by B. J. Scott
“I’ll never belong to you. My heart will always belong to Ayden.” She spat at him again, but this time she missed.
“It matters not. Perhaps I won’t marry you and will just keep you as my whore. That is if I decide to let you live. I never was the type to settle down with one woman.” He dropped his head and nipped at her breast.
Repulsed by his touch, she struggled, but to no avail. Helpless to do anything to fight him off, Katherine closed her eyes, waiting for the inevitable.
“That’s a good lass. I told you I’d break you,” he groaned in her ear. Trapping both wrists with his left hand, he freed up his right, then slithered his tongue in the crease between her breasts.
In one last effort to thwart his assault, she brought her knee up, catching him squarely in the groin. He moaned and rolled off her, writhing for a moment on the ground.
Climbing to her feet, she clutched the front of her gown together and backed away. But stopped when she felt a rush of wind and realized the cliff and water below was right behind her.
“I have had about enough of you and come to a decision.” MacConnery rose, still gripping the crotch of his trews. He closed the gap between them.
“And what decision is that?” she asked, though she knew the answer.
“You are na worth the trouble. And it is na worth me risking my good name or reputation should someone decide to believe your story about me being a traitor.
“You are a traitor,” she sobbed. Her resolve spent, the tears flowed and she couldn’t stop them.
“That may be, but you will not be around to tell anyone, whore. When they find your body at the bottom of the gorge, I will tell everyone you confessed about your tryst with MacAndrews and carry his bastard. That upon learning of his death, you threw yourself off the cliff and onto the rocks below,” he said with a smirk. “I, of course, tried to stop you from leaping, but was too late to intervene.” He mockingly dragged the back of his hand across his brow, feigning sorrow, then lunged forward and grabbed Katherine around the throat. “It is a shame I dinna get to sample you, but there are plenty of other women who will welcome a Duke into their bed.”
“Get away from my wife, or I swear, I’ll gut you where you stand.” The thunderous boom of Ayden’s voice echoed off the walls of the canyon.
MacConnery swiftly released his hold on Katherine’s neck, clasped her wrist, and spun around, taking her with him. With her one arm twisted behind her back and his other arm now draped across her throat, he used her body like a shield. “I think I am the one who should be doling out the orders, not you.”
When she heard the sound of Ayden’s voice, she wasn’t certain if he was real or imaginary. But when her eyes locked with his, her heart leapt with joy. “Thank God, you’re alive. I prayed every day you were gone that you’d return to me,” she sobbed.
“The rumor of my death is false, leannan,” Ayden said.
“I can see that now,” she sniffled. “But when I went to MacAndrews Castle, the guard said your father had gone to retrieve the bodies of your clan’s dead, and that your mother was so grief-stricken she’d taken to her bed, I naturally assumed it meant you were dead.”
“The guard at the castle told me I’d just missed you, so I followed as quickly as I could. I’m so sorry you were lead to believe I was dead.” With his hand outstretched, Ayden took a step closer. “Once this is over, I promise never to leave you again.”
MacConnery cleared his throat. “This is all very touching, but I have enough of this sappy reunion. Shame it will be short lived.” He tightened his arm around Katherine’s neck and shuffled backward.
“They are mourning the deaths of three of my cousins and ten of our men. And all thanks to that traitorous blackguard,” he growled, and pointed his finger at MacConnery. “I always considered him a bastard and a liar, but never knew just how evil he truly was until I spotted him sitting on horseback beside King Edward as he pummeled the castle with his trebuchet.” He glowered at MacConnery. “And what’s worse, the pompous arse dinna even care who saw him consorting with the enemy and betraying his countrymen.”
“And how did you get away?” MacConnery asked snidely. “The only men who could possibly have gotten out of Stirling Castle alive were cowards, prisoners, and traitors. And since Edward ordered his men to show no quarter and no prisoners were taken, that leaves the other two.” He grinned at Ayden. “Perhaps we are both cut from the same cloth after all.”
