Chapter 5
Chapter Five
“M ake it go away,” she muttered, throwing an arm across her face to block out the spotlights and the drums. With a groan, Kate turned to see it was not a spotlight, but pale gray light filtering through the hotel room curtains and the gentle patter of rain against the window.
Her head throbbed, a dull reminder of the whisky she’d consumed at the pub next door with several boisterous Australians last night. Not her finest moment, but the group of kids enjoying their gap year had been a welcome distraction and the burn of the alcohol had at least temporarily numbed the ache in her chest.
She stretched, wincing as her muscles protested. Yesterday’s hike had left her sore, though the physical discomfort was almost welcome. At least it was a distraction from the emotional turmoil roiling through her. How could she have been so clueless? With a groan, she rolled onto her side and found herself staring at the brooch on her nightstand.
Had that strange encounter with the old woman at the cemetery actually happened? In the harsh light of day, it seemed more like a bizarre dream or a whisky-induced hallucination. Yet the brooch was undeniably real, its tarnished metal gleaming dully in the weak light, the stones at its center catching what little illumination filtered through the curtains.
“I should turn it in,” she murmured to herself, running a finger along the Celtic knot pattern. “It probably belongs to someone or was meant to be left at the grave of someone’s ancestor.”
With a sigh, she forced herself out of bed and into the shower. Under the blissfully hot spray, she tried to formulate a plan. The logical thing would be to book a flight home, lick her wounds, and try to forget Angus MacDonald had ever existed. But the thought of returning to Atlanta, facing Mandy’s sympathy and her colleagues’ knowing looks, made her stomach clench.
No, she decided as she toweled off. She’d come all this way. She might as well see something of Scotland before she left. Scotland had always been on her bucket list. The ticket was paid for, the vacation approved, so she would stay, travel around the country and she’d go home with a few souvenirs and scenic photos instead of just a broken heart.
Dressed in jeans and a light sweatshirt, Kate ventured downstairs to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. The hostess seated her by a window overlooking the harbor, where fishing boats bobbed in the gentle swells and seagulls wheeled overhead despite the drizzle. She’d braided her hair and left her face bare since the rain would just wash the makeup away, anyway.
“Will you be staying with us long?” the hostess asked as she poured Kate a cup of strong tea.
“Just a few days,” she replied, accepting the steaming cup gratefully. “I thought I’d do some sightseeing while I’m here.”
The woman nodded approvingly. “Wise choice. Skye has much to offer beyond distilleries.” Something in her tone suggested she knew exactly why Kate had arrived on the island and why her plans had changed. News evidently traveled fast in small towns, even when you were a stranger.
After a hearty Scottish breakfast consisting of the eggs and toast she’d ordered, not the black pudding the server had tried to convince her to try, Kate was fortified enough to face the day. She stopped at the front desk to inquire about local attractions and was handed several brochures featuring fairy pools, ancient stone circles, and dramatic coastal landscapes.
“The weather should clear by afternoon,” the clerk assured her. “Perfect for exploring.”
Outside, the rain had indeed lessened to a fine mist that beaded on her navy jacket but didn’t soak through. Kate stopped in at a small shop on the corner, purchasing a bottle of water and, on impulse, a roll of Life Savers. The familiar candy was comforting, a small taste of home.
She wandered through Portree for a while, browsing shops filled with woolen goods, Celtic jewelry, and whisky. But her thoughts kept returning to the cemetery and the mysterious old woman. Before she quite realized where she was headed, Kate found herself on the path leading out of town, retracing yesterday’s steps.
The climb seemed easier today, perhaps because she knew where she was going. The mist clung to the heather, transforming the landscape into something ethereal and otherworldly. By the time she crested the hill overlooking the cemetery, the rain had stopped entirely, though heavy clouds still hung low in the sky.
The ruins looked different in this light, softer, more melancholy. The weathered gravestones stood among the wet grass, and the crumbling keep on the cliff seemed to blur at the edges, as if it might dissolve into the mist at any moment.
Kate made her way down the path, hiking boots squelching slightly in the damp earth. The cemetery was deserted, no sign of the old woman or anyone else. She wandered among the gravestones, reading the inscriptions that were still legible. Generations of MacLeods lay beneath her feet, their lives, loves, and feuds long forgotten.
Eventually, she found herself standing before the chapel ruins. The spiral stone the old woman had pointed out was there, set into the ground near the entrance. It looked ordinary enough, just a flat slab of gray stone with a faint spiral pattern carved into its surface, nearly worn away by countless footsteps over the centuries.
