Reckoning (Book 4 of Lost Highlander series) (15 page)

He shook his head. “I fear for the future with the two of ye in charge of anything.”

Bella laughed, then grew serious. “Ye must go,” she said, fruitlessly shoving his chest and glancing nervously behind her. “None of them can be trusted.”

He half faced the trees, torn between a clean escape and his duty. “I canna leave without speaking to my brother,” he said.

“Aye, and I reckoned that,” she said with a tender smile. So like her many times great-granddaughter, it tore at his heart. “He’ll be waiting for ye further in.” Instead of shoving him again, she clung to the edges of his plaid, searching his face. “Thank ye, Lachlan. I can hardly believe it, but ye’ve changed my life.”

“For the better, I hope,” he said, oddly choked up. He couldn’t believe he might actually miss the wee harridan.

She nodded her head vigorously and reached up to his shoulders, trying to pull him closer. “Verra much for the better,” she said.

He leaned down, for a disconcerting moment thinking she wanted to kiss him farewell.

“I’m sorry for this,” she said, pulling a nasty little knife out of her sleeve. She grasped a handful of his hair and yanked his head forward. With a vicious swipe, she hacked off his ponytail. Letting him go, she leaned back with the hair in her fist. “They’ll need a trophy,” she explained apologetically.

“Bloodthirsty Glens,” he muttered, running his hand over the ragged ends of his newly shortened hair.

“Ye’re so fair of face, ye hardly needed so much hair anyway,” she said, her smile wobbling. “Go now, before they catch up to us. I shall take care of everything. I know you dinna care for such things, but I shall make sure people remember ye well.”

He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “Goodbye, Bella.”

Much deeper in the forest he found Quinn sitting on a tree stump, looking forlorn. He looked up when he heard Lachlan approach and smiled.

“About time,” he said, tipping his head to the side to get a better look at Lachlan’s hair. “That’s a good look on ye.”

“Shut it, idiot,” Lachlan said, placing his hand on Quinn’s shoulder and squeezing it.

“Are ye going to cry, Lach?” he asked, standing up. He stood just shy of Lachlan’s great height.

“Aye, I just may,” he said. “Let me look at ye, lad.” He took a step back and tried to memorize his younger brother’s face. “It’s a great burden I leave ye with,” he said. “I am sorry for it.”

“Ye love the wee lass so verra much?” Quinn asked. “That ye must leave your own time and all that ye own for her?”

“I do,” he said simply.

“Well, then. Ye must go. Catie and I would rather ye be gone than moping around for the rest of your days.”

“Ah, Catriona,” breathed Lachlan, closing his eyes and trying to conjure his baby sister’s face. It had been so long since he’d seen her. He’d never see her again. “She is the most important thing, aye? The crops can fail and the keep can fall, but ye must make sure she is properly settled.”

Quinn nodded seriously. “I understand,” he said.

“Ye must make sure she gets her daft season. It was her mother’s last wish. She was English, but she was good to us, though you probably dinna remember her.”

“I remember her a bit. She used to sing to me.”

“Aye, the poor woman loved us like we were her own, and no thanks or help at all from our bloody sire.” He took a deep breath. “I wish ye could have known our mother, and had a better image of our da. He wasna always the wastrel ye knew, but his broken heart wouldna let him get back to the man he once was. I am sorry ye never had a real father, like ye should have.”

Quinn looked down at the ground, kicking at the dirt before he looked back up at Lachlan. “I had ye, brother.”

Lachlan felt a strange prickling behind his eyes while his throat closed up. He shook his head, trying to get back on track, no time for emotions. “But Catie. The lass has no idea how verra rich she is. Ye must make sure to keep the fortune hunters away from her. No gamblers, no drinkers. I know her ma wanted her to have the English season, but try to put a good Scottish lad in her sights. But dinna make her hate her own people …” Lachlan trailed off, sure he was missing something.

“It shall be done,” Quinn promised.

He grabbed Lachlan around the neck and before Lachlan could barely hug him back, he turned and left.

