Chapter 36
Patrick
slid down off his horse in a daze. He could hardly believe what he was looking at. It was his house, of course. He noted impatiently that his house was in the condition he’d left it, so it was a safe bet they’d returned to the proper time.
Aye, the place was his.
And his garage was on fire.
He ran, but before he could get anywhere near to saving what he owned, his garage blew up. He probably would have blown up with it if Jamie hadn’t appeared from out of nowhere and borne him down to the ground.
“Leave it!” Jamie bellowed into his ear.
“Get off me, you fool!” Patrick shouted.
“You’ll replace it!”
He fought, but found himself being dragged back behind his courtyard wall by both his brother and his cousin. He shook off their restraining hands.
“I’ll leave it be,” he snapped. “What kind of fool do you take me for?”
That neither Jamie or Ian offered any comment was telling enough.
Patrick stood there and watched as several hundred thousand pounds of metal went up in smoke. And while it burned, he gave thought to who might have done such a thing.
The answer was immediate and definitive.
Gilbert McGhee.
Patrick looked at Jamie. “Why?”
Jamie shrugged.
He looked at Ian. “What in the hell am I going to do now?”
“Kill the bastard,” Ian said simply. “’Tis obvious he’ll stop at nothing.”
“What if I’d had a . . .” He could hardly manage to get the word out. “A child,” he finished. “A child playing in the garage. A family waiting to nip into town for a bit of shopping whilst I ran back in to fetch my lady’s forgotten purse. What then?”
“He doesn’t care,” Ian said.
“Wait,” Jamie said slowly. “Stop and think. You don’t know it’s McGhee. It could have been anyone. It could have been a stray spark.”
“Look to the tyre tracks,” Ian suggested. “I daresay you’ll find them matched easily enough.”
Patrick looked down and started to do just that. He walked about, looking at the ground, simply because he could do nothing else. He couldn’t watch the ruin that had once been his speed and freedom. He couldn’t look at his family. He couldn’t look at his love.
By the saints, Madelyn.
He did look at her then. She had slid down off the horse and was looking at him with an expression he couldn’t quite read.
Pity.
Mingled with fear.
Aye, and well she should. He turned away from her and continued his search. Fortunately for him, dawn was breaking and he had light. Jamie elbowed him aside and bent to retrieve a lighter.
“Evidence,” his brother said wisely.
“Impossible to say whose it is,” Patrick pointed out.
“Fingerprints,” Jamie insisted. “Forensic evidence.”
Patrick briefly speculated on the possibility of this event taking his brother’s library in an entirely new direction, then looked at the lighter Jamie was putting into his pocket.
“It won’t prove anything,” he said heavily.
“We wouldn’t need to prove anything if we just made him disappear,” Ian insisted.
“Look at this,” Jamie said, picking up a wad of pounds and unfolding the notes. “A hundred quid on the outside, one pound notes on the inside.” He swore in disgust. “Pompous, treacherous whoreson.”
“Aye, he is at that,” Ian said, the he paused. He stooped down suddenly and retrieved a piece of paper that had been trampled underfoot. He unfolded it, read it, then went quite still. Then he looked at Patrick and handed him the slip of paper.
Your toys this time. Your woman next. Or your children, if it pleases me.
The missive was typed. Gilbert typed everything. Correction: He had his secretary type everything. The secretary that his wife had bought to keep him busy in a business his wife had bought to keep him out of the house each day.
Patrick didn’t doubt, though, that this missive hadn’t been typed on any typewriter Gilbert owned. If there was one thing he wasn’t, it was stupid.
Patrick felt a sick feeling of finality settle into his belly. He couldn’t let Madelyn stay. He’d known it. Hadn’t he known it? Hadn’t he known there was something in the future that would make them, as a couple, impossible?
He didn’t stop to think. He certainly didn’t stop to prepare a speech. He looked at Ian.
“Are her bags still packed?”
“Patrick!” Ian exclaimed softly, aghast.
“Are her bags still packed?” Patrick demanded in a low voice.
“We left them as she—”
“Fetch them. Fetch your car.”
“I will not—”
“Do you expect me to use one of mine?” Patrick snarled, gesturing toward his ruined garage. “Fetch yours, damn you to hell, and get her to Inverness.”
Ian looked at him silently for a moment or two, sighed, then turned and walked away. He didn’t walk very quickly, and Patrick toyed briefly with the idea of telling him to make haste, then discarded it. He looked at his brother.
And he found he had nothing to say.
Jamie only stared at him just as silently.
Patrick turned and walked over to the horses. Madelyn was holding on to the stallion’s reins. She didn’t speak to him and he returned the favor.
He pulled Bentley off his horse, but left him gagged, bound, and blindfolded.
No sense in borrowing trouble. He laid him out facedown on the ground.
He stared down at the fool, who was now wriggling around.
Patrick could only imagine what he was saying.
There had to be lawsuits somewhere in the offing.
What to do with Bentley? He could untie him, certainly.
