Still, my actions of the night before left me embarrassed. I didn’t kiss men I didn’t know. I didn’t act so impulsively without thinking about the consequences of my actions. I didn’t tend to do things without a point and, kissing Orick, what with him leaving and with my being so emotionally unavailable, was pointless.
“Ye could feel my wanting of ye. ’Tis why ye dreamed of me.”
I swallowed hard as I replayed what he’d just said in my mind. He didn’t seem the sort of man to be so forward, and I couldn’t even begin to guess what he meant.
“What?”
“Do ye believe in magic, lass?”
My answer came out before I could soften the bluntness of my answer.
“No. Definitely not.”
He surprised me by laughing as he pointed to the painting as if to support his case.
“How can ye no believe in magic when ye have proof of it right here?”
I stepped away from the wall and walked to the front of the painting.
“That is not proof of anything. Maybe proof that I’m slightly psychic or something, but I’ve always felt I was a little bit of that. I can sometimes feel things before they happen, but I don’t ever have enough sense of them to really understand what they mean.”
Orick’s face took on a glazed look.
“I dinna ken what ye meant by a word of that. In truth, it doesna matter whether ye believe in it or no, for I know well enough that it exists.”
“Okay, well that’s fine. You’re certainly entitled to your own opinions.” I smiled and looked down at my feet while I searched for a way to change the conversation. “Now that you’ve remembered, congratulations on that by the way, can I ask what part of Scotland you’re from? You speak quite differently from Aiden, what with all the ’tis-es and the kens. You speak like Eoghanan and Adwen. Where do you all come from?”
He smiled, and I couldn’t help but do the same as the corner of his mouth turned up. It was endearing and infectious.
“’Tis no a matter of where we are from, but when.”
“Okay…clearly you are going to make me ask. What exactly does that mean?”
He surprised me by reaching for my hand. I allowed him to take it as I followed his lead down the stairs. He didn’t answer me until we were near the bottom.
“Ye say that ye doona believe in magic. If I asked ye to allow me to prove it to ye, would ye allow me to do so? ’Twould require ye to accompany me on a journey.”
I trusted him, but I also realized that such a trust was rather foolish. I didn’t know him—he’d done nothing to earn my trust. And despite what I felt in my gut about him, scenes from criminal case television shows flashed in my mind at his question.
“A journey? Would this journey end with me shoved into the trunk of a car with duct tape across my mouth?”
Orick looked horrified and completely confused.
“Again, I doona ken, but I believe I can say no. Jane, Grace, Eoghanan, and all their children will accompany us. Allow me to show ye.”
Curiosity got the better of me, and I knew I couldn’t say no. Not only that, being around him seemed to make me impulsive. Whether it was pointless or not, I wanted to spend more time with him.
“Fine. Show me.”
“We will all leave come morning. Tonight, we shall all tell ye everything over the evening meal.”
CHAPTER 18
Aiden and Anne looked entirely too calm. How were they not as shaken by everything as I was? It didn’t make any sense to me at all.
“I’m going to repeat myself once again because obviously you guys weren’t paying attention at dinner. They are convinced they live in the seventeenth century—every single one of them. How is that not certifiably crazy? I’m really half tempted to call someone, for Cooper’s sake if nothing else.”
Anne laughed and dismissed my concern with absolute certainty.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Gillian. Cooper is the most levelheaded and well cared for child I’ve ever seen. If anybody needs to be called on, it’s you. Just take a breath and think about everything that they said.”
What was there to think about? The very idea that I was the one out of line or acting crazy baffled me completely.
“Aiden, back me up here. It’s crazy, right?”
“No, I doona think so. Why doona ye go with them and see for yerself?”
I collapsed in frustration onto one of the couches in the sitting room.
“Are you telling me that you believe them?”
Anne came over and gave me a shove so that I would scoot over as she sat down beside me and looked up at Aiden.
“Should I tell her or should you? Which one of us is more likely to get through?”
Aiden smirked and pointed at Anne.
“I vote for ye. Yer American. Ye can relate to her close-mindedness and lack of belief in anything out of the ordinary.”
Anne glared at him then turned to face me.
“Okay, Gillian, I’m going to tell you a story. I know you won’t believe most of it, but at least listen. After I’ve finished, you can leave with Orick and the rest of them and see for yourself that I’m telling the truth. My hope is that with this story, you’ll be able to understand why we believed them so easily.”
I ground my teeth, crossed my arms, and settled in to listen to her fairy tale.
“Fine.”
“I’m not sure how you thought Aiden got this job. I’m sure Tracy made it sound like she did it out of the goodness of her heart. I can assure you, that’s not what happened.”
I never believed Tracy did anything out of the goodness of her heart. Everything that Tracy did—good, bad, or indifferent—was in her best interest.
“No, I just assumed she hired him because she knew him from college and he does good work.”
Anne winked at Aiden and smiled with pride.
“Both of those things are true but no, that’s not why she hired him. Or at least, maybe that is why she hired him, but it’s not as if she called him to inquire about the job. We had to come to her, and we wouldn’t have even known about the possibility without the help of a little magic.”
