The Key to Her Heart: A Highlander Time Travel Romance Page 9

  “Look,” she said. “Just stop and listen to me for a minute.”

  “I will not listen to the rantings of the demon within you. It must be cast out if you are to be saved. Know that this brings no pleasure for me but it must be done. If the clan were to hear of your rantings, the punishment upon you and I would be far worse than scourging and prayer.”

  “Listen, please,” she begged, craning her neck to look at him. “It’s not rantings. I swear on my life I have told you nothing but the truth. I’m from the future. I’ve traveled back in time and…and…and look at me, Jock.

  “Do I look like I’m lying? Please. Please let me go, I’m begging you. Please, Jock, don’t do this. Don’t hurt me. You promised you wouldn’t hurt me.”

  He looked from the scourge to her and back again. She continued fighting to free herself as he muttered something under his breath before taking a slow step toward her.

  She screamed at the top of her voice as the scourge whipped down through the air toward her body. Another second and all she would know was pain.

  The second lasted forever.

  Chapter Ten

  As the scourge whipped down through the air Jock had been prepared for the shriek from the demon inside her. What he had not been prepared for was how her scream of terror reached deep inside him to a place in his soul he hadn’t even known existed.

  Before he knew what was happening, the scourge was turning aside and thudding into the straw mattress. He let it fall from his hand and immediately began untying her, not speaking as he did so.

  Words could not hope to get across what he wanted to say to her. The fact that he hoped he wasn’t making a mistake. That if there was a demon in her, he had just cursed them both for eternity.

  All he could do was hope he hadn’t just made the biggest mistake of his life. He undid her right wrist before stepping back, leaving her to undo the bonds that tied her ankles.

  If the demon was going to attack him, this would be the time, when his mind was at its most confused, when he was at his weakest. He would go down fighting though, his fists already clenched.

  “Why did you do that to me?” Daisy asked as she undid the last of the knots holding her in place. You promised me you wouldn’t hurt me.”

  “I wasnae trying to hurt you. I was trying to save you.”

  “Save me? You’ve some funny ideas about that if you ask me.” She sat up, swinging her legs off the bed. “I think I should go home.”

  “Aye. I shall help you dress.”

  “No,” she said sharply. “I can manage on my own thank you very much.”

  He watched her for a moment but she held his gaze without breaking for the first time. Had he made the right decision? There was a knock on the door. A voice from the other side. “My laird, a rider approaches from the north in MacDonald tartan.”

  “I will be back,” he said to Daisy, turning and opening the door. He headed out, walking up to the battlements and looking where the guards pointed. Down below, waiting by the closed gate, the rider sat, struggling to keep control of his horse. Typical MacDonald.

  “What you be wanting?” Jock called down. “It is a long way from your homeland.”

  “The king sent me with a message. Are you going to let me in or leave me to tell him of your lack of welcome?”

  “I will not be told what to do by a MacDonald who’s barely old enough to ride. What’s your message?”

  “The king will be here in two days time. He will stay for one day and asks that you begin preparation to provide him that which you promised.”

  “You may tell the king he will have what I promised or he will have my head.”

  “So be it.” The rider turned to go.

  “Wait.” Jock nodded down into the courtyard. “Bring him in and give him some vittles. He looks like he needs them, scrawny wee thing.”

  Leaving his men to tend to the messenger, he returned to the keep, making his way back to his bedchamber. “You’re still here,” he said, nodding toward Daisy.

  “Well, you locked me in. I couldn’t exactly go anywhere.”

  “That didn’t stop you vanishing from the infirmary did it? I think it’s maybe time you and I had a talk.”

  “I don’t. I think it’s time I go home.”

  “And where is home?”

  “Edinburgh, not that it’s any of your business.”

  “You would travel that far on foot? At this time of night? You will be picked off by outlaws before you’ve made it five miles off our land.”

  “I won’t be walking. I’ll be driving.”

  “Driving? Driving what?”

  She ran a hand through her hair, shaking her head as she did so. “Eccentric isn’t the word,” she said quietly before raising her voice. “My car. Or let me guess, you don’t know what a car is?”

  “I have never heard the word before.”

  “Then allow me to show you it. You’ll be amazed.”

  She walked toward him, stopping dead in front of him. He felt a sudden urge to kiss her and wipe that stubborn look off her face but he managed to resist it, stepping aside and watching as she walked out of the room and down the stairs. He followed in silence as she made her way out to the courtyard.

  “I’m ignoring all this,” she said, waving her arm at the buildings they passed as they made their way to the front gate. “It’s not here.”

  The gate was still open, the messenger struggling to get his horse inside. Three grooms were fighting to still it but Jock’s patience was too thin to leave them to deal with the problem.

  Shoving past, he grabbed hold of the horse’s reins, muttering to it as it came to a halt. “Shush,” he said, “be still.” Turning to the nearest groom, he handed him the reins. “If you cannae do your job, I’ll move you to the laundry,” he snapped, turning back to find Daisy had gone.

  He picked up his pace, finding her outside the castle, spinning on the spot and looking bewildered.

