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And if he couldn't control her, Campbell would kill her.

Chapter Eight

“When is this all going to stop?” Jean's question broke the  tense silence that had accompanied them for the past  couple of hours. She seemed to be  finding her mettle the  further they got from Campbell's lair.

Damn straight
, Haley thought, grateful that the girl had finally said something after hours of increasingly gusty and exasperated sighs.

MacColla had roused Haley far too soon, sweeping them all back into their saddles to be on their way once more.

Haley glanced around, even edgier than she'd been before.  They'd entered the foothills of some sort of mountain range, and now she was totally confused. Could they be in the Berkshires?

“Yeah,” Haley muttered. She also wanted to know when it

was all going to stop.

“'Tis just a wee hill.”

She could hear MacColla's patience wearing thin and felt a rush of irrational satisfaction. His sister's moaning had been almost as annoying as their never-ending trail ride.

It had been slow going all afternoon, bending far up their ponies' necks to manage uphill scrabbles on scree -covered slopes, then leaning far back for skittering descents. Every

movement was agony for Haley, and yet it was the girl who

required coddling.

“Could be worse,” he mused. “I could've taken you lasses  up and over Beinn Bhreac. And faster it would've been,” he  grumbled, “than meandering like a snake along the belly of  these valleys.”

Beinn Bhreac? What the
-

“Alasdair.” Jean's tone was stern, and Haley smiled.

This should be good
, she thought.

“I'd meant, when will this fighting stop?” The girl scrubbed  at her face. Was she crying? Haley wondered just what she  could be talking about.

MacColla didn't answer for a time. He rode behind Haley, and she felt him adjust, saw from the corner of her eye as he pulled his head far to the right. Felt the light tickle and tug of her hairs pulling free from the stubble where they'd snagged along his jaw.

His voice was measured when he finally replied, “It will stop when it's over, Jean. Not before.”

Nice.
 
He clearly ducked whatever question she'd been asking, and Haley couldn't believe the girl could put up with it.

Beinn Bhreac.
 
She once more considered that strange phrase he'd said. Just what was it with him and the  Gaelic?
 
Beinn Bhreac. Speckled hill.

They rode along a deep valley, flanked by rocky slopes that felt way too barren for New England. Concern had become foremost in her mind, eclipsing even her injury.

The gorgeous landscape did  nothing to calm her. On the contrary, the grand stretches of hill and hardscrabble foliage had an alien quality, heightening the sense of displacement that cut through her as viscerally as her pain.

Their path wound, narrowed into a thin gap, then widenedagain. Deep green pines studded the horizon, soaring along the hillside like a great, roughened spine. A tremendous buck crested the rise and froze, as sudden as a snapshot, captured like some sort of preposterously majestic still life.

It wasn't any Massachusetts she'd ever seen. Rocky slopes surrounded them, but they weren't the sharp craggy peaks of this North American mountain ranges she was familiar with. These brute, rounded hills had the feel of raw rock covered by a rough green and brown quilt of  tenacious vegetation.

One plant in particular dominated, coarse and low to the ground, and Haley wracked her mind, frantic to place it.  Frantic to find something recognizable in this increasingly foreign landscape.

Not the Berkshires at all, more like…

“Aye. the heather will be even more bonny come late

summer.”

Heather?

“Late summer?” She heard her voice crack. “What month is

it now?”

He paused for a moment, then spoke tentatively, as if to a child. “May.”

May.
 
Last thing she remembered, signs of fall had been all around. Those things that reappeared each year like clockwork. Her father's ancient Irish-knit sweater. The

television tuned to a football game. Colin's trademark red  and black flannel shirt. Chill wind whipping her hair in a  dash along the Quad. Trees the glorious red and orange of

autumn.

“May… Of course it is,” she muttered.
 
Of course
 
it would be  May. Why wouldn't it be May in this backward universe  she'd landed in?

“Ho!” A man shouted at them from a distance, and  MacColla froze at her   back. “Alasdair MacColla,” he  shouted again, “as I live and breathe!”

They looked up to see someone standing on the hill above them, to the right and just slightly behind.

A
 
kilted
 
someone, with a sword at his waist and a smile on

his face.

Oh good.
 
Haley wavered in the saddle.
 
There's the last straw right there.
 
She was distantly aware of MacColla's hand steadying her waist.

“I hope we're not too late for the hammer throw,” she  murmured, now feeling completely unmoored.
 
Is everyone  going to look like they're geared up for the Highland Games?
 
She fought to stay upright despite the blood she felt  draining from her head.

MacColla either didn't hear her remark or didn't

acknowledge it. His focus was on the man, now hurtling  down the hill toward them, his feet galloping at a  lumbering run. The dull clatter of scree echoed through the  valley as the man set a small tumble of rocks sliding down  with him. MacColla exploded into a sharp bark of laughter,  kicking his heels to spin the pony around to face him.

“John Scrymgeour,” MacColla informed his suddenly alert  sister. It was just a quick aside, but the information  appeared to put her at ease.

