As Morgaine did.
Now there was an unsettling thought! Oh, he had need of a bite in his belly. Alasdair stifled a desperate urge to turn tail and run from all of this.
An eerie scream carried below the mount, something setting the very ground to rumbling. Too late, Alasdair recalled that detail of Morgaine’s domain and jumped despite himself.
Aye, he was in a fine fankle, to be sure.
“Morgaine’s dragon!” Alasdair muttered.
Blake shook his head, frowning at a band strapped to his wrist. “No, no. 11:30.” He fanned through another book. “That would be the Highland Chieftain leaving Waverly Station for London. Right on time.” He glanced up to Alasdair. “Morgaine’s Dragon isn’t on my train schedule. Are you sure it leaves from here?”
“No,” Alasdair conceded, not having any clue what the advisor was talking about. Blake fumbled through his book, evidently looking for something, while Justine tapped her toe.
Perhaps it would be a wise course to curry the favor of these trusted advisors of Morgaine’s. They might be able to help him escape the clutch of her spell.
Alasdair could not outrun the land of Faerie, that much at least he knew as well as he knew his own name. ’Twas those who outsmarted the enchanted folk who returned to the world Alasdair knew to tell their tales.
“Look, Blake, just leave it for now,” Justine said smoothly. “We’ve invited Alasdair to join us for lunch, after all.” She smiled up at Alasdair. “So, you like Morgan. You know, I just have the strongest feeling about the two of you…”
“Oops, bad news,” Blake interrupted, glancing up from his ledgers. “Says here that they only have tea and snacks at this restaurant.” He frowned indecisively.
Alasdair did not know of this tea and snacks, but it sounded less than promising, given Blake’s response. “A man has need of a proper drink when matters go awry,” he said firmly.
Blake winked at Justine. “And we’re real men, aren’t we, Alasdair? No quiche and tea for us!” He fanned through his book before Alasdair could make sense of that, jabbing victoriously at the page. “Hey, here’s a pub in the Grassmarket.” He glanced up brightly.
Alasdair had to ask. “A pub?”
“Public house. We can get our wee dram there, or a beer.”
Ah, a tavern. Alasdair nodded understanding as Blake consulted his volume again. “It’s called the Hangman’s Drop. What do you think?”
Justine rolled her eyes, but Alasdair thought the name oddly appropriate. Those lost to the world of Faerie might as well be dead, after all.
“What about your one o’clock gun?” Justine asked enigmatically.
“Maybe tomorrow,” Blake said with dismissive wave. “Today, we’ll enjoy a bit of local color.” He grinned. “Hey, Alasdair, stand with Justine, will you? I’ve got to take your picture!”
Alasdair watched as Blake held a small black box to his eye and made it click. They were a strange lot in the world of Morgaine le Fee, that much was for certain.
Alasdair could not be trapped here for all eternity. Nay, he had to escape.
And Morgaine le Fee herself held the sole key to his release.
*
Chapter Three
What was it with men and booze?
And why did Morgan invariably find men who couldn’t stay away from the stuff so attractive? She should have learned her lesson by now! Morgan stormed across the grassy bailey, as angry with herself as with the highlander, jumbled memories crowding into her mind.
Matt with his insincere promises.
Matt laughing at yet another party, the consummate charmer even when he drank far too much.
Matt snoring in the car as Morgan - stone cold sober and deeply unhappy - drove home.
Again.
And again and again and again.
Then the final straw.
But Morgan would not think about it. The subject was closed. Old business. Nothing to do with her life anymore. That chapter was done and best forgotten.
What she should be thinking about was her new book.
Or more to the point, why she hadn’t a clue how to start.
Well, she could hardly collect stories by racing through one town after another at breakneck speed. What she needed was a few hours alone with her sketchbook. Then everything would start to flow.
Morgan knew that she had to stop fretting about Blake’s schedules and Justine’s chances for conception and just treat herself to a little time to think about the work.
And Morgan would start by following the first creative impulse she’d had all week. She would go back and take that picture of Edinburgh through the arrowslit, the one she had planned to take before finding Alasdair.
Morgan knew she could work this camera and she would prove it.
The shot looked as good in the viewfinder - in fact, the angle of the sun was little better than it had been before - and Morgan carefully snapped the picture. The Polaroid whirred as it spit out the shot and she lingered in the tower room as it processed.
No point in leaving until she knew for sure she had done it right.
Morgan refused to admit that she might be deliberately avoiding any chance of being swept along with her sister’s plans. Irritation surged through her at just the thought of Justine’s unwelcome interference.
Honestly, fixing Morgan up with an actor pretending to be an historic figure in an old castle. Couldn’t he find any better roles to play?
Of course, the drinking could have ruined his chances of serious acting. What would he do next? Detergent commercials? Couldn’t Justine see that Alasdair was trouble with a capital T?
Although he did have awfully good legs.
And Morgan had a picture of him. Unable to deny her impulse, she rummaged in her bag for the Polaroid that she had inadvertently snapped of Alasdair.
The picture, though, only showed the room below.
Morgan frowned at it in disbelief. The last step was there and the wall opposite where she was certain Alasdair had been when the camera went off.