  “Where is it?” she asked. “I don’t understand. What have you done with it?”

  “Where’s what?”

  “My car of course. Where’s it gone?”

  “What is this car you speak of?”

  “Four wheels, engine. Red color. It was right here and okay, where’s the parking lot gone? This is just grass. What happened to the gravel?”

  “Are you all right?” he asked as she suddenly staggered. He caught her before she fell but her eyes had already rolled into the back of her head. Picking her up into his arms he carried her back inside. Whatever was going on, she hadn’t been able to take it anymore and had passed out.

  He thought about taking her to the infirmary but after his previous encounter with Alan, he decided against it, taking her back to his bedchamber and laying her out gently on the bed.

  The cords that had bound her still lay there like coiled snakes, making silent accusations against him. He tossed them into the corner of the room before draping a blanket over her.

  That done, he called for a servant, sending them to fetch cold water and enough herbs to soothe her head. She had a high fever, her forehead coated in beads of sweat. She tossed and turned on the bed, muttering to herself though the words were indecipherable.

  It was an hour before she opened her eyes again. When she did, he felt a strong urge to wrap his arms around her, hold her tight, she looked so scared.

  She sat up, moaning quietly. “I’m still here. Tell me this isn’t real.”

  “Drink this,” he said. “You look like you need it.”

  “What happened?” she asked, taking the tankard from him and staring into the interior. “Why am I here?”

  “You passed out by the gatehouse. Do you remember?”

  “I remember looking for my car and then nothing. Did I really faint? Maybe that concussion was worse than I thought.”

  He leaned back in his seat and examined her. “What’s a concussion?”

  She sighed, sipping at her drink and then grimacing. “What is in th
at?”

  “Herbs to soothe a troubled mind.”

  “It’ll take more than that to sort this one out.”

  Leaning forward once more, he looked at her closely. “Who are you?”

  “I told you, Daisy Stone.”

  “No, not what’s your name. Who are you? Why do you wear such strange clothes and speak words that have no meaning if you are not possessed?”

  “I might ask you the same question.”

  “I wear the colors of my clan. You wear things like no woman has ever worn.”

  She sat up in bed, pushing the covers down to her waist. “No car, no parking lot, no lightbulbs. Oh, my. What if Tabby’s right?” She groaned, covering her face with her hands. “No, no. She can’t be right. Can she?”

  “Right about what? Who is Tabby?”

  “Tabby is my roommate and if she were here now she’d tell me this was all because of the silver key.”

  “You’re still making no sense.”

  “The key. The box. Have you still got that box I gave you? That would prove it one way or another.”

  “Prove what?”

  “Whether or not I’ve gone back in time. Or does saying that make you think I’m possessed again?”

  “I dinnae ken what to think anymore. What good would a silver key do?”

  “Because if Tabby’s right, I might be able to prove one way or another whether they are special like she thinks. Where’s the box?”

  “I dinnae ken. I threw it aside when you got here.”

  “Then help me find it.” She climbed out of bed and began hunting through the bedchamber, getting on her knees and rummaging in the dark corners outside the light of the torches.

  Jock helped, wondering once again if she was mad or possessed. Was there a difference? Trust him to fall for one such as her. The only woman he was interested in and she was scrabbling on the ground looking for a silver key she thought was magic.

  Something sparked in the back of his mind. A memory. Eddard had spoken of a silver key not that long ago. He’d put it down to his mental decline when he talked of it, that was why he’d forgotten.

  His father had told him about Morag traveling back and forth in time with the help of a silver key. What if it wasn’t rambling? What if it was true? All of a sudden, he wanted to find the key as much as Daisy.

  “Found it,” she said, getting to her feet triumphantly, holding the box aloft. She opened it as she walked back into the light. “Where’s the key?” She frowned, looking up at him. “It was in the door.”

  Jock looked, seeing something twinkling in the light of the torch down on the floor. Wedged between two floorboards was the key and it took some effort for him to wrench it free before he could pass it to her. “What now?” he asked.

  “Now we close this door,” she said. With a thud the door closed, trapping the two of them inside the bedchamber. “Then we lock it with this.”

  “And what is supposed to happen?”

  “We shall see. I unlocked it and found you here. Let me ask you something. What year do you think it is?”

  “Twelve-forty by the grace of God.”

  She looked as if she was about to faint again. She staggered, knocking a ewer of water onto the floor. He caught her but she kept her eyes open.

  For a moment he held her in place, looking down at her in silence. The moment ended and he let go, his hands still tingling from where he’d touched her.

  “Are you faint?”

  “I’m all right,” she said, looking down and seeing her feet in the spilled water. “Just a bit woozy. Sorry about that. It takes a bit of getting used to. As far as I can see, there are two options.

  “One, I’m dreaming and none of this is real.

  “Two, I’ve traveled back in time through to the Middle Ages. If Tabby is right, when I use this key I should go back home. Something tells me the key is the answer.

  “Every time I’ve dreamed about this in the past, when I turn the key, I wake up. That’s what’s going to happen this time.”

