He shook his head, needing to get it all out. “I had to look after the horses. Ronald sent me because they were restless, made me deal with them without finding cover. He said it would only take me a couple of minutes.
“By the time I got back, she was gone and they were all talking about how I’d abandoned my post. No one believed me when I said Ronald had sent me away. For all I know he killed the lass and hid her body.”
“She’s not dead,” a voice said in the dark. It was Maggie. They looked up at her but she was fast asleep, or appeared to be. “She’s alive and closer than you think, Eddard MacGregor.”
They waited but she didn’t say anything else.
“That was weird,” Jessica said, stifling a yawn.
“You must sleep,” Eddard told her, lying down and throwing an arm over her, drawing her against him in the way they’d both become used to. It felt strange to think it would be their last night together.
“I don’t want to sleep,” she said quietly. “If I sleep tomorrow comes and after that all this is over.”
“You mean you like sleeping on the dirt?”
“I mean…never mind.”
She said nothing else. Soon her breathing became steady. It took a lot longer for Eddard to fall asleep and when he did he dreamed of the day the princess went missing.
He ran upstairs in the keep, hearing her calling his name. He reached the corridor and it wasn’t the princess calling for help. It was Jessica. She was being pushed through a door by a figure in the shadows. She cried for him to stop but he couldn’t run.
His limbs moved but in slow motion, like wading through a swamp, the floor at his feet gripping his boots. He tried to reach her. He strained every muscle in his body but just as his fingers brushed over hers, she vanished. The door slammed shut and the figure in the darkness muttered, “Too late.”
He sat up in the cottage, sweat pouring down him despite the cold. The fire had long since died.
He shook his head. It was just a dream. It didn’t mean anything.
He lay down once more, closing his eyes and praying he would dream no more that night. His prayers went unanswered. All night he spent running down the corridor, trying to save the princess over and over, save Jessica, save the princess, the two people blurring into one.
Beside him Jessica slept on, dreaming her own dreams of doors slamming in the dark, echoing sounds that bounced around her head until her ears rang from the noise.
Chapter Ten
Jessica was back at MacGregor Castle. It was a surreal experience. She was probably the only person in the history of the world who could do a direct comparison between how it looked in the twenty-first century and the thirteenth.
The track leading to the main gate followed roughly the same route as in her time though pebbles and mud took the place of the asphalt she remembered.
Drummond had given them both hooded woollen cloaks to wear and they looked like monks, standing stock still on a hilltop near the castle.
Eddard stood next to her, deep in thought. She said nothing. They would move when he had decided the best approach. She had no suggestions to make. This was his world, not hers.
The men pacing back and forth in front of the gate had swords at their side, swords that would be sharp even if the blacksmith’s work was poor.
Their armor glinted in the early morning light, their faces hidden behind helmets. How were they going to get in there?
While he mulled, she ran her eyes over the castle. From the hill where they stood they could see it clearly though they remained hidden by the surrounding trees.
Eddard had mentioned them when they first left the cottage that morning. “In my time all vegetation was kept clear to give a clear line of sight for the archers. One more thing Ronald has neglected. See that crumbling wall? If that is not resolved by winter the entire east side of the battlements will come down like the abbey wall where I found you.”
The gate she already knew. That was where she’d first approached the site. That patch of grass, that was the parking lot in her time. The walls looked pretty much the same apart from the crumbled section and its surrounding scaffolding.
It was odd seeing guards pacing the battlements below the pennants that fluttered in the light breeze. Crows circled the great keep, their cawing the only sound.
She looked to her right when she heard a noise. Carts were approaching, laden with goods.
“They are about to open for the morning,” Eddard said. “It’s now or never. Do you recall what Angela taught you?”
“I am Morag MacGregor and my parents are Rachel and Cam. I have a little brother, Philip. I’m definitely not Jessica Abrahams.”
