Reunited (Book 2 of Lost Highlander series) (10 page)

“Why are ye out here all alone?” he asked.

He was beginning to accept that things were not what he was used to and an oddly dressed young woman alone in the woods at dusk was probably cause for some alarm. People were probably out looking for her.

To Pietro’s amazement, she turned and flung her arm around him, pressing her face into his chest and crying all the harder.

After the slightest hesitation, he stroked her hair, pushing some strands off her face and tucking them behind her ear. He was overcome with a fierce sense of protectiveness.

“Ye’ve nothing to fear, lass,” he said, feeling bold.

She sniffled and pushed away from him, looking up at him as if taking his measure.

He smiled his most charming smile, once again taken by surprise at her beauty.

“It’s my husband,” she sobbed, falling back against him and gripping his shirt.

Well, crap.

He didn’t want to seem a cad and shove her away as if she had the plague, but he didn’t want some angry tartan clad madman to come bursting into the clearing and take an axe to his head because he was holding the man’s wife, either. But he didn’t want to let her go, not if he was honest. Maybe he’d get his fight after all.

He patted her back and rocked gently from side to side, and soon she stopped crying, and he began to feel sleepy and comfortable with his back against the boulder and her small, soft body nestled against him. He was about to let his head rest against the rock and close his eyes when she gasped and wrenched away from him. She stood and stepped back, brushing at her skirts and trying to straighten her hair.

“Ye’ve been kind to me,” she said with a hitch in her voice. “Now it is my turn to beg yer pardon. I do not know what came over me.”

Her lip quivered and she looked off into the depths of the woods.

“Are ye running from your husband?” he asked.

She put her face in her hands, then looked at him, eyes blazing and clear.

“Aye,” she said. “He’s a cruel savage. He forced me to marry him a fortnight ago. He willna speak to me. He shuts me up in my room.” She took a deep breath. “He’s mad, he’s evil. He mutters to himself, and goes off for days at a time, and when he returns he’s in a terrible state. He stares at me and gives me the darkest looks.”

She reached out and leaned against a tree, as if her confession had taken the last of her strength.

She looked at him and shuddered. He took a step forward and stood close, not touching her, but trying to give her strength with his proximity.

“I’m afraid of him.”

“I’ll help ye,” Pietro said. “I’ll help ye get away from him.”  

“Why would ye do that?” she asked, taking a step back and peering up at him.

It was almost full dark. The moon had taken over the sun’s post, and the stars were winking to life all over the sky.

He almost laughed. What else did he have to do? Then he sobered. How could he help her when he had no idea what had happened to him. He had some money in his wallet, but he had a feeling it wouldn’t be worth anything here. Now.

Once again he ran his hand over his head, feeling for lumps. He wasn’t much of a dreamer when he was asleep. Of his occasional dreams the most vivid were of his training days in the RAF, or of getting kicked by a horse.

He never had such detailed dreams where his place of work would be completely changed, the castle he parked his truck in back of every day almost unrecognizable.

If he had dreams of gorgeous women, they certainly were never dressed in old fashioned clothes that covered them nearly head to toe.

Still, he pinched himself rather viciously on the inside of his arm to try to wake himself up. He was still there in the forest, looking at the beautiful woman.

Whatever had happened, if he was unconscious on the floor of the barn, or dead and this was some strange afterlife, it appeared he was going to have to make the best of it.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

She narrowed her eyes at him and frowned, then her face completely transformed into something he couldn’t understand.

“Ye dinna know who I am?” she asked. She almost looked delighted.

He shook his head and shrugged, hoping this wouldn’t spoil anything, but knowing there was no way he could pretend to know who she was.

“My name is Bella, “ she said, dropping a quick curtsy.

He stared at the top of her head in disbelief. She had actually curtsied. Now she was standing there looking expectant.

Jesus, he had to tell her who he was. If she was someone who was well known in these parts, it stood to reason that she would also know most everyone.

What should he say? He was clearly Scottish, that fact was already established. He couldn’t very well spout out his very Italian sounding name and suddenly try to pretend he was from a faraway land.

“Are ye here for the celebration, then?” she asked.

He nearly sighed out loud with his relief. “Aye,” he said. “The celebration.”

He looked around wildly and finally told her his middle name, which his mother had chosen. It was Scottish enough sounding. As an afterthought he added her maiden name as well.

“I’m from the coast,” he said vaguely, hoping she wouldn’t ask any more questions.

She nodded and grew pensive, brows knitted. “Ye’ll help me get away from here?” she asked, glancing at the sky.

Throwing himself fully into whatever was happening to him, he took her by the elbow and pulled her close to his chest, wondering if he should suggest going back to the castle, or trying to make it to the village on foot. Feeling dizzy, he wondered what the village looked like, if it was even there at all.

She turned in the direction of the crofter’s cottages he’d seen before he passed out in the woods and nodded.

“They’re helping with the slaughtering for the feast. It’ll only be Granny Jinty and she’s half blind.” She looked up into his face and seemed to come to a decision. “It should work,” she said almost to herself.

Grabbing his hand, she turned and started pulling him out of the woods toward the cottages.

The moon was rising over the thatched roofs of the small stone huts. He smelled a peat fire, and he glanced nervously at her.

She put her hand in the middle of his chest and gave him a little shove behind her.

“Stay put and keep yer mouth shut. Act daft if ye have to say anything.”

That wouldn’t be difficult at all. He watched as she strode up to the door of the hut and hallooed.

