The circle of knights flinched collectively as Circenn froze, his gaze fixed not on Duncan’s blade but high on the east face of the keep.
“She is walking calamity. The lass is absolutely without wits, I vow it,” Circenn said. He released a string of curses that caused even Duncan to raise a brow.
All eyes turned to the east where a slender woman clung to the stone wall, fifty feet above the ground. Knotted linens flapped in the breeze, dangling a dozen feet beneath her. It was obvious what she was doing, dropping down the dozen feet to the window beneath hers, preparing to enter it.
“Why does she not simply use the door, milord?” one of the Templars asked.
“I locked it,” Circenn muttered.
Duncan lowered his sword and cursed. “I should have known I didn’t beat you fairly.”
“Who is she?” another knight asked. “And what manner of dress is she wearing? It is as if she has naught a stitch on. You can see the separate curves of her … er …”
“Yes, who is she, milord?” a half-dozen knights echoed.
Circenn’s eyes never strayed from the slim figure descending the wall with no small degree of finesse. Clad in those strange trousers, one could indeed see every inch of her shapely derriere as her long legs stretched to find a toehold. He’d been holding his breath since the moment the flicker of linen had caught his eye. Now he expelled it in a gusty sigh. “I was not supposed to reveal her,” he lied swiftly, meeting Duncan’s gaze with a silent warning. He was momentarily appalled at how easily the lie had sprung to his lips. See, he berated himself, break one rule and they all go to hell. “She is cousin to the Bruce and I have been entrusted with her keeping. You will protect her as you would fight for Robert himself. Apparently she cares little for being secured. I suppose we may have to give her run of the keep.” With those words, he thrust his sword into his scabbard and stalked off into the ruin.
At the door, Circenn glanced over his shoulder at Duncan with another warning look that threatened grave repercussions if Duncan didn’t support his story and protect the lass. The look on Duncan’s face made him feel two inches tall. His friend and trusted adviser was gazing at him with astonishment, as if a stranger had taken over the laird of Brodie’s body. Duncan shook his head and his expression clearly said, What the hell are you doing? Have you lost your mind?
As Circenn entered the tower and took the stairs two at a time, he decided he very possibly had.
* * *
Lisa kicked her feet and gently swung herself into the window, exhaling a sigh of relief. With her daddy’s encouragement she’d taken extracurricular tumbling and rappelling through junior high and high school. Although this climb hadn’t looked too difficult, it certainly had been unnerving dangling above the courtyard, praying her knots would hold. She’d hoped the mist would take longer to burn off, and when the sun had begun to steam away the thick clouds she’d hurried, aware that the fighters below would have a clear view at any moment—if they looked up.
But Lisa was counting on the fact that people rarely looked up; the vast majority kept their gaze fixed firmly on the ground or on some nonexistent point in the sea of people surging down the city sidewalks. Only Lisa and some of the homeless people scanned the sky, watching the clouds break and scuttle. Dreamer, her father had teased. Only dreamers watch the sky. You’re a romantic, Lisa. Are you waiting for a winged horse to break through the clouds carrying your prince on his back?
After Eirren had left, she’d waited in her room for Circenn Brodie to come, and when he didn’t appear she’d grown increasingly restless. She needed to find the flask, and with her door bolted from the outside, she didn’t have many options. She’d looked out the window and discovered another one a dozen feet below it. She’d quickly decided to have a look around while it was possible.
And if he caught her? She didn’t care. The lord of the castle needed to know that she was not the kind of woman who would sit about waiting for his decisions, abiding his control. She’d considered her situation thoroughly, and yes, it appeared that she was truly in the fourteenth century. And yes, she had a mother who was dying in the twenty-first. She couldn’t escape the castle, but she needed to assert herself as an innocent woman who was due a modicum of respect, and whom Circenn should help return to her time. Doing nothing was simply not an option. The only way she’d ever been able to cope with the difficulties in her life had been to meet them head-on, eyes open, mind working to achieve resolution.
She shoved aside the tapestry and leaped down from the windowsill. Her boots hit the floor with a soft thud just as he burst through the door.
“What an idiotic, insensible, stupid thing to do!”
“It was not stupid,” she snapped, harboring a special hatred for that word. “It was a perfectly calculated and well-thought-out risk. Don’t even start. If you hadn’t locked me in, I wouldn’t have been forced to do it.”
He crossed the room swiftly and grabbed her. “Do you realize you could have fallen?” he roared.
She drew herself up to her full height, her back ramrod straight. “Of course I do. That’s why I knotted the linens together. For heaven’s sake, it was only a dozen feet.”
“And the wind could have snatched you off at any moment. While it may only be a dozen feet from window to window, it is a fifty-foot fall to the ground. Even my men wouldn’t do something so stupid.”
“It wasn’t stupid,” she repeated evenly. “It was an intelligent exercise of my skills. Where I come from I’ve done it before, and besides, I had no way of knowing whether you planned to feed me today or talk to me or listen to the fact that I desperately need to get back home. And while we’re on the subject of idiocy—is lunging at each other with sharp swords any less stupid? I saw what you were doing down there.”
