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

by Preston, Rebecca

  “And you, Elena. You’ve been busy, too.”

  “I mean, only if you count lying in bed feeling miserable.” Elena shrugged, a little confused. Even if she had been doing anything else, how would Una know?

  “You’ve been making friends. Friends with the women of the castle. Friends with … others.”

  She tilted her head to the side. “How do you know that? Have you been talking to the guards down in the village, or something?” She felt a low buzz of adrenaline at the idea that her friendship with Brendan might already be the subject of gossip. But Una’s face was drawn and dour.

  “I find things out. The men of the Castle, Elena, you must be careful. They’ll creep in. Creep in around your guard. Take advantage of your kindness. You mustn’t let it make you weak. Didn’t we talk on the lakeshore last week, about men, about the terrible things they’re capable of?”

  Una looked upset, and Elena was torn between defending her friendship with Brendan and trying to comfort the woman. She reached out to touch her icy-cold hand again, and this time Una took it in hers, clutching it a little too tightly for comfort.

  “Promise me you’ll be careful, Elena. Promise you’ll keep away from those men.”

  “I can’t promise that,” Elena said, frowning. “I agree with you that a lot of men are capable of a lot of evil, but… that doesn’t mean I’m going to completely swear off their company.”

  “Does a sheep swear off the company of wolves?”

  “Men aren’t wolves, Una. Some of them, maybe… but not all of them.” She took a deep breath, deciding to cut to the chase. It was clear Una had heard something about her and Brendan. Maybe she could put her mind at ease if she addressed it. “Brendan and I are friends. He’s a good man — a lot more respectful than many I’ve met before, if I’m honest. But we’re just friends,” she added, a little reproachfully. “That’s all. He’s not going to hurt me.”

  “All men hurt you eventually,” Una said simply, a strange, wild light in her eyes. “You defend them because you cannot help but love them. That kindness, that softness. It makes you beautiful, Elena, but it makes you vulnerable. I’ll just have to protect you.”

  Elena smiled, but there was something strange about this conversation — as though Una had made some kind of important decision on her behalf without taking what she wanted into account. “That’s … nice of you. But I can protect myself pretty well. I’ve had training, I know how to fight…” Why did she feel like she needed to justify her strength to this willowy woman? Una didn’t exactly look like a warrior — though Elena knew from experience that women who’d been through traumatic experiences at the hands of men tended to have a lot of hidden reserves of strength and rage to call on, especially when it came to protecting other women. How was she supposed to reject Una’s offer of help and protection, to argue with her about whether all men were evil, when she’d so clearly been through something to make her feel this way?

  “No need to worry,” Una crooned, taking her hand in her icy cold grip again — but this time, she stroked her wrist gently, as though it were a frightened animal she needed to calm. “I’ll keep you safe, my dear Elena, my dear friend.”

  It was a kind sentiment, if a little strange, Elena thought to herself. So why did the look on Una’s face in the light of the setting sun make her feel so afraid?

  Chapter 24

  They sat on the edge of the jetty for a long time as the sun set. The good thing about Una was that she was more than happy to let silences yawn and claim the space between people. Elena appreciated that, appreciated just being quiet around a friend. That had been something her brothers were good at, something her father had in buckets. Strange, she’d never found a romantic partner that she was happy to be quiet around. Even Nick, her most recent ex, technically the most serious relationship she’d ever been in… he’d been terrible at silences. He’d always accuse her of giving him the silent treatment, even if she was just busy with her own thoughts, and if she tried to argue, it became a whole fight. Easier to just agree with him and make small talk. What a terrible man.

  Maybe Una was onto something, she grinned to herself… but her amusement stilled at the knowledge that Una absolutely hated every man alive. That would include her father, her brothers, her lovable partner Billy… and Brendan. Somehow, her dislike for Brendan was hard to stomach. Had he ever done anything wrong? Sure, he’d flirted with Anna a little when she’d first arrived as a means of getting back at Donal… that wasn’t the best behavior, she supposed, a worried frown creeping onto her face. She could feel Una’s eyes, black as the lake water, boring into her.

