Highlander’s Curse (24 page)

Say a few words and
poof
, married.

Not that there was any need to stress over or second-guess what she’d just done. After all, it wasn’t like it was a real marriage or anything. Just some words she’d said so she could make sure she didn’t lose contact with the only person who could get her home again. Besides, a marriage didn’t really count if she hadn’t even been born yet.

Unless she ended up stuck here. Trapped in medieval Scotland
and
married.

Not that having Colin for a husband would be such a horrible fate. If she allowed herself to be totally honest,
which wasn’t the most comfortable thing to be right now, she could think of only one thing that kept him from being a pretty decent candidate for husband material: he lived in the wrong century. And worse? This was where he wanted to be. Where she’d promised to stay with him until he’d completed his quest to save his friends.

Her step slowed at the thought and she stumbled, grabbing onto the cold stone wall to keep from slipping on the topmost stair.

She really had to let all that go. She couldn’t think about it right now. Accepting time travel and Faerie Magic would mean accepting other things that shook her whole world. Things like her being some Faerie half-breed. Things like finding The One only to learn they could never be together because they existed seven hundred years apart. The whole of it was simply too bizarre, too depressing, for her mind to comprehend without some gigantic cry fest at the end, and truly there was no time for wallowing in self-pity.

Only one thing needed to be important right now: getting back to her own time. And since the only way it seemed she had any chance of making that happen required Colin’s presence, her main goal at the moment was to make sure she didn’t let her new husband out of her sight.

A shiver ran up her spine as she thought of him in that fashion—
her new husband
.

Whatever it was that made Colin MacAlister so attractive to her, it certainly was powerful. Powerful as in he really might be The One. It would explain everything.

“No,” she rejected. “Nothing more than stupid pheromones.” She pushed open the door to the bedchamber, her eye drawn immediately to the bed that seemed to loom large in the room.

Their
bed now.

Not that it hadn’t been their bed before that ridiculous excuse for a marriage she’d just gone through. It was, after all, the same bed in which she’d awakened this very morning, wrapped in Colin’s incredible arms.

Stop it!
She wanted to shout the words out loud and stomp her feet to drive the image away. That had to be strictly off-limits mental territory. She wouldn’t even think about getting into a bed with him again because, obviously, in bed with him, thinking was all but beyond her abilities. Just being close to that man wrapped her in a sensory cloud of hormonal overload.

She put a hand to her heated cheek, reminding herself that she’d come up here to pack.

“I need to pack. But pack what?” she asked the empty room.

How did she even begin to prepare for this journey she’d insisted on making? Setting out with Colin tomorrow was like some backwoods road trip gone horribly wrong. And yet, she felt certain to the bottom of her soul she had no choice but to go with him if she ever wanted to get home again.

The quiet knock on her door came as a welcome relief, and she hurried to answer it before whoever was there disappeared and left her alone again with her own miserable thoughts.

“Hey.” Ellie smiled at her as she pushed past her
into the room. “I brought you some things I think you should take with you tomorrow.”

Thank goodness someone had some ideas about what she’d need.

“I don’t suppose you have a pair of jeans in that bundle?” Days spent on horseback wearing a dress was not at all what she’d choose if she actually had a choice.

“Don’t I wish,” Ellie chuckled. “I do miss my jeans some days, but you’ll get used to it after a while and the dress won’t seem so cumbersome.”

Maybe. If she were going to be here that long. Which she wasn’t. Absolutely. Was. Not.

“I do have the next-best thing, though.” Ellie held up what looked like a pair of narrow-legged pants, made from the same material as the shift she wore. “I made these for myself for riding. They’re not standard issue for the time period, but they make being on horseback a relatively more pleasant experience.”

Abby took the soft garment gratefully, wondering what her new friend would pull out of her cloth bag next.

“Now these, they’re not so comfortable but, trust me, you could end up finding them to be much more important to you than those bloomers.”

Ellie walked over to the bed and pushed the pile of clothing out of her way to roll out a bundle of cloth. Inside were two belts and two daggers.

“Weapons?” Abby stepped back, surprised to see Ellie holding two very different-looking knives.

“Exactly.” Ellie nodded, her expression completely devoid of any trace of the humor she’d expressed only a moment before. “Based on everything the family says,
Colin is very likely the best warrior this clan has ever produced, so you’ve got that going for you. But believe me, Abby, wandering around the countryside in this day and age isn’t like a stroll in your old neighborhood. In our time we complain about the occasional man who thinks he has the right to do whatever he wants to any woman. That man is more the norm than the exception in this world. You can’t put your safety entirely in Colin’s hands. You need to be prepared to take care of yourself, too.”

Abby accepted both the daggers along with their protective wrapping, taking a closer look at the smaller of the two. With its fancy scrollwork and tiny jewels, it reminded her of something decorative she might expect to see adorning a Halloween costume. “This is beautiful.”

“It’s practical,” Ellie corrected. “You wear that
beautiful
one around your waist, on the outside of your clothing. If you find yourself in trouble, any bad guy is simply going to take it away from you because chances are good you won’t be able to stop him. But this—” She pointed to the longer, thinner dagger lying next to its daintier companion. “This one you strap around your thigh, under your dress. No one but you knows it’s there until you need it. Colin’s sister taught me this trick. She gave me this set to match one she owns. I’ll feel a lot better knowing you have them with you.”

