Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
It had been a long time since Logan had used the dungeons, and it showed. The cells were covered in a thick layer of slimy dirt, the reek of mold and rot hitting his nostrils before he’d even opened the main door to the dungeons.
They had dispensed with a gaoler several years prior and had never had any reason to reinstate one, but he realized he should, at least, have had someone clean out the filthy cells.
Grabbing a rickety, three-legged stool as he passed it, he set it in the center of the first cell he came to and promptly dropped the mysterious woman onto it. He was furious and deeply concerned, but he could not very well make her sit in the muck.
“Who sent ye here?” he growled, pacing back and forth in front of her. “Where did ye come from, eh? And how, pray tell, did ye get here? As ye can tell, ye’re nae wet, so ye dinnae swim, and ye werenae washed up, but nor have any boats been sighted, so explain yerself!”
Adeline looked up at him, trembling from head to toe, gripping the edge of the stool like it might save her. “What happened?”
“Eh?”
“What happened?” she repeated in that peculiar accent, unlike any he had ever heard before. It was mellow and musical, less clipped and precise than the English, not as fast or melodic as the Irish, making him wonder if she hailed from Wales. “You were… so nice to me a moment ago, and now… you’re throwing me in this place. What… did I do wrong?”
Her teeth chattered, the dungeons as cold as an ice house.
“Are ye a Catholic?” he shot back.
She raised an eyebrow. “I’m not anything. I’m not religious.”
“If ye’re nae Catholic, ye wouldnae have dared to mention Christmas,” he pointed out, eyeing her closely, searching for signs of deceit. “Did ye hit yer head so hard that ye forgot the Reformation?”
She looked bewildered. “I don’t know what the Reformation is, but I swear I’m not Catholic. Not that you should be throwing people in prison cells for being Catholic. What do you think this is, the Middle Ages? I mean, I know you’re probably trying to stay in character or whatever, but this is harassment.”
He felt as bewildered as she looked, only understanding half of what she was saying.
“It’s the year of our Lord, 1705, and you ken well enough the penalty for being Catholic in Scotland. Even if ye’re Welsh, ye’d ken that, so daenae pretend ye daenae ken. I willnae believe ye.”
“Excuse me?” Adeline’s eyes widened, her body freezing up. “What year did you say it was?”
“1705,” he repeated, suddenly uncertain of her behavior.
How hard would a person have to hit their head in order to forget the year? He had seen a man clubbed in the head by his wife forget that they were married, but everyone suspected that one had everything to do with the other, and he had been pretending all these years.
Then again, there was a story of a young woman who had been struck in the forehead by a thick bough while riding at speed, and she had forgotten her entire family for almost a year. Even now, though some memories had returned, there were people she could not recognize as old friends.
Adeline began to shake her head, starting slowly, growing more desperate with every moment. Her eyes squeezed shut, her knuckles whitening on the stool, a strange, keening sound emerging from her bloodless lips.
“That can’t be true,” she hissed, her movements unsettling. “You’re lying. This is a set-up, and you really should learn when a joke is over. It’s not funny anymore. Get Emma in here, right now.”
“Emma who?”
“Emma Wickes. My best friend. Get her in here before I lose my damn mind!”
He blinked in surprise at her sharp curse. It was not what he would have expected from a woman, but then she was not like any woman he had ever encountered. She was… some sort of warrioress who wandered the Earth in bearskins, talking in riddles.
If she isnae a Catholic, then…
He considered Theo’s suspicions once again and quickly shook them away. This woman had likely been trained to withstand interrogation, that was all.
“I daenae ken a lass by that name,” Logan told her. “And this is nay jest, lass. This is a serious crime. If ye’re a Catholic, spreadin’ the word of Christmas, then ye’re in dire trouble.”
“What have you got against Christmas? It’s me who should hate it, not you,” she retorted curtly. “And I’m not a Catholic!”
“Then what are ye?”
She glared at him, shivering violently. “I’m a doctor. I live in New Jersey. I need immediate medical assistance because, clearly, I’m having some sort of mental breakdown. Either that, or you’re not real, and I’m in a hospital room, deep in a coma. Or I’m still knocked out on my living room floor, lucid dreaming. Heck, maybe this is what happens before you die—you make believe you’re in some… castle, being thrown into a dungeon by a hot man in plaid.” Her eyes widened. “Crap, that’s it! This is a dream. I was watching some stupid Christmas romcom about a man in plaid, and here you are. This is just my subconscious!”
She jumped up and put her palms on his chest, running them across the hard muscle, squeezing his arms, trailing her fingertips down the ridges of his abdomen. All the while, he blinked down at her, too astonished to move.
He could not remember the last time he had been touched like that, and though he knew he should force her back down onto the rickety stool, his body responded, warmed by her unexpected caresses.
“You’re exactly what I’d dream of,” she said, lightly slapping her hands against his cheeks, cradling his face. “I mean, come on, look at you! You don’t exist in the real world! No man looks like that in real life!”
Coming to his senses with the slight sting of her palms, Logan slowly grasped her wrists, pulling her hands away from his face. “I exist, Miss Adeline,” he growled. “And ye shouldnae touch me.”
His chest burned where she had put her hands on him, sending a bolt of concern through his heart, for if Theo was right, then he had just allowed a witch to touch him.
And that tingling sensation, making his skin run hot with a feverish heat, felt alarming like a spell being woven throughout his veins, cursing him.
I allowed her to trick me .
“I’ve read about hallucinations and lucid dreaming feeling ridiculously real,” she went on, “but if I’m in a coma or unconscious, I can’t get to my textbooks. I wonder if the universe thought I needed a Christmas gift so bad that they made me knock myself out to get it.”
