She turned in his arms and snuggled up against him, so happy in the knowledge that she was precious to this most amazing, complicated, masterful, vulnerable, overwhelming man. They'd marry soon. That is, if she had anything to say about it. She wasn't about to give him a chance to send her away. She hugged him in delight, her plans dancing in her head.
He tugged the covers over them both and soon was breathing the soft, even breaths of sleep. Julia smiled to herself as she gazed at the fading fire. Monty Gilette and his goons had done her a great big favor when they chased her into the Highlands. Into the Highlands and straight into love. Love and another feeling she had never fully known in her lifebelonging. She was the MacStruan's lady.
She no longer cared that she was living in the strangest community she could ever have found. She no longer cared that water came from wells and streams, and cooking was done over peat fires, and sanitation was a daily battle. She didn't care any longer if she was from the twentieth century, stuck somehow in time. She wasn't going anywhere. She'd found a love and a family to fill her heart.
A family! The idea brought another delightful shiver to her. What if a bairn was already growing inside of her? A wee MacStruan planted there by the MacStruan, her love?
She couldn't sleep. Despite all their exertions so far, she was too excited by these new feelings, her new future, to sleep.
Gingerly she lifted Darach's arm from where it was draped over her waist. She slipped out of bed and donned her slippers and Darach's big shirt. She breathed deeply of the scent of him that lingered on the garment. He was hers. She wanted everyone to know it, to stake a claim on him like a lioness defending her territory. She wanted to be at his side forever.
But first she was hungry.
She let herself out of the chamber and padded downstairs to the kitchen. Little Cat came to greet her, making it plain that nocturnal visitations were absolutely correct in her rules of etiquette, especially if there was a possibility that salmon would be forthcoming.
Julia scooped her up. LC's furry belly felt very round and firm. She held the cat up to look her in the eye. "Is that my cooking I feel? Or have you been kindling the common fire with some local tom?" LC remained silent. "Oh, so you're taking the Fifth on this one, huh?" Julia giggled. "Well, I'm not ashamed to admit that that's exactly what Darach and I have been doing. And I hope the fire catches quick." She put the cat down and rubbed her own flat stomach. "Quick, do ye hear?" she whispered.
I'm turning absolutely primitive, she thought with a chuckle as she lifted a covered plate of cheese and bread down from one of the shelves. She found a gorgeous red apple sitting on the tabletop, its bright skin beckoning.
She smiled. One of the lairds had probably brought it in for her. Ross, most likely. It was far too early for ripe apples, but he'd found one rogue apple and saved it for her. She did belong. She was beginning to believe it.
She lifted the round fruit and took a bite. It was the sweetest, juiciest
She didn't get to finish the thought. She felt a fire in her stomach and weakness in all her limbs. She collapsed and something hard connected with her skull. She had the brief, ridiculous thought that she really ought to clean the kitchen ceiling. Then her world caved into darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Six
''Darach? Darach!"
Darach muttered a curse under his breath and burrowed deeper into the bed. He reached out to pull Julia in closer to him. He found only a cold spot where she should have been sleeping.
He sat upright, shaking his head. "Julia?" he called, squinting around the room.
"It's Alasdair!" came a voice from outside the door.
Darach rolled from the bed and went to yank open the door. In the back of his mind, he noted something wrong about the door, but he was too groggy to bring it to consciousness.
"What?" he growled, giving his brother a baleful stare.
"Is Julia wi' ye?" Darach twisted around to search the room once more. He turned back and shook his head. "Is she no' downstairs in the kitchen? It's near mornin'."
"It is mornin', full. And aye, she's been in the kitchen, but she's no' there now."
"Why the hell are ye askin' me all this?" Darach padded over to retrieve his shirt from the floor. He noted that Julia's clothes still lay where they'd fallen the previous night, along with his plaid and boots. But he couldn't lay hands on his shirt. An odd feeling began to form in his belly.
"It struck me strange when I went into the kitchen a wee bit ago," said Alasdair. "There was a plate on the floor, broken, and a bit of food left out. Ye know Julia with her safety and sanitation creed," he said with a short laugh. "She could no more leave a broken plate on the floor and food out for the vermin than she could grow a beard."
