Impossible. No matter how odd the lass seemed, he’d never witnessed such magic himself. “Surely, ye canna mean it? How can something so impossible be so?”
“How can the love of two people create another? I doona see how that is any less impossible than this. I have seen magic in me life, son. It does exist, and there is a piece of it held captive in yer home. We are nearly there. I think it best if ye unload me horse and leave for home at once, for ye owe the lass a grand apology.”
* * *
McMillan Castle
The smug, beautiful bastard lied. It was the fourth night since he locked me inside this room, and he’d still not returned. Not only that, but his idea of me being “well taken care of” differed from my own. Breakfast consisted of some sort of roasted bird. Unless, it poured out of a green box and tasted like sugary apples topped with milk, it didn’t constitute breakfast.
Lunch and dinner could hardly be called that. Even if they’d been decent meals, they were still two meals less than what I usually ate a day. I liked to eat and made sure that I could keep doing so by running my fair share of miles everyday.
The exception being the last four days I’d spent locked up inside this hole. Perhaps hole was a bit extreme. I’d slept in few rooms as pretty and the bed, despite being springless and slightly lumpy, I found quite comfortable. All that aside, any room where I had to go to the bathroom inside a wooden bucket and use scraps of cloth as toilet paper, I could label as a hole.
I spent the first day in denial, clinging on to my hope that all of this was just some sort of nerdy role-playing game taken to the extreme, but by day two, I could no longer deny the unexplainable presence of the rock inside my dress and abandoned that notion. Only two other possibilities remained.
One: the impact of the water and the bump on my head had caused brain damage, and I truly was crazy. Two: Bri, Morna, and Jerry all told the truth.
The first possibility surprisingly seemed less plausible to me than the second. After the first day, my headache was gone and I seemed to be having no sort of other cognitive difficulties. No slurred speech, no dizziness or confusion. Nothing. Only a small scab remained to remind me of the injury.
The second possibility, while admittedly insane, was now what I accepted as reality.
Bri was smart, and not the sort of person to easily fall under the influence of others. I’d used the assumption that Bri was crazy to rationalize the truth of something I simply couldn’t wrap my head around.
Truthfully, I was no stranger to magic, the paranormal, or whatever you wanted to call it. In the end, my absolute certainty that I had the rock in my possession and two things that happened to me in my past finally made me accept the fact that I truly had landed in the seventeenth century.
The first happened when I was eighteen. On the day of my high school graduation, I walked up the steps to the front door of the only real home I’d ever known to collect my foster mother, Lilly, for the ceremony. With my hand on the knob, I twisted it, but for some reason the door simply wouldn’t open. I tried over and over, but it wouldn’t budge. Suddenly, I heard a voice, clear as day as if someone were right beside me. I glanced over my shoulder but found no one. Again I heard the same words. “Don’t go into the house alone. Call Jep and wait for him to get here.”
I started to cry. Since the door wouldn’t budge, I did as the voice insisted. Once Jep arrived, the door opened with ease. Inside, we found the remnants of a break-in, with things smashed and broken everywhere, anything worth value stolen.
We called the police immediately, and Lilly arrived at the house with them. Thankfully, she’d been out getting her hair done during the robbery. From a surveillance camera of a neighbor’s house, the men had been armed and the time stamp showed they were still inside when I arrived at the front door. The thieves fled out the back.
The other incident occurred in college. During Winter Break, Lilly took me to Wales. Her parents moved from Wales to the States when she was a little girl, and she’d always wanted to make a trip back there to revisit her childhood. It was the most terrifying experience of my entire life.
We spent the day driving through Snowdonia National Park and decided to stop for the night at a small family run inn in a nearly deserted town. With the hotel virtually empty, we were the only one in a room on our side of the old house.
The evening passed normally and both of us slept like exhausted and weary travelers. But in the morning, things changed. We packed our bags, rolled them to the door, and opened it to see a figure staring at us not ten feet down the hallway.
