by Emma Prince
And if the MacBeans were truly bold enough, they would break not only their border, but might even try to claim Kinmuir as well. Though MacMorans had held this castle for several generations, one weak link in the chain could destroy all that. That was the way of things in the Highlands. Any sign of vulnerability, and the wolves descended.
Worry knotting his stomach, Eagan turned to one of the guards on the wall, preparing to give the order to organize a search party for the Laird. But just as he began to speak, Callum’s distinct whistle cut through the gloaming.
A guard farther down the wall sent an answering whistle, and several men began ratcheting up the portcullis. Eagan scanned the twilit moors again, his gaze fastening on a horse trotting toward the castle.
He breathed a sigh of relief when he picked out Callum’s dark form atop the horse, then frowned at the sight of the woman still sitting in the Laird’s lap.
Eagan hurried down from the wall. He’d just reached the yard when the gates swung open and Callum rode in. From the stiff way the Laird dismounted and lifted Caroline down, he hadn’t completely gone daft over her, thank God. Still, despite the falling darkness, Eagan didn’t miss the look that passed between them and the way the Laird’s hands lingered on her waist before he snatched them away.
“Laird,” Eagan said, clasping his hands behind his back. “I was just about to send a party to look for ye.”
Callum handed his reins to one of the lads who’d come running from the stables. “No need,” he replied brusquely.
Eagan opened his mouth to remind the Laird in the firmest terms short of crossing into disrespect that it wasn’t wise to ride after dusk with MacBeans growing more savage by the day—and the MacConnell alliance hanging in the balance—but Callum brushed by him, striding stonily toward the keep.
Caroline followed, though she walked much slower. As the Laird yanked open the keep’s double doors, light from the great hall spilled out into the yard, casting Caroline in a yellow glow.
A glow that clearly revealed lips that were swollen and red—from kissing the Laird no doubt.
Eagan swallowed hard. It was worse than he’d thought. He stood rooted for a long moment, until both the Laird and the lass had entered the keep and the doors had closed behind them. Inside, his mind churned.
As seneschal, it was his duty to ensure the smooth running of the castle. But more than that, he’d served the MacMoran Lairds, Callum and Duncan before him, for more than three decades. If Callum couldn’t see the danger he was in—the danger he was putting them all in—Eagan had to find a way to show him.
An idea taking hold, he hurried into the great hall. But he didn’t slow once he was inside. Instead, he strode to the west tower stairs. As he climbed toward the solar, he began composing a missive in his head.
Chapter Fourteen
At last the rains had come. The day after Callum and Caroline had visited the stones, the wind had whipped up and the skies had turned tumultuous. In the sennight since then, storm after storm had blown through.
Some were hardly more than a gentle caress, as if the clouds were reaching down to brush against the hills and moors, leaving them lightly misted and damp. Other storms seemed to attempt to pummel the land into submission with lashing downpours and howling winds.
Today was one of the latter. Callum didn’t mind, though. It suited his mood.
He stood in the yard before a dozen of his men, running them through drill after drill. Most hunched into their plaids, water sluicing from their beards, practice swords slipping from their numb hands.
Callum, on the other hand, stood only in his tunic, trews, and boots. He wanted to feel the pelt of the rain, the biting wind, the ache in his muscles as he moved through another sequence of sword maneuvers—anything besides the throbbing in his chest.
He willed himself not to glance at the topmost chamber in the east tower. The rains had driven Caroline away from her garden, and she’d spent much of her time in her chamber.
It was better this way. A few days past, when the downpour had let up to little more than a gentle mist, she’d checked on her plants and collected a few vegetables and pears for Tilly. Callum had strained so hard to catch a glimpse of her around the edge of the keep that he’d nearly taken a blow to the head from Bron’s wooden practice sword.
Aye, it was better now that he only saw her briefly for meals. Never mind the fact that she filled his mind at every other waking moment—and haunted his dreams as well.
