“And why is that?”
“Because it is empty.”
“Good God,” the king roared, pushing his chair back and slamming his fist into the table. “Someone seize this man before I cleave his head from his shoulders where he sits.”
Guards rushed the table. Jock reacted instinctively. The first two that reached him from the left, he shoved back. They fell into more and became tangled together on the floor. More were coming from the right. He grabbed his sword as they came, fending them off.
“Get hold of him!” the king cried. “He is but one man.”
Jock leaped over the table, landing in the aisle as more of the king’s guards ran toward him. “Don’t make me kill you in front of your own people,” the king said.
He hadn’t noticed the MacGregors rising. They were a proud people, unable to ignore the fate of their laird for any longer. Soon the entire hall was mired in a brawl.
Furniture broke, food was spilled, a lute snatched from the minstrels smashed onto the nearest head. Jock barely noticed when he made it out the door and into the courtyard. He fought well but there were too many of them.
The king’s men were swarming into the courtyard through the gates, gradually pushing the MacGregors away from their laird, leaving him alone in the middle of the courtyard. There was a door behind him that led to the kitchens but it was locked. There was no escape.
With his back to the door, Jock could only watch as a dozen of the king’s guards marched toward him, snarls upon their faces, swords outstretched. He raised his own blade, ready to go down fighting.
Leaning back, he took a deep breath as the guards all swung at once. Their swords whipped down through the air but just as he was sure they would slice his head into a dozen pieces, he fell backward, their blades cutting through thin air.
What was happening? He tumbled onto his back and before he even knew the reason he heard a voice he knew yelling at the top of her voice.
“Wait!” she cried, stepping over him and giving the guards no time to think. “I know where the money is hidden.”
Jock sat up in time to see the king pushing his way through his men. “You picked a fine time to come forward, lass. Know that if you are lying, your head will join that of your laird’s on a spike outside my favorite castle.”
“I’m telling the truth,” Daisy replied.
Jock smiled. She was braver than ten men, standing there an inch from death and yet not backing down.
“Come with me,” she said to the king, pointing behind her. “It’s this way.”
Chapter Fifteen
Daisy hoped she was right. Not least because of the swords being held by the distinctly unfriendly royal guards walking close behind her.
She was at the front of a crowd of people, all of them waiting to see what she had to show them. No doubt they wondered if it was a trap, if MacGregor men were waiting in the kitchen to pounce on them.
It was no trap.
She had used the silver key to travel back to her own time with one goal in mind. When she arrived inside her front door, she immediately ran through to the living room, glad to find Tabby was there.
“Where’s the book?” Daisy asked.
Tabby jumped at the sound of her voice, looking up from her cellphone. “You’ve been gone a week and that’s the first thing you say to me? Where’s the book? How about a, Hi Tabby, how are you?”
“What? I’ve not been gone a week.”
“Look at my cellphone. The date’s right there.”
Daisy glanced down at it before shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter. If it’s been a week here then who knows how long it’ll be when I get back.”
“Get back? What are you talking about?”
Daisy rubbed her eyes, taking a deep breath before answering. “I left Jock in the middle of a crisis that only I can solve. If I don’t get back to him in time he’s going to be executed.”
“Oh my, that’s terrible.”