But he wasn’t there. The photo showed only barren stone.
And Morgan’s own toe. How could he have avoided being in the picture? Was the room below bigger than Morgan had thought?
Intrigued, Morgan trotted down the stairs. She held up the picture and compared it to the small room, squinted between the two, but was unable to avoid the truth.
The room was so small that Alasdair couldn’t have missed being in her shot somewhere. Even Morgan hadn’t been able to stay completely out of it, evidenced by the tip of her out-of-focus boot.
So, why wasn’t he there?
Morgan felt goosebumps rise on her flesh, but she told herself it was just the damp chill of the air. There had to be a logical explanation to this. She studied the picture for a clue.
There was a funny glimmer on the floor in the shot. Morgan checked the room again and saw something catch the light in the same place.
It was a stone.
Without a second thought, Morgan crossed the room and picked up the large quartz crystal, cradling its weight in her palm. She turned it over and over, fighting against a sense that she had seen it somewhere before.
But where? Morgan knew she hadn’t noticed it here earlier.
She’d been too busy noticing Alasdair’s legs.
Morgan climbed back to the sunlight thoughtfully. She watched the light play within the stone, unable to shake the feeling that it was somehow familiar.
Where had she seen this stone?
The memory came in a sudden flash. The regalia! She had seen it this morning on the castle tour.
But how could Morgan be holding part of the Scottish crown jewels in her hand? They were locked away in a display case in the castle.
Unless Alasdair stolen the stone.
A sick feeling coiled in Morgan’s stomach. It was a perfect plan - take a job working inside the castle, get to know the staff, be amiable enough to be trusted and then steal a precious antiquity.
All the same, Morgan had a hard time believing that the man she had found could be a thief - at least on such grand scale.
But he was an actor, wasn’t he? And she had thought he intended to rip off her camera.
Well, there was only one way to find out the truth.
To Morgan’s relief, the others had disappeared from view when she peeked out the tower door. She sprinted across the lawn to the entry of the special exhibit of the castle’s history. Morgan elbowed her way through the crowds filtering through the exhibit, pushing to the front of the crowd gathered around the display case in the last room.
The Scottish regalia were the vestments of royal authority gathered over the nation’s long history, now finally displayed for all to see. The crown of Scotland perched on a crimson pillow, the crown ringed with ermine and lavished with garnets and pearls. The massive sword lay the length of the display, its ornamented hilt and scabbard fit for a king.
But Morgan stared at the scepter as the tourists flowed around her. A golden shaft spiraled with inscriptions and said to have been a gift from the pope in the Dark Ages, its gold had been reworked numerous times. Now it culminated in a trio of porpoises, nosing a golden setting skyward.
An empty golden setting.
Morgan swallowed. The crystal in her pocket had been mounted in that gold filigree this morning when she first saw the regalia. She knew it. Morgan fingered the stone guiltily, unsure what to do. She didn’t know how Alasdair had done it, with so much security around, but the truth was right before her eyes.
Alasdair was a thief.
And she had the goods!
Even Justine wouldn’t believe her little sister could get into such trouble so effortlessly.
Morgan glanced over her shoulder, but the guards stood as implacably as they had when she had been here earlier. Wouldn’t they have closed the hall if there had been a theft? Wouldn’t the case be damaged? Or an alarm set off? This place looked to be Security Central.
Morgan recalled suddenly how everything about Bannockburn had turned around while she was in the tower. She dug in her bag for her guidebook.
“The Crown Jewels and the Scottish Regalia are part of a special exhibit at Edinburgh Castle and the culmination of a tour re-creating the fortress’s past. The regalia were given to Edward I of England in 1296 as a token of Scotland’s subservience to England. They were taken to Westminster Abbey, then returned to Edinburgh Caste in 1996 to commemorate the seven hundredth anniversary of the joining of the two nations’ fates.”
That didn’t sound right to Morgan. She was sure there had been something this morning about Sir Walter Scott finding the regalia here in the castle. But Sir Walter Scott wasn’t even in the index anymore.
That was too weird.
What had happened to her book? Morgan closed it with a snap and eyed the untrustworthy volume with new suspicion. It looked exactly the same as it had this morning, complete with turned-down pages at places she wanted to visit.
But the text was all different. Morgan turned her scrutiny on the display cabinet, which seemed oddly undisturbed. The goose bumps returned, even though it was comfortably warm in this room.
If Alasdair has stolen the crystal, then how had he managed to change the text in her guidebook? And in Blake’s? And how had he gotten the stone out of the display case without anyone noticing?
None of this made any sense. She probably just didn’t have a devious enough mind to see how the con job worked. She never could figure out magicians’ tricks, that was for sure.
Okay, Morgan knew she had seen the stone firmly lodged in the regalia this very morning. But it wasn’t there anymore – it was in her pocket because she had found it on the floor in the tower room where Alasdair had been.
Obviously, he had dropped it.
Now, if Alasdair was a thief who had managed to conjure the stone out of the scepter, then maybe he had similarly substituted Morgan’s and Blake’s guidebooks. That would be nothing compared to getting a gemstone out of a protected display.
