Page 61 of Rory

“Not a great idea.” She grimaced. “You weren’t there, of course, but when things got hairy Esme made a wish that I think came true. I’m pretty sure I’m immortal now.”

“No, ’tisnae possible.” Rory caught her face between his palms, and the shock of the enormous change in her energy made him laugh loud enough to shake the whole forest. “By the Gods. ’Tis truth. You’ve the same power, but ’tis much more like the melia.”

“You still have your mortal weakness, so no shouting for joy, okay?” Harper chided.

He sobered at once. “Dinnae you wish return to your time?”

“If there’s some way we could go back to the modern world, I don’t think the druids will let us take you guys with us,” she countered. “Also, it’s easier for me to hide the fact that I’m immortal in your time. The other ladies made it here, too, and I’m guessing they won’t want to go back. I’m staying because of you, Blue Eyes. I love you.”

Rory dragged her against him and kissed her.

What a fool she’d been, Elspeth thought as she slowly came awake. No candles, torches or lamps illuminated the work room she now shared with her husbands, but it didn’t matter. On either side of her lay her two men, big and warm and holding onto her. Her memory seemed blurry, so she couldn’t quite recall how they had ended up in this big bed instead of the one they'd made on the floor. She wasn’t even certain they had been together at the end when the castle had shaken so much she’d been convinced they’d all be buried alive. Love for each other had saved them if they still lived. Yet how could they when the spell trap had been destroyed?

Mayhap we’ve gone to the next life, and may share that as husbands and wife.

“I should dearly like to ken what our lady now ponders,” Ulf said to Ben in a low, amused tone. “I ken she’s roused from her slumber, or I’d kiss her awake. Mayhap she wishes light a lamp and take a long look at us? For she remembers that we’re naked by her command, I reckon—and didnae she demand to ken what we did together before she came to us?”

“Sweetheart, I think our lover is dropping hints again.” Ben leaned over her as if trying to peer at the hunter’s face. “We’re finally where we want to be, so why don’t you tell us what you want? You know Ulf and I will do anything to make you happy.”

“Speak for yourself, Husband.” Ulf sniffed as if offended. “I’ve wants uncounted. Shall I never ken what ’tis to suck your cock while Els rides me?”

The way they teased each other and her always made her face grow hot, for despite nine hundred years of taking lovers, this strange marriage was entirely new for her. She closed her eyes and pressed her hands against her hot cheeks. What they had done together still seemed scandalous even to her own thinking. Yet their sweet jesting worked as well as kisses and caresses to arouse her until she fair trembled with need. She seemed to recall a fair amount of laughter during their first time together—or had that been just a dream?

When she opened her eyes again, she saw a faint thin light had come at last into the workroom from a large rectangular hole in the opposite wall—only it was no longer the chamber she recalled. What she saw made her clamp a hand over her mouth to stop a scream and jerk the linens up and over her head.

“Ulf,” Ben said, climbing quickly out of the bed

“Aye.” The hunter had already rolled out of bed and had a dagger in his hand. “Take our lady out of here, Husband. The fack?”

“We’re home,” the healer said softly.

Elspeth huddled under the unfamiliar coverlet, too fearful to look again at her surroundings. Indeed, if Benedict and Ulf had not been there, she might have begun screaming.

“’Tis the afterlife?” she asked, her voice shaking as much as her body.

“In a sense, yes, love.” Ben pulled back the coverlet and kissed her brow. “This was the life I left behind in my world.”

Before she could stop him he walked across the strange chamber of smooth white walls and went to draw aside the long tapestries that seemed to be made of silvery mist, revealing the enormous window behind them.

“Come and have a look,” he said, smiling at her and the hunter before he began making light appear from the oddest lamps she had ever beheld; this without flame or firesteel. They showed furnishings of wood and steel and something that had no color that resembled sheets of ice. Across the flooring a huge cloth had been spread that had countless tiny loops of yarn. On the walls hung paintings of seas and shores and boats so flimsy-looking they had likely sunk on their maiden voyages.

Ulf wrapped the bed linen around her before he picked her up and carried her over to Ben. She hid her face against the hunter’s broad chest, soothed by the warmth of his skin but terrified to see anything more of this Gods forsaken place with its glaring lights and unfathomable objects.

“’Tis naught to fear, Wife,” the hunter told her. “We’ve come to the time we truly wished to share. ’Tis Ben’s world in the future, and from what I see, ’tis glorious.”

Slowly she lifted her head, and then gasped as she saw a curving shore of gold and white sands and brown, rocky boulders bordering an endless turquoise sea. Large boats with beautifully colored sails drifted through the calm waves, and beyond them larger vessels crossed from one side of the horizon to the other.

“’Tis California, then?” she asked Ben.

He nodded. “This is my beach house in Carmel. We’ve landed in my time.”

He went into an adjoining room, and returned wearing a long robe and holding two others. “Come and see the rest of our new home.”

Elspeth hardly knew what to think as the healer guided them through a series of huge, airy chambers with such finely made furnishings as she’d never before beheld. As he walked, Benedict explained what things were, and then in what he called his kitchen he made a pot of tea on top of a strange huge silver box fitted with four dark spirals, one of which grew red hot with the turn of a knob. On the small, pretty table where he dined sat a glass bowl of strange fruits that looked as if they’d just come from the garden.

Ulf made a soft sound, and then asked Ben, “What troubles you, Husband?”

“The house. It’s just the way I left it on the day I went on the tour of the castle.” His jaw tightened. “That was three years ago, and yet everything here is the same.”