The entire known world would tremble at his feet. He could hardly wait.
She looked afraid. He liked that. “Where is the key? Give it to me.”
“I do not have it,” she replied before screaming, “Run Wallace!”
He hadn’t expected her to do anything but cower before him. Then she went and called out? The audacity! He would make her pay for that. “
The key,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “Hand it over and you shall see I’m not a bad person. I only want what is best for all of us.”
“I told you, I don’t have the key.”
“I know you’re lying to me. It brought you back from your time. It carried you to the island. You must have it.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Last chance.”
“I told you, I haven’t got it.”
“Search her.”
He stood back while his men ran their hands over her. He tapped his foot, waiting for the answer he knew was coming. She squirmed in place, trying to get away from the prying hands of his men. He enjoyed the sight.
“She hasn’t got it,” one of them said at last, turning to him and shrugging.
“Hasn’t got it?” he repeated, grabbing the nearest sword and thrusting it through the man’s gut. “You would bring me such news?”
The man slumped to the ground, holding his stomach, groaning as he took his last breaths. He looked at Natalie closely, watching the fear grow in her eyes as she kept glancing at the corpse by her feet.
“Wallace has it,” he said, turning to his men. “Don’t just stand there. Find him!”
They scattered across the valley. Where was he going with the key? He must know he couldn’t get away.
The men roamed far and wide, working their way up the surrounding mountainside as he stood and waited in the valley.
He paced up and down, waiting for news. “He must be somewhere,” he shouted at one of his personal guard. “He can’t have vanished into thin air. He has the key. He was right here. He can’t have gotten far. Find him or I will have your head left here for the wolves to enjoy.”
He turned back to question Natalie further. She wasn’t there. “Where is she?” he shouted, looking left and right. “Where is she?” The sound echoed off the mountainside. He roared with anger. “Find them!”
They had caught the two of them at last. It had all been in his grasp. And then what? They had slipped through his fingers. He cursed the name MacGregor, spitting on the ground and vowing that, when they were finally caught, he would make Wallace watch while he cut Natalie .
Something caught his eye high in the sky and he looked up in time to see a pigeon swooping down toward him, a note attached to its leg.
It landed on his outstretched hand, waited while he untied the note, and then flew off again.
Unrolling the slip of parchment, he read the contents quickly.
Return to MacCallister Castle. I slaughtered a pig. He meant for you to go hunting to get you out while W and A return to the door.
The note might not mean much to anyone else but to the barefoot man it meant everything. His mother had read the entrails of another sacrifice. He need not waste time searching for Wallace and Natalie.
They would come to him at the castle. He should never have left. Still, it wasn’t too late. He would get back there before them.
He was not hunted. They were. They would have to avoid the main thoroughfares and that would slow them down.
He gathered up his men and headed north. The more he thought about it, the more it made sense. No matter where the two of them ran to, there was no getting away from it.
The only way for her to return to her own time was to use the key in the same door that brought her here. That was the door in the dungeon.
Why had he gone after them? The only answer he had was that he had become too excited by the chase to think rationally. So their cheating helper wished for them to sneak back to the castle while he was out? Well, see how that worked out for Wallace and his little friend from the future.
If he planned things properly, he could get both of them there at once. What a joy that would be.
Take the key from her, lock Wallace back in the eternal chains, then take the key down the long stairs to free his father from his dungeon.
Maybe take him and introduce him to Wallace, see how much pleasure it would bring the old man to torture the last of the MacGregor lairds.
He would keep Natalie for himself. He had found the fear in her eyes pleasant enough and with work, he was sure he could make that fear turn into abject terror. Wouldn’t that be something?
Better news reached him a couple of miles into the march. A figure with hands bound was being dragged across open ground before being dumped at his feet by two men.
“Who is this?” he asked, yanking the hood from the stricken figure’s head. “This is not Wallace MacGregor.”
“It’s the captain who brought them to shore,” the man on the left said. “He was married to Scarlett.”
“Was he indeed?” the barefoot man replied, rubbing his hands together with glee. “Then he better join us on our stroll, hadn’t he?”
Under his feet, the ground trembled. Soon, he thought, as he began to march north again, giving the captain a good kick every now and then to keep him walking with them.
Soon the key will unlock the door that the druids said could never be opened again. Naive fools they were to think anyone could keep his father locked away forever.
Soon he would be free and Wallace dead. It would make all this running around worth it to know the MacGregors were gone for good.
Three generations of betrayal and subterfuge would be nothing more than a footnote in the annals of history. He would soon have the key.
It was almost over.
14
Natalie watched from behind a boulder as the barefoot man and his army departed the valley. Only when the last of them had vanished from sight did she allow herself to sigh and then collapse to the ground.
