RESCUED BY THE HIGHLANDER

by Preston, Rebecca

  “So, you met the Sidhe?” Brendan enquired, his eyebrow raised. “They brought you through?”

  “I guess so,” she said hesitantly, glancing at Maeve for confirmation. The woman shrugged a little, a smile dancing around her eyes. “We’re not really sure.”

  “She just bloody got here, Brendan, let her adjust.” Donal punched his friend on the shoulder — not hard. “There’s a lot to get used to.”

  “Oh, aye. Of course,” the man said apologetically.

  “It’s alright.” Anna laughed. “I wish I had more of an answer for you. But it’s been a strange night. I got home from work, I read for a while, I chased a man out of my house with a broadsword, I went to bed, I woke up at the bottom of a lake.”

  Malcolm was chuckling. “A broadsword? Can a tiny little thing like you even lift a broadsword?”

  Anna narrowed her eyes and looked straight at him until his chuckle died away. She let the silence hang in the kitchen for a few minutes before she responded. “I could lift you if I needed to,” she said, low and flat. “And if you doubt my strength, I’d be more than happy to take you on in an arm-wrestling competition.”

  Malcolm laughed — then his laughter died again at the look on her face. Donal and Brendan were exchanging glances, half amused and half worried. This was important, Anna knew — important to make a point like this, to stake her claim. You taught people how to treat you, she knew that. Little barbs like that one about not being able to lift a sword, they may seem like innocent jokes, but if you were to let them go by, you’d wind up in a place where nobody thought you capable of anything. And if she was in the sixteenth century, she was going to have to fight all the harder against the unfortunately still-prevalent assumption that women were lesser than men.

  Malcolm was clearly trying to decide whether he should take her up on her challenge. There was an uncomfortable energy in the kitchen, that was for sure. Good, Anna thought to herself. Discomfort was good. It was important that he knew that it wouldn’t feel good to ridicule her like that — that the result of thinking that she was weak was this kind of awkward feeling. Finally, he broke eye contact with her, waving off the challenge with a vague comment about an old shoulder injury that would prevent him from doing his best.

  “Scared of losing, are you?” Brendan asked quietly, his dark eyes twinkling at Anna as he spoke.

  She hid a grin. She liked Brendan.

  Donal cleared his throat. “Well. We’ll all talk more in the morning, I’m sure, but for the time being, I’m sure Anna’s in need of some rest. Your room is all ready,” he told her, gesturing out toward the entrance hall. “Maeve can escort you.”

  “Aye,” the woman agreed, smoothly moving to Anna’s side. “I’ll show her the way. You ought to get some rest too, Laird Donal. You’ve had an eventful night yourself.”

  “Good meeting you, Anna Clarke,” Brendan made a point of saying as the men moved out of the kitchen.

  Presumably, given their clothing, he and Malcolm were headed for a shift on the wall — and her suspicions were confirmed when she saw another half-dozen men waiting in the entrance hall for them in similar armor. A round-the-clock guard on a castle like this, in peace time? It didn’t make sense… unless, of course, it wasn’t other human beings they were watching for, but things like her. Anomalies. Strange creatures, coming through the burgh at the bottom of Loch Ness… her head was spinning again, and she took a deep breath and followed Maeve up one of the winding spiral staircases. Donal had disappeared up another one — she assumed he had his own quarters somewhere toward the top of the castle. If she had her pick, she’d want a window as high up as possible, too.

  Malcolm was looking after her as she climbed the stairs, a brooding expression on his face. She turned back and gave him a wink before she moved out of sight.

  “Careful, there,” Maeve said softly. “He’s a good man, my son, but he doesn’t like his ego being threatened.”

  “All the more reason to call him out,” Anna said, surprised by Maeve’s rather deferential position on the subject. But the older woman didn’t respond — just led her down a long, cold corridor. She realized with a start that she was still wearing Donal’s cloak.

  “I should give this back,” she started, lifting a corner of the fabric with her hand — then a huge yawn took over.

