Chapter 20
Madelyn
dressed in jeans and her warmest sweater, put on socks and her boots, then pulled on Jane’s coat.
She went downstairs and found a note on the table telling her to make herself at home.
It would seem that Jane, Ian, and the kids had gone to town for a couple of hours.
Patrick had gone back to London sometime during the night to finish up his baby-sitting job.
And there she was, all alone with no one to talk to.
She was tempted to spend the day at home exploring the possibilities of that exquisite violin Patrick had bought her in London—and what in the world had possessed him to do that, she wondered—but she had questions that were simply burning a hole in her brain.
Questions about Patrick that Patrick hadn’t seemed too eager to answer.
Questions she knew exactly who would answer.
She made sure her map was in her pocket—not because she was afraid of the red dots, but because she wanted to be able to get herself back home—then made herself a quick but substantial meal of oatmeal. She would need her strength. She had the feeling it was going to be a doozy of a day.
She took the key Jane had left her and locked up behind her. Maybe they all left their houses open and relied on ghosts to guard them, but she was a guest and thankfully not acquainted with the specter alarm system. She would have to content herself with a key in the lock.
It took her almost an hour to reach her destination, and by that time she was hot, tired, and wishing she’d learned to ride at Girl Scout camp so she could have made use of something from Ian’s ample stables.
She put her hands in her pockets and walked down a familiar path under the eaves of the forest. There, just before her, still sat that humble little house that tilted to one side and was covered with all sorts of foresty growth.
Light spilled out from paned windows that had to have been centuries old.
She scanned the surroundings for any kind of spell-casting woodland sprites, but found none.
Roddy’s warning about Highland magic came back to her, but she pointedly ignored it.
Moraig’s entire existence smacked of Highland magic, and given that she fully intended to delve into some of it, there was no point in trying to avoid it.
The door opened as she approached.
Apparently, she was expected.
“Good morning, Mother,” she said in Gaelic.
Moraig laughed delightedly.
All right, so it was more of a cackle than a laugh. Madelyn was determined to remain rational. Moraig was, environment and wild, flyaway white hair aside, not a witch.
“Is that all ye know?” Moraig asked.
“So far.”
“Ye should learn more,” Moraig said. “It would serve ye well.”
How, by impressing her father? By allowing her to eavesdrop on Patrick and Ian? By garnering her better service in the local pub? Tempting all three, but probably not worth the effort in the end.
“All in good time, my gel. All in good time,” Moraig said. “Come in. Sit. There is much to discuss.”
Bingo
, Madelyn thought. This was why she’d come.
She imagined Moraig might know as much as anyone else, and, more importantly, be more inclined than others to spill the beans.
Patrick tended to give her a few vague answers, then attempt to distract her with more shopping.
She was accumulating a great wardrobe, but not many reliable facts.
She hopped right into Moraig’s house and made herself comfortable on a stool near the fire. She happily accepted a cup of tea and didn’t ask any questions about its origin, or the contents of the pot hanging over the fire.
It might be lunch.
Moraig gave her stew a final stir, then turned and sat down on a stool across from Madelyn.
“So,” she said with a sly smile, “ye’ve come for a wee chat, have ye?”
“Yes,” Madelyn replied promptly. “And as little of that wee business as possible.”
Moraig rubbed her gnarled hands together. “And what is it ye’d be knowing, lass?”
“More of what you told me last time when I was too distracted to pay attention. You were trying to tell me a few things about Patrick. . . .” She trailed off meaningfully.
“Aye, I was.”
“Things I should probably know.”
“Aye, that as well.”
Madelyn tried to look as casual as possible. “Something about cattle raids and enemies. I think the pain of my tailbone distracted me from several important details divulged in that conversation.”
“Gel, ye’ve a silver tongue worthy of any laird’s bard, but it won’t serve ye here.”
Madelyn waited. When Moraig didn’t immediately begin to fill in those missing details for her, she wondered what she was supposed to do to pry answers from the old woman. Tap dance? Offer to chop wood? She waited for several uncomfortable moments, then decided just to get the pain over with.
“Then what would serve me here?” she asked.
“Honesty.”
Madelyn smiled in appreciation of a worthy opponent. “I’m just curious.”
“And what motivates yer curiosity, lass?”
Madelyn took a deep breath. “I’m beginning to care for him.”
Oh, who was she kidding. She was already knee-deep in a stream of the most ridiculous of romantic feelings for him without a hip-wader in sight.
She was in trouble.
