Fifteen minutes later she had ordered herself a decent meal, avoided another encounter with the Terrible Three from Mrs. McCreedy’s store, and was settling into a corner near the fireplace, a comforting cup of tea on the table in front of her. She leaned her head back against the worn bench, closed her eyes, and tried to forget what she’d seen.
“I won’t speak ill of them, but you do what you like.”
“’Tisn’t ill-speaking to speculate,” said another voice stubbornly. “And you must admit, odd things go on up in those woods.”
“Aye, and goodly amounts of money come flowing down from them into the village to benefit the likes of you, so don’t blether on about what you think you know.”
Emma wondered if the present was the proper time to get up and ask if she could have her lunch to go, but unfortunately she was just too tired to move. If that lack of enthusiasm led to hearing a few things that might explain a few other things, well, she wasn’t going to protest. Fortunately for her, the old man prone to blethering seemed perfectly happy to dish with the rest of his buddies, which worked for her because she was perfectly happy to eavesdrop.
Though after a few minutes, she wondered why.
Highland magic was apparently just the beginning of the odd things that went on in the area. Ghosts, bogles, an influx of gold diggers from down south: those were all discussed at length, with judgments passed accordingly.
But then their voices lowered and the juicy stuff was brought out and presented for examination.
Emma listened through a lovely lunch of chicken and veg, though she had to admit after a few bites that she was only chewing out of habit. What she really wanted to be doing was using her energy to make noises of disbelief over the things she was hearing.
Time-traveling lairds? Money dug up from gardens? Murder and mayhem that stretched through the centuries and found itself solved in times and places not her own and with medieval implements of death?
She had to have another gulp of tea. All that was starting to sound more plausible than she would have wanted to believe, especially that last part about swords.
She was actually rather glad she’d already finished her meal because she had certainly lost her appetite. She grabbed her coat and made her way as inconspicuously as possible to the front door. She paused outside on the sidewalk and wondered if she might really be losing her mind. That seemed like the most reasonable thing she’d thought all day, which probably should have given her pause.
She pulled her slicker more closely around herself, gave herself a good mental shake, then walked off back toward her hotel. She wasn’t losing it, she was just tired. She would go back to her temporary home, pretend it was bedtime not noon, and pull her covers over her head.
She would consign her day’s events to the receptacle entitled Jet Lag Hallucinations. Then she would take hold of the reins of her life and get back to her very sensible way of doing business. Maybe she would find out who owned that cottage on the loch and see if they wouldn’t rent it to her for a month or so. It would make a perfect home base to use while she put some miles on her rental car and explored the nooks and crannies of the Highlands.
The one thing she was sure of was that she wasn’t about to go near that very strange part of the forest again. Her phone could rot there for all she cared—
Well, she couldn’t survive without her phone, which meant she would have to go back and look for it. She looked up at the sky, which was, unsurprisingly, obscured by clouds. That was comforting, actually, but didn’t do anything for helping her know how much more daylight she might have. The very last thing she wanted was to get lost in the forest because she’d gone looking for her phone when she should have waited until morning. Besides, if she waited until morning, perhaps anything spooky might still be sleeping off a long night spent doing what it did to inspire the locals to greater heights of tall-tale telling.
She paused on the steps leading up to the inn’s doorway and looked back over her shoulder at the garden there. It was a rain-soaked delight with plenty of places where shadows lingered even in daylight. She shook her head, primarily at her own silliness. Her encounter earlier had been nothing but her imagination running away with her. She had worked herself up over the thought of running into a recluse, added to it the odd nature of Mrs. McCreedy’s map, then had a close brush with a river while she’d been driving. It couldn’t reasonably have been anything else. Not Highland magic.
Definitely not the sight of a green-eyed man in a ratty kilt that she suspected she would have a very hard time forgetting.
She turned her back on the garden and walked inside the inn. A restorative nap, a decent supper later, and absolutely no more unnecessary venturing into the forest. She would have another look at Mrs. McCreedy’s map and mark the whole area it illustrated as off-limits.
Then she would get to the business she had come to Scotland for without any more undue and unsettling distractions.
She studiously ignored the fact that what she had come to Scotland for were dreams.
Chapter 4
Nathaniel stood in the kitchen of his house that overlooked the loch and stared at what lay there so innocently on his table. Well, his sword was there as well, which was perhaps not such an innocent thing, but at least it was cleaned up and awaiting its usual trip into the back of his closet for safekeeping. What he was looking at next to his sword was what gave him pause.
It was a mobile phone.
It wasn’t just any mobile phone. It was a relatively unscathed, Scottish-flag-encased mobile phone that someone had quite possibly dropped in the forest earlier that morning before she had made a hasty trip back to wherever she’d come from. He’d already spent part of the afternoon trying to unlock it with no success whatsoever. Frustrating, but hopefully not a portent of things to come.
He had to assume the phone belonged to that dark-haired gel he’d seen in the forest—though perhaps saying that he had seen her didn’t quite describe the encounter. He had been in the past when he’d almost run bodily into her standing in the future.
