as long as you need or want,” Donal said, his gray eyes keen. “Castle Urquhart has something of a tradition of taking in people like yourselves… people chosen by the Fae.”
“Chosen?” Elena stared at him, taken aback by this new take on her presence here. “What does that mean?”
Chapter 13
“Donal, don’t stress her out,” Anna said in a low voice, elbowing her husband. “She’s got enough on her plate.”
“No, it’s okay,” Elena said, leaning forward and narrowing her eyes. “I know a little about the Fae already. What do you mean, chosen?”
Donal spread his hands, shooting his wife an apologetic look. Elena appreciated Anna trying to look after her, but her curiosity for the time being was much stronger than her sense of anxiety at how much she had to learn about this place. “Well, the Fae are a complicated people — difficult to understand, more difficult still to predict, for all that our scholars do their best up there.”
“I saw the library,” Elena said, thinking of the huge shelves groaning with books. “It’s a lot of information.”
“Mm, and half of it’s unreliable,” Nancy mumbled under her breath.
Anna stifled a giggle as Donal shot the unrepentant blonde a sharp look across the table.
“What? It’s just not a very efficient way of storing information! We learned so much about goblins last year, enough to know that half the books have inaccurate information in them, but the scholars won’t dream of doing any kind of a cull.”
“That’s their business, not yours,” Donal said testily. “At any rate… what we do know, about the Seelie Fae at least, is that they’re benevolent. We don’t understand them too well but based on all my experiences with them — and the experiences of my family,” he added, looking thoughtful, “they are interested in human beings. They like us, in their way. And they want to care for us. So when they send things through the gate… it’s usually for a purpose.”
Elena felt a chill run down her spine. “So I was sent for a reason?”
“It’s possible,” Nancy said, her mouth full of soup. “I’m pretty sure they sent me through because of my scuba gear. The burgh got jammed open and goblins kept coming through — if it hadn’t been for me, nobody would have been able to get down to the bottom of the lake and close the Burgh over.”
“And what’s a Burgh? I’ve heard that word a few times.” She felt her palms itching — part of her wanted to be writing this down, to keep notes of the strange things she was learning. Was there a medieval equivalent of the cheap notebooks she bought by the dozen from Staples? She certainly hoped so.
“The Burgh is a gateway between words,” Donal explained. “It joins the Faewild to our own reality. The opening on our side is at the bottom of the Loch — which is why the Castle stands where it does. Well, the Castle itself was built for another purpose, but… we’re here now.”
“The bottom of the Loch.” Her terrifying ordeal in the black water came back to her, and she shivered. “Not very convenient.”
“We’re glad it is where it is,” Donal shrugged. “If it were in the forest somewhere, it would be far too easy for Unseelie Fae to sneak out. This way, at least, it’s a difficult enough journey that most Unseelie think twice about making it.”
“But I didn’t try to go through any… weird portals, or whatever,” Elena said, thinking back to what she’d been doing before the water had come rushing in around her. “So how did I get through a door from the faerie world to sixteenth-century Scotland?”
“The Seelie Fae,” Anna explained, leaning across the table. “Did you happen to see some long, tall figures who seemed like they were made out of light?”
“Yeah — like humans, but taller, kind of stretchy. Standing around you, talking in these beautiful voices, something a little like Gaelic but not quite…” Nancy’s eyes were far away as she remembered.
Elena frowned, thinking back. “Now you mention it — yeah, for like a second, I saw something like that. I just assumed it was a dream or a hallucination or something, brought on by nearly drowning.” She shuddered, thinking of the black water, pressing down on her. “I had no idea which way was up when I was down there. If it hadn’t been for that woman, I would have drowned, I think.”
Donal looked curious. “Woman?”
“Yeah, there was a woman with me.” Suddenly, there were three sets of eyes boring into her. Elena put her fork down, a little taken aback. “Didn’t you see her? I’m pretty sure she was with me on the docks when I passed out. I just assumed she was someone from the castle.”
“Nobody’s mentioned going for an impromptu midnight swim and rescuing an American woman,” Anna said blankly, the surprise clear on her face. “Are you sure it was a woman? Nessie helped me and Nancy make it to the surface when we came through.”
