Chapter 12
CHAPTER 12
“ L issa, right? I’m sorry about all this. I promise it’ll all be explained soon.”
“You’re American,” Lissa said, aware that she was stating the obvious but not especially caring. There had been a headache creeping up on her since she’d first lost her way in the trees, and over the last few minutes it had intensified to the point that she was ready to do away with niceties.
“Sure am,” Amelia said cheerfully. “There’s quite a few of us, actually. You’ll meet them soon enough. But for now…” She tilted her head, looking inquisitively into Lissa’s face, and as she did, she realized that the woman was almost her height. And there was something about her bearing that reminded Lissa of herself a little. A subtle but unmistakable vibe that she wasn’t to be messed with. “What’s your most pressing question?”
Lissa took a moment to consider that, aware that both of the men were looking at her now. Hamish looked thoughtful, Niall just perplexed. “I suppose,” she said, very carefully, “at the risk of sounding completely insane… I’m wondering what century we’re in?”
Amelia’s smile widened. “You’ve gotten there quicker than I did,” she said brightly. “Good place to start. It’s the latter part of the sixteenth century. Are you a history buff?”
“Not even slightly.”
“That’ll do for specifics, then. Where were you exactly, when you got lost?”
Lissa narrowed her eyes. “How’d you know I got lost?”
“Turned around, disoriented, confused, wait a minute, wasn’t the road right here, who are all these guys on horses?”
For someone who’d seemed quiet and unassuming, Amelia was certainly confident in taking center stage. Behind her, Hamish was smiling at her with a fondness that bordered on reverence. Lissa returned her attention to the woman’s eerily prescient comments.
“Something like that, yeah,” she admitted, narrowing her eyes. “My driver got a flat tire, so I said I’d walk the last few hundred yards to the hotel, and then … I don’t know. Dirt road. Should’ve stayed with him, I guess.”
“Wouldn’t have helped,” Amelia said, shaking her head. “Sooner or later, you would’ve gotten lost in the fog. Weatherby Manor, right?”
“Right.” She reached into her pocket, where she’d put the now thoroughly folded and creased map. The headache was not getting any better. It felt like her mind had quietly put a kind of cushion around the casual statement that they were in the sixteenth century — a kind of ‘let’s deal with that later’ attitude that Lissa was more than willing to go along with. “It was — I was —”
“Oh, neat! I don’t think anyone’s brought a paper map before.” Amelia peered down at the paper, clearly fascinated. “There — this is where we are right now. Castle MacClaran. Not actually ruins,” she added, her eyes dancing with amusement. “In case that wasn’t clear.”
“Told you,” Niall said faintly.
She glanced up at the sound of his voice, surprised to see him swaying on his feet, suddenly pale. That look was back — the look of a man who’d seen a ghost, the look of a man who hardly dared believe what he was seeing. Beside him, Hamish put a steadying hand on his forearm. MacClaran men, she thought, something in her recent memory itching at her. The story the old man had told her… a shudder ran down her spine as she turned back to Amelia, wondering if the young woman knew about the terrible fate that Davey’s story suggested lay in wait for her.
“There’s a curse,” Lissa heard herself say, looking between Hamish and Amelia with that uneasy prickle still moving up and down her spine. She was operating almost entirely on dream logic at this point, desperately trying to make sense of the seemingly incoherent collection of information she’d managed to collect. It felt like trying to stop sand from running out of her hands. “My driver was telling me. The wives of the MacClaran men — they all — they die.”
Amelia lifted her eyebrows, glancing back at her husband. “She knows about the curse,” she observed, sounding impressed. Then, unexpectedly, she leaned forward and grabbed both of Lissa’s hands in her own. It was an oddly old-fashioned gesture, for all the world like they were sisters in some storybook, sharing a secret — but the warmth of her touch was steadying, and Lissa found herself squeezing the other woman’s hands in turn. “The curse was broken, Lissa — some time ago, in fact. You’re right, though — it claimed the lives of a lot of innocent women. But it’s also why we’re here.”
“The curse is why I got lost in the forest?” Lissa remembered how silly she’d felt when she imagined that a witch’s cottage might be hidden in the trees that surrounded her. Now, a witch’s cottage seemed like the most natural thing in the world.
“The curse is what brought you here,” Amelia clarified. “I know because it brought me here, too. And a lot of other women, as well — like, seriously, a lot.”
Lissa frowned, her mind racing despite the slowly increasing pain in her head. The story Davey had told her… the curse, the tragic deaths it imposed on the MacClaran women… and what else had he said? The spell that had brought them back … but brought them back strange and different. “In strange clothes,” she said aloud, her eyes widening as the pieces came together, “and with strange new voices — holy crap. They weren’t taken by fairies. They were … they came from the future ?”
“I know it’s a lot,” Amelia said, squeezing her hands. “You’re — genuinely figuring this out insanely fast, but — if you want to take a minute, maybe come inside and have something warm to eat?—”
“No, wait,” Lissa said sharply. “I want to get to the bottom of this. You’re telling me that — that getting lost like I did, getting turned away on the way to the hotel, that was… that was some witch bringing me back through time?”
