Time Travel Romances Boxed Set (24 page)

Both men shrugged, the plumber tapping
another section of the plan. “See? If we can fish the pipes through
the cellar somehow here, then we can hook up exactly as we would
have if the tank had gone in the original location.”

“
That old wall is a thick
sucker,” the inspector observed.

“
There has to be another
way,” Baird said and the trio settled over the plans to work out
their strategy.

*

Aurelia did not find the dungeons as easily
as she had hoped. Once she could have walked there blindfolded, but
now all had been changed around so thoroughly by Bard’s workmen,
that she quickly became disoriented.

Her father’s hall had been a simple wooden
structure in the style of the Vikings, a long rectangular hall with
a sloping roof and tables along its walls. It had been destroyed,
as Aurelia had noted earlier, though not a single mark remained to
hint at its precise location.

At least the ritual well was more or less as
it had been. Aurelia started there.

The stone structure that Bard made his hall
was new to Aurelia, though parts of it looked markedly aged. She
suspected the stones had come from elsewhere, perhaps from the
ancient crumbling towers on the horizon.

But roughly where Bard’s hall stood, there
had been an old settlement, long fallen into decay. A tumbling
central tower had dominated a circle of clover shaped homes, which
Aurelia recalled had been waist-deep in the turf. Certainly they
had been too far gone to repair and she was not surprised that Bard
had eliminated them.

Indeed, though she would never tell him as
much, his hall vastly improved the appearance of Dunhelm. Aurelia
would never have expected a barbarian to have such an aesthetic
sense, but then there was much about Bard that surprised her.

She refused to think about that now.

Beneath the tower that no longer stood
sentinel over the squarish peninsula of Dunhelm, there had been
deep pits. A curved staircase followed the outer wall of the tower,
descending to a small anteroom from which the pits could be
reached. Once undoubtedly cellars, they had been converted to
dungeons by Bard’s own sire, Erc.

The only problem was that without the
landmark of the tower, Aurelia was not certain precisely where they
should be.

After a good amount of fruitless searching,
she conceded defeat and resolved to circle the peninsula before the
daylight was gone. She might well find the bodies of fallen
warriors or some hint of what had transpired in the attack.

Maybe a survivor willing to share a tale. Or
see another angle of the land that would reveal the location of the
dungeons.

Aurelia’s spirits were high when she began,
but quickly faded. The peninsula of Dunhelm was not a small one and
she had a good bit of ground to cover. That added to her
determination to walk close to the edge of the cliffs - all the
better to see the bodies cast below - made the walking
difficult.

But she saw nothing other than myriad birds
nesting on the rocks that fell to the sea. Aurelia was convinced
every curve would reveal a horror to her eyes, but as the day
passed and nothing suspicious came to sight, she began to tire.

Aurelia walked until the sun was lowering
toward the sea, her view filled with rocks, birds and the
occasional seal.

What had happened to everyone? The dungeons,
even if she managed to find them, could never have accommodated
hundreds of men. And how could Dunhelm have been captured without a
resounding battle?

Even if the carnage had been cast into the
sea, Aurelia knew full well that the sea returned such gifts in
short order. But the beaches, far below, were barren.

Aurelia stared back at Bard’s hall, distant
calls of the workmen carrying to her ears. Could it be that Bard
had let her father’s men all go free?

It defied good sense! And she had seen well
enough that he was a man with a logical mind.

Perhaps the warriors had been shipped off to
some foreign estate, perhaps they toiled in whatever outpost the
son of Erc had made his own, perhaps they had been shipped off to
be sold as slaves in the markets of Micklegarth.

Such an expense. Aurelia winced, not certain
it would be worth the trouble.

No, some must be here in the dungeons. Why
else would those dungeons have been so artfully concealed? Aurelia
stalked back toward the hall, determined to find those dank and
dour cells.

She found them in a rather different way
than she had expected.

