“I dinnae ken nor do I ken what she thought to do next. If she had loosened her hold, I would hae killed her wi’ my bare hands.” Still as they watched their captive from across the yard, James felt a grudging respect for the lass. He’d not admit it aloud but she had bested him handily. “Me thinks she is no’ from Scotland a’tall,” he said. “I dinnae ken her speech. Her accent is most odd. France? Even Spain, mayhap?”
“Mayhap. Why would ye think that?”
“She says she knows the Queen.”
“Margaret?” Rhys raised his brows in surprise. “One of her ladies? And I thought I knew them all.”
“Nay, no’ Margaret,” James corrected with a grimace. “Catherine. The bluidy queen regent of England.”
Rhys whistled and looked over his shoulder at their hostage once more with fresh interest. “’Struth, ye think?”
“I cannae say,” James admitted, hating to admit his lack of certainty. “Nor do a know what to do wi’ her.”
“I say we cart her back to Father,” Rhys suggested. “If he cannae find out who she is, Mother will surely know.”
James sneered at the recommendation. “I am my own laird. This problem is my own.”
“Lindsay is our sworn rival. If she is theirs, ‘tis a problem for the whole clan,” Rhys reasoned. “If she is a Sassenach, ‘tis a problem for our king. If she is simply mad…. Is she?”
“Why dinnae ye go find out?” James grumbled. “Yer the bluidy nice one.”
With her hands tied in front of her and bound to the iron sconce, Scarlett couldn’t get to her bag which now hanging down her back despite several attempts to swing it forward. She could reach her dress pocket for her phone, however, and was surprised that they hadn’t thought to take it from her right away.
Scarlett quickly dialed Tyrone’s number and pressed send, holding the phone as furtively to her ear as she could manage. Nothing but silence. Not a ring or even his voicemail. That was odd, since her agent never turned off his phone. He even left it on when he was in bed with a woman, which was how Scarlett had so inopportunely found out about his fling with her mother.
Thinking to redial and try again, Scarlett glanced down at her screen and noticed that there was no service. Not even one bar. Damn! Of all the times to have no coverage.
Noticing that the men set to guard her were watching her strangely, Scarlett slipped the phone back into her pocket. On an afterthought, she powered down the phone as well. If she were to try again later on, she didn’t want to have drained her battery down as it would when constantly searching for a signal.
That baffling Laird guy who had attacked her in the castle was yelling out orders to the other men who hurried here and there, bringing out horses and loading them down with a collection of arms and shields like those she had seen in the exhibit. Watching them, realization dawned. Was that it then? Were they just a bunch of thieves?
Where was everyone then, she wondered once more? Surely someone had heard the raucous even from the other side of the castle? Or had they been somehow subdued?
“Are ye well, lady?”
Shading her eyes against the setting sun, Scarlett narrowed her gaze on the brother as he approached. Rhys, the Laird guy had called him. “Yes, thank you, but I’d be so much better if y’all would just let me go.”
“I’m afraid I cannae do that,” he said with mock sorrow to match her light sarcasm. “Even though I am the nice one. I thank ye for that compliment, by the by.”
Scarlett shrugged, drawing his eye to the bindings on her wrists as the rope attaching her to the sconce swayed. “Being told you’re the nice one when compared to the devil isn’t really much of a compliment is it?”
“Ye hae a ready wit, my lady. I shall look forward to hearing more of what ye hae to say.” He chuckled, pulling a handkerchief – who carried a handkerchief anymore? – out of the pocket of the velvet – yes, velvet… in summer – jacket he wore beneath the long plaid draping over his shoulder. Even the cuffs and collar of the shirt he wore beneath it were unusual, heavily embroidered in gold thread. Gently, he tucked the delicately embroidered linen between the ropes and her wrists and gave them a little pat.
“Thank you.”
Rhys shrugged.
“You seem like a reasonable guy. Surely you can’t be in favor of this idiocy?”
“Can ye provide a reasonable explanation of how ye came to be here?”
