Highlander's Hope: Called by a Highlander Book Two Page 3

  The memory of endless pain and despair flooded her. She could feel it again, her violated, torn flesh, the humiliation, the bottomless exhaustion and desperation. Her body acted before she could think.

  She turned and ran.

  Trees flashed before her eyes, and branches slapped her. She stumbled against roots and pushed against trunks. The air was a bog, slowing her, grabbing her. She turned to look behind her, but no one followed her. The only sounds were her ragged breathing, the chirping of the birds, and the wind rustling the leaves.

  She came to a halt at the sharp edge of a ravine, rocks crumbling under her feet and falling down the slope. She panted and looked around. The MacDougall men were nowhere to be seen.

  Thank God, Mary, and Jesu, it seemed like she was alone. Suddenly, she heard someone moan down in the ravine. Her hand jerked to her shoulder for her bow, but it wasn’t there. She must have been so caught up in her terror she dropped it without realizing.

  She heard the moan again, longer and louder now, and she narrowed her eyes, searching down below for the source of it. Maybe Tamhas or Muir had fallen, or maybe they’d been attacked by the MacDougall spies?

  Someone moved. A broad-shouldered man in clothes the color of fading leaves crawled from the ruins of an ancient tower that most folk avoided. He sat up and held his head like he had a headache or had hit it hard. She didn’t recognize him from the castle. Was he another MacDougall spy? She should just leave before he saw her.

  The man raised his head, and for a moment, Marjorie thought he did look familiar. Not that she recognized his face, but there was something about him, like she knew him from somewhere.

  “Hey!” he cried, wincing as he moved. “I’m pretty hurt, and I don’t think I can climb up. Can you help?”

  Marjorie hesitated. Leaving a man in trouble was cowardly. It had been cowardly to let those two spies go instead of rising up like the warrior she’d been training to be all these years. She just couldn’t do it again. He was injured. How dangerous could he be?

  “Can you call 911, or whatever you guys have here in Scotland?” he said.

  She frowned. She’d heard an accent like his before. His soft Rs and broad consonants sounded like her new sister-in-law, Amy. Also, calling some numbers didn’t make any sense.

  “Ye must have injured yer head,” she said. “Dinna move. I’m coming down.”

  “Don’t. You may hurt yourself—”

  But she began climbing down the slope, carefully balancing on the rocks and stones that crumbled and rolled from under her feet. Once or twice, she almost fell, but she held on to bushes and regained her balance by sheer luck.

  When she was down, she studied the man from closer up. Oh, Jesu and Mary, she hadn’t realized from high above how huge he was. She didn’t think she’d ever seen anyone as muscular and tall—except perhaps Ian. Muscles corded under his wet clothes. He wore broad breeches with pockets, a tight, thin tunic, and a short coat the likes of which she’d never seen before. They were all completely wet. Had he swum in the brook? His brown hair was completely wet and gathered in a ponytail behind his head. His blue eyes were framed with long eyelashes, but there was pain behind them. Like he was carrying the misery of the whole world on his shoulders. Like pain was in his bloodstream.

  And like no one could understand.

  Her gut clenched as the thought reverberated within her like the echo of a voice in a cave.

  “Are ye from around here?” she said.

  “No. I was on my way to a farm nearby and had a bad fall.”

  “The Keir farm?” she said.

  Her maid, Moire, had mentioned she had a cousin that was coming for a visit.

  “Yes, the Keir farm,” he said.

  “Ye must be Moire’s cousin. Sorry, I forgot yer name, although I’m sure she mentioned it.”

  “Konnor,” he said. “But I’m not—”

  A branch snapped somewhere above them, and Marjorie ducked and pulled him behind one of the large boulders. He crawled, wincing but not making a sound.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  “There are MacDougalls nearby,” she whispered.

  “Are you in danger?” Something about his tone was so protective. It was as though one of her brothers asked the question. A warm sense of being safe settled in her chest.

  “Mayhap,” she said and peered from behind the boulder. “Can ye walk?”

  “Unlikely. Can you not just call an ambulance?”

  “A what?”

