“American. I see—well, not truly, but…Gwen?”
“What?” His questions were starting to scare her.
“In what century do I find myself?”
The breath locked in her throat. She massaged her temples, assailed by a sudden headache. It figured that a man who dripped such raw sex appeal had to be fatally flawed. She had no idea what to say to him. How did one answer such a question? Dare she get up and simply walk away, or would he tackle her again?
“I said, what century is it?” he repeated evenly.
“The twenty-first,” she said, closing her eyes. Was he playing a game? The bold block letters of a newspaper headline blossomed against the insides of her eyelids, crowding out all rational thought:
DROPOUT DAUGHTER OF WORLD-RENOWNED PHYSICISTS ABDUCTED BY ESCAPED MENTAL PATIENT. SUBTITLED: SHE SHOULD HAVE LISTENED TO HER PARENTS AND STAYED IN THE LAB.
He fell silent, and when she opened her eyes he was scanning the village below: the boats on the loch, the buildings, the cars, the bright lights and signs, the bicyclists in the streets. He cocked his head, listening to the blat of horns honking, the buzz of motorbikes, and, from some café, the rhythmic bass of rock and roll. He rubbed his jaw, his gaze wary. After some time he nodded, as if he’d resolved an internal debate he’d been having. “Christ,” he half-whispered, aristocratic nostrils flaring like a cornered animal. “I haven’t lost a mere moon. I’ve lost centuries.”
A mere moon? Centuries? Gwen pinched her lower lip between her finger and thumb, riveted.
Then he looked back at her, eyed her shirt, her pack, her hair, her shorts, and finally her hiking boots. He tugged her foot out from beneath her, held it in his hands and studied it for a long moment before raising his eyes to hers again. His dark brows dipped.
“You name your stockings?”
“What?”
He ran his finger over the words Polo Sport stitched on the thick woolen cuff of her sock. Then his gaze fixed on the small tab on her hiking boots: Timberland. Before she could form a reply, he said, “Give me your pack.”
Gwen sighed and started to hand it to him, then unzipped the main pouch first, not in the mood to get into a discussion about zippers. Considering the one on her shorts—if he truly didn’t know how they worked—she wasn’t in a hurry to teach him. Women should sew padlocks on their zippers with him around.
He took the pack and dumped the contents on the ground. When her cell phone fell out, she was momentarily furious with herself for forgetting it, until she recalled that it wouldn’t work in Scotland anyway. As he withdrew it from the jumble of her belongings, she realized it wouldn’t work—ever again. The plastic casing had been crushed in one of her many falls, and it broke into pieces in his hands. He eyed the tiny technology inside with fascination.
He sorted through her cosmetics, pried open a compact, and regarded himself in the small mirror. Her protein bars were tossed aside along with the box of condoms (thank heavens), and when he spied her toothbrush, his bewildered gaze swept from her long, thick hair to the tiny brush and back to her hair again. One brow arched in an expression of doubt. He picked up the latest issue of Cosmopolitan, eyed the picture of the half-clad model on the cover, then fanned rapidly through it, gawking at the brilliantly colored pictures. He ran his fingers over the pages as if stunned. “And Silvan thinks his illuminated tomes are lovely,” he muttered. When he started sorting through her brightly colored panties, she’d had enough. She closed her fist over the lime silk thong he was currently examining and firmly shook her head.
But when he looked at her, she realized that for the first time since they’d met, seduction was not on his mind. Her desire to flee was abruptly vanquished by the look of anguish on his face, and she wasn’t so certain anymore that he was playing with her. If he was, he was a consummate actor.
Plucking the magazine from his hands, she pointed out the date in the corner. His eyes widened even further. “What century did you think it was?” she asked, disgusted with herself for being a sucker for a gorgeous man. He evidenced no intellect, had no redeeming qualities, yet drew her like a fluttery moth to a flame, and so what if she made ashes of her wings?
“The sixteenth,” he replied hollowly.
