Chapter 28
She cannae be angry with me. It’s nae her who is destined to die.
Hunter eyed the carriage just up ahead, his body sore from being in the saddle all day.
Nancy hadn’t spoken to him since they parted ways after the cèilidh, spending most of her time holed up in the study with Lady Gibson and Lady Culloch.
He’d gone to ask her if she would like to take a walk along the coast or up into the mountains, but he’d been met at the door by a guard who insisted that the ladies were not to be disturbed.
In his own castle, he’d have shoved the man aside, but he’d figured it wasn’t wise to injure the pride of an ally’s soldier in a castle that wasn’t his.
So, he’d walked by himself and spent some time with the other two lairds, discreetly trying to find out if they knew what the women were discussing so intently that it had to be done behind closed doors.
Neither Dougal nor Logan had been any the wiser.
“Must be a time traveler thing,” Dougal had suggested.
“Adeline and her sister always talk alone when they get together,” Logan had said. “I wouldnae worry. They’ve adopted yer bride, that’s all.”
“Or it’s about the 10th of June,” Dougal had mused aloud, with a pointed look at Hunter. “Yer bride really doesnae like the date, does she?”
Hunter had thought better of answering that, though he would inform them of the issue before the wedding day itself, once he had Nancy’s decision.
It wasn’t that he needed the extra help, but he figured it wouldn’t hurt to have two powerful warriors and their men at the wedding as reinforcements.
However, even that morning, as the Lochlann contingent was preparing to leave, Nancy hadn’t said a word to him. She’d hugged Jane and Adeline goodbye, hugged that Mrs. Crimmins woman for even longer, and then climbed into the carriage without so much as a glance at him.
In that fleeting glimpse, he’d noticed that she looked pale, with faintly bruised crescents under her eyes, as if she hadn’t slept well.
And around her neck was a new necklace that he hadn’t seen before, a small red stone flashing in the hazy dawn light.
A piece of jewelry that made him inexplicably uneasy.
The pendant reminded him of a drop of blood, especially against Nancy’s throat.
At least we’re almost home, so she cannae hide from me so easily.
He sighed as he turned his gaze toward the near horizon, the towers of Castle Lochlann rising against a bronze sunset, the daylight having lingered long enough to welcome the party home.
Alas, Nancy seemed to have other ideas, as the very moment the carriage came to a halt, she was out of the door and hurrying up into the castle. She didn’t even look back, didn’t bother to wait for Isla to get out of the carriage either.
“What have ye done to upset her?” Isla asked as Hunter pulled his horse to a halt beside the carriage.
“I was hopin’ ye could answer that,” he replied, frowning. “Did she nae say anythin’ to ye on the ride back?”
Isla shook her head. “Nae much. She just said she was tired, then slept most of the way. But I ken when somethin’ is botherin’ a lass, and I cannae think of any other cause than ye.”
“Aye, well, I mean to find out.” He slipped down from the saddle and, as someone came to take his horse, headed inside, in pursuit of his bride.
It didn’t take him long to find her in the hallway to Freya’s nursery. He stopped her before she could step into the room. This wasn’t a conversation he wanted his daughter to hear, even if she wouldn’t understand a word of it.
“Is this yer decision, then?” he asked, moving in front of Nancy, putting his body between her and the door. “Is yer silence me answer?”
A muscle twitched in her jaw as she lifted her gaze. “I haven’t made a decision. Not yet.”
“Then what’s wrong?” He paused to gather himself. “Ye can do as ye please in this castle, lass, but I willnae have ye ignorin’ me. That wasnae part of the agreement.”
“I’m busy,” she muttered, then tried to push past him.
Of course, he didn’t budge. She could have shoved him with all of her might, and he wouldn’t have moved an inch.
“Hunter, I have a child to look after,” she tried again. “And I can’t have this conversation right now. I need to see Freya.”
With some reluctance, Hunter took a step away, allowing her to turn the handle and walk into his daughter’s room.
Maybe it wasn’t wise to pressure Nancy, but the thought of her choosing anything but marriage to him was beginning to drive him a little mad. He’d meant it when he said that when he liked something, he strove to keep it. And she had become something he didn’t want to lose.
Will ye just trust me, lass? Will ye just trust that I can handle what’s comin’?
He didn’t know how to explain to her that he had seen more battles than he cared to count, that he had been attacked and injured and cornered almost weekly for years, yet he had survived. He had been in a thousand situations that had seemed impossible to win, and yet he had survived.
But she wasn’t from this time, he knew that now. So, how could he explain what she hadn’t experienced? Nothing he said would reassure her when she was so fixated on this silly tapestry.
However, from his perspective, if a person could travel through time, then anything was possible. Changing his fate wasn’t an exception; he would prove it to her if she would just agree to stay to see it.
