The Pocket Watch (11 page)

Logan looked up from where he sat at the head table, his face lighting in a smile. “There’s my beautiful lass.”

She smiled back, crossing the hall to sit with him at the table. His lips brushed her cheek with a kiss. That wouldn’t do this morning. She wrapped her arms around him, holding tightly for a moment. She loved him with all her heart. She found herself praying that she wouldn’t have to leave him.

He must have sensed her tension. “Maggie, is something wrong?”

“Nay, not exactly. But I need to speak with ye. Alone.”

“All right, sweetling, break yer fast and we’ll find a place to talk.”

Maggie ate a bannock quickly. “Can we go now?”

“Is that all ye’re going to eat?”

“I don’t have much appetite this morning. Can we go now?”

Logan frowned, “Aye.”

“I was thinking the chapel would be a good place to talk where we will be sure to be alone and undisturbed.”

He nodded, taking her hand. “If ye wish.”

They left the keep and walked across the bailey, entered the chapel and sat on one of the benches. Maggie whispered a prayer that he would believe her.

“Something has upset ye, Maggie. Tell me what it is.”

Maggie took a deep breath. “Before I start, I need to tell ye, I love ye with all of my heart Logan.”

He frowned and kissed the back of the hand he still held. “I love ye too.”

“Remember that. What I’m about to tell ye is going to be hard to believe.” His brow furrowed but she went on. “You remember the day of the accident? The day I…
changed
?”

“I could hardly forget that, my love. I fear this sounds cruel, but I am glad it happened.”

“I know ye are. I am too. Margaret was more than spoiled and self-important, she was intentionally mean. She didn’t give a whit about anyone but herself. The choice to ignore yer warning that day was pure folly. I am so very sorry for the hurt Margaret caused.”

“But ye changed. Ye are a completely different lass now.”

She knew Logan had no idea how accurate that statement was. “Aye, I am. But I didn’t just lose my memory. After the accident there were things I knew that Margaret didn’t. Like healing skills and Latin. No one seemed to know that Margaret could read, but I can read Latin.”

He smiled, “But not Gaelic.”

She nodded. “Aye, not Gaelic. And I know how to stop a person from choking. There are reasons for this and I want to tell ye why but please, promise ye will listen to my whole story before ye react.”

His expression sobered. “Ye’re worrying me.”

“I know I am and I’m sorry, but please will ye promise me?”

“Aye. I’ll listen to yer whole story before reacting.”

She took a deep breath. “Do ye agree that there are things in the world which people don’t understand, things known only to God?”

“Aye.”

“But there are things which people think they understand and accept as irrefutable fact?”

Logan’s eyes narrowed. “Aye, facts are facts.”

“Logan, there are some things which people believe to be facts that aren’t quite as simple as they seem. What I’m about to tell ye is one of those things.”

Logan shook his head. “But, Maggie—”

“—Nay Logan, ye promised to listen.”

He nodded. “I did and I will.”

Maggie leaned over and kissed him. Oh Dear God how she loved him. She couldn’t stop herself and she feared it might be the last time he accepted a kiss from her if he didn’t believe her or, worse, thought her a witch.

His eyebrow went up and he smiled. “Does this truth have something to do with kissing? Because I’d be happy to show ye what I know to be true first.”

She smiled. “Nay, it doesn’t have to do with kissing, although I wish it did. It has to do with time.”

“Time?” he looked incredulous.

“Aye, time. We think of time as fixed. Yesterday is always behind us, tomorrow is always ahead of us.”

“Because it is.”

“Nay, Logan, it isn’t. Time is not linear. There are ways to cross from one time to another. Essentially it is possible to go backwards and then forwards again.”

He frowned. “How do ye know this?”

“Because I did it.”

To her dismay, he stiffened and pulled away from her slightly, dropping the hand he held. “How is this possible?”