Darach yanked on his boots and went to grab a shirt out of the chest. "Nay, she wouldna. And she wouldna go out dressed in my shirt alone. I latched the door from the inside when we retired last eve. It isna latched, so I know she left on her own."
Alasdair's face paled. "Jesu, Darach, ye don't think?"
Darach faced him as he tossed his kilt over his shoulder. "What is it ye're thinkin'?"
"Ye dunna think she's run off, do ye?"
Darach thought of last night and the way Julia had cherished him, welcomed him, and how she had insisted on being allowed to remain with him. There was nothing about her that showed she was false in any way. "Nay," he answered.
Alasdair looked somewhat relieved. "Good. I was afraid ye might be thinkin' she went off to the Morestons or flew out wi' the kitchen broom."
"Not in my shirt," Darach said, lifting his belt and sword. "And not wi'out first usin' the broom to sweep up that broken plate." He fastened his belt and tucked his knife into the toe of his boot. "But I'm thinkin' she is wi' the Morestons."
He was past Alasdair and headed for the stairs before Alasdair could say the name Darach didn't want to hear: Isobel. Images of the night Isobel was taken and the night he had borne her home had long since been seared onto his brain. This was too like that awful time. And he'd been fool enough to think it couldn't possibly happen twice!
Julia came to with a groan. Her mouth was horribly dry and bittertasting, and she felt as if a flock of vicious woodpeckers were slamdancing inside her skull. She tried opening her eyes.
She closed them against the glare of sunlight through mist.
"Darach," she murmured, putting out her arm to his side of the bed. She came up with a handful of leaves, moss, and dirt. "Whatwhere?"
She sat up, her ears ringing madly. "Darach, how did we get out . . . here . . ." Her words faded away as she opened her eyes to see that she was in the woods by the standing stones. "Oh . . . no. No!"
Things weren't right. The trees were all wrong. There weren't enough of them.
She had an acrid taste of citrus in her mouth, the scent of dying flowers in her nostrils. Both sensations were fading fast.
She'd gone traveling. Every sense she possessed told her she was back in her own time. Far, far away from Darach and the clan. "No," she whispered. "No, it's not time. I didn't mean for this to happen now. I just" She couldn't go on. A cry of grief came welling up within her like the rush of floodwaters.
She heard a footstep.
She scrambled to her feet, instantly wary. A man stood a few feet away from her. He was wearing a brown leather bomber jacket, blue jeans, and Nikes. If she had any doubt that she had traveled in time, he pretty much removed it.
He held out his hands. "Don't be afraid. I'm not going to hurt you."
She gasped. "You! You're the one who chased me! You shot at me! What are you doing here?"
"I've been following you. Are you all right?" He took a step toward her.
"Get back!" She glanced around, looking for a branch, a rock, anything to defend herself.
"Ma'am, I fired a warning shot to get you to stop running," he said, pausing. "You wouldn't stop when I shouted at you."
"Of course I wouldn't. I'm not stupid." She backed away,
wondering if she could outrun him. She was getting her Highland wind, but would that be enough? This guy looked awfully fit. Perhaps if she could lull him for a moment or two she could get a head start.
"So you're an American?" she asked conversationally. "You must be one of Monty's boys. I have to say you've been pretty smart in following me."
"Actually, Ms. Addison, I'm not here on behalf of Mr. Gilette. I'm with the FBI."
"Oh, sure," she said. "Right."
He reached into his coat pocket. She shrieked and ducked, hands over her head.
"Whoa! Lady, I'm not going for my gun. See?" He held up his hands. She saw a shiny card and a badge in one of them. He held it out to her. "My ID," he said. "Special Agent Williams. I've been tracking you for weeks."
Julia took the proffered identification between her thumb and forefinger, as if the little leather folder might explode at any moment. She examined it closely. She squinted back and forth between him and the photo on the card.
All her bones suddenly ached. She drooped as she handed back his ID. "Yeah, well, it looks good, but anyone can make up a phony ID."
