Swept By The Highlander: A Scottish Time Travel Romance-Highlander Forever Book 3

by Preston, Rebecca

  Well, she’d have to find way of sending word to them. Bracing herself against the dizziness she’d been feeling, Elena slid her legs to the edge of the bed and carefully stood up. Thankfully, the dizziness seemed to have passed — she still felt a little weak, the way she usually did the day after a heavy workout, but she was confident in her ability to start walking. Maeve had said something about a change of clothes, and she hesitated, unsure of whether to change what she was wearing. It had a certain smell to it… the smell of lake water, she realized with a shock. Well, a change of clothes couldn’t hurt.

  The dresser contained a range of clothing, and Elena suppressed a laugh when she saw it all laid out. More medieval clothing! She had to give them credit for the attention to detail — tunics and blouses like the ones Anna had been wearing, and a couple of dresses that looked a little like Nancy’s. Rolling her eyes, she pulled out a likely-looking pair of trousers and a tunic that wasn’t too medieval. She pulled her own clothes off and changed quickly, feeling the chill in the air even with the crackling fire. Unseasonably cold. What was the temperature usually like in Scotland?

  “You’re not in Scotland, Elena,” she scolded herself, rolling her eyes. Wherever it was that she’d wound up, it wasn’t Scotland. There was a rational explanation for all of this, just ready and waiting for her to go and find it. But she wasn’t going to find it if she allowed herself to believe the ridiculous story that the women had spun for her. Really? Time travel? As if.

  Her boots were sitting by the fire. Someone had very kindly taken the laces out and stood them up to allow the water to drain out of them, and the heat of the fire seemed to have done a decent job of drying them out. The soles were still a little damp — she wrinkled her nose as she poked her foot into one — but overall, they were wearable. It felt good to be wearing her own shoes, even if the tunic and trousers felt deeply unfamiliar.

  Bracing herself, Elena stepped through the doorway and into the corridor beyond.

  A crowd of people almost knocked her down and she stood back against the wall, frowning. A gaggle of young women, all wearing aprons and what looked like medieval dresses, were bustling down the hallway, each carrying a basket that looked like it was full of laundry. A couple of them peered curiously over their shoulders at Elena, but if they said anything about her to one another she couldn’t make it out at this distance… or in their strong Scottish accents. Why had Anna and Nancy had American accents like hers?

  She headed down the corridor after the gaggle of women, peering suspiciously around her for any sign of where she might actually be. There were tapestries adorning the rough stone walls, and she peered at them without much success. Her brother Ben would be great to talk to about now — he’d gone through a huge medieval history phase in high school. It wasn’t a passion she’d ever picked up, however — and she regretted it now. She wanted to find evidence that the women were messing with her. She’d never have admitted it to them, of course, but the idea of being stranded in a foreign country in another time… yes, it was laughable, but it was also deeply scary.

  And nothing she found, as she walked, eased any of her suspicions. People walked by in various outfits — she saw more women in the same aprons as the group from before, then a couple of men, laughing and talking in what looked like armor with real swords at their sides. A little later, two women in dark brown robes — a little like what medieval monks wore in movies — moved past Elena, deep in conversation, one of them clutching an armful of ancient-looking books. They both shot her curious glances, too, but she got the distinct impression that they’d been told to leave her alone.

  Elena had always prided herself on being rational, but there was a part of her mind that was jumping up and down screaming that maybe, just maybe, the rational answer to her situation was that Anna and Nancy had actually been telling the truth about where she was.

  And when.

  But how could that be?

  At the end of the corridor there was a set of spiral staircases, and she started climbing down, at a loss for where to go. She realized, a little too late, that she’d forgotten to make note of which floor she’d originally been on — she was going to have a lot of trouble making it back to the little room she’d been stationed in. Nothing for it now. She emerged in what looked like a huge entrance hall, doors set in every wall — including a pair of enormous double doors at the far end, big enough for dozens of people to come through at once. They were closed at the moment, though they stood ajar — just wide enough for one person to walk through.

  Not aware she was holding her breath, Elena crept across the hall toward the door, curiosity pounding in her chest. More tapestries hung on the wall of the hall, these ones much bigger, depicting scenes of battle… and, strangely, some creatures that didn’t look at all human. Why, that one looked rather like a dinosaur… and beside it, strange, malformed little goblin creatures. She’d always thought tapestries were about depicting history, not folklore. Interesting.

  But she tore herself away from the tapestry, her focus shifting to the door. She knew she was putting it off — inside the building, it was easy to justify the things she was seeing as some kind of elaborate renaissance fair activity. Outside, she’d know once and for all whether she was still in Baltimore… or whether something decidedly strange had happened to her. After all, there was only so long she could keep doubting the evidence of her eyes… and no matter how desperately she’d hoped to spot someone with a cellphone or a modern wristwatch, she’d had no such luck. But did that really make any more sense than the explanation the women had given her? Why on earth would a cosplay event take her prisoner like this? Why would they want a random woman with absolutely no knowledge of history to play along with them? Wouldn’t that ruin the immersion?

