Chapter 22
Madelyn
packed her last sweater into the suitcase, zipped the suitcase shut, and carried it over to the door. It was surprisingly heavy. Then again, Patrick had been buying her clothes for the past week and half.
He bribed her with clothes and trips. . . .
Why, so that Lisa would marry him? Madelyn shook her head. There were so many things that just didn’t add up. She could imagine a woman doing many things with Patrick as her partner, but having to be bribed to spend time with him—or to fall in love with him—just wasn’t one of them.
Maybe Gilbert McGhee had an overinflated opinion of his late daughter’s desirability.
Madelyn put the thoughts out of her mind. It wasn’t really her business anymore. She was convinced of that. She’d been convinced the moment Patrick had walked back into the great hall the night before. She’d seen the change in him from across the room.
When he’d told her on the way back to Ian’s that he was going to fly to London the next day, she hadn’t been surprised.
When he said he’d managed to find her a really great seat on a flight back to the States that same evening, she’d been even less surprised.
No less devastated, but no less surprised.
She could only imagine his reasons, especially once she’d discovered that Gilbert had driven off in Bentley’s car.
That information had come by way of Elizabeth’s younger brother Zachary, who had been practically frothing at the mouth to get at Gilbert.
Patrick had to be anxious to get rid of Bentley.
And since she was connected to Bentley, he was probably anxious to get rid of her as well.
Though for all she knew, there was much more to it than that. Maybe Patrick had just decided he didn’t want another relationship. Maybe he’d just decided he didn’t want a relationship with her. He’d dropped her like a hot potato before. Maybe he was just running true to form.
That didn’t account for the way he’d treated her over the past couple of days, but maybe that was an aberration.
She closed her eyes briefly. What a glorious aberration it had been.
She sighed. She would come to conclusions later. For now, she had to get through the day.
She wondered if it would be possible to get one last walk in before she had to go.
She pulled Jane’s jacket on over her long skirt and warm sweater, then went downstairs to see what there was to poach from the cabinets that wouldn’t wake the family and spoil her plans.
She tiptoed down the stairs only to find that the kitchen light was already on.
She took a deep breath, put her shoulders back, and walked into the light.
Ian was standing at the stove, thoughtfully stirring something in a pan. He looked up as she walked in.
“’Tis early,” he said. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“I’m leaving today,” she managed.
“So soon?” He looked surprised.
“Patrick has a job. He thought it would be easier to get me to the airport when he goes to London today than to wait for her another time.”
“I see.”
“I’m ready to go,” she said brightly. “You can only be a tourist so long before it gets really old. Too much excitement and all. I really need to get home as soon as I can.”
He approached, dishtowel in hand. He handed it to her. “Your eyes are leaking.”
“Allergies.”
“I thought so.”
She wiped her eyes, then handed the towel back to him with a brilliant smile. At least she hoped it had been brilliant. It felt sort of sick and forced. “Gotta go. One last hike.”
“Be careful.”
“What’s up here but a lot of heather and the occasional ghost?”
He smiled. “True enough.”
“Unless there’s something else you’d like to be divulging.”
“You’ve been talking to Moraig.”
“Yes.”
“She’s fanciful.”
“I’d say.” She looked at him. Thirteenth century? Right. Ian looked perfectly modern. “I love her, but she’s completely delusional. You weren’t born in the Middle Ages, were you?”
“Do I look like I was born in the Middle Ages?”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It felt like one to me,” he said with a smile. He shoved a scone into her hands. “Be careful.”
“What’s the worst that could happen?” she asked lightly. “I find myself in a different century?” She didn’t believe it. Not really.
Swords and swordplay aside.
“Hurry back.”
She nodded and left the house before she could make a bigger fool of herself. She pulled the door shut behind her and managed to get mostly off Ian’s property before she started to sob. She stopped under the eaves of the forest, buried her face in her hands, and cried in earnest.
It was a very messy sob session.
She was still blubbering when she decided that perhaps it would be in her best interest to keep going.
The sky was barely lightening. Patrick didn’t have plans to leave until noon.
She could almost get herself to Moraig’s and back in that time.
Better that than hanging around Ian’s, trying to make polite conversation.
The thought of that was enough to hastily propel her forward.
She walked swiftly along the way she’d gone the day before. In fact, the path to Patrick’s house was becoming all too familiar. She paused and looked into his backyard.
No piper.
No ghostly guardsmen.
So they were all ditching her. It shouldn’t have surprised her, she supposed.
Maybe she just wasn’t cut out for this kind of life.
She needed to work. She needed stores with hot bakery goods and stimulating drinks.
She needed chocolate shops within walking distance of her labors. She needed clients.
The client thing, she had to admit, might be something she would have to look at differently. Maybe it was time she started working for people who really needed her services, instead of rich, spoiled executives who were too lazy to obey the law.
