Kiss of the Highlander (22 page)

“Why does that not surprise me?”

She bit her lip to keep from screaming with frustration. “The future you seemed to think you would be smart enough to believe me, but I’m beginning to realize the future you gave you a whole lot more credit than you deserve.”

“Cease and desist with your insults, lass. You provoke the very laird upon whom your shelter depends.”

God, that was true, she realized. She
was
dependent upon him for her shelter. Although she was a smart woman, she suffered more than a few concerns about how a misplaced physicist might fend for herself in medieval Scotland. What if he
never
believed her? “I know you don’t believe me, but there is something you must do, whether you believe me or not,” she said desperately. “You can’t let Dageus go get your fiancée yet. Please, I’m begging you, postpone the wedding.”

He arched one dark brow. “Och, have out with it, lass. Ask me to marry you. I’ll say nay, then you can hie yourself back whence you came.”

“I am not trying to get you to postpone it so you’ll marry me. I’m telling you because they’re going to
die
if you don’t do something. In my time, you told me Dageus was killed in a clan battle between the Montgomery and the Campbell when returning from the Elliott’s. You also told me that you’d been betrothed, but that she died. I think she must have been killed coming back here with Dageus. According to you, he tried to help the Montgomery because they were outnumbered. If he interferes with that battle, they will both die. And you’d believe me then, wouldn’t you? If I foretold those deaths? Don’t make it cost that much. I saw you grieve—” She broke off, unable to continue.

Too many mixed emotions were crashing over her: disbelief that he wouldn’t believe her, pain that he was engaged, exhaustion from the stress of the entire ordeal.

She cast him a last pleading glance, then darted into her bedchamber before she turned into the emotional equivalent of Jell-O.

After she’d slipped inside and closed the door, Drustan gazed blankly at it. Her plea for his brother had sounded so sincere that he’d gotten chills and suffered an eerie sense of disagreeable familiarity.

Her story couldn’t be true, he assured himself. Many of the old tales hinted that the stones were used as gates to other places—legends never forgotten, passed down through the centuries. She’d like as not heard the gossip and, in her madness, made up a story that held a purely coincidental bit of truth. Had she faked the blood of her virginity? Mayhap she was pregnant and in desperate need of a husband….

Aye, he could travel through the stones, that much of it was true. But everything else she claimed reeked of wrongness.
If
he’d ever gotten trapped in the future he would never have behaved in such ways. He would never have sent a wee lass back through the stones. He couldn’t begin to imagine the situation in which he might take a lass’s maidenhead—he’d vowed never to lie with a virgin unless ’twas in the marriage bed. And he would
never
have instructed her to tell his past self such a story and expected himself to believe it.

Och, thinking all this future self, past self was enough to give a man a pounding head, he thought, massaging his temples.

Nay, were he to get into such a situation, he would have simply come back himself and set things aright. Drustan MacKeltar was infinitely more capable than she’d made him out to be.

There was no point in getting unduly upset about her. His primary problem would be keeping his hands to himself, because addled or no, he desired her fiercely.

Still, he mused, mayhap he should send a full complement of guard with Dageus on the morrow. Mayhap the country wasn’t as peaceful as it appeared from high atop the MacKeltar’s mountain.

Shaking his head, he strode to the boudoir door and slid the bolt from his side, locking her in. Then he grabbed the key from a compartment in the headboard of his bed, left his chamber, and locked her in from the corridor as well.
Nothing
would jeopardize his wedding. Certainly not some wee lass scampering about unattended, spouting nonsense that he’d taken her virginity. She would go nowhere on the estate unaccompanied by either him or his father.

Dageus, on the other hand, he didn’t plan to allow within a stone’s toss of her.

He turned on his heel and stalked down the corridor.

Gwen curled up on the bed and cried. Sobbed, really, with hot tears and little choking noises that gave her a swollen nose and a serious sinus headache.

It was no wonder she hadn’t cried since she was nine. It
hurt
to cry. She hadn’t even cried when her father had threatened that if she didn’t return to Triton Corp. and finish her research, he would never speak to her again. Maybe a few of those tears leaked out now as well.

Confronting Drustan had been more awful than she’d imagined. He was
betrothed
. And by saving Dageus, she was saving Drustan’s future wife. Her overactive brain busily conjured torturous images of Drustan in bed with Anya Elliott. No matter that she didn’t even know what Anya Elliott looked like. It was clear from the way things were going that Anya would be Gwen’s antithesis—tall and slim and leggy. And Drustan would touch and kiss tall leggy Mrs. MacKeltar the way he’d touched and kissed Gwen in the stones.

Gwen squeezed her eyes shut and groaned, but the horrid images were more vivid on the insides of her eyelids. Her eyes snapped open again.
Focus,
she told herself.
There is nothing to be gained by torturing yourself, you have a bigger problem on your hands.

He hadn’t believed her. Not a word she’d said.

How could that be? She’d done what he’d wanted her to do, told him what had happened. She’d believed telling him the whole story would make him see the logic inherent, but she was beginning to realize that sixteenth-century Drustan was not the same man that twenty-first-century Drustan had thought he was. Would the backpack have made that much of a difference? she wondered.

Yes. She could have shown him the cell phone, with its complex electronic workings. She could have shown him the magazine with the modern articles and date, her odd clothing, the waterproof fabric of her pack. She’d had rubber and plastic items in there; materials that even a medieval whatever-he-was—genius?—wouldn’t have been able to dismiss without further consideration.