He knew he didn’t have much time. He could already hear shouts in the distance. They must have discovered he’d got away and were now scrambling through the forest to find him. He took a deep breath of the chilly eighteenth century air and when he could no longer hear Quinn’s footsteps, took the vial of herbs from his sporran.

Evelyn rubbed her bleary eyes and looked out the kitchen window, unable to focus on the terrible handwriting for another second. She wanted to rest her eyes on the cool grey skies and the trees rustling in the wind. She felt antsy and itchy all over and got up, nearly knocking the bench over in her haste to be away from the paper laden table.

Magnus was still sleeping and she decided to walk around in the courtyard for a few minutes. Grabbing a water bottle from the fridge, she escaped the confines of the castle, breathing in the crisp air.

Piper had been gone for four days. She had forbidden Evelyn to go with her when she did the spell, begging her to stay safely far away. Evelyn followed her that night anyway and hid behind the trees, hoping first that the spell would fail, and barring that, that she would get taken along in the blast radius so she could keep an eye on her.

Something didn’t sit right with her about the whole plan to find Rose, and it wasn’t plain old worry either. Piper had left the diary behind, and Evelyn read it through several times. It was sad, what happened to her, tragic really. Evelyn knew firsthand what it was like to be targeted by Daria.

Still, she couldn’t bring herself to actually like Rose. Everything she’d ever heard about her, she’d been an awful mother and a completely absent grandmother. Evelyn closed her eyes and imagined Sam being lost to her for twenty years. It tore her up to think of it, but would she leave Magnus? She couldn’t think that Sam would want her to leave their child, even if he was grown. It wasn’t like moving back to Texas or something. Rose had traveled to another time, as good as dead to Piper and her mother.

Propping open the kitchen door so she could hear Magnus if he woke, she headed to the edge of the courtyard and looked down at the stable. She closed her eyes, letting the cold breeze waft over her, revitalizing her weary mind.

When she opened them, she dropped the water bottle and yelped in dismay, blinking several times to clear her vision. Surely not. She prayed her eyes didn’t lie.

“Lachlan?” She covered the distance to him in hurried steps and planted her hands flat on his brick hard chest. Yes, he was really there, standing like a plaid covered mountain beside the decorative shrubbery.

“Aye, I’ve made it back at last,” he said in his low rumble.

Evelyn threw her arms around him. “We thought—,” she started, pushing away to get a better look at him. He was surprisingly clean and healthy looking. “Are you all right? Do I need to get Dr. Stone?” She circled around him, looking for blood stains.

He laughed. “I am well, thank ye.”

Her mind raced, emotions tumbling over one another, and she grabbed his hand, tugging him toward the kitchen.

Inside, he spied the bassinet and leaned over it. “The wee lad has grown,” he said, looking stricken. “How long have I been gone?”

“Two months,” Evelyn said, trying to get him to sit by pushing on his rock of a shoulder. He obliged her and sank into a kitchen chair. “What happened?” she asked, sitting across from him and leaning over, barely able to believe he was really there. “We thought you were dead.” It felt awkward just hanging there, when he was clearly alive. “Sorry, but there were papers.”

He shook his head abruptly. “Where is Piper?” he asked, then looked chagrined.  “My  apologies, lass. The story is long and convoluted. I’d rather no’ tell it twice.”

She reached over and placed her hand on his wrist and his eyes flew wide with grief.

“No, no. She’s alive. But she isn’t here, Lachlan.”

His face relaxed but not by much when he put together what she meant. “She’s gone back? To look for me?” He got up and took a few steps.

“She went back yes, but not to look for you. She thought you died in a battle here. She’s looking for her grandmother. It’s another long story,” she said. “Oh my God, Lachlan. You’re alive.” It hit her all at once and she blinked back tears of relief and bewilderment.

“She went alone?” he asked roughly. Feeling ashamed all over again, she reached over and touched Magnus’s cheek. Lachlan closed his eyes. “Once again, my apologies. I didna mean that ye should have gone with her. I know she would have killed ye had ye tried.”

