Time Travel Romances Boxed Set (48 page)

“
Morgaine said a tall man
would come to this place – a man young yet bold, a man with hair of
gold,” the woman intoned hoarsely. “’Twas he, she said, who should
be the one to venture into the beyond. ’Twas he she would have for
her very own.” The woman leaned closer, and a shiver of trepidation
rippled over Alasdair’s skin.

“
You are the one,” she
confided.

“
Bollocks! I will be no
witch’s toy!” Alasdair squared his shoulders, well done with
listening to this lot of haivers. “Summon your lady Morgaine for
me. She and I have matters to discuss if she thinks to make a
captive of
me
!”

The woman cackled. “Nay, laddie, you must go
to her!”

“
Where?”

“
Ah, my lady lurks in the
hidden corners of the beyond.” Before Alasdair could ask for
explanation, the woman pointed a bony finger at his feet. “Turn
thrice in this place while I chant her spell.”

Alasdair could not keep his brows from
rising in skepticism. “And then?”

“
And then we shall all have
another sip of whisky!” concluded one of the men, an idea that was
greeted with great approval.

“
And
then
…” the
woman said loudly enough for her voice to carry over the men’s
foolery. “And then you will have the opportunity to ask of Morgaine
your questions.” She leaned closer and her voice dropped yet lower.
“If you dare.”

There was such certainty in her tone that
Alasdair suddenly feared there was more to this matter than he had
suspected. A shiver danced down his spin as the cold wind ruffled
his hair. He stared into the mad witch’s eyes and for a fleeting
moment doubted the wisdom of taking his men’s dare.

“
Are you man enough to
confront a harridan?” teased one of the men.

Alasdair aimed an unappreciative glare over
his shoulder. “Man enough?” he scoffed in turn. “It seems to me
that I have fallen into a company of whispering old women. Turn
thrice and see myths come to life. Ask witches about the future.
Dragons beneath the mount!” He spat with vigor. “Nonsense all of
it!”

His men cheered.

Alasdair braced his feet against the parapet
and nodded to the hag. “Chant your ditty, woman, and I will turn as
you bid me – if only to prove this whimsy for what it truly
is.”

“
Hold tight to the charms,”
the woman cautioned, her tone ominous. “They might well be your
only route of return.”

Return? Surely he was not going anywhere?
Alasdair frowned, but the woman began to drone a verse in Gaelic
that was vaguely familiar to him. At her imperious nod, he started
to turn in place.

Once.

Twice.

Alasdair’s annoyance rose as the air seemed
to swim about him. Curse the strength of that whisky! He closed his
eyes tightly.

Thrice.

“
Wish!” hissed the
witch.

Alasdair wished with all his heart and soul
to see the future of his beloved Scotland, to see the freedom he
fought to ensure his son would inherit.

He stumbled then, the woman’s chanting faint
in his ears. His heart stopped cold when his steadying foot
encountered naught at all.

He had stepped off the parapet!

Alasdair swore vehemently as he fell,
bouncing off the walls of the staircase. He roundly cursed his
companions, who did naught to aid him as he tumbled. Blithering
fools! His neck would be broken for their foolish dare!

Alasdair landed at the foot of the stairs
with a thump so resounding that it stole the breath from his lungs.
His hands flew open. The gem danced away and the heather crumbled
to naught, though but a moment before it had been green and
fresh.

Then his head cracked on the cold stone
floor and Alasdair knew no more.

*

“
Hoy!”

“
Stop, lad!”

“
Hold up!”

A dozen besotted men stumbled down the
stairs in pursuit of their fallen companion. They rounded the last
corner and burst as one into the hall below, half afraid to see the
bloodied sight each and every one anticipated.

Naught greeted their bewildered eyes but the
dancing shadows cast by their blazing torch.

Alasdair was nowhere to be seen.

That was enough to sober the most drunken of
them all.

“
But where…?” Iain
whispered as the others carefully checked the corridor.

