Falling in Time

by Sue-Ellen Welfonder

  If so, he meant to rout the bastard.

  A lifetime of searching hadn’t produced the temptress who haunted his dreams, but if he could locate the man whose name she cried in passion, he might just find her. Only then would he know peace.

  He’d make her his, insisting she wed him.

  And if she refused or – saints preserve him – for some reason wasn’t able, he’d finally bend to his father’s will and accept a suitable bride of his family’s choosing.

  He just hoped she wouldn’t be Euphemia MacNairn, his clan’s current favorite.

  She was such a wee slip o’ womanhood that a man could blink and miss her presence in a room.

  But her tongue was sharper than the best-honed sword.

  A fault she kept well hidden, though Rogan had no trouble seeing through her false praise and simpering airs. Her eyes, when she thought no one saw her, held a chill colder than the blackest winter night. And – Rogan shuddered - he’d rather guzzle brine than take her to wife, even if her sire was his father’s staunchest ally.

  At least the thought of her banished the painful throbbing at his loins.

  Grateful, Rogan hastened from his bedchamber. But before he reached the stair tower, a dark shape stepped from the shadows, blocking his way.

  “Ho, Rogan!” His cousin Gavin’s smile was crooked. “Such a scowl! Are you on your way belowstairs to announce that the sun willna be rising on the morrow? Or” – he waggled his eyebrows – “have you been dreaming of her again?”

  “Her?” Rogan pretended innocence.

  Gavin laughed. “Unless you cease blethering about the vixen each time you sink into your cups, you cannae think I know naught of her!”

  “I ne’er sink into my cups.” Rogan tried to push past his cousin, but the lout shot out a hand, seizing his elbow in a viselike grip.

  “Once was enough.” Gavin leaned close and winked, clearly amused. “Truth tell” – he flashed a glance over his shoulder and then lowered his voice – “if such a lush piece invaded my dreams, I stay abed all my days.”

  “You’ll hold your tongue is what you’ll do.” Rogan shook free and glared at him. “Lest you wish me to silence it for you?”

  He reached for the dirk that should have been tucked beneath his belt, but remembered too late that he’d tossed on his plaid and nothing else.

  Gavin caught the gesture all the same.

  Unfortunately, it only drew another laugh.

  “I but speak the truth.” The lout had the gall to clamp a hand on Rogan’s shoulder.

  “Why are you skulking about in the shadows?” Rogan changed the subject.

  “I was- … er, ah… visiting Maili.” Gavin released him and brushed at his plaid. “You might be of a better temper, too, if you’d partake of her services now and then.”

  “I haven’t tumbled a laundress since I grew my first beard.” Rogan stepped away from the cold wind blowing through an arrow slit in the stair tower’s thick walling. The chill reminded him of the coldness of his empty bed.

  He did his best to assume an air of importance. “I have no time for such frivol. Some of us have weightier matters to attend, see you.”

  “In the middle o’ the night?” Gavin looked close to laughter again.

  “Snorri’s gone missing,” Rogan improvised, seizing the first thought that came to his mind.

  His dog was out and about somewhere.

  And considering the beast’s age and bad hip, his disappearance from Rogan’s bedchamber was troubling. Snorri rarely left Rogan’s side. He even shunned his comfortable pallet by the hearth fire to sneak into Rogan’s bed, often sleeping sprawled across Rogan’s ankles.

  It wasn’t like the dog to be missing at this late hour.

  Though – Rogan was sure – the well-loved scamp had no doubt crept down to the kitchens where he was known to beg meaty bones and other tidbits from Cook and the kitchen laddies.

  Even so, if Snorri hadn’t returned by morning, he’d launch a search.

  “I was just heading out to look for Snorri now.” Rogan started forward again.

  He wasn’t about to tell Gavin he was on his way to ask his father’s men about a man named Lore who, like as not, was as non-existent as his dream vixen.

  Even so, he had to know.

  “I saw Snorri trotting towards the kitchens as I was leaving Maili’s pallet.” Gavin’s words stopped him.