The ghost stared at us as we stood frozen in the doorway, seemingly deciding if she approved of our presence. Neither of us breathed. After a few very long seconds, the woman turned and walked down the hallway, evaporating in the distance. If Lilly hadn’t seen it also, I would have been certain I imagined it.
Both instances couldn’t be explained, yet I knew with absolute certainty that both happened. Confident in the reality of those instances, I didn’t see how I could continue to deny the possibility that something truly unexplainable happened here as well.
If I believed without doubt in guardian angels and ghosts, why couldn’t I believe in time travel?
Chapter 11
I woke on the fifth morning with a fully renewed attitude about my current situation. Sure, it terrified me to realize that I’d somehow ended up in a time nearly four hundred years before I was born, but I also had hope that when I was ready to return, I would be able to. After all, I had the rock, didn’t I?
According to Morna, the entire purpose of the rock depended on it. So far she’d told the truth about almost everything. Skipping the rock indeed sent me back in time and the rock magically returned to me after I tossed it, just as she’d promised it would. Bri, however, Morna lied about. While Baodan confirmed that she lived in this time as well, the innkeeper made it seem like I would find her here at McMillan Castle, and Bri wasn’t. She probably didn’t even know that I was here in this time with her.
I twirled the rock in between my fingers. It scared the bejeezus out of me to find it inside the pouch, but now I prized my possession of it as my lifeline back to home. As long as I had that with me, I saw no reason not to enjoy my time spent with Bri in a place and time most people would only ever dream of visiting. I might as well enjoy this place as well, until Baodan took me to Conall Castle.
I slipped out of the gown I’d been given to sleep in and reluctantly crawled back into the now-dry gown that I traveled here in. I found it uncomfortable, which made me self-conscious. I was a jeans and a t-shirt, sweats and hoodie kind of girl. Dresses were no less than a tolerable form of torture.
I spent half of an entire day trying to figure out how to do up the laces myself. While I figured out how to keep the dress up, it was sloppy work. As long as I wouldn’t reveal myself to the man sitting outside my door, I felt satisfied.
Walking across the room, I knocked at the door and tried to rouse Eoghanan. I knew he sat just outside the door. He spent every moment leaning against the doorway since Baodan left. Until now, I’d only managed to get a few words out of him. I intended to change that today.
“E-o, look. In case you haven’t noticed, your name isn’t the easiest to pronounce so I’m just going to call you, E-o. Is that cool?” As expected, he didn’t answer, and I slumped down in the doorway and sat with my shoulder leaning against the hinge. “Come on. I know you’re out there. I see you every time a meal’s brought, or a bath, or they come to empty my chamber pot. You haven’t left, not even at night. I can hear your snoring through the door. Open up. I won’t try to leave, I swear. I just want to talk.”
He groaned, annoyed, but still said nothing.
“You have no idea what a talker I can be, and I have nothing to do in here. So you can either open up this door and talk to me for a little bit or you can sit there with the door closed and listen to me talk at you all day long.”
“Ye doona need the door open to
speak to me, lass. If ye insist on doing so, talk as ye are now.”
I shook my head, stopping when I realized that, of course, he couldn’t see me do it. “Nope. I’m afraid that’s not going to work for me. I like to speak to people face to face, not through big wooden doors.”
He laughed, but I could tell I made him uncomfortable. I really didn’t care.
“I doona think Baodan would want me talking to ye, lass.”
“I don’t give a damn what Baodan wants. I’m being held in here like a prisoner when I’ve done nothing wrong. The least you could do is open the door and talk to me.”
I heard him stand and I smiled. I could out-pester anybody. Although I knew I shouldn’t pride myself on it, I usually got what I wanted.
He shouted and I jumped, but it wasn’t at me. He told the guards at either end of the hallway to stand down. “If she tries to run, stop her lads. I only mean to talk to her.” After a moment of no movement, I heard him slip the key inside and open the door.
