Nathaniel sighed and imagined he should be. He considered, then looked at his host. “Have you ever gone back where you shouldn’t have? Or back to the same time period to change something you did before?”
Jamie looked green, if such a thing were possible. “Aye.”
Nathaniel waited, but apparently details were not going to be offered freely. “Perhaps I shouldn’t ask.”
“I wouldn’t answer,” Jamie said. “At least not willingly. Besides, I’m not certain those tales would serve you in your present business.” He leaned back in his chair. “I think you, my lad, have been given the very great gift of going back and redoing the same experience over and over again until you get it right.”
“Do you think so?”
“I’m trying to look on the positive side of things,” Jamie said dryly. “In truth, I haven’t a clue what time is doing with you. That is my best guess.”
“But what could it possibly matter?” Nathaniel asked. “My going back to the same time, I mean. Worse still, why is Emma caught up in all this?”
“Perhaps she was never meant to go,” Jamie offered.
“Or perhaps she was, because she sees things I’m missing—”
He stopped speaking. He thought that was better than gasping as if someone had just shoved a sword into his gut.
She had seen Gerald in New York and recognized him from the past. That was something Nathaniel imagined he never would have managed on his own. It wasn’t something he wanted to think on, but if his cousin were truly loitering in the past, how had he figured out how to get there?
Nathaniel realized with a horrifying moment of clarity that he hadn’t been nearly as careful with his popping through time gates as he should have been. Heaven only knew what Gerald had seen that he shouldn’t have.
“Does Emma remember all the times she’s gone back?”
Nathaniel dragged himself away from those unsettling thoughts. “Aye.”
“Can you wrench the gates to your own purposes? Change your destination or arrival time?”
Nathaniel looked at him in surprise. “It never occurred to me that I might, so I haven’t tried. What damage would I cause?”
Jamie chewed on his words for so long, Nathaniel began to worry that he’d forgotten what he wanted to say. When he finally spoke, Nathaniel wished he hadn’t.
“I can’t say for certain,” Jamie said slowly, “and I haven’t had your experience of having my destination out of my control. But given what you’ve told me and seeing how your lady has been dragged into something that quite possibly might prove fatal for her, my advice is that you try to go back before she first sees you and close the gate.”
Nathaniel blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Close the gate,” Jamie repeated. “Decide when and where it is that she first sees you, then close that gate before she does. Then you should, as I said before, let her go.”
Nathaniel knew his mouth had fallen open, but he couldn’t do anything to remedy that.
“And how the hell would I do that?” Nathaniel said, doing his damndest not to curse the man sitting across from him. “If I wanted to, mind you, which I don’t.”
“I can’t tell you how,” Jamie said seriously, “just that I think you need to. Name the alternative, Nathaniel. She chooses to go back endlessly—presumably in an effort to somehow save your sorry arse—you go back endlessly to rescue her, you’re endlessly living these half lives in two places.”
“Which I’ve been doing—”
“Alone,” Jamie interrupted pointedly. “You’ve been doing it alone. Now you’re drawing a woman into the circle with you.”
“I didn’t—”
“Not intentionally,” Jamie said stubbornly, “but she is there because of you. You are the only one who can stop this cycle.”
Nathaniel wished he could do something else besides grit his teeth.
“Do you love her?”
Nathaniel decided his response was best made in Gaelic and not very politely.
Jamie only smiled gravely. “When you tell her the same, I would phrase it differently.”
“And how would I tell her that?” Nathaniel asked grimly. “When my whole purpose, if I take your advice, is to avoid meeting her?”
“I’m talking in circles,” Jamie said wearily. “All I can say is that I think you need to allow her to live her life free of yours. The alternative is an endless loop you cannot control.”
Nathaniel set his glass aside and rubbed his hands over his face, not because he was sleepy but because he needed to buy himself time. Jamie had a point, damn him. He either had to save Emma or he had to save himself—
Unless he could do both.
He breathed carefully, unwilling to disturb the thought that suddenly occurred to him lest it rush away from him and he lose it. What if he could solve time’s mystery and keep Emma safe in the future?
If he could do that, then he could solve it all.
He nodded, then looked at Jamie. “I’ll see to it.”
Jamie studied him for a moment or two in silence, then rose. He nodded toward the door. “Let us retreat downstairs. It’s best your lady have no idea what we’ve discussed. For her own sake.”
Nathaniel couldn’t have agreed more with that. He left Jamie’s study with him and walked back downstairs. He studiously ignored how odd it was to be walking through a medieval keep in the current day with a man who had ruled over that keep hundreds of years earlier. He wished he had time to press James MacLeod for more answers to things that puzzled him, but perhaps that would have been only a distraction. He already knew what he needed to do.
He would go back and he would solve things himself.
He had no other choice.
Chapter 27
Emma stood with Nathaniel while they took their leave of James MacLeod and tried not to think about the fact that she’d just spent an evening in the castle of a medieval laird.
