by Jessi Gage
“Ye’re awake as they come,” He told her. She must have bumped her head even if she didn’t admit it. “But if there’s aught I can do to wake ye more, I shall. Is it maybe a strong tea ye need?”
The lass met his gaze with the sad emerald pools of her eyes. He nearly stumbled, forgetting to pick up his feet.
“I can’t have caffeine,” she said with a sniff. “I’ve already had a coffee today, and more than one a day isn’t good for the baby.”
More of her gibberish. Caffeine? Coffee? Baby? Did she mean a bairn? She didn’t have a bairn with her, unless–a horrible thought struck him.
“Did the Gunn take your bairn?”
The lass opened her mouth, then closed it as if she didn’t ken how to respond. At last, she said, “If you mean the man with the beard, ‘the Gunn’ didn’t take anything from me, thank you very much. I meant caffeine isn’t good for the baby–the child I’m carrying.” She shifted in his arms to lay a delicate hand on her belly.
Oh, carrying. She was with child. Christ, he could see the bulge now that he looked properly. He’d been so focused on the fighting that he’d missed what was right in front of him, an unprotected, pregnant lass–woman, he corrected. And married she must be, if with child.
Och, and he’d pushed her in the mud and lain atop her to hide her lightly-colored woolen from the approaching Gunn. What if he’d hurt her or the bairn? He’d owe her husband compensation if so. And he’d never forgive himself.
Size might have its advantages when it came to fighting, but those few boons fell far short of making up for the problems it caused. Being the biggest and the strongest had gotten him into far more trouble than it had gotten him out of. Swallowing his regret for how careless he’d been with her, he sought to determine whom she belonged to, whom, saints forbid, he might owe.
“Whose wife are ye, then? Not a Gunn’s or I wouldna have had to rescue you from one.”
“I’m not married,” the lass said. “And thank you for the rescuing, by the way. I can’t believe I dropped the dirk. Stupid.” She shook her head.
His heart warmed at her thanks. He didn’t hear many kind words from the lasses and would take what he could get, even from a dishonored woman who had caught a bairn out wedlock. Oddly, he didn’t think poorly of her. Whether it was her worried brow, her guileless, soft mouth, or her vulnerable size, he had not the heart to condemn her.
He didn’t even mind so much that she found him distasteful for his size, although talking with her now, she didn’t seem overly upset to be in his arms. He endeavored to keep her talking, keep her distracted from her disgust.
“Ye never answered my first question,” he said. “Who are you? And where are ye from if ye’re no’ English?”
“Ugh. I don’t know. Is there an answer that won’t get me burned at the stake or locked up in a ward for the hopelessly insane?”
Like most things out of her mouth, that had been a peculiar answer. “Ye could try the truth,” he offered, slowing his pace since he heard Archie’s voice not far off.
“No,” she said flatly. “I couldn’t. At least not the whole truth. How about we just go with my name, Melanie, and with the honest fact that I’m a long way from home and I have no idea how to get back.” Her green eyes pierced his. “I’m afraid you might be stuck with me, Darcy Keith.”
Chapter 3
He’d pushed her into a bush, shoved her in the mud, squished her with his excessively-muscled body and trudged off into the woods with those tree-trunk legs of his, leaving her to jog after him in bloody, mud-caked, nettle-riddled clothes, and all it took for her to forgive him was seeing that vulnerable look in his warm brown eyes. That and the fact she could feel those tiny flutters of movement deep in her womb that meant her baby was coping admirably with the abuse her body had taken in the last half hour.
It was almost tempting to feel relief.
But true relief would only come once she figured out how to get home. She didn’t have much in Charleston, but what she had she’d worked hard for and was darned proud of: a few close friends, a small but neat apartment, a job that made up in intellectual stimulation what it lacked in pay, a routine. Her mom and dad were just a five-hour drive away in Atlanta.
What was happening back there while she was here? Was her time going on without her, or had none of her life even happened yet? Was she certifiable for even considering such a question?
