And then they disappeared.
Chapter 18
Theophilus de Piaget stood in the great hall after sunrise and contemplated things that intrigued him.
He watched his aunt and uncle mourn the death of their daughter. He listened to an interesting tale about Robin having dug a grave for her during the night—which he had threatened to do the evening before—because he feared that what she had was contagious and might infect the entire keep. Both Robin and Anne looked grief-stricken enough for that to have been the case.
Theo looked about him at the household, most of whom wept openly. He watched his cousins and brothers who were equally as devastated. For himself, he felt as if someone had cut his heart out of his chest. He loved Mary easily as much as he loved his own sisters. She had been his best mate save his brother, and he had happily remained near her at Artane when he surely could have gone home with his parents.
He could hardly bear the thought of life without her.
He imagined that, in spite of the quickness and secret nature of their courtship, Zachary Smith felt the same way.
He watched his uncle finish his speech to his household, then retreat with his wife upstairs where they could grieve in private. His brothers and cousins also left the great hall to find a place to shed their tears in private. The servants left as well, to go about their duties with heavy hearts.
But Theophilus de Piaget only stood in the shadows and contemplated things that intrigued him.
Because he had eavesdropped on his uncle when he and Zachary had been discussing how to counteract the poison Mary had ingested.
He had also been at that very strange spot in the ground the night before and he’d seen Zachary take Mary in his arms and disappear with her.
It was strange.
Very strange, indeed.
Chapter 19
Zachary walked along the road quickly. Artane sat on the bluff in the distance like an enormous bird of prey. He was fairly certain that wasn’t the medieval version of it, for which he was most grateful. He had no idea what the local time was, but it had to have been very late. He could only hope he’d landed in the right year. There was light still pouring from the last in a set of row houses in front of him, which made him feel slightly better.
He wished he felt as confident about Mary’s odds of surviving something he hadn’t been able to stop.
He stepped over the low front fence and walked up to the doorway, then managed to ring the bell with his elbow. He waited impatiently, but the door opened soon enough. The porch light went on at the same time.
An older man stood there. He took one look at Zachary, then called back over his shoulder.
“Doris, we’ve another one!”
Zachary supposed they got all kinds, but he wasn’t going to ask for details. He cleared his throat.
“I’m in a bit of a tight spot,” he said apologetically, the modern English feeling strange on his tongue. “If I could use your phone?”
The man looked at him, then at Mary. He stepped back. “You can lay her on the sofa in the parlor. The phone’s right there.”
Zachary thanked him profusely, then followed him into the front room. He laid Mary down, then sat down on the edge of the couch and considered. He supposed he could have taken her straight to Artane and hoped for the best with whatever doc Gideon could dredge up, but he was dealing with medieval poison, not a modern ailment, and that poison was going to require more than just a visit from a local general practitioner.
It was why he also rejected the thought of an international call to his dad in Seattle. Robert Smith was a fabulous pediatri cian, but Zachary suspected his dad wasn’t going to be much help with something concocted almost eight hundred years in the past.
He picked up the phone and dialed someone a bit closer to home. It rang on the other end half a dozen times before someone picked up.
“This had better be an emergency.”
“It is,” Zachary said hoarsely.
“Oh, Zach,” Robert Cameron said, sounding very surprised. “You’re home.”
Zachary closed his eyes, feeling an overwhelming sense of relief rush through him. “What’s the date?”
“Still the twelfth of April, but not for much longer.”
Zachary took a deep breath. “I need help. Can you send a helicopter to Artane? Actually, no, not to the keep. I’ll be in a field to the northwest. I don’t have a flashlight, though, or a phone.”
“Don’t fash yourself over that,” Cameron said without hesitation. “I’ll send Peter down with the pilot. He’ll find you. What else do you need?”
Zachary was enormously grateful for a brother-in-law who was willing to offer help without asking any questions first.
“I have someone with me who’s been poisoned,” he said, falling back into Gaelic out of habit. “I have no idea what the poison was, or if she’ll live. I think I should try the docs in Inverness.”
“Can I offer a piece of advice?” Cameron said slowly.
“If you hurry.”
“Take her to Moraig’s. They won’t know what to do with her in Inverness and then you’ll have to explain all sorts of things about her condition I’m imagining you won’t want to.”
Zachary looked at Mary, pale and cold. “But I can’t do this by myself. It’s far beyond any skill I have.”
“I’ll call Patrick and have him waiting for you. I’ll bring Sunny as well.”
Sunshine Cameron was eight months pregnant and probably needed more rest than that, but Zachary couldn’t bring himself to argue. With Patrick and Sunny both working on her, surely Mary would survive.
Surely.
Zachary let out his breath slowly. “Thank you, Cam.”
“Anything for a brother. We’ll see you at Moraig’s.”
Zachary hung up with a deep sigh, then set the phone on the floor. He smoothed Mary’s hair back from her face and fought the urge to panic. He had failed to keep her safe in medieval England, but with any luck, he wouldn’t fail as spectacularly in the future.
