More gunfire, mortar blasts, and screams broke through her thoughts, and shivering, she wrapped her arms around her chest. Whether the chills were from the cold or shock, she didn't know. A sob hitched in her throat.
She was really in the middle of the Battle of Culloden. The Jacobites’ last stand against the English army, led by the Duke of Cumberland. And to make matters worse, judging by her surroundings, she was behind the already-defeated Jacobite line. As the English pressed forward, the Jacobites were being pushed to the upper edge of the moor. If they came further her way, someone would see her.
She cautiously squirrelled into the shrubbery.
Forcing her breathing to deepen and slow, she closed her eyes and concentrated on the sound of the air passing through her nose. That relaxed her somewhat, but the fighting continued to make her jump with its ferocity, and her body shuddered at each horrific sound. Silently, she willed herself to keep still.
She hissed out a breath. Part of her mind screamed none of what was happening was possible—there was no such thing as time travel—but the other part, the more logical side, calmly told her she had truly time traveled and was now on the sidelines of one of the most famous battles in history.
She had no choice. She couldn’t go home without the orb, so she decided to wait the battle out and stay safe, and then she would get the time device and go back home.
Not more than an hour later, she watched as the English chased their enemy from the battlefield, and at long last, all was quiet except for a stray gun firing or a shout here and there.
She squinted out over the many prone bodies. Something moved. No, someone. One of the soldiers was still alive.
Chapter 4
Obscure noises infiltrated the calm blackness, and Iain tried to clear his brain of the pain radiating through his entire body. Pain? He smiled. Whether in his mind or physically, he didn’t know and didn’t much care at that moment—he felt pain, excruciating agony, but that made him happy. He must still be alive.
Instantly, another thought struck him. Was there pain after death? No. The pain was real, not something he perceived but a horror he felt in his flesh. He breathed in the stench of blood and death.
But it wasn’t his death.
Iain pushed the pain out of his mind and listened with his ever-so-alive ears. Confusion filled his dim mind at the muffled noises floating around his still form. Sounds of battle so far away, he thought they might be a memory.
He forced his eyes open and compelled the fog from his mind. Where was he? A distant gun fired. All at once, he remembered, and he turned his throbbing head, pulling his side as he did so. He wrapped a hand over the site of new pain and felt sticky dampness covering hisside. Examining his fingers, all he could see was black in the dim light. He lifted them to his nose and confirmed it was blood. He stilled. He was still alive, but not knowing how bad the wound was, he wasn’t sure for how long.
He risked raising his aching head a touch to take in the battlefield. Too many bodies to count lay strewn over the moor. In the distance, more gunfire echoed, signaling that the battle wasn’t over yet. Iain peered over the still bodies.
The English army fired at the backs of what was left of the fleeing Jacobite army, shadows in the lessening light, some falling, some outrunning the distance of the guns. He, apparently, had been left for dead.
Weary and feeling lost, Iain let the darkness take him under once more.
He woke again to the feeling of movement. Strange sounds carried to his ears. He opened his eyes and snapped them shut again at the sight above him. Brown hair falling about a beautiful face—a woman? She had her arms wedged in his armpits and was hauling him from the field, all the while grunting with the effort and, Iain was reasonably certain, cursing quietly. She looked down, and her wide blue-gray eyes immediately captured his gaze.
She stopped and dropped him. “Sorry,” she said, sitting down beside his head, “but you startled me. Can you walk by yourself? I hope so, because you’re too heavy for me to carry much further.”
Furrowing his brow at her dialect, Iain looked around. Darkness had enveloped the moor, and he could hear no noise.
She nodded as if in understanding. “I think they’ve all gone. I got you off the field and under a shrub last night but had to leave you there because they came back and cleared the field of the dead and wounded. I snuck back tonight andcouldn’t believe you were still there”—she glanced at him—“and still breathing.”
Thankful to be out of the enemy’s clutches, even for a small time, Iain cooed, “Tapadh leibh, caile.”
She sniffed. Drawing her cloak up, she wiped her face and gazed at Iain with sad eyes.
He could only stare as if nothing else mattered at that moment but to keep looking into those stormy blue eyes for all time. Her gaze widened, and she turned her head.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered in English.
Her accent was unfamiliar. Perhaps she was from another part of England Iain wasn’t familiar with. He narrowed his eyes at her. “Sassenach?”
“English? No . . . um, yes, I speak a kind of English.”
He turned his mind to thinking in English. He’d learned it well at Glasgow University but hadn’t had many occasions to use it since then. She said she wasn’t English, but what did she mean by “a kind of English”? Did she even know what she was? Mayhap she had hit her head. “I will speak English, and I said ‘thank ye, lass.’”
She turned her gaze to his face, but he noted she didn’t make eye contact again. With a wry smile, she said, “I’m just glad you’re not dead.”
He raised his eyebrows. His head throbbed, and with every movement, dizziness threatened to overtake him, but he saw the fear in her eyes. She was worried about him. He wondered if he should have known her. Was she one of the peasants he’d befriended in the last village he and his men visited before the battle? Perhaps, but although he was probably the only one who wasn’t completely drunk that night, he still couldn’t remember. He wondered idly if that night was the last night he’d ever be happy again, before turning his thoughts back to the matter at hand.
