“Did you have a lot of gatherings in your time?” she asked as they twirled on the dance floor.
He had grown more adventurous and they had moved past standing and swaying a few songs earlier.
“Aye, when my aunt visits us, and of course we have holidays for the crofters. A big feast, and singing and storytelling. The clans around us usually invited us to their gatherings, and up until my father died, we’d have them every so often as well.”
The music stopped and he dipped down to kiss her, having become more relaxed as the night wore on. She realized she was exhausted and looked around to find very few people were left. Sam and Evie were sitting at a table with the baby monitor between them, Evie looking at pictures on Sam’s phone, a sweet, unguarded smile on her face.
Archie was pouring a drink for Mellie. She’d have to keep an eye on those two. He seemed nice enough but he was too old for her. She saw Dr. Stone for the first time picking at what was left of her extravagant birthday cake and waved at him, glad that he had made it.
“Looks like—” she started when a huge crash sounded from overhead, shaking the wooden beams with its force.
She grabbed Lachlan’s hand and squeaked in surprise, wondering if the half rotten fifth floor had finally collapsed. “Will you run upstairs and see?” she asked, looking around to try to reassure everyone.
She’d heard plenty of creaks and groans since she’d moved into her stone monstrosity, but never such a resounding crash.
She hurried over to Evie’s side after Lachlan took off, his new best friend trailing after him. Evie pressed the monitor up to her ear and fiddled with the settings, handing it to Sam with a dismayed look on her face.
“I can’t hear anything,” she said. “Can you?” She stood up and yelped. “I’m just going to go check on him,” she said, wringing her hands.
“I’ll go with you,” Sam said, trying to sound calm, but his face telling another story. “I’m sure it’s just those damn squirrels knocking things over up there though.”
He and Evie headed for the door of the dining hall before she could stop them. Dr. Stone and Mellie gave the ceiling suspicious looks.
“It’s been standing for a thousand years,” Piper said, herding the stragglers into the kitchen. “I’m sure everything’s fine.”
Once they were in the cozy confines of the smaller room, they began to relax. Until Evie’s blood curdling scream rang out from the second floor.
Chapter 11
Pietro awoke to one of Quinn’s world class swearing tirades. He reached for Bella’s hand that had been comfortingly resting on his chest all night and sat up when he found it was no longer there.
Quinn noticed he was awake, and instead of stopping his cursing, seemed to be inspired with a refreshed stream of creativity. Pietro got dizzy trying to keep up with all the rude variations on the livestock theme. Surely a goat wouldn’t fit … he shook his head and cleared his throat.
“Aye, I see ye there,” Quinn said, hitting the mantel with his fist, causing the trinkets to wobble precariously.
Catie sniffled in the corner of the room, and Pietro was shocked that Quinn had gone on like he had with his sister present.
“Where’s Bella?” Pietro asked as he mentally examined his condition.
Headache mild. Fever somewhat subsided, but he was still a little chilled. Hunger level ravenous.
Quinn’s already dark look turned dangerously stormy and Catie began to sob. “That is what we are trying to find out,” he said.
He pressed his lips together, glaring at his sister, then shook his head and sat down hard in the armchair where Bella had been sleeping.
“What do ye mean?” Pietro asked, swinging his legs over so he was sitting up like a regular person.
He was so sick of lying around like a frail invalid. He was a bit muzzy from sleeping so long, but his senses were starting to click into full alert.
“I didna know,” she wailed from her corner.
“Know what?” Pietro tightened his hands into fists.
He looked from Catie, who was useless in her pitiful crying, to Quinn, who was still simmering with barely controlled rage.
“The lasses went out early this morn to gather eggs,” he said, dropping his head into his hands. “A man rode up and said he was my messenger. Told them he had important news from Lachlan that only Bella could hear.”
He shook his head and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. When he took them away, Pietro noticed for all the man’s great size, he looked very young and frightened.