“Well, I was okay to get to the surface because I had my gear,” Nancy pointed out. “What Nessie did was scare the absolute living daylights out of me, mostly.”
“No, she was a human woman, I’m pretty sure,” Elena insisted. “I think I’d remember meeting the Loch Ness Monster.”
“Aye, you probably would,” Donal said thoughtfully, leaning in. “Do you remember anything else about this woman? What did she look like? How old did she seem? Are you sure she was human?”
Elena thought back, trying to pick through the exhaustion and confusion of the memories to construct a clear picture of the woman who’d helped her to the surface. She knew as well as anyone that eyewitness testimony was notoriously unreliable, especially when stress was a factor… or darkness, or near-death experience… still, she tried to remember what she could, not wanting to disappoint the Laird who was staring at her so intently from the other side of the table.
“I didn’t get a good look at her,” she said, spreading her hands helplessly. “She had long hair… it was in a braid, a bit like this,” she added, gesturing to her own hair. “It looked black, but it was dark, and we were both dripping wet, so I don’t know that it was actually black. She had pale skin — again, moonlight, I don’t know if that’s the case. She was definitely wearing some kind of skirt, too — it went right down to the ground, even covered her feet.”
“Interesting,” Donal said thoughtfully. “How old did she seem?”
“Oh, not old. My age, maybe.”
“That’s not Maggie,” Anna said, a note of worry in her voice as she looked up at Nancy. “And Maggie would have told us if she’d pulled someone out of the Loch.”
“I could have dreamed it,” Elena said, not liking how worried her new friends were looking. “I wasn’t in a good state of mind… it’s possible all of it was a hallucination. Or maybe she was one of these… the Seelie Fae you mentioned?”
“The Sidhe don’t come to our side of the Burgh,” Donal said simply. “And if she’d been one of those, you’d have known about it. They’re beings of pure light… there would have been no mistaking it. Probably would have woken half the castle, too,” he added with a smile.
“I’m happy to investigate,” Elena shrugged. “I don’t have many other skills — and I wouldn’t mind spending some time in that library.” Something about the books was ver
y soothing… paperwork felt the same no matter what century you were in. “I could ask around, see if anyone knows her, start putting together a profile —”
“You really are a cop, aren’t you?” Anna laughed, her eyes amused. “How exciting. No wonder Brendan likes you.”
“Oh, you’ve met Brendan? Watch out for that one,” Donal said, with the tone of someone revisiting an old in-joke.
Anna rolled her eyes.
“I’m missing something,” Elena said, raising an eyebrow, and Nancy snorted.
“Nothing important,” Anna said firmly, moving the conversation on before Elena could learn any more information.
She tried to fight the feeling of disappointment in her chest. Why am I so interested in Brendan? It’s just because he is one of the first people I’ve met here, that’s all, she told herself, trying to dismiss the feelings. That was all. It was nice to make friends, it was nice when someone extended kindness to you when you were having a bad day. Her poor, overstressed mind had just seized on the first person to offer her kindness, that was all.
They passed the rest of the evening chatting away, getting to know each other a little — and Elena was surprised by how normal it was already feeling, to sit at a medieval table, eating medieval food in a medieval hall. After a long day of hovering on the edge of a panic attack over all this craziness, it felt good to just sit and eat — and the food was delicious. There were mashed potatoes with lashings of butter and salt, perfectly cooked fish caught fresh from the lake outside, and a whole range of perfectly roasted vegetables.
“I often think Blair’s some kind of Seelie Fae,” Nancy said, sighing contently as she finished her second plateful. “It’s an absolute privilege to eat for two when it’s her cooking.”
Elena felt a twinge of guilt, thinking of the bottle of cooking wine she’d thieved from the kitchen earlier that day. Embarrassing, to have needed the alcohol to get by… she made a resolution that she’d make it up to the kitchen staff, somehow. Whether that was with a few hours of peeling potatoes, or by some other means, she’d find out. In the meantime, though… she felt a huge yawn coming and stifled it with some difficulty, feeling the weight of exhaustion slipping over her shoulders like a warm cloak.
Swept By The Highlander: A Scottish Time Travel Romance-Highlander Forever Book 3 Page 8