“We train,” he said, lowering his voice with obvious effort. “We prepare for war.” If the man clenched his teeth any harder, his jaw would lock, she decided.
“And war is a particularly intelligent venture, is it not? I’m merely battling for my rights and trying to return home. I have a life, you know. I have responsibilities at home.”
He opened his mouth, then snapped it shut and regarded her for a moment. “What exactly are those responsibilities?” he asked finally, very softly.
Very softly from this man made her nervous, as did his hands on her waist, as did his moving so near that his breath fanned her face as she stared up at him. She felt suddenly cowed. Damn the man for having such an impact. She was not going to cry her heart out to this wall of warrior.
She took a deep breath and willed herself to calm down. “I know this is not the best situation for you but it’s not for me either. How would you feel if you were suddenly yanked from your time, thrown somewhere else, and held captive? Wouldn’t you do everything in your power to get your life back? To return to your homeland and win your battle for freedom?”
His jaw relaxed as he pondered her words. “You behave like a warrior,” he said grudgingly. “Aye, I would do everything in my power to return.”
“Then you can’t blame me for trying. Or for being here, or for complicating your life. I’m the one whose life has been messed up. At least you still understand where you are. You still have your friends and family. You still have security. All I know is that I must get back home.”
He was quiet for what seemed an interminable time, looking into her eyes. She could feel tension emanating from his body as he studied her, and she realized that this fourteenth-century warrior was struggling as hard as she was to figure out what to do next.
“You frightened me, lass. I thought you would fall. Doona climb my walls again, eh? I will find a way to give you some small freedom within the keep. I trust you were not trying to escape the keep itself; you are obviously intelligent enough to see you have no place to go. But doona climb my walls,” he repeated. Then he rubbed his jaw, looking suddenly weary. “I am unable to send you back home, lass, I told you the truth about that last night
. There’s something else you should know as well. The conversation you overheard before you attacked me last night was correct: I did swear an oath to kill whoever arrived with my flask.”
Lisa swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. He had come to kill her last night. Would he have slipped in stealthily and slit her throat if she hadn’t been awake and ambushed him first?
He looked directly into her eyes. “But I have made the decision to temporarily refrain from fulfilling my oath. That is not an easy thing for a warrior to do. We hold our vows sacred.”
“Oh, how gracious of you,” she said dryly. “So you don’t plan to kill me today, but you might just decide to tomorrow. Am I supposed to find that reassuring?”
“There are valid reasons why I swore my oath. And aye, you should be grateful that I am letting you live for the now.”
She would take what she could get. It wasn’t as if she had much to bargain with. “What possible threat could I be to you? Why would you swear an oath to kill a person you didn’t even know?” But even as she asked, she knew the answer to her question—whatever was in the flask was immensely valuable. Perhaps it was a tool to travel through time; that would certainly explain why people were casting curses upon it and willing to kill for it. Hadn’t he snatched it from her the moment she’d arrived?
“My reasons doona concern you.”
“I think they do concern me, when your reasons determine whether I live or die.” She knew that oaths were sacred to knights of yore. He had nothing to lose by killing her. She was a woman lost in time; no one would miss her. Keeping her alive created a liability for him, and what would prevent him from suddenly changing his mind and honoring his vow? She would not be able to stand living day to day, always wondering if this would be the day he killed her. She needed to gain insight into how this warrior thought so that she could plan a defense. “Why did you decide to break your oath?”
“Temporarily,” he corrected stiffly. “I did not break the oath, I merely have not filled it. Yet.”
“Temporarily,” she conceded. A ruthless murderer would not have bothered to have this conversation with her, which meant he had reservations about killing her. Once she knew what they were, she would exploit them to her advantage. “So, why? Is it because I’m a woman?” If that was the case, she resolved, she would be as feminine as possible from this moment on. She would drip vulnerability, bat her eyelashes, and ooze helplessness while doing everything in her power to steal the flask back and regain the upper hand.
“That is what I thought at first, but nay, it is because I doona know if you are guilty of anything. I have no problem killing a traitor, but I have not yet taken an innocent life and I doona wish to start now. But, Lisa, should I discover you are guilty of anything, no matter how small the transgression …” He trailed off, but his point was perfectly clear.
Lisa closed her eyes. So, he intended to watch her, study her, before he decided whether he would kill her. But she didn’t have time to be studied and watched. Her mother needed her now. Time was of the essence, and if she didn’t find a way back soon, she might lose Catherine without getting to say good-bye, and there was much she needed to say to her mother still. She’d been so obsessed with earning enough money to make ends meet, and with maintaining a cheerful smile on her face to keep her mom’s spirits up, that somehow they had quit talking. Both mother and daughter had retreated into cautious pleasantries because the reality was too painful. But Lisa had always thought there would be time, a few special hours, maybe a week, in which she stopped going to work, incurred more debt, and did what she most wanted—stayed at home with Catherine, holding her hand and talking until the very end.
She shook her head, bewildered and more than a little angry at what life had dealt her. How dare her life keep getting worse? She stiffened her spine and her eyes flew open. “I must get back home,” she insisted.
