Chapter 3
B rigid gasped. Professor Edmondson! He was her mother’s boss at the time travel lab - a well-respected scientist and time traveller. Why would he have kidnapped Finn? None of this made any sense. She stared at him.
“Thank you for coming,” Professor Edmondson said politely. “I am glad you managed to follow my instructions.”
So he had kidnapped Finn.
“I hardly had a choice,” Brigid pointed out.
He shrugged. “Sometimes, such methods are necessary, crude as they may be.”
Brigid still could not get her head around this conversation. Here she was, in the dark, in another time, with Professor Edmondson - a man she barely knew.
“Why didn’t you contact me via my mother?” she asked, confused. “Why go to these lengths?”
“Kara and I have had something of a falling out,” the Professor said smoothly. “She just didn’t understand my methods. So, if I can’t use her, I’ll need to use you instead.”
“Use me for what?” Brigid whispered.
He smiled, teeth gleaming in the flickering light. Brigid shivered.
“I have need of someone with time travel abilities in their blood,” he said.
Time travel in their blood ? Brigid was more confused than ever.
“But, time travel is a science,” she said. “It’s got nothing to do with blood.”
The Professor laughed.
“Poor Brigid,” he said. “So talented, and yet so foolish. No, time travel is not a science. It is closer to what you might understand as magic. Your mother has the ability to travel in time, and so do you. And so, I need you to open time portals for me.”
Brigid backed away from him - but with the cross behind her, she couldn’t go far. She did not like the sound of his proposal at all.
“If my mother won’t help you, why should I?” she asked.
“Because I have your boyfriend,” the Professor growled, all friendliness vanishing from his face. “If you don’t help me, poor Finn will suffer.”
Brigid’s panic roared back in full force, blurring her vision and shaking her hands. Finn . Where was he? What had he already suffered?
“Please, don’t do anything foolish,” she said. “I can get home in just a moment. Then I’ll contact my parents, and they will make you regret this. But if you let Finn go, we can all pretend this never happened.”
This time, the Professor growled like a wild animal.
Brigid did not move fast enough. Before she could touch the cross again, two men leapt forwards and grabbed her arms. They pulled her towards Edmondson. Brigid was suddenly very, very aware that she was just one woman in the middle of a dozen men.
They pulled her further away from the cross, until she stood right in front of Edmondson. He grabbed her chin in his cold fingers and tilted her face up to his.
“You will help me, Brigid Knight,” he said. “If you don’t do every single thing I tell you, Finn will suffer. You’d better believe that I have no problem with using force to get what I want.”
From his cruel grip on her face, his fingers digging into her flesh, Brigid could well believe that.
Then, suddenly, a loud whooping sound broke the air. Two masked men, wearing black capes, burst through the circle of men. One carried a long-barrelled gun and the other swung a huge sword, its blade glinting a fierce silver in the torchlight. Brigid screamed. The two men released her and she tumbled to the ground, wrapping her arms over her head.
One tent, larger than the others, stood in what seemed to be the centre of the camp. The two men fought their way towards it, screaming and hacking as they went. With a single swipe of that massive sword, the masked man slashed straight through the canvas before anyone managed to stop him. Brigid’s jaw dropped open.
But the two strangers were heavily outnumbered. That was as far as they got before Edmondson’s men rallied and fought back. The masked men backed away, their attack turning to defence in a matter of seconds. They glanced at each other. Brigid could not see their faces behind their masks, but they seemed to exchange some sort of message. Their path changed, leading them towards where she huddled beside a tent.
The taller of the men, the one with a sword, offered Brigid a hand, while his companion kept Edmondson’s men at bay.
“This is no place for a lady,” the man said, his voice gravelly and with a thick Highlands accent. “Would you prefer to come with us?”
Brigid hesitated. Could she trust this masked man any more than Edmondson? If she accepted his offer and ran, Finn might be in even more danger than before. But Edmondson’s intentions seemed dark. Who knew how badly he would mistreat her?
So, Brigid nodded.
The man grabbed her hand. As Brigid clung to him, he took off at a run. They sprinted between the tents and crashed into the woods beyond, branches whipping at Brigid’s body and cracking under her feet. She skidded on the slick mud, trying desperately to keep her balance. The other man ran behind them, firing off occasional shots to protect their backs.
Holding her hand in his, the tall man led Brigid through the woods until they reached a small clearing. Two horses stood there, calmly chewing the long grass.
“Apologies,” the man said. “We were not expecting a guest, so you will have to share my horse.”
“That’s quite alright,” Brigid said faintly, still trying to catch her breath. How surreal, to be having a polite conversation in the middle of the woods, with only moonlight to illuminate her rescuer’s face.
As if he felt her eyes on him, the man whipped off his mask. Even in the faint light, he was incredibly handsome, with thick red-gold hair tumbling down around his shoulders. He winked at Brigid.
“A pleasure to meet you, my lady,” he said. Then, without warning, he swooped in and kissed her. For a second, his warm lips caressed hers, and she gasped against him. Then he pulled back and grinned at her.
Brigid spluttered. The surreal feeling only deepened.
“What was that for?” she asked.
He shrugged. “It seems fair reward for rescuing a beautiful lady. I am Alexander MacLeod, but you can call me Sandy.”
Brigid blinked at him. “I’m Brigid,” she managed.
He repeated the name a few times in a soft voice, rolling his tongue around the r sound.
“A lovely name,” he said.
“No more time to waste,” the other man said, pulling off his own mask. “We need to get moving. Edmondson will be after us any moment.”
“He seems like a determined devil,” Sandy agreed.
The shorter man vaulted up onto his horse. Sandy turned to Brigid and crouched down, making a step with his hands. Brigid stepped up, letting him boost her into the saddle. He jumped up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her close against him. Then they were off.
The rough dirt road was lit only by moonlight, silvery pale. Trees cost long, shifting shadows over the uneven ground. In front of Brigid, the horse’s head constantly slid in and out of the shadows, the hypnotic motion making her slightly dizzy.
Reaching down to the side, Sandy fumbled for something in the bulging saddlebag. He pulled out a huge length of cloth and wrapped it around himself. It was a dark-coloured tartan fabric, Brigid realised. A Highlander plaid?
She tried to focus her mind and work out where she was - when she was. Her racing thoughts pulled all the clues together. She thought about the long-barrelled gun - a musket? And the huge sword - perhaps a claymore?
It would be a bit longer before she could confirm anything for sure. She didn’t want to ask the date and make her rescuers suspicious. But she suspected that she was now in eighteenth-century Scotland. Not only had she failed to rescue Finn, but she was now trapped in the past herself.