Reunited (Book 2 of Lost Highlander series) (5 page)

With everyone preoccupied with trying to save the tower, Lachlan was able to get deep into the woods, where he stowed Brian’s corpse behind a fallen tree. He went to the edge of the Glen land and soon met up with his men, who had been patrolling each night in hopes that he would show up.

“My men thought I had escaped on my own without their help, y’see?” Lachlan said. “They didna know I was catapulted to the future, and were beginning to wonder why I had no’ shown up yet. They were no’ happy that it took so long for me to get back, but when I told them I’d captured the blackguard Brian Duncan, they were pleased enough with me.”

The next day, Lachlan and his men retrieved the corpse and returned with it to Castle Glen. Everyone for miles around had been on high alert for the evil mass murderer and even though Lachlan himself had very recently been held prisoner by the Glens for cattle rustling, he was now hailed as a hero.

Known all over the Highlands for their hospitality and rich feasts, the Glens ordered a celebration in Lachlan’s honor, and clans from all around were sent invitations to the estate.

“That was all well and good, but it meant I couldna leave for home, and risk insulting them, and no offense my love, but yer people are quite easily insulted. And they were still no’ past their anger over my cousin breaking some daft betrothal, where the girl had mostly dreamed it all up in her head to begin with.”

Piper coughed loudly to hide her laughter. “So that’s what happened! I thought my side were the oath breakers. Are you sure your cousin didn’t toy with my poor ancestor’s affections and then weasel out of his responsibility?” She instantly regretted her joke when his eyes flared with indignation. “I’m teasing, Lachlan,” she said in a hurry, stroking his arm. She almost said it was so long ago it hardly mattered, but realized with a jolt that to him it was very recent and real. “I’m sorry, “ she said more sincerely.

“No matter,” Lachlan said with a rueful smile. “Since I was beholden to stay there until the feast could take place, I had plenty of time on my hands.”

“Wait,” Mellie interrupted, scooting forward in her chair. “What happened to the witch?”

She clutched her crucifix and cut a glance at Piper. No one said Daria Glen’s name.

Lachlan cracked his neck and looked at them both long and hard.

“She was never found, no’ for certain.” They both gasped and he rushed to continue. “But the fire raged out of control, the destruction was severe. There wasna much left to even distinguish the guards from one another. She had to have been consumed. It is what I believe.”

He said this last with so much force, Piper almost thought he was overcompensating, but from what Evie had told her about her insane ancestor, she fervently hoped that it was true.

Lachlan was given a room in the castle, and he sent his men home with instructions until he could leave the Glens without causing any clan strife. At first he helped with repairs to the tower, but after two weeks, that was done. When he couldn’t throw himself completely into hard, mindless labor, he was consumed with thoughts of Piper. He had never been so completely enchanted by any lass, and knowing he would never see her again, or even know that she had a good life, was torture.

He was heading out to the stable to beg a horse so he could ride hard across the land to try to forget, when he came upon two girls crying outside a locked up room. His heart melted, and he thought maybe he could help them, do a kindness in Piper’s honor.

“What troubles ye, lasses?” he asked, scaring them half out of their wits with his great size.

He held out his hands and tried to seem harmless. One of the girls had a broom and pail, and the other several brushes and large cloth sacks.

“Is yer task so awful as all that?” he asked teasingly, trying to get them to smile. It only made them cry harder.

“We beg pardon, sir, but this was the room of our beloved cousin who died in the fire, and we’ve been set to clean the room and pack her belongings. She had no mother so we’re sending them to … to … the poor crofters.” They broke down into desolate sobs, throwing their arms around each other’s shoulders.

Realizing that they were talking about Daria, at first he wanted to swear and rail about what she really was. Tell them about the blood sacrifices, the murders, her wicked love affair with the sinister Brian Duncan.