“It wasn’t your messenger?” Pietro asked, his voice sharp with panic. “Where are they?”
“I dinna know, and I dinna know,” he said.
“He was wearing our plaid, and he called me by name,” Catie said, blowing her nose into a hankie. She took a deep shuddering breath. “It’s been so long since I’ve been home, I didna know he wasna our man, Quinn.”
Quinn winced and got up to put his hand on her shoulder. “I know, lass. Ye must try to calm down. We are sussing out what’s been done.” He turned to Pietro. “Catie left them to have a private word. The man said they’d be right behind. She ran ahead to have breakfast ready for them when they returned.”
“And they never returned?” Pietro stood up and ignored both of them leaning forward like they might need to catch him at any moment. He swayed but stayed upright. “How long have they been gone?”
A clattering in the kitchen caught their attention and Quinn and Catie hurried out of the room, nearly knocking him over in their haste.
“Yes, I’ll be fine without your help,” he muttered, following them at an unsteady pace. His fear for Bella’s safety was keeping him on his feet.
A stable lad and Aunt Gwen were helping a man into a chair. The man wore only his shirt and stockings and rubbed a large welt above his right eye. Quinn groaned and turned to Catie.
“Do ye recognize him, then?” he asked her acerbically.
“Hello Redmond,” she said, eyes downcast. A second later she was crying again.
Quinn motioned for the lad to run along, then asked Redmond what had happened.
“Well, and it seems self explanatory, nae lad? I got hit on the head and my clothes stolen from me.”
Aunt Gwen pushed bowls of parritch in front of them. Pietro gave her a grateful look and paused before digging in. How could he have an appetite when Bella was possibly in danger? Going without wouldn’t help her, so he forced a spoonful. He’d need whatever strength he could cling to and he didn’t remember the last time he’d eaten.
“Was it one of the bastard Glens?” Quinn asked.
Redmond rolled his eyes and then clutched his head. “Aye, and there was more’n one of them.”
Quinn glanced at his aunt, and Pietro was sure her presence was the only thing sparing them from a new round of cursing. He swallowed a mouthful of oats and spoke up.
“So, the Glens took Bella?” he asked, only to be given twin dirty looks from both Quinn and Redmond. “But wouldn’t she have recognized him?” A sharp pain struck him in the heart, and he wasn’t sure if it was Bella choosing to leave him or the thick, pasty parritch. He couldn’t believe she would leave, just tear away from him after last night. He pressed his palm to his chest, still able to feel her warm hand resting there. He looked to Catie and gently touched her arm. “Did she act like she knew the man?” he asked, not wanting to send her into another bout of hysterics.
She shook her head. “No, she acted mean to him, like she acts to ye and my brother. But not as if she knew him.”
His appetite was gone. Where was she now? Was she scared? “We have to go after her,” he said, slamming his fists on the table and rattling the dishes.
Redmond made a rumble of dissent that almost sent Pietro over the table to give the man another lump, but Quinn shook his head at him.
“Ye are right. Redmond will gather the others to meet us. I shall ride after Bella.”
He got up and heade
d out the door toward the stable. Pietro was so stunned that he had agreed with him that he sat there for a moment, staring at his back. Then he swallowed hard and ran after him.
Quinn barely turned to acknowledge him as he readied his horse, barking instructions to anyone within a five foot radius. Stable lads were scurrying out of his way to do his bidding, not wanting to be the victim of a clap on the head or an earful of his wicked swearing.
“Ye’re no’ well enough,” he said, shaking his head at the lad Pietro had asked for a horse. “I canna have ye falling into the road halfway to the Glen land. I shall find her, ye need no’ worry.”
Pietro gave the stable lad his best look of fury for ignoring him and started to saddle a horse on his own. “If I drop, leave me,” he said, his arms quaking as he shifted the saddle onto the horse. “But I am going. And I am worried.” When he saw that Quinn looked as stony as ever, he pulled out his most powerful ammunition. “Lachlan said ye are to keep us together at all costs. Not just alive, but together.”