Kate pulled the brooch from her pocket, turning it over in her hand. The metal was warm, warmer than it should have been after being carried in her pocket on a cool, damp day. She traced the Celtic knot with her finger, feeling the intricate pattern beneath her skin.
“This is ridiculous,” she muttered to herself. “I should just turn this in at the hotel.”
But instead of putting the brooch back in her pocket, she found herself pinning it to her shirt, right over her heart as the old woman had instructed. It felt heavier than it looked, a solid weight against her chest.
Almost without conscious thought, Kate stepped onto the spiral stone. The ground felt solid beneath her feet, no different from any other patch of earth in the cemetery. What had she expected? A trapdoor to open and swallow her whole?
She closed her eyes, feeling totally ridiculous. The wind had picked up, carrying with it the scent of rain and salt and something else. Something green and ancient.
“What do I really want?” she whispered to herself.
The answer came unbidden. To be loved. Truly, deeply, permanently. To find someone who would never lie to her, never betray her. Someone who would see past her defenses to the woman beneath.
But those were just fairy tales. Love always ended. That was the one constant in her life, the one truth she could count on. She’d seen it time and again, predicted it with unerring accuracy. Except in her own case. She’d been blind to Angus’s betrayal, willfully ignorant of the signs that should have been obvious.
Kate opened her eyes, blinking away unexpected tears. This was silly. Standing on an ancient stone in a Scottish cemetery, pinning her hopes on some local superstition. She should put this whole humiliating episode behind her.
She lifted one foot off the stone, but something made her pause. A strange stillness had fallen over the cemetery. The wind had died completely, leaving an eerie silence broken only by the distant crash of the waves against the cliffs. The clouds overhead seemed frozen, no longer drifting across the sky.
And was it her imagination, or had the brooch grown even warmer against her chest?
“I wish...” The words slipped out before she could stop them. “I wish for a love that doesn’t end. Someone to love me above all else.”
The moment the words left her lips, the world around her changed. The wind returned with sudden violence, whipping her braid across her face and nearly knocking her off her feet. The clouds overhead darkened and swirled, and a crack of thunder split the air.
The brooch pinned to her shirt glowed red, so hot she reached up to tear it off, but her fingers seemed to pass through it as if it were made of smoke. Her body felt strange, insubstantial, as if she too were turning to mist.
A wave of dizziness washed over her, and Kate swayed on her feet. The cemetery around her began to blur and shift, the gravestones wavering like reflections in disturbed water. The chapel ruins seemed to flicker, stones rising from the ground and reassembling themselves before her eyes.
“What’s happening?” she tried to say, but no sound emerged from her throat.
The last thing she saw before darkness claimed her was the old woman standing by the rowan tree, a knowing smile on her weathered face.
* * *
Kate came to slowly, awareness returning in fragments. Cold stone beneath her cheek. The smell of damp earth and wood smoke. The distant sound of voices on the wind.
Her head throbbed, a steady pulse of pain behind her eyes. Had she fainted? She must have hit her head when she fell.
With a groan, she pushed herself into a sitting position, one hand going to her temple. Her fingers came away clean. No blood, at least. Small mercies.
It took her a moment to register that something was wrong. Very wrong.
The cemetery was gone.
Or rather, it was still there, but completely transformed. The weathered, tilting gravestones had been replaced by newer markers, their inscriptions crisp and clear. The chapel, which had been little more than a shell with crumbling walls, now stood abandoned, its roof intact.
And beyond the cemetery, where the ruins of Bronmuir Keep had stood...
“It can’t be—” Kate’s breath caught in her throat.
A small castle rose against the sky, solid and imposing, its gray stone walls unbroken by time. Smoke curled from several chimneys, and a flag snapped in the breeze from the highest tower. The flag bore the MacLeod clan crest, a bull’s head encircled by a belt of blue and silver, with three small ravens perched atop a crown above the shield. Unlike the traditional MacLeod crest from Dunvegan, this one featured a crossed claymore and dirk beneath the bull, marking this branch of the ancient family with its own distinct identity. She recognized it from the brochures in the hotel.
“This isn’t possible,” she whispered, scrambling to her feet.
Her knee buckled, and she reached out to support herself against the nearest gravestone. The stone was smooth and relatively new, the inscription easily legible.
Here lies Morag MacLeod, beloved wife of Ian and mother to his sons. Taken by fever in the Year of Our Lord 1688. May she rest in peace.
1688.
Kate’s knees nearly gave out again. She staggered back from the stone, heart racing.
“No,” she said aloud, her voice sounding strange to her own ears. “No, this isn’t real. I’m dreaming. Or hallucinating. Or?—”
Or what? What other explanation could there be for what she was seeing?
