Taken

by Angeline Fortin

  Another battle cry behind them, and James turned to fight once more but another pop sounded and the Englishman stumbled with a scream of pain as the bits of his knee fell apart. Scarlett again. Reaching her side, James grasped her arm, hauling her away from the fighting. “Are you hurt?” she yelled over the clash of metal and the screams of dying men.

  James shook his head. He would survive it if they made their way through this mêlée. Battling, pushing his way through the swamp of combat and death. Ahead, he saw Rhys fall to his knees and rushed forward, feeling a jolt through his shoulders as his sword sank deep into the neck of the man who would dare try to kill his brother.

  “Are ye alright?” he yelled above the din and Rhys nodded, wiping blood from his brow as he pushed himself to his feet. His eyes widened as he saw Scarlett behind him but there was no time for comment. Savage cries, echoed around them and the two men put Scarlett between them, facing the English soldiers pressing in.

  Once long ago – or far in the future, depending how one looked at it – Mark Twain was quoted as saying that ‘The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.’

  Now Scarlett knew why. She had done it! She had saved Laird, who in turn had saved Rhys. Firing her pistol again and again, she was determined to keep it that way.

  The crowd thinned, only requiring a slash here or there to make a path for them. Scarlett fired once more and then they were to safety, running toward the River Till to the east. All around them, the Scots were retreating knowing that defeat was upon them.

  The battle was over, but not finished. They had to run as the Englishmen would follow, looking to strike down any stragglers.

  Tripping along after Laird’s long strides with his plaid trailing out behind her, Scarlett’s legs were burning against the exertion. Then numbing. She stumbled as weakness washed over her. “Laird,” she cried out, tripping over her skirts and landing on her knees. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. “Laird,” she whispered weakly.

  Laird turned and frowned down at her taking in her pale face, nearly translucent skin. “What is it? Are ye injured?”

  No, that wasn’t it at all. Weeks ago, she had taken Laird’s sword in her hand and begged for someone to save her. She had come to him and now saved him in return. The circle was complete. She knew it with a sickening certainty. “Laird, oh no! Oh, God, not now. Not yet!”

  Her eyes met his beloved gaze, seeing the confusion there. He didn’t yet understand what was happening, but he would all too soon.

  His gaze narrowed and then his jaw set with familiar stubbornness. “Nay, yer no’ goin’ anywhere, lass. Fight it.”

  “I can’t,” she gasped. Laird dropped his sword and fell to his knees, locking his arms tightly around her. Scarlett held on to his shoulders, hoping beyond hope that she might hold him tightly enough to carry him with her. “Oh Laird. I want… Take care of Aleizia and Aileen. Don’t make her marry the earl. And, Rhys.” His eyes flared as she cast her eyes north. Realizing they weren’t following, Rhys had stopped and turned back. “Don’t let anyone make him marry at all. He and Willem…”

  Laird’s eyes widened in understanding. “I won’t but ye hae to fight it, mo chroí.”

  “I can’t.” Weakly she lifted a hand to stroke his cheek, but already she was fading. “Be the heir you were meant to be. Maybe not in position, but at heart. Take care of them all. I love you, Laird. I will always…”

  “Scarlett! Na-a-ay!”

  James beat his fist down on the ground where Scarlett had just sat but there was nothing there. She was gone.

  How? Why?

  His fingers found the warm blade of his sword and curled around it, so tightly that it cut into his fingers. His palm. Blood oozed from between his clenched fingers. The pain was nothing compared to that impaling his heart and spiking through his chest as if death itself had seized him in its grip. So much he had gained.

  “Nay, mo chroí. Stay wi’ me,” he whispered. “Please, please, dinnae go.”

  “Laird,” Rhys shouted running back to his side. “We maun go. Now, Laird!”

  “Nay, I cannae.”

  “Aye, ye can, ye spleeny bastard! She dinnae come all this way to hae ye die on yer knees,” he yelled, fisting his hand in James’ shirt and dragging him to his feet. “Now, come on!”