Well at least he was still listening as he had promised. “I don’t understand it all myself. I have no idea how it works, and there may be more than one way to do it, but the method I know about is called ‘soul exchange.’ A soul is pulled from one time to another and enters the physical body of someone who is about to die, but the new soul is able to prevent that death. That’s what happened to me. My soul entered Margaret’s body just in time to rein Robin in and prevent the accident that seemed certain to occur. I went to sleep at night, and woke up clinging to Robin’s back.”

He stared at her in disbelief, but he still listened so she continued, “I was terrified. I had never ridden a horse. I acted on instinct to stop him. I know now I pulled much too hard on his reins which is what caused him to rear and throw me. The reason I know things Margaret didn’t know is because I am not Margaret. I know other things too. I understand complicated mathematics, I can read and speak English, although it has changed a lot over time. I know things about the nature of the world that mankind won’t discover for more than two hundred years.”

“Ye are asking me to believe that ye lived two hundred years in the future and yer soul entered Margaret Grant’s body just as she was about to die?”

“I’m actually from more than seven hundred years in the future, but aye, my soul entered Margaret’s body just in time to stop the accident. It’s why at that moment, I became a completely different person from the Margaret ye knew.”

He looked grim. “That’s what ye meant that first day. About not wanting to be Margaret. What happened to her soul?”

“It was an exchange, her soul entered my body in the future.”

“Did ye choose to do this? To meddle with souls and time?”

Maggie sighed. “I did, but only because I was trying to prove that it wouldn’t work. Ye see, most people in the future don’t even know this is possible. I met an elderly woman named Gertrude who I thought wasn’t in her right mind. She insisted that soul exchange was possible. In the future I’m a…healer. I wanted to get help for her but the only way she would accept it, was if I tried what she told me and it didn’t work. Logan, I firmly believed it wouldn’t work.”

“What did ye have to do to make this unnatural thing happen?”

The derision in his tone hurt. She feared this wasn’t going to end well, but she had started and had to see it through. She pulled the chain from around her neck and showed him the watch. “She gave me this.” Maggie knew mechanical clocks hadn’t been invented yet. “Do ye remember me not understanding what ye meant by prime and sext and so on?”

He nodded.

“That is because in the future we have mechanical clocks that mark the hours. A clock that is small enough to wear or carry is called a ‘watch’. This looks like a kind of watch called a ‘pocket watch’ but it isn’t a normal pocket watch. It is the conduit that brought me back in time and it marks the number of days I’ve been here. Gertrude told me to put the chain around my neck before I went to sleep and it would take me back in time. I don’t believe in magic and with no other explanation for how it could work, I didn’t believe it would. I thought she was touched in the head.”

“But ye want me to believe it worked.”

She looked into his stormy gray eyes, praying with all her heart that he would. “Aye, I do. Because I am here.”

He snorted. “And why are ye telling me this now? Is it time for ye to go home? Did ye make me fall in love with ye, only to have Margaret Grant return and make the rest of my life miserable?”

Maggie sighed. “Margaret won’t return, ever. She set a course of events in place that inevitably would have ended in her death. On the other hand, I have a choice to make. I told ye this pocket watch marks the number of days I’ve been here. Before sixty days is up, I can leave anytime I wish simply by saying a particular word. But if I do that, Margaret’s body here will die, as it would have on that day, and I will return to my own body, in my own time.”

“Ye said ‘if’ ye do that.”

“Aye, I did. I can choose to stay. If I don’t say the word before my time is up, I will stay here forever.”

“Ye have just admitted practicing magic to me. I could have ye burned as a witch.”

“I don’t believe it is magic. It might be, but it might be something from even farther in the future that I don’t understand. In any event, if I stay beyond six more days, any magic that existed is gone. But, Logan, if ye intend to burn me as a witch, I’ll leave now.”

The pain in his expression tore at her heart. “I don’t intend to burn ye as a witch, Maggie.” He pulled her into his arms, holding tight. “Sweetling, these things ye are saying…they’re hard to believe. In fact, I’m not sure I do believe them. But I do love ye and one thing is for certain. Ye can’t tell this story to anyone else or ye
will
be accused of witchcraft.”