She pinched herself, hard, on the soft flesh of her inner arm. The sharp pain made her wince, but nothing changed. The castle still stood where ruins had been just moments before. The chapel remained whole, not the crumbling shell she remembered.
Kate fumbled for her phone, thinking she could call for help. But her pockets were empty. No phone. No water bottle. But at least she had the roll of Life Savers she’d purchased that morning. Her hand went to her heart. It was gone. The brooch was missing as well.
She looked down at herself, half-expecting her clothes to have changed as well, but she was still wearing her jeans, hiking boots, jacket, and light blue sweatshirt. At least that was something.
A movement at the edge of her vision made her turn sharply. A figure was approaching from the direction of the castle. A man, tall and broad-shouldered, moving with purpose across the open ground.
Her first instinct was to hide, but where? The cemetery offered little in the way of concealment, and running would only draw attention. Besides, perhaps this person could help her make sense of what was happening.
So she stood her ground, watching as the man drew nearer. He was dressed strangely, in what looked like a long-sleeved linen shirt and a plaid draped over one shoulder, secured with a belt at his waist. Dark hair fell to his shoulders, and even from a distance, she could see the wariness in his stance. A few guys in town wore kilts with hiking boots, but this guy... He looked like one of the action heroes in the movies she loved.
When he was about twenty feet away, he called out something in a language she didn’t understand. His voice was deep and commanding, with a thick Scottish accent that made the foreign words roll like thunder.
“I’m sorry,” Kate called back, trying to keep her voice steady. “I don’t understand.”
The man paused, then switched to heavily accented English. “Who are ye, and what business have ye on MacLeod lands?”
“My name is Kate Adams,” she replied, fighting to keep her voice level. “I’m... lost. I need help.”
The man’s eyes narrowed, his gaze sweeping over her strange clothing. He said something else in that foreign language. Gaelic, she realized belatedly, then reverted to English.
“Ye’re dressed most strangely, lass. Where do ye hail from?”
“America,” Kate said automatically, then winced.
The man’s brow furrowed slightly. “The colonies? Ye’ve come a fair distance then. What brings ye to our shores?”
Kate turned in a slow circle, heart hammering in her chest. The rugged landscape stretched out before her, rolling green hills, jagged cliffs, the distant sparkle of the sea. But there was no town with its quaint shops, no paved roads, no boats with motors bobbing in the harbor. Not a single plane crossed the sky, no power lines cut through the landscape, no cars or buses or trains, anywhere to be seen. Just wilderness, a dirt path, and a castle that looked whole and inhabited rather than the crumbling ruin she’d visited that morning.
It was true. Somehow, impossibly, she had traveled back in time. The gravestone had said 1688, but that was when Morag died. What year was it now?
Before she could formulate a response, the world began to spin. The shock, the impossibility of her situation, crashed over her like a wave, and Kate swayed on her feet.
“I don’t...” she began, but couldn’t finish the thought.
The last thing she saw before darkness claimed her again was the man lunging forward, his expression changing from suspicion to alarm as she collapsed.
* * *
For the second time in what felt like minutes, Kate drifted back to consciousness. This time, she was lying on something softer than stone. A narrow bed, she realized, with a rough woolen blanket drawn over her. The smell of wood smoke was stronger here, mingled with unfamiliar herbs and the distinctive scent of tallow candles.
She kept her eyes closed, trying to make sense of what was happening. Had she dreamed the whole thing? Maybe she’d never left the hotel? Maybe she’d had some kind of breakdown after confronting Angus and had been taken to a hospital?
But the sounds and smells around her were too vivid, too alien to be a modern hospital. She could hear the crackle of a fire, the low murmur of voices speaking that same rolling language she couldn’t understand, the distant barking of dogs.
Reluctantly, she opened her eyes. She was in a small, stone-walled room with a single narrow window. The glass was thick and uneven, distorting the view outside, but she could make out a courtyard below. A fire burned in a small hearth, filling the chilly room with warmth and flickering light. Simple furniture. A chair, a small table, and a chest completed the sparse furnishings.
And standing near the door, watching her with intense blue eyes, was the man from the cemetery.
Up close, he was even more imposing. Tall and broad-shouldered, with a face that could have been carved from the same granite as the castle walls. His features were striking rather than conventionally handsome. A straight nose, high cheekbones, a strong jaw darkened with stubble. A thin scar ran through one eyebrow, giving him a slightly dangerous air.
But it was his eyes that held her attention. A deep, penetrating blue that seemed to look right through her.
“Ye’re awake,” he said, his voice deep and resonant. “I thought perhaps ye’d sleep until the morrow.”