  His warm eyes shone as he smiled. “I swear, you locals are weird. Totally into your Highland heritage, aren’t you? The costumes, the arrows, the accent…”

  “I dinna ken what ye mean, Konnor. ’Tis ye who appear strange to me. But I wilna leave a friend of my clan in trouble. Come, lean on my shoulder. We have a healer in the castle, and Moire will want to ken ye’ve arrived.”

  She squatted next to him and allowed him to wrap his arm around her shoulder. His scent reached her—something foreign, like the fresh scent of rain, woodsmoke, and something dark and strange. She helped him stand, and the weight of him was heavy but pleasant against her skin. Her chest rose and fell faster, but it was only from the exercise, she told herself. Not because she was affected by this man in any way.

  Because after what Alasdair had done to her, there was way she could be affected by anyone.

  Chapter 3

  Konnor didn’t know how long they limped through the woods. Between the agonizing pain in his ankle, and trying not to crush the beautiful Scotswoman with his weight, time crawled. Every second felt a year long.

  When he’d woken up in the ravine, the rain had stopped. Strangely, there was no sign that a drop had fallen. How long had he been out? The last thing he remembered was the weirdest sensation of falling through the stone, but he was sure that was only a side effect of the concussion. Sìneag had said something about time travel. But the ruins were still ruins, and the ravine and the woods looked exactly the same. Sìneag was still nowhere to be seen.

  Where on earth had this beauty come from? They were out in the middle of the wilderness right after a storm? And why was she completely dry, while his clothes were soaked through? This was all so weird.

  “How far still?” Konnor said. “I must be heavy for you. Not every woman can support a 180-pound male for miles.”

  She frowned, and there was a fleeting expression of confusion on her face. Then she glared up at him, a hardness in her moss-green eyes. Her long, braided hair smelled mysterious, like a fresh herb cocktail mixed with something sweet that he guessed was her own scent.

  “Ye canna climb the slope, so we must take the longer route through the ravine.”

  “All right,” he said. “All right.” He considered asking if she could call someone with a car, but he decided against it. Judging by her clothes—leather pants, a simple linen tunic, and something like a leather coat—and the arrows in a quiver on her back, she didn’t look like someone who carried a mobile phone around.

  “Were you on a hunt?” He said it as a joke to lighten up the mood. He imagined she probably did archery as a hobby and had been practicing nearby. Or maybe there was a renaissance fair or something.

  “Aye.”

  “How did it go?”

  “As ye see, I caught someone.”

  He chuckled. “Well, thanks for not shooting me.”

  “I dinna shoot the fallen.”

  A code of honor? Had she really been out hunting? “You have the arrows. Where’s the bow?”

  She shot him a sideways glance and raised her chin. “I dropped it.”

  “Why didn’t you pick it up?”

  She bent forward just a tad to correct the position of his arm over her shoulder and then sped up a little.

  “None of yer concern.”

  Hmm. Mysterious all right.

  “Is it like a hobby?” he asked. “I mean, archery? I don’t know anyone who does it.”

  “A what?” she said. “Hobby? Din
na ken what that is, but I hunt to feed my people.”

  She was so serious. Was she in some sort of closed community, like the Amish, but in Scotland?

  “Well, that’s very noble of you,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  “Marjorie. Yours?”

  Marjorie… A shiver went through him. That was the name Sìneag had said.

  “Konnor…” he said automatically. Was this some kind of a joke? A setup?

  She stopped behind a bush large enough to hide them both and carefully glanced through the branches. Ahead of them, the trees tapered off, and the small brook that flowed down the length of the ravine went into the loch. A castle stood on the shore, not a big one, though it was hard to see from this distance. Sheep grazed in the meadow before it, and the smell of dung reached Konnor’s nose.

  The surprising thing was that the castle wasn’t a ruin. Actually, it looked quite new. Smoke rose from the chimneys in the towers and from somewhere behind the wall. Scotland was full of castles. He’d seen a couple of ruins during his trip with Andy. But this one… It could be Glenkeld, the closest castle he’d seen on the map. But that was marked as a ruin, so on second thought, this must be something else.