Or at least he hoped she’d been in the future.
He’d almost lost his head as a result of his surprise, but he’d managed to save his sweet self and pull back into his proper time period. Or, rather, the time period where he’d been loitering. At the time.
He sighed deeply. His life was, he had to admit, extremely odd.
At least he was safely tucked into the modern part of his life for the moment. He picked his sword up and carried it back to the bedroom, then hid it behind a trio of hand-tailored suits he only wore when forced. He looked at them for a moment or two, then decided it wasn’t a good use of his time to think about when he might need to wear one of them next. He shut his closet door and went back into his kitchen. He considered what to do about that phone lying there on the table, then decided perhaps it wasn’t unreasonable to venture into the village to see if he couldn’t find its owner.
There was an added benefit to that piece of altruism, and that was potentially eliminating the possibility of someone lurking in the woods nearby, looking for her phone and perhaps seeing things she shouldn’t. Heaven only knew he encountered enough of those sorts of women as it was. Why the rumors that went around the pub about him weren’t enough to frighten them off, he surely didn’t know.
He put the phone in his pocket and made sure his house was put to bed for the moment. No sense in giving anyone reason to execute a rescue of his stove, again perhaps seeing things they shouldn’t have.
Besides, he needed dinner and a stiff drink. He didn’t keep anything in his own house save a few bottles of wine that were too expensive to casually open, simply because he’d had his own brush with drinking too much and he knew better. But a pint down at the pub or a glass of whisky at someone else’s table? That he could do.
He looked at his mobile, then cursed the lack of reception
in his house. It was almost as if he lived in some sort of time warp where modern conveniences just didn’t exist.
He didn’t allow himself to start down that well-worn mental path. The irony of it was just too much.
He would obviously have to head to Inverness soon if he wanted to see what those of the legal profession were combining. He tended to think that no news was good news when it came to lawyers and their business, but for all he knew, he would be on a flight to JFK to deal with them sooner rather than later. At least in New York, he didn’t have medieval clansmen trying to kill him.
Unfortunately, that respite never lasted very long.
Half an hour later, he was walking into McCreedy’s for the barest of necessities, grateful he’d caught her before she closed up for the evening. Mrs. McCreedy was busy tending a pair of well-seasoned widows, so he nodded politely to the three of them and went about his own business. If he lingered a bit until the shop was empty, well, who could blame him? He didn’t trust very many, but that woman behind the counter was one of them. She’d gotten him out of more than one tight spot with a nod toward the back exit.
He made polite chitchat with her whilst she was ringing up his tins of nonperishables, then leaned casually against her counter and laid the phone down.
“Any ideas?” he asked.
“Ah, a proper Scottish tribute right there,” she said approvingly.
“Unfortunately not mine.”
“Did you pinch it from some southerner who vexed you?” she asked sternly. “Not sure I’m in the market for stolen mobiles, lad.”
He smiled. “Nothing as nefarious as that, I assure you. I found it in the woods near my house.”
“And you didn’t try to unlock it?”
“Would you expect anything else?”
“You’re a canny one, Nathaniel, to be sure.” She picked the phone up, studied it, then looked at him. “You didn’t see the owner?”
He wasn’t sure he dared admit that he might have, but he supposed there were reasons enough why he might have seen a gel in the woods.
“I think I may have seen her in the area,” he conceded. “Tall, dark-haired, a bit too thin.”
Mrs. McCreedy nodded knowingly. “I’ve seen her. She’s here for a week at Southerton’s inn, though I don’t know how she’ll manage that long there, things being what they are in that house. I think she came from the States to take in the scenery.”
“Brilliant,” he muttered. “They’re coming across the Pond to look for me now.”
“And aren’t you a fine catch,” Mrs. McCreedy said with a laugh. She raised her eyebrow and shot him a look. “If I were fifty years younger, don’t think I wouldn’t be fishing for you. As for the other, her you’re wanting is at the pub, or so I heard a bit ago. Her name’s Emma, if you’re interested.”
“Your spy network, Mrs. McCreedy, is no doubt the envy of Her Maj’s secret service.”
“If you only knew, my lad,” she said sagely. “If you only knew.”
He didn’t imagine he wanted to know more than he already suspected, so he simply wished her a good evening and escaped whilst he still could. He carried his sustenance out to his car, then walked up the street to the pub.
There were two pubs to choose from in the village, though he supposed the ever-increasing tourist trade would have supported more. He chose Keith MacLeod’s place because it was the more touristy of the two, and he favored it precisely because of that. It put him more often than not in the way of those who came to try to flush him out of the forest, but it kept him out of the way of most of the locals. He definitely had good reasons for that, and those reasons were, put simply, the laird from up the way, the laird’s brother, and that same laird’s cousin. Those lads tended to frequent the tavern down the street.
He had done a flawless job of never encountering any of them over the past five years, and he thought it was best that it stay that way. Having more than a passing acquaintance with James MacLeod’s fourteenth-century progenitor was odd enough. That he was actually doing any, er, time traveling was likely something that would have seen him safely installed in the local insane asylum if anyone knew, and that was something he wanted to avoid. The very last thing he wanted was to be answering any questions from James, Patrick, or Ian MacLeod about his own activities.
