Chapter 11
Sunny woke to a crushing pain in her head. She lay perfectly still, trying to figure out where she was and what had happened to her. She didn’t hear anything untoward. No swords ringing. No enemies yelling. No angry Cameron clansmen shouting curses. It was, she had to admit, eerily silent.
Was she dead?
She felt the floor under her fingers and found it to be very cold indeed.
She still had fingers to feel with, so she supposed it was a safe bet she was still alive.
She just didn’t know where she was— or with whom.
She closed her eyes and listened, but all she could hear was her own ragged breathing.
She held her breath and listened a bit longer, but to her dismay, heard nothing. Had Cameron been hurt?
Was he dead?
She thought back to the last thing she remembered. Cameron had turned to fight his cousin, backed her up to Moraig’s house, then pushed her inside. She remembered a blinding pain in the back of her head, as if she’d been hit with a rock.
She felt around her. She found a rock, a very sharp one, but nothing else. There was also something wet on the floor next to her head. Was it blood?
Before she could come to any decision on that, she heard a noise. It sounded like someone outside the door. She fumbled for a weapon, but came up with nothing. She didn’t have Cameron’s knife any longer. She had flung it at one of his clansmen and watched him stumble away, clutching his throat.
Was it Cameron at her door? But he shouldn’t have been at the door; he should have been right beside her. She reached for the rock, just in case it was someone she might have to do damage to. She might be able to protect them both until she could figure out what was going on.
The door at her feet opened. She tried to get up, but she couldn’t. The lights went on and she screamed in pain.
“Sunny!”
She clutched her head, then forced herself to squint at what was in front of her.
Patrick MacLeod stood there, looking at her in astonishment.
Patrick MacLeod, not Robert Francis Cameron mac Cameron.
Sunny pressed her hands against her head and looked around her.
She was in Moraig’s house, Moraig’s twenty-first-century house that was now her house, with her coat on the peg by the door and her pictures on the anything-but-straight walls and her additions and subtractions to Moraig’s collection of furniture.
But she was alone.
She started to hyperventilate. She felt strong arms go around her, then heard Patrick’s voice.
“She’s here, love. Nay, I don’t think I should move her. Her head is bleeding. Call Jamie for me, will you? He’ll call Ian.”
Of course. Those MacLeod lads had a calling tree that would have been the envy of any ladies’ aid society.
“Nay, love, don’t worry about bringing anything. Sunny will have everything here I need.”
Sunny heard him set his phone down.
“Sunny, you’re bleeding,” he said, sounding very worried.
Sunny shielded her eyes from the light with one hand and peered at him.
“Where’s Cam?”
“Who?”
She pushed him away and struggled to her feet. “Help me up,” she begged. “Please. I have to get to the threshold.”
“’Tis a bad idea, lass,” he said. “Let me at least look at that bump. And do you realize you’re babbling in Gaelic?”
“Just help me up, damn you,” she said fiercely. “Either that or get out of my way.”
He stood and pulled her up. She swayed as the room spun violently. Patrick put his arms around her and held on to her until she managed to stand without help. She turned away and looked around her house. The light hurt her eyes, but she forced herself to look at the floor, her bed, the kitchen.
There was nothing except a misshapen circle of blood and a sharp rock. She was still alone. Well, except for Patrick.
“Did you”—she had to think about the word for a minute— “drive?”
“Nay, sister, I walked,” he said, sounding puzzled. “Why?”
“I need light for the outside,” she said, holding out her hand.
He pulled his flashlight out of his jacket pocket, turned it on, and handed it to her. “Sunny, where have you been?”
“Not here,” she said. She pulled him along with her so she could use him as a crutch. She shined the light all around her threshold, looking for boot prints, or blood, or something to indicate that Cameron had been there as well.
There was nothing.
She pulled Patrick outside with her. She looked all around the house.
There was still nothing.
She went back inside, feeling increasingly frantic. She looked all over, but still the only sign of anything out of the ordinary was the pool of blood she’d been lying in and the bloody rock lying next to it. Nothing else. No evidence that anyone had come back to the future with her.
The flashlight fell from her fingers because she simply didn’t have the strength to hold it. She felt Patrick pull her into his arms. She clutched the edges of his coat and gasped for breath she couldn’t seem to catch. He hadn’t made it. Cameron hadn’t come with her through the gate.
