Warrior and the Wanderer (23 page)

“Bang,” he said softer, giving her waist another squeeze. “I left my time and awoke under water in your time right before I found you.”

“In the Firth of Lorn,” she said knowing she would never forget the day Ian saved her. “Ye just dropped into the water.” She remembering the odd clouds that day, the way the water grew dark and angry just before a silvery piece of the clouds broke apart from the sky made a mighty splash. But clouds couldn’t make a splash.

“Me and my Corvette dropped into the water,” he said.

“Corvette? Is she a French lass ye ken?”

He let out a light chuckle. “She’s my car.”

“Car?”

“It’s kind of like a carriage. It has four wheels, two seats, and a two hundred and seventy horse power engine.”

“Yer carriage has two hundred and seventy horses? No’ possible.”

“Then how do you explain me being here? Nothing short of two hundred and seventy horsepower and some legendary Danish go-juice could send me back in time to this sixteenth century paradise.”

They rode in silence for a while. The landscape changed to forest. Dark and thick, blotting out the grey sky. The path was barely visible through fallen pine needles and fern. Bess tried to concentrate on keeping her mount straight and steady on their way to Stirling, but Ian’s words had distracted her. She had not expected his truth to be that he was not of her time but from five centuries yet to come. She fought to take a deep breath.

“You don’t believe me,” he said.

“I wish that I could. But I feel ye are covering the real truth with this fairy story. If ye traveled such a great distance back to my time, as ye have confessed, what would be the purpose of it?”

He leaned forward, brushing his lips over her neck. “I came to save you.”

His kiss sent a shiver through her or was it his reply that caused the sensation?

“Ye kent I was chained to that rock in the firth?”

“No. I didn’t come to your rescue by intention. I had never heard of you. This Dane who sent me, revealed his identity when I was in Edinburgh prison. He sent me to save you to keep the balance.”

“What balance?”

“That’s what I asked the Dane. Apparently, the past and future are intertwined. You dying by Lachlan’s hand would upset the balance. And once I’ve saved you from Lachlan, I have to go back to my time, or that’ll upset the balance. So sayeth the Dane before he led me out of prison through a hole in the floor.” He paused. “Aye, I know, Blaze, I don’t believe it myself.”

Yet, Ian spoke as if he believed what he said, if he had burst into her life riding a Corvette with two hundred and seventy horses. She couldn’t deny the things she had seen that fateful day. She didn’t see horses, but she did see something strike the water just before she saw Ian break through the dark roiling surface. He was here and he promised he had to leave…to go back to his time, he said.

That thought made her tighten the hold on the reins. Ian would leave her.

“What would happen if you didnae go back?” she found herself asking him.

“Global disaster, I think. Even if that weren’t the case, I can’t stay here.”

“Why?” She held the reins up, pressing her fists into a knot between her breasts, sat stiffly in the saddle.

“I just can’t, Blaze. This is not my time. I’m an aberration here. You may eventually accept that I come from another time, but the rest of your world would just as soon see me burned for witchcraft.”

“How d’ye ken I would accept what ye said as the truth?” she asked.

He gave her waist a squeeze, put his lips near her ear. “Because you haven’t screamed like a banshee, haven’t summoned Alasdair to beat my brains in or to dragged me to the nearest exorcist.”

“D’ye ken why none of those things have happened?” she asked.

“Could it be because of my charm, my endearing wit and personality?” He gently tugged her earlobe between his teeth. She closed her eyes languishing in the tingles that issued forth from his touch.

“Ye’d like to think that I believe ye,” she said breathlessly. “Yet, I cannae grasp it.”

He slid one hand around her waist, cupping one of her breasts. She let out a sharp gasp.

“If you don’t believe me, then why not call for your champion?” he asked.

“Because I believe what my own eyes saw that day.”

“You believe what you saw, now that I’ve explained it to you.” He brought his other hand around her body, finding her other breast.

“Dinnae touch me like that—”

“You don’t like my touching you this way, Blaze?”

“I like very much,” she confessed. “But ye declared that we will have to part ways, because a Dane of legend says ye must. We should behave as if that’s to be.”

“I prefer to live in the moment when I’m with you.” He nibbled her earlobe again.

Bess shrugged from his touch. “And when ye’re gone, Ian, so go these ‘moments’. Best I withdraw my affections for ye on the now.”

Ian slipped his hands from her breasts and placed them back on her waist. She waited for him to protest, to tell her that he would not subscribe to the Dane’s will, that he would stay with her. He remained silent.

She knew that her desire for Ian to remain in her company would not be in her clan’s best interests. He was a MacLean and so was Lachlan. Her clan would not tolerate Ian being a part of them. Best she let him go his way.

Back to his time.

’Twas nothing but fairy story. She tried to convince herself of that.

“Have I told you about a wonderful invention from my time called the ‘flashlight’?” He offered her more nonsense.

“Ye havenae.”

“Well, we could use one now. It’s getting dark.”

“Alasdair and I ken the way around the bog. We’ll go another league before we stop for the night.”

“Isn’t a bog one of those nasty wetlands that don’t look much different from dry land?”

“Aye.”

“Glad you and Alasdair are so confident navigating them.”

Without invitation, he placed his hands on her shoulders. He rubbed her there with his strong fingers, kneading the taut muscles, softening them, relaxing her.

“What does one do in yer time to travel from hither and yon?” she asked only to hear another of his fairy stories to take her mind from the tedium of the dark road.

“They move fast. Everything is so bloody fast. Transportation and communication. One can fly across the ocean in a matter of hours.”

“Fly?”

“In a big white metal bird, called an airplane.”