  “Let us go,” Marjorie said. “The way is clear.”

  Clear? Was she afraid of someone? Konnor scanned their surroundings, looking for any sudden movements, for armed men, for a shadow lurking behind the trees, for guards or snipers in the castle, for any patch of light reflected off a weapon.

  Nothing.

  “Are you in danger?” he said when she tugged him to continue walking.

  “Aye,” she said, and his gut tightened. “I think we mayhap be. I just saw MacDougall spies talking about a siege.”

  He blinked. Was he hallucinating again? “A siege? What siege?”

  “The siege of Glenkeld, of course,” she said.

  Who would besiege a castle these days, unless they were role-playing? There were groups of people who liked medieval fairs and playing elf and dwarf battles and such… Maybe she was part of something like that?

  All that reminded him of his childhood. As a boy, he’d read Lord of the Rings and other fantasy and sci-fi novels. Feeling helpless against his stepfather, Jerry, Konnor had admired the characters who rose against evil and violence. Perhaps he’d been looking for strength for himself. But in real life, evil won. Jerry had mocked him for what he liked to read, and when Konnor didn’t stop, his stepfather beat it out of him.

  They walked towards the castle now, and he looked at it with astonishment as they approached. It was a simple construction, four walls connected by four towers on the corners. One of them was round and looked bigger and older than the others. The rest were smaller and square. Two smaller towers surrounded a massive wooden gate that stood closed.

  “I thought Glenkeld was a ruin. Do you live here?”

  “Aye. ’Tis my clan’s seat. Ever since the bloody MacDougalls took Innis Chonnel after Alasdair MacDougall—” Her voice shook as she said the name, and she cut herself off. Something dark crossed her face, and he saw a bottomless pain dwelling in the depths of her eyes. He looked away. He knew that kind of pain all too well. But it wasn’t his business. He wouldn’t want anyone asking him about his. He shouldn’t meddle in her affairs, and he’d be gone soon anyway.

  Konnor looked back to the castle as they approached it. Now that they were a few feet away, he could see through the slit windows that someone was moving on the timber gallery built on top of the rampart. He’d learned that was what they were called when he and the guys had visited an old castle.

  The gate opened slowly. A white-haired man in a heavy, quilted coat stood in the opening. A sword was sheathed on his belt. Konnor cocked his head, studying the man’s costume. Something about the posture of the man said he wasn’t kidding, and the Marine in Konnor tensed.

  “Mistress, why are ye without Tamhas and Muir?” the man asked, one hand on his sword. “And who is this?”

  “’Tis Konnor, Moire’s cousin. He needs Isbeil. He’s hurt his leg. Aren’t Tamhas and Muir back?”

  “Nae.”

  “Damn it. They’re probably looking for me.”

  As they walked into the courtyard of the castle, four men tugged at the heavy gates to close them, and a weight settled on Konnor’s chest when they closed with a thud. The inner courtyard was a perfect square with four towers in the corners, probably about 160 feet in width and length.

  There were several buildings in the courtyard. A large, rectangular stone building with a tall, thatched roof and small windows with no glass, a wooden building a man led a horse out of, and two small wooden houses with thatched rooves. The aromatic scents of soup and fermented hops reached him. Wow, this was a proper self-sustained community.

  Most of the people in the courtyard were men wearing baggy leggings and long, belted tunics. They had bushy beards and shaggy hair and carried firewood, sacks on their shoulders, baskets with vegetables and bread. Their feet kicked up dust from the dirt-packed courtyard as they walked, and chickens and geese ran around cackling and squawking.

  Had he walked into the past? How could this place even exist? Were they all so invested in their role-playing that they really wanted to live like it was the Middle Ages? If this community was what Sìneag had meant by time travel, she’d certainly nailed it.

  “I need to tell ye something, Malcolm.” Marjorie looked around and leaned closer to the white-haired man. “I heard MacDougall spies in the woods. They snuck around the castle and were talking about a siege.”

  Malcolm’s face fell, and he was speechless for a moment. Was that panic showing on his face? “Colin…” His bright eyes flashed, and his nostrils flared. “Are ye sure, lass?” he said finally.