“It is impossible, lass. Returning you is not in my power.”
“Do you know anyone who can?” she pushed. “You must concede, it would be the best solution. All our problems would be solved if you simply sent me back.”
“Nay. I know no one who has such power.”
Did he hesitate briefly? Or did her desperate need to cling to hope conjure the illusion? “What about the flask?” she said quickly. “What if I touched—”
“Forget the flask,” he shouted, straightening to his full height and glaring down at her. “It belongs to me, and I have already told you that it cannot return you to your time. The flask is my property. You would do well to forsake all thought of it and never mention it to me again.”
“I refuse to believe there is no way for me to return.”
“But that is the first fact you must accept. Until you acknowledge that you cannot return home, you will have no hope of surviving here. One of the first lessons a warrior is taught is that denial of one’s circumstances only results in failure to recognize real danger. And I assure you, Lisa Stone, there is infinite danger in your present situation.”
“You don’t scare me,” she said defiantly.
He stepped so close that his body brushed against hers, but she refused to back up an inch. For all she cared, he could stand on top of her, but she would not yield ground; she had a feeling that lost ground was not something a person ever got back from Circenn Brodie. She returned his glare.
“You should be afraid of me, lass. You are a fool if you are not afraid of me.”
“Then I’m a fool. If I went through time once, it can happen again.”
“Would that it could, for it would certainly make my life easier. Then I would not be caught in this dilemma. But I doona know how to make it happen. Believe that much, at least.”
Lisa found herself studying his face the way he’d searched her eyes moments ago, seeking some way to gauge if he was telling her the truth. But she was intelligent enough to recognize that she was in the defensive position—he being the massive and invincible offense. She would be wise not to push him too far.
“Temporary truce?” she offered at last, not meaning a word of it, resolved to find the flask at the earliest opportunity and fight him any way she could.
“You will abstain from climbing my walls?”
“You promise you won’t try to kill me without first telling me, so I can have a bit of time to accept it? A few days would do,” she countered, postponing the possibility of death any way she could.
“Will you pretend to be cousin to the Bruce, as I told my men?” he said gravely.
“Will you promise that if there is a way for me to get back home, you’ll let me go? Alive,” she added, stressing the word.
“Say ‘aye’ first, lass,” he demanded.
Lisa held her breath for a moment, looking at him. She had little choice but to pledge this bizarre truce to him. If she tried to back out now, she suspected they’d be fighting again in a matter of moments. “Aye,” she mimicked his accent.
He studied her, as if measuring the depth of her honesty and commitment to her words. “Then aye, lass. If a way can be found to return you, I will help you do it.” The corner of his mouth twitched in a strangely bitter smile. “It will get you the hell out of my life and my compromised integrity,” he added softly, more to himself than to her.
“Truce,” she accepted. Integrity, she jotted in her mental file of significant facts about Circenn Brodie. It was important to him. She experienced a flash of hope: The precise knightly characteristics that might drive him to fulfill his oath—which included integrity, honor, protection of those weaker than he, and respect and chivalry toward women—could also be prevailed upon to prevent him from doing it. Killing a helpless woman would surely not be easy for him. She knew that sealing an agreement was no small matter to a knight, so she extended her hand for the seal of a handshake, not realizing how thoroughly modern-day the gesture was.
He eyed it for a moment, took it, then pressed it to his lips and kissed it.
Lisa snatched back her hand with a
scowl. Heat tingled where his lips had brushed her skin.
“You offered it,” he snapped.
“That wasn’t what I—oh, forget it,” Lisa floundered, then explained, “We don’t kiss hands in my time—”
“But we are not in your time. You are in my time now, lass. I cannot stress enough how important it is for you to remember that, at all times.” His voice was low, his words clipped as if he were irritated by her response. “And so there are no further misunderstandings between us, I will explain: Should you offer me a part of your body, lass, I will kiss it. That is what men in my century do.” His smile was mocking, couching a none-too-subtle challenge.
Lisa folded her hands behind her back. “I understand,” she said, casting her gaze to the floor in a deceptively submissive manner.
He waited for a moment as if not quite trusting her acquiescence, but when she didn’t raise her eyes again, he turned toward the door. “Good. Now we need to find you decent clothing and teach you how to be a proper fourteenth-century lass. The better you blend in, the less risk you will face, and the less risky your presence will be for me.”
“I will not empty chamber pots,” she said firmly.
He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.
* * *
Circenn returned Lisa to his chambers, had hot water sent up for her to wash with, then went off in search of clothing for her. Chamber pots, indeed. Did she think they were so barbaric that they did not have garderobes? Chamber pots were used only for nocturnal emergencies, primarily by children and the infirm, and in his opinion there was no reason why anyone could not manage to make it down the hallway, unless they were possessed of extreme laziness and lack of discipline.
He snorted, focusing his mind on the task at hand. He couldn’t give her run of the keep until he’d managed to hide some of those curves and long legs beneath the ugliest gown he could find. His men needed no distractions. He gathered the maids and instructed them to procure a gown, all the while brooding over what to do with her.
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