The morning wore on in a way that wasn’t particularly pleasant, but he hadn’t expected anything else. The Fergussons were determined and the MacLeods weary from not just the current skirmish. He’d already had a full report of what had gone on earlier in the week whilst he’d been off seeing to other business. If that business included more keeping his investments in the twenty-first century in good shape and less roaming through medieval forests, scouting for Malcolm, well, who was to know—
“Nat, duck!”
He did without thinking, thanked his cousin—however many generations removed he might or might not have been—for saving his life for the second time that day, then turned his mind back to the battle at hand. It looked like it might go on for quite some time.
At least the future, as he knew very well, would keep for a bit longer.
Chapter 3
Therewere, Emma had to admit as she examined her current location, several benefits to driving on the left. The first one that came to mind was that when she got distracted by scenery, she apparently naturally fell off the left side of the road into a bit of gravel instead of to the right into a bit of a long, winding river.
That was definitely a glass-half-full kind of moment.
She turned the engine off, then indulged in some restorative deep breathing. The morning had gone fairly well, all things considered. Hot shower, clean clothes, and an almost edible breakfast had gotten her off to a good start. She hadn’t hit anything in the village and she’d found her way out into the countryside without any trouble. Of course, her very recent brush with plunging her car into a river had been a thrill—and not a good one—but if that was the worst that happened to her, she wasn’t going to complain.
She took a final deep breath, then peered out her windshield at the forest that loomed up in front of her. The road leading into it didn’t have any no trespassing signs posted, but she wondered if it might be wise to figure out where she was before she wandered onto someone’s private property, found herself mistaken for a grouse, and shot on sight.
She checked her phone but had no signal. Inconvenient, true, but nothing that couldn’t be solved by using a good, old-fashioned physical map. At least that way she could very reasonably claim ignorance if she wandered where she shouldn’t have. She pulled out the map she had bought earlier thatmorning at the local gas station and unfolded it until it took up most of the front seat. It was easier that way to ignore Mrs. McCreedy’s map that she hadn’t gotten around to taking back to the generous, if not slightly misguided in matters of magic and its ilk, shopkeeper.
The damned thing was almost burning a hole in the passenger seat, truth be told. She could smell the metaphorical smoke from where she was sitting.
She forced herself to focus on the map in front of her. She realized very quickly that it wasn’t going to be of much use except on more substantial journeys. The village was there, true, but that was about as detailed as it got.
She looked without much hope for some sort of exploded view of where she was, but found nothing. She sighed, folded the map back up into approximately its original configuration, then looked over at what she really didn’t want to become too familiar with. Unfortunately, she knew she had no choice but to concede the battle. She took the treasure map and carefully flattened it against the steering wheel, trying not to get too involved in wondering what in the hell the mapmaker had been thinking when he’d whipped out quill and ink. Maybe Mrs. McCreedy’s great-grandson had made it for her and those were things he’d buried for future use. She wasn’t opposed to running into a decent cache of either snacks or doubloons, so she threw caution to the wind and gave the thing a serious look.
She identified the village, then traced her route north and a bit east until she thought she might be looking at where she was. She didn’t see any Xs crowding around her, so she supposed she was safe from whatever those indicated. A little wander in the forest couldn’t go too wrong. She was comfortably far away from the MacLeod family castle and not anywhere close to Cameron Hall, so maybe she could avoid any encounters with angry lairds as well.
She folded the map up carefully and put it back on the passenger seat. The world didn’t end, so she took that as a good sign, then climbed out of her car and locked it behind her. She put her phone in her pocket, realized there was no hope of getting her bearings from the sun, then set off in what she hoped was the right direction.
The forest, once she entered it, was a bit spookier than she’d expected it to be, but she supposed that had more to do with the cloudiness of the day than it did the shadows in the trees. She zipped her slicker up and continued on, undaunted. No self-respecting Seattleite would have paid any attention to what was falling through the branches, and she was nothing if not seasoned when it came to rain.
Stillness descended until all she could hear was her footsteps against the earth. Peaceful, true, but having nothing to do but walk gave her far more time to think than she wanted. She’d put on a good face as she’d been bolting from her life, but she was quickly coming to the realization that she had to face where she was.
The truth was, she was at a crossroads. She was a year or so away from being thirty, recently broken up with her boyfriend, and staring at the ruins of a business she’d built from scratch. What of her savings she hadn’t been forced to give to an unscrupulous business partner, she had used to buy a ticket to Scotland and pay in advance for the first week of her stay. She had six months’ worth of income stashed in an account she had managed to keep separate from any business entanglements, but once that was gone, she was out of money and out of options. She had to come up with a solution, and fast.
The solutions she didn’t consider were insolvency, piracy, and moving back in with her highbrow parents who would sigh lightly every time they saw her. Where that left her, she just didn’t know.
She had to pause and take several deep, strengthening breaths. She would manage it. All she had to do was put one foot in front of the other. She had come to Scotland for inspiration, and she fully intended to find it. She just needed some peace and quiet to get her head together and start a new chapter in her life.
Things definitely could have been much worse. She could have been living eight hundred years earlier and been on her way to the Tower of London. She could have been missing her shoes. She could have had a lifetime of the same sort of truly awful tea and stale cookies she’d made a pre-breakfast meal of back in her room. When she looked at it that way, her life was looking pretty good.
Besides, in the end, where she found herself was her choice. She had chosen to take a step out into the darkness without knowing whether her foot would find solid ground or thin air.
She really wanted it to be the former.
At least that seemed to be the case at the moment. The ground was solid if not a little damp, the air was clean and crisp, and she had on warm clothes. She couldn’t complain.
She continued to wander through woods that seemed more like a church than just trees and sky and rain and felt the peace of her surroundings sink into her soul. She paused at one point only because she found herself standing on the edge of a lake. She watched the water for quite some time, hoping she wasn’t trespassing. The tracks she had begun to follow were definitely something she remembered from Mrs. McCreedy’s treasure map, but that wasn’t much help because she couldn’t remember where they’d led to. Even more unsettling was realizing she should have made a better mental note about the location of those mysterious Xs.
She looked around herself casually, but didn’t see any pirates peeking out from behind the trees, primed to attack if she got too close to their hiding places. She did, however, see a house sitting on the shore, actually not far from where she stood. It didn’t look all that inhabited, so maybe it was a holiday rental. For some odd reason, the thought of that made her heart leap a bit. Maybe she would ask around in the village and see if it was for rent. She could think of much more uncomfortable places to pass the winter.
She let that thought settle around her for a bit, enjoyed it probably more than she should have dared to, then turned away with at least something of a plan in place. Peace, quiet, and water in front of her for a couple of months. Who knew where that might lead her?
She walked through the forest in the opposite direction from the lake. It was cold, but she had shoes and a decent jacket. With any luck, one of those pubs in the village would have a fireplace with an empty spot next to it. She would have her ramble, then go have lunch and get warm. The thought was appealing enough to leave her walking more quickly than she realized until she had to stop and catch her breath.
She frowned. Was that ringing?
It wasn’t her phone; it was more a metal on metal sort ofsound. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and checked it just to be sure, but that wasn’t what she was hearing. She looked around herself and considered. She couldn’t see anyone nearby, but what did she know? Actually, for all she knew, it was that rumored recluse hiding in the trees in front of her, sharpening his knife and fork before he grabbed her and plopped her into a boiling pot of water to cook her up for supper.