She took a deep breath. “I’m not sure how he feels, of course, and not that it matters, probably. I have a life to go home and try to resurrect—”
“Yer life there will keep.”
But her patience and sanity might not. Madelyn wished, briefly, that she had come bearing gifts, like Godiva or a nice Kate Spade purse. Surely Moraig needed something to collect her herbs in. Did Prada make herb-carrying trugs? Too late to wonder now.
“Moraig,” she said, leaning closer, “I really need to know some things.”
“And what would ye do with the answers, if ye had them, gel?”
Madelyn opened her mouth to blurt out a meaningless reply, then stopped herself. If she had details about Patrick’s life, what would she do with them? She looked at the old woman. “Well, I wouldn’t use them for gain.”
“Hmmm,” Moraig said noncommittally.
“I’m discreet.”
“Are ye?”
“Completely.”
Moraig seemed to give that some consideration. Then she looked at Madelyn searchingly. “Can ye learn to love him?”
Madelyn took a deep breath. “Yes.”
“Do ye love him already?”
Madelyn closed her eyes briefly. “I think so. Maybe. Yes.”
Well, that very resolute answer seemed to be enough for Moraig.
“Very well, then,” the old witch said, leaning forward conspiratorially, “I can’t tell ye all, ye ken. Some of this is Patty’s tale to tell, if he trusts ye with it.”
“Sure.”
“Ask me yer questions, and if I can answer them, I will.”
Questions? Why, they were her specialty. “When was he born?” she asked.
Moraig didn’t blink. “1285.”
Madelyn did blink. “Huh?”
“Ye heard me.”
Heard, but didn’t believe. “But that was centuries ago. Centuries,” she repeated. “That isn’t possible.”
“Isn’t it?”
“It isn’t,” Madelyn said firmly. Best get past that ridiculous answer as quickly as possible. “Where was he born?”
“Down at the keep. His ma died when he was wee. Broke his da’s heart and never did a woman cross the threshold of that hall for years afterward.”
“Interesting.”
“Interesting is those two brothers, young Pat and his brother Jamie.”
So she’d said before. “And when was his brother born?”
Moraig shrugged. “Sooner than Pat I’d say, aye? Don’t know much about Laird Jamie, save he comes quite regular and brings me aught I need without my asking.” She grinned at Madelyn. “He thinks I’m a witch.”
Madelyn had the feeling she’d have a lot in common with Laird Jamie.
But perhaps there were grains of reality in Moraig’s fanciful answers. She would just play along for a while and see where things went. “So,” she said slowly, “if Patrick was born in 1275—”
“1285.”
“1285, as you say,” and she could scarcely say it without adding a very skeptical right immediately after the date, “how did he get here? Or has he just lived that long?”
“He came through the time gate.”
“The time gate?”
“Aye.”
Madelyn couldn’t help herself. A “right” slipped out before she could stop it. “Where is the time gate?”
“There are many here. Don’t know which was his.”
Madelyn had a brief vision of red dots on Jane’s map, but quickly dismissed it.
Then again, what else might those dots be? Poison oak? Nettle patches?
She contemplated it for a moment or two, then dismissed the thought. She had other things to concentrate on. She focused on the problem at hand.
“Where did Patrick learn all about swords and stuff?” she asked.
Moraig looked at her as if she’d sorely overestimated Madelyn’s intelligence. “Where do ye think, gel?”
She had to take a deep breath in order to even say the words. “In the past?”
“Aye, of course.”
“So,” Madelyn said slowly, “you’re telling me that Patrick grew up in the Middle Ages, learned all kinds of sword fighting there, then came through a time gate to the present where he now lives among modern men.”
“Nay.”
Madelyn frowned. “Nay?”
“He didn’t come to the present.”
“He didn’t?”
“Nay, he came, seven, nay, eight years past. Maybe nine.” Moraig smiled. “My memory fails me.”
Madelyn suspected her memory wasn’t all that was failing her. “But the rest of it,” she prodded, “the other stuff . . .”
Moraig only smiled again.
“Not important,” Madelyn conceded. “And the time gate was where again?”
“Hidden.”
All right, so Moraig was sharper than she’d given her credit for being.
She frowned. She wasn’t sure what she had expected to hear, but it hadn’t been this.
She’d expected to hear that Patrick belonged to a society of secret swordwielders, or an ultrafanatical group of rich guys with more muscles than sense, or one of those reenactment societies that had perhaps taken things one step too far and actually set up permanent shop in the wilds of Scotland.
But Patrick as a medieval clansman hanging around in the twenty-first century, wearing jeans and driving a sports car?
It was absurd.