He sighed. "Yeah. Ms. Coburn said you'd be hard to convince. She gave us a tape to play in case you weren't sure I was the real thing."
He took a minicassette player out of his pocket and handed it to her. She took it and sat down on one of the stones, her head aching. She was so tired, and she wasn't sure she cared much what happened to her right now. She wanted Darach. She wanted to go home.
Still, she was here. And she knew that she had unfinished business in this time. She looked at the object in her hand. The tiny machine seemed strange, somehow, though she knew what it was. She turned it over a couple of times, then managed to find the PLAY button and pressed it.
"Hey, Julia. This is Martine. Girlfriend, if you're listening to this, then I know Mr. Williams has finally found you. I know I sort of pushed you into running away after Gilette's men offed those guys in my kitchen. But the guys here at the FBI and the NYPD have convinced me it's best if you come home and tell all about what you saw. They'll see that you're protected every step of the way. They promised me that 'cause I said I'd test my new cutlery on them if anything happened to you. I think they took me seriously."
Julia stared at the tape. It was Martine's lovely, husky voice. But had they coerced her into making this? If they had, she'd take them apart, one piece at a time. The tape continued.
"Anyway. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking this is a bogus tape and I made it at gunpoint or they used a computer to put my voice on here. But listen to me, Jules. This is the real thing and I'll prove it. It's real 'cause only I would know what happened the night we snuck into Lido's. Remember? We used his PC to rewrite all Tony's menus so dinner the next night read like a roadhouse nightmare. I'll never forget your specialty of the day: Pork Rinds a la Maison Denny's. Nobody knows about that except us.
"So, go ahead and take a chance, Jules. For my sake as well as yours. And so we can put scum like Gilette away for good. Go with the nice man. He's harmless if you don't tick him off. Tell him all you know. And I'll have your chef's hat all clean and starched when you get back."
The tape clicked off. Julia stared at the cassette player, then stared at Agent Williams again. "All right. I'll tell you everything I know. Then I'm out of here. Capisce?" She gathered Darach's shirt around her and settled herself on the stone.
"You want to talk out here?"
She looked around. "Sure. Why not? We'll be okay unless the Morestons come along. But I'm pretty sure they're not going to. Not today."
"The Morestons?" He rubbed his cheek. "Ms. Addison, you're not involved in gang activities here, too, are you?"
She drew herself up in her best imitation of Mairi MacStruan. "I'll have ye know I"ve never been involved, as you call it, wi' any gang activity anywhere. I was an innocent bystander when that killing happened in New York."
"So you did see someone get killed?"
"I did. I was in the freezer, taking out Cornish game hens for that night's special. I looked out the window of the freezerit's a walk-into make sure that nobody was standing by the door, because I had an armful of cold birds and didn't want to clonk anybody coming out." She shivered at the memory.
"Would you like my jacket? I think it's going to rain and that . . . dress . . . doesn't look too warm."
She waved him off. "No, no. Now that I've been up here for a few months, I'm getting pretty used to it. But I'm always cold when I recall that last night in New York."
He looked puzzled. "A few months?"
"Aye. I've been here since early May. It's almost September now."
He sat down at last. "Ms. Addison. When I shot at you, did you fall?"
"Well, kind of. It was more like I went flying down the path over there."
"And did you hit your head or anything?"
"No. I had a couple of bruises here and there, but nothing on my head." She peered at him. "Why would you think I'd hit my head?"
He coughed. He looked around at the standing stones. He glanced up at the sky. He looked everywhere but at her.
"Mr. Williams?" "Ah, Ms. Addison, do you know what day it is?"
"Yes. It's August the twenty-seventh."
"No, it's May fourteenth. The same day that you drove your rental car off the road and ran into the woods. That happened only a little more than an hour ago."
She stared at him. Then she looked around herself. He was right: Everything was the same as when she'd left; he was the same; only she had changed. She struggled to make sense of it all. "But when I fell down the hill over there, I was taken prisoner by the MacStruans. I've been in their clan's village for weeks, months!"
