“You said you’d hear the whole story. Was that a lie? You who claim you don’t lie?”
“Fine,” he said impatiently, turning back around. “Tell me all of it and have it done with.”
“Maybe you should sit down,” she said uneasily.
“Nay. I will stand and you will speak.” He folded his arms across his chest.
“You’re not making this easy.”
“I doona intend to. Speak or leave. Doona waste my time.”
She took a deep breath. “Okay, but I’m warning you, it’s going to sound pretty far-fetched at first.”
He exhaled impatiently.
“I’m from your future—”
He stifled a groan. The lass was a bampot, addled, soft in the head. Wandering about naked outside, accusing men of tupping her, thinking she was from the future, indeed!
“—the twenty-first century, to be precise. I was hiking in the hills near Loch Ness when I fell into a cave and discovered you sleeping—”
He shook his head. “Cease this nonsense.”
“You said you wouldn’t interrupt.” She jumped to her feet, much too close for his comfort. “It’s hard enough for me to tell you this.”
Drustan’s eyes narrowed, and he backed up a step lest she touch him and he turn into a lustful beast again. She stood there, head tossed back. Her cheeks were flushed, her stormy eyes flashing, and she looked ready to pummel him, despite her diminutive size. She had courage, he’d give her that.
“Go on,” he growled.
“I found you in the cave. You were sleeping, and funny symbols were painted on your chest. Somehow, my falling on you woke you. You were confused, you had no idea where you were, and you helped me get out of the cave. You told me the strangest story I’d ever heard. You claimed you were from the sixteenth century, that someone had abducted and enchanted you, and you slept for nearly five centuries. You said the last thing you recalled was that someone had sent you a message to go to some glen near a loch if you wished to know who’d killed your brother. You said you went, but someone had drugged you and you started getting very tired.”
“Enchanted?” Drustan shook his head in amazement. The lass had an imagination that could compete with the finest bard. But she’d made her first mistake: He didn’t have a dead brother. He had only Dageus, who was alive and hale.
She took a deep breath and continued, undaunted by his blatant skepticism. “I didn’t believe you either, Drustan, and for that I’m sorry. You told me that if I accompanied you to Ban Drochaid, you would prove to me that you were telling the truth. We went to the stones, and your castle”—she swept a hand around the room—“this castle was a ruin. You took me into the circle.” She deliberately omitted the intense passion they shared therein, not wishing to alienate him further. With a wistful sigh, she continued. “And you sent me here, to your castle, in your century.”
Drustan blew out an exasperated breath. Aye, she was truly a madwoman, and one who knew the old rumors well. He knew the villagers loved to repeat the old tale that their ancestors had seen two entire fleets of Templars enter the walls of Castle Keltar centuries ago, never to come out again. Apparently she’d heard that those “pagan Highlanders” could open doorways and had incorporated it into her madness.
“But before I sent you back, using the stones in some pagan fashion”—he scoffed, not about to admit to such a thing—“I took your maidenhead, eh?” he said dryly. “I must confess, you’ve chosen a most unique way to try to trap a man into a wedding. Choose one about whom strange rumors abound. Claim he took your virginity in the future, thus, he can never argue conclusively against it.” He shook his head and smiled faintly. “I give you credit for your imagination and audacity, lass.”
Gwen glared at him. “For the last time, I am not trying to marry you, you overbearing slack-jawed troglodyte.”
“Slack-jawed—” He shook his head and blinked. “Good, because I can’t. I’m betrothed,” he said flatly. That would put an end to her crazed claims.
“Betrothed?” she echoed, stunned.
His eyes narrowed. “ ‘Tis plain that doesn’t please you. Careful lest you further betray yourself.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. You told me you weren’t…” She trailed off, eyes wide.
Yet another hole in her story, he mused darkly. He’d been betrothed for over half a year. Near all of Alba knew of his upcoming nuptials and were, like as not, watching with bated breath to see if he actually succeeded this time. And he would succeed. “I am. The match was agreed upon last Yuletide. Anya Elliott is due to arrive within the fortnight for our wedding.”