As much as she wanted to wrap herself in the cozy blanket of denial, her gut told her that option was long gone. This place was real, and she was really in it. She had disappeared from her workbench at the museum when that box had opened.
The box!
Of course. She’d made a wish and the box had granted it. It was the only possible explanation for what had happened. And if it had dumped her five hundred years in the past because of a bone-headed wish she’d made partly in jest, surely it would return her if she asked it nicely.
She needed that box.
She hadn’t seen it back at the boulder, but she hadn’t exactly been looking for it either. She had to go look. It had to be there. It just had to.
She opened her mouth to tell Darcy to take her back, but got a mouthful of evergreen needles.
He shouldered his way through a wall of trees, apparently oblivious to the reaching branches catching at her clothes and hair. Stupid box. This wasn’t even what she’d wished for. Sure, Darcy was gorgeous, but he was no romantic hero. He might look the part, but to play the role respectably, he’d need serious lessons in chivalry. Lesson number one: no pushing the heroine in mud puddles. And who’d ever heard of a pregnant heroine, anyway?
C’mon, box. It wasn’t a serious wish. Send me home, for the love of all things Scottish.
Before she could ask Darcy to take her back to the boulder, he set her on her feet in front of a circle of six men in various states of undress and injury. A rickety wagon with no horse occupied the far side of the small clearing. The most able-bodied of the group, a wiry red-haired man, dashed around, wrapping wounds and refilling flasks from a barrel in the wagon. That must be Archie. Grinning over a huge abdominal abrasion, he declared the wounded man needed naught but a daily vinegar rinse and a healing tup with his wife. Looking up, he noticed them.
“Hail, Big Darcy,” he greeted with a booming, cheerful burr. “What have ye brought me?”
“Looks like a lass,” one of the wounded men said with a grin as he looked her up and down. “A bonny one at that.”
“Where’d ye find her, Big Darcy?” another man asked.
“In a mud puddle,” another answered. “’Tis clear to see.”
“Where’s the rest of her dress?” another asked.
“Is that blood beneath the mud?” Archie asked, wading through the wounded until he stood directly before her.
Nervous, she shifted to hide behind Darcy, but he didn’t cooperate, turning to go back the way they’d come. Just before disappearing back through the wall of trees, he said over his shoulder, “Though she looks to have taken a bath in blood, none of it seems to be hers. Take care of her, Archie.”
He slipped through the trees, leaving her staring disbelievingly after him. The brute hadn’t even said goodbye.
Ignoring Archie’s hand on her arm and the exhaustion demanding she sit and rest her weary pregnant bones, she marched toward the trees.
Darcy’s head poked through, so close that if she’d been a foot taller, he would have headbutted her. “I almost forgot,” he said to Archie. “She’s no’ English.”
He disappeared again without even glancing at her.
“Wait!” She shook off Archie’s hand and pushing through the densely-packed branches. “Darcy, wait!”
He stopped and turned, though his impressive body clearly strained to get back to the fighting.
“I need to go with you,” she said.
“No. Ye will stay here with Archie and help tend the wounded.” He strode away.
She trotted after him. “I can’t. T
here’s something back there I need. At least, I hope there is. I have to look for it.” She caught up and ventured to grab his arm to slow his gait. His skin was hot velvet stretched taut over granite-hard muscle. She couldn’t resist relaxing her grip to smooth her fingers over the enticing flesh. He really was cover model material. But she only appreciated the feel of his tawny skin for a second. She had to get that box. Had to get home. Alan and the others helping with the Scottish immigrants exhibit were depending on her. Her friends and family would be beside themselves with worry. The dining-room-turned-nursery-nook in her apartment was only half decorated. She had to water her plants.
Darcy stopped walking and stared at her hand until she removed it. “What is it ye lost? I’ll look for you. You are to stay here, understand?”