Wallace remained on guard, watching closely in case it was some kind of trap. She looked up at him with fresh eyes. He looked different. Or did he?
She shook her head. It wasn’t him that was different. It was her. She’d just seen a man killed.
Of course, it had always been a risk, coming back into the past like this. Still, there was no getting away from the fact that a man had died, his body lay down in the valley as she sat there, unburied, unloved, uncared for.
he thought was enough to bring tears to her eyes.
She sniffed loudly enough to make Wallace look down at her. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” she replied. “Just sad.”
“Oh.” He went back to watching out while she continued to think. So much had changed since her arrival here. Not just in what she thought she knew about the past but in what she thought she knew about herself.
It turned out there were things that made her uncomfortable. Being searched roughly by sneering men was one. Being held captive by a barefooted bald man who made her skin crawl was another. And then there was seeing a man die. She had seen a man die.
She was torn. Part of her wished this was all a dream, that she would wake up and be back at home, all thoughts of ghosts and MacGregors back where they belonged, in the pages of her book. She’d be able to close the cover on them and ignore them if that were the case.
But then what did she have to go back for? Everything in her life that she thought was important was gone. She had nothing. The book seemed so unimportant compared to the real people who surrounded her.
Could she stay? She looked up at Wallace. Did he want her to stay?
When he’d pulled her through the doorway, she’d been so shocked she couldn’t say a word. Which was great because it meant no one noticed until it was too late.
She was staggered. One minute she was captive, the next she was on the mountaintop, looking at a closed door in a rock.
“The key,” Wallace replied. “Scarlett was right. The door in the rock.”
“She said you’d get the thing you most needed, didn’t she?”
“Well, maybe she was wrong about that part.” He refused to be drawn any further despite her efforts to get him to talk.
In the end, she left him watching out from behind the boulder as she looked at him properly for what felt like the first time.
He was an unusual person to understand. Sometimes he seemed so angry with the world. Other times he seemed on the verge of smiling or laughing but then seemed to clamp down on it like he wasn’t allowed to enjoy himself.
Did he even like her? There was the time on the ship when he’d seemed on the verge of kissing her. Did that mean something or was she reading too much into it?
“I think we’re safe,” he said, looking down at her.
She looked away, embarrassed at being caught staring at him. “What now?” she asked.
“Now we get you home.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll work that out once you’re safe.”
“What if you end up back in those chains? You might never get released again.”
“I would rather spend an eternity in the torment of those accursed chains than have you spend another second in danger. Come on. If we move fast, we may get there before the barefoot man.”
“And if we don’t?”
“Then I’ll make sure you get home. You have my word.”
Wallace led the way down the mountainside. Once they were in the valley, Natalie stopped by the body of the man who’d been killed, his face still fixed in agony, his eyes glazed.
“We should bury him,” she said.
“We have no time. We must move.”
“It’s not right to leave him here like this.”
He nodded, kneeling down and closing the man’s eyes with the palm of his hand. He muttered something under his breath before standing up again.
“What did you say?” Natalie asked.
“A prayer of protection for his soul. If we survive this, I promise you I will give him a good Christian burial but for now we must get going. Time is against us.”
Natalie thought about those words during the long slog north. Time is against us. Time certainly seemed to be against her. It had been biting at her ever since she’d made the journey back in time.
It was as if there was someone out there that didn’t want her messing with time, that the butterfly effect would have awful repercussions for the present.
The thought depressed her but there wasn’t much she could do about it other than go home and vow never to use the key again.
First, she had to get home. That wasn’t exactly easy with her limbs aching and her heart racing.
The only thing that kept her moving was Wallace. He encouraged her whenever she fell behind, taking her hand through the marshes and down the steep edges, guiding her without a single complaint no matter how many times she stumbled.
“Why are you being so patient with me?” she eventually asked. “I thought you hated the MacCallisters.”
“I’ve changed my mind about many things since meeting you,” he replied.
“You’re a good person, Wallace MacGregor.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You are. You’re taking me home. You don’t have to. You could run off into the wilderness and leave me alone. You’re a good person.”
“What if I tell you I was planning for you to take my place in the chains? What if I tell you the only reason you’re here is because I made a deal with the barefoot man?”
“A deal?” Natalie stopped walking. “What kind of a deal?”
He turned and looked at her. “I was to bring you and the key to him and in return he was to bring my father back to life. That’s why my spirit came to you in your time.”
“But why? Why me? I don’t understand.”
“Because I vowed to have my revenge on the last of the MacCallisters.”
“You mean me?”
“Aye. Only once I met you, I knew I couldnae do it. There was no way I could hand you over to him. I will return to the chains and you will return home and you willnae think me a good man for I am not one.”