  She turned the key, locking and then unlocking it a moment later.

  “Did it work?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” She swung open the door and stepped through.

  Jock followed but by the time he’d made it out into the corridor, she was nowhere to be seen.

  “Daisy,” he shouted. No answer. He looked down. There were her wet footprints leading from the bedchamber. They crossed the threshold of the door and he frowned, kneeling down to look closer.

  One footprint had been sliced in half. The heel was there but at the point where it crossed the doorway it wasn’t there anymore. He ran his finger through the water. That was real.

  Where had she gone? What had the key done to the door?

  More importantly, what had it done to her?

  Chapter Eleven

  Daisy was sitting in her car. “That’s weird,” she said, looking around her. “Very weird.”

  She opened the car door and stepped out, half expecting to see Jock standing there. Nobody was around.

  It was dark but there was enough moonlight for her to make out the shadowy form of the castle in front of her. “Parking lot gravel,” she said, putting her feet down outside the car. “Just like it’s always been.”

  Her head began to hurt. What had happened? She had walked through the door after unlocking it with the silver key. Then what?

  Then she was sat in her car. She tried to rationalize things but there was no real way of explaining it. The only possible explanation was that the key moved either the doorway, or her.

  It can’t have been a dream. What had she done? Turned up at the castle and then fallen asleep in the car for hours? Was that more likely?

  She stepped out into the warm summer’s night. There was no breeze, not a sound anywhere apart from her feet crunching on the gravel. The door to the gatehouse swung open on its hinges. The wood was rotten.

  “Weirder and weirder,” she said, pausing to let the pounding feeling behind her eyes subside a little.

  She walked through the gatehouse and out into the courtyard just as the moon disappeared behind a cloud. She waited and it emerged a moment later, lighting up the empty grass. No buildings, no highlanders in tartan baldrics. No torches on the walls. The place was empty.

  She walked up the stairs, noting the missing door at the top. Inside she could hear nothing at all. The silence was overwhelming and she longed for the clash of swords as on her first visit, something that would tell her life went on, that she wasn’t alone in the universe.

  More by feel than by sight she made her way to the laird’s bedchamber. The door was unlocked. She pushed it open, wondering what had happened to the silver key. Had she left it behind when she’d come through time to her car?

  Where was Jock?

  Was he back there wondering what had happened to her? Without the key would she ever be able to get back there again? It would be the most frustrating thing in the world if she had found a way to travel through time only to lose it before she could prove to anyone it was possible.

  Inside the bedchamber was a single window, the moon shining through it, revealing a completely empty space. The plaster on the walls had long since vanished, the floorboards gone, rough undressed stone all that was left.

  There was no furniture, no Jock, and no signs of life beyond a crow that cawed loudly at her invasion. It flew out of the window into the night, leaving her waiting for her heart to return to her body from the three feet or so it had leaped toward the ceiling when the bird exploded into the air.

  Suddenly she was crying. She wasn’t really sure why. She guessed it was because she knew it was over. There was no chance of seeing Jock again, or getting the chance to investigate some of those medieval recipes she had always wondered about. Why hadn’t she gone to the kitchen when she was back there?

  Why did she care about seeing him again anyway?

  Look at what he’d done to her last time she was there. He’
d tied her to his bed against her wishes and been on the verge of beating her bloody. Would he have killed her?

  The question didn’t matter. None of it mattered anymore. She staggered away from the empty bedroom. He was long dead. The entire clan was long dead.

  All that was left was an abandoned castle and her memories. Already they were fading, his face blurring in and out of focus in her head no matter how hard she concentrated. She blamed her headache, it pulsed behind her eyes, making her nauseous. She needed fresh air.

  She fought her way back down the stairs to the courtyard leaving the dead room behind. The laird was in his time and she was in hers. She was going to have to get used to the idea so she better start straight away.

  He had been about to beat her. She couldn’t trust him. She should forget him, pretend it was all a figment of her imagination, pretend he meant nothing to her. Tell herself that often enough and it might even come true.

  She was still crying when she got back to the gatehouse. She heard a noise from behind her and turned to find the custodian holding a lantern, squinting at her in the dark.

  “Who’s there?” he asked, taking a step toward her. “You? What are you doing back?”

  “Leaving,” she said, turning and heading for her car. There didn’t seem much point talking to him. Sure, she could ask why he had sent her up to an empty bedroom but if she told him what she’d seen up there, he’d either laugh or call the emergency services.

  Where would she end up then? Locked up? Injected with all manner of things? Better to keep quiet until she got home.

  Tabby.

  The thought of her friend reassured her. She could at least talk to her. Tabby would believe her. Tabby would also help her get over Jock MacGregor.

  She didn’t start driving until the tears had stopped. She sat behind the wheel, refusing to look at the twinkling lantern light over by the gatehouse. The custodian was watching her. Let him watch. She had nothing to say to him.

  She got home a little after three in the morning according to the clock in the car. Parking up, she sat still for a moment, trying to gather her thoughts. She wanted to go inside and sleep, hope the headache would have faded by the time she woke up.