“The two of you are nothing alike,” Katherine said through pursed lips. “Ayden is a good and decent man, while you, on the other hand, and are the miserable traitor.”
“Silence.” MacConnery tightened his arm across Katherine’s throat and wrenched her arm behind her back, twisting until she stopped speaking and whimpered against the pain. “I’ve heard enough from you, my dear, and I need to think. One body at the bottom of the cliff is easy to explain, but two will take more planning.”
“I can simplify things for you, MacConnery,” Ayden growled.
“Can you now?”
“Aye. We can arrange for your body to be the one found at the bottom of the gorge.” He quickly leapt forward and reached for Katherine’s arm. But MacConnery countered the move by shuffling backward, halting with his heels resting on the precipice.
Remembering what MacConnery had told her about standing too close to the bluff, she feared in his effort to evade Ayden, he’d put them once again in the same perilous position. If her slight weight alone posed a danger, their combined weight would surly cause the lip of the cliff to give way. When she felt the ground shifting beneath her feet, she was certain of it. “Ayden,” she whispered and their eyes locked. “I love you,” she muttered as the edge gave way.
As the large chunks of grass and earth disappeared beneath his feet, MacConnery toppled backwards, taking Katherine with him.
“Catriona!” Ayden launched forward in time to grab her arm, but was unable to prevent her from going over the edge. Only this time, he toppled over with her.
Chapter Twenty One
She was falling, the wind rushing against her body, the deafening sound of water crashing on the rocks below echoing in her ears. Her head began to throb and for a moment she felt like her body was shattering into a million pieces, yet she hadn’t hit the ground. Certain she was about to die, Katherine mumbled a prayer and braced herself for the impact. But before it happened, everything went black.
Katherine moaned and brought a hand to her brow. Her head pounded and every muscle in her body ached. “Where am I?” she mumbled, but she couldn’t open her eyes. The sensation and terror of falling into an abyss was so vivid, so real. She remembered being on a cliff, struggling with a man who was trying to kill her, when the ground beneath their feet gave way. She’d heard Ayden call out her name as he lunged in her direction, in a heroic, last-ditch effort to save her.
Terrified, she struggled to wake up. When she finally opened her eyes and her vision cleared, she was stunned to find herself curled up in the chair in Agnes’s sitting room, with the journal on her lap.
Ayden? Had he fallen too or did he manage to stay on solid ground? She prayed for the latter, but it all happened so fast. They were standing atop the cliff beside the water fall. MacConnery had his arm draped around her throat, and her arm wrenched behind her back. He’d just confessed to betraying his countrymen at Stirling Castle to the English King in exchange for land and title.
He and Ayden were arguing one minute and they were falling the next. She clutched a hand to her throat. MacConnery was responsible for Catriona’s death. She hadn’t killed herself after all. If nothing more, her journey to the past disproved the seven-hundred-year-old theory that her ancestor had committed suicide. Yet the burning question remained. Had she actually gone back in time to uncover he truth about Catriona’s death, or had she dreamed it all?
Unfortunately, knowing the truth didn’t automatically fix things. Catriona’s body still remained in unhallowed ground, and there was
no way Katherine could make things right if she was no longer in the past and able to tell anyone what she knew about that fateful day. She prayed Ayden survived, so he could see the wrong she was sent to fix was set right.
Maybe, I could do something about it now, she thought. Once her week at Glen Heather was up and she owned the property outright, she could go to the kirk and do everything in her power to have Catriona’s body moved to a fitting resting place. She had no doubt that when she told her story, people would think her mad, but she felt she owed it to Catriona to try.
She’d solved the mystery of how she died, but was powerless to prevent it from happening again. She hung her head, suddenly swamped by an overpowering rush of sadness and grief. Knowing Catriona died for the second time caused her heart to ache. It was like a huge part of her had been torn away, leaving a massive hole in its place.