He took her hand and brought it to his mouth. A cold and drowsy humor ... The words ran through his head over and over again. He wished he’d been a better herbalist. He wished he’d bothered to make certain of the dates. He wished a dozen things that he couldn’t go back and change.
He knew how that would turn out.
He could only hope that Patrick and Sunny could see to what he hadn’t been skilled enough even to attempt.
“Your lady friend’s ill?”
Zachary looked up at the man standing in the doorway of his front room and simply nodded.
“Reenactment society?”
“Yes,” Zachary managed. “The food wasn’t good.”
“’Tis England, lad. What do you expect?”
“Don’t you live here, too?”
The man lifted an eyebrow. “I was speaking of my own kitchen, as it happens, but I’d best not say that too loudly. I try to eat at the pub as much as possible.” He studied Zachary for another moment or two. “What’s coming for you?”
“A helicopter.”
“Oy, but that’s a fair sight better than the last bloke. He only had a limousine.”
Zachary blinked. “The last bloke?”
“Come through last year, no, maybe a pair of years back. Kilchurn was his name, I think.” He looked at Zachary. “What silly buggers ye are.”
Zachary felt his mouth fall open. Kilchurn? He opened his mouth to ask for further details, then shook his head. It wasn’t possible. Maybe the name was a common one. Or maybe he’d just been under too much stress lately and he was really starting to lose his mind.
“Get you something to drink?” the man asked.
Zachary shook his head. He didn’t think he would manage anything strong. Actually, he wasn’t sure he would manage anything at all.
He took both Mary’s hands in his own and bowed his head. He hoped the helicopter would hurry.
It was almost four in the morn
ing by the time the pilot set down near the woods surrounding Moraig MacLeod’s house. Zachary thanked the man for the ride, then quickly carried Mary, wrapped in a blanket, through the woods to Moraig’s crooked little cottage. Cameron was right. It wasn’t just that the woods were full of magic and the air full of a hint of spring; it was that there was something profoundly healing about the entire place.
The door opened and light spilled out onto the ground as Zachary walked up the path. Patrick stood back and said nothing as Zachary carried Mary inside. He laid her on the bed, then straightened. He would have wrung his hands, but he didn’t want to give the impression that he wasn’t completely confident that Patrick and Sunny could work miracles.
Patrick pulled up a stool and sat down next to the bed. He checked Mary’s pulse, lifted her eyelids and looked into her eyes, then simply took her hand in his and held it.
“Details?”
“She was poisoned. I’m not sure by what.”
Patrick looked up. “Medieval poison?”
“She’s mid-thirteenth century,” Zachary said, shoving his hands in his pockets only to find he still didn’t have any pockets. “She spit out most of it, which is probably the only reason she isn’t dead. She was unconscious within fifteen minutes. That was this morning. Well, yesterday morning—”
“And you waited this long before you did something?” Patrick asked incredulously.
“It’s complicated,” Zachary growled. He took a deep breath. “Sorry. I would have come sooner, but I had to convince her parents to let me bring her forward, and I had to hope for a gate that worked since all the ones I’d tried hadn’t. It wasn’t exactly like hopping on a plane, Pat.”
Patrick smiled briefly. “I know how that goes. So, she fell unconscious and then what?”
“She continued to fade.” He supposed there would be time later to tell Patrick the entire story, including Styrr’s actions and his own knowledge of her death date. “No convulsions. Just unconsciousness. I tried plantain tea, but she couldn’t keep it down.” He drew up a stool and sat down next to Mary’s head. “What can I do?”
“Pray.” Patrick pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it to Zachary. “Call Cameron and let him know you’re here. Sunny insisted.”
Zachary did, apologizing as he did so for the lateness of the hour. He hung up, then handed the phone back to his brother-in-law. It was profoundly weird to have been in the Middle Ages that morning and now find himself in a house that belonged still in the Middle Ages but boasted several things that were most definitely of a current vintage.
It was no wonder he shook his head a lot.
Patrick set his phone down on the floor, then rubbed his hands together. “We’ll do what we can, you and I, until they arrive. We can try tea, but I’m not sure we’ll get your lady here to swallow it. We may have to settle for poultices and time.”
“Time?”
Patrick shot him a look. “I can’t counter what I don’t know, Zach, and medieval poisons were generally fatal. Time may be the only thing we have—time to wait out the damage done. But I will do what I can.”
Zachary swallowed, hard. “Please do.”
“Who is she?”
“Maryanne de Piaget.”
Patrick blinked. “One of Gideon’s ancestors?”
“Her father is—was—Robin, the second lord of Artane.”
Patrick let out a low whistle. “Well, you don’t mess about, do you?” He smiled. “Shall I strip her, or shall you?”
“We’ll wait for Sunny,” Zachary said without hesitation. “If you do it, I’ll kill you. If I do it, Mary will kill me.”
“Then we’ll wait. But we’ll take off her boots now.”
Zachary did so without hesitation. He sat next to his love while Patrick put the finishing touches on a detoxifying concoction in the kitchen. It smelled reasonably good, which was a bonus. He held her hand and bowed his head.
And he prayed.