  “Ah, well” – Rogan forced himself not to continue down the stairs – “I’ll be returning to my bed then.”

  He tried not to frown.

  He should have known his cousin would somehow twist any excuse he used, making it impossible for him to complete his intended mission.

  Proving it, Gavin nodded and folded his arms. He clearly intended to stay where he was until Rogan turned and tromped back up the way he’d come. Damn his cousin for being such a long-nosed bugger of a kinsman.

  Rogan felt the loon’s stare boring into his back even when he knew the tightly-coiled stairs hid his retreat from the other man’s view.

  He still felt eyes on him when, moments later, he let himself back into his bedchamber. But the gaze he sensed now wasn’t his cousin’s.

  The eyes he knew were watching him were amber.

  And they belonged to her.

  The dream vixen who now, damn her luscious hide, was apparently no longer content to merely haunt his sleeping hours, but his waking ones as well.

  Rogan could feel her everywhere.

  In his room’s darkened corners – the night candles had gutted hours ago and only a few cold embers glimmered in the hearth – and even right before him, tempting and beckoning, although he couldn’t see her.

  Her presence shimmered in the air.

  Rogan stopped where he was, just a few paces from his bed, and tore off his plaid, letting it drop to the rush-strewn floor. He half hoped his nakedness might call her. So he stood still, waiting, challenging the silence. But the only thing that came to him was the smell of rain on the cold breeze slipping in through the shutter slats.

  Until the wind seemed to shift, turning even colder. Then, beneath the night’s chill, her scent slid into the room, teasing him. Light and provocative, it was only a tantalizing promise. But just that one slight hint of her was enough to fire his need and set him like granite.

  She was near.

  He knew it in the depths of his soul.

  “Damnation.” Rogan sank onto the edge of his bed and put his head in his hands.

  Don’t leave me.

  Stay … I beg you!

  The words – her words – came to him from a distant place. But although the beloved voice was hers, one so engrained on his heart that he’d recognize it anywhere, she spoke in soft lilting tones very different from the speech she used when she talked to him in his dreams.

  You will be killed….

  Rogan jerked, looking up. This time the words were close. No longer faraway, her voice was as clear as if she’d spoken at his ear, pleading. And the words, so ominous and dire, had broken on a sob.

  “Lass!” Rogan shot to his feet, glancing around, his heart thundering wildly.

  How cruel that he didn’t even know her name.

  But – he could scarce believe it – he could see her!

  She stood in the far corner, limned by moonlight. And unlike in his dreams, when she usually wore naught but a smile, this time she clutched a deep red cloak about her, holding fast to its voluminous folds as if a great gusting wind blew, chilling her.

  Even more surprising, her lovely amber eyes were now deepest blue, glistening tears making them shine and sparkle like sapphires.

  And her hair – Rogan stared, disbelieving – was no longer the deep, gleaming russet he knew and loved, but palest flaxen. She wore it in a single heavy braid that swung low, reaching to her shapely hips.

  Ragnar…. She looked right at him, calling him a strange name as she reached a hand towards him.

  Rogan stared at her. How odd that she l
ooked so different. And that she called him Ragnar and not Lore.

  Frowning, he took a step forward. But then his blood chilled, stopping him.

  He could see the window shutter through her outstretched hand!

  Indeed, now that he’d blinked a time or two, he noted that he could look through more than just her hand. The entire length of her – even her richly-worked woolen robe - was as insubstantial as a will-o’-wisp.

  Yet the strange woman was her.

  His dream vixen.

  He tried to go to her, but his feet wouldn’t move. And neither would his lips when he attempted to speak. He could only stand and stare, watching as she faded into the moonlight, disappearing in a swirl of twinkling sparkles that danced on the air, taunting him, before they, too, vanished as if they’d never been.

  “Thor’s hammer!” Rogan scrubbed a hand over his face.

  Even that one cannot help us….

  The words came on the icy wind still racing past the windows. But even as he wondered if he’d really heard them, the night stilled. All was silent save for the muffled roar of the nearby sea.