“Of course,” she said with an impatient sigh. “I was at the dedication ceremony like everyone else and only went inside for the exhibit…”
Rhys shook his head, cutting her off with an upheld palm. “Cease, lass. Laird had the right of it. Ye’ve a way of making a man’s head pound.”
A hint of desperation was building from deep within but Scarlett strove to keep it from her voice. She had to talk some sense into him. “Come on. Just let me go. It’ll save you a world of hurt in the long run. Anyone can see you’re not kidnappers.”
“What makes ye say that?” There was a smile playing at his lips.
“You’re taking too long for one thing,” Scarlett told him. If her hands were free, she might have slapped the grin right off his handsome face. There was nothing at all amusing about this. “Look at y’all. It’s like you’re hoping to get caught. Plus you haven’t done your homework if you think you’ll get a good ransom for me. Despite what you might think, there isn’t that much.”
“I rather doubt that.”
“Celebrity doesn’t always equal money, honey,” she warned, her Southern roots showing as her agitation grew.
“Celebrity?”
Scarlett was torn between rising anxiety and irritation at their tireless questioning. “Listen, Braveheart, I appreciate the whole medieval thing y’all got going here. It’s impressive, really, but you’re going about this all wrong. Why don’t you just let me go and stick with what you obviously know best?” Though they seemed to know what they were doing pretty damn well. Despite her disbelief at their tactics, apparently a raid in broad daylight was working for them. They must be pretty good if no guards or authorities had come upon them yet. “Take your loot and leave, but let me go.”
“Ye think we’re naught but thieves, lady?”
“Well, aren’t you?”
“Reivers, my lady,” he said, rolling out the word with his heavy brogue, his gray eyes twinkling merrily. “In the long and glorious tradition. The Lindsay’s are our sworn enemies. We’ve merely come to take back what they thought to steal.” He raised his brows suggestively at her. “And what they hae left behind.”
Scarlett rolled her eyes. Yea, she got it, despite his blather. They might not have been ransacking the castle looking for her in particular but a good thief took what was available. Despite his courtesy, he really wasn’t going to let her go.
Now that was disappointing. A thick lump tightened her throat but she swallowed it back, inhaling a calming breath. It wouldn’t do to panic just yet. “So you’re not going to let me go then? You should. There’ll be hell to pay if you don’t.”
Shit! What else could she do? She really did not want to be kidnapped. “I can pay…”
“A Lindsay as ordered, Sir Rhys,” one of the other reivers called for his attention and shoved a man wearing a kilt of wide orange and green plaid down at Rhys’ feet. Rolling on to his back, he sneered and spit on the ground, all bravado and balls. Scarlett was astounded that he could be so brash as he was bleeding heavily from a gash on his shoulder and in obvious pain.
“You did that?” She gasped at Rhys, shuddering at the sight. “Your people did that to him? He needs a doctor. You need to get him to the ER.”
Rhys, his guards and even the man on the ground all looked at her strangely – as if she were the problem – before one of the guards hauled the prisoner to his feet.
“This lass,” Rhys said, pointing a finger at her as he spoke to the bleeding man. “Do ye ken who she is?”
The Lindsay man frowned in confusion as he looked betwee
n her and Rhys.
Scarlett was genuinely puzzled as well and not just by the entire bizarre scenario. It finally struck her that, even though she couldn’t recall the last time someone hadn’t recognized her out in public, none of them did. Not when she was hanging over that Laird guy’s shoulder or standing on her own two feet. Surely one little haircut hadn’t changed all that?
“Seriously?” she couldn’t help but ask. “Don’t I look at all familiar?”
Four sets of male eyes scanned her from head to toe but she saw no inkling of recognition in any of them. The Lindsay prisoner offered a shrug to boot.
Maybe they really didn’t know who they were kidnapping.
Yea, right, she thought to herself. Why the hell would they be kidnapping her then?