“Elliott?” she breathed.
“Aye, Dageus is going to fetch her and bring her here for the wedding.”
Gwen turned her back to him, to conceal the shock and pain she knew must be etched all over her face. Betrothed? Her soul mate was going to marry someone else?
He’d told her Dageus had been killed coming back from the Elliott’s. He’d told her that he’d been betrothed, but she’d died. But he hadn’t bothered to tell her they’d both been killed at the same time!
Why? Had he loved his financée so much, then? Had it been too painful for him to speak of?
Her heart sank to her toes. Not fair, not fair, she wailed silently.
If she saved Dageus, she would be saving Drustan’s future wife. The woman he wanted to marry.
Gwen drew a shaky breath, hating her choices. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. She was supposed to tell him her story, together they would unmask the villain, get married, and live happily ever after. She’d planned it all out this afternoon, even down to the details of her medieval wedding dress. She wouldn’t mind staying in the sixteenth century for him; willingly she’d forfeit her Starbucks, tampons, and hot showers. So what if she couldn’t shave her legs? He had sharp daggers, and eventually she’d quit nicking herself. Yes, it might be a bit rustic, but on the other hand, what did she have to go back to?
Nothing. Not a damn thing.
Empty, lonely life.
Tears pressed at the backs of her eyes. She dropped her head, hiding behind her fringed bangs, reminding herself that she hadn’t cried since she was nine and crying wouldn’t help now. “This is so not happening,” she muttered dismally.
You can’t let his clan be destroyed, no matter the price, her heart said softly.
After a time she turned around and looked at him, swallowing the lump in her throat, acknowledging that there was no way she could stand by and watch him be abducted and his family be destroyed. So what that it might rip her to pieces in the process?
So much for falling in love, she thought dismally.
“Drustan,” she said, striving for the calmest tone of voice she could muster, when inside she was unraveling at every seam, “in the future, the last thing you said was for me to tell the past you the whole story and to show you something. The something I was supposed to show you was my backpack, because it had things in it from my century that would have convinced you—”
“Show me this pack,” he demanded.
“I can’t,” she said helplessly. “It disappeared.”
“Why does that not surprise me?”
She bit her lip to keep from screaming with frustration. “The future you seemed to think you would be smart enough to believe me, but I’m beginning to realize the future you gave you a whole lot more credit than you deserve.”
“Cease and desist with your insults, lass. You provoke the very laird upon whom your shelter depends.”
God, that was true, she realized. She was dependent upon him for her shelter. Although she was a smart woman, she suffered more than a few concerns about how a misplaced physicist might fend for herself in medieval Scotland. What if he never believed her? “I know you don’t believe me, but there is something you must do, whether you believe me or not,” she said desperately. “You can’t let Dageus go get your fiancée yet. Please, I’m begging you, postpone the wedding
.”
He arched one dark brow. “Och, have out with it, lass. Ask me to marry you. I’ll say nay, then you can hie yourself back whence you came.”
“I am not trying to get you to postpone it so you’ll marry me. I’m telling you because they’re going to die if you don’t do something. In my time, you told me Dageus was killed in a clan battle between the Montgomery and the Campbell when returning from the Elliott’s. You also told me that you’d been betrothed, but that she died. I think she must have been killed coming back here with Dageus. According to you, he tried to help the Montgomery because they were outnumbered. If he interferes with that battle, they will both die. And you’d believe me then, wouldn’t you? If I foretold those deaths? Don’t make it cost that much. I saw you grieve—” She broke off, unable to continue.
Too many mixed emotions were crashing over her: disbelief that he wouldn’t believe her, pain that he was engaged, exhaustion from the stress of the entire ordeal.
She cast him a last pleading glance, then darted into her bedchamber before she turned into the emotional equivalent of Jell-O.
After she’d slipped inside and closed the door, Drustan gazed blankly at it. Her plea for his brother had sounded so sincere that he’d gotten chills and suffered an eerie sense of disagreeable familiarity.
