“Aye, ye said that.” A soft caress stroked his temple. “I think ye hit yer head harder than I thought. We should get ye to a doctor.”
“She left a note,” he reminded himself. “It confessed everything. It was in her hand. She said she couldnae live with the shame. She threw herself in the river.”
One of his tenants had seen her at the riverbank.
Then how had she been sitting in the solar moments ago? Of her own free will? Why had she called Etteridgemy dear?
“We never found her body.” Uncovering his eyes, he stared up at her in disbelief. “We never found her body.Och, it disnae seem possible. She staged her own death and…ran off with that buggering ponce?”
“What are ye talking about?”
Faithless, scheming…. Hell! Bloody fooking hell, Ian had been right about her. “My wife is alive.”
“What?”
Birdsong pierced the dumbfounded fog pervading his mind. Finn sat up and glanced around again only to be thunderstruck once more. His head swam. “What have ye done to me? Did ye pull me outside?”
In the blink of an eye? And alter the weather while she was at it?
“I’m sorry. I did what I felt I had to do to stop ye.” Aila petted his arm as one might soothe a spooked horse. “We are exactly where we were a few seconds ago, only about two hundred and seventy years later. Give or take.”
He had no need of more fairy tales. “My head is splitting, lass. I beg ye, nae more of yer tales.”
Framing his face with her hands, blue eyes overflowing with…sympathy? She turned his head to the left. Finn’s heart knocked hard against his ribs before his eyes even registered what he saw. With a hard blink, he looked again but the image before him did not waver.
A castle. One he’d only seen in sketches and in his mind. One that mere hours ago had been no more than three feet tall. It stood before him tall and proud, a rounded tower topped with a conical cap on each corner. The walls connecting them rose three stories high with another, narrower addition above.
There should be another floor.That’s what Aila had said.
And there was.
His head swam and he swallowed back the urge to retch. “What have ye done?”
“I told ye, I —”
Finn batted her hands away. He didn’t need to be coddled like a child. He needed the truth. Preferably one far more palatable than the bitter ones he’d been dealt in the last few minutes.
“I dinnae care. I dinnae care what it is. Send me back.”
Send her back.He’d said those words when Elliot had brought Aila to him for the first time. When she’d turned to go….
Had her ludicrous story contained some truth? Nay, it was impossible! What she’d suggested was impossible. Beyond the whims of man or science.
She’d told him she was leaving.
Losh, is this where she would have gone? So far from his reach?
“I will,” soft words assured him. “We have to move to a safe spot first. I dinnae ken if Ian followed me or no’. If we go straight back…. I’m sorry, I dinnae ken the precise time to make it appear instantaneous. We’ll have to return somewhere else where we ken nae one will be standing.”
“Now ye’re havering, lass.”
“I am. I’m sorry. I just cannae think of the best way to explain it.”
“Start with that.”
She turned her head to follow his finger. “That is Inveraray Castle, home of the Duke of Argyll. The thirteenth duke, presently.”
Finn rose to his feet, again shaking her off when she tried to provide succor. He was a grown man with a good head on his shoulders, one who took pride in his education and intellect. It was a blow to his manhood that she didn’t believe him capable of absorbing this bizarre reality. Even if he wasn’t entirely certain he was capable of it himself. Blast, it would be nice to have her wrap her arms around him.