5
There was no need to panic yet, Scarlett reminded herself. According to what she heard, no one in the castle had been killed, so soon – hopefully sooner rather than later – Tyrone would discover she was missing and call the police. Or the Bobbies. Or whatever they were called around here. Either way, Scarlett just needed to bide her time, look for escape if possible and otherwise wait them out.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t wait much longer.
“Is that good then, lady? No’ too tight?” her guard, Cormac, asked kindly. He’d cut the ropes at her ankles but tied her still bound wrists to the pommel of the saddle. A saddle he had lifted her into as easily as her father might have set her atop a pony at the fair when she was a child. If her father had ever done such a thing, that is.
“I’m fine. Thank you.” Thanking her captor seemed silly but Scarlett couldn’t blame her guard or take out her frustrations on him. This wasn’t his fault. He was just following orders and it didn’t seem that anyone, Rhys included, was willing to contradict the big guy. “Is there a smaller horse I could ride though? This one is huge and I’m rather neurotically afraid of heights.”
Huge was a modest word for the horse. Gargantuan would have been better.
“My apologies, lady, but nay.”
The horse stomped his feet impatiently and Scarlett clung to the tall pommel as if being tied to it wouldn’t be enough to save her from a fall. Where on earth did they find horses whose backs were taller than a man’s head? The ground looked so far away. It was dizzying. Percheron, Cormac said. Nineteen hands. Scarlett didn’t know the exact conversion but was sure it roughly equated to really, freaking huge.
A total of a dozen of Laird’s men were mounted and ready to go, leaving an equal number behind at Dunskirk. Each of them dressed in kilts and armed to the teeth. The thought of being surrounded by so many strange, dangerous men was disconcerting. Scarlett shuddered. “Where are you taking me?” she asked her guard as he mounted his own horse and gathered up her reins.
Without giving her an answer, Cormac kicked his horse into motion and Scarlett’s obediently followed. Her teeth slammed together and her stomach dropped like a stone as the jarring lift of the rough gait nearly sent her listing out of the saddle.
Oh God! The horse was forgotten as the realization that they were actually leaving the castle robbed Scarlett of her breath. Of course, she knew they meant to but now that they were actually moving…. “Where are you taking me?” She yelled this time, and then screeched out the words at the top of her lungs when she was ignored once more.
Laird pulled his horse alongside of her, looking larger and even more menacing atop a great black beast that incredibly was bigger than her own. Despite herself, Scarlett was momentarily cowed into silence. She didn’t know they made horses that big… or men for that matter. “Where are we…?”
“We travel to Crichton to find out who ye are.”
“Crichton? What is that?”
“Cease yer prattle, lass, or by God’s might, I shall be tempted to gag ye for the journey,” he barked and drew on his reins, turning his mount around and leaving her. Scarlett twisted about in the saddle, bedeviled enough to yell at him once more.
“Hey! Come bac–”
Any other words she might have had caught her throat with a gasp of horror.
The castle – or a good portion of the five-sided goliath – was gone.
Just gone!
Scarlett shook her head and blinked hard but the vision remained.
It made no sense. No sense at all.
In fact, her mind blanked entirely as she watched the building recede in the distance, trying to process what she was seeing.
And what she wasn’t.
Most of Dunskirk Castle had disappeared.
All that remained was the massive westerly tower where the armory exhibit had been, a portion of the keep and a shorter curtain wall. It was like she was seeing the castle as it had been a century ago, before fairy tale façade had been added.
But where had it gone?
Where had it gone?
Cold sweat prickled at her skin as her heartbeat accelerated, pounding nauseatingly against her ribcage. She dragged in a painfully shallow wheeze and then another as her head swam dizzily. A horse whinnied close by and Scarlett stared dazedly at one of the kilted men as he rode by, his eyes narrowing on her with what might have been concern though he said not a word.
That rough faded kilt, the short leather boots and the sword at his side. Then there was their odd language. The fighting… with swords, no less. It was outlandish but it all might be easy enough to explain away. There could be a renaissance fair nearby. There might be some historical reenactment going on. There could have been something some logical reason for them to be out and about as they were.