Seeing me sitting on the floor, he did the same, mirroring my position so that we faced each other, each of us leaning against the inside of the door frame.
“Thank you.” I smiled and leaned across him to peek down the hallway, but he quickly grabbed my arms and pushed me back inside.
“Did ye no just tell me that ye wouldna try to leave? I’ll no hesitate to shut the door again and leave ye to talk with only yerself.”
“I wasn’t trying to leave, I just wanted to see what it looked like. All I saw was the upside-down view. It’s beautiful.”
He nodded and looked up and around him as if he hadn’t taken the time to appreciate its beauty in some time. “Aye, lass, it is. Now what do ye wish to speak about?”
Where to begin? Anxious to ask many things, I decided to start with what pressed at the forefront of my mind. “Why have you been sitting outside my door? Caring for me and being a creepy stalker are two very different things.”
“I’m sitting out here for yer protection.”
“Why?”
“Because ye doona want the men of this castle to enter yer room.”
I crossed my arms but quickly uncrossed them, remembering Baodan’s reaction. The fact that I allowed Baodan to see, but wouldn’t let Eoghanan game me a moment of pause.
“What does that mean? Are you saying that I need to be protected from you?”
He shook his head and looked down at his hands awkwardly. “No, lass. I swear to ye I willna hurt ye.”
“Then who? The other brother? Niall, is that his name?”
“Ye are no afraid to say whatever ye think. ’Tis unusual in a lass.”
“Sorry.” I wasn’t sorry at all. I had no filter, and I didn’t imagine that would change anytime soon.
“Doona be sorry, I doona suppose anyone ever has to fear that ye are pretending to be someone ye are no and that’s more than most people can say.”
“Yes, it’s a problem. What’s Baodan’s problem with you?”
He hesitated as if deciding to share that information, then relented. “He believes that I am responsible for a great hurt, and foolishly he doesna trust me.”
E-o wouldn’t hurt me. I’d spent all of five minutes with him, and I would stake my life on that fact. A pain in his green eyes made my chest hurt, but a deeply rooted kindness lived within him. A kindness I expected he’d been unable to express for some time. “He’s wrong about you.”
He looked up from his hands at me and smiled, obviously surprised. “Why would ye say that, lass? Ye doona know me at all.”
I shrugged my shoulders and grinned at him. “I have a knack for that sort of thing. I’m good at reading people.” I thought of Brian and grimaced. “Well, most people anyway.”
He laughed and I saw his smile for the first time. Large and crooked, his lower lip stuck out in the most adorable way. What could he possibly have done to make Baodan despise him so much?
“Ah, well we all have pasts, doona we? By the look on yer face, I can see ye are thinking about someone in yer’s.”
“Yes, but it’s nothing worth thinking about. Can I ask you a question?”
“Aye, for ye will anyway.”
“You’re not really his brother are you?”
He turned quite pale but recovered quickly. It couldn’t have been that big of a secret. I’d not met Niall yet, but Baodan had dark hair and eyes. E-o looked more like he could’ve been my brother, with the same red hair and skin tone as myself.
“I am in every way that matters, lass, but ye are right. I am no his brother by blood.”
He didn’t seem to want to elaborate so I didn’t press him. “Can I ask you just one more? Last one, I swear.”
“Aye.”
“Is Baodan wrong about Niall as well?”
Anger flashed across his face, and I knew his answer before he spoke. “No, if anything, Baodan doesna realize how dangerous Niall can be.”
“And that’s why you sit outside here?”
He nodded somberly. “Aye, but lass,” he paused and reached out to grab my hand. “I’m afraid I willna be here tonight. There is something I must attend to before Baodan’s return. I shall lock yer bedchamber door, and Rhona will have the only other key. I am sure that I have been over-cautious. Doona worry. The guards will be outside yer doorway as well.”
Suddenly chilled, I nodded and pulled my hands away from him to run my hands up and down my sleeves as I watched him stand to leave. “What is it that you have to do?”