“Och, Ian, yer imagination runs rampant.”

“I can’t convince you that I am telling the truth, can I?”

“Convince me with proof.”

“The only proof I have is at the bottom of the Firth of Lorn, where I saved you.”

“And ye want to go back to it. This Corvette?”

“Aye. I have no choice.”

“Aye,” she repeated holding the reins in tight fists.

They rode in silence for a while.

Then she felt Ian brush his lips near her ear. He began singing to her, low and soft, the song languorous, tugging on her senses.

She closed her eyes, held fast to the reins, feeling Ian’s warm breath brushing over her as he serenaded her with his song.

He allowed the song to fade into the night, and she opened her eyes.

“’Tis bonnie,” she whispered. “So bonnie.”

“It’s the most beautiful love song ever written,” he said. “Called ‘God Only Knows’ by men who call themselves The Beach Boys. And it is the first time I have ever sung it to anyone.”

He gently turned her head to the side, and leaning forward pressing his lips to hers. She kissed him, still under the spell of his song. His
love
song written by lads from some the sandy shore.

She broke the kiss, resting her cheek on her shoulder. Ian stroked her hair.

“If there was a way—” he began.

She shook her head. “Speak no’ of what is to come. Let’s live as you say ‘in this moment’. And not think on what is to come any more.”

“So, do you believe me?” he asked.

“I believe that ye intend to leave.”

A sudden thunderous shout broke the dim. Bess jumped and stared straight ahead. Ian held her against him. A shadow raced toward them on the path. Ian tightened his hold on her. Bess’s mount snorted and reared up a little, but Bess reined in the frightened animal. “’Tis just Alasdair,” she said.

Her champion brought his horse to a furious halt in front of them, sending soil and pine needles soaring into the air.

“
Leanbh,
” he called out. “
Ans a boglach.
”

“A child, in the bog? Where?” Bess asked searching ahead on the road, in the shadows.

Alasdair spoke, trying to catch his breath. “Just ahead, to the right of a broken auld pine. I couldnae get to him. I started sinking and…” He cast his eyes downward. “…I cannae swim.”

Without another thought, Bess drove her mount forward with Ian holding her so tight. Was this what he meant by ‘living in the moment’? Moments, according to the bard who sang his ethereal bonnie songs, were all they had.

* * * *

Despite Bess’s orders for him to stay put, Ian started to follow her into the bog.

Alasdair, apparently, had other ideas.

“Take another step, Maclean, and ’twill be yer last.” He reached into a pack slung over his horse and produced a ball of what looked like waxy fabric.

“What’s that?” Ian asked as he took a step off of the path in Bess’s direction in the murky woods.

“Haud yer wheesht, MacLean,” Alasdair grunted not answering Ian’s question at all. He squatted down and took up a branch from the ground.

“Bess is alone out there,” Ian said taking another step forward.

“Lady Campbell is well and good on her own.” Alasdair stood upright with an audible passing of wind. Ian winced. “I would obey her, if I were ye. The lass can be as headstrong as the west wind sometimes.”

“She’s not the only one with a strong wind.” Ian took another step. “But she shouldn’t be out there alone. I’m going to her.”

Alasdair, his back to him, was doing something with the stick and ball of waxed fabric. “No.”

“Aye, well, try and stop me.” Ian continued forward into the forest, after Bess following the wail of a very frightened child.

Then a hand clamped around his bicep.

Ian shrugged from his hold, but Alasdair was relentless. He grabbed Ian again and jerked him backward, off his feet.

“Listen, you big bastard—”

“Take this. Lady Campbell said to bring a torch.” Alasdair thrust a flaming stick into Ian’s hand. The top of the stick was wrapped in the waxy fabric that held a very nice fire.

“Uh, thanks,” Ian said.

Alasdair nodded.

Ian looked at him. “Are you coming?”

“I’ll make camp, get some meat.”

“OK, Braveheart, you do that. And thanks for the light.”

Ian raced forward in his own private circle of light. The ground grew soggier with each hard fall of his boots. His own clothes kept out the encroaching chill. He still wore the plaid wrapped around the waist of his jeans and thrown over his shoulder. Now, the plaid was as much a bloody hindrance as was the increasingly softening forest floor.

The child wailed louder. Its cries mingled with Bess’s shouts.

“Ian! Here!”

He turned to the right.

“Blaze?”

“Come forward, a few more steps.”

In one step he saw her. In one more step he saw the child at the edge of the circle of light half mired in the bog. The ground squashed ominously under his boots.

“What can I do?” he asked. He buried the bottom of the torch several inches into the muck so he could have both hands free.

He peered at the damp depression in the forest. The child was in the center of it, only it’s head and shoulders exposed. From this vantage, a dozen very wet steps away, he could see the child was shivering and was a boy. The pale eyes stared back at him in silent pleading.

He gave the child a confident smile and nod before focusing on Bess. She had bent a sapling to the ground. Scattered on the ground around her were several broken branches, deadfall, already rotted on the forest floor, no use to saving a child from a bog.

“Let me,” he said stepping forward.

He pressed the center of the sapling to the ground with one boot and took the dirk from Bess’s hand.

Without another word between them, Ian chopped away at the sapling, the wood chips flying about his face, and landing at his feet. Bess stood off to one side speaking words of encouragement to the child.

“Lad, ye’ll no’ be in the damp long.”

“A-aye,” the child said, through chattering teeth.

She tossed a glance over her shoulder at Ian. He finished chopping the sapling.

“Soon, lad,” she said assuringly. “Very soon.”

Ian returned her dirk and picked up the sapling. It was slender, a yard taller than himself at least, and strong enough to pull one rangy boy from a bog.