Her story couldn’t be true, he assured himself. Many of the old tales hinted that the stones were used as gates to other places—legends never forgotten, passed down through the centuries. She’d like as not heard the gossip and, in her madness, made up a story that held a purely coincidental bit of truth. Had she faked the blood of her virginity? Mayhap she was pregnant and in desperate need of a husband….
Aye, he could travel through the stones, that much of it was true. But everything else she claimed reeked of wrongness. If he’d ever gotten trapped in the future he would never have behaved in such ways. He would never have sent a wee lass back through the stones. He couldn’t begin to imagine the situation in which he might take a lass’s maidenhead—he’d vowed never to lie with a virgin unless ’twas in the marriage bed. And he would never have instructed her to tell his past self such a story and expected himself to believe it.
Och, thinking all this future self, past self was enough to give a man a pounding head, he thought, massaging his temples.
Nay, were he to get into such a situation, he would have simply come back himself and set things aright. Drustan MacKeltar was infinitely more capable than she’d made him out to be.
There was no point in getting unduly upset about her. His primary problem would be keeping his hands to himself, because addled or no, he desired her fiercely.
Still, he mused, mayhap he should send a full complement of guard with Dageus on the morrow. Mayhap the country wasn’t as peaceful as it appeared from high atop the MacKeltar’s mountain.
Shaking his head, he strode to the boudoir door and slid the bolt from his side, locking her in. Then he grabbed the key from a compartment in the headboard of his bed, left his chamber, and locked her in from the corridor as well. Nothing would jeopardize his wedding. Certainly not some wee lass scampering about unattended, spouting nonsense that he’d taken her virginity. She would go nowhere on the estate unaccompanied by either him or his father.
Dageus, on the other hand, he didn’t plan to allow within a stone’s toss of her.
He turned on his heel and stalked down the corridor.
Gwen curled up on the bed and cried. Sobbed, really, with hot tears and little choking noises that gave her a swollen nose and a serious sinus headache.
It was no wonder she hadn’t cried since she was nine. It hurt to cry. She hadn’t even cried when her father had threatened that if she didn’t return to Triton Corp. and finish her research, he would never speak to her again. Maybe a few of those tears leaked out now as well.
Confronting Drustan had been more awful than she’d imagined. He was betrothed. And by saving Dageus, she was saving Drustan’s future wife. Her overactive brain busily conjured torturous images of Drustan in bed with Anya Elliott. No matter that she didn’t even know what Anya Elliott looked like. It was clear from the way things were going that Anya would be Gwen’s antithesis—tall and slim and leggy. And Drustan would touch and kiss tall leggy Mrs. MacKeltar the way he’d touched and kissed Gwen in the stones.
Gwen squeezed her eyes shut and groaned, but the horrid images were more vivid on the insides of her eyelids. Her eyes snapped open again. Focus, she told herself. There is nothing to be gained by torturing yourself, you have a bigger problem on your hands.
He hadn’t believed her. Not a word she’d said.
How could that be? She’d done what he’d wanted her to do, told him what had happened. She’d believed telling him the whole story would make him see the logic inherent, but she was beginning to realize that sixteenth-century Drustan was not the same man that twenty-first-century Drustan had thought he was. Would the backpack have made that much of a difference? she wondered.
Yes. She could have shown him the cell phone, with its complex electronic workings. She could have shown him the magazine with the modern articles and date, her odd clothing, the waterproof fabric of her pack. She’d had rubber and plastic items in there; materials that even a medieval whatever-he-was—genius?—wouldn’t have been able to dismiss without further consideration.
But the last time she’d seen the damn pack, it was spiraling off into the quantum foam.
Where do you suppose it ended up? the scientist queried, with childlike wonder.
“Oh, hush, it’s not here, and that’s all that really signifies,” Gwen muttered aloud. She was not in the mood to think about quantum theory at the moment. She had problems, all kinds of problems.
