Chapter 4
Emily would love this, Nancy mused distractedly as the Hawk ushered her through a labyrinth of drafty hallways and down a seemingly endless flight of stairs. The temperature dropped with each downward step, while flickering torches cast menacing shadows on the stone walls.
If Emily wanted atmosphere for her latest novel, this was it.
“Do you have a name?” she asked, as the stairs finally ended in a long, narrow passageway. “I can’t keep calling you the Hawk in my head.”
He ignored her and pressed on, though his grip had loosened somewhat. Maybe now that she was already inside his castle walls, he knew she wouldn’t run. And if she did, she wouldn’t get very far.
Years of running away from this, that, and the other had given her pretty solid cardio, but even she wasn’t idiotic enough to think that she could outrun this giant of a man. A step of his was twice hers, and she didn’t have short legs.
It’s not fair for a man to be that tall and that good-looking.
He had to almost bend at the waist to make it through the low-ceilinged passage, his shoulders broad, his back a fine display of rippling muscle that she could see beneath his thin shirt.
Even without him looking at her, she could picture his face: a strong jaw, accentuated by a pleasant, short beard; defined cheekbones that could slice apples; a nicely sloping nose that hadn’t been punched out of joint, unlike a couple of his guards; and eyes the color of a jade ring she’d once stolen, which might’ve been just as pretty if they weren’t glaring all the time.
Her gaze skimmed down his spine to where his belted plaid hung low on his hips, the fabric too loose to give any insight into the shape of his backside.
His calves, on the other hand… His skin was bare between the hem of his plaid and his boots, and for an instant, she really wanted to sink her teeth into that sculpted muscle.
But then he ruined her daydreaming by ramming a door open with his shoulder, the screech of old hinges shuddering through her like a reprimand.
Ahead, cast in torchlight, were rows upon rows of metal bars, interspersed here and there with stone partitions. Even if her brain was jumbled, she knew what this was: a dungeon. No castle would have been complete without one.
I don’t think this is a fever dream.
The thought repeated, the impossible possibilities drumming on the inside of her skull.
Brains were magnificent things, for sure, but if she was dying, if her gray matter was compromised, then surely it wouldn’t be able to manifest so many intricate details all at once: the steady sound of water dripping, the biting cold, the slick gleam of some unpleasant sludge on the walls, the scent of sweet hay and…
something not so sweet. Even the torches, as she passed them, gave off a fleeting heat.
As they walked past the next one, she discreetly swiped her finger through the flame and stifled a gasp at the sting.
It has to be a hallucination, she told herself sternly. Brains are magnificent things, and right now, it clearly doesn’t want me to know I’m dying.
She wouldn’t accept any other explanation.
At that moment, the Hawk pushed open another door off to the left, which led into a small, empty room. A rolled-up blanket was tucked into the corner, and a solitary chair leaned up against the wall, but there were no windows, no furnishings, no comforts. Which was probably the point.
“Sit,” the Hawk commanded.
Too weary and confused to argue, she flopped down onto the chair and hugged her purse to her stomach.
“So, about your name,” she said with as much courage as she could muster. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll just have to make one up.”
After all, she was a tough, hard-hitting reporter who knew how to handle herself. She wouldn’t be intimidated by this hot stranger with the brooding, gritty, slightly dirty vibe to him. He was just a figment. She couldn’t be scared of figments.
“What’s yer name, lass?” he replied brusquely, leaning back against the opposite wall, his powerful arms crossed over his equally powerful chest.
She took a deep breath, her cheeks feeling a little warm all of a sudden. “Nancy.”
“Nancy?”
She nodded. “Nancy Kane.”
“Kane?” He furrowed his brow. “Nay relation to the Gareloch Kanes?”
She shrugged. “Not that I’m aware of. I always meant to make a family tree, but it’s something I never got to do.”
His lip twitched as if she’d annoyed him again. “I assume ye’re nae here in response to me summons?”
“You summoned me?” She squinted, like she could get her brain to solve this if she could just strain her eyes hard enough.
“Nay, lass, me summons,” he replied tersely. “I sent word to the surroundin’ villages for a nursemaid. But yer clothes arenae fit for a nursemaid, so ye cannae be here for that.”
It took Nancy a minute to translate what he’d said into modern English, the word ‘nursemaid’ fogging up her already foggy mind.
If this was a hallucination formed by her last memories, then the story had gone way off-plot. The Hawk didn’t have children, unless the art teacher forgot to mention it.
Then again, if he died on his wedding day, there wouldn’t have been time for children. Not legitimate ones, anyway.
“You have children?” she asked outright.
“Aye. One.”
She pressed her fingertips to her temples and began to rub them in slow circles. “Wait… so you survived your wedding?”
All of a sudden, he was across the room and standing in front of her, those beautiful eyes glinting with anger as he brought his hand down on the wall behind her head.
He bent over her, breathing hard in a way that was clearly supposed to frighten her…
but had the opposite effect on her wayward mind.
You’re such a loser, Nancy. You’ll regret getting all flustered over a hallucination when you wake up.
