She pushed away, her large, beautiful eyes gleaming with unshed tears. “I am not loveliness. I am the size of a beached whale, and now that we’re back here, you’re going to find someone else, and I’ll be stuck here, and I have no one to turn to, and…” She hiccupped as she was wont to do each time she worked herself into one of these spells that had become commonplace the farther along she traveled in her journey to motherhood. She grabbed a cup of water from the bedside table and downed it while holding her nose.
Caelan took the cup from her, set it on the table, and eased her back into his arms. He kissed her hard and long, pouring every ounce of his love and need for her into the bond. She clung to him, desperation in the kiss that she returned. His heart ached to make her understand he was nothing without her, and no one could ever take her place in his heart or his bed.
He pulled back and looked into her eyes. “I did not travel across time and space merely to bed ye, get ye with child, and then toss ye aside.” He cupped her cheek and brushed his thumb across her bottom lip. “I came for ye because ye are part of my soul, my love, and I intend to keep ye for all eternity. Now wipe your eyes, aye? We shall enjoy our wedding banquet, then return here to give our marriage bed a proper christening.” He gave her a smile that he prayed she would take to heart.
She stepped back again, easing out of his embrace while smoothing the folds of her gown. Her mouth flattened into a tight line, and her gaze fell as she brushed a stray tendril of hair behind her ear. With a strained cough and one last hiccup, she returned to the window and stared outside.
He could tell that her eyes saw nothing but the life she wished she still had. The sight of her mourning her time clenched icy fingers around his heart and squeezed.
“Florie is nice,” she said in that dead tone that made him ache with regret. She squinted as though trying to see something in the distance. “But the rest of them, they stare and whisper. They look at me with fear in their eyes—like I’m a tainted relic that’s going to curse them.”
Caelan pulled in a deep breath and forced himself to remain calm. She needed understanding now. She needed patience. Emrys had warned it would be difficult for her to adapt—especially with her condition that made her even more sensitive to the upheaval of leaving her time.
“They merely need to know ye, lass,” he reassured gently. “Meet ye and speak with ye. Once they see the wonderful woman ye are, they will be the family ye never had.”
She didn’t respond, just continued staring out at the sea. The waves crashed outside, mimicking the turmoil within the room. “If they’re so eager to welcome me with open arms, why did Emrys tell me to keep my past and Granny’s journal a secret?” She hugged her middle as though trying to shield her children. “They think I’m a witch, Caelan. I see it in their eyes, and I know what happens to witches in this era.” She finally glanced back at him for the briefest moment, the sadness and fear in her face stealing his breath. “If they accept Emrys’s magick, why can’t they accept mine?” She barely shook her head. “I’m not safe here. I can feel it.”
He joined her at the window, remembering the same warning from Emrys. “My clan…our clan,” he corrected, “is superstitious. Some find it difficult to accept Emrys and his ways. That is why the old seer has been kept under the laird’s protection. If not, some would have seen him banished from the clan years ago.” As soon as the words left his lips, he knew he shouldn’t have uttered them. Damned fool, he was. “I will keep ye?—”
Her glare cut him off. “You knew their superstitions and yet you still brought me here? Knowing I could be in that same danger. What if something happens to you, and I fall to them? What about our sons?” Her jaw tightened and her eyes brimmed with tears as she tightened her arms around her stomach.
He took her back into his arms and lifted her chin to force her to look him in the eyes. “Ye are allowing fear to steal your power, lass. Fight it. Ye are so much stronger than ye believe. Ye will never find peace as long as ye look for the ill in every situation. We are together because of our love, and we will be safe because I will make it so. Ye must trust in me, Rachel. Ye had started to before we came back through the portal. Can ye not do so again?”
She shifted with a despondent sigh and sadly shook her head. “I've read too much about this time. I may never get past the fear.”
“Trust me,” he whispered, then kissed the tip of her nose. “Come now. Let me introduce my wondrous wife to my clan.”
Rubbing her forehead as though it ached, she linked her arm through his. “Fine,” she said with a heavy sigh that twisted his heart. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.”
Caelan didhis best to ignore the acrid scent of the smoke rising from the brazier in the corner as he paced around Emrys’s chambers. “She’ll not even let me touch her. No holding her and no consoling her. We’ve been here weeks now, and she still turns her face to the wall every night and cries herself to sleep.” He raked a hand through his hair, then scrubbed his face. “Her misery is killing me, and it canna be good for the bairns. Tell me what to do.”