But why? Morgan frowned.
Of course! Alasdair must be intending to use Blake, Justine and herself to smuggle the stone out of here! Ha! He would follow them and steal the stone again, once they had done the dirty work for him.
Morgan hadn’t been given a four-star imagination for nothing, and it was working overtime now. Clearly, they had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, looking like hapless tourists.
And a hapless tourist was exactly what Alasdair must have needed. Morgan groaned inwardly that she had played along so well.
The whole scheme was far-fetched and weird, but she couldn’t think of any other possible explanation. The way those blue eyes sparkled with intelligence told her that Alasdair had it in him to concoct a brilliant plan.
But what should she do with the stone? She glanced toward the guards, standing with their stoic passivity, and knew they would never believe her story if she handed the crystal back.
After all, it sounded nuts. Did they think the stone had been lost for seven hundred years? The guard standing to one side had been here this morning. She had answered a question for Blake and just might remember Morgan.
She certainly would remember whether the crystal had been in the scepter.
Morgan smiled as she walked toward the uniformed guard, her heart pounding, her fingers unable to stop toying with the quartz deep in her pocket. “Excuse me. I was here this morning. Maybe you remember me?”
“Oh, yes, miss.” The guard summoned a polite smile. “Are you having a pleasant visit?”
Morgan swallowed. “Yes, but I was wondering something. Wasn’t there a crystal in the scepter this morning?”
The guard looked astonished. “Oh, no, miss, there’s never been one as long as I’ve been here and it’s nigh onto five years.”
Her words were probably meant to be reassuring, but Morgan frowned. “I was sure I saw the stone this morning.”
The guard shrugged and kept her tone light. “With all respect, you canna have done so, miss. It’s been lost since the time of that scoundrel, Robert the Bruce.”
Robert the Bruce a scoundrel?
Morgan blinked in surprise, but the guard leaned closer and dropped her voice. “There are those to say he stole it and sold it to pay for his petty uprising against the good British.” She clicked her teeth in disapproval while Morgan gaped.
The good British?
The guard’s words were so irreconcilable with everything Morgan had heard since her arrival in Scotland that she thought the woman might be joking.
But she was perfectly serious.
Was the guard in on Alasdair’s scheme?
Morgan tried another tack. “Can you tell me anything about the actors in period costume within the castle? Where do you find them?”
The guard looked confused. “Actors, miss? We hire no actors here.”
“But there was a man in a kilt…”
The guard drew herself up proudly. “If you are thinking of the Sutherland Guard who conduct the tours of the castle, I must assure you, miss, that they are no actors, but loyal veterans of Her Majesty’s Highland Military.”
“No, no, not the tour guide.” Morgan hastily tried to make amends. “It was another man, in a different kilt.”
The guard’s glance was cold. “I assure you, miss, that there are no other kilted men in the employ of the castle. Perhaps you have confused another guest with our staff.” Her polite smile returned. “Perhaps you might be moving along now, miss, and make way for other visitors to see the regalia.”
No actors in the fortress.
And no crystal in the regalia.
Morgan eyed the other security guard, who nodded crisply in her direction. He hadn’t been here this morning, but surely not everyone could have been in on the scam, could they?
Morgan crossed the room, repeated her questions, and received exactly the same answers from this second guard. In fact, the man seemed bemused by her curiosity, and M
organ didn’t miss the tolerant glance the guards exchanged. The male guard must have seen her note the look, for he smiled.
“With all respect, miss, we often have American tourists with fanciful ideas about Scottish history. There has been no stone in the regalia for at least seven hundred years, you have my word. In fact, of late there has been some question as to whether the stone was really a quartz crystal.” He rattled off a series of academic citations obviously intended to put an end to Morgan’s questions.
It worked.
She stalked out of the gallery, knowing that she wasn’t some fanciful American tourist. She had seen the stone this morning!
Somehow Alasdair had bamboozled the guards. Not only was the highlander a con man, he was a very, very good one.
But just because Morgan was the only one who had noticed his crime, that didn’t mean he was going to get away with it. She wasn’t going to return the stone herself – because that would be the quickest way to get herself in trouble – so, she would make sure that Alasdair did.
Which meant that she had to find him, and the sooner the better.
Well, her sister had spirited him off for a “wee dram” and a confidential lunch. She knew that look in Justine’s eye: Alasdair would at this very moment be embroiled in an interview for Eligible Bachelor of the Year.
Which couldn’t be further from the truth.
If that trio was anywhere between here and Holyrood Palace, Morgan was going to find them. She wanted some answers from Alasdair MacAulay, answers that probably wouldn’t show him in a very flattering light.
Morgan smiled despite herself and headed for the castle restaurant. She couldn’t help looking forward to proving her always-knows-best older sister wrong.
Just once.
*
By the time Morgan headed back tot he bed-and-breakfast, it was getting dark and her feet were aching. When Blake and Justine weren’t to be found in the castle restaurant, she waited for the one o’clock gun, certain that they would return for that.
But they hadn’t.
Time Travel Romances Boxed Set Page 39