  She crept through the doors, blinking a little as her eyes adjusted to the daylight outside. It must have been around midday — the sun was high in the sky and the air, though cool, wasn’t cold. But her attention wasn’t taken by the weather. It was taken by the courtyard she was standing in. It was bustling — across the black flagstones that made up its floor, men were hurrying back and forth, leading horses, carrying equipment. The courtyard stretched out to where a great wall rose, and she followed it with her eyes — there were men atop it, staring out beyond it. Guards. They were guards… this was the wall… which meant that behind her…

  Elena half-ran, half-staggered toward the middle of the courtyard, feeling her heart pounding in her chest. She had to know — had to look at the building she’d been in. And when she turned, she looked up — and kept looking, her mouth dropping open as her eyes took in the sight before her.

  It was a castle. Anna and Nancy hadn’t been kidding — it was a huge castle, rising straight into the air, made of the same dark stone as the courtyard beneath her feet. It even had turrets atop it, for all the world like the picture books she’d read as a child. Elena took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to steady her nerves, to calm the pounding of her chest. Her mind was trying its hardest to justify the castle — but she knew full well that there was nothing like this within a hundred miles of Baltimore. No castles… not like this one.

  She kept moving backwards, heedless of the people who were forced to move out of her way or the curious looks she was drawing from the men hurrying back and forth across the courtyard. The castle must have been seven or eight floors high — she realized her little room was about halfway up, and from what she remembered of the walk from the door to the staircase, it must have been on the far wall. And it had looked out over a lake… the lake. The Loch, Anna had called it. Loch Ness.

  Surely not, Elena thought faintly… but it was getting harder and harder to fight the feeling that neither Anna nor Nancy had said a single untrue word to her. Could it be? If she wasn’t dreaming, or mad, or being conned — all three of which were rather appealing ideas, she had to admit — then she’d have to face the fact that she was in medieval Scotland.

  And what the hell
was she supposed to do with that?

  Chapter 8

  Elena stood in the courtyard for what felt like hours, staring up at the castle, her mind working furiously to reconcile what she knew was true — that time travel was the stuff of science fiction, that there was no way in hell she’d gotten from the outskirts of Baltimore to Scotland in a matter of a few hours, that none of this could possibly be happening — with the evidence of her eyes and other senses. No matter which way she tried to look at it, she had to admit, there were no gaps in the evidence being presented to her. She’d trained as a detective, she knew how to be objective. And objectively speaking… there were no problems with what she was seeing. Every detail was correct, down to the cool air on her skin and the distant sounds of men shouting to each other on the walls.

  But how was she supposed to accept such a huge upheaval in the way she’d always believed the world to work? How was she supposed to come to terms with the fact that her rational, scientific mind had been misled her whole life? Of course, she knew there were always problems and faults in even the most empirical knowledge — their evidence-based way of looking at the world, while pretty reliable in a lot of ways, was not a perfect approach. She knew that. That was part of basic critical thinking — understanding that your tools for constructing knowledge were imperfect, that there would always be blind spots in even the most careful investigation.

  Why, it was a big part of why she was so adamantly opposed to the death penalty. Many of her cop friends thought that was a sign of her softness, of her youth, of not having spent enough time in the job to be properly hardened about the way criminals should be punished. But that wasn’t the case. She’d met her fair share of criminals, she’d seen the damage they’d caused, the horrible things they did to people… and yes, it was tempting to succumb to black-and-white thinking, to just decide that criminals who’d done a certain amount of damage deserved to die for their crimes. But it wasn’t right — she knew that. The way they constructed their narratives of guilt and innocence, the way investigations worked, the way that evidence was analyzed and pieced together in a court of law… it was the best system they had, but it was so full of faults that it made her head spin, sometimes. Was it really right to pin the life of a human being on a system that was so full of faults? How many innocent people had been put in jail as a result of a flaw in the system? And that was just the accidental ones — what about the unscrupulous people (many of them lawyers) who exploited the flaws in the system for their own gain? No — she couldn’t get behind the death penalty. Not until they had a perfect system for determining guilt and innocence. Which they didn’t.

  And she didn’t have a perfect system for determining what was really happening to her, she thought now, staring up at the castle as her mind raced. People were giving her curious looks as they moved back and forth across the courtyard — on some level she supposed it was strange, an unfamiliar person in their castle courtyard, staring up at the castle like she’d never seen one before. Is this normal to the people walking past me? she thought, feeling a bizarre urge to laugh. Was it normal, to just walk past a castle every day of your life? Did they even look at it? She barely glanced at the building the precinct was in, these days, but she supposed the people walking past her now might have stared up at it the same way she was staring up at her castle.

  She was so far from home, she realized with a rush of disorientation so strong it made her stagger. Suddenly, there was a hand on her elbow, steadying her — a young man was looking up at her with bright blue eyes, a look of vivid concern on his face. He couldn’t have been much older than twelve — he had a saddle slung over one arm and was clearly headed for the low buildings over by one side of the castle. They must be the stables, she realized. Horses. Of course there were horses. That was probably how everyone got around, right? They probably rode out into the world beyond these walls… down to the local village, or the local town, or out across the moors, or… her head was spinning, and she forced herself to return her attention to the here and now. The castle was more than enough to be dealing with for the most part.

