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MacColla eased himself into the bath. The copper tub barely held him, but the water was hot and unclenched his tight muscles. He reached back to grind at the knots along the tops of his shoulders, taking pleasure in the stretch of tendons along the backs of his arms.

John had generously given them their choice of rooms, th e majority of his family currently residing in their primary home in Glassary, to the east. MacColla wasn't much for luxuries, and had chosen the smaller but warmer of the rooms offered him. The hearth was big, the window faced west, and the mattress was softer than any ground he'd used as a bed these past weeks.

And still, he was tenser than he thought he had reason to be, and wondered at the strange woman who'd put him so on edge. Dunking his head underwater, he tugged his fingers through his hair, untan gling the matted mass before he washed.

MacColla sat up abruptly and whipped his hair from his face. Curse his distraction, but he still hadn't pressed the issue of the woman's clan.

He'd thought she was a spy. All signs pointed to it. She'd come upon them in Campbell's own lair. A mysterious woman, strong and alone, with no ready explanations or denials on her tongue.

And, most troubling of all, she had suspected the truth of

James Graham's fate.

And yet, in his heart he didn't believe it to be true. S he'd seemed so…
 
innocent
. He'd thought it was merely her injury that made her appear so. But feeling her quake before him as they rode, steadying her with his own hand, he'd sensed her confusion, her vulnerability.

Some sort of scout for Clan Campbell? He couldn't give the notion much credence.

She'd trembled like a newborn foal, terrorized by the sight of Fincharn. And then she'd gotten violently ill, and he'd wondered if she weren't actually an enemy of John's clan  Scrymgeour. And yet there had been no   recognition between the two of them.

He felt mercy for the poor lass. Wary, but merciful.

And, oh, how he wanted her. The image of those creamy arms and shoulders stayed in his mind, taunting him. And the smooth stretch of her belly. He fantasized about  pulling that strange white shirt up and over her head. He knew her breasts would be even paler and more perfect, if such a thing were possible.

MacColla shut his eyes, marshalling his body back to

composure.

He'd keep her close until he could discover the truth of her origins.

And God help her if she turned out to be something she didn't appear to be.

* * *

Haley paced another frantic circle around the room, dragging her hand hard along the cold stone as she went.  The sharp peaks and edges of granite h ad made her palm raw, but she couldn't stop herself. Something had to make this experience real to her. She pressed her hand harder onto the damp rock, foisting her physical self onto this strange world, hoping her mind would follow.

She was back in time  and didn't know how it had

happened, just that it had. The evidence was all around  her. But it was more than simply the clothes and the  Gaelic. More than the godforsaken chill of the castle she  now found herself in.

Haley
 
knew
. She felt it. Felt it in the desolation around her.  An animal knowing, bone- deep and as old as man, that she could travel for miles in any direction before encountering another soul. She felt the absence of technology like a sudden silence. Felt nature around her, ascendant, all-

powe rful, in a way she'd never sensed it before.

Most of all, she felt small and vulnerable and terrified out of her wits.

She stopped. She needed to search again for something, anything that could be used as a weapon. She'd already noted the small candleholder on the table at her bedside.

The pitcher full of water could do some damage too. And

pocketing the small knife on the tray of cheese and bread  had been a no-brainer. Her eyes roved the room.
 
There  must be something else.

She stormed to the bedside for the hundredth time. Small

table with candles, pitcher, basin. She peeled the thin  mattress away from the bed. It was packed tightly with  straw and made a light crunching sound. There was a  woven hammock beneath, attached to the wooden cot. She  kicked at the base of it. The thing was too sturdy to remove  a leg, and it'd be too readily noticed anyhow.

She picked at the hammock that was to be her seventeenth- century version of a box spring. It was actually

a well-made thing, the rope tied off into strong, even knots  and pulled over and under into a dense basket weave.  Definitely something to keep in mind. Once she severed  that rope, though, that was it for the bed.

Oh God, how?
 
She dropped the mattress back into place and sat suddenly.
 
How?
 
How had she gotten there?

Her mind kept returning to the gun. And that hideous painting. A wooden panel bearing the crude likeness of a man and a woman. The man was MacColla, she knew that now. And she was the woman, with a scar on her neck. It had been glistening with fresh blood. But whose?

That weapon and that painting were the two things that linked her to…
 
when
?

She tried to place herself in time. Tried to remember her history. When and how MacColla died. It had been on a

battlefield in Ireland. He'd been betrayed,  slain. She didn't  recall the precise date, just that it would've been in the  1640s. The time of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, that  politically correct name for what some still referred to as  the British Civil Wars.

But when,
 
exactly
? 1645? '46?

And why her? Why Alasdair MacColla? She tried to remember as much as she could about the man. He'd been

fierce. Brave. Vicious.

Many claimed he'd invented the Highland Charge, the battlefield strategy that had brought the Highlanders so many triumphs for so many years. Fire off a musket shot, then charge, finishing off the battle with sword and targe.

Such famous MacColla victories. Such infamous MacColla

brutality.

