“What’s wrong?” he said.
“There are MacDougalls nearby,” she whispered.
“Are you in danger?” Something about his tone was so protective. It was as though one of her brothers asked the question. A warm sense of being safe settled in her chest.
“Mayhap,” she said and peered from behind the boulder. “Can ye walk?”
“Unlikely. Can you not just call an ambulance?”
“A what?”
His warm eyes shone as he smiled. “I swear, you locals are weird. Totally into your Highland heritage, aren’t you? The costumes, the arrows, the accent…”
“I dinna ken what ye mean, Konnor. ’Tis ye who appear strange to me. But I wilna leave a friend of my clan in trouble. Come, lean on my shoulder. We have a healer in the castle, and Moire will want to ken ye’ve arrived.”
She squatted next to him and allowed him to wrap his arm around her shoulder. His scent reached her—something foreign, like the fresh scent of rain, woodsmoke, and something dark and strange. She helped him stand, and the weight of him was heavy but pleasant against her skin. Her chest rose and fell faster, but it was only from the exercise, she told herself. Not because she was affected by this man in any way.
Because after what Alasdair had done to her, there was way she could be affected by anyone.
Chapter 3
Konnor didn’t know how long they limped through the woods. Between the agonizing pain in his ankle, and trying not to crush the beautiful Scotswoman with his weight, time crawled. Every second felt a year long.
When he’d woken up in the ravine, the rain had stopped. Strangely, there was no sign that a drop had fallen. How long had he been out? The last thing he remembered was the weirdest sensation of falling through the stone, but he was sure that was only a side effect of the concussion. Sìneag had said something about time travel. But the ruins were still ruins, and the ravine and the woods looked exactly the same. Sìneag was still nowhere to be seen.
Where on earth had this beauty come from? They were out in the middle of the wilderness right after a storm? And why was she completely dry, while his clothes were soaked through? This was all so weird.
“How far still?” Konnor said. “I must be heavy for you. Not every woman can support a 180-pound male for miles.”
She frowned, and there was a fleeting expression of confusion on her face. Then she glared up at him, a hardness in her moss-green eyes. Her long, braided hair smelled mysterious, like a fresh herb cocktail mixed with something sweet that he guessed was her own scent.
“Ye canna climb the slope, so we must take the longer route through the ravine.”
“All right,” he said. “All right.” He considered asking if she could call someone with a car, but he decided against it. Judging by her clothes—leather pants, a simple linen tunic, and something like a leather coat—and the arrows in a quiver on her back, she didn’t look like someone who carried a mobile phone around.
“Were you on a hunt?” He said it as a joke to lighten up the mood. He imagined she probably did archery as a hobby and had been practicing nearby. Or maybe there was a renaissance fair or something.
“Aye.”
“How did it go?”
“As ye see, I caught someone.”
He chuckled. “Well, thanks for not shooting me.”
“I dinna shoot the fallen.”
A code of honor? Had she really been out hunting? “You have the arrows. Where’s the bow?”
She shot him a sideways glance and raised her chin. “I dropped it.”
“Why didn’t you pick it up?”
She bent forward just a tad to correct the position of his arm over her shoulder and then sped up a little.
“None of yer concern.”
Hmm. Mysterious all right.
“Is it like a hobby?” he asked. “I mean, archery? I don’t know anyone who does it.”
“A what?” she said. “Hobby? Dinna ken what that is, but I hunt to feed my people.”
She was so serious. Was she in some sort of closed community, like the Amish, but in Scotland?
“Well, that’s very noble of you,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Marjorie. Yours?”
Marjorie… A shiver went through him. That was the name Sìneag had said.
“Konnor…” he said automatically. Was this some kind of a joke? A setup?
She stopped behind a bush large enough to hide them both and carefully glanced through the branches. Ahead of them, the trees tapered off, and the small brook that flowed down the length of the ravine went into the loch. A castle stood on the shore, not a big one, though it was hard to see from this distance. Sheep grazed in the meadow before it, and the smell of dung reached Konnor’s nose.
The surprising thing was that the castle wasn’t a ruin. Actually, it looked quite new. Smoke rose from the chimneys in the towers and from somewhere behind the wall. Scotland was full of castles. He’d seen a couple of ruins during his trip with Andy. But this one… It could be Glenkeld, the closest castle he’d seen on the map. But that was marked as a ruin, so on second thought, this must be something else.
“Let us go,” Marjorie said. “The way is clear.”
Clear? Was she afraid of someone? Konnor scanned their surroundings, looking for any sudden movements, for armed men, for a shadow lurking behind the trees, for guards or snipers in the castle, for any patch of light reflected off a weapon.
Nothing.
“Are you in danger?” he said when she tugged him to continue walking.
“Aye,” she said, and his gut tightened. “I think we mayhap be. I just saw MacDougall spies talking about a siege.”
He blinked. Was he hallucinating again? “A siege? What siege?”
“The siege of Glenkeld, of course,” she said.
Who would besiege a castle these days, unless they were role-playing? There were groups of people who liked medieval fairs and playing elf and dwarf battles and such… Maybe she was part of something like that?
All that reminded him of his childhood. As a boy, he’d read Lord of the Rings and other fantasy and sci-fi novels. Feeling helpless against his stepfather, Jerry, Konnor had admired the characters who rose against evil and violence. Perhaps he’d been looking for strength for himself. But in real life, evil won. Jerry had mocked him for what he liked to read, and when Konnor didn’t stop, his stepfather beat it out of him.
They walked towards the castle now, and he looked at it with astonishment as they approached. It was a simple construction, four walls connected by four towers on the corners. One of them was round and looked bigger and older than the others. The rest were smaller and square. Two smaller towers surrounded a massive wooden gate that stood closed.
“I thought Glenkeld was a ruin. Do you live here?”
“Aye. ’Tis my clan’s seat. Ever since the bloody MacDougalls took Innis Chonnel after Alasdair MacDougall—” Her voice shook as she said the name, and she cut herself off. Something dark crossed her face, and he saw a bottomless pain dwelling in the depths of her eyes. He looked away. He knew that kind of pain all too well. But it wasn’t his business. He wouldn’t want anyone asking him about his. He shouldn’t meddle in her affairs, and he’d be gone soon anyway.