Sapphire Dream (30 page)

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Authors: Pamela Montgomerie

BOOK: Sapphire Dream
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She whirled and thrust her hand toward him. “We need to talk about
this
.” In the center of her palm was one of his old carvings. A chill stole over him.
That
carving. He thought he’d destroyed it years ago.
“Where did ye get that?” he demanded.
“Hegarty. He sent your gold. The carving was in the chest.”
His gold. Returned at last. Now they would have money aplenty. They would buy the Goodhope Plantation . . .
But the small carving rose like a stone wall between him and his plans. The demand in Brenna’s eyes sent dread curling dark fingers around his throat, cutting off his air.
“I’ll explain later, Wildcat. I am still recovering, you ken?”
Her eyebrows soared. She snorted softly. “I
ken
you’re recovered enough to make excuses. I want an explanation.
Now.
” Her voice was sharp, lacking any sweetness. She was a warrior once more.
And he had not the strength to fight her.
 
 
It was about damned time Rourke was awake. For more than a day she’d waited to confront him about what she’d found.
Brenna sat at the foot of his bed, tapping her foot and watching him coldly. Since yesterday morning, she’d alternated between being furious and feeling utterly betrayed.
How could he not have told me?
Rourke moved back against the headboard, looking as weary as an old man despite the healthy glow to his skin and the clear vibrancy of his guilt-ridden eyes. He stretched his legs, brushing her hip with his bare toes.
She scooted back, avoiding him. She’d thought she knew him, thought she understood what made him tick. Now she knew she’d never understood him at all.
He nodded toward the carving. “What do ye think it is?”
She shot him a scowl. “I
know
what it is. It’s an airplane. You’re from the future, too, aren’t you?” She searched his eyes, feeling betrayed all over again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
His mouth twisted ruefully and he looked tired, exhausted, but she had little sympathy for him. He’d lied to her. Perhaps only by omission, but it was a
huge
omission.
He closed his eyes as if to escape her glare. “I am not from your world.”
His words sunk in as she cupped the small plane in her palm. “Then how did you . . . ?”
Slowly, he opened his eyes and met her stare, his expression taught and tense, like a man about to face an operation without anesthetic. Tilting his head back, he looked up at the ceiling as if gathering his thoughts. Or his courage.
Finally, he met her gaze with those pale, intense eyes. His tension bled into her. She was suddenly afraid she didn’t want to know what he had to say.
“Brenna. You are not from that world where you grew up. You’re from this one. Ye were born here twenty-five years ago.”
She heard the words, but their meaning eluded her.
Born. Here?
“You’re wrong.”
“I told you about the prophecy, aye? You were little more than a bairn when the Cruden Seer named you as the one who would be the Earl of Slains’s downfall. Barely five summers, ye were.”
Denial flashed hot and then cold. She pushed off the bed and strode into the window alcove, needing to escape. “I wasn’t born here.” She turned back to him. “You’re wrong, Rourke.”
“Nay.” He closed his eyes, his expression taut. “’Tis time you knew . . . everything.”
A pounding started in her ears. She didn’t want to hear this. She didn’t want to listen to this nonsense. Did he think she was a complete moron? She strode back to the bed. “I don’t know who you think I am, but I was not born in the seventeenth century. I know that much.”
“Do you?”
The pounding in her ears intensified. “Of course.”
“You remember being four or five in that place?”
Did she? She remembered coming to America. Before that, only a few flashes of memory. The man during the storm. A woman singing her to sleep. Riding a horse. She remembered now, there had been horses everywhere.
Doubts began to slip in. She’d never found any evidence of her family in Scotland. No record of her birth. No record of anyone looking for her. When she’d gone in search of her family, the only one who had recognized her name had been the old Earl of Slains.
You burned this castle three hundred years ago, Brenna Cameron. You’ll not do it again!
An icy chill slid down her spine. It couldn’t be true.
Rourke opened his eyes and caught her gaze. “Listen, Wildcat. Then decide, eh?”
Brenna felt as if the ground was shifting beneath her feet and she sank onto the bed beside him. “I don’t want to hear this,” she whispered.
“Aye, lass. I ken that. But hear it ye must. The time is past for you to know. The Earl of Slains was outraged that a bairn, a lass no less, was to be his destruction. He ordered you killed.”
“Say
her
. He ordered
her
killed. It wasn’t me.”
Rourke ignored her. “Your mother was round with babe and too close to her time to travel. Your father was afraid to leave her side. So they sent you to Picktillum with your aunt.”
Chills danced along her arms and scalp. “It wasn’t me. I don’t remember any of this.”
“Don’t you? You followed me around that entire summer. You used to watch me carve my wee birds.”
“
It wasn’t me.
” But she stared at him. She had remembered a carver.
“The earl . . . learned where you were. My parents tried to protect you.” Anguish flickered in his eyes. “He killed them and set fire to the house.”
Her stomach clenched until she thought she’d be sick. “And you
saw
this?”
“Nay. I didna see it done, but I found their bodies as I fled through the castle, just before the fire. My father . . .” He clenched his jaw and turned his head toward the window as if escaping the picture in his mind’s eye. “My father had been beheaded.”
Bile rose in her throat. The pounding in her ears moved to her temples. “Oh, Rourke.” She reached for him, laying her hand on his arm. “Not because of me.” It wasn’t. She wasn’t the one. But his words sparked old memories that began to swirl in her head, vague and shadowed. Memories of crying and smoke. And terror.
Her hand went to her forehead as she squeezed her eyes closed against the images.
“Hegarty saved us. I dinna ken where he came from or how he knew we were in trouble, but we were trapped and there he was. He saved you and your aunt. And me. I was ten.”