  “What are you thinking about, Elena?” There was something so charming about the way Una said her name — like it was a song or an incantation or something, a magical phrase, each syllable given equal, joyful treatment.

  “Just what you said about men,” she said thoughtfully, her eyes on the water. “I don’t know if it’s true or not.”

  “Oh, it is. I’m much, much older than you, my dear, and I’ve forgotten more than you’ll know about the things men can do.”

  Elena couldn’t help but grin — something about Una’s wide eyes and quirky little smile made the sentence more funny than condescending. “What do you mean, much, much older? You can’t be a day over thirty, Una Corbin.”

  She threw her head back and laughed, a full-throated sound that echoed over the lake. “Most kind of you to say! Maybe I am thirty. It’s a nice number. Threes are very powerful,” she said solemnly, gazing out over the water. “A magical number. Yes. Thirty.”

  Elena opened her mouth to question that — then closed it again, shrugging to herself with amusement. She was just going to have to let some of Una’s strangeness go, she suspected. “Have you really never met a decent man? I know they have their faults, but some of them manage to overcome the way they’re socialized, the way society teaches them to treat women…”

  “No, no,” Una sighed. “Sometimes if they gather all their strength, they can resist their base urges for a few days, a few weeks, a few years. But never long enough, my sweet. They always show their true selves eventually. Suspicious, jealous, vengeful, violent. Best not to have anything to do with them in the first place. Know the breed, know the dog.”

  “Brendan’s not like that,” she said softly, thinking of the man’s bright eyes, gnawing at her lower lip in consternation. “He’s been nothing but kind to me…”

  “Give it time. Have you ever known a man to show you all of himself the first day you met?”

  She hesitated. Nick had been a liar since day one — though he did it subtly, with so many weasel words that he could always defend the myriad of ways he misled her. Even Billy had been difficult to get a read on at first — there was a lot under the surface when it came to that guy. “But isn’t that just.. what people are like?”

  “Not women,” Una said softly, her face filled with an odd reverence. “Women are… perfect creatures. All the more pity that they’re saddled with the violence of men. All the more cruel and unjust that they fall in love. If I could destroy love, dear Elena, I would. I’d replace every man alive with a woman, and there’d be no need for swords or armor ever again.”

  Elena smiled reluctantly. She had to admit, she’d entertained similar thoughts before… working the job she worked, you ran into example after example of why the world might fare a bit better without men. But they were also capable of being brave, and strong, and noble… of doing good work, as well as evil. And the idea that women were perfect, well, that wasn’t accurate, either. People were more complicated than that, more nuanced. You couldn’t just operate under blanket assumptions. But Una seemed to have opted for that path a long time ago.

  The sun had set by the time Elena started shivering even under her warm jacket. Her pies were long finished, and she could smell the distant smell of roasting meat in the castle — it was time to head inside. Her friends may have been looking for her — they’d be worried if she was
n’t in her room or at dinner. So she gathered herself and rose to her feet, stretching out her legs, stiff from sitting on the dock for so long. Una followed her to her feet, and she grinned as she looked at her.

  “You’re smiling, Elena. What’s pleased you?”

  “We’re the exact same height, look.” She grinned, stepping closer to Una to prove it. Sure enough, there was barely an inch between them — Una clasped her hands in hers, grinning wide and toothily.

  “Perhaps we’re sisters.”

  “Perhaps!” Elena giggled. “Though I’d wonder how that could have worked, exactly…” After all, medieval Scotland was a long distance for a long-lost twin sister to travel.

  “Oh, all manner of magical things can happen if you put your mind to it,” Una said vaguely, making a strange little gesture with her fingertips. For a moment, Elena could almost have sworn that there was a glow of light in the air … but she must have imagined it.