Quinn shook his head but didn’t argue. “Depend on my brother to fall in love with a witch,” he muttered under his breath.
Pietro paused at that. Was Piper a witch? He never would have put it so bluntly, but what other reason for them to have traveled across the ages? For the most part, he thought he’d taken it all remarkably in stride, being ripped from his day job to a completely different century, to meet the woman he was supposedly destined to be with. It shook him a little now, but it was obviously too late to worry about it much. Bella was his, fate had deemed it so, and he would protect her to his last breath because he bloody well happened to love the wee vixen. He reddened as Quinn continued to stare at him, glad the man couldn’t read his thoughts.
They set out with four other men, armed to the teeth, and would meet up with the rest of Quinn’s men from his own land sometime later on down the road. From there they would try to determine what was to be done, if Bella had been abducted against her will to be forcibly placed back under her father’s iron thumb, or if she had for some reason decided she was done with the Fergusons. Done with Pietro.
As they rode, his unsettled thoughts waged a war in his mind. He couldn’t decide if he was fooling himself into believing that a few passionate encounters was enough to keep Bella by his side. She did seem determined to be independent, and he thought he had convinced her that she could make her own decisions with him. He had told her in the beginning that he would take her to Edinburgh to be a tutor, no matter what the people of the day thought of that. There was no reason she should want to go back to her father, who she purported to despise.
He groaned as he continued to circle around his musings, always ending back where he had started. Confused.
“Ye’re going to hurt yerself,” Quinn said with a wry smile. “We shall find her. We know they willna harm her at least.”
“Did she ever say anything about me, while I was asleep?” Pietro asked, throwing his pride onto the muddy road to be trampled by the horse’s hooves. He stared at the reins in his hands, not wanting to meet Quinn’s eye.
Quinn took a deep breath, which didn’t bode well for his hopes at all. “Aye, she was worried for ye,” he said. “As we all were.”
“Bugger,” Pietro said. “Ye know what I mean. Ye know she is with me though she is married to your brother? We are meant to be together.” He hated the pathetic sound of his own voice as he threw the words at Quinn.
“Verra well,” he said, pulling his horse up close to Pietro. He slowed down and watched until the others were quite a bit ahead of them. “She did speak of ye, to my sister.”
Pietro stared at him, waiting for him to continue. “Well?” he asked, about to jump out of his skin.
“Are ye sure ye feel well enough to be out like this?” Quinn asked maddeningly.
“I feel well enough to knock ye out of that saddle, if ye don’t tell me what they said.”
“I hesitate to do so as I was eavesdropping, and shouldna have heard it in the first place,” he said, his face dimpling with a mischievous grin. He held up his hand in concession and continued. “It seems she told my sister a bit about yer being soul mates. Catie ate it up with a spoon, but Bella thinks it’s all very unromantic. She’d rather not know, y’see.”
“What?” Pietro asked.
Quinn shrugged. “I dinna understand her. She said it takes all the mystery out of it, and that if ye really are soul mates, it willna matter if she treats ye like a washing maid.”
“I hope she treats her washing maid better than she treats me,” Pietro said bitterly.
Quinn laughed. “Aye, ye lap it up like a dog, though. She seems to like, er, certain aspects of yer relationship. Perhaps ye have more power than ye think.”
Pietro’s head was swimming and for the first time in days it wasn’t from fever. Was he supposed to be playing hard to get with Bella? He had thought it was a good thing to be assured of his romantic future. He assumed she would have thought the same.
“Ye think I should withhold sex?” he asked incredulously, earning him a howl of hilarity from Quinn.
“I wish I had yer problems,” he said, flicking the reins to catch up to his men, leaving Pietro to ruminate on the new information.
“No, ye don’t,” he muttered to his retreating back.
