Highlander Unraveled (Highland Bound Book 6) (6 page)

“I’m going to call the shop. There’s a lass there who works for Shona and Moira, been running it since they left. She’ll know best what to do about the yard. I admit to knowing next to nothing about keeping plants.”

I didn’t know what to say. I had no way of proving whether or not these people were actually helping me or hindering me. The best I could do was stay on my toes. Not let my guard down.

“How about some supper?” Mrs. MacDonald asked, breaking the silence.

“It smells delicious,” Mr. McAlister said.

My stomach grumbled, but I still felt too jumpy to eat a thing, afraid it would all come right back up.

“How about a glass of wine?” he asked me, walking toward the counter. He lifted a bottle of red. “I brought this in hopes Moira would be home. She has great taste in wine.”

“When was the last time you talked to either of them?” I asked.

He let out a long sigh. “I’ve not seen or spoken to Shona in years.” He eyed me, perhaps trying to decipher how much I knew. “Moira says she ran off with a man.”

Moira had spent the last few years before coming to 1544 thinking her sister had gone missing—coincidentally at the same time Rory had also gone missing. No one had been able to find her; the authorities had labeled her disappearance a cold case.

I nodded, not wanting to give away that up until now, I’d been living with Shona at Castle Gealach.

“And Moira?” I asked.

“She’s been gone just a couple weeks now.”

Long enough for her plants to die, but not long enough for anyone to really take note? Except the neighbor…

“Did you alert the authorities?” I asked.

Mr. McAlister sighed again, rifling through a drawer to find a wine opener and Mrs. MacDonald stared at him, willing him to say yes, I supposed.

“She’s not missing,” he finally answered, peeling the foil from around the top of the bottle and screwing the opener into the cork.

“Then where is she?” Mrs. MacDonald asked, her hand fluttering to her throat, the spoon left dipped into the pot, all thoughts of serving dinner gone.

The cork popped from the bottle and Mr. McAlister stared me right in the eye, a knowing look. He grinned and said, “Emma knows.”

Chapter Six

Logan

The woods echoed with night sounds. Creaks and howls, chirps and buzzes. A warm breeze blew around my ankles, covered in a mist that glowed from the light of the moon.

My body still stirred with the memory of my wife, her touch, and her kiss.

Mo chreach
, I missed her with a fierce passion.

Appearing to me in the glen had been real. I’d never fallen asleep, and I was fairly certain I wasn’t hallucinating.

My boots crunched roughly over the forest floor, disturbing small creatures that scurried to hide. I cared not who heard me. Nor did I care if I woke any of my enemies who lay in wait for just such an opportunity.

In fact, I welcomed anyone to dare tempt me into battle. I couldn’t wait to unleash the fury that drove me forward.

I had enough anger swirling with the ache in my veins that I was likely to murder a man with my bare hands should he leap in front of me.

Down the mountain I stormed, toward the loch at the bottom. Hacking at tree branches, overgrown weeds that stuck onto my breeches like tiny, clinging fingers of irritation.

I broke through the trees, the loch gently lapping at the shore, mocking me with its peaceful sound.

A beam of moonlight shone on my rowboat, beckoning me to climb back in. But I didn’t want to.

I stood staring at my castle across the water. The turrets jutting from one end of the sky to the other. The walls were high, thick. Torches blazed along the walls. The moon shone on the irons spikes of the portcullis. The structure was fortified to an extreme. No sane man would dare scale its walls or attempt to breach its gates, unless death was what he wished for.

And yet, Fate had been able to easily take siege of Gealach. Fate had me by the ballocks. Twisted into knots.

For a man who prided himself on control, on power, I was unnerved.

Unraveled.

My gaze roved to the ships, large and imposing as they rocked in the gentle current. A mix of our own, and some we’d commandeered. They loomed from the docks like monsters in the dark. Well-built warships, almost ancient in appearance with their swooping Viking design and dragon bows. But the wood was new. Polished, cared for. The design was meant to entice fear—to bring out the memories of Vikings invading these lands. To exploit images of them ravishing the women, annihilating the men, enslaving the children.

And it worked.

That was why the new king, and the old, had trusted me as the guardian. The one who could keep him on the throne.