The Glens had been fooled by Daria’s falsely sweet exterior. She kept her true self well hidden from them her whole life. If he tried to get them to believe she was anything other than their kind, nature loving, spinster cousin, he would frighten them and probably make them believe he was addled. He was about to leave them to their chore in disgust, but something started to bubble up in him. An idea, mere curiosity.

He shooed them on their way, telling them they were in no mind to do such a job, and it would be better if more time passed. It was wrong to do it so soon after her passing, downright unfeeling. If anyone had anything to say about it, the girls should direct that person to him. Half terrified and half relieved, the girls had scrambled away from him and he was left alone in front of Daria’s door.

“What did you do?” Mellie breathed.

Piper leaned over and smacked her on the knee for interrupting.

“I prayed for the protection of my immortal soul and broke open the door,” Lachlan said.

Inside Daria’s chamber, the air seemed colder. It was still and quiet, and not even the dust motes dared to stir in the air as he entered.

He was prepared to find the darkest of objects. Skulls of small animals, unidentified bones, locks of hair, fingernails. His skin began to crawl as he imagined books bound with human skin, the words inside written in blood, cursed ancient artifacts stolen from the graves of the damned. Necklaces made of teeth and—

“Lachlan!” Piper grabbed Mellie’s hand. The poor girl was nearly hyperventilating.

“Sorry,” he said, abashed.

He quickly searched the wardrobe, the chest, under her bed and mattress, only to find benign items like clothes and bits of jewelry and toiletries. He was about to give up altogether, deciding the wicked deceptress must have had a safer hiding place for her devilish items, when his foot caught on a loose board.

It only took him a second to pry up the board to find Daria’s stash. A simple sewing bag was stuffed into the crack under the floorboard, containing several books and another smaller bag that was tied up tight with red string. Stuffing the bag under his kilt, he made his escape back to his own room, where he began to study.

One of the books was an old and tattered spellbook that wasn’t written by Daria, but was written by someone who was clearly as insane. He could barely make out the faded script, and much of it shocked him so, he couldn’t see himself ever trying to recreate any of it, no matter how desperately he wished to get back to Piper.

Every day since he’d been back in his own time, he regretted his decision to return. He knew it was the only way. Sam and Evelyn may not have been able to get back safely if Piper hadn’t performed the wicked ritual, and his own deep sense of justice made him need to return the corpse of Brian Duncan, so the dark murderer’s victims and their loved ones could find peace and closure.

He thought by throwing himself into the everyday life of Piper’s own ancestors, and many of them did so remind him of her, that he could find his own peace.

As soon as the bloody celebration in his honor was over, he fully meant to hie away home and relieve his idiot brother of the running of the place, and hopefully they would have enough food and resources put away to get them through the winter. He did not trust his wayward fool of a younger brother one whit, and even with fast horses taking and bringing constant correspondence, he was pretty sure he’d return to a terrible mess that only he would be able to clean up.

Bloody clan Glen and their legions of cousins having to come in from all directions for a celebration he wanted no part of. It didn’t please him to be honored for killing a man, no matter how the man may have deserved it. He’d be best pleased to forget about it and go home and wallow in his regret over losing Piper.

But, it was in his clan’s best interest to be on the good side of the Glens again. They’d been barely civil for the past several years, and a strained peace was no peace at all.

He had a good mind to marry off his simpleton brother to one of these lot, and his last missive had urged Quinn to come down for the celebration.

After he decided he didn’t have the heart to perform any of the terrible rituals in the first spell book, he’d barely glanced through the others, which were personal diaries of Daria and didn’t make the least amount of sense.

The only thing that kept jumping out at him repeatedly from all the frightening babble was the name of a woman, Agnes Clairmont. He casually asked one of the kitchen staff if they’d heard of her. She was an herb woman who lived at the outskirts of the estate, across the river.

After several days of arguing with himself and going mad waiting for all the Glens to finally arrive, he saddled up a horse and galloped off to find her, the head of Brian Duncan sending him a stark warning as it rested, rotting and askew, on its pike atop the wall surrounding the castle.