She remembered. A blond-headed boy with a sharp tongue and no patience with her.
Rourke’s hands rested limply on the bed beside him. His head tipped back to lean against the wall, eyes closed. “We were trapped in one of the cellars. Smoke was starting to seep in, but the earl’s soldiers were outside. There was no escape. Nor any way in, but suddenly Hegarty was there with us. He put his sapphire around your neck and tried to send the both of us and your aunt to safety. It almost worked.”
He opened his eyes and lifted his head to meet her gaze. “I saw the world where you grew up, Wildcat. For a minute, maybe two. Bare-limbed women playing with small children in the grass while a strange, birdlike creature flew noisily through the air and swift coaches without horses chased one another along a hard-packed road.
“I didna know where we were, only that it was a wondrous place. And then of a sudden I was back in the smoke-filled cellar of my home. We all were. The magic hadna been strong enough for the three of us. Hegarty yanked me aside and sent the two of you by yourselves. You never returned.”
Brenna stared at him, not wanting to believe his words, but deep down she knew he spoke the truth this time. It fit too well with her scattered memories.
She was from the past.
“I didn’t know.”
“Before he sent us the first time, Hegarty told your aunt to leave Scottish soil so that he couldna be forced to bring you home until you were grown and able to defend yourself. He told her to bring ye back to Scotland on your twenty-fifth birthday so that he could call you home.”
Suddenly so many things began to make sense. Janie’s demand that Brenna wear long dresses, even though the other girls wore shorts and jeans. Her insistence on the most old-fashioned of manners. How many times had she said, “A lady does this,” or “A lady never does that.” And the doctors. She’d been afraid of them even when she lay dying.
Brenna had loved Janie, but she’d hated her, too, fighting her over the unreasonable demands that made Brenna a laughingstock. Her stomach clenched with remorse as she remembered how, in the third grade, she’d taken a pair of scissors and destroyed the dresses Janie had painstakingly sewn for her by hand. She’d reduced Janie to tears that night and forced her to promise to buy her a pair of jeans and a couple of T-shirts.
Now, far too late, Brenna understood. Janie had had an impossible task. If Brenna thought living in the past was hard, how much more difficult must it have been for Janie to live in the future? And more difficult still to raise a headstrong girl to be a lady of the seventeenth century, keeping her safe until the time was right to return her to her family.
“
My family.
” Her heart lurched. “Are they still alive?”
Rourke met her gaze. “I canna say. I told you true when I said I went to sea and never returned.”
Brenna jumped to her feet. Thoughts tumbled through her head as chills coursed through her body. Her family was
here
. They hadn’t abandoned her all those years ago. She’d been as lost to them as they were to her.
All this time she’d been trying to get back to the twenty-first century, when her home was here.
And Rourke had known all along.
She whirled on him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Ye are not safe here.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.” Anger sparked and flamed deep inside her. Anger that because of the Earl of Slains she’d been ripped from her home in the first place. Frustration that Janie never told her, left her thinking she’d been abandoned. And fury at the man in front of her for not being honest with her when he knew. He
knew
.
“What
right
did you have to keep this from me? To decide I was going back. I’ve spent my whole life wondering why they never came for me, why they never tried to find me. How could you keep something like this from me?”
“’Tis too dangerous for you here.” His words were slurred as if he’d been drinking, and she realized he was falling asleep again. He started to list sideways and she helped him lie down. He was asleep almost before his head hit the pillow.
She stared down at him, hurt and confused. He would have sent her back without ever knowing her life was supposed to have been here. He had no right to make this decision for her. No right. He always thought he knew what was best for her. He’d tied her in the cave to keep her safe. Had tried to send her back to the future for the same reason. Maybe he thought he was acting in her best interest, but it had to stop. She was a grown woman. An intelligent woman fully capable of making her own decisions in
either
world.
And she knew the first thing she had to do. She had to find out what had happened to her family.
Her parents might still be alive. The man she’d remembered holding her in the storm might still be here. A wary excitement trembled within her. Twenty years she’d been gone, and this place wasn’t exactly conducive to long life. Especially with the Earl of Slains around.
But they might still be alive.
And she’d bet money Rourke’s uncle would know.
She smoothed the blanket over Rourke’s hips, then left him as she went to discover the truth about her family. As she hurried down the passage to the stairs, her heart pounded with futile rage at the fates. Fates that had torn her from everything she’d known, not once, but twice.
She found Rourke’s uncle in a neatly furnished anteroom off the dining room where they’d eaten that first night. The walls were wood-paneled and hung with tartans and swords as was the dining room. A large desk dominated the room. It was a man’s room. A war room.
Uncle James was alone, sitting at the desk, a mound of books in front of him when she rapped at the doorframe. He looked up and saw her, then stood.
“Rourke?”
“He’s good. He woke up and sat up for a few minutes, but he’s asleep again.”
Relief softened the lines around the older man’s mouth.
“I need to speak with you,” Brenna said.
He smiled and motioned her in.
Brenna turned and closed the door, then crossed to where he stood, clasping her hands tight in front of her. “What do you know about the Camerons?” Now that the question was out, her heart spasmed with fear that the news would be bad. Surely she hadn’t come all this way only to find out she was too late?

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