  “You alright there, ma’am?” the young man asked, his hand still on her elbow.

  She realized she was swaying a little as her mind raced, and she cleared her throat, trying to anchor herself in the present moment with a deep, shuddering breath. The boy’s accent was so thick she could barely make out what he’d said — and she was used to translating thick Maryland accents.

  “I’m okay,” she said faintly, trying to believe it herself. Her heartbeat felt erratic — it was pounding fast, but somehow it felt inefficient, like in those dreams where you ran and ran but never seemed to get anywhere. “Just feeling a bit — overwhelmed, that’s all.”

  “Are you a friend of Lady Anna’s?” the boy asked curiously, his eyes lighting up with interest as he listened to her speak. “Only you sound like her. Not that that’s a bad thing,” he added hastily. “It’s just not how people talk around here.”

  “Anna?” Of course. The dark-haired woman who’d been sitting by her bedside when she woke up. Suddenly, she regretted not listening more closely to what she and her friend had said… but then again, who could have expected her to just believe she’d been transported through time and space the minute she woke up? “Yes. Yeah, I’m a friend of hers.” She supposed that made as much sense as anything… or were the people around here familiar with the concept of time travel?

  The boy was nodding. “Did you come through the Burgh as well?”

  “The what?”

  “The Burgh. Down deep at the bottom of the lake.” The boy grinned at her, wiggling his fingers. “Did you meet Nessie on your way up?” But he seemed to sense that she had no idea what he was talking about — and that she didn’t have much spare processing power to work it out. “Well, anyway. You’re welcome to Urquhart Castle. I’m James. Let me know if I can do anything for you.” He winked one of those bright blue eyes at her.

  “Thanks,” she managed. “I mean, all I really need at the moment is to calm myself down.” She’d witnessed more than a few panic attacks on the job. After all, she often met people on the absolute worst day of their lives, and mental stability was usually a casualty of that kind of thing. She even had special training on how to handle people who were midway through an attack. Unfortunately, the training hadn’t said much about what to do when you yourself could feel a panic attack hurtling toward you at the speed of a runaway train. She’d always been so stable, so calm — this was very unlike her.

  James shrugged his shoulders. “I mean, you didn’t hear it from me, but the cellar under the kitchens is never guarded. Plenty of wine down there. Not that I’ve ever tasted a drop,” he added piously, his bright eyes twinkling. Despite her mental state, Elena couldn’t help but feel a stirring of amusement at the boy’s roguish attitude. This was the kind of kid who used to give her and her colleagues hell back home — but somehow, she couldn’t fault him for it.

  “Where are the kitchens, then?”

  “Come with me,” he said brightly. “I’ll drop this saddle off and take you there myself. I need something to eat, anyway, growing lad and all.”

  It felt good to have a destination in mind — somewhere to walk that wasn’t just an aimless, confused wander. She tried to focus as she walked, trying not to think about the pounding of her heart and the panic trying to clutch at the edges of her vision. The stables were a welcome distraction. They were huge — at least a dozen stalls in this building, and she’d spotted more behind it. The smell of hay and horses was strangely comforting — a warm, musky scent that made her think of going on pony rides when she was a small child. She had no idea how to ride a horse, she realized with a worried jolt. Was that going to be a problem here? Almost certainly… then she took another deep breath as that new panic, added to the existing panic, threatened to overwhelm her.

  James, oblivious to how new all of this was to his new friend, dumped the saddle in a pile of tack and came t
rotting back to her, whistling jauntily as he led her back toward the castle. They headed around the side of it, this time, and she tried to figure out the layout of the lower floor as he led her through a back door. The kitchen seemed to be right at the back of the huge castle — that meant there was a considerable space by the entrance hall not yet accounted for.

  A dining hall, perhaps? That would make sense — she thought briefly of images from old movies of medieval knights sitting around huge tables laden with plates of meat, toasting each other with flagons of ale as fires crackled in hearths that lined the hall. Was that the kind of thing she was in for? There were never any women in those pictures… or was she going to be expected to be in the kitchen, working? A prickle of anger stirred in her chest, disrupting the panic a little. No way. She’d had more than enough of that kind of thinking in her time — she wasn’t going to be subjected to any more of it, medieval times or no.

  James pulled her out of these dour reflections with a sharp whistle, and she followed him into the kitchen, blinking around at the huge space. There were several huge counters, workspaces cluttered with crockery, cutting boards, a range of foods in various states of preparation — mostly vegetables, she noticed, and on the walls, a huge amount of fish hung up. That made sense, she supposed — a castle on a lake would probably get a lot of its rations from that lake. There were ancient stoves over by the far wall, where several pots were attended by a handful of servants. Elena gazed around, trying not to let the room overwhelm her. There was room in here for at least a dozen people to be working at once, probably more if they were efficient about it… How many people live in the castle, she wondered, that they need a kitchen like this to feed them all?