And here he was thinking of her—her eyes like blue fire, her lips, her scent—yet again.
“I’ve never seen so many Highland warriors enfeebled by a wee bit of rain,” he barked at his men. “Taggard, if that sword slips from yer grip one more time, I’ll tie it to yer hands. Hamish, quit huddling under yer plaid like an auld woman and square yer shoulders against yer opponent. We willnae stop until every last one of ye—”
Behind him, the portcullis groaned and the gates creaked open.
“What the bloody hell?” he muttered, tossing aside his practice sword and stomping through the mud and puddled water toward the slowly opening gates.
Suddenly a lad on horseback shot through the slim gap in the gates, clumps of mud flying behind him. He reined in hard, sending another spray of mud around him.
“Who the hell are ye?” Callum snapped, holding up a hand against the rain of muddy water. “And what in God’s name are ye doing riding into my castle in this manner?”
It wasn’t until the mud had stopped flying that Callum realized the lad wore the patch of a messenger on the sleeve of his tunic. The lad, who couldn’t have been more than seventeen, was breathing nearly as heavily as his horse. His cheeks were flushed red, either from his hard riding or the cool weather, or both. Yet he hopped down from his horse with surprising agility and gave Callum a quick bow.
“Laird MacMoran?”
“Aye,” he replied warily.
The lad dug into the pouch on his waist, removing a small packet wrapped in waxed parchment. As he handed the packet to Callum, he grinned from ear to ear.
“I was tasked with delivering the news ye requested, Laird. Yer missive made it clear that ye wished to be informed with all haste about the birth of the King and Queen’s bairn. I’ve ridden straight from Dunfermline Abbey in only three days.” He lifted his chin proudly. “A journey that takes most messengers five.”
Over the sudden thunder of blood filling his ears, Callum distantly realized that the lad should be compensated for his extra efforts at promptness.
“Come inside and warm yerself, lad,” he murmured, staring at the packet in his hand. “Eat yer fill. Yer horse will be looked after as well.”
“Thank ye, Laird,” the lad said with another wide grin before darting off to the keep. Callum followed, but his feet moved far slower than the boy’s.
Good God. He hadn’t expected word of the Queen’s birth to arrive so quickly. The messenger had said it had taken him three days to ride from Dunfermline, which meant…After making the quick calculation in his head, Callum cursed. If the lad had left straightaway, which he likely had given his eagerness to deliver his news speedily, that would put the birth on the twenty-fifth of July.
Just what Caroline had predicted.
Nay, not predicted. If he was to believe what she claimed, she hadn’t guessed at the future. She knew it, because the events had already happened in her time.
It was only one detail, he reminded himself. Everyone knew the Queen carried another bairn. There were only so many days she might deliver to choose from.
Still, his pace quickened as he entered the great hall and strode toward the east tower stairs. He held the answers to all the odd riddles about Caroline—her abrupt and unexplained appearance at Loch Darraig, her strange accent, her peculiar words and tales—folded in his hands. It seemed only fitting to settle this with her.
Before he realized it, he stood in front of her door. He knocked once, and at her beckon, he stepped inside. She sat
on the large chest, which she’d pulled beneath her window. She turned from gazing down at the garden, starting slightly at the sight of him. Her lips parted to speak, but he held up the folded parchment.
“A missive with news from Dunfermline has arrived.”
She stilled, yet to his surprise, she seemed more resigned than anxious, as if she already knew what he’d find inside the missive. Aye, well, that was exactly what she claimed to know.
He removed the protective wax wrapping and quickly unfolded the parchment inside. He scanned the words scratched in ink, his pulse thudding in his ears. Then he read them again.
He had to swallow against a suddenly dry throat.
“It is,” he began, pausing to clear his throat. “It is as ye said. The Queen was safely delivered of a bairn on the twenty-fifth of July. A boy, to be known as James.”