  Sure now that he was in danger of losing his wits, he strode across the room and thrust his hands into the corner where he’d seen the woman. But, of course, he felt nothing out of the ordinary.

  Rogan frowned.

  He knew he’d seen her.

  He’d heard her, too.

  Yet….

  The more he tried to make sense of it, the more it tied his mind in knots. It was one thing to have heated dreams of a hot, passionate woman. And perhaps he could also be excused for enjoying their sensual encounters, real or imagined. He was, after all, a red-blooded man with needs and desires that made it impossible to resist such temptation.

  But to have her suddenly appear as a see-through woman in his own bedchamber, calling him a different name, and then vanishing before his waking eyes, tested even his limits of belief.

  And as a MacGraith – hereditary guardians of nearby Smoo Cave, with all its inherent oddities – he’d been born to accept strange happenings.

  This night he’d had enough.

  So he crossed the room determinedly and climbed into his bed, pulling the sheets and furred coverings over him. The morrow would be soon enough to think on the things he’d seen and heard.

  But as soon as he rolled onto his side and tried to sleep, he knew he wasn’t alone.

  She was in the bed with him.

  Naked, warm, and supple as always.

  Rogan’s eyes snapped open. He couldn’t see her – she was lying behind him, her full, round breasts pressing against his back. Equally rousing, she was sliding one sleek thigh up and down his in a slow, sensual glide that would bring any man to his knees.

  Rogan groaned. His entire body tightened.

  “Don’t leave me.” She spoke the same words as before. But this time she used the voice he knew.

  The voice he loved.

  Knowing himself lost, he turned to face her. His heart caught when he saw the want in her amber eyes. She reached for him, trembling as she wound her arms around his neck, clinging to him, begging his kiss.

  “Lass-”

  “Don’t leave me,” she pleaded again, just as he slanted his mouth over hers.

  His heart pounded and he pulled her close, thrusting his hands in her hair as he kissed her. She opened her lips beneath his, her tongue slipping into his mouth, firing his senses even as he slid his hands from her hair down over her shoulders and to her breasts. He rubbed his thumbs over her nipples, almost losing his seed when they hardened beneath his caress, thrusting greedily against his fingers.

  “Lass….” He broke their kiss, pulling back to look at her. “I don’t even know your name.”

  “But you know me.” She bracketed his face, dragging him back to her mouth, silencing him with a deeper, more feverish kiss. “I am yours.

  “I have always been yours. And” – she pressed into him, her silken warmth and lush curves taking his breath and blotting everything in his world but her – “you, my heart, will always be mine.”

  “Aye, I am,” Rogan agreed, believing it.

  And then, for the rest of the long night, he knew no more.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “You can be letting me out here, lassie.”

  Lindy glanced at the tiny black-garbed woman she’d picked up along the roadside shortly after driving out of Talmine village. Grizzled and ancient-looking yet surprisingly spry, the old woman was leaning forward to peer through the car’s rain-splattered windscreen.

  “That be the turn-off I need, up yonder.” The woman sat back and rubbed her hands in glee.

  Or so the gesture struck Lindy, flashing another glance at her strange passenger.

  In fact, if she’d taken a better look before slowing the rental car that morning, she might not have offered the woman a ride. But she’d appeared harmless enough, hobbling along the edge of the road with a woven-wicker shopping basket on her arm. It was just too weird that on such a wet and windy day, the crone’s heavy waxed jacket hadn’t shown even a few speckles of rain.

  And – Lindy really couldn’t explain this – the woman’s small black boots, jauntily tied with red plaid laces, weren’t at all muddied or damp-stained.

  But she did have kindly eyes.

  Bright blue eyes that twinkled with merriment as Lindy drove past Sutherland’s great mist-hung hills and through the dismal morning. And each time Lindy assured her that such wild weather and the rugged landscape were reasons she’d wanted to come to Scotland, her odd companion nodded enthusiastically.