  As dark descended around them, the battle was all but over. His misery was just beginning with her loss.

  41

  September 9, 2013

  Flodden Field, the north of England

  The battle was still raging. Scarlett stared dumbly at the sight as the numbness faded. Hope speared through her but faded quickly. Where it had been blood, guts and ugliness before, the spectacle before her was too small, too clean… too kind.

  Staged.

  Only a few hundred men were on the field. A field dotted not with the bodies of the dead and injured but with rounded hay bales. Atop a low hill not far away a stark granite cross rose in memorial against the blue sky.

  A plane flew overhead and Scarlett’s head whipped from the left to the right taking in the evidence of a modern day Flodden. Cars, cameras. Spectators.

  It was a reenactment, she realized. It wasn’t real at all. Laird was truly gone. Dead now by about five hundred years. “No, no, no,” she whispered, denying the truth. Digging in her purse, she found her phone and turned it on.

  But there it was. September ninth, twenty-thirteen. Five fifty-seven p.m. Just as when she’d left, she’d come back through time exactly five hundred years almost to the minute. And almost a month had passed since she travelled back in time.

  A month where her life had changed completely.

  And now Laird was gone. Torn away from her forever by time and space. Scarlett felt her shoulders heave in a bone-jarring but silent sob, then another that ripped through her chest like an alien trying to force its way out, but even that pain couldn’t have matched this torture. She couldn’t take a breath; her throat was clenched too tightly. The burning in her breast spread, radiating outward as hot tears rolled down her cheeks.

  No.

  The cry of her soul echoed by Laird a half a millennia before as her fingers curled into the moist earth of Flodden.

  “Oi, there! You alright, miss?” a deep, brusque voice said nearby as a strong hand wrapped around her elbow and tried to help her to her feet. “Are you hurt? Can you stand?”

  Could she? Scarlett had no idea. She didn’t even want to try. She just wanted to curl up in Laird’s plaid cry until she hadn’t a tear left to shed.

  “Hey, don’t I know you? Aren’t you that actress who went missing some time ago?” he asked. “Wot are you doing all dressed up like that? Filming a new movie?”

  “Something like that,” she mumbled noncommittally.

  The phone in her hand sounded a series of pings, then again and again. Forty-six voicemails. One hundred and twelve texts. Almost all were from Tyrone, though a few were from her parents.

  Flipping through her contacts, Scarlett dialed for help.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  Yes, well, welcome home.

  Scarlett hung up on Tyrone. Ignoring the buzzing of her phone when he called her back straightaway. She would answer his messages later but not now. Not when she too devastated by what had happened to her to even draw a steady breath.

  There were things she needed to do and she would do them on her own.

  Right now, there was somewhere else she desperately needed to be.

  “Sir, can you help me, please? I need to get to Dunskirk Castle. Can you take me? I know it’s a long way…”

  “Ain’t but a fifteen minute drive or some such, miss,” the man said gruffly. “Are ye sure that’s where ye want to go? Do ye need the police?”

  Scarlett looked up into his concerned brown eyes. “No, thank you, everything I need is at Dunskirk.”

  Laird. Donell! That old curmudgeon better be there.

  A mont
h later

  “Good morning, Miss Thomas. We’re pleased to have you back again.” The clerk at the Dunskirk admissions desk welcomed her back just as she had every morning the new museum was open for the past month. “Nothing yet, I’m sorry to say.”

  Nothing yet, meaning there was no sign of Donell. Again. Just as there hadn’t been since the day she returned to her time. She had looked everywhere for him but to no avail. Just as she had in the past, Scarlett felt an undeniable conviction that she wouldn’t see him again until he pleased him to make an appearance.

  Unlike last time, she wasn’t certain if that were ever going to happen.

  He had gotten what he wanted from her.

  Scarlett sighed. “Can I just go back then?”

  The clerk nodded. Scarlett gave her points for being so professional. No doubt she was harboring a raging curiosity for the reasons behind Scarlett’s daily visits. What could a world famous celebrity want with an ancient Scotsman? Why would she come to Dunskirk each day to wait for him, wrapped in a ragged old tartan?

