He stumbled to the doorway. He leaned one hand on the doorframe and hung his head. He had to get his mind to function. He had to reevaluate his whole plan for this visit. The rest of the village wouldn’t be waiting with bated breath for his return, either, no matter how much he dreamed they would be.
What a fool he was to puff himself up into some kind of returning hero. He considered launching and flying home to Urlu that very minute. No one but Marri ever had to know he stuck his foot in it by coming back here. His brothers would be delighted to have him back—unlike these country people with their hearts in their stomachs.
He raised his head, and his eye fell on the planter in the middle of the village. A woman sat on the wall, but she resembled no woman he ever saw in this village before. She wore a plain navy-blue skirt and jacket, a white blouse with a chunky bead necklace around the lapels, and she wore some kind of stockings above her bare feet.
Her shoulder-length chestnut hair swept around her face, and the sun caught a pair of golden earrings tucked under the wisps on either side. She observed the village around her with a serene smile on her face.
Jamie studied her. She definitely didn’t come from this village, so who was she? An inkling of excitement crept into his guts. He had to find out more about her.
Just then, Marri came up behind him. “I’m sorry, Jamie. I didnae mean tae hurt ye so. I shouldnae bear ye any grudge. I’m right glad tae see ye so weel. When ye first left wi’ yer brothers, I thought I’d die o’ the loneliness. I didnae die, and Daniel was there. He allus ga’e me a kind word, and after a time….”
“Who is that woman?” Jamie interrupted. “I dinnae recognize her.”
Marri jumped. “Her? No one kens who she might be nor where she comes from. She’s a stranger.”
“How did she come tae be ’ere, o’ all places?” he asked.
“Who kens?” Marri turned away. “She speaks a strange tongue. No one can understand a word she says, but she ne’er causes anyone any harm. She just sits there, or walks around the village. She smiles at e’eryone. Then she leaves.”
“How laing has she been ’ere?”
“Ainly since yesterday. She just appeared out o’ nowhere. No one e’en kens her name.”
Jamie took a step forward. He got all the way to the planter before he realized he hadn’t taken his leave from Marri. Oh, well. She married another man, so she no longer kept any hold over him. He could come and go as he pleased.
He arrived at the planter. The strange woman smiled up at him, and he smiled down at her. “Hello.”
Jamie sat down on the wall next to her. “How do ye come tae be ’ere? Ye dinnae come from ’ere.”
She scanned the brae beyond the village. “I’m actually not quite sure how I came to be here. I just showed up, but now that I’m here, I don’t want to be anywhere else. I love it here.”
“It is sort o’ peaceful when ye think aboot it.” He couldn’t take his eyes off her. She looked so different from the others.
“What about you?” she asked. “I thought I recognized everyone in this village, but I’ve never seen you before. I would definitely remember if I had seen you.”
“I was born up the brae there.” He swept the rising country running up the mountains. “I ken all the people around ’ere, and I ne’er saw ye, either.”
“I just got here,” she replied. “I…well, I just sort of appeared here, kind of like you, I guess.”
She flashed him a bright grin, and the sight sent a bolt of lightning through his guts. He wanted to get near her, to touch her and make her smile like that all the time.
He slid closer on the bench and laid his hand over her bare knee. “Ha’e ye some place tae stop fer the night? Ye cinnae stop out ’ere. Ye’ll catch yer death.”
A beautiful blush colored her cheeks at his touch. “I don’t have anywhere to stay, but I don’t think I can stay here. I have to go home.”
His eyes flew open. “Home! Where?”
“Back where I came from. I have to go back. Like you said, I can’t stay here—not overnight, anyway.”
“How will ye gang back?” he asked.
“Through the doorway, of course,” she replied. “I can go back and forth whenever I want. I guess I’ll come back tomorrow, but…well, I do have stuff to do back there. I might…. well, I might not be able to come as often in the future. I might just have to come some of the time. I might have to keep this for…you know, special times.”
Jamie’s mind reeled. “Ye can go back and forth whene’er ye want tae?”
She nodded. “I’ve already been back about five times. I only came back to get a good look at it, but I have to go back soon.”
He slid closer. Her skin under his hand felt so intoxicatingly inviting. He had to touch her while he had the chance. He slid his fingers a little lower on her knee where the skin turned soft. It invited him to sneak up under her skirt and…
“Ye mun’ stay ’ere,” he breathed. “Ye mun’ stay and….”
He couldn’t continue. He pressed his mouth against her ear and moved the rest of the way against her. She let out a little peep of surprised excitement. She turned her head aside, but she didn’t pull away. She grabbed his wrist to stop his hand. “Don’t do that. I can’t. I’m married.”
He breathed his hot breath into her ear. “Ye dinnae belaing there. Ye mun’ ken it yerself. Ye belaing ’ere. Dinnae go back. Stay.”
She pulled away ever so slightly, just enough to get the message across. She pulled his hand away from her leg. “I can’t. I have to go home. My husband is waiting for me, and I have a life back there. Maybe I’ll see you again sometime.”