  “Och, I know.” She trilled agreement, sounding as if she did. “There be some folk what belong here, they do. These hills are in their blood, no matter where they’re born. And when that happens, there’s naught what can keep them away. No’ time or the span o’ the ocean.”

  She bobbed her head again, sagely. “They always return.”

  They always return.

  The old woman’s words echoed in Lindy’s mind as she scanned the winding road ahead, looking for the turn off. But all she saw was miles of bleak moorland and the dark, choppy water of Loch Eriboll.

  Until her passenger grabbed her arm and pointed, indicating a narrow, heather track that could or couldn’t be a path leading to a croft house.

  “That’s it!” The crone’s insistence convinced Lindy.

  And indeed, as soon as Lindy stopped the car and the old woman clambered out, Lindy spotted a low white croft in the distance. Half-hidden by the shoulder of a hill, the little house was thatched with heather in the old way and appeared to stand very close to the loch.

  “I’d be for asking you in for a cup o’ tea, but” – the crone turned up her jacket collar against the wind, her eyes bright in the watery sunlight – “you’ll be a-wanting to get on to Smoo afore the day gets too long!”

  She leaned close, saying something else, but great buffets of wind were rocking the car and the shrieking gale snatched her words away. Lindy only saw the old woman’s lips moving. But she caught the almost mischievous wink she gave Lindy just before she stepped back and, turning into the wind, hobbled off down the path to the cottage.

  A cottage where – Lindy only registered after starting to drive away – the two deep-set windows shone with flickering candlelight.

  Lindy frowned and hit reverse, just to be sure.

  Scotland did seem like a land where time stood still, but the last she’d checked, electricity was in use. Even in wild and remote Sutherland.

  But when Lindy slowed the car and came to a halt where she’d let out the old woman, the narrow heathery track leading to the croft house was gone.

  Lindy blinked.

  Then she looked again, even getting out of the car and shading her eyes against the sun that was just beginning to break valiantly through the clouds.

  But the track really wasn’t there.

  Nor was the lowlying croft house, though – the fine hairs on her nape lifted
– the shoulder of the hill that had kept part of the cottage from view still raged distinctively against the backdrop of the loch.

  Lindy’s heart began to pound and she whirled around, scanning the empty moorland for the old woman. But, of course, she, too, was nowhere to be seen.

  Nothing stirred anywhere except a few clumps of scrubby, wind-tossed gorse and several wheeling seabirds, determined to take advantage of the howling gale whistling along the loch shore.

  Then the sun dimmed again, once more slipping behind the clouds, and – for one startling moment – Lindy was sure she saw a man standing in the distance, watching her. Tall and broad-shouldered, he stood, unmoving, on a narrow curve of the dark, pebbly strand.

  He looked as powerful and forbidding as the wild landscape surrounding him. In fact – Lindy swallowed – everything about him screamed that this was where he belonged. He was as much as a part of the big, brooding sky, the sea, and the dark, rolling moors as the cold, racing wind that seemed to quicken and chill the longer she watched him.

  She could feel his stare.

  It was fierce, almost compelling.

  Lindy put a hand to her breast, unable to look away. The wind was icy now. It made her eyes tear, but she was afraid to risk blinking. The man hadn’t budged a muscle that she could tell, but something about him made her believe that any moment he’d come for her.

  He’d move – she just knew – with incredible speed, appearing suddenly before her. And then, before she could even realize what was happening, he’d pull her into his arms and start kissing her.

  Or so she thought until the sun peeped out from a low bank of clouds again and she recognized the silhouette for it was: the stark black outline of a tree.

  No braw Highland laird readying to stride across the heather and seize her.

  It was only a tree.

  Feeling foolish, she turned back to her rental car and scrambled inside. She gladly turned the key in the ignition, driving away a bit faster than she likely would have done otherwise.

  Thinking about how much the man – no, the tree – reminded her of Rogan MacGraith, didn’t hurt either.

  It also helped that she found the passing scenery almost surreal, as if she’d left the real world and driven straight into the fabric of her dreams.