All The Time You Need (13 page)

The barber’s words rang out in a room filled with an undercurrent of muted conversations. The situation had gone on for far too long.

“No,” Alex said, annoyance bubbling up in his chest. “I would remind you once again, Master Montague, that Mistress Shaw is as much a guest at Castle Dunellen as you yerself are.”

Across from him, the barber fumed, obviously wrestling with his next action. A smile lifted his lips as he appeared to have made up his mind.

“In that case, my good laird, you have a choice to make.” Montague crossed his arms in front of him, his smile growing, displaying the confidence he had in what he was about to do. “I am a man of reputation and skill, whose services are sought far and wide. I will not be treated in this disgraceful manner. Not by a madwoman, not by anyone. Either she goes or I go. The decision is yers.”

Alex shoved down an irrational desire to bury his fist in the barber’s face as he pushed back his own chair to stand. He should be thanking the man instead of visualizing ways to remove the snide smile the barber wore. After all, thanks to Montague’s ultimatum, the opportunity he had wished for was waiting for him as if presented on a platter.

A hush fell over the room as Alex raised one hand, waiting to speak until all eyes in the great hall turned in his direction.

“Then my choice is an easy one, Master Montague,” he said at last. “When you’ve finished yer meal, yer to pack yer belongings and take yer leave of Castle Dunellen. Yer services are no longer required. From this point forward, Mistress Shaw will be caring for my father.”

“What?” Montague yelled. “You canna do this. I set aside all my work and regular patients to come here.”

“And now you can pick it all up again when you return to wherever you came from,” Alex said. “It was you who insisted that I choose, and so I have. I have spoken my choice to all present, and my word is final. There will be no further discussion on the matter. From this point forward, Mistress Shaw will see to my father’s care.”

* * *

Annie nearly choked on the bite she’d just taken, and had to force herself to swallow.
She
was to care for the old man? That wasn’t at all what she’d wanted. She’d just been trying to get them to recognize that someone needed to step up and stop what was happening to him.

“I’m no doctor,” she said. “I’m not even qualified to work the front desk in a doctor’s office.”

Beside her, Lissa laid down the bread in her hand and turned to meet Annie’s eyes. “And yet you kenned enough to speak up about what was being done was wrong, aye? You’ll be fine. I’ll bring Aggie to help you. She’s been healing all of us since before my Da was born. I have faith in you, Annie Shaw. Faith in the wonders you have learned in yer own time. This must be the reason why the Fae sent you to us now. To save our father.”

Annie couldn’t be responsible for the health of Lissa’s father. She needed to go home. Not to mention, the idea of having the old man’s life in her hands was more intimidating than anything she’d ever encountered.

Still, she’d provoked this with her insistence that the person in charge of caring for him was incompetent. She’d been right in doing that, she had no doubt. Anything she knew about the most basic medicine in the world had to be more than that barber knew. Any care she gave him had to be better than allowing him to be bled dry and starved to death.

She would do it. At least until she could find a way to go home, she would. Even a few days of proper nutrition and not having his blood drawn should allow him to show some improvement.

“Okay, then,” she said. “If I’m doing this, our first step should be to start with his diet.”

She needed to find foods that he could have that would begin to build his strength. Foods suitable for a man in his weakened condition, but nutritious enough to help him heal.

“I’m sure Cook will be more than happy to prepare anything you ask of her,” Lissa assured. “I’ll take you to her as soon as we finish here.”

“I’ll also want a full accounting of what happened to him that led him to this condition.” She needed to understand as much as she could about what she was fighting against if she was to have any hope of actually helping the old man.

“And so you shall have it,” Alex said. “Whatever you need to care for my father, you’ve but to ask and I will see that it is given to you.”

“And what of the silver Morgan has already given to the barber?” the young man sitting next to Morgan asked, his eyes fixed on the door Montague had stormed through only seconds earlier.

“The water has dried on that account, Aiden,” Alex answered, shaking his head. “Now we have but to cut our losses and pray that father improves under the care of our newest guest and kinswoman.”

Any thought of planning the auld laird’s care evaporated when Annie heard the name Alex used.

“You’re Aiden?” She fixed her gaze on the man across the table and waited for his confirming nod before she spoke again, not quite sure how to approach what she really wanted to know. “Have you ever…”

Her words trailed off as she tried to come up with something other than to ask if he was Ellen Shaw’s lover. He was so young, barely out of his teens. It felt beyond foolish to assume that he could be the same Aiden who had stolen her grandmother’s heart.

“Have I ever what?” Aiden asked, his irritation clear. “Have you some reason now to drive me from the table as you’ve driven away our barber?”

Direct, it would have to be.

“Have you ever met a woman named Ellen? A woman who might have been particularly, I don’t know…special to you?”

“I know of no one named Ellen,” Aiden said, lifting his tankard to his mouth.

“Unless she means Grandda’s Ellen,” the young man sitting next to him offered.

“Doona be ridiculous, Cullen,” Aiden said. “It’s no’ likely Mistress Shaw has heard the likes of our grandda’s preposterous stories.”

“No?” Lissa asked, a smile playing on her lips. “Perhaps not Grandda’s version, but Ellen’s maybe?”

From his spot farther down the table, Alex spoke up. “Why do you ask my brother about this woman? Is she someone you’ve come here to find?”

“In a way,” Annie answered, knowing how ridiculous any explanation she attempted would sound.

But could it be any more ridiculous than finding herself stuck seven hundred years in the past? Not likely.

“Go on,” Alex encouraged, his full attention turned in her direction. “In what way?”

“Ellen is—” Annie paused, a sense of loss still tugging at her heart as she acknowledged what she could not change. “Ellen was my grandmother.”