He sounded so distraught that she touched him, brushing her fingers against his chiseled jaw, lingering longer than was wise. “MacKeltar, you need help,” she soothed. “And we’ll find you help.”
He closed his hand over hers, turned his head, and kissed her palm. “My thanks. I am pleased you come so swiftly to my aid.”
She withdrew her hand quickly. “Come with me to the village, and I’ll get you to a doctor. You probably fell and have a concussion,” Gwen said, hoping it was true. The alternative was that he had been wandering around, God only knew how long, thinking he was some medieval lord, and she just couldn’t reconcile the powerful, arrogant man with a delusional paranoid schizophrenic. She didn’t want him to be sick. She wanted him to be just as he appeared to be: competent and strong and healthy. It seemed impossible that a mental case could be so…commanding, regal.
“Nay,” he said softly, his gaze drifting to the date on the magazine again. “We go not to your village, but to Ban Drochaid,” he said finally. “And we haven’t much time. It will be a hard journey, but I will tend you gently when we arrive. I shall see you handsomely rewarded for your assistance.”
Oh, God, he meant to take her to his castle. He really was over the top. “I’m not going to those stones with you,” she said as calmly as she could under the circumstances. “Let me take you to a doctor. Trust me.”
“Trust me,” he said, as he pulled her to her feet beside him. “I need you, Gwen. I need your help.”
“And I’m trying to give it to you—”
“But you doona understand.”
“I know you’re sick!”
He shook his dark head, and in the late-afternoon light his silver eyes were clear, level, and intelligent. No crazed glimmer lurked there, only concern and determination. “Nay. I am well and in no way touched as you are thinking. You will simply have to see for yourself.”
“I’m not coming with you,” she said firmly. “I have other things to do.”
“You must forgo them. The Keltar takes precedence, and in time you will understand. Now, I ask you a last time, do you come with me of your own free will?”
“Not a chance in hell, barbarian.”
When he wrapped his hand about her wrist, she realized that while they were arguing he’d removed a chain of sorts from somewhere on his body. When he closed the metal links about her wrist and bound her to him, she opened her mouth to scream, but he clamped a powerful hand over her mouth.
“Then you come with me of my will alone. So be it.”
5
Nearly five hundred years, Drustan brooded. How could that be? He felt as if only yestreen he’d gone riding in the heather-filled Highland meadows of his home. His mind reeled from shock, and try though he might to deny it, he knew it was true. He knew it with a gnostic bone-deep knowing that was unquestionable. Her time felt different, the natural rhythm of the elements was frenetic, fractured. Her world was not a healthy one.
Centuries had passed, and he had no idea how it had happened. Probing his memory had yielded no additional facts. Five centuries of slumber seemed to have muted his memory, dimmed the events that had occurred just prior to his abduction. All he knew was that he’d been lured into some sort of ambush in which a number of people had participated. There had been armed men. There had been chanting and fragrant smoke, which reeked of witchcraft or Druidry. He’d obviously been drugged, but then what? Enchanted by a sleep spell? And if he’d been spelled, by whom? Still more important, why? The why of it would tell him if his entire clan had been targeted.
An icy finger of dread brushed his spine as he considered the possibility that they’d been attacked for the lore they protected.
Had someone finally believed the rumors and come seeking p
roof?
The Keltar males were Druids, as their ancestors had been for millennia. But what few knew was that they were not simple Druids, struggling with mostly incomplete lore since the loss of so much of it in the fateful war millennia ago. The Keltars possessed all the lore and were the sole guardians of the standing stones.
If after he’d been abducted, his father, Silvan, had been killed by his abductors, the sacred lore would be lost forever, and the knowledge they protected—to be used only when the world had dire need—vanquished utterly.
He glanced at Gwen. If she hadn’t awakened him, he might well have slumbered for eternity! He murmured a silent prayer of thanks.
Pondering his situation, he realized that for now the how and why of his abduction were irrelevant. He would find no answers in her time. What mattered was action: He’d been blessed enough to have been awakened and had both the chance and the power to correct things. Yet to do so, he must be at Ban Drochaid by midnight on Mabon.