She stood up. She took a step away from the planter, but she didn’t leave. She turned around to face him. Her skin glowed with rosy excitement, and she smiled down at him. “Sorry. I forgot to ask your name.”
“Jamie Cameron.”
Her eyes widened. “Cameron! All these people are Camerons.”
“They’re me Clan,” he replied.
She let out a deep sigh looking around the village one more time. “That is so nice. This place is so beautiful and peaceful. I would give anything to belong to this Clan and live here forever.”
“Ye can,” he replied. “Ye can…”
“I better go,” she told him. “It was nice to meet you.”
“Wait, lassie,” he called. “Ye didnae tell me yer name.”
She gave him that exquisite smile one more time. “I’m Grace.”
He stared at her while she walked away. She moved through the houses to the glen. He followed her movements beyond the green hills until she vanished among the trees.
Chapter 3
Mike yanked the door open in Grace’s face. “Where in the name of God have you been? Do you know what time of night it is?”
“Of course I do,” she replied. “Are you going to let me in, or are you going to interrogate me out here on the porch?”
He spun away and stormed into the house. Grace stepped inside and shut the door behind her. Now that she came face to face with his wrath, she saw herself from his perspective. Mud caked her bare feet. Her pantyhose frayed to shreds and rode up her shins. Dirt and grime stained her skirt and smudged her shirt.
She followed Mike into the living room. He propped his hands on his hips and paced around the room. He moved his lips in silent mutterings, and he kept shaking his head and glaring out the windows into the night.
She sat down on the couch and peeled off her destroyed pantyhose. She wanted to take a shower and go to bed. The grandfather clock in the corner, the one Mike bought them for their fifth wedding anniversary, chimed eight-thirty PM. It wasn’t too late. They could still get to bed at a decent hour and be up at their usual time for work in the morning.
A forgotten little voice in her head rebelled against his reaction. What was the big deal? Why couldn’t she go for an innocent little walk one night out of her life? It’s not like she cheated on him or something. She
stopped that little incident with Jamie before it started, and she certainly never gave him any invitation to touch her like that. What was she supposed to do—lock herself in the closet so she never laid eyes on another human soul?
The other part of her cringed when she remembered what she’d done. The last twenty-four hours of her life wiped out the previous three decades of solid stability. The dirt embedded in her feet gave silent witness to her degradation. If she truly deserved Mike’s love and trust, she would never have gone off in the first place. She never would have wanted to go off on some hair-brained trip to God knows where.
Where did she go, exactly? She must have been in Scotland—a remote, distant past Scotland disconnected to anything she ever knew before. She should have screamed and run from that harsh, poverty-stricken world, but she didn’t. She loved it. She kept migrating back there. She would always have to go back there, whether she wanted to or not. She understood that now.
She could make up her mind right here and now never to go back. She could make herself and Mike a solemn vow she would never do anything like that again. It didn’t mean a thing. Whatever mysterious force took her there in the first place would always draw her back. Her destiny waited there for her. She was never more certain of anything.
Mike sat down on the couch and turned to face her. He took a shaky breath. “Now listen to me, sweetheart. I don’t know what sort of a game you’re playing, but I don’t want you to ever do anything like you did tonight. Do you understand me? We’re going to go back to our regular routine. We’re going to go to bed right now. We’re going to wake up in the morning, and we’re going to go on as though none of this ever happened. Understand? You’ll never do anything like this again, and we’ll forget all about it.”
Grace squared her shoulders and looked deep into his eyes. She really did care about him. She’d spent more time married to him than she’d ever spent doing anything else. She couldn’t sit here and lie to his face. “Something’s happened, Mike. I don’t know what it is, but it’s big. I don’t want it, but it already happened and I can’t change that. I just have to deal with it.”
“What is it?” he asked. “What are you telling me?”
“I really don’t know. I can’t exactly explain it.”
“Try,” he told her. “You went out last night and you never came home. You didn’t show up for work today, and then you give me this cryptic phone call about going for a walk. Now you show up at this time of night. You’ve never done anything like this before. You never gave any indication you were ever inclined to do anything like this. What am I supposed to think? I think you owe me some sort of explanation for your bizarre behavior. I think I’ve earned that much at least. Don’t you?”
“Yeah. You have, and I want to explain. I’ll do the best I can, but I don’t know if it will make much sense to you.”
“Start at the very beginning,” he told her. “When did it start?”
“It started yesterday evening when I went to Hazel Green’s house,” she began. “It…Hazel got up this idea about casting a magic spell. She wanted to send us all to King Arthur’s court in Camelot. You know how she is.”
Mike smacked his lips. “Is that what this is about? Have the five of you been out there playing make-believe all this time? I could believe it of Hazel, but I thought the rest of you had more sense than that.”
“We haven’t been playing make-believe,” she told him. “I don’t know what happened to the others, but the spell—it did something to me. It took me somewhere outside Hazel’s house. I didn’t know where I was. I wound up in a forest, and when I started walking, I came to this village somewhere in ancient Scotland.”
He stared at her exactly the way she expected he would. Now that she said the words out loud, she heard how ridiculous they sounded. The next thing she knew, he would be calling in the men in white lab coats to take her away to a padded room.