  “Aye. Very sure. They’re coming. They ken the weakness of the northern wall. But they dinna ken I heard them.”

  “Good.” He glanced at Konnor and then back at her. “Let me take over. Ye must be exhausted carrying a huge man like him.”

  Marjorie let go of Konnor, and Malcolm took her place supporting him. Disappointment ran through him at the loss of her strong shoulder under his arm and the soft curve of her breast beside his chest. He searched her face, but she was looking at Malcolm.

  “Right,” she said, then she quickly glanced at Konnor and nodded. “Get better. Put him in the chamber next to mine, Malcolm. ’Tis the best one for a guest, especially a sick one.”

  “Aye, mistress,” Malcolm said.

  He turned with Konnor to enter the big, round tower.

  “Wait!” Konnor said. “Can I use your phone? I need to call someone.”

  He needed to call the Keir farm and let them know he was running late. Maybe Andy was already there, and if not, he needed to ask them to go and find his friend so Andy didn’t spend time out there looking for him. Marjorie and Malcolm studied him as though he’d just spoken Mandarin. They wore the same expression Sìneag had.

  “A phone?” Marjorie said. “What’s a phone?”

  Konnor chuckled. They really were deep into role-playing. The medieval costume certainly suited Marjorie. The colors highlighted her soft, glowing skin, beautiful without a trace of makeup. She had slightly slanted eyes, full lips, and shiny, dark hair.

  He might actually enjoy this, but he did want to call his mom and let his friend know he was okay. “Right. Funny. What’s a phone? So you guys don’t have one in a castle like this?”

  “Nae.”

  “Damn. Where is the nearest one?”

  “I dinna think I’ve ever heard of one,” Marjorie said. “Sorry, Konnor. Mayhap ye hit yer head?”

  She was mocking him, and Konnor was slowly losing his patience. “Come on, guys. Do you have a safeword or something for when you want to stop playing in the Middle Ages? If you do, I’d like to use it now. I really do need to use a phone. I have people who might worry about me.”

  Marjorie looked confused. “What nonsense are you talking about?”

  “Aye, lad,”
Malcolm said.

  Konnor’s fists clenched and unclenched. He hated being at the mercy of complete strangers. “I can’t figure you guys out. Are you some kind of cult?”

  Marjorie and Malcolm exchanged glances. “A cult?”

  “Or neo-pagans?”

  “We’re Christians.”

  “Okay. Maybe very, very orthodox then, if you’re refusing to use modern technology?”

  “Malcolm, just take him away before he says something else and I decide to keep him locked up. ’Tis a good thing ye’re Moire’s cousin. If ye were a stranger, ye’d be locked in a cellar by now.”

  Konnor clenched his lips tightly together. Stubborn folks. He didn’t understand why she was pretending as though she didn’t know what he was talking about. But something told him not to push anymore. If he wanted her help, at least any medical help, he probably should let it go for now. Whoever this Moire was, once she announced she’d never seen him before, he’d be in trouble.

  “Aye,” Malcolm said, and the two of them limped through the dusty courtyard, into the tower, and up a narrow, round flight of stairs.

  They passed through two massive wooden doors with thick and rough iron hardware and went up another flight of stairs. Malcolm led him through a door into a small room with a single wooden bed and a fireplace. A slit window let in some light and fresh air. A chest stood by the wall and an unlit torch was placed in a sconce above it. That was it. No electrical outlets. No lamps. No glass on the window.

  Malcolm helped Konnor to the bed and let him sit. He leaned over him with a threating expression on his face, and although Konnor wasn’t afraid of the man, uneasiness settled in his stomach. Malcolm’s bushy, white eyebrows knit together, and his blue eyes flashed. “Look, lad, I’m the constable of this castle, so ye better watch yerself. I dinna ken what ye’re playing at, but if ye hurt our mistress, or even look at her funny, I will cut off yer ballocks and serve ye them for dinner. Understood?”

  Konnor returned the antagonistic stare. “I don’t have any intention of hurting anyone. Especially not your mistress.”