  Still, the clerk had never uttered a word. Never asked. Just remained serene and unquestioning as if she knew Scarlett’s sanity was depending on it.

  Perhaps it was.

  “Just let me stamp your pass.”

  With a nod, Scarlett drew her monthly pass from her purse and the girl found a blank spot on the oft-stamped card to make another mark. Winding her way through the exhibits, Scarlett found the spot where Laird’s sword had once been displayed. His bejeweled Claymore no longer stood there. She had that much to be thankful for, staring at the short bill that sat in place of the claymore. The bladed weapon was about two feet in length but Scarlett had no idea whose it was.

  Nor did she have much information about what had become of Laird. He hadn’t died at Flodden, that much she did know. He hadn’t left his sword on the field to be found. There wasn’t much else she could discover about him beyond that, though she’d spent much of her time lately researching Dunskirk and its former owner. Information on the early owners of the property was spotty at best. She knew he’d continued to serve at court sporadically until James V had been old enough to hold his own. He’d been made Earl of Achenmeade for his service but there’d never been another earl by that time. According to all sources, it had died with him. Whether it was because he never married or not, Scarlett didn’t know.

  She only hoped he’d returned to Dunskirk and began to live his dream, building on his tower to begin the expansion that would lead to this one day.

  She hoped he was happy. Oh, so happy with his life.

  If only she knew! If Laird were happy, that would be enough for her.

  She could let it go.

  But without knowing…

  Movement stirred behind her and out of the corner of her eye, she saw an elderly but spry figure slip out of the tower door. Her heart began to pound and she followed but couldn’t catch sight of him again. Down the stairs she went and through the halls, past a cordoned-off area and around another corner.

  A pair of heavily carved doors with stained glass panels stood ajar and Scarlett went through them. She knew well enough from her time filming there that they led to the chapel. Donell wasn’t within but a single candle sat burning at the altar. Another flickered in one of the alcoves off to the side, the light dancing off an amorphous object she was decidedly unfamiliar with. Intrigued, she decided to take a look. Her boots scuffed along the stone floor, breaking the reverent silence.

  Her gasp when she saw the carved marble tomb there was like a shout, bouncing off the stone walls. In all her years at Dunskirk, it had never been there before but she recognized the sculpted figure laying on top all too well.

  It was Laird.

  Scarlett fell to her knees beside it, tracing her fingers over his attractively hewn features, his nose and clean-shaven jaw. Then over the words carved into the side of the tomb:

  James Stewart Patrick Hepburn

  1st Earl of Achenmeade.

  Laird of Achenmeade.

  Born May 2nd in the year of Our Lord 1486

  Died October 10 in the year of Our Lord 1552

  He awaits Ye still

  A tear splashed on the marble, setting the gray marbling out in stark contrast to the white. Laird, oh Laird, her heart cried. I’m here. I’m still waiting, too!

  “’Boot time, lassie. What kept ye?”

  Scarlett’s head whipped around and she stared incredulously at Donell, who was leaning against a granite pillar not far away.

  “What kept me?” she asked incredulously. “What kept you? I’ve been here almost every day for a month.”

  She had. Tyrone and her parents had wanted to make a media circus of her ‘kidnapping and disappearance’ as well as her miraculous return but Scarlett had told them that the paycheck was all dried up. She refused to work for them and be the oh-so-marketable Scarlett Thomas product any longer.

  Thankfully, Grayson would have nothing to do with her. He’d finally gotten all the publicity he ever desired, though not in the best light. It seemed he’d been a person of interest in drawn out investigation surrounding her disappearance. CNN instead of Entertainment Tonight. No one had believed his outrageous claims that she’d simply disappeared into thin air.

  Even the press had given up on getting a word out of her on the matter but Scarlett had never given up on finding Donell, hiring private investigators to track him down and waiting him out herself at Dunskirk.