I kept my mouth shut, as promised, while I waited for her to continue.
“Two weeks before Tracy hired Aiden for this job, he was about to send all of his team members to look for work elsewhere. We were about to sell our house and were talking about moving to the States and living with my family for awhile to get back on our feet.”
I would never have suspected that they were struggling in such a way. I reached out to squeeze Anne’s hand.
“What happened?”
“You see how remote everything is here. It was hard to find work, and slowly our savings ran out. Anyway, right when we were ready to make the call, our phone rings and it’s some old woman out in the middle of nowhere—a few hours outside of Edinburgh—who wants to have some work done in her kitchen. Aiden drives out there to meet her, some lady named Morna, and she’s decided she doesn’t need any work done after all.”
Anne paused and looked at Aiden knowingly.
“I’m sure he was ready to throttle the lady, what with the hope it had given us and the hours he had to drive when we hardly had the gas money. Anyway, right as he’s starting to leave, she tells him she’s caught wind of a job that would be much bigger for him and proceeded to tell us about someone buying Cagair Castle and putting up the money to restore the place. He could hardly believe it when she said Tracy’s name. He called her right away and, by that night, he had the job, a job that was guaranteed for at least eight months and where he would make enough money to pay himself and his workers enough to last them well over a year.”
Job tip aside, the situation would have frustrated me if I was in his shoes. Why would the old lady have him drive all the way out there just to change her mind?
“Why didn’t she call and tell Aiden she didn’t want work done and give him the tip on Cagair Castle anyway?”
Anne nodded
and smiled as if I were finally catching on.
“That’s exactly what I said. It didn’t make sense. Regardless, I thought we owed her a thank you for the tip. It was one of those days where I was feeling rather cooped up anyway, and Aiden was already hard at work making plans for Cagair, so I decided to drive out to Morna’s house myself and thank her in person. Aiden gave me very specific directions. When I got there, the house was completely gone, as if it never existed at all.”
I couldn’t stay quiet at that.
“Oh, come on now. You must have just gotten lost.”
“No. I wasn’t lost. I made sure of it. Then I made the long drive into Edinburgh and started asking around about her. My one-day trip out of the house ended up taking me three. I became sort of obsessed with finding her. Most people I asked had no idea what house I was talking about and had never heard of a woman named Morna who lived near Conall Castle. Then I finally found an old man who looked nearly as old as this castle is who said he’d heard stories about the disappearing house on the way to Conall Castle. Most people who have heard the story believe it’s bad luck to see the house, for those that have usually disappear shortly after. For us though, it certainly hasn’t been bad luck at all.”
It was a rather remarkable story, but I didn’t see how it was supposed to convince me that Orick and the rest of them weren’t stark-raving mad.
“Is that all? It’s a crazy story, Anne, I’ll give you that. It’s more than a little creepy, but I don’t know—” She interrupted me mid-sentence.
“Don’t you remember the name of the woman Jane said sent her and her sister back? The woman who dropped off their luggage and seems to play a large part in their journeys back and forth? Her name was Morna.”
Now that Anne said it, I did remember Jane going on about the supposed witch named Morna, but at the time my brain had already overloaded and I’d not taken in much of what she said.
“So you think this witch that got Aiden the job is also somehow connected to our guests?”
Anne threw up her hands as if it were obvious.
“That’s exactly what I think. Rumors of disappearances have happened at Conall Castle, at McMillan Castle, and here at Cagair as well. You remember how convinced Aiden was that he saw them crawling out of the cellar? Maybe it wasn’t the drugs. Maybe he really did see that and that’s where they travel back and forth. Maybe it’s a thing with Scottish castles, and our guests are some of the very people that went missing. Maybe they went through and liked it. Let’s be honest, we’ve seen their husbands so we know that’s a definite possibility. They fell through somehow, fell in love, and decided to stay there and make lives for themselves. Maybe you’re supposed to be the next missing person.”
“The next missing person? That sounds terrible.”
Anne stood and reached down to offer me a hand so she could pull me up right along with her.
“I think it sounds romantic. And you’re going. There’s no harm in seeing. My money is on them. They’re telling you the truth, Gillian, and you’re about to be in for one hell of an adventure, I expect.”
Of course I would go. Even if they were crazy, hearing them talk about it over dinner had never really made me not want to go. All it did was make me think that I would need to have some sort of escape plan before I left with them just in case they turned out to be half as crazy as they all sounded.
“We will see, I guess. Are you and Aiden going to come?”
Now that we were both standing, Anne moved to Aiden’s side, smiling as he placed his arm around her in a statement of joint agreement.
“Oh gracious, no. Of course we aren’t going. Are you crazy? I am way too attached to sweat pants, movie night, and wine, but you go and have a great time. We will definitely come and see you all off though.”
It seemed everything was decided, and I would have to get on board despite any monumental doubts I now had about the sanity of everyone inside Cagair Castle. We weren’t leaving until morning. I assumed the only thing I could do before then was to get Toby and me all packed for what was sure to be one of the shortest and most ridiculous, imaginary trips ever.