She remembered the sight of Darcy pulling his sword from the bodies of the men he’d killed and how the “Gunn” had pinned her down and threatened her. Maybe she didn’t want to go back there. On the other hand, she’d be a fool to trust this warrior to look as hard as she would for her ticket home.
“I have to go with you,” she insisted.
Huffing a frustrated breath, Darcy picked her up again, this time not as gently as he had when she’d tripped on the root. He carried her under one arm like a sack of grain, though to his credit, he avoided putting pressure on her lower abdomen.
“I said no, ye contrary thing, and I’m big enough to make ye obey whether ye want to or no’.” He crashed through the line of trees, stomped past the wounded men, and set her firmly in the wagon. “A skirmish is no place for a woman. I willna be responsible for you getting raped or killed.” That vulnerable look softened his hard features for a second. “I could tie ye down, but then ye’d be no help to Archie. So what’ll it be, lass? Will ye obey me or no?”
He tried to intimidate her with his posture and size, bracketing her with his bare arms. It didn’t work. Rather, the sight of the succulent, hard mound of his exposed shoulder so close to her face made her wet her lips. His strong collarbones and sinewy neck glistened with sweat, and he smelled of pine and male exertion. Her libido jumped like a feisty poodle.
Jeez Louise, Mel, get a grip. This is not a romance novel. He’s not your hero. The box got it wrong. The box was way out of line.
“I need it,” she said, pleased her steady voice didn’t betray her attraction. “I have to go with you.”
“I told ye I’d look for whatever ye lust.”
Lust. The antiquated word spoken in his deep voice did strange things to her tummy. It took a solid effort not to lick her lips in invitation as the word called to mind activities that most definitely related to wanting.
Home, she reminded herself. She had to get home. “I don’t trust you to look as hard as I would. I’m coming with you.”
“Where are your ropes, Archie?” he asked. “The woman refuses to stay put, so I’m going to tie her to the wagon.”
Several of the wounded men snickered.
Archie said, “In the foot case there. And bring me some of yon dried moss before ye tie down your woman.”
Your woman. The casual declaration made her stomach leap, and the sensation wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
“She’s not mine,” Darcy growled as he opened the lid of a wooden chest in the wagon. To her horror, he removed a coil of rope. After tossing a yellowish clump in Archie’s direction, he came at her.
Her libido disappeared with a poof. She hopped off the wagon, dodging hands that had no business being so quick, considering how large they were.
“Don’t you dare tie me down! I’ve got to get that box. It’s my only hope to return home.”
He lunged for her, catching her easily around the waist with his long arm, and plunking her back in the wagon. Libido was back. Her body thrilled at Darcy’s manhandling, though her muscles struggled against it.
The thought of him tying her up in private might have some merit, but not in the middle of the forest with several strange men as witnesses. “Okay, okay,” she blurted as he looped the rope around one wrist. “I won’t follow you. Please don’t tie me. I’ll stay. I’ll help.”
He paused to eye her suspiciously.
“I promise,” she said. “I’ll stay here and make myself useful. As long as you promise to look for a rosewood box inlaid with white gold and about yea big.” She gestured with her hands, rope trailing from one wrist. “As long as you swear to look as though your life depends on it.” She held his gaze, hoping he was getting how important this was to her, hoping she could trust him.
The circle of wounded men went quiet, waiting for his answer.
He bounced on the balls of his feet, clearly impatient to return to the skirmish, but he gave her his full attention and said, “I vow that if your cherished box is on that field, I will find it.”
She relaxed at the sincerity in the promise. “It would be near where you found me,” she said. “If it’s not there, then–” She forced herself to say the rest past her tight throat. “Then I don’t think you’ll find it anywhere.” And I might be stuck here forever.
He nodded his understanding, then wheeled around and strode from the clearing.
“Damn,” one of the wounded men said. “I’d hoped to watch Big Darcy bind the feisty lass.”
The other men chuckled. Some of the chuckles ended in pained groans.
