Page 57 of Edge of Yesterday

“If you want it so.” Lennox rested his hand on his sword hilt.

Julianna shot Lennox a glare, then returned her attention to Cailean. “Nae, Cailean, not a hostage. A guest we are protecting.” He didn’t move, and she said to Gregory, “Put the knife away before someone takes notice.”

He glanced at Lennox who gave a curt nod.

“That is better,” Julianna said. “Now, Cailean, I ask that ye trust us. There are people who will no’ be kind to strangers.”

“People like Crowe?”

“Aye,” she said.

The quick reply unsettled him, but he shrugged. “There’s nothing for me to tell, but all right.”

Julianna gave him a gentle smile. “Good. Let us go now.” She looked expectantly at him, and he started walking. She fell in alongside, with her brother and Gregory flanking them. “The horses are behind the Red Lion. The tavern is—”

“I know where the Red Lion is.” Cailean’s pulse quickened.

At last, an ending. They would pull him into the popular pub, order a round of pints, and all have a good laugh. Christ, but they made him work for the finale.

They trudged through muck to the far end of the road. A building bearing a large wooden sign with the picture of a red lion came into view. This wasn’t the tavern he knew.

Cailean frowned as they approached the half-timbered tavern with its slate roof, stone chimney, and collection of small wattle and daub outbuildings. The heavy wooden door stood open and, through it, he caught a glimpse of dark wood, a warren of wattle and daub ‘partitions,’ and candlelit, smoke-hazed air. The place looked empty, but it was early yet. A stout, aproned woman swept the stone-flagged floor with a heather broom.

The medieval-style Red Lion he knew boasted a red-patterned wall-to-wall carpeting that spread through the entirety of the main public room, an area that wasn’t, as now, divided up into little nooks by wattle and daub partitions.

His companions continued past the pub’s entrance and around the side to the outbuildings and stables at the rear, which—he saw with dismay—encircled a cobbled courtyard with a well, instead of the large paved car park that should be there. But…Julianna’s two guards weren’t the only ones back here. Two huge, unsavory spearmen guarded a blocked, square-headed door that he figured led into the tavern’s cellar.

“What are those thugs up to?” Cailean nodded at the spearmen. “Guarding the ale from hoodlums?”

Lennox and Gregory exchanged a look.

“You said you knew the Red Lion,” Gregory said, his tone suspicious.

Lennox edged closer to his cousin, his hand hovering near his sword. “What is a hoodlum? Or a thug?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Cailean rammed his fingers through his hair. His headache threatened a throbbing migraine. Assholes with pointy-ended poles, he wanted to say. “A ruffian.”

Julianna stepped between them. “The Red Lion’s cellar is used for more than a cold store,” she said. “Court is held in a room on the top floor. Prisoners are kept in the cellar until the day of their trial.”

“Of course.” Cailean thwacked his aching forehead. “Those two are guarding some wretch down there, right?”

She nodded. “Aye. A man caught poaching a deer in the woods behind Heatheredge Tower.”

“Maybe he was starving, eh?” Cailean muttered.

The guards stared at them.

“Come.” Julianna grasped Cailean’s arm and pulled him toward the stables.

They continued around a corner and their tethered horses came into view.

Lennox helped Julianna onto her horse, then glanced at Cailean, “If ye run, I will cut you down. Your babble is starting to make me wonder if ye are a bloody warlock.”

“Lennox.” Julianna shot him a narrow-eyed look.

Cailean swung up onto his horse and pulled the beast’s reins hard right as he nudged the animal’s belly with his heels. “We can’t have you cutting me down, can we? Might be less messy to just pitch me into the cellar with the poacher,” Cailean said as they jingled past the two spearmen at the barred cellar door.

They reached the road and broke into a trot. He concentrated on catching sight of something, anything, that would prove once and for all that the medieval buildings hid twenty-first century construction. They passed through the gate and left Heatheredge behind, along with a piece of his sanity.