He shut the door, and I could hear his footsteps fading away along with the sound of his voice. “I’m afraid that I canna tell ye that. And lass…please doona call me E-o, I’ll teach ye how to properly say me name next time I see ye.”
I laughed as his footsteps retreated, any worry that I’d felt due to his concern for my safety gone as quickly as it came.
* * *
Eoghanan reached the alchemist’s cottage by sunset. As he slipped off his horse, he led the beast to the back, securing it safely out of sight so that none would see him.
He could see the old man working inside. He was alone, just as he’d hoped. The man appeared small and frail. It wouldn’t be difficult to overpower him, but Eoghanan hoped he wouldn’t put up a fight. He wished to hurt the alchemist as little as possible.
Peeking around the corner of the home to make sure that no one watched, he stepped inside without knocking. Approaching him from behind, he raised his fist and brought it down hard upon the back of the man’s head.
One blow was all it took. Catching him as he went limp, Eoghanan gathered his target and strapped him to the back of his horse then rode in the direction of McMillan Castle’s dungeons.
Chapter 12
My stomach growled loudly, reminding me that it was past time for another measly meal of some sort of meat I would unlikely want to eat. Usually food arrived right at sunset, but the sun set hours ago, and my stomach rumbled in response to it.
Just as I contemplated whether I should holler at one of the guards to see what the hang up was, I heard the key jiggle inside the lock. I moved to a small table against the farthest wall of the room and sat with my back to the door to await my food.
The door latched into place, and I froze in my seat. Rhona never stayed long enough to bother closing the door. I knew before I turned that it was not her in the room with me. I’d nearly forgotten Eoghanan’s warning and the concern on his face at having to leave me alone but, as rocks settled in my stomach, I knew who I would find as I twisted in my chair.
“You must be Niall.”
He nodded as he moved to set the food down in front of me and then went to lean against the wall beside the small table so that he looked right at me.
I expected him to be tall and menacing. Instead, he stood much shorter than both Baodan and Eoghanan and his face was unusually pretty for a male. He was good looking, no doubt, and he knew it too. He displayed it in the way he held himself. I suspected he denied himself little.
“Aye
, lass, right ye are. ’Tis a pleasure to finally meet she who has all in the castle busy with gossip.”
Unlike the ease I felt with both other brothers, I held my breath in Niall’s presence. I wondered if I would have felt the same way if Eoghanan withheld his warning. Regardless, something inside told me to tread carefully. “Where’s Rhona? She usually brings me my meals.”
He waved his hand dismissively and stepped closer in my direction. “Eat, lass. Rhona dinna feel well, so she went abed and left yer meal in the hand of her kitchen maid. I told her I’d be happy to take it to ye as I was anxious to introduce meself. When I arrived, I found that both the guards were no feeling so well either. Seems something has spread throughout the castle.”
“Ah.” I ate slowly, hardly looking up from my plate in the hopes that he would take his leave. Inside, I knew better. If he had any intention of leaving, he wouldn’t have closed the door behind him.
He waited until I finished. With every bite, I could see his eyes raking over me. All my hunger vanished, and each bite was a struggle. I no longer wished to eat.
“Thank you for the food.” I stood from the table and moved to the door to open it for him. “I’m quite tired. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll retire now.”
I only just cracked the door open before his long strides met me as he pushed it closed with his hand. “Just a moment. I willna trouble ye long.” He reached to grab a small satchel hanging off of his kilt and dropped it onto the table where I’d just eaten. The bag jingled with coins, and I swallowed a hard lump in my throat.
“What’s that for?”
“’Tis yer payment, o’course. There is talk around the castle that yer trade is in the company of men. I doona usually have use for such women, but I heard ye were verra pretty. And ye are.”
He stepped closer and grabbed me by the arm. He touched me gently, but a threat lay within it, a dare to pull away.
Morna's Legacy: Box Set #1 Page 55