“Wait, what?” Piper asked, shaking out of her rapt attention to Lachlan’s story. She exchanged a glance with Mellie.

“Oh, aye,” Lachlan said, standing up and gingerly stretching his side and tugging at his jeans. “The land used to be surrounded by a stone wall.”

“There’s still a bit of it here and there in the forest,” Mellie said, nodding sagely.

“I meant the head!” Piper said. “Did they really put Brian’s head on a pike?”

“Yer people are a vengeful lot, my darling, I’m sorry to have to tell ye. Theatrical as well, ye’d say.”

 Lachlan shrugged and sat back down, patting Piper’s hand as she shuddered and made a face.

“I made my way past Brian’s warning head, and set out to find this herb woman that Daria had an acquaintance with,” Lachlan continued. “She was scared to death o’ me when I first rode up, and I admit I may no’ have been overly friendly at first. The poor woman had no clue what the witch really was. She was as fooled as any of her kin of her true nature.”

Lachlan learned, after drinking many cups of foul tasting herb tea, that Agnes had first traveled back in time quite by accident, while mixing up a concoction that she hoped would help her grandmother regain her senses. It was as if her dear granny was trapped in her own mind, living in the past, and sometimes didn’t even recognize her. It fairly broke Agnes’ heart.

She’d been outside, singing a silly song she’d made up and grinding dried herbs to powder when she’d felt suddenly as if she were no longer in control of her own mind. She heard words coming out of her mouth that she couldn’t understand, and saw things clearly that she knew shouldn’t be there. The pestle grew hot in her hand and she fainted.

When she’d woken up, the hut she lived in with her grandmother was completely different. There were more chickens, and the cow was brown instead of black. All of her herb pots were gone. When she tiptoed to the window and peeked in, her grandmother was young and vibrant, sitting on a stool and brushing her long golden hair. There was a baby in a basket beside her who started to cry and her grandmother had told the baby to hush, calling it by her mother’s name.

Agnes ran into the forest, scared she’d gone mad. She hid in the cowshed at nights and stole food when her grandmother took the baby into the village. After several days of this, she wandered up to her own front door and pretended to be a young widow looking for sewing or washing work. Thankfully, her grandmother took pity on her and she at least made a few coins so she could get a proper room at the inn. She kept taking jobs from women in the village and each night tried to find a way to get back.

She gathered all the herbs she had been working with at the time she’d been thrust backwards into the past and desperately kept trying to recreate what had happened. Each night she ground the same herbs and repeated the strange words she’d heard herself say, all to no avail.

It was only when she’d taken a sewing job that was especially arduous—someone’s fancy cousin would be visiting and they wanted to show off with new dresses for all five of their daughters—that she’d torn up her fingertips. That night she once again began to grind up the herbs and sing, feeling heartsick for her old life and trying to hold onto hope.

“But there was something different this time,” Lachlan said with a dramatic pause.

“Her fingers were cut. She bled on the herbs,” Mellie said, effectively taking the wind out of his storyteller sails.

“Aye, that’s right,” he said with a frown. “And it was also her thinking so hard about her own time. That’s what the witch could never get on her own, as she had no heart, only greed and lust and … “ he trailed off and looked at Piper, his eyes full of love.

“Y’see, there’s no need for all of the wickedness if ye can focus hard enough on where ye want to go. Ye must have a true feeling. Ye can make it work with the bones and sacrifice as well, but that is what caused us to get sick. Agnes learned to control the travelling and never got ill.”

“What was the thing she said? Was it a chant?” Mellie asked, hand firmly wrapped around her crucifix. “She remembered it, aye? And taught it to you?”

Lachlan nodded. “It has no meaning that I know of. It’s no’ really a chant. We didna know how to write it, but she never forgot it after it came to her, unbidden, the first time.”