One question hung in my mind as I carried Toby back up to my room—what did one pack for a trip to the seventeenth century?
CHAPTER 19
“Knock. Knock. Sorry to disturb you. Nobody has seen you in awhile, so I just thought I would drop in and check on you and bring you something that you can put on in the morning.”
Jane stood in the doorway with Cooper as she looked at my suitcases and the various items surrounding them spread out all over my bed. A simple gray gown lay draped over her arm. Admittedly, it did look extremely out of place in this time, but as far as I was concerned, that didn’t mean that it had come from another.
“Packing a few things, I can see. Do you mind if I help you with that?”
I could see that she intended to help regardless of what I said, so I smiled and nodded as they both walked all the way inside. Cooper didn’t hesitate a moment as he crawled on top of the bed, right up in the middle of everything, and gathered a squirmy Toby into his arms. The pup took to wagging his tail and licking Cooper’s face right away.
“He likes you.”
Cooper smiled and nudged his own nose with Toby’s.
“Good, ’cause I sure do like him.”
Jane reached for one of my empty suitcases and went to close it, hesitantly pulling it off the bed as I watched her suspiciously.
“I don’t mean to disappoint you, but you can’t bring these suitcases with you. It wouldn’t do for someone to see you rolling around something like this. I have a different sort of bag you can put a few things in, more of a pack sack of sorts.”
I tried not to frown as I watched her roll my suitcase to the other side of the room.
“A pack sack?”
“Yes, a small cloth thing. You’ll see. And good on you for thinking of laying out everything you’ll miss, but you can’t bring most of this stuff with you.”
“Like what?” I sat down next to Cooper on the end of the bed and waited for Jane to take control.
“Well, toilet paper for starters. I know it would be great to have, but there’s not really anywhere to put the stuff when you’re done with it. It would just get really gross. You won’t need shampoo either, but you won’t really miss that. I’ll admit, any time I come back here I always relish a good scrubbing with the stuff, but just wait until you get to use the oil mixtures that some of the ladies in McMillan village make. It’s lovely, and your hair will shine and become so soft that you won’t miss the suds as much as you would think. Is it all right if I gather up the things you definitely will want?”
I shrugged, knowing full well that she would do as she wished. Cooper obviously could tell the same thing, for he squirmed his way off the bed and turned to pet Toby as he spoke.
“This looks like it could take awhile. I think I’ll go play downstairs. Would it be okay if I brought Toby with me? I promise I’ll take good care of him. We will stay inside.”
Toby jumped off the bed as if he understood every word and took off out the bedroom door ahead of him.
“I know you will. Absolutely. He will love that.”
Once Cooper was gone, Jane waved for me to stand and watch over her shoulder.
“Grab all the toothbrushes and tubes of toothpaste you have. All of the modern girls I know back there, myself included, haven’t been willing to give that up. We’ve even got our husbands using them, though we have to do that in private. Also, pick out one of your most comfortable lounging outfits. I keep a pair of modern clothes locked away in a sacred place and, if I ever find myself all alone, I am out of my dress and into my stretch pants in record-setting time. You’ll want to do the same. Lastly, gather up a bunch of your modern undergarments. The guys love them and, since no one really sees them, I don’t think there’s any harm in feeling more like yourself. And trust me, having those on underneath the clothing we usually have to wear h
elps a lot.”
It pleased me to hear her say that I could bring some of the things I’d already gathered. When she first started in, I assumed she was about to shelf everything. Still, she made it sound as if I would be gone a very long time.
“Just how long do you think I will be gone? You make it sound like it will be forever.”
Jane smiled, leaned over and pushed all of my stuff to half of the bed, and sat down as she patted the bed for me to join her.
“Gillian, I’m sure you will come back occasionally just as we do, but I honestly expect that once you go through, you will never live on this side of time ever again.”
I gulped down the anxious knot that rose in my throat at her words.
“Just why would you think that?”
“You’re going to fight this, I can tell. Let me tell you now, as a former champ at battling this thing, there’s no point.”
Spending time with these people made me feel as if I came from another planet. They always spoke of things as if I should understand them, as if I should pick up on what they meant. I never did.
“What thing?”
“The love thing. That’s what all of this is about—the time travel stuff. That’s the point of all of it. It’s why Morna still continues to live way, way past her expiration date. It’s why each and every woman that has gone through has done so, and it’s why you dreamt of Orick long before he showed up here.”
“Whoa now.” I jumped off of the bed like she’d poked me with a hot iron. “I’m just going on this trip out of pure curiosity. Nothing more. I feel like maybe you’ve gotten the wrong impression about Orick and me somewhere. I don’t know him. I just helped him the night he arrived because he needed it.”
Something flashed in Jane’s eyes, and I knew even before she spoke that I upset her.
“No, don’t do that. I didn’t get the wrong impression about anything. You kissed him, didn’t you? And you do like him, yes?”
Love Beyond Dreams (A Scottish Time Travel Romance): Book 6 (Morna's Legacy Series) Page 9