He glanced at her again, but she refused to look at him. Dusk had long since fallen, and they’d made good time, putting many miles between them and the horrifying, noisy village. In the moonlight her smooth skin shimmered with the warm richness of pearl. He indulged himself, envisioning her nude, which wasn’t hard to do when she wore so little. She was all woman and brought out the most primitive man in him, a fierce need to possess and mate. Her nipples were clearly visible beneath her thin shirt, and he ached to suckle them in his mouth. She was a fiery wee lass with a spine of steel and curves that would lure even his devout priest Nevin’s gaze. He’d gotten hard the moment he’d opened his eyes and looked at her and had been uncomfortably erect since. One flirtatious glance from her would return him to a painful state, but he didn’t worry overmuch that she might cast him such a look. She hadn’t spoken to him in hours, not since he’d refused for the hundredth time to release her. Not since he’d told her he would toss her over his shoulder and carry her if he had to.
It intrigued him—that she’d neither screamed, nor fainted, nor pleaded for release. His first impression of her had not been entirely accurate; although it was difficult to discern, what with her strange manner of speaking, she did possess a dash of intelligence. She’d demonstrated fine reasoning abilities while trying to talk him out of taking her along, and when she’d realized there was no possibility of him relenting, she’d treated him as if he simply didn’t exist. Bravo, Gwen, he thought. Cassidy is Irish for clever. Gwendolyn means goddess of the moon. Quite a fascinating lass you’re turning out to be.
Whereas initially he’d thought her an orphan or survivor of a clan massacre, a woman willing to barter her body to secure a protector—thus explaining her clothing and demeanor—it had since occurred to him that she might simply be typical of her time. Mayhap in five centuries women had changed this much, become tenaciously independent. Then why, he wondered, did he sense a silent sadness, a brush of vulnerability in her that belied her bravado?
He knew she thought that he’d dragged her off because he desired her, and would that it were that simple. There was no denying that he found her mesmerizing and was impatient to bed her, but things were suddenly much more complicated. Once he’d discovered he was stranded in the future, he’d realized he needed her. When they arrived at the stones—if the worst was true and his castle was gone—there was a ritual he must perform, his conscience be damned. There was a possibility the ritual would go wrong, and if that happened, he needed Gwen Cassidy standing by his side.
She was growing weary, and he felt a pang of regret for causing her distress. When she stumbled over a tree root and fell against him, only to hiss and jerk away, he softened. He would give her this one night, for after tomorrow there would be no stopping. She nearly fell where she stood, so he cupped one arm behind her shoulders, the other behind her knees, and deposited her on the mossy trunk of an enormous tree that had fallen to the floor of the forest. Perched upon the massive trunk, with her feet dangling several inches above the ground, she looked wee and delicate. Warrior hearts did not always come in warrior-strong bodies, and although he could hike three days without rest or food, she would not fare well under such conditions.
He boosted himself up onto the trunk beside her.
“Gwen,” he said gently.
There was no response.
“Gwen, I truly will not harm you,” he said.
“You already have,” she retorted.
“You’re speaking to me again?”
“I’m chained to you. I had planned to never speak to you again, but I’ve decided that I don’t feel like making things easy for you, so I’m going to tell you incessantly and in vivid detail precisely how miserable I am. I’m going to stuff your ears with my shrill complaints. I’m going to make you wish you’d lost your hearing when you were born.”
He laughed. This was his scornful English again. “You are free to torment me at every opportunity. I regret causing you discomfort, but I must. I have no choice.”
She arched one brow and regarded him with disdain. “Let me be certain I understand this situation. You think you are from the sixteenth century. What year, exactly?”
“Fifteen hundred and eighteen.”
“And in fifteen hundred and eighteen, you lived somewhere near here?”
“Aye.”
“And you were a lord?”
“Aye.”
“And how is it that you ended up sleeping in a cave in the twenty-first century?”