***
They met up with a scout the next day, who had just come from the direction of castle Glen. He had been watching the roads for the past few days and noted a small group pass by with a woman in their midst. It had to have been Bella. Pietro grilled him ruthlessly but nothing the man had seen led him to believe she was being mistreated.
Quinn rubbed his face tiredly and looked out at the long road ahead of them. Then he looked to Pietro.
“I dinna know what we can do without my brother. Neither one of us has a claim on the lass.”
“Well then, where’s Lachlan?” Pietro asked. His headaches came and went, but the tremors in his limbs still bothered him, and he clenched his fists at his sides to keep anyone from noticing how weak he was. “Didn’t he say he was going to speak to a friend in Castle on Hill before heading to your land?”
He was sure that was their intention when they had all parted ways, was it a week ago? He had been unconscious for so many days he wasn’t sure. But surely Lachlan would at least be on the way to his home by now.
Quinn shook his head. “I believe he was going to the village, aye, but if he ever started the journey home, none of my men have encountered him. It makes me believe …” he trailed off and Pietro nodded bluntly, to show that he understood.
The only other explanation was that Lachlan and Piper had returned to the present. Future. It made his head spin and he didn’t want to start hopelessly reminiscing about hot showers and comfortable beds, or fast cars for that matter. His horse whinnied and nudged his shoulder as if it sensed his wistful thoughts.
“It’s not your fault, old man,” he said to the sturdy gelding he’d been riding. “So, what do we do, if we can’t find your brother?” he asked Quinn.
Quinn mounted his horse in a smooth, quick motion, signaling to his men to do the same. “We stay the course and hope for the best. If we have to bluff, we shall. I only pray her father willna marry her off to another in the space of these few days.”
Pietro’s blood froze at those words. “Can he do that?” he asked, gripping the edge of the saddle.
A swirling flurry of rage, disgust and horror swept over him at the thought of it and he flung himself onto his horse, wild to get moving. Every moment away from Bella felt like knives pricking at his skin, and he yearned to hold her again.
For once he was grateful for her contrary nature. The certainty that she would raise a ruckus if her father tried any such thing kept him from whipping the horse into a lather to get there sooner. He prayed she would raise hell if she had to.
“He can do whatever he pleases. The Glens are verra powerful and Tavish is the sort that does no’ like to be played a f
ool. This will be personal to him.” Quinn pulled ahead of the others, with Pietro staying beside him.
“It’s personal to me,” he said, distraught.
Quinn looked at him sidelong before answering. “Good,” he finally said. “I pray ye stay healthy enough to fight, as we’ll need every last man if it should come to it.”
Chapter 12
Everyone froze while the scream tapered off into a sad echo of itself. Piper was the first to shoot from the room, tearing up the stairs as fast as her strappy heels would allow. When she reached the second floor, she turned in the direction of the room Evie was living in with Magnus, only to run into Sam coming out of the room next to it. He looked as if he’d seen a ghost and been punched in the stomach in the same instant.
“The baby’s gone,” he said, his voice harsh with fear.
“What?” Piper couldn’t even register the words he’d just spoken.
She could hear Evie sobbing in the darkened room and pushed past him to find her standing shaking in front of Magnus’ crib. The baby monitor was on the floor at her feet, a wadded up blanket clutched in her hands. She turned to face Piper, and Piper hoped to never again see such anguish again on anyone’s face, let alone her best friend’s. Hurrying to her side, she put her arms around her and peered into the crib. The sheets were rumpled and a binky lay off to the side, all by itself.
“Sam’s looking for him,” Piper said.
It was the wrong thing to say, as if the baby had just climbed out of his crib and wandered off to another room. She didn’t know what to say, stunned that he was gone. Everyone in the village loved Magnus, loved Sam and Evie. Who would take him? Had someone possibly heard him crying and picked him up?
Evie sobbed harder and held the blanket out to her, choking as she tried to speak, but unable to form words and just shook her head.
Revenge (Book 3 of Lost Highlander series) Page 11