“I warned ye it would take a while for the lass to adapt. She never planned to be here and did not come willingly. Ye must be patient.” Emrys didn’t bother to look up from his book as he idly stroked his beard. “Ye must also remember that she’s growing heavy with your children. As she nears her time, her emotions will be even worse. Make her feel as safe as ye can. She knows too much about Scotland’s history that has not yet come to pass. Try to keep her thoughts away from those things.”
Caelan pounded his fist on the table, then reached over and slammed Emrys’s book shut. “I need your help, damn it. I dinna need idle advice about being patient and understanding. Iamdoing those things, but it’s nay helping her. Not a feckin’ bit! I need her smiling again and looking at this as her home. I need her happy.”
Emrys glared at him, his bushy white brows twitching. “What do ye ask of me, my laird? Cast a spell that will turn her into a meek, accepting wife?” He stiffly rose from his seat and jabbed a bent finger in Caelan’s face. “Did ye think it was going to be a mere feat of going to the future, whisking her back, then all would fall into a nice, tidy routine? Are ye that big of a fool to think that any woman worthy of the MacKay line would be easy to uproot from her era and replant over six hundred years in the past?”
Mumbling and cursing under his breath, Emrys threw more herbs on the burning coals in the brazier. As the smoke becamemore bitter and thickened anew, he turned and faced Caelan. “Ill tidings are brewing, and ye best work harder at winning back your wife’s heart, mind, and soul. Go carefully, Caelan, for ye can still lose it all even though she joined ye in this time.”
Caelan slammed his hands onto Emrys’s chest, caught hold of his robes, and yanked him closer with a hard shake. “What have ye seen? Tell me so I can keep her and the bairns safe. I will let nothing risk them!”
“I have said all that the Fates will allow,” Emrys said, jutting his chin to a defiant angle. “If I reveal too much and change the tapestry of time, they will take away my visions completely. But know this—that which we should fear the most does not always come from outside forces. Sometimes our greatest enemies, our greatest challenges, come from within.”
He yanked his robes free of Caelan’s fists and returned to his seat by the fire.
Caelan gritted his teeth as he strode to the door. “If anything happens to her, and ye have seen it, and not warned me, the Fates will not be able to take your visions away because I will take your life.”
“I saw the woman,and I tell ye that she is an evil brought into our midst.” Roderic, the bastard half-brother to Laird Caelan MacKay, glanced around the village’s only inn as he whispered around his tankard of ale.
Chieftain Cormac of Glen Marren leaned forward and narrowed his eyes in disbelief. “Me and mine attended the wedding banquet. The lass looked harmless enough to me.” He belched and patted his stomach. “Already round with child, so the laird must be pleased she’s fertile.”
“What about how she got here?” Roderic insisted. “How could anormalwoman accept that a druid was going to take her back in time to be with her husband? Would your fine daughter have accepted such an unnatural thing so easily?” Roderic allowed himself a cruel smile as he purposely reminded Cormac of his daughter’s rejection by the laird. He knew the man was still sorely disappointed that his daughter had not been taken to wife by Caelan. The match would’ve been advantageous for both clans since Cormac’s lands joined the MacKay lands at their northernmost border.
Cormac frowned as he stared down into his mug. “Nay. Not my Calynda. She would never accept such a heathen tale. She would’ve run screaming to the Church for protection.” He pursed his lips, his scowl tightening. “But Emrys has advised all the clans in a fair manner for as far back as any of us can remember. A druid, he is, yes. A follower of the old ways. But never has he brought ill upon a soul.”
“As far as we know,” Roderic said, stoking the man’s doubt. He waved to the barmaid to bring two more ales. Sowing seeds of ill content was thirsty work. “What of that maid who disappeared from the cliff by the sea? Her body never was found. If she merely lost her footing, as some have said, her body would have snagged in the jagged rocks below, ye ken?” He leaned closer and lowered his voice, feeding on the fear growing in Cormac’s eyes. “But the moon was full that night, remember? It was just before planting time and had Emrys not just told the clans they needed a sacrifice to ensure a good harvest? What better sacrifice than that of a pure maiden?”
“Aye, the poor wee lass was never found, and the crops did do well that year.” Cormac’s knuckles whitened as he clenched the handle of his drink. “But what can we do? Laird MacKay is powerful, and if his wife be a witch, what will keep her from laying curses upon us? Upon our descendents, even?”