The odds of her identifying the enemy without his help weren’t promising. The estate was vast, and Silvan had told her that, including the guards, there were seven hundred fifty men, women, and children within the walls, and another thousand crofters scattered about. Not to mention the nearby village….It could be anyone: a distant clan, an angry woman, a conquering neighbor. She had at most a month, and as recalcitrant as he was—not even willing to admit he could travel through the stones—she certainly couldn’t expect him to be forthcoming with other information.
Woodenly, she undressed and crawled beneath the covers. Tomorrow was another day. Eventually she’d get through to him somehow, and if she couldn’t, she’d just have to save the MacKeltar clan all by herself.
And then what will you do? her heart demanded. Catch the bouquet at his freaking wedding? Hire on as their nanny?
Grrr…
“Well?” Silvan demanded, strolling into the Greathall. “Does she still claim you took her maidenhead?”
Drustan leaned back in his chair. He quaffed the remains of his whisky and rolled the glass between his palms. He’d been gazing into the fire, thinking of his future wife, trying to keep his mind off the temptress in the chamber that adjoined his. As the spirits had slid into his belly, his worries had eased a bit and he’d begun to see dark humor in the situation. “Oh, aye. She even has a reason why I remain blissfully unaware of my breach of honor. ’Twould seem I tupped her in my future.”
Silvan blinked. “Come again?”
“I tupped her five hundred years from now,” Drustan said. “And then I sent her back to save me.” He couldn’t hold it in any longer. He tossed his head back and laughed.
Silvan eyed him strangely. “How does she claim you came to be in the future?”
“I was enchanted,” Drustan said, shoulders shaking with mirth. It really was quite amusing, now that he reflected upon it. Since he wasn’t currently looking at her, he wasn’t worried that he might lose control of his lust and could see the humor more easily.
Silvan stroked his chin, his gaze intent. “So she claims she woke you and you sent her back?”
“Aye. To save me from being enchanted in the first place. She also mumbled some nonsense about you and Dageus being in danger.”
<
br /> Silvan closed his eyes and rubbed his index finger in the crease between his brows, a thing he did often when thinking deeply. “Drustan, you must keep an open mind. ’Tis not entirely impossible on the face of it,” he said slowly.
Drustan sobered swiftly. “Nay—on the face of it, it’s not,” he agreed. “ ‘Tis once you get into the details that you realize she’s a wee bampot with little grasp on sanity.”
“I admit it’s far-fetched, but—”
“Da, I’m not going to repeat all the nonsense she spouted, but I assure you, the lass’s story is so full of holes that were it a ship, ’twould be kissing the sandy bed of the ocean.”
Silvan frowned consideringly. “I scarce see how it could hurt to take precautions. Mayhap you should pass some time with her. See what else you might learn about her.”
“Aye,” Drustan agreed. “I thought to take her to Balanoch on the morrow, see if anyone recognizes her and can tell us where to find her kin.”
Silvan nodded. “I will bide a wee with her myself, study her for signs of madness.” He cast Drustan a stern look. “I saw the way you looked at her and know that, despite your misgivings, you desire her. If she’s daft as you say, I won’t abide her being taken advantage of. You must keep her out of your bed. You have your future wife to think of.”
“I know,” Drustan snapped, all trace of amusement vanishing.
“We need to rebuild the line, Drustan.”
“I know,” he snapped again.
“Just so you know where your duties lie,” Silvan said mildly. “Not betwixt an addlepate’s thighs.”
“I know,” Drustan growled.
“On the other hand, if she weren’t daft—” Silvan began, but stopped and sighed when Drustan stomped from the room.
Silvan sat in pensive silence after his son had gone. Her story was nigh impossible to believe. How was one to countenance someone knocking upon one’s door, claiming to have spent time with one in one’s future?
The mind summarily rejected it—it was too chafing a concept for even a Druid to wrap his mind about. Still, Silvan had swiftly run through a few complex calculations, and the possibility existed. It was a minuscule possibility, but a good Druid knew it was dangerous to ignore any possibility.
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