“That is what I must discover.”
“MacKeltar, it’s impossible. You seem relatively sane to me, this delusion excluded. A bit chauvinistic, but not too abnormal. There is no way a man can fall asleep and wake up nearly five centuries later. Physiologically, it’s impossible. I’ve heard of Rip Van Winkle and Sleeping Beauty, but those are fairy tales.”
“I doubt the fairy had aught to do with it. I suspect gypsies or witchcraft,” he confided.
“Oh, now, that’s infinitely reassuring,” she said, too sweetly. “Thank you for clarifying that.”
“Do you mock me?”
“Do you believe in fairies?” she countered.
“Fairy is merely another name for the Tuatha de Danaan. And yes, they exist, although they keep their distance from mortal man. We Scots have always known that. You have lived a sheltered life, have you not?” When she closed her eyes, he smiled. She was so naive.
She opened her eyes, favored him with a patronizing smile, and changed the subject as if not wont to press his fragile mind too hard. He bit his lip to prevent a derisive snort. At least she was talking to him again.
“Why are you going to Ban Drochaid, and why do you insist on taking me with you?”
He weighed what he might safely tell her without driving her away. “I must get to the stones because that is where my castle is—”
“Is, or was? If you expect to convince me you are truly from the sixteenth century, you’re going to have to do a little better with your verb tenses.”
He glanced at her reprovingly. “Was, Gwen. I pray it stands still.” It must be so, for if they arrived at the stones and there was no sign of his castle, his situation would be dire indeed.
“So you’re hoping to visit your descendants? Assuming, of course, that I’m playing along with this absurd game,” she added.
Nay, not unless his father, at sixty-two, had somehow managed to breed another bairn after Drustan had been abducted, which was highly unlikely since Silvan had not tupped a woman since Drustan’s mother had died, as far as Drustan knew. What he was hoping for was some of the items in the castle. But he couldn’t tell her any of that. He couldn’t risk scaring her off when he needed her so desperately.
He needn’t have bothered searching for a suitably evasive reply, because when he hesitated too long for her liking, she simply forged ahead with another question. “Why do you need me?”
“I doona know your century, and the terrain between here and my home may have changed,” he offered the inc
omplete truth smoothly. “I need a guide who has knowledge of this century’s ways. I may need to pass through your villages, and there could be dangers I would not perceive until it was too late.” That sounded rather convincing, he thought.
She was regarding him with blatant skepticism.
“Gwen, I know you think that I’ve lost my memory, or am ill, and am having fevered imaginings, but consider this: What if you are wrong, and I am telling the truth? Have I harmed you? Other than making you come along with me, have I injured you in any way?”
“No,” she conceded grudgingly.
“Look at me, Gwen.” He cupped her face with his hands so she had to look directly into his eyes. The chain rattled between their wrists. “Do you truly believe I mean you ill will?”
She blew a strand of hair out of her face with a soft puff of breath. “I’m chained to you. That worries me.”
He took a calculated risk. With an impatient movement he released the links, counting on the mating heat between them to keep her from outright fleeing. “Fine. You are free. I misjudged you. I believed that you were a kind and compassionate woman, not a fainthearted lass who cannot abide anything that she does not immediately understand—”
“I am not fainthearted!”
“—and if a fact doesn’t adhere to your perception of how things should be, then it cannot be.” He gave a derisive snort. “What a narrow vision of the world you have.”
“Oh!” Gwen scowled, scooting away from him on the fallen tree trunk. She swung one leg across it, straddling the massive trunk, and sat facing him. “How dare you try to make me feel bad for not believing your story? And I assure you, I do not have a narrow view of the world. I’m probably one of the few people who doesn’t. You might be astounded by how broad and well-informed my vision of the world is.” She massaged the skin on her wrist, glaring at him.
“What a contradiction you are,” he said softly. “At moments I think I see courage in you, then at others I see naught but cowardice. Tell me, are you always at odds with yourself?”
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