“Was? And yet you claim to seek her here?” Alex asked. “Explain yerself.”

“My grandmother died a few months ago. I’m not looking for her, exactly. I’m looking for answers to a puzzle I stumbled into when I came to claim the cottage she left to me. I’m looking for a man named Aiden who, apparently, was very important to her.”

So important that for every day of her life she’d worn the necklace he’d given her. So important that she’d told only her most trusted friend about him. So important that, for more than four decades, she’d made an annual pilgrimage to the spot they’d shared.

“You see, Alex?” Lissa asked, a broad smile lifting the corners of her mouth. “I told you as much, did I no’? It’s exactly as Grandda always told us.”

“This is not a discussion for us to have here and now, sister,” Alex said, his eyes flickering to the people in the great hall before returning to his sister. “There is naught to be gained in dragging out the eccentricities of our grandfather’s later years to sully his memory in front of all who join us here. I’ll no’ have any of it.”

As if to emphasize his words, he rose from his chair and strode from the hall.

Annie watched the exchange between the siblings, utterly confused as to how the conversation had hopped from her civilly answering questions about her grandmother to Alex’s sudden departure. When she turned to ask Lissa what had just happened, she found the other woman staring at her, still grinning.

“I feel like I missed something just then. Something big. Why did your brother leave like that? Why is he angry?”

Lissa shrugged, obviously not concerned about Alex’s response to her. “He left because he knew I was right, likely enough. He’s no’ angry so much as unsettled. He dinna want me to raise the subject of the Fae in front of many here in the hall who might view the subject with fear and mistrust.”

“The Fae?” If nothing else, her new friend definitely had a fixation on these mythical creatures. She really must have missed something that someone said. “I didn’t hear anything in our conversation about—”

“It’s what the whole of the conversation was about, lass. Yer story of hunting for yer grandmother’s lover and mistaking our brother for the one you sought, simply because of his name. Do you not see the connection?”

“I never said anything about the Aiden that I was looking for being my grandmother’s lover.”

Not that she hadn’t allowed herself to consider it, especially after she realized the importance of the necklace and how secretive Syrie had been about the man. The hearts carved in stone had done their part to reinforce the suspicion, too. But somehow, saying it out loud, naming them as lovers, felt almost like an insult to Nana Ellen’s memory.

“Not in so many words, perhaps.” Lissa chuckled and leaned her head closer to Annie, lowering her voice. “Our brother Aiden was named for our grandfather. Throughout Grandda’s life, he told the story of a beautiful woman the Fae had sent to him for a very short time when he’d first come to claim this land. A woman named Ellen, the love of his life, who the Fae then took from him as mysteriously as they had brought her to him in the first place. It was she for whom he named the castle in which we sit at this very moment. Castle Dunellen. The castle at Ellen’s hill. While my brothers saw Grandda’s stories as the mere fancy of an old man’s mind, I heard the truth in his stories. I believed every word he ever told us was true because
he
believed every word he told us was true. And now, obviously, I was the one who was right all along. Yer being here proves it, does it no’?”

As if an elephant had suddenly settled on her chest, Annie found it hard to breathe. Not only was she lost seven hundred years in the past, but her grandmother had been here at some point, too. Ellen had been here as a young woman and had returned to live out her life in her own time. That could mean only one thing.

“I
can
go home,” she whispered.

There had to be a way for her to return to the place and time where she belonged. She knew it now for a fact. If her grandmother had made this trip before her and returned, there had to be a way back. All she had to do was to find it.

Chapter 8

“Thank you for believing me, Lissa. Thank you for being my friend.” Annie smiled at the woman sitting next to her on the hearth. “You can’t imagine how much it means to me. There are moments when it’s only your friendship and the thought of finding my way home again that keep me going.”

Lissa looked up from her needlework to return Annie’s smile. “You’ve no need to thank me. The truth is easy enough to believe if you want to.” She dropped her task to her lap and, with her elbows braced against her knees, she rested her chin in her hands as she leaned forward. “But answer for me this, my friend. You told me that yer family has arranged for you to marry a man you’ve no great love for, and running from that marriage was why you ended up here. So, why then are you so anxious to return to yer own time? Do we make you so unhappy here as to drive you back into the arms of the man yer supposed to wed?”

“No!” Annie exclaimed, realizing what an ungrateful whiner she must sound like to her new friend.

Over the past weeks the people in this castle had done nothing but make her feel welcome. Well, most of the people. Their laird, Alex, had avoided her as if she carried some horrible disease. The few times they’d ended up in the same room, he’d almost immediately excused himself.

Not that she minded his leaving whenever she entered a room. His presence always unsettled her in ways she couldn’t begin to explain and didn’t want to explore. He made her feel…well, that was the problem, exactly. He made her
feel
. His voice, his glance, everything about him made her feel things. Things like heat simmering along her skin, emotions she could barely understand, and a trembling deep inside. Things. Physically unsettling things
.

Even thinking about him like this was enough to send a shiver down her spine.

“Then why are you so determined to find yer way back if no’ for the man you doona love?”

Annie breathed in carefully, deeply, struggling to rid herself of Alex’s image hovering in her mind, his dark eyes fixed on her, as they always were when she was around him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never said I didn’t love Peter.”

“No’ with yer words, perhaps,” Lissa answered. “But you told me in so many other ways. You never speak of the man unless yer asked a specific question about him. And when you do answer, there’s no longing in yer voice, no’ even as much as I hear when you speak of the bathing rooms in yer own time with their special rolls of lovely, soft paper. Most of all, I’ve yet to see a single tear shed for yer missing of this Peter of yers. None of that strikes me as the actions of a woman in love.”