“The tower room.”
“The tower room of…?”
“MacCleod castle of course.”
Kerry felt her head pound as she tried to take it all in. “You’re telling me I’m in the garret of the east tower of MacCleod castle and I’m betrothed to Callum MacCleod?”
“Aye, lass. I’m glad your memory is returning, is it not? You know about this place then?”
“Sort of. I read it in a book. Can you help me up?”
“I’m not sure I should. I’m under strict instructions to keep you resting for at least a week.”
“Either help me up or I’m doing it anyway.” She swung her legs out of the blankets, surprised to see they were uncovered. “Where are my clothes?”
“You were naked when you were found, lass. We wanted to wait until you woke to dress you.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Was it bandits?”
“Was what bandits?” Kerry snapped, wrapping the blanket around her as she got slowly to her feet, the woman holding her arm to help.
“That stripped you and left you for dead outside the walls. We heard nothing but then you were just there. Did you fall from a horse or something?”
“Who’s we?”
“Me and Melissa. We were gathering the last of the blackberries when we found you. Not much point, they’re long past their best but they do still make good dye, I suppose. Do you really not remember any of this?”
Kerry almost stumbled as pain wracked her skull. A question had to be asked but she didn’t want to know the answer, not really. “If this is the tower and that was Callum MacCleod, what year is it?”
“It’s the year of our Lord, 1190, October the fifteenth to be exact.”
“1190?”
“Aye.”
“As in the year 1190?”
The woman nodded.
Kerry crossed to the window and looked down. Far below she could see a raised earthwork above a moat, thick brambles coating the slopes, sheep on top pulling at tufts of yellowing grass.
Lifting her head she looked out at the countryside beyond. It was a sea of greens and browns, low hills that rose past woodland to distant mountains. To the left, just visible, the ocean sparkled and shimmered like sunlight on a mackerel’s back. No roads, no cars, no houses. Just fields and mountains and the ocean beyond.
“This isn’t a dream, is it?” she asked, turning back around to face the woman. “This is real, isn’t it?”
“As real as I am,” the woman replied, holding out a linen nightshirt. “Now come and get back into bed before you faint.”
Kerry let the woman dress her before guiding her under the blankets once more. She’d seen Back to the Future enough times to know what was happening though arriving in the past naked had more of a Terminator vibe to it.
She was in the middle ages. Stephen Hawking eat your heart out. She couldn’t tell anyone how she’d done it though if she ever got home again. She had no idea how it had happened. She couldn’t remember anything between talking to her mom on the phone and then waking up to find that highlander telling her he wouldn’t marry her.
That reminded her. Why did they think she was his fiancée? Who had they mistaken her for? And more importantly, what would happen if his actual fiancé turned up? “Do you know my name?” she asked the woman who was busy pouring more nettle tea into the horn cup.
“Aye. Of course I do.”
“Who am I?”
“You’re Nessa MacKay. Are you all right? You look awful pale all of a sudden.”
“Could you let me rest a while. I feel a little queasy.”
