Love Came Just in Time (31 page)

He looked at her blankly. “We were accustomed to letting our mounts go where they willed.”

“That's what I was afraid of.”

 

 

THE NEXT THREE days were an endless, relentless exercise in trying to remember which side of the wheel the turn signals were on and spending most of her time turning on the windshield wipers instead. By the time they reached Inverness, Ian had familiarized himself with all the workings of the dashboard doodahs and had apparently decided that bagpipes were much preferable to top forty on the radio. He seemed to have no trouble understanding the unintelligible news reports she couldn't decipher. He spent a great deal of time grunting, as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing.

They left Inverness and headed north. Jane did the best she could with the roads available to follow Ian's homing beacon. By the time they reached roads that had continually shrunk in width and increased in incline, she was convinced they were hopelessly lost. She stopped in a little town and found the first bed and breakfast—which wasn't hard, as it was a very small town indeed—and pulled in.

“Enough,” she said, turning the car off and putting her head down on the steering wheel. “I can't drive anymore today.”

“I could drive.”

She turned her head and looked at him out of one eye. The light of intense desire was visible even in the twilight.

“Not a chance,” she said, resuming her position. “We'll get going first thing in the morning. I need dinner and some sleep.”

She heard Ian get out of the car, then felt a brush of cool air as he opened her door. He unbuckled her seat belt, then took her arm and gently pulled her out. Before she knew it, she was enveloped in a warm embrace.

“I have driven you hard,” he said, running his hand over her back, “and I beg pardon for it. I am anxious to see my home and know if there is aught left of it.”

And to see his cousin, no doubt. Though she hadn't heard him say as much since they'd left the States, she knew he was worried that he wouldn't find what he was looking for. That she was even considering the ramifications of him missing his family because they had landed in different centuries only indicated how very tired she was.

“It's okay,” she said with a yawn. “I can understand the feeling.” She would have pulled away, on the off chance that such a thing might have gotten her dinner sooner, but she found that she just couldn't move. It was the strangest thing, but for the first time in her life she was content. Content in spite of a blinding headache from too much concentrating on the road, too little sleep, and continually doing her best to ignore what she was going to do when she returned to the States and faced the shambles that was her life.

“Food,” Ian announced, “then a bed if they have one. I'll find some means of working for our keep this eve. Surely they have a handful of odd things needing to be done. Perhaps wood to be gathered for the fire or animals to be tended.”

The thought of Ian manhandling a chainsaw sent shivers down Jane's spine. She pulled back to look up at him.

“I can pay for it.”

“Nay, you cannot.”

“I have enough left on my credit card.”

His lips compressed into a tight line. “This does not sit well with me. Already you have done more than you should have.”

“And if the shoe had been on the other foot?”

“How was that?”

“If I had been popped back to the”—and she had to take a deep breath to keep from stumbling over the very words—“fourteenth century, what would you have done?”

He sighed. “Given you food and shelter, then seen you home.”

“What's the difference, then?”

“The difference, sweet Jane,” he said as he smoothed his hand over her hair and smiled down at her, “is that being unable to provide for such needs wounds my manly pride.”

Jane wasn't sure about the condition of his manly pride, but she was sure about the condition of her knees, and that was completely unstable. She had never considered herself anything but fiercely independent. The thought of anyone, her family or a man, doing anything remotely akin to taking care of her was something she had avoided at all costs.

But somehow, standing in the Scottish twilight in a tiny town on the edge of the sea with Ian MacLeod's arms securely around her, the thought of allowing someone else to provide for her for a change wasn't so hard to stomach.

She savored the moment as long as she could, then pulled away.

“I am starving,” she admitted reluctantly. “For all we know, they won't even take a credit card or traveler's checks and we may very well be relying on your ability to chop wood.”

Ian kissed her gently on the forehead, then pulled back and took her by the hand. “Perhaps I will have the chance to repay you.”

“Perhaps you will. We could head back to the fourteenth century,” she offered.

He laughed. “You would find it a very primitive place indeed. No airplanes, no automobiles, and no MTV.”

“Ugly,” she agreed, and she tried not to enjoy overly the feeling of her hand in his. It was more delicious than she would have suspected and she could hardly keep herself from wishing such hand-holding might continue far into the future—say for the next fifty or sixty years. Or maybe for the rest of forever.

She put her free hand to her forehead. No fever. Maybe insanity didn't begin with an overheated brain. Just a gradual slip into believing things that couldn't possibly come to pass—such as sharing a life with a man who claimed to be from the year 1313.

The B and B did take credit cards and they also didn't pass up Ian's offer to do a few chores as the proprietress was very pregnant and her husband had been laid up for several weeks with a back injury. Jane figured it was the perfect situation. She got to eat and watch Ian strip off his shirt all in the same twenty-four hours. Life just didn't get much better than that.

 

 

LATE THE NEXT morning, after a pair of hours watching Ian soothe his manly pride, Jane crawled behind the wheel of the car again and suppressed a groan. If she'd even suspected Ian might have the wherewithal to negotiate a stick shift, she would have turned the keys over to him happily. He'd tried to convince her he was capable, but he'd come close to plowing over half a dozen flowerpots on his way out of the driveway when he'd offered to demonstrate his skill. She'd taken the keys away and promised him a driving lesson somewhere less dangerous.

“Direction?” she asked, turning on the car.

“North.”

North, north, and evermore north. Jane drove without hurrying and she wasn't sure exactly about her reasons for her leisurely pace. She told herself she was just meandering so she could enjoy the scenery. It was true that the mountains and forests were breathtaking. And every time they passed a little hamlet that deserved to be immortalized on some postcard, she couldn't help but imagine how life would be if she lived there.