  “Una, would you like to come to the castle and have something to eat with us?” She hesitated. “I know you hate men, and that’s completely fair, but you could just sit with me and Anna and Nancy, we could take a whole table to ourselves…”

  “So kind,” Una breathed, raising one cool finger to stroke Elena’s cheek carefully. “So very kind, my sweet Elena. I cannot come within the castle walls. Too many men, ringing the outside, armed with iron and violence.”

  “I understand,” Elena said, a little disappointed regardless. Was there a way she could convince Una that men weren’t so bad? The men of the Keep, at least, had been nothing but polite to Elena so far… but she had to admit, a little seed of suspicion had been planted over the last hour, especially with the point Una had made about the men in Elena’s life having seemed okay at first.

  “Come and see me again, Elena. Any day, after dark, outside the walls, I’ll come to you. I promise. My sister.” She beamed, her toothy smile spreading across her beautiful face. Then she turned and strode away down the jetty, throwing Elena a little wave over her shoulder. It was amazing, the way she walked — she seemed to glide, as though her feet weren’t making contact with the ground at all. Unbelievably graceful. Could she be a dancer? Elena’s best friend in high school had been a ballet dancer — she was always complaining about how much rehearsal she had to do, how closely she had to watch what she ate and so on, but she’d been one of the most unbelievably graceful and beautiful people Elena had ever met. She could see Una, dancing — that green dress swaying about her lithe body as she twirled. What a strange friend she’d managed to make, she thought with some amusement as she turned and headed for the castle.

  To her delight, dinner was just being served when she reached the castle, and she grinned wide, getting in line to load her plate as high as she could. Nancy and Anna were both delighted to see her up and about and on her feet — Anna in particular was thrilled she’d been feeling strong enough to even go for a walk down to the docks. She was on the brink of telling them both about Una, about the strange conversation they’d had about men and whether any of them could be trusted… but then Donal and Malcolm had turned up to congratulate her on her recovery, and she felt an odd sense of reluctance to say anything about Una to them. It felt like a betrayal, somehow, to speak about her strange friend to the men she so despised.

  She served herself a huge plateful of meat and vegetable. The pies she’d devoured were sitting just fine in her stomach, not even a shadow of nausea to make her worry, so she’d decided to give her body exactly what it asked for, for as long as possible. Even Malcolm was impressed with the speed and ferocity with which she put food away, even heading back for a second plateful when she’d destroyed her first, and by the end of the meal, she was feeling almost back to normal — and about as bloated as it was possible for a human body to get.

  Anna poured her a glass of water, chuckling a little at the expression of bliss on her face. Malcolm and Donal had to take their leave early — more business to do with the illnesses, Elena suspected, though she’d been too busy devouring her meal to ask too many questions about it. Plenty of time for that later. Nancy left early, too, saying she was going to get an early night. Fair enough, too. It couldn’t have been easy to gestate a whole human being like that. Elena wondered idly if she’d ever know what that was like. She liked the idea of having children… but her career had always come first.

  “How are you settling in?” Anna asked, taking her hand. “Now that it’s been a couple of weeks.”

  “I mean, not too badly, apart from the horrible sickness. I’m making friends, I’m fitting in, I think I can make myself useful…” She shrugged. “It’s fine. I did want to ask you, though — when I go back, am I going to have lost much time?”

  But Anna was looking at her blankly. “When you what?”

  “When I go back to my own time. Like, how does time travel work? Will two weeks have passed there as well, or will I just be dropped back a few minutes after I left?”

  Anna squeezed her hand tightly in hers. “Elena… I’m so sorry. I thought you knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “There’s no way back. This … this is where you are for good, I’m afraid.”

  Chapter 25

  Elena blinked, her pulse pounding oddly in her ears. That couldn’t have been right, could it? She must have misheard… it must have been the lingering effects of the illness, messing with her senses. Anna couldn’t have just said she was stuck here… could she? But the serious look on her face seemed to tell a different story.