It was the beginning of a very long day. Sunny and Cameron came more quickly than he’d expected, which meant they had likely already been on their way. Together they stripped Mary and put her in shorts and a T-shirt that Sunny had brought along. Zachary half expected Mary to wake up and express her dismay over the skimpiness of her clothing.
But she didn’t. She only lay there, her dark hair coming free of her braid, her face so pale that every freckle across her nose was visible from three feet away.
Zachary paced until he couldn’t any longer, then he finally simply leaned against the wall. Sunny was working on Mary’s feet and Patrick was brewing up something else they were going to soak cloths in and put over as much of Mary as they could.
By sunset, Patrick and Sunny both had stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. Zachary was sitting on a stool near Mary’s bed. He stroked the hair back from her face and tried to avoid thinking very black thoughts.
They were the same thoughts he’d been avoiding all day. The irony was, he now had her in a time where they could have been together, yet she was so close to dying that he could feel it in the air. He wondered what other fiendish things Fate had in store for either of them.
He decided that it was probably better not to know.
He looked at Cameron, who was sitting in a chair near the fire, simply watching silently. Now, there was a man who had seen enough death over the course of his life to probably think he’d seen enough. Zachary wanted to ask Cameron’s opinion, but he couldn’t bring himself to. He could only look at Mary and feel absolutely helpless.
“Care to talk?”
Zachary looked at Cameron. “Honestly, I’m not sure I would even know where to begin.”
“That she’s still breathing is a good sign,” he offered.
“Do you think so?”
“It depends on what the poison was, of course, but most things I saw acted very quickly. Within minutes. Either she has the constitution of a horse, or she spat out most of it. Or it wasn’t very well made.”
Zachary nodded, though he wasn’t sure which of the alternatives was the most palatable. He imagined that if Geoffrey of Styrr had been the one making the potions, what Mary had ingested was quite potent. He supposed the truth was she was simply very strong.
The front door opened. He looked up, searching Sunny’s face, then Patrick’s for any sign of impending disasters. Sunny walked over and put her hand on his head.
“I’m going to go to Patrick’s and sleep for a bit,” she said with a weary smile. “Then I’ll come back and spell him. I promise we won’t leave your lady unattended.”
Zachary nodded. That didn’t sound as if they expected her to die, though he wasn’t sure how they would have broken that news to him if they had.
Cameron gathered up his wife and wrapped her in a coat before he ushered her out of the house and pulled the door to quietly behind her.
Zachary looked at Patrick. “What now?”
Patrick sat down on the stool near Mary’s feet. “In truth?”
Zachary closed his eyes briefly before he could stop himself. “I’m not sure I can take the truth right now, Pat, if you don’t mind.” He had passed exhausted sometime during the previous night. He knew tears were running down his cheeks but he didn’t even have the energy to stop them. “I haven’t had her very long. I honestly never thought I would have her at all. The thought of losing her is just more than I can bring myself to face right now.”
“Then don’t,” Patrick said quietly. “Just take off your boots and lie down with her.” He smiled faintly. “Never underestimate the power of another heartbeat next to yours.”
“Hippocrates?”
“Moraig MacLeod. Midwife, healer, herbalist, and clan witch. She knew of what she spoke.”
Zachary nodded, then heaved himself to his feet. He wished quite desperately for a shower, or a shave, or even a toothbrush. He supposed the last wasn’t beyond reach. He found one in the bathroom, used it, then came back into the great room and took off his boots. He c
rawled over Mary and did his best to fold himself into a space that was made for a woman of about five foot two, not a man who was six foot three trying to hold the woman he loved. He did the best he could, then closed his eyes.
“Thanks, Pat.”
“You’re welcome. And just so you know, Jamie is worried about you.”
“Is he?” Zachary asked in surprise.
“Only now, of course. He didn’t worry before.”
“Your brother is a hard-hearted bastard.”
Patrick laughed for the first time that day. “Such disrespect for your laird who only has your best interests at heart.”
“Pat?”
“Aye?”
“Shut up.”
Patrick laughed again quietly, then stood over the bed and helped Zachary turn Mary gently so she was lying on her side with her back to his chest. Zachary put his arm around her and paused. He looked up at his brother-in-law.
“I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose her.”
“Don’t think about that,” Patrick said gravely. “Just keep her close to your heart. She’ll know you’re there.”
Zachary nodded and put his arm around her waist. He felt for her hand and laced his fingers with hers. Her hands were cold and her skin clammy. There had been no change in her over the past twenty-four hours.
He supposed that the status quo was better than the alternative.
He closed his eyes and prayed for a miracle.
Chapter 20
Mary dreamed.
Or, at least, she thought she had dreamed. Her dreams had been foul ones full of pain and things that tore at her skin, loud noises she had never heard before, and the world rocking uncontrollably underneath her. Every bit of her ached abominably, as if she’d not only been thrown from a horse, she’d been stomped on as well, only to thereafter eat bad fish that had left her retching in the garderobe for the whole of the night.
She didn’t move. She simply breathed in and out, carefully so as not to disturb the fragile truce she was having with her poor, abused form. She didn’t even attempt to open her eyes. She merely lay still and tried to determine where she was and what had happened to her.