And she sure as heck didn't imagine living there alone.

The drive was, needless to say, very hard on her heart.

Hours had passed and Jane's imagination, and her bladder, had taken just about all they could take. Espying a choice place to pull off, she did so before Ian could protest. She shut off the car and sighed.

“I don't think this map is accurate,” she began. “Maybe it's all this driving on the wrong side of the road, but I don't see anything familiar....”

“I do.”

The tone of his voice sent shivers down her spine. She looked at him.

“You do?”

He nodded and pointed out the window. “There's the loch. We're a day's ride southeast. By horse,” he added.

“Shouldn't be far in a car, then,” she said slowly.

“Shouldn't be.”

She pulled back out onto the little two-lane road and continued slowly. They passed through a good-sized village and Jane slowed to a crawl.

“Recognize this?” she asked, then realized the answer was written in Ian's astonished expression. “I take it this wasn't here the last time you rode through.”

He looked visibly shaken. “Nay, it wasn't.”

She decided that any lightness was completely inappropriate, so she managed a bathroom stop before they continued through the village. The road then took a sharp turn west.

“Wait,” Ian said, pointing to a very sketchy-looking road leading more northward still. “Take that.”

“But it doesn't look—”

“It's the right direction.”

“Whatever you say,” she said, following the one-lane road away from the village. She could only hope no one would come flying down it the other way without honking first.

And then suddenly and without any warning at all, the road stopped in what could have been termed a cul-de-sac if one had been feeling generous terminology-wise. Jane hadn't taken the car out of gear before Ian was reaching over to pull the keys from the ignition.

“Come with me,” he said, heaving himself out of the car.

“Bags?” she asked, following him.

“We'll come back for them. 'Tisn't far.”

Never mind what kind of shape he'd been in when she'd first met him. A week of rest and her cooking, pathetic as it was, combined with the substantial meals they'd had in Scottish pubs, had restored him to a walking form she could barely keep up with. She just held onto his hand and ran to keep up with him as he strode first over a field and then plunged into a forest. It was perfectly quiet in amongst the trees and profoundly chilly despite the time of year. Ian continued to hurry until they were both almost running.

And then, without warning, the forest ended and they practically fell forward into a meadow. Jane hunched over with her hands on her knees and sucked in air until she thought she might be able to stand upright. Then she looked up, and felt her jaw go slack. She held out her arm and pointed.

“That,” she spluttered, “that . . . is a castle.” She'd seen plenty of them on their way, but this one was so . . . well . . . perfect.

Ian looked down at her, a smile of satisfaction on his face.

“Home,” he said simply. He took her hand, hauled her into his arms, and kissed her full on the month before he threw back his head and laughed. “By the saints, Jane, we're home!”

Before she could decide how she felt either about a medieval-looking castle being given such a cozy moniker, or about being kissed by someone who had a sword strapped to his back, she found herself being pulled once again into a flat-out run.

Ian skidded to a halt some two hundred yards farther. “The village,” he said in astonishment. “ 'Tis gone.”

“Well,” she panted, “at least the castle is still there.”

Ian looked at it suspiciously as well. “ 'Tis in a far better state of repair than it was the last time I saw it.”

Jane knew that had been something to concern him. They had seen enough ruins along the way to make Jane wonder how any medieval castle survived its trip through the ages.

“ 'Tis a mystery we'll solve later,” he announced, continuing on the way up the meadow. “Jamie will know the answer to this.”

“Think your cousin's here?” she asked with a little wheeze.

“I hope so,” Ian said somewhat grimly.

And then he seemed to find just getting to the castle to be taxing enough on his verbosity, because he said nothing else as they trudged toward a dwelling that was starting to give Jane the willies. She'd never seen a castle that looked that authentic and that lived-in. Admittedly, her experience in the British Isles was limited to their drive from Edinburgh, but this was still spooky.

“New gate,” Ian remarked as he pulled her through it and across the small courtyard to the castle itself.

Jane didn't have a chance to say anything before he'd marched them up the steps and was pushing on the door. It didn't open, so Ian took his sword and banged on the portal with the hilt. Jane started to say that maybe he shouldn't, then she decided that arguing with a large man with a sword in his hands wasn't a very good idea.

The door finally opened and a young man looked out.

“Yeah?” he asked.

Jane judged him to be in his mid-twenties, exceptionally fine-looking, and obviously home alone based on the carton of milk he held. Bachelor, she deduced by the lack of glass in his hand.

“I am Ian MacLeod,” Ian announced, as if that should have clarified everything for the guy.

Apparently it did, because his jaw went slack. “Jamie's cousin Ian?” he asked, looking with wide eyes at Ian's sword.

Ian threw Jane a look of supreme relief, then turned back to the young man. “And you are . . . ?” he demanded.

“Elizabeth's youngest brother,” Elizabeth's youngest brother managed. “Zachary.”

“Ah, Zach the Brat,” Ian said, thrusting forward his hand. “I heard many tales of your escapades from your sister.”

“I'll bet you did,” Zachary said, stepping back a pace. “You may as well come in. Jamie and Elizabeth aren't here right now, which means there's nothing in the fridge, but you can make yourselves as at home as you can.” He looked at them as if he'd just noticed them. “You guys are traveling light. Don't you have any bags?” He looked at Jane. “Are you fourteenth-century too?”

Jane shook her head with a smile. “Nineteen seventies vintage.”

Zachary frowned. “How did you find Ian?”

“He showed up in my bridal salon.”

“Figures,” Zachary said.

Jane looked at Ian, then looked at Zachary. “You believe all this time-traveling business?”