  “No way back?” Elena said slowly. “What about the Burgh?”

  “Even if it was easy to reach — which it isn’t — it doesn’t work that way, I’m afraid,” Anna said, her mouth twisting with regret. “It’s not like a door that opens both ways. It’s more like… well, it’s not like a magical portal, it is a magical portal. It works because the Sidhe want to make it work. And if they don’t…”

  “Well, why don’t they? They brought me here for a purpose or whatever, right? Why can’t I go home once I’ve fulfilled that purpose? That only seems fair.” Her heart was pounding, and she could feel anger swelling in her chest. “Or am I just meant to be stuck here for the rest of my life?”

  “Elena, I wish I could tell you how it works. I don’t understand it myself. No-one does… not even the scholars who are meant to dedicate their lives to understanding it. Not even Maeve, who lived with them for years. Not even me or Nancy, who met them on our way through the gate. But from what Maggie’s told me, I have a theory.”

  Elena gritted her teeth. “And you couldn’t have shared this theory with me any earlier? It’s been two weeks, Anna! Two weeks you’ve been keeping crucial information from me?”

  But Anna’s face had gone steely. Elena realized, a little too late, that she should have known better to pull the hardcore cop act on an ex-military woman like Anna. “Remember who you’re talking to, Elena. We’re friends. We’re on the same side. We’re in this together.”

  But still, she couldn’t quite get her resentment in check. “It’s fine for you. You have a life here — a husband, a child — you might have given up on the other side, but I haven’t.”

  “I didn’t give up on the other side,” Anna said coldly. “It was taken from me. Taken by the man who snuck into my house with a gun the night I was brought here, actually. As far as anyone back home knows, Elena, I’m dead. So’s Nancy — she would have drowned in a collapsed underwater cave if the Sidhe hadn’t brought her through. And you’d be dead too, mark my words. That’s the pattern. Women who are about to die — the Sidhe grab them and bring them through to this place instead. Where were you, when you came through?”

  “Baltimore.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” Anna’s eyes were steady.

  When had this interrogation flipped roles? Elena didn’t care for this at all.

  “I was checking out a tenement where me and my partner were investigating a murder,” she snapped, knowing what Anna was a
bout to ask.

  “Sure. And then what happened?”

  She gritted her teeth. “Nothing. I —”

  “What happened at the tenement, Elena? I’m sure you remember.”

  “Some stairs gave way under me and I fell,” she ground out, furious despite herself. “But that doesn’t mean I died —”

  “No, it doesn’t. But you being here definitely does. Face it, Elena — the Sidhe saved your life by bringing you here. They don’t owe you anything — if anything, you owe them. And whatever purpose they have in mind, it’ll probably be important. Mine was. So was Nancy’s. A lot of people’s lives relied on them. So if I were you, I’d stop acting so entitled, be grateful that you’re still alive, and get to doing something useful with yourself.”

  There was a ringing silence.

  Anna bit her lip after a moment. “Sorry. That was a bit harsh.”

  Elena took a deep breath. Somehow, though she was expecting to feel furious, she only felt… a lingering sense of embarrassment. “No, Anna. You’re right. Everything you just said was right. I’ve been kind of childish about all this.”

  Anna’s shoulders relaxed a little. “It’s okay. It’s… it’s a lot to take in.” She smiled a little, her eyes curious. “How are you feeling now?”

  “Uh, not great,” she admitted, her eyes prickling. “I’m… I’m really not gonna see my family again, am I?”

  Anna sighed, pulled her into a hug. She fought back tears, then gave up on that, let herself sob against Anna’s comforting embrace.

  “We don’t know that for sure,” Anna murmured. “We’ve been talking about… making some kind of a time capsule. Writing letters to our families back in our own time, letting them know that we were safe, that we lived good lives after they thought they’d lost us. You’re more than welcome to do that, too. Write to your brothers, your father, even your mother if you’d like.”