He’d heard the rumors about them, absolutely barking speculation about why those three looked as if they had simply up and stepped out of a medieval battle scene.
It was absolute rubbish, of course. James MacLeod and his kin were just men with a terrible fondness for the past who had made themselves a little kingdom there near the forest. He wasn’t about to tell them about any of his own adventures, no matter if they might or might not have been kin. He was a MacLeod, true, but there were MacLeods aplenty in Scotland. For all anyone knew, he was related to that lad over on Skye. His own sire had traced his lineage to yet another branch of the family, but Nathaniel supposed no one he knew would be interested in that.
He realized with a start that he was fair to finding himself in true peril a heartbeat before he walked into that trio of London lassies he’d seen several days before. He spared a moment to marvel at their tenacity before he ducked into a darkened alleyway. He slipped around the back of the pub and ventured inside the kitchen. It certainly wasn’t his first time using that entrance, and he suspected it wouldn’t be his last. He almost ran bodily into Fiona’s father.
“Keith,” he said, relieved. “Good to see you.”
Keith MacLeod, yet another of the innumerable MacLeods in the area, pursed his lips. “Hiding, Nat?”
“You know me,” Nathaniel said, giving the kitchen a cursory glance to make certain there were no huntresses, stray medieval clansmen, or American gels with long, dark hair hiding amongst the veg.
“I do,” Keith said, “and I trust you, which is likely more important, aye?”
Nathaniel looked at him then. “Sorry?”
Keith blew out his breath. “You, having a care with Fiona. She’s young and apparently mad for you.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Nathaniel said, “and I’m old enough to be her father.”
“So I keep telling her,” Keith said seriously. “Complain about your knees a bit more and perhaps she’ll believe you. Now, what do you need?”
“Besides a safe haven and a whisky?” Nathaniel asked. “Information, mostly. Have you seen a woman with long hair, maybe a Yank?”
“She’s up at Southerton’s, but Mrs. McCreedy likely already told you as much. She just left here a few minutes ago, so you might catch her if you run. I’ll have supper waiting when you get back, if you like. Takeaway or not?”
Nathaniel opened his mouth, then realized he didn’t know. He’d been dealing in the currencies of life and death for the pair of days so deciding what he wanted to eat, never mind where he wanted to eat it, was simply beyond him. He looked at his host helplessly. “I have no idea.”
Keith nodded toward the back door. “Be off with ye then, laddie. I’ll have something waiting for you after you’ve found your prize.”
Nathaniel rolled his eyes with what he hoped passed for a dismissive laugh, then slipped out the door and made his way to Southerton’s. He saw one alleyway blocked by an SUV, so he continued on to the far side of the garden and rounded the house to the front.
He wondered when it was he would stop running into things that potentially spelled his end. He hid behind a trellis and peered at the little tableau standing there in the light spilling down from over the front door.
Damn it, what next?
He had the distinct feeling his anonymity was about to become a fond memory, and that had everything to do with those three women standing there.
He recognized his American quarry right off and realized he had grossly misjudged the fairness of her face. Quietly beautiful, if her looks could be thus
qualified. What he wanted to do was sit down and paint her. A pity he had absolutely no skill with paintbrush or pencil. He wondered absently if she would sit still long enough for him to learn how to use either.
There was, he noticed with a certainty that surprised him, something slightly fragile about her, something that said she’d had just about all she could take that day. He realized he was reaching for the dirk down the side of his boot only after he realized that he was neither in a time where he could rush out and defend her nor carrying a dirk.
He set aside the alarm he felt over those realizations and forced himself to turn his attentions to the other two women standing there. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any problem identifying either of them.
The wench on his Yank’s right was none other than Sunshine Cameron, countess of Assynt. He didn’t know much about her past what she looked like, but she seemed to keep that ferociously competitive Robert Cameron in check, so Nathaniel supposed she must be fairly strong-willed herself. But that wasn’t what gave him trouble. It was that she was standing across from her sister, Madelyn, the lady of Benmore, wife to one Patrick MacLeod.
The same Patrick MacLeod who happened to be brother to the laird up the way, a man Nathaniel absolutely didn’t want to visit with over a pint down at the pub.
Perhaps he should have added genealogy expert to his résumé. Just trying to keep straight all the people he had to avoid was becoming a part-time job.
“I don’t know how he found me.”
Nathaniel listened to the sisters comfort the woman he could only assume they knew, then it occurred to him what she’d said. Who had found her, and why was that so upsetting? He could certainly understand being stalked, but his reaction was generally annoyance, not fear.
He eavesdropped shamelessly and gathered that she had been discovered by someone she had left behind quite happily in the States, and she was unhappy enough about the turn of events that she was considering changing lodgings. She seemed highly uncomfortable about that as well. Money worries, perhaps, or simply an unwillingness to pack her gear. Who knew?