And Ayden? Hot tears tracked down her cheeks when she pictured his face, the look of pure adoration she saw in his eyes when they made love for the first time, the look of terror on his face when he tried to keep her from toppling to her death with MacConnery. She loved him so and never had the chance to say goodbye, and likely never would. She slid her hand over her belly, and released a shuddered breath. What of their child? Would she still be pregnant?
Again her heart clenched when she thought about raising their babe alone, a child Ayden would never know he had.
By now the tears flowed freely, her body trembling and wracked by sobs. She buried her face in her hands and released a torrent of tears, crying until she could cry no more.
A nearly spent tallow candle sputtered and winked from the table beside her, but other than the one taper and the rays of a full moon shining in the window, the room was chilly and dark. She shivered and glanced at the fireplace. But where a roaring fire once burned, nothing remained, except for a pile of ash. She scratched her head, wondering how long she had actually been asleep. It was early afternoon when she settled in to read the journal and now it was obviously nighttime.
The thought of food made her stomach growl. She was starving and felt like she hadn’t eaten in days. The baby again came to mind. When in the past, the mere idea of eating caused her to retch. She’d been there for almost two months and yet if she guessed correctly, only a few hours had passed since she’d fallen asleep in the present. Would she still be pregnant or would that be a memory from the past as well? She certainly had not slept in the chair for two months so concluded that time moved at different rated depending on if you were in past or present.
She stood and after taking a minute to stretch out some kinks in her neck and spine, she retrieved a new candle from the mantle and used the flame from the dying one to light it, along with an oil lamp she found on the table. Having no electricity was going to take some getting used to, along with a lot of other things. “No running water, no shower, no fridge, no stove,” she prattled off what was only a fraction of her endless list. But if Agnes could live here without modern conveniences, so could she.
With enough light to guide her way, Katherine took the candle, lantern, and snatched up the journal, then made her way into the hallway. When she first arrived at the cottage, the idea of living there alone didn’t bother her. In fact she relished the idea, but after her time in the past, she wasn’t so sure she could go it alone. Especially if she was still carrying Ayden’s child. Again Ayden flooded her mind, her heart twisting in her chest, the weight of her grief like a heavy stone she’d be destined to carry for a very long time.
Upon entering the room that had reminded her of a parlor, she jumped, startled when a clock gonged, then did so eight more times. “That’s odd,” she muttered as she approached the mantle. “This old relic wasn’t working the last time I looked. It was stuck on midnight, just like my —” She stopped midsentence when she glanced at her digital wrist watch and realized it too read nine o’clock.
And while she should have been beside herself with fear — given two more strange paranormal-like occurrences to add to the roster of peculiar events — she found herself surprisingly calm. Either her sanity had flown the coop altogether or she’d resigned herself to the claim that unexplainable things happened in Scotland and nowhere else in the world. Perhaps it was a little of both, she concluded, but so far no real harm had come to her except for the void losing Ayden had left her heart
She continued toward the kitchen, although her appetite was suddenly gone. But if she was still expecting, she had to think of the baby, so if necessary would force herself to eat.
Upon entering the kitchen, Katherine stopped dead in her tracks. The fire on the hearth in this room had also burned to ash. On the table beside her purse she spotted three cardboard boxes, and on the floor was a small steel cooler. These were definitely not there when she had her breakfast or visited with Noreen, so she decided that someone must have brought them when she was napping. It was the only logical conclusion she could come up with.
Curious what the boxes contained, she set the lantern, the candle, and the journal on the table, then opened the first one. It was filled with canned goods, including a variety of soups, pasta sauce, tuna, a can of some sort of luncheon meat — which she wouldn’t eat in a million years — peaches, fruit cocktail, and vegetables. In the next carton she found packets of instant oatmeal, a box of corn flakes, a loaf of whole wheat bread, macaroni, sugar, flour, peanut butter, honey, some other nonperishable condiments, apples, and a bag of potatoes. In the last, she found personal items like soap, tampons, shampoo, and toothpaste.