Abby might have been tempted to discount the whole idea if it hadn’t been for her experience back at the dig site. If it hadn’t been for that little gold knife of Jonathan’s, she and Colin might not have escaped without one of them getting shot.

“Thank you. For this and for everything else you’ve done for me today. I really do appreciate you and everyone else down there supporting my demand to go with Colin. I sort of expected everyone to side with him and insist I stay behind.”

“Well, now that you mention it.” Ellie sat down on the stool by the hearth, reaching up to clasp Abby’s hand. “There is a reason we were in favor of your going along with him. I have something I need to ask of you. I can’t overstate how important this is and how really difficult it’s likely to be.”

Wonderful. Like she didn’t already have enough next-to-impossible tasks on her plate just trying to get back to her own time. Still, she could hardly refuse when she hadn’t even heard what Ellie wanted from her.

Abby sat on the rug next to Ellie, waiting to hear what her new friend had to say.

“We need your help, Abby. With Colin.”

“With Colin?” What help could Colin possibly need from her?

Ellie nodded, letting out a deep breath before she began. “He’s learned just enough about the future to be a danger. He’s set his mind on warning the king about a surprise attack the English will make on our sovereign and his men so he can prevent Robert’s army from being decimated and scattered. You have to stop him from doing that.”

“Hold on a second,” Abby held up a hand, her mind racing to keep up with the conversation. “King Robert? You’re saying Colin plans to go find Robert the Bruce?” It was one thing to accept the bizarre situation she found herself in while she sat in some isolated castle,
but to try to wrap her head around meeting the people she’d studied about?
Mind-boggling
didn’t even come close. “Wow. When you suggested I consider this a personal learning experience, you weren’t kidding. An opportunity to actually speak to someone like—”

“No!” Ellie leaned forward, staring into her eyes. “The point is, you can’t let him do that. Think about what I just said. He wants to change what’s already happened in your time. He wants to warn the king that the English are waiting for him. If he does, they’ll be prepared for that battle instead of walking into an ambush.”

“The war for Scottish Independence goes on for years and years.” You didn’t need a minor in history to know that: you only had to watch movies or read a few romance books. “One skirmish isn’t going to change the outcome of that war.”

“How did you make it into graduate school without developing a single shred of critical thinking ability?” Ellie clicked her tongue, obviously exasperated. “Think! We’re not talking about changing the history of the war. We’re talking about changing the very threads of the future. If those men go into that battle forewarned, people who would have died will likely live. More important to our discussion, people who would have lived will likely die.”

Abby nodded, a glimmer of Ellie’s point starting to crystallize for her.

“What if one of those English soldiers who’s supposed to live but doesn’t is named Washington, or Jefferson, or Lincoln, just to pick out a random few? We don’t know whose ancestors are there. They could
be yours or mine. We don’t know whose ancestors are at risk and we can’t take a chance, because we don’t know what would happen to that future if we plucked some entire family line out of existence.”

A wave of weakness hit Abby, making her glad she was sitting. The possibilities were horrifying.

“We have to convince Colin not to go through with his plan. I know he has to go after Alasdair and Simeon, they’re family. But he can’t take his warning to the king. You have to stop him.”

“I have to stop him,” Abby repeated, the importance of Ellie’s request settling over her. “I’ll do my best.”

“Good, then. Your best is all we ask.” Ellie rose to her feet and crossed over to the door. “I’ll check with the kitchens to make sure they have everything ready for you to take along with you tomorrow. Good night.”

“Good night,” Abby echoed, but the door was already shut behind Ellie.

For several minutes, she sat on the floor, the potentially catastrophic possibilities racing through her thoughts, each scenario she imagined worse than the one before it.

Earlier today, Ellie had mentioned something about the Faeries whose Magic had sent her here having some reason of their own for having sent her. Could this be it? Could it be that she was meant to prevent Colin from ripping apart the fabric of space and time by altering history?

Talk about biting off more than she could chew. Abby rubbed her fingertips over her temples, wishing she had a few physics classes under her belt rather than the micro-mini understanding of the subject she possessed from
watching the Discovery Channel. Maybe knowledge of that kind would allay some of her fears.

More likely it would just give her more to worry about.

“Just enough knowledge to make us both dangerous,” she muttered, pushing up from the floor to stand.

Something would come to her. It had to. She’d think of a way. No task was impossible if she simply broke it down into its smallest parts. How hard could it be? Keep Colin from totally screwing up the future and then get herself back home, leaving the man she was falling in love with here, seven hundred years away from her.

“Not love,” she denied aloud, balling her hands into fists. Lust. Pure and simple. What she felt was only lust. It had to be. She wasn’t sure she could survive the pain of leaving him if it were anything more.

Across the room, the door opened and Colin walked in, filling the whole room with his presence, completely blurring for her any difference between love and lust.

T
he sight of Abby standing by his bed took Colin’s breath away.

Suddenly unsure of what to do or say, he simply stood drinking in the sight of her. The candlelight flickering in the room shone around her like some mystical halo. Her long, brown hair cascaded over one shoulder, exposing her soft, slender neck and the raw, red mark that marred it.