“Listen, lass, whatever differences me wife and I had are in the past,” he growled. “Ye daenae speak of the dead like that. Ye daenae speak of me daughter’s maither like that. Am I understood?”
Clearly, she’d said the wrong thing. Clearly, her brain was improvising, changing the story the art teacher had told her.
The best thing she could do was play along with whatever timeline of events this version of the Hawk thought had happened, if only to avoid feeling any pain that her synapses were still capable of firing up.
“I’m sorry,” she said, lowering her gaze. “I… mistook you for someone else.”
The Hawk pushed off the wall. “Aye, well, I wouldnae advise ye to do that again.”
“No, of course not.” She drew in a shaky breath, her heart fluttering with an anxiety she hadn’t felt in years. “Could I… um… ask what the date is? I’m still dizzy from my… uh… travels, so everything is kind of muddled up here.”
She tapped the side of her temple and gave a tight smile.
The Hawk stayed where he was, standing in front of her. “It’s the year of our Lord, 1710. The tenth day of May.”
“Pardon?” Her eyes widened. “May the 10th, 1710?”
He nodded. “Aye.”
“Oh… oh, no.” Her heart rate quickened, her hand resting on her chest in a futile attempt to stop it from beating so hard. “Oh… oh, that’s not good.”
The ghost of a smirk lifted his lips. “Why? Are ye late somewhere?”
A sharp pain poked at the center of her forehead, a dull ache thudding behind her eyeballs, forcing her to close them.
Evidently, this was her brain trying to tell her that this wasn’t real, so why was her body responding as if it was? Why was her heart pounding with anxiety, the back of her neck prickling in a cold sweat, her blood rushing in her ears?
It’s just a panic attack. It has nothing to do with this. It’ll pass.
But the feeling didn’t, her hands suddenly shaky, her legs bouncing up and down.
“No, I’m not late anywhere,” she rasped. “I just… I just need to leave, now.”
“So soon?” he said in that low, sarcastic tone that, ordinarily, would’ve sparked a desire to banter back. “Have ye nae been satisfied with our hospitality so far?”
She managed to crack her eyes open enough to shoot him what she hoped was a withering look, and instead found herself distracted by his cocky stance and that extraordinary body of his, his muscles bulging where his arms crossed over his chest, the cords of his neck standing out as he tilted his head and looked at her.
The kind of body and good looks that gave a man every reason to be cocky. If he also had a sense of humor, then he was, without a shadow of a doubt, a figment of her imagination.
No man had it all. She didn’t appreciate the artistic license her mind was taking with him. Unless the point was to never want to leave the dream? Why be afraid of dying or spending forever in a coma if the dream or the afterlife was this delicious?
“Oh, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this wild ride in fantasyland,” she replied, matching his sarcastic tone, “and this is quite the finest dungeon I’ve ever had the pleasure of being in, but I’m afraid staying here doesn’t work for me anymore.
I got here by accident, and I must return home as soon as possible. ”
His arms relaxed, his gaze a little less predatory in its assessment of her. “Aye, I agree, but what ye’re nae tellin’ me is where yer home is and how ye ended up here.”
“I told you, I am from America!” she huffed, her anxiety rising. “And… I don’t know how I got here. It wasn’t a ship. It wasn’t a plane. It—”
“What’s that?” He took a half step closer, his eyes staring at a place that prompted her to cross her legs.
“I beg your pardon?”
He nodded downward. “That thing stickin’ out of yer trews.”
“My what?”
He muttered something indecipherable as he reached down a hand. Nancy braced herself, wondering if this was the moment where her dream tried to reel her back in to the fantasy, but then she heard the soft clack of him tapping something.
She glanced down and saw the edge of her phone sticking out of her pants pocket.
Well, I can’t just tell him, can I?
Whatever he was, she felt compelled not to muddy history with modernity, as if the dream might spit her out if she didn’t abide by the rules.
“It’s… a sort of… tablet that I write messages on,” she replied haltingly, racking her mind for something credible.
“It doesnae look like any tablet I’ve seen,” he said, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. “It’s nae wax or clay.”
“It’s made of something different. A glass-like material from where I come from,” she hurried to explain, and prayed he wouldn’t try to scrape some letters into it with a blade.
Without warning, he snatched up her purse and took it over to a small recess in the wall. There, he began to rifle through it like a common thief, enacting a show-and-tell of her own damn things.
“What’s this?” He took out her notepad and pen.
“Give me that back!” she shouted, clenching her fists as the shock gave way to fury. “Those are my personal belongings. Do you have no manners here, huh? Do you just go through a woman’s things in this place?”
He leveled a cool look at her. “If she’s a lass I daenae ken who was found at me gates, and cannae tell me a useful thing about her, then aye.” He shook the notepad slightly. “Now, what’s this?”
“I write on it,” she replied, a bite in her voice.
In his position, she’d be suspicious too, but that didn’t mean she liked the direction this had taken. She’d preferred it when he was bent over her with his hand on the wall, breathing heavily as if he meant to put an end to her love life’s complete drought.