  “Sleep first,” Maeve said, amused. “Plenty of time for that in the morning.”

  Chapter 14

  Maeve ushered her into the little room at the end of the corridor. It was about the same size as her bedroom at home, she realized with some amusement — her apartment really was tiny, but she’d thought a guest room at a castle would be smaller, somehow. There was plenty of space to move around — it was clearly intended as a medium-to-long-term residence, with a big chest of drawers for clothing storage standing by the wall, as well as a little table with a couple of chairs. There was a fireplace, too, with a freshly laid fire crackling away, banishing the chill from the room that had been starting to sink into her bones in the corridor. Anna shrugged the cloak from her shoulders and held it for a moment before carefully draping it across the back of one of the chairs.

  “I’ll leave you to rest,” Maeve said gently. “You sleep as long as you like. I’ll send one of the servants up mid-morning with something to eat for you, but don’t feel like you have to get up, alright?”

  “Thank you, Maeve,” Anna said sincerely, feeling a little bit guilty for getting annoyed with the woman for not taking her side against Malcolm’s teasing. No need to start picking fights the minute she got here. She’d held her own against Malcolm, dismissed his insinuation that because she was a woman, she was bound to be weak — that was all she needed to do. Word would get around, she knew. It always did. She’d trained several groups of recruits now, and Army guys were the worst about that kind of thing. Every single group she’d dealt with started out cocky and arrogant, doubtful of her abilities because of her size and her gender. And every single group figured out, within a week or two, that she wasn’t to be trifled with. It would be the same here. Maybe it’d take a little longer, she thought, frowning slightly — after all, it was the sixteenth century. How many strong female role models had these guys run into? Donal seemed respectful enough of Maggie… but she had the ‘village witch’ thing going.

  Well, she had time, it seemed. Plenty of time to prove herself to these men. That was, if she couldn’t find a way home quickly. Maeve bid her goodnight and moved away, the wooden door creaking shut behind her. And for the first time since she’d awoken at the bottom of the lake, Anna found herself alone.

  She sat on the edge of the bed, bouncing a little to get a sense of how soft it was — it seemed surprisingly comfortable, and definitely warm, covered as it was in what looked like a huge pelt from some creature. They lived on the edge of a lake, she reasoned — they probably knew how to keep a bed nice and warm. For the first time since she’d gotten out of the lake, she finally felt warm again — properly warm, warmed all the way through. She hoped she wouldn’t get a cold from her expedition into the lake, but she didn’t hold out much hope. She’d been soaked through and shivering for a very long time. Sleep would help, she thought, throwing back the covers and climbing into the bed. A good night of sleep worked wonders for healing and the immune system, she knew that.

  Just as she’d thought, the bed was incredibly comfortable. Soft and warm, it seemed to cradle her sore and aching body, lulling her toward sleep. But for the life of her, she couldn’t seem to drop off to sleep. Her thoughts, now undistracted by people around her, started to tick furiously, wrestling with the central problem of where she was and what she was doing here. Time travel? Faeries? Really? Was she just going to accept that those were the explanations for where she was, for all the strange people she’d met? She was meant to be a rational woman. She’d studied science, for God’s sake, was she really going to just fall for all this superstition? Her exhaustion wasn’t helping her think at all — she kept picking
up threads of reasoning then dropping them, too tired to chase them through to their conclusion.

  There must be a rational explanation, that was it. There was a lot going on in science these days, right? She’d occasionally see intriguing headlines as she scrolled through her Facebook feed… God, what she wouldn’t give to have her phone on her right now. Just to check out a few things… the sci-fi books that her brother loved so much started running through her head. Wormholes, that was a thing, right? Strange passages through time and space that people in space shows often used to get around? Could there have been a wormhole from her bedroom to the bottom of Loch Ness? She didn’t know enough about wormholes to figure out whether that was a good explanation or not. Some kind of … temporal instability? Maybe a black hole? She knew black holes could mess with time… but she also didn’t know how. And how could a black hole have gotten into her bedroom without destroying the entire planet? It wasn’t likely.