She scowled at one and all as she shook the rope from her wrist, but her scowl quickly slipped away. Some of the men were horribly injured. One had a bandage wrapped around his thigh and soaked through with blood. The bandage was obviously not tight enough to slow the blood flow from what must be a serious gash. Another had a chest wound. He didn’t grin at her like the others, but lay still except for his jumping chest. Pink blood frothed from a wound under his armpit. Another man held a bloody rag to his neck, and an ugly bump under his skin looked like a broken collarbone. Another had a head wound that needed stitches.
She slid down off the cart and found Archie. “How can I help?”
* * * *
“I’m afraid you might be stuck with me, Darcy Keith.”
Making his way back to Berringer’s field, he tried to forget those sweetly drawled words, but found himself thinking instead that being stuck with a bonny woman with lush curves and a streak of bravery belying her slight stature wouldn’t be such a terrible fate. But thoughts like that were neither useful nor prudent. ’Twas impossible for him to do full honor to a woman by giving her a proper marriage bed and children. Thus he had no business thinking of any woman with longing, especially one so small.
He had to help his clan first, but once the Gunn were off their land, he’d find the woman’s–Melanie’s–cherished box. She said it was her only way home, and home was precisely where he wanted her. Safe with her own people. Far from his futile desires.
Mayhap the box was the only possession she had and she meant to sell it to buy her way back to her people. He still didn’t ken what people those might be, but they certainly weren’t Scottish and he believed her when she said she wasn’t English; her odd speech alone proved as much. Whoever her people were, it was plain she desperately wanted to return to them. Well, he’d help her do just that, and good riddance to her.
By the time he ran back onto the field where his clan had clashed with the Gunn for the third time since Hogmany, and it only April, his kinsmen had driven most of them back over the border. All that was left was to help a few of the battered back to Archie’s wagon where they’d all gather before journeying home to Ackergill.
He carried wee John, who had a gash to his arse that made walking awkward, while Gabe limped along with a little help from his free arm. After depositing the men in Archie’s clearing and contenting himself with the sight of the woman dutifully washing Symond’s sliced shoulder, he returned to where he’d found her to look for her box.
It took naught but two open eyes to find it. The thing lay half buried in the same mud puddle he’d pushed her into. He lifted it out of the muck and u
sed a corner of his plaid to clean it. A bonny thing it was. Shiny and smooth with rounded edges and inlaid knotwork of white metal on the lid, just like she’d said. ’Twould certainly bring her enough coin to buy passage on a vessel if ’twas over water she needed to go.
He turned the box over to scrub mud from the bottom. An inscription emerged: MacLeod, 1542. Inverness.
He nearly dropped the thing.
Trusting he’d read the delicate script wrong, he shifted the box so its base better caught the late-afternoon light. He read it again. It still said 1542.
The little box claimed to be from twenty-five years in the future. Surely someone had forged a few lines to alter the year. Changing a one to a four would be only too easy. But the inscription was written in glossy brown ink beneath the stain. If a forgery, ’twould have had to be done before the piece was finished.
Might the box actually be from the future? A frivolous and dangerous thought.
He weighed the object in his hands. Legends were told in pubs about women claiming to have come through the stones like the ones at Loch Stemster from exotic places and future times. He had found the woman near a great stone.
He snorted and shook his head. He had never put any stock in such tales, and he wouldn’t start now. The box was a simple forgery. ’Twas the only solution. But there were some who were more inclined to believe the worst about a person than to trust in reason.
And the king of those paranoid fools was Laird Steafan. Ever since losing his son, Darcy’s cousin, at the battle at Creag Kirk four years ago, Steafan hadn’t been the same. He would hardly leave the keep for fear of being cut down and leaving Ackergill without a proper leader. He had little tolerance for visitors, more often than not sticking them in the dungeons for the night, rather than allowing them a warm room with a clean bed for fear of what havoc they might cause. Most of all, he mistrusted anything to which a hint of magic could be credited, and if Steafan mistrusted someone, he dealt with them harshly.