“I didn’t want her to go at all, but she thought … it’s not great,” she finished weakly, wondering if Lachlan knew that Piper had been possessed. How could she possibly explain that?

“I have to find her,” he said, turning back and gripping the edge of the table. His eyes blazed stormy blue.

Evelyn nodded. “Yes, you do. But not right now. You look exhausted, and I need to tell you everything we learned. And Sam and Mellie will want to see you.” She stopped her avalanche of words and tipped her head to the side. “And what happened to your hair?”

“Bella Glen,” he said with a frown, putting his hand to the back of his neck. “Is it so verra bad?”

“It’s pretty bad.” Evelyn tried not to smile too widely as she looked him over. He was alive, when all the historical documents pronounced him dead, and he had a tomb in the crypt. It was a miracle. “Go change into some of your modern clothes and we’ll go into town and get it fixed. And I’ll tell you everything. And you need to tell me how you fooled the historians into thinking you were dead.”

Lachlan’s face relaxed into his trademarked beautiful smile and he laughed. “Again, that would be the doings of Bella Glen.” He squeezed her shoulder and went to change.

***

Lachlan wanted to hear everything about Piper, but Evelyn made him go first with his side of things. He told her everything on the car ride into the village, and she believed it truly was a miracle he wasn’t actually dead.

“That was a farfetched plan,” she said, wracking her brain for all the mentions she’d read of that fateful battle he’d supposedly been killed in. While Piper had refused to speak of it further and gone into her shell of denial, Evelyn had scoured everything she could find about it. “I think there was a fire that night,” she said. “I bet Bella really did set the woods on fire to cover up your disappearance. That was risky back then.” She thought about the village’s antique fire truck and the few volunteer firefighters who kept it running. It would be risky now.

“Aye. She was desperate to be rid of me, of that I’m certain.”

“Piper didn’t believe it for a long time,” she said, feeling guilty for not doubting everything she’d read herself.

“I shall leave this verra night to find her,” he said, pulling at the seatbelt as if he wanted to jump out of the car and leave that second.

“Well, just hang on there, He-Man,” she said. “You need to know what’s going on, and if you don’t at least stay to see Mellie, she’ll throw a fit and probably poison our food.”

Lachlan groaned at the mention of poisoned food, and agreed to stay at least one day. Evie hoped beyond hope that Piper would waltz through the kitchen door that evening, having defeated Daria, to find the surprise of her life. Then they could all go to Disney World.

She pulled into the parking spot for Donna’s Beauty and hustled him inside. When he was done, what was left of his raggedly chopped black locks were neatly trimmed into a typical twenty-first century man’s hairstyle. Except he looked anything but typical. After Donna brushed off his shoulders and whirled his chair around, they both stood and stared at him for several long moments. He blinked from one to the other and smiled nervously, running his hand over his shorn head.

“Dear God,” Evelyn said, adjusting the neckline of her sweater. “Your face hurts my heart. You are seriously too handsome.”

“Far too handsome,” Donna agreed, shaking her head and tutting.

Lachlan went beet red and scowled at them, while he dug out his stash of modern money and handed over an indiscriminate wad. Evelyn intercepted it and counted out the proper amount for Donna. Piper had accounts at all the shops in town, but he seemed so proud of himself, and she didn’t want to hurt his old-fashioned pride.

“Next stop, we shock the living daylights out of Sam,” she said, pulling him next door to Sam’s bookshop.

“Ye’re a bit cruel, Evelyn,” Lachlan said mildly. “Ye should have called him first.”

Evelyn rolled her eyes at him and flung open the door to Maclean Booksellers, making sure the little bell rang violently.

Sam looked up from stocking magazines with a huff, and promptly dropped the stack he was holding. The glossy magazines slid everywhere at his feet as he stood there staring, first at Lachlan, then at Evelyn, who thought her face would crack from smiling so hard. He clapped his hand over his mouth, his green eyes wide. Dear lord, but she loved him.

He turned to her accusingly and she couldn’t stop smiling. She knew she should have called and warned him, but the look of surprised delight on his face was worth it.