  Then why was she here? How had this happened? Could it be possible that it was all just some extended psychotic break she was having? Maybe she was dead. Maybe this was what the afterlife actually was. Her head was spinning, and she tried to get a hold of herself. She wasn’t going crazy — that wasn’t possible. She knew her own mind far too well to let herself believe that anything was wrong. Everything inside her head was exactly as it should be — she knew what stress did to her, she knew what extreme situations did to her. You didn’t go to war and back twice without a fair bit of self-knowledge. So, she knew that, given the circumstances, she was reacting just as she always would. It was the circumstances that were the strange part, not her response to them. She was responding just fine.

  And she’d seen guys go psychotic, lose their minds under pressure. They got erratic, got angry, got frightened — the world stopped making sense. As strange and ridiculous as what she’d been told was, she had to admit, it had a certain internal logic to it. And internal logic was not a common symptom of psychosis. It had also all been going on far too long to be a dream — her dreams were never this realistic, this detailed. And her body hurt too much, too, she thought with a blearily little smile. Pain was never a factor of her dreams. Even when she was injured, her dreams were pain-free. No. She was awake, she was coherent, she was sane. It was the world around her that was strange.

  To her shock, she could feel the panic rising in her chest — and her nerves were so overstrained that it was a huge effort to fight it down. But what was wrong with that? There was nobody here, nobody to put on a show for except herself… and she knew herself well enough to know that a bit of panic was natural. So, she let it well up for a moment, took a few deep shuddering breaths, and let herself cry. She’d never have cried in front of another human being — even her family had only witnessed Anna’s tears a handful of times — but it felt good to let go, to let herself succumb to the panic and the misery and the homesickness for a moment. She let herself cry until the sobs started to recede under their own power, then she took a deep breath and wiped her face, wrinkling her nose at the damp spot on the pillow.

  It felt good. Felt cathartic. Felt like she’d worked through the knots of panic that she couldn’t ease with rational thinking. Sometimes you just had to have a good cry. But she wasn’t going to make a habit of it. She had to be sharp, had to keep her guard up. People here were likely to assume she was weak if they caught her doing something like crying — and though she knew that crying wasn’t a sign of weakness, the rest of the world, unfortunately, hadn’t quite gotten that memo left. God, she knew guys who’d been a little too honest on their psych profiles when they were trying to join the Army, guys who’d been knocked back just for admitting that they got anxious sometimes. So much stigma, still, about emotions. But she was hardly in a position to try to change the world, was she? She just had to take it as it was, for now. And that meant putting on a tough guy persona, even if she didn’t feel it all the time.

  She shut her eyes, focusing on her breathing. She was feeling a little calmer now, but the worry was still gnawing at the corners of her mind. Time to relax. Sleep would help — a lot of wounds, physical and psychological, got knitted up by sleep. And in the morning, she could look into what was happening — have a good look around the castle, talk to some occultists, see if she could piece together a scientific explanation for her apparent abduction by mythical creatures. There had to be a scientific explanation, right? She had a twenty-first century scientific education. She could do this. She could explore the castle, get some expert insight from the occultists, then piece together an explanation for her presence here that didn’t make her feel like a crazy person on the verge of snapping like a twig. That was a good place to start.

  After all, hadn’t there been mysteries like this for the entire course of human history? They’d thought the whole universe revolved around the Earth for a long time, hadn’t they? That must have been a strange one to puzzle out, as evidence that that wasn’t the case began to pile up. Strange things happened all the time. It was a big and complicated world. But there was always a rational explanation — always a way to make sense of things. All Anna had to do was sit tight, hold on to her wits, and figure it out. She was surrounded by kind people who wanted to help her — even if they were a bit condescending about it, she thought darkly, thinking of Donal’s disbelief that she trained soldiers, and Malcolm’s joke that she probably couldn’t even pick up a broadsword. Nevertheless, they were allies.