Several long moments later, a stooped wisp of an elderly lady hobbled out and peered sideways at her, squinting and grabbing her hand to pull her closer.

“Why, child, I wasna expectin’ ye,” she said. “I heard ye was married, is it true?”

“Aye, ma’am, ‘tis true.” She waved her hand at Pietro and turned back to the old lady. “That’ll be him.”

Pietro started at this blatant lie and wished she might have filled him in on her plan ahead of time. He took a step forward but was rooted to the spot by Bella’s glare.

Granny Jinty craned her neck around to get a better look at him. He raised his hand in a half wave, not even sure if she could see it.

“He’s none so big as the lads described,” she said.

Bella shrugged. “He’s plenty big,” she said. “We’re on our way to his land, and wonderin’ if we can spend the night.”

“Has the feast happened already, then?” Granny Jinty seemed to shrink even more, her wizened face collapsing into a frown. “The lads promised to fetch me for it.”

“No, Granny, the feast has no’ taken place yet. We, er, just wanted to get on with things.” She turned to him and gave him a desperate look.

He hurried forward. Ah, so was he not supposed to hang back and be daft after all?

“There’s urgent business on my land, ma’am,” he said, turning to Bella for approval. She merely closed her eyes. “We had to be on our way before the feast.”

Granny Jinty got close enough for him to count the hairs on her chin, squinting at him with her rheumy eyes.

“But I thought the feast was—” she started.

Bella grabbed his arm and all but flung him towards the second hut.

 “No, Granny,” she said loudly, backing away from the old lady. “If it’s quite all right wi’ ye, we’ll stay in the other cottage?”

“Aye, of course ye may,” she said, looking confused. “Here, take a light.”

Muttering to herself, she turned back into her own hut, returning a moment later with a lamp for them.

Bella let out a deep sigh and pulled him hurriedly into the other cottage, which was slightly larger than Granny Jinty’s but not the least bit luxurious.

A large straw stuffed mattress was on the floor, covered by a threadbare quilt. A spindle leg chair and a spinning wheel took up one corner of the room, while a tiny fireplace, basin and kettle took up most of one wall. A wooden chest covered by a square of needle worked linen was wedged in on the far side of the mattress.

Bella hung the lamp on a hook in the wall and they both stared at each other.

“Well, I suppose this is our honeymoon,” she finally said.

Pietro sat down on the mattress and put his head in his hands.

They couldn’t have been in the woods performing the failed ritual for more than an hour, but when they returned to the castle, Mellie, Sam and Evie were all gone. Piper knew Mellie had classes, and Sam and Evie would have gone back to his house in the village, but she still felt abandoned.

She went straight to her room and slumped onto the bed, gazing up at Lachlan, who had followed behind her. He’d been quiet the entire walk back, shaking his head distractedly to every question she’d asked.

The whole walk home she’d wondered why the spell hadn’t worked, when it had worked so many times for Lachlan.

He assured her he’d done everything the same. The only variable was herself.

Maybe she had to do the other spell, the one that was tinged with evil and bad feelings. She was afraid she wouldn’t be able to do it again, even with Daria’s nasty packet of human finger bones and the grimoire with the spell in it that caused her to say things she didn’t understand and fall into fearsome trances.

She was terrified it might send Lachlan back without her and she’d never see him again. That she’d disappear here in the present and Lachlan would never be able to find her. He’d spend the rest of his life trying to get back to her and she would never have existed. Would his memory of her cease to exist as well?

“Ye must stop,” Lachlan said gently, tracing his finger along her eyebrows. “Ye’re getting all scrunched up from worry.”

She tried to relax, but couldn’t. She wanted to keep moving, act. Get this taken care of once and for all.

“We should try the other way,” she said, heart pounding with the frantic decision. “Right now.”

“But how?” he asked, looking at her with pity in his eyes. “Ye dinna want to tell yer friends so they may help us find a way?”

She shook her head. “No, definitely not. What if they get sucked back with us?” She gasped when another thought struck her. “Lachlan, when you’ve done it your way, did anyone ever get sent with you? Accidentally?”

He swallowed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I dinna think so,” he said slowly, looking sick. “I canna be sure. I pray not.”

Piper wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her face into his chest, trying to calm down.

“We don’t know anything,” she said finally, her voice muffled in the folds of his plaid.

She pushed away to look up at him. He still looked stricken with the thought of what he might have done, if some innocent had been hurtled forward in time. It was a certain death sentence, and she shuddered at the thought of it.

When Evie and Sam had been mistakenly sent back, they’d barely made it home alive.

 Lachlan’s first trip to her time had been a mistake as well, he’d been caught in the blast radius of Daria’s spell to send Brian Duncan forward, so the murderer could try to escape justice. It was pure luck that Piper was able to perform the necessary rituals to get him back.

“We have to stop,” she said, clutching him tighter to keep from shaking. “We don’t know what we’ve been doing, how many people might have suffered. I don’t think we should try again—” her voice caught on the tears she’d been holding back since they had failed in the woods.

Lachlan stroked her hair and smoothed his hand down her back.

“There now, lass, we willna think of it anymore tonight.”

He kissed the top of her head and eased her back down against her pillows. She curled into a ball and tried to push all thought from her mind.

“We’ll get some rest and start anew tomorrow, aye?”

He lay down next to her and pulled her to him, stroking her hair and whispering endearments until she managed to shut off her troubled musings and fell asleep.

***

The next morning she awoke feeling so hale and hearty, she couldn’t even begin to believe that everything she knew could disappear at any moment.