But the last time she’d seen the damn pack, it was spiraling off into the quantum foam.

Where do you suppose it ended up?
the scientist queried, with childlike wonder.

“Oh, hush, it’s not here, and that’s all that really signifies,” Gwen muttered aloud. She was not in the mood to think about quantum theory at the moment. She had problems, all kinds of problems.

The odds of her identifying the enemy without his help weren’t promising. The estate was vast, and Silvan had told her that, including the guards, there were seven hundred fifty men, women, and children within the walls, and another thousand crofters scattered about. Not to mention the nearby village….It could be anyone: a distant clan, an angry woman, a conquering neighbor. She had at most a month, and as recalcitrant as he was—not even willing to admit he could travel through the stones—she certainly couldn’t expect him to be forthcoming with other information.

Woodenly, she undressed and crawled beneath the covers. Tomorrow was another day. Eventually she’d get through to him somehow, and if she couldn’t, she’d just have to save the MacKeltar clan all by herself.

And then what will you do?
her heart demanded.
Catch the bouquet at his freaking wedding? Hire on as their nanny?

Grrr…

“Well?” Silvan demanded, strolling into the Greathall. “Does she still claim you took her maidenhead?”

Drustan leaned back in his chair. He quaffed the remains of his whisky and rolled the glass between his palms. He’d been gazing into the fire, thinking of his future wife, trying to keep his mind off the temptress in the chamber that adjoined his. As the spirits had slid into his belly, his worries had eased a bit and he’d begun to see dark humor in the situation. “Oh, aye. She even has a reason why I remain blissfully unaware of my breach of honor. ’Twould seem I tupped her in my future.”

Silvan blinked. “Come again?”

“I tupped her five hundred years from now,” Drustan said. “And then I sent her back to save me.” He couldn’t hold it in any longer. He tossed his head back and laughed.

Silvan eyed him strangely. “How does she claim you came to be in the future?”

“I was enchanted,” Drustan said, shoulders shaking with mirth. It really was quite amusing, now that he reflected upon it. Since he wasn’t currently looking at her, he wasn’t worried that he might lose control of his lust and could see the humor more easily.

Silvan stroked his chin, his gaze intent. “So she claims she woke you and you sent her back?”

“Aye. To save me from being enchanted in the first place. She also mumbled some nonsense about you and Dageus being in danger.”

Silvan closed his eyes and rubbed his index finger in the crease between his brows, a thing he did often when thinking deeply. “Drustan, you must keep an open mind. ’Tis not entirely impossible on the face of it,” he said slowly.

Drustan sobered swiftly. “Nay—on the face of it, it’s not,” he agreed. “ ‘Tis once you get into the details that you realize she’s a wee bampot with little grasp on sanity.”

“I admit it’s far-fetched, but—”

“Da, I’m not going to repeat all the nonsense she spouted, but I assure you, the lass’s story is so full of holes that were it a ship, ’twould be kissing the sandy bed of the ocean.”

Silvan frowned consideringly. “I scarce see how it could hurt to take precautions. Mayhap you should pass some time with her. See what else you might learn about her.”

“Aye,” Drustan agreed. “I thought to take her to Balanoch on the morrow, see if anyone recognizes her and can tell us where to find her kin.”

Silvan nodded. “I will bide a wee with her myself, study her for signs of madness.” He cast Drustan a stern look. “I saw the way you looked at her and know that, despite your misgivings, you desire her. If she’s daft as you say, I won’t abide her being taken advantage of. You must keep her out of your bed. You have your future wife to think of.”

“I know,” Drustan snapped, all trace of amusement vanishing.

“We need to rebuild the line, Drustan.”

“I know,” he snapped again.

“Just so you know where your duties lie,” Silvan said mildly. “Not betwixt an addlepate’s thighs.”

“I
know
,” Drustan growled.

“On the other hand, if she weren’t daft—” Silvan began, but stopped and sighed when Drustan stomped from the room.

Silvan sat in pensive silence after his son had gone. Her story was nigh impossible to believe. How was one to countenance someone knocking upon one’s door, claiming to have spent time with one in one’s future?

The mind summarily rejected it—it was too chafing a concept for even a Druid to wrap his mind about. Still, Silvan had swiftly run through a few complex calculations, and the possibility existed. It was a minuscule possibility, but a good Druid knew it was dangerous to ignore
any
possibility.

If her story were true, his son had cared for the lass so much that he’d taken her maidenhead. If her story were true, she knew Drustan had powers beyond most mortal men and had cared for him enough to both give him her virginity and come back to save him.

He wondered how much Gwen Cassidy truly knew about Drustan. He would speak with Nell and have her casually mention a few things, observe the lass’s reaction. Nell was a fine judge of character. He would spend time with her himself as well, not to question her—for words were without merit, lies easy to fabricate—but to study the workings of her mind as he would study an apprentice. Between the two of them, they would discern the truth. Drustan was clearly not demonstrating a levelheaded response toward the lass.

His eldest son could be so stubborn sometimes. After three failed betrothals, he was so blinded by doubts about himself, so hell-bent on wedding, that he was unwilling to entertain anything that might seem to threaten his upcoming nuptials. He was going to marry, and tarry not in the process.