Or, perhaps more to the point, crammed behind a sofa in a medieval laird’s private study.
Getting herself downstairs after Nathaniel and Jamie had decamped had been something of a trick, but she wasn’t beyond thinking on her feet. She’d waited until she’d heard male voices fade, then quickly slipped out into the hallway and made it sound as if she’d just hurried out from the laird’s room of swords. It was simply amazing, she had told them breathlessly, how quickly time had passed while she’d been lingering over that incredible collection of historic weapons.
If Jamie had reached out and casually plucked a dust bunny from off her shoulder, she’d pretended not to notice.
Never admit anything had been Bertie’s favorite axiom, and she clung to it with both hands. She had been cheerfully polite, thanked Jamie profusely for his hospitality, and waved as she and Nathaniel had left the hall and walked to her car.
She didn’t comment when Nathaniel put his sword in the car, wedging it between their seats. If he took her hand and put it on his leg as they were driving so he could cover it with his own except when he was shifting gears, she didn’t argue with it. When he came inside her house and built up her fire, she only thanked him. But when he headed toward her door, she stopped him.
He wasn’t going to get away that easily.
“It’s early,” she said before he reached for the doorknob. “Interested in some of our usual fare of crap telly?”
He stopped with his back half to her and his head bowed. He sighed, then turned and pulled her into his arms. He held her in silence until she half wondered if he ever intended to let her go. Perhaps he would simply stand there forever, unmoving and unspeaking.
“You could stay,” she whispered.
He cursed. She thought that she might want to make a list of those Gaelic curses at some point, though she had to admit she was starting to recognize a few things she’d heard before. S
he held on to him tightly.
“How do you say I love you in Gaelic?”
“Tha gaol— Wait, why?”
“No reason.”
He sighed deeply. “Tha gaol agam ort. And it sounds nothing like ’tis spelled.”
“How did you learn all this?”
“My mother, for the most part. The rest? On the job, darling. On the job.”
She pulled back. “Stay. At least for a while.”
He sighed, released her, and took her face in his hands. He shook his head, then kissed her.
“Telly,” he said, “then I’m locking you in your house.” He looked at her seriously. “Don’t go anywhere without me, Emma.”
She nodded, though she had absolutely no intention of paying any attention to that.
She’d obviously heard what he and Jamie had discussed and she had the feeling he’d come to a serious decision in James MacLeod’s hall. Given what she knew of Nathaniel MacLeod, she had no doubt what that decision was. If he followed through, he would never encounter her across time’s boundary, then he would likely simply keep out of her sights until she unthinkingly left Benmore behind to pursue her original reason for coming to Scotland.
To turn dreams into reality.
She didn’t want to think about the cosmic ramifications of that.
She considered several ways to get around Nathaniel’s likely plan. She could write herself a note to remind herself that she was terribly in love with the man holding her in his arms, or send herself something to an email account she could bury under other accounts, or, as a last resort, she could text Bertie a secret code that would lead her down a trail to a certain recluse in the Benmore forest.
She put her jammies on because she thought it might throw him off guard to see some MacLeod plaid on display, then sat down on the couch with him and the cups of tea he’d made. She put her head on his shoulder, her arm around his waist, and closed her eyes.
She hadn’t wanted to agree with Jamie that Nathaniel should try to fix things by making sure she never met him, though she had to admit that it was the most straightforward and sensible solution of all those available. It was hard, unyielding chivalry.
Very medieval chivalry.
She struggled to keep her eyes open, but Nathaniel wasn’t wearing his boots, and a quick look proved that his eyes were closed. She snuggled closer to him, feeling warm and safe with not a set of medieval numbers in sight.
She drifted off and couldn’t bring herself to fight it.
• • •
She woke to darkness and panicked until she realized she was lying on her couch covered in a blanket, not sprawled in the MacLeod dungeon covered in goo. She sat up, her head spinning, and it occurred to her that maybe that tea hadn’t been just tea.
She considered, then dragged her hand through her hair. She could credit Nathaniel MacLeod with quite a few things, but knocking her out was not one of them. She had been exhausted, and she suspected he’d felt the same way. What he was probably doing was snoozing peacefully in his bed.
She pushed herself to her feet and walked unsteadily over to the window to pull the curtain back. Damn it, it had to be at least nine. She checked her phone and realized it was almost ten.
She walked over to open her front door. Well, her car was still there, which she supposed boded well. It definitely wasn’t too early to head to Nathaniel’s and make sure he hadn’t done anything she wasn’t going to like.
She threw on clothes, made sure her stove wasn’t going to burn the place down, then grabbed her gear and left her house.
She drove to Nathaniel’s house, pulled to a stop behind his Range Rover, then got out. She paused as she shut the door to her car. She was hardly a professional at sensing changes in anything, but she couldn’t deny that she felt something . . . off.