*

Aurelia was marching resolutely across the
lawn behind the hall when the ground suddenly gave way beneath her
feet.

She screamed and scrambled for a grip as the
earth fell away, taking her with it. Aurelia fought against falling
into the gaping hole opened in the earth, even knowing it was
hopeless.

She dropped a good thirty feet before she
landed on her buttocks with a solid thump. Dirt showered around her
and a chunk of turf landed heavily beside her foot.

The sounds of the world seemed distant and
muffled in the eerie silence that surrounded Aurelia. Far above
her, the hammering and shouting of the construction continued
undisturbed.

No one had heard her scream.

Aurelia tried again, just to be sure, but
there was no response. She winced and moved slightly, knowing that
she would have an enormous bruise in short order.

Aurelia reached out and touched a damp stone
wall. She called a greeting, but the words echoed through the stone
and came forlornly back to her.

She had found the dungeons all right, but
there was no contingent of warriors wasting away in these forgotten
shadows.

She was alone. Aurelia bellowed again, but
with no discernible effect. She was alone and evidently destined to
stay that way.

Well, she was not going to sit back and wait
to be rescued! Aurelia pushed to her feet, determined to explore
her prison thoroughly.

She stared into the darkness surrounding her
as she tried to remember exactly how the dungeons had been laid
out. There were half a dozen cells, as she recalled. She might find
some sign of her father’s warriors, though her heart doubted they
had ever been here.

The dungeons, after all, smelled dead and
unused.

Aurelia folded her arms across her chest,
already feeling the chill of the coming night, and set to
exploring. What had happened after she pricked her thumb?

What if her father had seen his forces so
outnumbered that he surrendered himself to Bard rather than see his
men slaughtered?

What if Bard, having won what he saw as his
due, had been persuaded to let her father’s men leave Dunhelm
freely?

There would be neither bodies nor prisoners,
then.

But, of course, there would be a legion of
men not particularly well disposed to the new upstart king.

Unless Julian’s plan succeeded. Their
marriage would ensure that all those formerly loyal to her sire
would turn their loyalty to Bard. And when her escaped father
returned to reclaim what he had lost, his own men would be pledged
against him.

Despicable! Fortunately, Aurelia had deduced
the truth. Bard would fool her no longer with his lingering glances
and little smiles! She would teach Bard son of Erc that she was not
a woman with whom he could trifle.

Although a more pressing issue in this
moment was how Aurelia was going to get out of the old
dungeons.

*

Baird was dead on his feet by eight o’clock
that night. He ached from stooping and scrambling through the
nether regions of the bishop’s palace. He had bumped his head and
scraped his knee, missed his dinner and wished heartily that he
hadn’t let Aurelia eat his lunch.

But the fourth septic tank was secured in
its new home and ready to accept donations.

Now, all Baird wanted was to sleep. He made
his way through the silent hotel, permitting himself a thrill of
pride at how it was all slowly coming together, and climbed the
stairs to his room.

What they needed was an elevator in this
place.

*

Talorc’s book taunted Baird from the end
table when he climbed into bed. Baird didn’t remember bringing it
upstairs, but he found himself reaching for it without
hesitation.

It fell open where he had been reading
before.

The most obvious and enduring legacy of the
Picts, of course, is the vast number of standing symbol stones left
scattered all across Scotland. These stones are carved with heavy
relief and mounted at great effort to stand on their ends. There is
remarkable repetition in the range of symbols employed on these
stones, though no script on the stones or Pictish documents survive
elsewhere to explain their import.

There is considerable controversy as to
whether these stones are territorial boundaries, memorials to the
dead, announcements of treaties and alliances, or whether they mean
something entirely different and as yet undetermined.

Baird glanced to the photograph at the
bottom of the page and his heart lunged into his chest. The symbol
stone was just like the door to the well!

Well, not exactly. A closer look revealed
that there were common elements - the crescent, for example - but
that this stone was slightly different.

