A heaviness settled in her chest. She had to admit she felt more than a passing crush for the man, but there was just too much working against them, and the worst thing at that moment was that he still didn’t believe her.
She pulled her hands out of his. “You don’t believe me. You don’t believe I came from the future.” Her hands felt likesandpaper as she rubbed her face. “I guess it doesn’t matter, but I have to go back.”
“I do believe ye believe what ye say, lass, but until ye can recall how you got to the moor that night, we cannae find yer kin.”
Abby couldn’t believe what she was hearing. He hadn’t heard a word she’d said. He still believed she had a grandmother in Scotland somewhere.
Her gaze rose to his eyes, and she nodded. She had to figure out how the time device worked, and she had to do it that night. If she stayed with Iain any longer, she might not ever want to go home. Her brain seemed to tilt as a raging war of possibilities filled her mind. Could she stay? Surely one little person out of time couldn’t do much damage to the order of history? However, another voice argued, it would do a great deal of damage. Who knew who Iain was supposed to marry? Maybe he just hadn’t met her yet.
She gazed up into his warm eyes but quickly looked away. She couldn’t let herself be drawn in by them again. “I know you don’t believe me, but I have to leave tonight.”
She stepped on the first step and slowly climbed the stairs, her heart and legs becoming heavier with each step.
“Wait. May I look at yer treasure more closely?”
She shrugged without looking back. “If it helps you to believe me, sure.”
Her mind argued with itself all the way to her door, and it seemed somehow appropriate that the moment she stepped over the threshold, a flash of lightning lit the room, followed almost immediately by a crash of thunder. The wind howled through and around the stone building. The storm was close, and her departure, imminent.
Chapter 23
An ache filled Iain’s being at the sadness in his angel’s eyes, and he realized then that he didn’t want to believe her. He didn’t want to contemplate she might be telling the truth. He didn’t want to believe that her treasure could take her away from him.
But somehow, he knew she told the truth, and somehow, he knew then that his father’s friends were from the future. Had his father known? Iain’s mind traveled back to a time not long before his father had passed into the next world. Iain’s father and his friends, Mark and Dianne, were sitting at the other end of the long table when Iain entered the morning room. Dianne gave Iain’s father a picture, and his father laughed, nodding his head in agreement at something Mark had said. Iain’s father’s eyes were wet from either laughter or tears, Iain didn’t know.
But he heard his father’s words. “I will rest in peace knowing this will come aboot.”
“Iain?” Abigail’s voice brought him back.
“I’m sorry. What did ye say?”
She was holding out her treasure, the white orb with the fine artistry of leaves around the middle.
“Do you want to have a look?”
“Aye.” Iain took the orb and turned it over in his hands. “It is beautiful. A skill of workmanship I have never had the pleasure of beholding before.”
“I’m not sure if an artisan did it or . . .”
“Or?”
Abigail let out a breath of air. “I suppose it doesn’t matter what I say. You won’t believe me, anyway. A machine might have formed the leaves.”
“A machine? Nay. Only a skillful hand could do such precise work.”
“Not in the future. Machines can do better and more detailed work in a fraction of the time it would take a human.”
It dawned on Iain how much he could learn if Abigail stayed. What other wonders waited for his people in the future? What of the English?
“Tell me, then, what happens to Scotland and her people now that the English have invaded?”
She took the orb back and studied its casing. “You’ll know this soon enough anyway. See that kilt you’re wearing?” Iain looked down at his dress and nodded. “They’re going to be banned soon. The Dress Act of 1746 will ban the wearing of kilts or any tartan in Scotland—but don’t worry, it will be repealed by 1782.”
As she spoke, she kept twisting the top of the orb this way and that.
Iain didn’t care about the wearing of kilts at that moment. He had the alarming thought that she would succeed in leaving him. Mark’s board game from his childhood came to mind. “Wait.”
Abigail stopped and gazed at him, her eyes still cloudy with sorrow.