He started walking again. Natalie waited a moment before following him. She wasn’t sure what to think. Part of her felt crushed and betrayed by his confession.
He had lied to her. He hadn’t brought her back in time to show her around the Middle Ages. He had done it to get revenge on her.
Even as anger rose up in her, it faded, replaced by sorrow. She caught up with him and shoved him in the side. “You don’t get to say all that and just act like nothing happened.”
“You are angry with me, I understand. Dinnae worry, soon you will be in your own time and away from me.”
“I’m not angry.”
“Yes you are.”
“All right, I am. But I’m sad too.”
“I’m sorry I let you down.”
She shoved him again. “I’m sorry for you, you great fool.”
“What?”
“You did it to try and get your father back. That’s something I can understand.” She sighed, wondering whether to tell him. “I’m going to share something with you, all right? I want you to just listen and not say anything. Okay?”
He nodded.
“I had a baby girl once. She was called Tanya. She died when she was eight months old. A simple infection, the common or garden kind that a million kids get every year and shake off like the cold. Yet it killed my little girl.” She took a deep breath before continuing. “If I was offered a chance to bring Tanya back to life by the devil himself, I would be hard pressed to refuse no matter what the deal was. Even for just a moment to hold those tiny fingers in my own again, to look into those gorgeous blue eyes of hers. I understand why you made that deal, Wallace, more than you’d think I might.”
He glanced down at her and then looked away, beginning the long climb up yet another steep slope.
“Okay, you can talk now.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you had a daughter?”
“Because it’s not the kind of thing that comes up in polite conversation.”
“I’m sorry, Natalie.”
“It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault. Just…let’s not keep secrets from each other anymore, okay?”
“Deal.”
They walked in silence for a while. Natalie expected to feel worse for telling him but for some weird reason she felt better, like a weight had been lifted from her.
She’d never told her housemates about Tanya. She’d never shared her feelings about it with anyone, preferring to try and deal with them alone. So why had she told him?
She had no answer for that.
Soon any chance of conversation was gone. The wind which had been growing steadily began to howl as they reached the next hilltop. It chased them down the other side, catching her breath and whipping it away from her whenever she opened her mouth.
At last the castle came into view. It was strange seeing it in its prime, so different to in her time. Some parts were the same of course, the battlements, the towers, the surrounding earthwork.
So much was different. The grass surrounding it was beaten flat by constant use, dirt paths stretching in different directions from the drawbridge.
Guards patrolled the entrance but there was no sign of the barefoot man.
“We might have made it before him,” Wallace said, motioning for them to duck behind a straggly bush of hawthorn. “Wait, look.”
The barefoot man came into view. He was walking out of the castle, dragging someone on a long rope behind him.
“It’s the captain,” Natalie said. “Oh no.” She realized where he was being taken. A gibbet had been set up on a stretch of flat ground about fifty feet from the drawbridge. “He’s going to kill the captain.”
Wallace turned to her, grabbing her hands and pressing the key into her palm. “Listen to me,” he said. “I will help the captain. You need to get to the dungeon and use the key. There’s a sally port over to the east. Head around those trees and down. No one will see you if you’re quick. Go!”
“I’m not going without you.”
He leaned toward her and kissed her. She felt the softness of his lips on her own for all too brief a moment and then he was shoving her toward the trees. “Go.”
She looked back but at that moment a guard yelled something, pointing her way. Terrified she’d been spotted, she ran for the trees, hiding behind them and clinging to the nearest trunk, panting for breath.
He’d kissed her. She closed her eyes and relived the moment. Sure, it was probably nothing to him but to her, it was everything. She relived it again and again, the smell of him, the softness so unexpected as he leaned his body against hers.
She slapped herself. This wasn’t the time to go all doe eyed. It was time to get moving. She was still in danger.
She was halfway down to the sally port when she stopped, skidding behind a clump of rose bushes. She looked out at the castle.
Wallace was running down the hillside, sword drawn. He crashed into the first group of men he saw, taking down two before they even had their swords out. The captain was being led up the steps to the gibbet.
They still had time.
She ran faster. The noose was slid around his neck. She looked back to Wallace only to find he’d been swamped by too many armed men. There was no way he could defeat them all.
She shouldn’t look. She should focus on getting home, shouldn’t she?
This was stupid. What was she about to do? Go down to the dungeon and go home?
As if.
She would spend the rest of her life regretting leaving him to his fate. She couldn’t do that. He was going to try and take on an entire castle to free the captain and then what would be his reward? Back in those chains if he was lucky.
He needed her help. He needed her. He’d only sent her away to try and make sure she was safe. Well, that wasn’t his decision to make. It was hers.
The Key to Her Past: A Highlander Time Travel Romance (Clan MacGregor Book 4) Page 10