by Lynn Kurland
He spent the rest of the evening curled up with her on the sofa with her head on his shoulder and his hands to himself. He was fairly sure he’d slept, because he snorted himself awake. She was indiscreet enough to refuse to ignore that.
“Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty.”
He grunted. “You could have refrained from comment.”
“You tried to talk me into caddying for you, probably in the snow.”
“I bought you a car.”
“And forced me to drink whisky-laden tea.”
He smiled and suppressed the urge to tip her face up and kiss her. He thought that perhaps it would behoove him to keep his hands and his mouth to himself.
“Nathaniel?”
“Call me Nat.”
She laughed, the barest huff of a laugh. “Do I know you well enough to call you Nat?”
“You drooled on my shoulder and you’ve tempted me to hand you the keys to my car. I think that entitles you to quite a few liberties at my expense.”
She sighed deeply. “Thank you. It was a very lovely day.”
“My pleasure.”
“How do you say I’m not a demon in Gaelic?”
He froze. He sat up and shifted to look at her. “What?”
She looked at him, clear-eyed. “You heard me.”
“I heard you, but I don’t want to answer you.”
She took a very careful breath. “Please.”
Damn it to hell, what was he supposed to do besides answer her? He cursed a bit, then spat out the words as quickly as possible.
“Chan eil mi a deomhan.”
“Don’t suppose you know a more vintage rendition of that.”
“Don’t suppose I would tell you if I did.”
She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Go home, Nathaniel.”
“Emma—”
She stood and held down her hand for him. “I’m tired.”
He let her pull him to his feet, walked to the door with her, then paused on the threshold. He looked at her seriously.
“Emma, don’t.”
“I’m not going to do anything,” she said seriously. “Are you crazy? I’m going to stay right here and watch as many versions of Pride and Prejudice as I can find. Come back for breakfast.”
“Emma—”
“Here’s your coat, lad,” she said, shoving the same into his hands.
She all but shut the door on his arse, which he supposed he deserved. He found himself standing outside her door, in the cold, with his coat in his hands. He frowned, waited until he’d heard the lock click shut, then slowly made his way to his car. That woman was up to something. He couldn’t believe that she would actually go back to the past now that she’d seen what it had to offer, but what did he know?
He decided the only reasonable course of action would be to go home and get a decent night’s sleep, then find himself a decent spot in the morning from which to watch her house.
He didn’t dare do anything else.
Chapter 17
Emma listened to the sound of Nathaniel’s car fade into the distance. She washed up the tea things not because she was interested in a clean kitchen, but because she needed to be doing something that felt like it belonged in the current day. She dried her hands off, then turned around and leaned back against the sink.
There were strange things going on in the forest.
She suspected that if she’d had any sense at all, she would have gone to bed and hoped to wake up to a different reality. Or, actually, her regular reality. A reality that didn’t now include the knowledge of how to say I’m not a demon in Gaelic.
She made a last stab at pretending nothing had changed. Her recent experiences had been a bad dream. Sleepwalking. A crisis brought on by a lack of American junk food. After all, she had been under an enormous amount of stress in Seattle before she’d even gotten on a plane to escape to an entirely different country. It was possible that all that pressure had taken its toll, leaving her vulnerable to something small and insignificant pushing her over the edge.
The truth was, her life was complicated. She was being stalked by a grown man who was actually a ten-year-old boy with keys and a checkbook. She didn’t imagine Sheldon had the courage to actually get on a plane and confront her in person, but she’d been surprised by his actions before.
Then there was what she’d experienced so far in Scotland. Hadn’t she spent that first day listening to those old-timers down at the pub really hitting their stride with their stories about strange things happening in the woods? Hadn’t those stories included time travel, ghosts, bogles, and recluses with fancy cars and gigantic bank accounts?
Well, she knew that last item was actually just an accurate description of her very handsome neighbor who had killed someone dressed in a filthy kilt, apparently to save her life—
She forced herself to take a series of deep, even breaths before she went to find a piece of paper to make a list. Lists made her feel better, even if she only scribbled them in leftover spaces in her sketchbooks, then ignored them. She grabbed her book, sat down at the kitchen table, then started with a fresh page on the off chance good sense returned and she decided to chuck it in the fire before anyone saw it.
She began with everything she’d heard from those grandpas down at the pub: time travel, creatures from nightmare, guys hiding in the woods, lairds not born in the right century. She added Mrs. McCreedy’s bit about Highland magic, but she couldn’t remember if the woman had said anything else.
On the other side of the page, she put down everything she knew about Nathaniel MacLeod and his handsome, secretive self. She had to add a little something about his ability to cook, his fondness for golf, and his willingness to offer comfort apparently without expecting anything in return. Oh, and he made her laugh.