As promised, MacBain and Murray had provided everything she needed. Well, maybe not everything, but she could certainly survive for a week on what they’d brought. After which, she could do her own shopping and stock up on a healthier selection of food.
She eyed the cooler and lifted it to the table. Since there was no electricity in the croft, and therefore no refrigerator, keeping things on ice was her only option. In addition to the frozen block, she found a carton of eggs, milk, yogurt, meat, butter, cheese, and a note explaining that a fresh supply of cold foods would be left by her door at 9 am each day, along with a new block of ice.
She tugged one of the chairs from beneath the table and sat. The honeymoon faze of her stay at Glen Heather appeared to have ended. From now on, she assumed she’d be preparing her own meals. “Perhaps I’ll opt for a peanut butter and honey sandwich, something requiring no culinary skills,” she chuckled to herself.
As she leaned back in her seat, contemplating whether she’d start a fire, go to the stream and fetch some water, or prepare a meal that required no cooking, a shiver of trepidation slithered up her spine, causing her blood to run cold. For a moment, she’d swear she wasn’t alone, like eyes were upon her, watching her every move. This wasn’t the first time she’d felt this way since her arrival at Glen Heather. And unlike the minor incident with the clock and watch, this was much more difficult to ignore. But when she glanced nervously around the room and saw no one, she released the breath she was holding and chalked it up to her imagination playing tricks on her again.
She decided the water could wait until morning, when the sun was out and she could easily find her way to the stream and back without tripping in a gopher hole and breaking a leg. For dinner, she settled on a peanut butter sandwiches, a staple that got her through many all-nighters of cramming when in university. But first, she thought it would be wise to put the rest of the stuff away and store it as high on a shelf as possible. In a place this old, she had no doubt she’d be sharing her abode with mice. She wasn’t afraid of them, but the thought of sharing her food with the little varmints was less than appealing. Spiders and cockroaches were another story. She shivered at the thought.
Katherine carried the boxes over to the shelf by the hearth and put the items away. Once she’d secured her supplies, she grabbed a plate, a knife, two slices of bread, and other items for her sandwich, then returned to the table. But as she was about to sit down, she heard a faint brushing sound com
ing from just outside the kitchen door.
Standing completely still, she listened, startled when she heard it again. Only this time it was louder and sounded like something had been tipped over. Her heart hammering, she picked up the knife and crept toward the door. It was too late for a visit from her neighbor or the lawyers, so she had no idea who or what it could be. But she wasn’t a fool, and didn’t plan to open the door and have someone attack her. She and her roommates had watched too many slasher films in University not to be careful. Her only intention was to make sure the door was barred. What she wouldn’t give for cell phone reception in case she needed it.
On the way by the window, she double-checked the shutters, making sure they were locked, then crept to the door. As she was about to slide the bar into place, she heard another bang, her heart leaping to her throat. Someone was definitely out there, of that she was now certain. Panic squeezed her chest and thoughts about what to do next raced through her mind. But as she slowly backed away, she heard a cat meow.
Feeling like a complete idiot, she opened the door a crack and grinned down at a tabby with four white paws, batting a leaf across the porch. She saw a broom laying on its side and concluded the cat had likely knocked it over while playing. “Hello, wee one, do you live around here?” She wondered if maybe the cat had belonged to her aunt. Feeling sorry for the little beast, she picked it up and carried it inside, then promptly secured the door.
“I’ll call you Tiger,” she said, then scratched the cat under its chin. “I know it’s not very original, but that and Mittens were the first two names that popped into my mind. Besides, I am not sure if you are a male or female.” She turned the cat over and checked beneath its tail. “Yep, Tiger it is, little fellow. But if I am pregnant, I better buy a book of baby names,” she chuckled. “I’ll bet you’re hungry,” she said as she put the cat down, then moved to the shelf and retrieved the can of luncheon meat. “As long as your taste in food is not as selective as mine, the mystery meat will have found a purpose.”