He got up and paced about the circle. "I'm real confused here. I didn't see anyone named MacStruan or Moreston up here. Just you, Ms. Addison. I've been beating the bushes up here for over an hour, looking for you." He turned to face her, frowning. "But when I saw you running, you were wearing a sweater and a hat and pants. You disappeared from sight and when I circled back here, I saw you lying on the ground. Now you're wearing that shirt thing. And you say that you've been in some clan encampment?"
"Aye." She waved her arm to the left. "All this, from the stones to the wee loch on the other side of the village and then some, is MacStruan land. Or it was."
"Ma'am, this is a reserve. All this land is protected by the Scottish Natural Heritage Society." She rubbed her head. There was a hot, sore knot on the back of her head. She had been hit. Or she'd fallen. And she was deeply confused. She knew she had come back to the twentieth century, but no time had passed, as it had in the fifteenth.
She leaned forward. "Tell me something. Is there an inn in Kinloch village called the Blackwater Inn?"
"Sure. That's where you've been staying."
She rubbed her head. "Agent Williams, could we go there now? I think I need some time to figure out what's going on."
"Good idea." He offered her his hand to help her up. "Your car is pretty well enmeshed in that thicket you drove into. I think one of your tires is blown. But my car is only a short distance from there." He looked down at her slippered feet. "Are you okay in those?"
"Oh, aye. I wear them all the time." She looked up at him. "Or at least I think I wear them all the time."
They returned to Agent Williams's car in silence. She took her place in the passenger seat and buckled herself in. He climbed in, started the heater going, and reached under his seat to hand her a Thermos. "Here. It's tea. Good and strong. You could probably use something to brace you."
She filled the cup as the car warmed. As the heat from the tea seeped into her chilled hands, she thought of how this same tea had been made months ago and it was still warm. Or was it only a couple of hours ago that it had been brewed?
She screwed the lid back on the Thermos and set it down on the floor at her feet. She took a good long draft and swallowed. She looked at Agent Williams.
''Will you at least think about
going back to New York to testify?" he asked.
Julia thought hard for a moment. When she nodded, he put the car into gear and began to back down the dirt road. She hung on to her teacup, sipping quickly to avoid having her drink end up in her lap. A sharp pain entered her heart as they left the MacStruan borderlands. She knew she was leaving a part of herself in this place, with Clan MacStruan.
Calm down, Addison, she told herself. She wasn't going to give up. She'd take this opportunity to find out more about the MacStruans. She'd testify against Monty Gilette, just as she knew she'd testify against Craigen Moreston if she could. She'd see justice done. And then she'd hurry back to the Highlands, to the stones. They must be the portal between her time and Darach's, just as she had guessed that day with Alasdair in the library. She'd hurry back to Darach, with a satisfied mind and a clear conscience at last.
Darach rode as if speed were the only thing that could save his sanity. And maybe it was so, he thought. He had to get to Castle Moreston before anything could happen to Julia.
When Isobel had been taken he'd waited, refusing to bargain with Craigen. He'd waited until he'd known her life was in peril. And he'd been too late. Isobel's blood was on his hands. Please God, he wouldn't add Julia's to that stain.
He chafed at every rocky patch or stream that hindered him, forcing him to slow down lest the horse be injured. He wished for wings, like the fantastic machines that Julia had described to him. He'd soar over the trees, over the hills, and landlike an avenging eagleon the topmost tower of the Moreston stronghold.
But that was not to be. He pushed on, Alasdair and Niall at his heels, Big Dog racing to keep up. Only a few more miles, as the crow flew. He wouldn't allow himself even to think about what he might find when they arrived at that evil house.
Craigen Moreston stared at the woman lying on the bed. He lifted her limp hand and let it fall to the bed once more.
"Angus, ye idiot, ye've killed her," he said quietly. "Do ye think she's of use to me dead?"
Angus cringed at the white heat in his chief's eyes. "I didna hit her, Craigen," he said. "I swear! She was lying on the floor in the kitchen, just where ye said she'd be. There was no trouble takin her. She seemed asleep."
The Mirror & The Magic Page 26