She laughed that strange, uneasy laugh that she had mustered back in Moira’s bedchamber.
“What year do ye think it is?” Logan asked directly, still gripping her wrists.
She did not try to fight him, her eyes—the color of the headland on an autumn morning, green and golden—fixed on his.
“It’s 2023,” she replied calmly. “And pretty as you are, I’m really hoping I’m going to wake up in a minute. Spending Christmas alone is better than spending Christmas in a hospital bed, or worse.”
She sounded so certain, her expression so earnest, that the impossibility of what she was saying was delayed for several minutes.
Instead of telling her that she was quite mad and clearly suffering from injuries he had not yet inspected, he asked, “And where do ye think ye are?”
“I’m in New Jersey, America. I got angry at my snow globe and shook it so hard that it went flying. It smashed to pieces, and I was trying to pick up those pieces when the lights went out, and I… collapsed,” she explained, her words so peculiar and unknown that it delayed common sense even longer.
“I havenae heard of America. Where is it?”
She pointed toward the slick, grimy wall. “If you’re saying that I’m in Scotland, then you’d have to sail past Ireland, and then all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. That’s where I’m from.”
“From the Colonies? Ye sailed all that way? Is that how ye came to be washed up on the shore?” He stared at her in abject disbelief.
“I haven’t sailed anywhere. I’m still in my apartment, and this is a dream,” she insisted, pulling slightly against the grip of his hands.
He loosened his hold a little. “It’s nae a dream, lass. Ye’re here, same as I am.” He frowned. “Did ye get that bearskin from… America?”
“This?” She laughed and yanked her hand free, tugging at a little rectangle of black fabric.
She pulled apart the tiny black teeth that held both sides of the bearskin closed, all the way to the lowest part of her stomach. Logan watched, unable to look away, as she slid her arms out of the bearskin and let the whole thing fall.
It skimmed down her hips, her thighs, her calves, pooling at her feet. But he was no longer observing the bearskin, his eyes drawn to her slender figure, all but naked in front of him. There was a layer of some kind of gray material he was unfamiliar with, so thin that it was like a second skin on her lean, breathtaking body.
He could see everything.
His breath caught in his throat, his gaze admiring full, shapely breasts, two pert nipples poking through the second skin.
And with the shape of her, his eyes had no choice but to follow the teasing lines of her curves, taking in the hourglass curve of her waist and jutting hips, before committing the firm, lean muscles of her thighs to memory… and the faintest hint of what lay between them.
She’s bewitchin’ ye! his common sense boomed in his head, snapping his eyes back up to her face, but not before they had savored the elegant curve of her neck, and the slim lines of her arms.
Here was a woman who had clearly worked hard throughout her life, for ladies of good fortune and station did not have her lean, defined physiques, showing their wealth on their bodies, highlighting their rounder curves with bustles and padding. Yet, he had never seen a figure more beautiful, more tempting, more… bewildering.
Why had she stripped bare in front of him?
“It’s a onesie,” she explained, picking up the fallen bearskin. “It’s made of polyester, not an actual panda.”
He shook his head. “None of those words make any sense to me.”
“That’s because I’m from 2023, and you’re from 1705,” she replied. “And you can stop staring at me like that. This is a yoga jumpsuit. It’s comfy, not something that gives you the right to ogle me.”
He immediately averted his gaze. “Are ye a selkie? Is that yer sealskin?”
“No, I’m a woman who isn’t in her own time!” Adeline replied vehemently. “I’m a woman with a head injury, who has dreamed you up!”
He swallowed thickly, his mind still raging with the image of her standing so bare in front of him. “Are ye a witch, then?”
“Read my lips,” she shot back, though he did not turn to look at her. “I am Adeline Clark, twenty-six years old, a doctor from New Jersey, and I am in the middle of a medical emergency. I’m not a witch, not a selkie, not any kind of Scottish creature you can think of—which, of course, you can’t, because you’re not real, and my knowledge of Scottish myths and folklore only stretches so far. You’re a figment of my imagination, conjured by a mix of bad TV, too much wine, me thinking about my sister, and some kind of trauma to the brain.”
Logan gathered his thoughts, pushing down the sensation that still prickled in his veins, and finally turned to look back at her, concentrating solely on her striking eyes. If he glanced any lower, he would lose control of his common sense once more, bewitched a second time.
“It appears ye’ve been instructed to bamboozle me, so ye can weasel yer way into me keep,” he said evenly, though his heart thundered wildly, urging him to take a peek downward. Just one. “It willnae work, Miss Adeline. When ye talk a bit of madness, it’s easy to be tricked, but when ye talk too much madness, it circles back around to obvious deceit. So, I suggest ye make yerself comfortable here, and we’ll see if ye’re nae more willin’ to tell me the truth in the mornin’.”
He stepped back through the open door of the cell and closed it behind him, turning the rusty key in the rustier lock with a squeal of metal on metal. The key stuck for a moment as he tried to pull it out, but it came away soon enough.
“Fine, leave me in here,” Adeline replied with a shrug, pulling her peculiar bearskin—or “panda,” as she had called it—back over her astonishing body. “Come morning, I’ll be waking up with a hangover, where I belong. At worst, I’ll be waking up to a hospital breakfast. Either way, thanks for the Christmas gift of feeling some rock-hard abs!”
She shook her head, mumbling, “Just when I thought my life couldn’t get any more pathetic, I go and conjure up a Scotsman in a kilt while suffering a catastrophic brain hemorrhage or something. Hey, if I die, at least I’ll die happy.”
Utterly confused, Logan walked away, wondering what in heaven’s name he had willingly carried into his keep. And as he walked, he thought of her curves again, growing evermore certain that she was a witch, and she had just cast a spell on him.