Better yet to untie him and have a means of transporting him back to his hotel.
He couldn’t ask Ian. Madelyn didn’t deserve that on top of everything else.
He looked at his brother. Jamie would do.
Jamie could put on his medieval laird persona. That would keep Bentley in line.
“Jamie,” he called, “did you drive?”
“Aye,” Jamie said, looking at Bentley, then back at Patrick reluctantly. “Unfortunately.”
“Take him back to his hotel, will you?”
Jamie sighed heavily. “As you will.”
Patrick leaned over and ripped off Bentley’s blindfold. He stared down into very wide, very terrified eyes.
“You’re safe now,” Patrick said. “You were . . . away for a while.”
Bentley was suddenly quite perfectly still.
“You were . . .” Patrick began slowly, seriously, “abducted.”
Bentley blinked.
“Aye.” Patrick nodded. “By them. You know who I’m talking about.”
Bentley nodded.
“Behave,” Patrick said. “Do good. Give away all your gold jewelry. Do work for free. Twenty, thirty hours a week. Or they’ll be back.”
Bentley nodded again.
Patrick looked at Jamie. “Take him off my land.”
“Happily.” Jamie hauled Bentley to his feet. “So, my wee friend, you’ve been on a bit of a journey—”
Patrick watched his brother take a very filthy, unsettled attorney and put him in the back of his car. Patrick was a bit surprised Jamie didn’t hose him down first, but perhaps his brother had smelled worse.
Patrick turned his attentions back to his garage. And as he stood there, he wondered what in the hell he was supposed to do now. Hose the building off? What was the point? It was halfway to the ground as it was. His cars were destroyed.
And this was apparently only the beginning.
“Why don’t you fight?”
He looked next to him to find Madelyn standing there, looking at him with fire suddenly in her eyes. It matched, incidentally, the fire in his outbuilding.
“Fight?” he echoed. “Fight what?”
“Fight Gilbert.”
“Why?”
She looked at him as if she’d never seen him before. “Patrick, he burned down practically everything of value you had.”
Not everything. The thing of most value was standing right beside him.
It was the one thing he dare not not keep.
“There’s no point,” he said flatly.
“I can’t believe you!” she said, sounding stunned.
“What would you have me do, Madelyn? Go at him with my sword? This isn’t medieval Scotland. I can’t take justice into my own hands.”
“Then fight him in court.”
“I can’t prove anything.”
“You won’t even try!” she exclaimed.
He looked at her, tried to memorize everything about her, every expression of disbelief, pain, and anger that crossed her face. Those he would file away with the more tender expressions he had already collected over the past month.
Love.
Hope.
Desire.
“There is no point,” he said quietly.
He was certain that moment would be burned indelibly into his mind for the rest of his life.
The crackling and the occasional mild explosion coming from his garage.
The smell of things that continued to burn.
The chill in the air. The flicker of fire against the stone wall, against Madelyn’s hair, on her beautiful face.
He would never forget any of that.
He would also never forget the moment when she realized what he was going to do.
“Oh, Patrick,” she whispered.
He pulled her into his arms so he didn’t have look into her eyes. He clutched her to him, buried his face in her hair, and tried not to break down. He couldn’t now. He would later, when he was shoveling out.
Alone.
He held her while she sobbed until he heard Ian pull up. Then he pushed her back, put his arm around her, and led her over to the car.
“Ian will take you to Inverness. I’ll have the plane waiting.”
She didn’t say anything.
What was there to say?
“I’ll call you,” he offered.
She looked up at him then and her tears were gone. In their place was something he was actually quite sorry to be the recipient of. Her look spoke volumes about what she thought of his level of courage. She opened the car door, then paused.
“I liked you better in the Middle Ages.”
She got into the car, pulled the car door shut, then turned her face away from him.
He watched the car drive away. He didn’t suppose he could blame her for her sentiments. He had liked himself better then as well.
But he couldn’t fight. How could he? It had nothing to do with Gilbert. If it had been only him and Gilbert in a field and both of them lacking any family, he would have cut the bastard to shreds as slowly as possible, making him suffer for hours before he finished him.
Unfortunately, Gilbert did have family, and Helen McGhee had asked him specifically not to hurt her husband.
And so he complied.
Unwillingly, but he complied just the same.
He watched Ian’s taillights disappear into the forest, then bowed his head and blew out his breath.
He stood there until he realized he’d been standing there for too long.
It was cold. He looked at the horses he’d brought with him and wondered if he dared put them in his stable.
Or if he dared leave his own beasts there.
Jamie had room. Ian had room. Who would torture him worse with their lectures?
Ian, he decided. Besides, Jamie was going to be gone for a while. He went over to the MacLeod stallion and swung up on its back. He took the reins of both horses and started toward the keep he’d just left almost eight hundred years in the past.
He rode, trying to empty his mind of the thoughts he knew he didn’t dare face. Even so, he couldn’t rid his mind of Madelyn’s final words.
I liked you better in the Middle Ages
.
By the saints, he did, too.