Still, it was weird how closely the two
resembled each other and how neatly this dovetailed with Aurelia’s
story. Baird glanced at a map on the next page which marked every
Pictish stone in Scotland with a dot and was reassured. There were
hundreds of the damn things!

And it didn’t mean that the slab in the well
had been there since the time of the Picts. One thing that struck
Baird about Europe was that people reused every little thing,
artifact or otherwise. If that stone was laying around here just
when someone wanted to make a stone door, they would have thought
nothing of using it.

The carved slab in the well could have
originally been anywhere within a couple of miles.

Although that wouldn’t explain why the woman
carved on it was dressed exactly as Aurelia had been. She certainly
couldn’t have moved it there herself, even if it had cohered
perfectly with the story she had concocted.

Baird’s gaze lifted of its own accord to the
mysterious shadows lurking far beyond his window, shadows that
marked the stairs descending into the well. Instead of solving a
mystery when he laid those stairs bare to the sunlight, Baird had
opened a nest of enigmas.

All centered around Aurelia.

Maybe that stone wasn’t as much like her as
he recalled. Suddenly, Baird’s exhaustion slipped away. He had to
go and see the stone again, right now.

A walk, after all, would do him good.

*

Aurelia was cold and cramped, damp and
irritable by the time she heard the faint crunch of footsteps
overhead.

Someone to help her!

She screamed as loud as she could and barely
dared to breathe until she heard the steps hurry in her direction.
The arc of a light cut through the night, and she blinked as it
shone directly on her.

“
What in the hell are you
doing down there?” Bard demanded and Aurelia’s heart
sank.

Trust him to be the one to find her!

“
I fell,” she admitted
irritably.

“
So I see.” The light
flicked away and Aurelia could see Bard crouched on the edge, his
elbows braced on his knees. That wry smile was tugging at the
corner of his lips and her defiance melted just a
little.

Oh, the cursed man fairly oozed with
charm!

“
So, are you naturally this
much trouble, princess, or do you have to work at it?”

Trust him to find it amusing that she was
trapped here! Why, it probably suited Bard well to see her in such
foul circumstance!

“
You may find this
humorous, but I do not!”

He openly considered the depth of the pit
she had fallen into, then looked back to her with a heart-wrenching
grin. “It’s a good thing you’re so cute, because you sure are a lot
of trouble.”

There was a charge that hit too close to
home. Such belittling compliments had been the reason Aurelia
learned to fire the crossbow. “I am not cute!” she cried. “I am a
warrior!”

“
A regular Amazon,” Bard
agreed easily and she knew he was mocking her even without
understanding the reference. “My seventh foster mother would have
said you were in a fine pickle, princess. Seems your warrior skills
aren’t getting you out of it.”

Bard might be in a teasing mood, but
Aurelia’s sense of humor had been chilled out of her hours before.
“Seventh foster mother? No one has that many foster mothers!”

“
Wrong, princess.” His
expression turned grim again. “I had fourteen. And foster fathers
to match.”

“
What need had you of so
many?”

Bard’s lips thinned. “I didn’t need any of
them,” he said tightly. “Just like they didn’t need me.” He pushed
to his feet and cleared his throat. “Now, do you want some
help?”

As much as it galled Aurelia to accept his
assistance, there was no other means of escape. “Yes, please.” She
wrapped her arms around herself and felt a shudder ripple through
her, despite her determination to appear strong.

“
Then, let’s get you out of
there.” He straightened and Aurelia hated how she admired the lean
strength of his legs. He was back with a rope in short
order.

And when the warm grip of his hand finally
closed over her own, Aurelia hated that she felt safe and secure
once more. She could not help but shiver at the contrast between
her cool flesh and his warmth.

It could be no more than that.

Bard’s voice dropped and his gaze sharpened.
“Your hands are freezing, princess! How long have you been down
there?” The concern in his eyes nearly undid her resolve.