Hell, they might all have been escapees from a nearby mental facility, for all she cared.
But they could be explained.
Scarlett turned back again, wide-eyed.
The castle though…
That one was tougher.
Their caravan reached the end of the drive to the castle where by all rights an ornate gatehouse and towers flanking a stone arch should stand.
Nothing.
The horses hooves ground against the graveled path that marked the way to the village center. Gravel, not the smooth concrete of the highway. Tall grass waved at her from the open field where the local high school should have been.
Unless sheep had taken to grazing on the golf course to the right, it was gone as well. As was the bustling town she had come to know so well over the years. No inns, no library. No fire station. No pubs. Well, pubs plural. One lonely tavern was all that remained.
No rubble. Not even a small pile of stone to save her from insanity.
Unless alien invaders had somehow surreptitiously vaporized half the castle and three-quarters of the village without catching anyone’s attention…
Yes, that would have been bad.
This, this was worse.
How?
How?
How?
“Are ye well, my lady?” Rhys pulled up alongside her horse, drawing Scarlett’s wild stare. Around her, all the mounted men around her began to take notice of her panic. Some eyes widening, others narrowing worriedly at the hyperventilating, crazy woman they had taken prisoner.
One even crossed himself.
Personally, Scarlett didn’t think prayer was going to help any of them.
Denial warred in her frantic thoughts for an explanation. Any explanation, but her mind was quickly becoming little more than a yawning dark void of horror. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Rhys nodded sympathetically. “Hae ye been ill long then?”
“Why do you all keep asking if I’m ill?” Even to her own ears, the question was a piteous moan. “Do I look sick?”
Eyes looked her up and down and Scarlett could see he was restraining a nod. “Hae ye no’ then?” he asked instead. “Yer to thin and wan. Yer hair shorn and walking aboot in yer bedclothes. What else might we think?”
Too thin? Wan? “Bedclothes?” Dumbly, Scarlett looked down at her white maxi dress once again. To whom would it look like nightgown? Or ra
ther, when would it have looked like a nightgown? Not too long ago really. Early twentieth century even. Maybe the 1950s?
Casting a glance about at the dozen men around her once more, Scarlett was fairly certain that she wasn’t going to be that lucky. “Ah, since I am so obviously out of it, right now. Would you mind telling me the date?”
“Hae ye suffered so long ye cannae ken the time that has passed?”
“Apparently not,” Scarlett muttered to herself.
“’Tis the fifteenth day of August, my lady.”
Scarlett nodded, biting her lip. True enough. But…
“And the year?”
Her breath caught and held as the question she tried to convince herself didn’t need to be asked popped out anyway.
Rhys lifted a brow warily. “’Tis the year of our Lord, fifteen hundred and …”
The blood roared in her ears, drowning him out. Fifteen hundred? Fifteen? Oh God! This was bad, so very bad. Either she’d gone completely around the bend, her captors all had, or her worst fears had been realized.
A warm hand touched hers and Scarlett flinched, casting a terrified look at Rhys before struggling to regain her composure. “My lady? Lass?” His soft brogue was filled with concern. “I pray that dinnae come as a great surprise for ye, my lady.”
The bitter burn of bile rose in the back of her throat but she swallowed it back with a grimace and shook her head woodenly. Insanity would have been preferable to the alternative, but the truth was undeniable. After all, if you eliminate the impossible…
Scarlett gasped for air, dragging in a ragged breath.
Damn. Sherlock-ed by logic.
How? How had it happened? Beyond Sci-Fi, no logical explanation was readily available. Even searching within the genre, she would be hard put to unearth a reasonable explanation.
How then? There hadn’t been any blue police boxes about. No mysterious, bow-tied ‘doctors’. No big balls of ‘wibbly, wobbly, time-y, wimey stuff”.
Taken: A Laird for All Time Novel (Volume 2) Page 4