If he went back to Scotland and stood inside Andrew MacIntyre’s bedroom in MacIntyre Hall at five past nine the next morning he would see Kerry walk through the door. All he had to do then was take her home and keep her there. A happy ending for him and Kerry and he would never see Mr. Kite or Mr. Wint ever again.
He agreed of course. Something about the way they spoke over the course of the hour they were in the house convinced him they were telling the truth. It was only when he stood in MacIntyre Hall the next morning and his watch told him it was six minutes past nine that he began to wonder. Had he been duped?
According to them she had fallen out of the tower and slipped back in time to the twelfth century. It had seemed so convincing but the more he thought about it the more stupid it sounded. It was nonsense. She wasn’t coming through time back to the present.
She was dead and this was some kind of set up to try and get him to confess to killing her. It wouldn’t work. He hadn’t killed her. She had fallen out of the window because she was as clumsy as she’d always been. That was hardly his fault, was it?
“Screw this,” he said when his watch reached eight minutes past nine. He walked out the door into the corridor. He’d been conned. Very funny. He would get home and have some choice words to say to them two if they turned up at his house again.
He stopped dead when he saw someone in the distance. A woman was walking out the front door into the morning light. It was her, he was sure of it.
She wasn’t in the past but she was in the hall. What was more, she hadn’t spotted him yet.
He crept toward her as she headed outside. Reaching the doorway a few seconds after her, he watched as she crossed the grass.
Wait. Grass? Why was there grass outside? Had he got lost in there and come out by a different entrance?
It didn’t matter. What mattered was that the woman he loved was running after a man in bizarre clothes, a man who was turning to face her with a smile on his face. Beside the man, a horse stood patient.
Edward wanted to kill the horse and the man. How dare he smile at her? Jealousy flared inside him.
“I’m staying,” Kerry said, her voice loud enough for him to hear from the doorway. “I want to stay, Callum. With you. If you’ll have me. I…I love you.”
The jealousy inside Edward began to boil over, turning into white hot rage. She loved that…that mud splattered bum over there?
“I love you too,” the man said, taking hold of her hands. How dare he touch her?
Edward didn’t hear anyone coming up behind him until he felt a tap on his shoulder. “A word,” a voice said in his ear. “Before you do anything rash.”
“Rash?” he said, spinning around to find himself facing the two men who’d sent him to Scotland in the first place. “You told me she would run back into my arms. Look at her.”
“You were supposed to wait in the bedroom for her,” Mr. Kite said. “It is not our fault if you cannot follow simple instructions.”
“Hey,” Edward snapped. “I did as you said. She didn’t come through. How is that my fault?”
“What?” Mr. Wint sounded shocked. “Are you sure?”
“I gave it until ten past and nothing. It was only when I left that I saw her.
The man turned pale, muttering to his colleague. “How was that possible?”
“She is far from her path,” Mr. Kite replied before realizing Edward was staring at him. “No matter. He can still get her.”
“No I can’t,” Edward said, looking outside again. “They just rode off on his horse together like it’s the end of a western.”
“Then you better be after her, hadn’t you?”
Edward shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere until you explain to me why this matters so much to you two.”
“It matters not one whit to either of us.”
“Then why are you shoving me after her? What’s in it for you?”
“You might as well tell him,” Mr. Kite said.
Mr. Wint sighed. “You saw the man she rode off with, correct?”
“The bum?”