When he lowered the parchment, she was gazing at him, her features unreadable.
“Do you believe me now?”
His last rational defenses made one final stand. But as he ran through each in his mind, they fell away. It might be chance or luck to guess the date correctly. And the bairn’s sex was an even chance, like the flip of a coin. Yet how had she known they would name him James?
As far as Callum knew, James wasn’t a family name for either the King or the Queen. The name Robert was, of course, but they’d given their first-born son that moniker. And to their second they gave the name David. John was the Queen’s father’s name, and Robert III’s name before he’d taken the crown. But no Jameses came to mind on either side of the royal family tree.
“I…I dinnae ken what to think.”
But a voice whispered in the back of his head that he did know. Mayhap he’d known all along. He’d thought her daft at first, but never that she was lying. She’d been steadfast in insisting that she was…from the future. Even now, his mind lurched over the very idea.
Yet it would explain so much. Her lucid descriptions of strange lands and peoples, their ways and habits as natural and familiar to her as his were to him. The revealing garments she’d arrived in, unlike aught he’d ever seen.
And her insistence that she find a way to return home. How well would Callum have fared if he’d arrived in her time? The idea was so hard to grasp that it made his head spin.
“How…how can this be true?” He glanced down at the parchment, then back at Caroline. “How can ye have fallen back…how long did ye say?”
“More than six hundred years,” she breathed. “And I don’t know.”
She stood from the chest and walked slowly to her bed, sitting and crossing her legs under her. As if he were sleepwalking, Callum followed, lowering himself onto the edge of the bed opposite her.
“I don’t understand any of it,” she went on. “Like I told you, I was in the present—my present—and my sisters and I jumped from the top of Leannan Falls. All of a sudden they were gone, and I was spinning like crazy, and then I popped up in Loch Darraig.”
“And ye dinnae have the faintest idea how it happened?”
“No,” she replied. “The loch doesn’t seem to have anything to do with it, though. Leannan Falls might be the key—or maybe I opened some wormhole or vortex or something and the falls isn’t the answer either. But I at least have to return to the falls. It’s my best chance of getting home.”
When her eyes met his, they were clouded with a tempest of emotion to rival the storm outside.
“Will you keep your promise to take me there?”
Her words were like a punch to the gut. He’d made that pledge never thinking to have to keep it. But he was still a man of his word—a man of honor.
“Aye,” he said, his voice low and tight in his throat. “It is too late in the day to depart now, but come tomorrow, we will set out for the falls. Rain or shine.”
This would be it, then. Her last night under his roof. They would have nearly a sennight’s worth of travel to reach the falls, but then she would be gone from his life.
He wanted to curse whatever magic or spirit or demon had brought her to him, only to draw her away so soon. But the truth was, he was no longer sure any length of time with Caroline would be enough.
Except forever.
He instantly quashed the thought and the emotion that rose with them. She’d made it abundantly clear that she wanted to return to her sisters and her own time more than aught that remained here for her.
A heavy silence fell over them, broken only by the drone of the rain outside. He nearly stood to leave, steeling himself with a few terse words about being ready for their journey tomorrow, but then he stopped himself.
If he could trade his pride to spend a few more hours at his mother’s bedside, or share another dram of whisky with his father, he would. But they were both gone. His time with them had been fleeting, just as it was with Caroline. Yet she still sat before him, flesh and blood, warmth and light.
“Would ye…” He cleared the tightness from his throat. “Would ye tell me something of yer time?”
Her dark brows shot up. “Really?”
“Aye.”
She gnawed on her lower lip for a moment. “What do you want to know?”
Callum leaned back against one of the bed’s posters, drinking in the sight of her across from him, so bonny and bold. His wee enchantress. His heart.
“Anything. Everything.”
Chapter Fifteen
Caroline stifled a yawn with the back of her hand. It was the first time in nearly three weeks of living in 1394 that she truly missed coffee.