In time, she heard others come into her house, but they were like ghosts floating on the edge of her vision. She thought she might have sobbed in Madelyn’s arms. She was fairly certain Patrick had helped her throw up.
Eventually, she found herself in her own bed, dressed in her damp dress and wrapped in two of Cameron’s plaids, alone except for Patrick who sat on a stool next to her bed, watching her with the gravest expression she’d ever seen him wear.
“I’m going to stay with you tonight,” he said quietly, “but I’ll be waking you every half hour. Tomorrow we’ll go into Inverness for tests. That is quite a serious bump you have on the back of your head.”
Sunny closed her eyes to keep the tears where they belonged. The Gaelic Patrick was speaking, complete with his medieval accent, was incredibly soothing. “Thank you,” she managed.
He brushed the hair back from her face gently. “Want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Sunny, you were gone for over a fortnight.”
“Apparently so,” she croaked.
He sighed. “Very well, I suppose you’ll tell me the rest when it suits you.” He paused. “We’ve worried. Jamie especially.”
“I missed his dinner.”
“He’ll want a full report, you know.”
“I’ll tell him to stuff it.”
Patrick laughed softly. “He’s your laird, gel. Show some respect.”
She couldn’t agree. Her laird was lost somewhere in 1375, probably dying from Giric’s sword across his throat or knife buried in his back. For all she knew, Cameron was a ghost and she would find him standing in front of her fire the next day— only she wouldn’t be able to touch him.
“Want the loo again?” Patrick asked quickly.
“No,” she managed. “No, I’m all right. Thank you.”
He squeezed her hand. “Of course. I’ll be here when you need me.”
She nodded and closed her eyes. She couldn’t talk anymore, couldn’t think anymore, couldn’t bring herself to face the harsh reality of what had happened.
Cameron hadn’t made it.
She wasn’t sure she would survive it.
Ten days later, she knew she could put off the unavoidable no longer.
She would have to go see Jamie, tell him something reasonable about her activities over her missing two weeks, then find the strength to ignore the look of extreme skepticism he would give her when she lied about whether or not she had used one of his gates.
Then again, perhaps he wouldn’t ask her anything yet. Even Patrick hadn’t asked her anything past inquiring about her headache. Maybe she looked as bad as she felt.
Sleeping hadn’t helped much. She had been in bed for a solid week, lying in her filthy dress, wrapped in Cameron mac Cameron’s two marginally clean plaids, and wondering when it was that he was going to show up at her door.
She’d spent two more days sitting in a chair in front of a cheery fire, waiting.
But he hadn’t come.
She’d eventually given up hoping he would. If he was going to find his way to her, he would have done it by then. But he hadn’t and he wouldn’t—not even as a ghost, apparently.
The only bright spots were that the cut on the back of her head had healed enough that she could wash her hair and a test done in Inverness had revealed that while she had a very good bump, she also had a very hard head.
She’d been told to go back to bed and rest, which she’d happily done.
It was easier to deal with life when she was sleeping away most of it.
She shuffled to the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. Actually, it was less of a look and more the occasional peek when the stars cleared long enough for her to see herself, but she wasn’t going to quibble.
She didn’t think she looked much different, though she was thinner. Patrick had tried to force all kinds of liquid things down her, things made of fruits and vegetables she usually liked quite well. It had been an effort to drink and she’d done it only because she’d known she had to.
She leaned on the counter and looked at herself. Did she look as if she’d traveled through time, fallen in love, then lost that love? Did her hands look as if they had tried to heal, succeeded at killing, touched the face of a man she cherished?
She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
She brushed her teeth, then had to sit down and rest. Well, one thing was for sure: she didn’t dare drive to Jamie’s. At least if she passed out while she was walking, she wouldn’t run off the road and kill anyone.
She sat again for a few more minutes, then got to her feet and tottered out of her house. She shut the door behind her, then stumbled along the path that led to Jamie’s upper meadow. She stopped and looked down its length.
She almost went back to bed.
But she’d promised to show up, so show up she would. At least the path led downhill. It could have been worse.
What should have been a half-hour walk took her almost two. By the time she got through Jamie’s gates, she wasn’t at all convinced that she wouldn’t pass out before she managed to get to the front door.