He certainly was as huge as the history books said he was.  She had never seen an image of the man, and thought with a shudder that the horrific wooden panel might be the only painting of him that ever existed. But his legend hadn't exaggerated his size. His power was clear in his broad chest, tremendous arms, and his thighs, solid as wood, which had  cradled her as they rode as if she nestled within the branches of some great tree.

MacColla. With ties to the Highlands and to Ireland. With a bloodthirsty desire to see all Campbells in their graves.

Haley went cold. She'd appeared, somehow, in Campbell 's castle. Anyone would believe
 
she
 
was a Campbell.

And then she'd asked those idiotic questions about  Graham. Dread chilled her, remembering her insistence that Graham wasn't dead. What would MacColla have

thought of that? It would seem like mad chatter  to him.

The mad chatter of an enemy.
 
Oh God…

She burst to her feet for one more spin around the room.
 
Bed, table. Two windows: no glass, openings too narrow for escape. Door: hinges? A possibility. Trunk.

Haley dropped to her knees, opened the trunk, saw the pile of musty woolen blankets she'd already rifled through a dozen times, and quickly closed it again.

MacColla killed all in his path. And here Haley was, in his path.

She looked at her hands trembling atop the glistening blond wood.
 
Get ahold of yourself, Hale.
 
She needed to calm down if she was going to be of any use to herself.

Think logically.
 
He hadn't harmed her. He'd actually saved her from those men.

He could have killed her a dozen times over by now. But instead he'd gently bound her torn muscles. Held her lightly on his horse. All despite the terrible things she'd said.

She looked around with fresh perspective.
 
A room, not a dungeon.
  
She didn't seem to be in any imminent danger.The steadying breath she took sent fresh pain stabbing through her torso.
  
Damned injury. That's the biggest danger.

If she were in the past, then fleeing would be certain death.  Where would she go? She'd surely starve, freeze, get kidnapped, killed, or some combination thereof.

Haley put her hand to the cold stone floor and gingerly sat down to lean against the trunk.

The past.
 
If she were truly in the past, she could solve the mystery of James Graham's fate. Haley shot up straight, her heart giving a sudden kick.

It was a dream come true for any academic. She c ould see for herself how it had all played out. Discover for herself if  Graham had really died, or if he'd actually survived, living on in secret.

She shivered, deciding then that she needed to know.

But what about her family? They'd be beside themselves , waiting, worrying.

She looked around at her room. The pitcher and washbasin. The candle by her bedside.
 
The past.

What if Graham were out there somewhere? She chafed

her arms, tamping down the quiver of goose bumps along

her skin.

She'd find out, then find her way home. A few weeks of uncertainty for her family, for the opportunity of a lifetime.  She'd been so preoccupied with her research when she saw them at the bar, maybe they'd even assume she was just buried in her work.

But where was she? Had that strange and beautiful pistol been the thing connecting her to this time and place? Had it even been made yet?

If she'd actually landed in a Campbell stronghold, they'd likely be somewhere in Argyll.

Good Lord, will I meet Campbell too?
 
She gasped, then gave a bemused laugh. His portrait came easily to mind. He'd been a wealthy and powerful man, and as unattractive as his reputation. He had other holdings, but Haley recalled the name Loch Awe now, remembered it being in the west.

She'd need a plan. She 'd take her time healing, use it to suss out the world around her, see if she could pinpoint an exact place in time. She wondered if Fincharn had a library. That would be next on the agenda.

Most of all she needed to pretend to be someone she wasn't. It struck her that she hadn't even told MacColla her

last name. She replayed their meeting in her head, and  sent up a silent prayer of thanks that she hadn't let any  clue to her true origins slip.

For nobody could discover the truth of who she was.

She knew  well that men like MacColla would think her a

sorceress. Knew what that would mean in the seventeenth-

century Highlands. Knew that a man like MacColla would  think nothing of snapping her in two, kindling for a pyre fit  for a witch.

The methodical reasoning gradually brought Haley into focus, and the hysteria that had shaken her abated into a distant pulse.

If she couldn't tell her truth, she'd need a new truth.

She thought with sudden clarity that the best lies were embroidered with details rooted in fact.

Though she probably knew what was going on in seventeenth- century Scotland better than most of its inhabitants, Haley's grasp of Scottish Gaelic was moderate at best. Which was not good enough for her to pass as a  Highlander.

But Ireland. She did know Ireland. She was a Fitzpatrick of  Donegal. She knew her Irish history. Hell, she could even make a decent soda bread. She'd visited her cousins many times through the years. Enough to be able to imagine what the country had been like hundreds of years ago .

She was, and would remain, Haley Fitzpatrick. And from that moment on, she was from Ireland.

Chapter Ten

I'm not a prisoner
, she thought.
 
Not a prisoner. I'm not a prisoner.

Though she kept telling herself MacColla hadn't placed her in a dungeon, after a few hours alone in her room, she was on edge, flinching at every distant noise and voice in the castle. She finally decided the only thing that would pacify her would be to test her theory. Prisoners, after all, weren't able to stroll about freely.