“We don’t know exactly how it works, but — yeah, basically,” Amelia said with a slight lift and fall of her shoulders. “Magic, time travel.”
“No wonder I couldn’t find Davey’s car,” she said faintly, thinking back to the old man. “Everyone’s going to be so confused when I don’t turn up at the hotel. They’ll have to search the forest.”
“Not for a few hundred years,” Amelia offered, a helpless little smile tweaking at her lips.
Lissa closed her eyes for a moment.
“Are you alright?”
“Yep. Just — thinking about that makes my headache worse, so let’s just — leave that alone. Okay. Right. Well, at least I know I’m not stupid enough to get lost on half a mile of straight road, that’s an upside.” She took a deep breath, then opened her eyes, letting her gaze rest on Niall this time. It was gratifying to see that he looked just about as shellshocked as she felt — though she hoped she was doing a better job of hiding it than he was. “Niall.”
“Yes?”
“Sorry if this is harsh, but do you have a dead wife?”
Beside him, Hamish looked thunderstruck — but Niall, by contrast, only uttered an odd, hoarse little laugh. “Aye, I do.”
“And do I remind you of?—”
“You could be twins,” he said, cutting off the question before she could even finish it. “Closer than twins, even. It’s — I can’t begin to tell you how—” His voice thickened and abruptly cut off, and Hamish put an arm around his shoulders, squeezing him tightly against his side. For a moment, she imagined them as children — the younger brother stepping briefly into the elder’s shadow for comfort before straightening his back and returning his gaze to her, tears standing in those bright blue eyes. “It’s a miracle.”
She hesitated, glancing sidelong at Amelia — but her new friend wasn’t looking at her. She was exchanging a look with Hamish, instead, and the depth of emotion there made Lissa look away quickly, feeling as though she’d intruded on something intimate and personal. She cleared her throat sharply. “I don’t — I’m not her, though,” she said clumsily, wondering even as she spoke if she was being a callous, hurtful monster. “I mean — right? Amelia? Or was I supposed to like, unlock some repressed memories or something while I was lost in the fog?”
Amelia shook her head as she turned her attention back to Lissa. “No,” she admitted. “We’re all — we’re our own people. Nobody’s quite sure what the truth is — some think we’re descendants of the women we look like, others say it’s all just magic. But only a few of us remember the lives of the women who were here before, in answer to your question — and some of us have had some fairly vivid dreams that feel like a connection.”
“Sure. Dreams. Neat.” Lissa massaged her forehead with her thumbs for a moment, hopeful of pressing the agony into submission a little. “Okay. I’m going to need a minute with — with all of that, I’m afraid.”
“Take all the time you need,” Amelia said.
“Absolutely. And please consider yourself an honored guest of Castle MacClaran,” Hamish cut in, a smile on his face. “There’s something of a standing invitation.”
“The Laird’s own wife, Fiona, is an archeologist from Boston,” Amelia said cheerfully. “Like I said — there’s a lot of us.”
“I took the liberty of sending ahead to have rooms arranged for Miss Crossworth when the guards mentioned you’d brought a guest along,” Hamish said, glancing at Niall as he spoke. “So there’ll be a warm bed waiting for you, and a hot meal if you’re hungry.”
She’d never felt less hungry in her life, if she was honest — too much adrenaline surging through her system, too many questions crowding into her mind for attention. Impossible to decide which ones were the most important, though she knew she was going to have trouble sleeping without getting at least a little more information — she found herself plucking a question almost at random from the maelstrom, worried that she wouldn’t get another opportunity to interrogate her hosts.
“I found some gates when I was wandering around in the woods — before I met Niall on the road, I mean. Saw men with swords and crossbows in these little blue outfits, like — well, at the time I thought they were period costumes, but I suppose that’s not technically right. What was that place?”
Amelia glanced at Hamish, whose brow had creased a little, before she looked back at Lissa. “Sounds like you found your hotel after all,” she said, a rueful little smile on her lips. “That sounds like the livery of Lord Weatherby’s men. Weatherby Manor. You didn’t think to ask them for directions?”
Lissa hesitated. How to explain that her most recent experience with an armed stranger hadn’t exactly gone her way? “I got a bad feeling,” she admitted with a shrug, not liking the vagueness of it. For all that she trusted her intuition implicitly, she usually opted for more rational explanations when justifying her actions to other people.
“Good instinct,” Niall broke in, surprising her. “The situation with Lord Weatherby at the moment is… well, not good.”
“It’s a mess,” Amelia said, frankly. “An absolute mess. Partly my fault, I’ll admit — but a very long story that I’d rather save for a more comfortable setting. Lissa, you’re dead on your feet. If we all promise to sit down for an interview first thing in the morning, can we coax you into getting some sleep?”
She hesitated for a long moment — but the dull, drumming pain behind her eyes was hard to ignore, as was the chill that had been slowly sinking into her bones ever since she’d gotten down from the warm back of the horse. “First thing in the morning?” she asked, winning a soft laugh from the group.
Amelia nodded her agreement — but it was Niall who spoke.
“First thing, I promise,” he said softly, and the intensity of his blue eyes was almost too much. “Until every last question is answered.”