After a flustered search, the men faced each
other once more, their eyes dark with suspicion.

“
Perhaps he but plays a
prank upon us,” muttered Iain skeptically. “Alasdair is not above a
trick.” The others turned on him, unanimous in their conclusion
that this was no jest.

“
Then where has he
gone?”

“
There is no sign of the
lad!”

“
And where is the old
crow?”

It was the first that they noticed she was
no longer among them.

One of the younger men ran to the parapet
again, his footsteps slower as he descended to the expectant group.
His eyes were wide when he came into sight. “Gone as if she had
never been!” he whispered.

A chill fell over then, and they glanced at
each other in trepidation. There was no other escape from the
parapet – unless she had taken flight.

“
They will think us
mad.”

“
Or that we played foul
with Alasdair.”

“
Robert the Bruce will be
ill pleased. He favors the lad, ’tis well known.”

That thought was not received well, and more
than one frown darkened a brow in that huddled group.

“
He was a good
man.”

“
A fine
soldier.”

“
A man of determination and
honor.”

“
And a man with nary a
whisper of his past,” Iain concluded. The men exchanged worried
glances. “What did we know of Alasdair MacAulay, in
truth?”

“
All the more reason to
hold our tongues,” advised an older man.

The men nodded slowly, then their glanced
lifted to the heavy stone walls around them. Suddenly the castle
they had considered no more than a strategic site seemed alive.
Danger lurked in every shadow, and the men instinctively drew
closer to each other.

For if the doughty Alasdair could be taken
so readily, what caprice of Fate left them untouched?

A woman’s laughter echoed suddenly, carrying
from everywhere and nowhere at all.

“
Morgaine le Fee!” Iain
muttered.

“
She comes for
us
!”

It took no more than that to set the entire
group running for the gates.

*

Some time later, they halted, panting, in
the same camp where they had lain the night before. The spot seemed
haunted by Alasdair’s measured tones, and more than one could fair
see him crouched in the midst of them as he described his plan of
attack.

“
Look!” Iain whispered and
pointed to the high mount of Edinburgh’s keep.

Every heart sank like a stone as a line of
ascending torchlights pronounced the English reclamation of
Edinburgh’s prize.

They had failed.

And the English would not succumb to the
same deception again.

What would this turn in the tide mean for
the course of Robert the Bruce? For the freedom of all Scotland?
Could the witch have stolen more than Alasdair this night?

*

Edinburgh, September, 1998

By their sixth day in Scotland, Morgan was
beginning to suspect that this trip had not been one of her better
ideas.

It had sounded so good - using a plump
advance to research her book on site in Scotland. But far from the
relaxing meander Morgan had envisioned, the trip had become a
nightmare in military precision. Vacation with Blake and Justine
was proving to have a more demanding schedule than Morgan’s working
life.

Which just didn’t fit any of Morgan’s
plans.

As they trudged through Edinburgh Castle in
the wake of a kilted guide, Morgan thought their relative positions
said it all.

Her brother-in-law Blake was right behind
the tour guide, his pencil and notebook at the ready,
interpretative guidebook - heavily marked with florescent yellow
Highlighter - tucked in his windbreaker, Day-Timer and map stashed
in the opposite pocket. He pushed his wire-frame glasses up his
nose and obediently looked as bidden, his profile reminding Morgan
of a hawk on the hunt.

Six-foot-two and so lean that his Adam’s
apple looked like a golf ball lodged in his throat, dark-haired
Blake was a font of information on bonnie Scotland, as he was on
everything else.

Blake was certainly not Morgan’s idea of a
knight in shining armor, though she had learned the hard way that
her romantic ideals were unrealistic at best. Her brother-in-law
was good-hearted, if overly driven, but she supposed a successful
corporate player had little choice. And organization had proven to
be an addictive habit for Blake.