She found herself quite suddenly in the forest.
And it was then, beyond all reason, that she found herself believing quite strongly in that Highland magic Roddy had told her about.
She stopped. The forest seemed to stop with her and wait while she made some kind of decision.
Forward or back.
She took a deep breath and walked forward.
The silence around her was singularly unnerving.
She crunched slowly through the woods, holding up her long skirts to keep them out of the wet.
She began to feel a little disconnected.
It was like having jetlag, but this was much worse.
She found herself becoming increasingly tempted to just sit down and rest. In fact, the temptation was almost overwhelming.
She stopped, put her hands over her eyes, and rubbed. Maybe it really was allergies. There was something, some kind of smell that was really beginning to get to her.
She froze.
Eternal Riches cologne.
She whirled around. Bentley stood there. That wasn’t a pleasant look on his face. She gave herself a hard shake and went on the defensive.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
“You,” he said curtly.
“Forget it. You had your chance and you blew it.”
He took a menacing step toward her. “I do not ‘blow’ things,” he said. “And I have no intentions of blowing this one. Now, come along. We’ll go back to the States, we’ll get married, and then I’ll get to where I’m supposed to be.”
She heard something there she hadn’t ever heard before. Either that, or she hadn’t listened closely enough. “Where you’re supposed to be?” she echoed.
“Dean of Northern Pacific’s law school.”
She shook her head. “What does that have to do with me?”
“Can you be that stupid?” he snapped. “Your father? Dean Anderson? Good friends? Do I have to explain every little seance of every situation to you?”
“That’s nuance, Bentley, and no you don’t. I get your drift. I just don’t understand why you want to marry me so you can be friends with Dean Anderson. Make your own friends without me.”
“No.”
“No?”
He leaned forward. “I don’t want to be his friend,” he said in a low voice. “I want to replace him.”
The way he said it sent chills down her spine. She looked at him in a brand-new light. He wasn’t a jerk. He wasn’t even a compulsive liar.
He was crazy.
Madelyn took Jane’s phone out of her pocket. She flipped it open and tried to look where she was dialing while still keeping her eyes on him.
Bentley slapped the phone out of her hand. “Cooperate,” he said, “or you’ll regret it.”
She backed up. “What’re you going to do?” she asked shakily. “Kill me? That’ll really endear you to my father.”
“He’ll be thrilled to know I killed your murderer. The man who chased you in the woods that I caught and killed. Unfortunately, he got to you first.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Am I?” he asked. “I’ve gotten plenty of murderers off during my long and distinguished career. I know how to avoid getting myself nailed.”
“You are nuts!”
“I told you never to talk to me that way!” he shouted.
He leaped toward her.
She turned and bolted.
He was right on her tail for quite some time. She brushed aside branches and flung them back into his face. He cursed. He cursed her, cursed her father, and began to curse Dean Anderson. Good grief, did anyone at the firm have any idea what a psycho they had on their payroll?
She ran as fast as she could, then she began to realize something. The faster she ran, the farther behind her Bentley seemed to be. Maybe his Teflon arteries weren’t so goo-resistant after all.
His shouts grew fainter and fainter until all she could hear was the crunching under her feet.
She ran until there was silence behind her. But she couldn’t stop. Shouting started up again and she continued to run until she realized something rather distressing. The shouting continued, but it was coming from a different direction.
In front of her.
She burst out of the trees into what could only be described as a small-scale war.
A small-scale medieval war.
She stood there and gaped. Had she stumbled into some movie set?
Some really authentic reenactment group?
Some bunch of yahoos who’d given up the corporate life to get back to nature?
Based on the bathing standards she could determine from where she stood, that last theory had the best shot at being true.
She backed up.
Into someone who grabbed her by the hair and yelled in triumph.
The fighting stopped, not because of her appearance, but because apparently all the opponents were dead.
And she, it seemed, was the booby prize.
The men, all but the one holding her by the hair, that is, turned to look at her. Whatever shouting there had been faded away to be replaced by grumbles of irritation and speculation.
One man, who she assumed by his stance and the way the others gave way for him to approach was the leader, looked her over in a very unfriendly, very suspicious manner. He said something to her. She couldn’t understand a word.
She tried a word of her own. “MacLeod?” she asked.
The man frowned, as if he couldn’t understand her at all.
She tried again, with the same cadence Moraig used when she said her name. “MacLeod?” she tried again.
The man’s expression darkened considerably. He barked something at the man holding her that she didn’t understand at all.
But she understood the hand motion. She suspected it translated across languages into something resembling render the demon unconscious so we might bind it and examine it later with an exorcist nearby.
Or something like that.
Good grief, where was she?
She didn’t really feel the blow.
But she had the wherewithal to hope her head was still attached to functioning vertebrae before the light of her consciousness flickered.
Then went out.