There was a big space between those two columns that she filled in with her experience, which consisted of seeing someone who looked exactly like Nathaniel MacLeod darting in and out of a medieval battle scene, her own raging hallucinations about being in a medieval dungeon, and the fact that she had a third of her wardrobe apparently either stashed in a garbage can or hiding behind a shrubbery, thanks to its state of ruination.
She studied each column again, adding doodles that contained several poisonous substance symbols, a zombie in a straitjacket, and Bigfoot peeking out from behind a tree.
She looked off thoughtfully into her little sitting room and considered what she’d laid out. She didn’t want to believe the picture it was painting, mostly because it was just too fantastical to be believed. Men didn’t travel through time, the forest near her home wasn’t a portal into a different century, and she wasn’t caught up in what felt like the middle of both.
If she’d had any sense, she would have forgotten everything she’d seen right along with all the tall tales she’d heard and gone straight to bed. She could have gotten up in the morning, texted Nathaniel, and invited herself over for tea and conversation as if nothing unusual was going on.
Or she could do a bit of very careful investigating.
The thought left her feeling as if she didn’t quite have enough of herself to fill her body and what she had left was absolutely terrified. Unfortunately, she just didn’t see any other way to put the doubting of her sanity to rest once and for all. For all she knew, she might be of some help to someone.
Nathaniel MacLeod, perhaps.
She banked her fire, because it gave her a reason to stall for a bit, then stood in her kitchen and dithered. Real spies didn’t dither, or so she’d always heard Bertie say, and she was beginning to understand why. Too much time spent thinking was not at all good for the nerves.
She walked into her bedroom, changed into black leggings, a black sweater, and a black slicker, slipped tools for the picking of locks into a passport belt she had converted into something entirely d
ifferent, then left her house. It was black as pitch outside, but she supposed her eyes would adjust in time. She stashed a key under the tire of the car Patrick had loaned her, then made her way toward the forest.
It was odd how normal everything felt. The longer she walked, the more she realized that things felt different from the other night. She paused by the tree where she’d first leaned while watching who she now knew to be Nathaniel fighting for his life against medieval clansmen, and she felt . . . nothing. No tingle, no unsettling vision, no feeling of the world splitting down its center.
She considered that until she realized she was cold, then she turned and retraced her steps to her house. She picked the lock to get inside, just for practice’s sake, considered the fact that hiding a key under a tire was overkill, then went inside to give things a bit more thought.
Whatever had been going on before was definitely not going on at present. She thought back over the events of the past several days, looking for something that seemed off. The only thing that came to mind was their experience with that dagger in Edinburgh. Well, that and his reaction at—
At Cawdor Castle. She looked around herself frantically for her guidebook only to remember that she’d set it down on a side table and never picked it back up. Then again, she’d been concentrating on getting Nathaniel to his car, not stockpiling items for use in future time traveling. It was too bad she hadn’t managed to slip Mr. Campbell’s dagger into her backpack.
She wandered through the sitting room, wondering if there might be something closer to home she could use for the same purpose, then stopped when she noticed a little bookcase tucked into a corner of the room. She walked over to it and scanned the titles there.
A Pictorial History of Medieval Scotland.
She pulled the book free of the bookcase without the world falling to pieces around her. She perched on the edge of the coffee table because sitting on the couch felt like too much of a commitment and she wasn’t sure when she would need to get up and run.
She opened the cover of the book, paused for a reaction from any stray Highland magic hiding in her house, then cautiously flipped through the pages. She had no idea who had come up with that title or acquired the photographs as evidence, but she soon realized that the author had obviously spent years collecting pictures of paintings and sketches. She looked to see if things were organized by date or region, then realized they were mostly organized by clan. She took a leap of faith and looked up the MacLeods of Assynt.
And there, in all its glory, was the castle she’d seen in the flesh. She looked at the illustration credits.
The MacLeod Keep, ca. 1387—
That was as far as she got before she realized she wasn’t holding that book while sitting on a low table, she was sprawled on the floor, and it hadn’t been a comfortable trip there. She crawled to her feet, took the book over to the kitchen table, then set it down.
1387. What the hell was it with that date?
She stood at the table, looking down at that illustration for what felt like hours, until she couldn’t ignore the inexorable pull of something that was far, far bigger than what her simple life was able to contain.
Was that what Nathaniel felt whenever he heard that date?
There was only one way to know for certain. She ruthlessly squelched the first squeaks of alarm from her common sense, ripped out the page in question, then folded it up and stuck it in her bra. She would ask James MacLeod later to forgive her for what she’d done to his book.
She left the house, locked it, then started for the forest. She would only go as far as she was comfortable with, which she suspected wouldn’t be all that far. Perhaps she would see something Nathaniel hadn’t. Perhaps she would actually see some sort of doorway through time and have the presence of mind to make a note of its location so Nathaniel could avoid it in the future.