She wondered if she were being watched or, worse still, if something had happened to Nathaniel thanks to someone else’s nefarious intentions. His cousin Gerald came immediately to mind, which left her running up to his porch to bang on his front door.
There was no answer.
She forced herself to breathe normally and not jump to conclusions. He could have been in the shower, or deeply asleep, or off on a walk. Then again, if any of those had been the case, she probably wouldn’t have turned his doorknob and found it unlocked.
She pushed the door open carefully, then reached inside and flipped down the light. Light switches going the wrong way, cars driving on the wrong side of the road, innocent people walking through the forest and finding themselves in a different century—she was starting to wonder if she would ever get used to how things were done in Scotland. The first two were rather charming.
The last one, not so much.
She eased inside Nathaniel’s house carefully, because she never walked into a place without knowing exactly what lay in store for her. She had a look around, very carefully, then realized that what she’d suspected was definitely the truth. Nathaniel wasn’t there.
She would have bet good money on where he’d gone.
She walked into his kitchen and saw something on the table. She picked it up, then swore.
There was a man who loved a woman he couldn’t have
and he did what he had to do . . .
Tha gaol agam ort
Damn him to hell, he was right. Gaelic didn’t look on paper at all like what it sounded. For all she knew, he’d just told her to get lost.
She went back through his house and looked for medieval gear. There was nothing hiding in his closet, which only stacked the odds against his having dashed up the coast for a bit of hiking. She cursed him as she locked up his house and got back in her car.
It didn’t take her long to consider then discard half a dozen possibilities for what to do next. She could go after him, true, but she had no idea where to look for him or if she would even be in the right time. What if he had gone back a week in time, or two weeks, or however long it had been since she’d been in Scotland, and he had landed in one place while she might land in another and they would never cross paths and she would die in the MacLeod dungeon—
She forced herself to take deep, even breaths and let that thought continue on its way. It didn’t do her any good to allow herself to entertain anything but success.
She considered different alternatives. She could just run into the forest and take her chances, of course, but that was something else to discard immediately. Just running without a plan would very likely do nothing but leave her repeating the same loop she’d already experienced a handful of times.
She considered going back inside Nathaniel’s house to hack into his computer, but given how unwilling he was to even talk about his journeys back in time, she imagined he wasn’t about to keep notes on his computer. His phone was a possibility, but she set that aside as something to perhaps be contemplated later. She would probably have to rifle through his entire house to find it.
Her only other option was to go to James MacLeod’s house and beat some details out of him. She had the feeling that if anyone would know what had happened to Nathaniel MacLeod, it would be that fourteenth-century laird up the way.
She put her car in gear, backed out, then headed down to the village. She supposed she should have eaten something, but she was too wound up to consider breakfast. James MacLeod might have been a medieval laird, but she was the protégé of an MI6 expat. She thought she might be able to do a few things he might not expect.
There was a black Range Rover sitting in front of his castle when she got there, along with a red Porsche. The Range Rover was Patrick’s, but she had no idea who owned that other thing. Perhaps it was a meeting of medieval guys who routinely gave out bad advice to men who weren’t from their time period and should have been taking care of business in the present day.
She got out of her car, ran up the steps, and ba
nged on the front door. It was answered fairly quickly, all things considered, and a man stood there who she didn’t know. He looked quite a bit like Jamie, though, so she supposed he was a relative. Ian MacLeod, perhaps.
“I need to see Jamie.”
The man lifted an eyebrow. “And who are you, lass?”
“I know who she is,” Jamie said, coming to stand next to the man. “Mistress Emma, this is my cousin, Ian. Ian, Mistress Emma is here, I suspect, to kill me.”
Emma glared at him. She hoped that might earn her a few points as well as give her courage, because that man there was intimidating as hell. She looked at Ian MacLeod and nodded shortly.
“I am,” she said crisply. “You’d best move.”
Ian looked at her thoughtfully. “Bare hands or steel?”
“Bare hands,” she said without hesitation.
“Pat,” he called over his shoulder. “Have a live one for you here.”
She threw herself at Jamie. She supposed, in hindsight, that it hadn’t been very well thought-out, but she was furious and he was definitely deserving of her ire. The thing was, she’d forgotten that he was a medieval sort of guy with a powerful instinct for self-preservation. She stopped her hands just short of his neck because she would have run into a pair of daggers.
Well, she wouldn’t have really, because she would have landed face-first on his floor and missed that steel entirely, as he had stepped back before she could get to him and Ian MacLeod had caught her as she fell. Ian set her very carefully back on her feet, then very deliberately took his hands off her and stepped back a pace. She looked at Jamie, then at Ian, then she did the most sensible thing she’d done all morning.
She pulled herself up by her bootstraps and got hold of herself.
“Well,” Ian said, sounding nonplussed. “I thought a batch of tears was coming our way.”
“By the saints, move,” Patrick MacLeod said, shoving his cousin aside. “Emma is not a weeper.” He looked at his brother. “Put up your steel, you fool.”