  And more importantly, she had herself. And that was someone she could count on.

  Chapter 15

  Anna didn’t even remember falling asleep. All she remembered was grabbing hold of the comforting thought that no matter what happened to her in this strange new place, she knew she could always rely on herself. That was something the military had taught her, something she hadn’t really known properly until she’d seen combat. Her fellow soldiers were like her brothers and sisters, of course, and she trusted her commanders with her life, every time — but in the end, when bombs were going off and the adrenaline was pounding, the only person you had to count on — the only person you could really, truly rely on — was yourself. She’d come to trust herself completely, overseas. That wasn’t something that everyone could say for themselves — but she absolutely could.

  So, it was no wonder that she slept pretty well. If there was nothing else to say for her current situation, at least she was far away from the terrible man she’d dated — the asshole who’d dared to turn up on her doorstep, two years after they’d broken up. Well, if it was true that she’d travelled back in time, there was good news — the jerk hadn’t even been born yet! She laughed a little bit as she woke up, slowly, a little bit of sunlight creeping through the window and falling across her face. It couldn’t be that late, she thought muzzily, sitting up in bed. No — this room was in the east wall of the castle, it seemed, and it was the rising sun that had woken her up. Well, that was only what, three hours of sleep? Four? Definitely not enough for her weary bones.

  But years of training — as well as active duty — meant it wasn’t so easy for Anna to just drop back to sleep once she was awake. Too much muscle memory screaming at her to get up, get ready, make her bed and get going. She made herself sit still, at least, staring out of the window. They must have been on the western side of the Loch, because the sun was rising over the water, and although Anna had never been much of a landscape person, she had to admit — it was breathtaking. The way the sun sparkled on those dark waters almost made up for her having nearly frozen to death or drowned in the lake, she thought dryly.

  But now the sun was up, she could see more of the surroundings, and that was what she was really interested in. Anna craned her neck, shuffling a little closer to the window and tugging aside the curtain to get a better look. Sure enough — no sign of civilization. Just rolling hills all the way to the horizon — what she could see of the land around the lake was, anyway. She supposed there was a chance that there was a modern city hidden just behind
where the wall cut off her view… but somehow, she doubted it. Like it or not, she was going to have to accept that she’d travelled through time. To Scotland. Medieval Scotland. Sixteenth century… idly, she wondered what year.

  It was strange, how reconciled she felt to where — and when — she was. The magic of sleep, perhaps. When she’d gone to sleep, she’d been on the verge of panicking about it all. She’d even cried — very unlike her, she thought with a bit of embarrassment. But the subconscious had a wonderful habit of working through hard things when you were asleep. She murmured a quiet thanks to her own brain, then felt immediately ridiculous.

  What was she going to do with herself? She tried for a few minutes to go back to sleep, but even though her body was still sore, and her mind was still a little frazzled, that old habit just would not lie down and die. Perhaps she’d try to have a nap a little later, she thought with resignation, sitting up and swinging her legs around to the edge of the bed. Her bare feet felt very cold on the stone floor of the castle, and she wrinkled her nose at the prospect of jamming them into boots again without socks. Maybe that could be a task for the day — buying, borrowing or bartering for a set of clothes she could call her own. Unless the faeries were willing to let her duck home to grab a few of her own things… I miss my Doc Martens, she thought wistfully. Not that the boots Maggie had lent her didn’t have their own particular charm, of course, but nothing compared to your own boots.

  One day, in basic training, she’d accidentally grabbed a similarly sized fellow recruit’s left boot instead of her own. So, it was her right boot, and his left boot — and the same for him, she supposed. It had been agony, wearing someone else’s shoes — and the drill sergeant hadn’t let them correct the mistake once they identified it. Ever since, she’d been strongly protective of her own shoes. What would happen to them, she wondered briefly as she laced up the unfamiliar boots? What would happen to her little apartment, to all her things? It was a terrible shame she’d left the broadsword up on the wall, she thought to herself with a chuckle.