Kate pushed herself up on her elbows, wincing as her head protested the movement. “Where am I?”
“Ye’re at Bronmuir Keep, home of Clan MacLeod,” the man replied, watching her carefully. “I am Connor MacLeod, laird.”
Connor MacLeod. The name sounded familiar — She gasped before she could stop herself, a chill running down her spine despite the warmth of the room.
His eyes narrowed instantly, suspicion hardening his features. “You know me? Have we met before, lass?”
Kate’s mouth opened, then closed. The knowledge sat heavy within her. That, according to the guidebook, Connor MacLeod would be murdered by the woman he was to marry. But how could she possibly explain that? He’d think her mad. Or worse, a witch.
“I... no,” she managed. “Your name just reminded me of something I heard.” A weak excuse, but better than the truth.
Connor studied her face, clearly unconvinced. “What exactly did you hear about me all the way from the new world?”
Kate’s mind went blank for a moment. Time travel? It couldn’t be real. There had to be some logical explanation. A dream, hallucination, elaborate historical reenactment. Yet the ache in her muscles, the smell of peat smoke, the calloused hand of the man before her, it all felt terribly, impossibly real.
“Nothing specific,” she lied. “Just... clan histories. I’m interested in Scottish heritage.”
Her hands shook as she hid them under the covers. “What year is it?” she blurted out, unable to contain the question any longer.
Connor’s eyebrows rose slightly. “The year of our Lord sixteen hundred and eighty-nine,” he replied, his tone suggesting he found the question odd but was humoring her. “June, to be precise.”
1689. She had traveled back in time more than three hundred years.
The room seemed to tilt again, and Kate closed her eyes, fighting the wave of dizziness that threatened to overwhelm her.
“Ye’re unwell,” Connor observed, taking a step closer. “Moira said ye had no visible injuries, but perhaps ye hit yer head.”
“I’m fine,” Kate managed, though she felt anything but. “Just... disoriented.”
Connor studied her for a long moment, his expression unreadable. “Ye said you are from the new world,” he said finally. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” Kate agreed, seizing on the simplest truth. “I’m a long way from home.”
“The colonies,” he said after a moment. “Ye’re from the English colonies across the sea?”
Connor’s expression didn’t change, but something flickered in his eyes. Recognition? Doubt? It was impossible to tell.
Kate hesitated. What could she say that wouldn’t sound completely insane? She couldn’t tell him she was from the future. He’d think her mad or, worse, a witch. But she needed some explanation for her strange clothes, her accent, her lack of knowledge about this time.
Relief flooded through her. Of course. The American colonies existed in 1689, even if the United States didn’t. “Yes,” she said quickly. “Exactly.”
He didn’t look entirely convinced, but he nodded slowly. “And how did ye come to be alone in our cemetery, dressed so strangely, with no possessions or companions?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? How had she ended up here? The old woman, the brooch, the wish... it all seemed like a fever dream now, too fantastical to be real. Yet here she was.
“I was...” Kate began, then faltered. What could she say? “I was traveling. There was a storm. I must have hit my head and... gotten lost.”
It sounded weak even to her own ears, and Connor’s expression made it clear he didn’t believe her. But to her surprise, he didn’t press the issue.
“We’ve seen no shipwreck,” he said finally, his voice measured. “But we’ll search the shore for debris. If your vessel truly went down nearby, the tide will bring something to us.”
He uncrossed his arms, clearly done with her. “Ye’ll stay here until ye’re well enough to travel,” he said instead, his tone making it clear it wasn’t a suggestion.
“Moira will tend to ye. When ye’re recovered, we can discuss how to return ye to yer people.”
With that, he turned to go, his plaid swinging with the movement.
“Wait,” Kate called, a sudden panic seizing her at the thought of being left alone in this strange place and time. “Please?—”
Connor paused at the door, looking back at her with those penetrating blue eyes. “Rest,” he said, his voice softening slightly. “Ye’re safe here, lass. No harm will come to ye under my roof.”
Then he was gone, the heavy wooden door closing behind him with a solid thud that seemed to underscore the finality of her situation.
Kate sank back against the rough pillow, staring up at the stone ceiling.
1689.
She was in Scotland in 1689, in a castle that would be nothing more than ruins by her time, speaking to a man who had been dead for centuries.
The weight of her shirt suddenly felt wrong, and she patted the spot where the brooch should have been. A chill ran through her that had nothing to do with the cold stone beneath her.
When ye’re ready, come back. Stand on the stone, wear the brooch over yer heart, and make yer choice.
She’d made her choice, all right.
And now she was trapped in the past with no idea how to get home or if she even could.