Even though it could have been mine. Everything. I didn’t want it—a notion that shocked most. But not Emma. She knew me inside and out.

I kicked the boat toward the shore. Still full of fury. The pound of my foot and scrape of the boat’s bottom masked the night sounds of bugs and animals.

All was silent on the wall across the way, patrolled by a few guards who remained hidden from those who might wish to attempt a siege.

And I was suddenly enraged at the injustice of this. That my wife should be missing, taken from me by the whim of Fate, and the world did not rage with me. The world was silent, sleeping, unknowing of my pain.

I fisted my hands at my sides, let my head fall back and a bellow loud enough to make the trees and ground shudder, erupted from my throat.

“Why?” I shouted.

Forget the boat.

I needed the cold of the loch sluicing over my skin, to calm me. I couldn’t return to the castle like this. I was ill composed, and of such a mind, my men would likely think I’d lost all sense and reason. I stripped, tossing my things into the rowboat that was moored up on the shore, and dove in.

The loch was frigid and churned with the same ferocity I felt. How many times had I used the loch and her angry current to battle the demons inside? To freeze the fiery anger? To work out the madness? An ire that had been present, before Emma, before she’d healed me, made me whole, found a crack in my fortitude and crept back in, causing me to feel as though I were balancing on the edge of a sword’s blade. Since I could remember, night swimming was routine for me. Nearly daily, even when snow fell upon my head and chunks of ice floated past. The cold focused me. Helped me to think, to work through whatever issue needed deciphering.

There was no ice now. The water was almost pleasant, allowing me more energy to think than to concentrate on staying warm.

But how could I think my way through this situation? Fate had stolen my wife from me. There was no way to grasp hold, to control the outcome.

I dove deeper, letting the cooler temperatures of the deeper water sink into my skin, down to my bones. This time, the water did nothing to quell the heat that raged in my veins.

God, I wanted her back. Needed her.

My life had been so different before she’d appeared. So lacking. I’d been on a downward spiral with no coming back, until she’d steadied me.

Emma.

I still remembered vividly the very first time I’d seen her, tumbling backward, end over end, long, shapely legs exposed. Her modern blouse stretched across her breasts—at the time I’d had no idea my wife had come from another time. She was simply an enigma. A unicorn. A thing of beauty thrust into a world of darkness and gore. She’d looked up at me with her large, almond-shaped blue eyes. Eyes that I looked into every morning since. Seductive eyes. Soulful eyes. When she looked at me, even now, I felt as though she saw right inside me, to the very core of my darkest secrets. But even knowing what those deep, dark secrets were, she’d not run away, she’d let me take her hand in mine. Let me touch her. Let me breathe in her sweet scent. Let me love her. Marry her. Create a child with her. Our son.

Soul mates, we were.

And now Fate was trying to rip her from me—had done so, in fact.

Kicking harder, arms pulling me deeper in a routine as familiar as my wife’s face, I touched the bottom, before shooting back to the top, lungs burning for a breath of air. Finally, I burst upon the surface, taking that much-needed gulp, flicking wet hair from my face.

The mountain that housed the stone circle jutted upward before me, the castle was at my back. Trees swayed in the breeze and the moon lit a path to the very top, to the glen, where I’d made love to my wife not an hour before.

I could still see her rising over me. Eyes hooded with desire, teeth biting her lower lip, creamy skin glowing with perspiration.

“Where are ye, Emma? When will ye come back to me?”

I smoothed away the water that dripped into my eyes. There had only been a few times in my life that I felt emotional enough to be brought to tears, and knowing for certain now, that Emma was no longer here, that brought me to my knees. I shuddered. ’Twas time to head back to shore. To take the boat back to Castle Gealach. To speak with Ewan about what I knew now to be a certainty.

She was in another time. Another world that I couldn’t reach. A place I’d never been, nor could fathom. Aye, she’d told me stories of her world. Of the modernizations I couldn’t comprehend. The values, the politics. None of it seemed real, most of it I couldn’t imagine. How had she survived in a world like that? How had any of them?

’Twas a miracle the earth still existed with the weapons she said they used. The way they could travel by air from one place to the next, a speed at which I could barely grasp.