“I was told you'd been sighted in Argyll,” John panted when  he reached them. Thin brown hair framed a full, goodhumored face. “Taking your leisure on Campbell lands?  And a few other things besides, I'd wager.” The man gave a  questioning glance in Haley's direction.

Was this guy in on the whole kidnapping thing? If so, he seemed remarkably nonchalant about it all. Might  he be able to help her? Should she beg him for help?

The man's smile faded. “I have tidings from the king.”

King?

His tone was somber, and Haley felt MacColla grow wary behind her. Their pony sensed it too, and she pranced a few nervous steps to the side.

“Indeed? And so serious you are, Scrymgeour.”

The man gave a single, earnest nod. Without his smile, his features appeared doughy, though no less pleasant.

“Perhaps your news would be best heard over a mug of ale.  I find myself suddenly thirsty” MacColla added warily.  “Ride with Jean, and we'll find ourselves by your hearth  the sooner.”

The girl's abrupt movement called Haley's attention to her.  Two angry spots suffused Jean's cheeks, a blush that looked particularly crimson in contrast to the white-knuckled grip she had on her reins.

“Please endure just one final rise, and you'll find the valley  opening up wide before us, bearing my modest Fincharn in  its palm.” John strode to Jean's side, giving her a  gentlemanly half bow before mounting behind her. “The  loch is lovely this time of year. The spring sunlight dances  upon its surface like fire.” He spoke for Jean's ears, adding.  “My castle lies just on the eastern shore of Loch Awe.”

It was all white noise to Haley, though.

Loch Awe. Great. A king
 
and
 
a loch
.

They made good progress from there, as the hills slowly smoothed into a thick carpet of knotty green grass. The loch appeared, and nausea twinged sharp in Haley's gut.  She
 
knew
 
there weren't any such bodies of water in the  Massachusetts she'd se en. It was huge, stretching along a fold in the gently curving valley, and glittering as promised.

A gray building emerged in the distance, a spectral thing in the hazy light that materialized as they approached. Her queasiness became insistent, clutching at the front of her belly. Haley breathed through her mouth now as if that could curb the roiling and flipping in her stomach.

She must've faltered, or made some sound, because she felt both of MacColla's hands steadying her.

John's castle came into focus. It was a huge rectangular building constructed of dingy gray stone and studded with a few small, square openings. A granite fortress, grim and nearly windowless, in the old “hall house” style of ancient castle.

Lochs, kilts, kings, and now castles.

“What's your king's name?” Her voice was a reedy whisper.

“Wait. MacColla. Charles? Charles the first.”

“Are you well, lass?”

She felt his hand on her shoulder, but she pulled away sharply. Swinging a trembling leg in front of her, Haley slid off the pony's back and buckled to the ground.

She heard muted chatter, then she registered the girl ranting a stream of unintelligible Gaelic.

Effortless Gaelic babbling all around.

And then the possibility came to her. But rather than the illuminating click of a  bulb, Haley's sudden realization snuffed out the light. It was a boulder come crashing down, as if to seal her in a cramped, airless cave.

It was the phrase that did it. An obscure phrase that had been spoken to her. That nagged at her still. The name  Jean had called her brother  - she remembered it. And she

knew.

Fear Thollaidh nan Tighean.

Destroyer of Houses.

Alasdair MacColla.

The
 
Alasdair MacColla.

She ran teetering for several yards before collapsing to her knees. The weathered building loomed in the distance, mocking her, an indifferent witness to her horror. The nausea that had quivered at the edges of her belly and in the back of her throat erupted full force now, and it was as if a great, violent fist punched into her gut, hauling up

everything from Haley's stomach with its clenched hand.  The strain robbed her of breath, forced bile singeing into  her sinuses.

The pain in her ribs made her vision waver, and a great wail escaped her. She tried to still her spasming body, tried to silence her own cries. Every movement was sheer agony.

She felt the small blip of burst blood vessels around her eyes as she retched again. And still she convulsed, as if some instinctual part of her believed she could make it all disappear by the full force of her body alone.

The violence of it made her bones creak, awoke fresh agony in her already abused ribs, and she sicked-up once more from the stabbing in her torso alone.

She had the knack of sensing MacColla near, and she felt him now, standing over her, the cool cast of his shadow on her back. Knew without thought that he was leaning down toward her.

And though her heart pounded with fear, she summoned a look of defiance. Against him, against her condition.  Against the whole unreal, unfathomable, inconceivable

situation.

“No!” she shouted, as she scrambled to the side, scrubbing

the trails of her body's fluids from her face. “No.”

One of the most brutal men in Scottish history. Somehow come for her.

She saw him, looming over her, as still as the hills at theirbacks. She clawed tight to her flickering consciousness and heard Jean on the edges of it. “I warned you, Alasdair. The lass is not right.”

And this time instead of focusing Haley, giving her strength. Jean's distant words erased her. Unmoored her.
 
Not right.

And the impermeable wall of masonry Haley had spent years stacking up and around herself became a great towering house of cards, fluttering lightly to the ground.

Chapter Nine