Justine, poised, elegant and groomed with a
precision Morgan had long ago given up trying to emulate, strolled
beside her spouse. Justine exuded tranquility in the most harried
circumstance, a trait that balanced surprisingly well with Blake’s
intense drive. Her Mona Lisa smile and easy assurance had been
known to calm the most stressed mother of the bride and had given
her catering business a definite edge in the wedding market.

Justine carried the camera, changing lenses
before her husband even asked, and she had the enviable ability of
finding their location the minute Blake cast the map over his
shoulder in disgust.

But then, Justine had always been the
Problem Solver.

In contrast to her composed sister, Morgan
could get lost in an elevator. Her hair was unruly, her makeup and
finesse nonexistent, her culinary skills meager and her inability
to be punctual an old joke.

Morgan had the same coloring as her older
sister and the same fine-boned build, but while Justine was tall
and slender, Morgan was petite. Morgan’s hair, instead of being
straight and thick, was a disorderly tangle of curls that fell to
her waist. Like Justine, she had green eyes, though hers tipped up
at the outer corners.

Justine often said that her sister looked
like one of the little fairies from Morgan’s own detailed
illustrations come to life. Certainly Morgan would rather have
lived in one of the delicate paintings she created for children’s
books than the modern world that she often found so
challenging.

Morgan was the Artist. It was a role that
fit her fairly easily, at least when she wasn’t feeling inadequate
in comparison to her sister.

And Morgan finally had a chance to build a
fire under her artistic career. This book was a turning point for
her - if it was on time and brilliant, she could be looking at
years of good work. Morgan had bet the farm to gather the folk
stories she needed right here in Scotland, in order to give this
book her best shot.

But that hadn’t quite made it on to Blake’s
agenda. Not out of malice or bad intentions - Blake just didn’t
understand anything that didn’t come with a decimal place. It
wasn’t in his nature to sit still and listen to the voices in the
wind.

Morgan’s other objective - and her ulterior
motive for inviting Justine and Blake along - had suffered pretty
much the same fate. Morgan was running zero for two and wasn’t
happy about that.

Having a child was the one goal that so far
had eluded Blake and Justine, and that was the one thing they both
wanted most of all. Morgan was convinced their hectic lifestyle lay
at the root of their fertility troubles. And she hoped that a niece
or nephew would fill a little hole in the void that love had left
in her life.

Now, it seemed almost a joke to remember her
conviction that a leisurely vacation would solve everything. She
had
talked Blake and Justine into taking a vacation they
would never get around to booking themselves, but victory had ended
early.

Morgan looked longingly towards the city
below, wishing she could escape the Scottish Invasion, as she had
come to call it, and wander through Edinburgh on her own.

As though he had heard her thoughts, Blake
Macdonald wound his way back to her, Justine trailing behind. He
leaned toward the sisters and spoke in a low voice, tapping his
perfectly sharp pencil on his Day-Timer as he checked his
watch.

“
It’s eleven-oh-nine. This
tour should be finished by half past the hour. We’ll have an early
lunch here in the castle so we don’t have to pay admission again to
hear the one o’clock gun.”

Justine walked her fingertips up her
husband’s arm. “Then, we could go back to the bed-and-breakfast for
a couple of hours to relax before dinner,” she suggested with a
provocative smile.

Finally! At least something was going to
plan! And Morgan could have some time to herself. Three was
definitely a crowd when conception was on the agenda.

“
Great idea,” Morgan
concurred. The tour guide cleared his throat and eyed them
sternly.

Blake frowned. “Don’t be ridiculous,
Justine. There’s not enough daylight in this country to risk
wasting any of it. Besides” - he consulted his notes while the
women exchanged a glance of exasperation – “we can zip down High
Street and make the last tour of Holyrood House before
teatime.”

“
Then, we’ll go back to the
room and put our feet up?” Justine suggested more
gently.

Blake shook his head. “We
have
to
have high tea at this hotel on Princes Street, Justine. All the
books say so. Then, we’ll wander down to the Grassmarket…”