She and Callum had stayed up almost the entire night talking. He’d been endlessly curious—if at times disbelieving—about the strange picture she painted of the future.
She’d been careful to consider what she told him, lest she unintentionally change the course of history. But she saw no harm in describing airplanes, indoor plumbing, modern medicine, and computers, though she’d struggled with the last a bit since in truth, she didn’t really understand them herself. She’d spoken of the ever-shifting powers of politics, and even the fact that a new continent, her future homeland, would be discovered across a vast ocean in a hundred years or so.
When at last the sky had begun to lighten with the first blush of dawn, he’d left, urging her to get at least a few winks of sleep. They had a big day ahead of them.
Judging from the cheery sunlight streaming in through her window, it was mid-morning now. But instead of feeling excited to finally be setting off for Leannan Falls, sadness sat like a stone in her stomach.
She was leaving.
She’d kept herself busy for a few minutes that morning by dressing and gathering a couple of extra gowns and chemises, as well as her old clothes, for the journey. But once she’d packed them into a leather satchel, she had nothing else to do. The sparse little chamber seemed to stare back at her, wondering what she was still doing there.
Straightening her spine, she grabbed the satchel and descended the stairs to the great hall. Breakfast had already been served and cleared away, so the hall was empty and quiet as she crossed to the double doors. The yard outside, however, bustled with activity.
A half dozen MacMoran warriors stood around their mounts, tightening buckles and adjusting straps on saddlebags. Callum stood in the center, holding the reins of a dappled gray horse that looked more like a pony compared to the men’s giant steeds.
He’d promised to pick out the most docile, sweet-tempered mare for her. Caroline had asked for the oldest, most pacified horse, but Callum had insisted that although she would need a tame mount, inexperienced horsewoman that she was, the animal had to be spry enough to make the week-long journey ahead of them.
Though she longed to go straight to Callum, she wanted to say goodbye to the garden first. She slipped around the edge of the keep and through the wooden gate, leaning against the stone wall for a moment to gaze upon the little patch of heaven.
Despite several brutal downpours, the plants seemed to be thriving. Everythin
g glistened with yesterday’s rain in the morning sun, making each leaf and flower look like a jewel.
Oh, she would miss this place—the castle and the sprawling wilderness surrounding it, yes, but most of all this tiny corner of wild, chaotic, overgrown life. Unable to help herself, she plucked one last errant weed before letting a breath go and turning to join Callum.
But just outside the garden’s walls, Tilly stood waiting, Margaret right behind her.
“Safe travels, mistress,” Tilly said, wringing her hands in the folds of her apron. “I packed enough food for over a fortnight, but dinnae let the men take more than their share. We cannae send ye home hungry.”
Tilly patted Caroline’s arm lightly, but then she made one of those Scottish noises of frustration in the back of her throat and abruptly pulled Caroline into a snug embrace. “Thank ye, lass. I’ll do my best to keep up the garden. I willnae let it get into such a bad state again, I vow.”
“I’ll help Ma, as well,” Margaret said, giving Caroline a soft smile over her mother’s shoulder. “We all do so appreciate yer hard work, mistress.”
Caroline found that her throat was suddenly too pinched to do more than murmur her thanks to both women.
When Tilly released her at last and stepped back, dabbing at her hazel eyes, Caroline’s gaze landed on Eagan, who stood back from the others in the yard, observing. His hands were clasped behind his back, and though his features were bland as ever, she noticed the faintest curve to his lips behind his neatly-trimmed beard.
The seneschal had never warmed to her, but that wasn’t her problem anymore.
“Bye, Eagan,” she said, giving him a nod but not slowing as she made her way toward the waiting men.
“Safe travels, mistress,” he said evenly.
When she reached Callum, she let herself drink in the sight of him. Now that the rains had been chased away and the sun shone cheerily overhead, his hair glinted like polished mahogany. He’d tied it back at the base of his strong neck for the journey.