With a sigh, he retreated from the doorway.
First, whiskey. Second, I need to have a word with Jack.
“Your daddy is as stubborn as a donkey,” Nancy murmured as she lay beside Freya on a blanket on the floor, dangling her keys for the child’s amusement. “Part of me hopes you inherit that, the other part of me hopes you don’t.”
Freya smacked the keys with a gurgle, her face a picture of happiness.
“He’s clearly a good fighter,” Nancy went on, “but this is… cosmic intervention. He can’t fight what has already happened. I mean, I do not doubt that my mom wanted to change things and come back to me, but the… magic or whatever wouldn’t let her. What if it won’t let him?”
Unless all roads always lead here.
The thought sent a horrible shiver down her spine.
She didn’t want to think that the powers-that-be were that conniving and that complex, but what if her mother had been trapped in this world so that she would eventually wish to find her, and be brought to this world too?
Sure, it seemed ridiculous, but Nancy had learned that fate and this time-traveling force were long-term planners and organized ones at that.
If Jane hadn’t become an archaeologist and the Scottish government hadn’t wanted to send a team to Castle Culloch to excavate, so they could turn it into a tourist destination, and Jane hadn’t been in the right place at the right time to be on that team, she wouldn’t have been sent back in time.
If a team hadn’t been sent in 2004 and hadn’t found the tapestry of her husband, she might not have been thinking of him when she went down the ancient stairs and got transported.
If Adeline hadn’t chosen to be a doctor and hadn’t gotten drunk and angry the night her ‘superior’ made an indecent proposal, throwing the snow globe against the wall, she wouldn’t have been hurtled back in time to her little island.
She wouldn’t have arrived in time to save the island from a plague.
And that was without taking into account how the snow globe had come into her possession, and how many hands it had been passed down from before it got to her.
Or, rather, who had made the snow globe in the first place.
All the pieces had to be in the right order, no detail spared.
Wait…
“The plague,” Nancy whispered, her heart leaping.
It stood to reason that the plague that had threatened Adeline’s island home should have killed everyone, or a lot of the residents at least. During their talks over the past couple of days, Adeline had mentioned that it had been simple enough to treat, but when people weren’t aware of modern medicine or even washing their hands, it became a big problem.
People who should have been dead are still alive because of her.
“People who should have been dead are still alive,” she repeated out loud, as she sat up and scooped the baby into her arms, kissing her chubby little cheeks. “If that didn’t break the universe, my sweet angel, then how can I? It’s just one person, not a whole island!”
Freya stared at her with her big eyes, clearly bewildered.
“I’m sorry,” Nancy said as she got to her feet, baby in her arms, and gently lay the child down in her crib. “I’ll be back very soon. I just have to speak to your daddy.”
With her heart pounding and her head swimming with possibilities, a tiny flame of hope wavering with all its might in her chest, she darted out of the nursery and called for a maid. One emerged from a nearby room, rubbing her eyes as if she’d been napping.
“Is somethin’ wrong, Miss Kane?” the maid asked.
Nancy grinned. “No, not at all. Could you just watch Freya for a while? There’s something I need to do.”
“Of course, Miss Kane,” the maid replied, a little grumpy.
Nancy could apologize later.
Despite speaking with Jane and Adeline, trying to come up with a list of potential suspects together, Nancy had never truly believed that fate could be altered.
That tapestry had played in her mind over and over, making it impossible to see any other outcome.
But now she had hope, and she wasn’t going to squander it.
In truth, she could’ve smacked herself for not connecting the dots sooner.
Not even the Clark sisters had made the point that things had changed when they’d come back to the 1700s.
Instead, they had focused on the fact that they were always meant to come back in time.
As such, they likely assumed that what they’d altered was always history.
Without a thorough study from some historian about what had happened to that plague-ridden island before Adeline went back, there was no way to be sure, one way or the other.
Perhaps a thesis in a library had rewritten itself, and the Clark sisters just didn’t know about it.
He might live, Nancy told herself as she ran through the hallways. Oh my God, he might live!
Skidding around a corner, she almost slammed into the wide-eyed figure of Elsie, who was waddling along slowly. Feinting around her at the last moment, Nancy didn’t stop to chat, though Elsie called out, “How was the cèilidh?”
“I’ll tell you about it later,” Nancy called back, sprinting onward, running faster than she had in years.
After a few wrong turns and expletives about the maze of this place, and halting to get directions from startled servants, she finally found herself before the door to Hunter’s study.
She wasn’t sure if he’d be inside, but she had a strong inkling.
And if he wasn’t, she would just try his bedchamber, the training yard, and anywhere else that a disgruntled laird might spend a few hours.
With a breath, she burst into the room… and expelled a raspy sigh of relief when she found him sitting there, a glass of whiskey in hand, his eyebrow raised at her intrusion.