Eddard coughed loudly.
Jock noticed the flecks of blood flying from his mouth, landing on the floor in front of him. He surreptitiously wiped them away with the tip of his boot.
“Here,” he said, passing a handkerchief to his father. He steeled himself, he was just going to have to come out with it. “Does Robin ask you sign anything on his visits?”
“Not that I can think of.”
“You’re sure?”
Eddard’s brow furrowed. “Wait, there was something a while ago. I cannae remember what it was about though. Did I do something wrong, Jock?”
“No, Father. You’ve not done anything wrong at all.” He stood up. “I’ll be back soon, okay? I’ve just got to take care of a few things.”
Eddard coughed again. Jock made a mental note to tell Adrian to bring some lemon balm and honey up for his throat. He crossed the room once more to his mother, kneeling before her and stroking her snoring lapdog. “Do I ken you?” his mother asked. “Do I ken your mother at all?”
“Aye,” Jock said. “You ken her well.” He stood once more, his heart breaking at the sight of them both. It didn’t make any sense. How could they decline so quickly?
As he left their chambers, it never occurred to him to look back over his shoulder. If he had, he might have noticed the sunlight sparkling on the two tankards on the table over by the window. If he had seen them, he might have been curious enough to have a look inside them.
But his mind was on other things as he left their chambers and he never thought to look back. So the tankards went ignored until someone came to collect them later that day, removing any trace of what was happening.
By then, Jock’s mind was on other things, such as finding a woman to accompany him to Robin’s party, and whether or not to take his sword and cut his double-crossing financier’s head from his shoulders before the swine could burn through any more of the clan’s money.
Chapter Nine
Daisy didn’t know what all the talk of keys meant. The stories Tabby had read to her made a strange kind of sense but then maybe she’d been living with her housemate for too long.
How could a key send anyone through time? It was just a key.
The box sat on her dressing table, looking at her as she brushed her hair in the mirror. Inside was the silver key. She ran through everything that had happened in the last few days, trying to make sense of it all.
She had delivered a box to the laird of MacGregor Castle. She’d forgotten to get him to sign for it and when going back to do that, she’d learned he was more eccentric than she thought.
He’d no concept of a pen and time seemed to move at a different speed for him. Perhaps by the time she got there this time, he might already have had the party.
What else?
She’d gone to collect a box from the sorting office only to get hit by a car while looking inside at the key it contained. She’d dreamed of him and some bizarre medieval infirmary and then woken up in hospital.
The swelling on her ankle had gone down but the grazes on her thigh were enough to confirm she had been injured. Then she found out the box wasn’t even for her, it was supposed to go to the laird, no doubt a companion for the box he’d already received.
Was that about it?
Sure, if she left out all the stewing she’d done about him, about the man she wanted to forget.
It had proved impossible to get him out of her mind and that was the main reason she’d agreed to go back up one last time. She would deliver this box, say a mental goodbye and then go back home, forget about him for good.
When she was thirteen she had taken up smoking. It had been a stupid thing to do and the habit hadn’t lasted long. The other girls in school were doing it and she was offered one not long after she’d become a laughing stock for proposing marriage to their biology teacher.
She remembered coughing her way through her first cigarette, the girls she thought were her friends slapping her on the back and telling her it got easier, how proud they were of her.
Jock MacGregor was like the cigarettes. When she’d been trying to quit after a few months of smoking, she had found herself thinking about them more than when she was actually holding a cigarette in her hand.
Once she had stopped, her mind was filled with nothing else. Then, over time, the desire for them had faded away. She had thrown herself into running, cycling, music. Anything to distract her from the craving for nicotine.
As an adult she could look back at that time and see it for what it was. She’d gotten lucky. She might have become hooked on smoking but she forgot about it. Now she was hooked on a Scottish laird.
This was going to go the same way, she could just tell. He was bad for her, infecting her mind, poisoning her thoughts, making it impossible for her to focus on anything else. He was rude, weird, and aggressive. She shouldn’t even like him.