She took a deep breath, reminded herself of all the survival skills Bertie had taught her, then continued on into the forest.
Things were different. Perhaps not so much in the forest by her house, but definitely as she continued on. Something had shifted in a way that was absolutely unmistakable—
She realized too late that she wasn’t going to be able to control the gate she was now firmly convinced had to exist between centuries. She was on the other side of it before she realized she’d entered it and it had shut behind her with an almost audible click.
Damn it anyway.
She had as little control over subsequent events as she’d had over her arrival into the midst of them. The one thing she could say with certainty was that informing the lads who arrived as if they’d been following a director’s cue that she wasn’t a demon didn’t improve things in the slightest.
What was surprising, though, was the overwhelming sense of déjà vu she had. It was as if her dream were replaying itself, but with an exactness that was less reassuring than it was extremely unsettling. She found herself escorted through the forest at exactly the same pace, waited with the boys at the edge of the meadow for exactly the same amount of time, watched Nathaniel race across the meadow at exactly the same speed he’d used the time before.
She wasn’t surprised when he ignored her. She was actually even less surprised to find herself yet again up to her ankles in the muck of the dungeon, but surely Nathaniel would rescue her.
Unless he didn’t.
She thought she had the presence of mind to have things handled, but she realized, as she stood there and fought very unsuccessfully another bout of shock, that she didn’t have anything handled at all.
She had only intended to investigate the entrance to, well, wherever she was. She hadn’t intended to become embroiled in the nightmare all over again. For all she knew, she had just plunged herself into a situation from which she would never escape. She would die in a medieval dungeon and no one would be the wiser. Sheldon would find some way to completely drain her bank accounts, her father would be happy to be rid of any possibility of her showing up for family gatherings, and her siblings would gleefully rub their hands together over the thought of splitting four ways the inheritance her mother had set aside for her out of her pocket money.
She, on the other hand, would die cold, terrified, and likely as a result of the things she could feel crawling up her shins. Thank heavens she was wearing leggings tucked into boots instead of just regular old pants that might have let things crawl directly on her skin.
She heard the hall settle down for the night and realized after what had to have been an hour that she was holding her breath. She forced herself to breathe evenly and fight off panic. What if he didn’t come? What if he was furious that she’d put him in a similar situation two nights in a row?
What if he’d clunked his head on something upstairs and forgotten all about her?
The grate moved. She closed her eyes briefly in thanks, then waited for the hand to be extended. She was better prepared that time and of more help to her rescuer. She held on to Nathaniel’s arm once she was free, then nodded.
“Ready,” she whispered.
“I am going to yell at you later,” he muttered. “Loudly.”
She would have smiled, but she didn’t dare. She was too busy hoping nothing would stop them from getting out of the hall itself.
They made it to the front door when they were stopped. Emma honestly couldn’t remember if it was the same guy as before or not. The truth was, she’d been so flipped out the night before, she hadn’t noticed anything past how badly she smelled and how desperately she wanted not to be where she was.
But within moments they were outside walking toward the forest. Once they were there, Nathaniel looked at her.
“Can you run?”
“Yes.”
He glared at her. She shrugged helplessly but didn’t bother to explain herself. Hopefully there would be time enough for that later. She simply ran with him a
cross the meadow and into the trees.
She was almost unsurprised when that stray clansman jumped out at them, only this time she noticed the dagger in his hand and how close to her chest it was before Nathaniel skewered him on the end of his sword.
She threw up anyway.
She had to admit that half an hour later when she was stumbling out from the edge of the forest and could see the lights from her house in the distance, she did the most sensible thing she’d done all night.
She burst into tears.
Nathaniel pulled her back into a walk and slung his arm around her shoulders. “We’re almost home.”
“I never cry.”
“You will once I’m done shouting at you.”
But he stopped, turned her to him, and held her until she was simply shaking so hard that her teeth were chattering. He finally half carried her to her house. He didn’t yell, not even when they were standing on her porch.
“Key?” he asked wearily.
“Under the front tire of Patrick’s car,” she managed. “I’ll go get it.”
“Stay here.”
She didn’t even dare lean against the doorframe. She was just as disgustingly filthy as she had been the first time. If she didn’t get hold of her nocturnal activities, she was going to be completely out of clothes before the week was out.
Nathaniel opened her door for her, turned on the lights, then handed her the key. He folded his arms over his chest and looked her up and down.
“Demon garb?” he asked sourly.
“Not anymore,” she said. She attempted a smile, but failed. “I was just trying to investigate the gate.” She took a deep breath. “I thought I could help you.”
“Darling, what you need is a keeper. I would offer myself for the job, but my life is complicated. What I want you to do is take that damned Audi I just bought you and get the hell over to the other side of the country.”
She lifted her chin. “No, you don’t.”
He swore at her. She supposed that was Gaelic. She imagined it hadn’t been complimentary.