We lived so much more simply here. And yet, infinitely more complicated.

I pulled my arms through the water, rotating my shoulders, twisting from side to side, legs kicking powerfully. Every stroke, every kick, was me pounding Fate into bloody submission. At least, for my own sanity.

When I reached the shore, dripping wet, I didn’t bother to dress. I simply yanked the boat back into the water, and hopped in. By the time I reached the shore, I was dry enough to put on my breeches.

Ewan approached from out of the dark. His feet silent on the grass and sand.

I glanced at him, his face tight as he watched me.

“She is gone,” Ewan said, not asking, but knowing.

“Aye.” Admitting it was painful, as though I were realizing it all over again for the first time. “But she’ll be coming back. I’m going to make damn sure of it.”

Ewan nodded, his support a great comfort to me. Emma was his sister. The man would want her back almost as much as I did.

“Did ye see her?” he asked.

“Aye.” I raked my hand through my wet hair.

Ewan tugged my boat up further onto the shore. “The glen has magic. Shona and I went back to modern day when we were together by the stone.”

I knew this story. I’d heard it a dozen times. When the six of us, Emma, me, Ewan, Shona, Moira and Rory, were together, we often talked about time travel. I was the only one of the six who’d not yet traveled, or “journeyed” as Rory liked to say. I didn’t feel left out by that fact, quite the contrary. I was blessed to still be here. Or at least, that was what I’d always thought until now.

Och, what I wouldn’t give to scoop up Saor and blend in with the mist, walking out of it into the arms of Emma in whatever world she was in. I’d brave that mad modern realm, if I could only be with her.

“If there is one thing we’ve learned, my laird, ’tis that ye’ll see her again.”

I frowned. “But that could be years, and there is no guarantee.” Rory had been missing for nearly five years by the time he’d returned. Ewan had come to the Highlands as a boy, and not returned to modern times until just the past year, and only for a few short hours at that.

“I canna live without her,” I said. “I dinna
want
to live without her.”

“I know how ye feel, Logan.” Ewan patted me awkwardly on my bare shoulder. “But we must remain positive, else, Fate will have won. Ye’ve a son to care for, a clan that depends on ye, and a country that has named ye its guardian. Fight on, Logan. Dinna give up.”

I stared up at the sky, willing it to open up, to strike me down with a lightning bolt. “Why did she bring this battle to me? I dinna think I am strong enough to withstand the pain.”

“I dinna know why she chose ye. But I do know ye are strong enough. Ye’ve faced far worse. I know it doesna seem that way to ye, but it’s true.”

I only glared at him. There was nothing worse than losing the love of my life.

“I think we’d best send for Rory and Moira,” Ewan said. “We need them.”

“Aye.” I agreed, though I couldn’t fathom what good it would do.

“’Haps, with all of us together, we can somehow bring her back.” Ewan shrugged, his face clouded.

“I will try anything.” We trudged up the slippery water gate stairs toward the outer bailey. Ewan told the guard at the top to secure the rowboat.

By now many had roused, and stared at me with faces full of concern.

The clan, my lands, Scotland—
my son
—were at a disadvantage. With my mind split between worry for Emma and duties to the clan, an enemy could sneak up behind me and I’d only notice maybe half the time.

I regarded those in the bailey, their eyes still filled with sleep. They looked at me as though waiting for answers I didn’t have to give. They didn’t know about time travel, and I couldn’t tell them without them all thinking I was mad. They would assume the enemy had taken Emma, and that we should be calling for war against whoever that enemy was.

And even though it felt that way, as though she’d been yanked right from my arms, she’d not been taken by an enemy with a face. Or one we knew by name. One we could bring our swords down upon to show our superior might.

How in holy hell was I going to explain it?

“Your mistress has gone missing,” I said, wincing at the gasps that went up through the people, the soft murmurs that moved in waves. “But we will do everything we can to find her.”

“Do ye know who took her?” one of the guards that had been at the bottom of the stairs asked.

I shook my head. The man was likely wracking his brain, trying to figure out how the enemy could have gotten past him.

I would have liked to ease his mind, to let him know he wasn’t going crazy, anymore than I was, but there was nothing I could say to ease those fears. Nothing that would make sense to him.