  “Ye ken what I find surprising?” he continued, as if she hadn’t even spoken. “Ye had no’ a tear in yer eye when ye left this place and found yerself in the past. No’ a tear for what ye’d lost and yet here ye are in tears now. Why is that?”

  “I suspect you know why,” Scarlett said tartly, wiping her eyes. “Stop playing with me, Donell. Are you here to send me back or not?”

  “Tsk, tsk, lassie. Ye’ve nae patience a’tall.”

  “No, I don’t,” she agreed. “Why couldn’t you just send him back here with me in the first place? He was supposed to die on that field after all. What harm would there have been in letting him come with me?”

  Donell shook his head. “That’s no’ the way it works, lass. There was more for him to do. A purpose. ‘Tis the reason he was spared.”

  “And what was the reason for sending me there?” she asked. “To break my heart?”

  “Is it broken?” he asked curiously. “Or are yer tears because no one has ever cared so much for ye?”

  “My tears aren’t because he cared for me, Donell. My tears are because I have never been given the chance to care so much for someone else. I would give anything for him. For Rhys and the girls.”

  “E’en if it meant staying here and being wi’out him forever?”

  The thought was like a knife in the heart but Scarlett nodded without hesitation. “If it meant keeping them safe. Yes. I would stay here. Is that why you didn’t let me stay with him?”

  Donell ambled toward the effigy, tracing his fingers across the marble. “He was just sixty-six years when he died. It wouldn’t have a been a verra long life ye had wi’ him in any case.”

  Another tear splashed on her cheek as she looked down at the carefully hewn sculpture of Laird’s beloved face. “A year would have been enough. A week. A day. It wouldn’t have mattered. I just wanted to live a life with him, no matter how long it ended up being. He never knew that. I never got the chance to tell him that I would have loved to have been his wife in truth.” Her voice broke with emotion over those last words.

  “Good answer, lass.”

  Silence fell once again in the chapel as Scarlett gathered Laird’s plaid tightly around her shoulders and stared down at the tomb. “So that’s it then? I’m here and he’s safe?” She sniffed and nodded decisively though her voice lacked the resolve, emerging in a choked whisper, “Okay, that’s okay then.”

  Her chin trembled as her tears began falling in earnest as the agony of loss and heartbreak expanded in her heart wi
th renewed energy. “It’s okay, Laird. You’re okay,” she whispered painfully as she spread her hand out over his, curling her fingers around the stone. Imagining she could feel the warmth of his touch. His hand in hers one last time.

  One final touch.

  “That’s all that really matters. You’re good. We’re good.”

  “Och, lass. Enough,” Donell said sharply, though a single tear glinted in the corner of his eye. “Ye’ve nae hesitation do ye? Is there nothing here at all that ye would miss?”

  “Toilet paper.”

  “Be serious.”

  “The next season of Sherlock? What do you want me to say, Donell?” she asked, shaking her head. “None of it really matters in comparison.”

  “What aboot this?” he asked, kicking a large box next to his foot. A box she recognized all too well.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “Answer the question.”

  Scarlett shrugged. “It was for them. It was all for them. I just… I thought they might like it.”

  “Ye cannae change their fate, lass.”

  “No, I’ve mostly decided that fate isn’t so bad. It gave me Laird. Even for a little while,” she said, her eyes drawn irresistibly back to the tomb.

  “Yet ye still came here hoping to change fate and find a way back.”

  A sad smile quirked her lips. “I did say ‘mostly’.”

  “Ye’d fight for him.”

  “I would. Every girl should be so lucky as to be taken by a Laird.”

  Donell nodded with open satisfaction. “Then go fight for him, lass.”

  Darkness swirled around the corners of her vision then the world went black. By bits and pieces, light began to pierce the gloom once again. Here. There. Little haloed flames. Candles.

  Set along the wall of the chapel were thousands of little candles, brightening the space and reflecting off golden grill work along the perimeter of the room, gold paint on the details of the murals covering the ceiling and the gold of the plate and goblet laid out on the altar.