Grace swallowed hard. “I know it sounds crazy. I was in this village for a few hours. It was about six-thirty in the evening when Hazel cast the spell, and I opened my eyes in the middle of the day in this other place. I walked all around the village and even talked to some of the people. The men all wear kilts and the women all wear long dresses. They talk in a strong accent so you can’t hardly understand a word they say.”
“Are you freakin’ serious?” he growled.
She talked faster. She had to get this out. She had to tell one other living person the truth if it was the last thing she did in life. They might drug her into oblivion. They might give her electroshock therapy to make her believe it was all a dream. Whatever happened, she had to say the words out loud now while she had a chance.
“After I left the village, I went back into the forest. I found another doorway. I don’t know exactly what they are, but I can find one whenever I want to. All I have to do is concentrate on it, and it opens. I came back here—I mean, I came back to this town. I walked around for a little while, just to make sure it really was the same town. Then I went back through the doorway to the village. I did it five different times, and the last time, I made that phone call. I just wanted to let you know I was all right and I would be home soon. I never meant to cause you any worry. I didn’t know what to make of it. It all just happened.”
He leaned back. “Do you really expect me to believe a tale like that? Do you really expect me to believe you went through some kind of time warp to somewhere in ancient Scotland? Come on, Grace. What do you take me for? What really happened? Did you meet some guy who sweet-talked you into his bed? Just tell me the truth so we can deal with it and move on. I’m a reasonable guy. I could understand if you had a little dalliance, and now you’re ready to go back to business as usual.”
Grace flushed at the memory of Jamie. His touch excited her. She never experienced that kind of excitement from flirting with a total stranger. She never experienced it because she never flirted with a total stranger before, especially not one as dashing and handsome as Jamie.
“I didn’t have a dalliance with anybody,” she murmured. “I’m telling you the truth.”
He turned away. “I just don’t know what to do about you, Grace. I don’t know how we can work this out if you persist in telling me these wild tales.”
“I can prove it to you,” she replied. “I can take you out there and show you. I can take you through the doorway, and you’ll see the village for yourself.”
He snorted out loud. “That’s a good one. You really have gone off the deep end, haven’t you? Here I thought you were just a bald-faced liar. Now I see you’re having some kind of nervous breakdown or something.”
Grace stood up. She’d had enough. “Don’t you dare call me a liar when you won’t even look at the evidence I’m offering you. What’s the matter? Are you so stuck in your little square box that you don’t dare even look? Come on, Mike. Put on your hiking boots. I’ll take you out into the forest, and I’ll show you. If it turns out to be a giant hallucination and I’m imagining the whole thing, you can have me committed and you never have to believe a word I say again. Until you’ve seen one way or the other, I don’t want to hear any more about it.”
She stomped out of the room. She climbed upstairs to their bedroom. She tossed her ruined pantyhose in the garbage and her clothes in the laundry. She jumped in the shower and scrubbed her feet pink again. She washed every speck of Scotland out of her eyes and ears and hair. She scraped all the dirt out from under her fingernails.
When she got out, she put on her nightdress and her bathrobe and went back to her bedroom. Mike sat on the edge of the bed. He took her hand and drew her between his knees. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said those things about you without knowing for certain. I…I just don’t know what to think.”
“Neither do I,” she told him. “This thing is as scary and mysterious to me as it is to you. I wouldn’t have believed it if it hadn’t happened to me. I don’t expect you to believe it without seeing it for yourself.”
He raised his eyes to her face. “Are you seriously telling me you went through some kind of portal to some other time and place?”
“You don’t have to take my word for it,” she replied. “Just go see for yourself. Then you can tell me what’s going on.”
He hung his head and rolled her fingers between his hands. “I don’t want to believe it. I just want everything to go back to the way it was before.”
“Me, too.”
He wrapped his arms around her hips and laid his face against her stomach. “I love you. I don’t want to lose you.”
She stroked his hair and rubbed his neck. “I don’t want to lose you, either. I don’t want to lose what we have. I want you to see because I need your help. I don’t know what to do with all this.”
He lifted his face to kiss her. “Well, we’re not going out there at this time of night. Come on. We’ll try to get a decent night’s sleep, and I’ll call in sick in the morning so we can go take a look.”
He pulled her down on the bed and pulled her into his embrace. They held each other for the rest of the night, but neither of them slept until the sun came up outside their bedroom window.
Chapter 4
Jamie stuffed the last piece of cold roast mutton into his mouth and licked his fingers. “Thank ye, Auntie. That was as fantastic as I remember it. Ye’re still the best when it comes tae curin’ mutton.”
A shriveled old woman with no teeth giggled from her stool by the fire. She sat spinning wool on a drop-spindle. She stole a twinkling glance at Jamie and went back to what she was doing with a shake of her head.
Jamie set his bowl aside and got to his feet. He put the cottage as much to rights as he could. “I mun’ go see Jock afore the sun goes down. Will I see ye later tonight, Auntie?”
“Aye. Ye come back ’ere and I’ll make ye a place in the crib,” she replied.
Grace Unchained - Phoenix Throne Book Five Page 2