She returned his embrace. “I won’t tell anyone else. I needed ye to know, to understand.”

“To understand? I—” his voice broke with emotion, “—I don’t understand. Are ye telling me ye’re leaving me? That ye’ll die soon? I won’t believe that. We are to be married in four days.”

“Aye, we are to be married and I love ye with all my heart. I want to marry ye. I want to stay here and grow old with ye.” Logan visibly relaxed a little. “But if ye are going to marry me, I need ye to understand who I really am and what the consequences of this decision are for both of us. I am going to ask ye to set aside yer disbelief for a moment. I want ye to pretend that everything I’ve told ye so far is true. Please, Logan, I want to tell ye who I really am.”

~ * ~

Logan stared at the woman he loved with his whole heart. What she asked him to believe was at best a sign she was touched in the head and at worst the work of the devil. In truth, he didn’t think she was either crazy or wicked, but the only option left was that her story was true. She begged him to set aside his disbelief and listen. Perhaps if he did, it would all be clearer. She was right—wicked, crazy, or a soul from the future—he needed to know before they were married.

“All right, Maggie. For the moment, I will believe ye. Tell me who ye are.”

She seemed relieved. “My real name is Magdalena Mitchell. I’m called Maggie at home. That’s why I asked ye to call me that.”

Maggie launched into her story, with such exquisite detail it became harder and harder not to believe her. She described her family and her childhood. She talked about her mother’s illness and the role Maggie had taken in caring for her. When she cried, he gathered her in his arms to comfort her.

This was not an act. She firmly believed everything she told him, and gradually he became convinced her story was true. Lasses studying just like lads as younglings? Going to universities? The
same
universities no less? She couldn’t make up something that ridiculous.

Still, that she wanted to go so badly and hadn’t been able to, caused his heart to ache a little too. That she had given the opportunity to her sister, rather than taking it herself made him…proud. This one detail, above all others sealed his faith that she was not and had never been Margaret Grant.

“Ye are a good lass, Maggie Mitchell.”

“So ye believe me?”

“Aye, I do. I don’t pretend to understand it. But I do believe ye. So, how did ye meet Gertrude and why did she give ye the pocket watch?”

Maggie sighed. “I have left out one rather important person in the story of my life. His name is Elliott.”

A man? A husband perhaps? Logan feared the worst. “Please, tell me ye aren’t married to him?”

She smiled but shook her head. “I’m not. He was my very best friend. We grew up together. Everyone expected us to get married.”

“But ye didn’t? Was he not yer father’s choice? Was yer da not able to provide a sufficient dowry due to his finances?”

Maggie laughed. “Nay, nothing like that. Marriage is different in the future. In most parts of the world, men and women choose their own spouses and there are no dowries. Most people marry for love. They spend a long time, sometimes years, getting to know each other before they decide to marry.”

“How is that possible? How are alliances made? If ye must know someone for years first, ye could only marry within yer clan.”

“Things are very different and alliances as ye know them aren’t necessary. I will tell ye more about that another time. For now ye’ll just have to accept that in my time most people marry for love.”

That was a sobering thought. “Then ye and Elliott loved each other?” Just asking the question was more painful than he could have imagined. He didn’t like the idea of anyone but him loving Maggie, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer.

“Aye, we did. That is, I thought we did, until he went away to university and met someone else.”

Her tone of voice sounded so melancholy. It was obvious, this man, Elliott, had hurt her deeply. “He set ye aside?”

She nodded. “He said he would always love me but that it was different with Amanda.” She gave him a sad half smile. “He told me I would always be his best friend.”

Logan couldn’t believe any man in his right mind would choose another over Maggie. “What a roaring arse.”

Maggie gave a genuinely happy laugh. “I agree. But on the day I met Gertrude, I hadn’t quite sorted that out. I had attended his wedding to Amanda and I thought my heart was permanently broken. Gertrude found me crying.

He caressed her cheek. “I’m sorry he hurt ye, Maggie.”

Maggie leaned into his touch. “I’m not. If he hadn’t I would never have met Gertrude…or ye. I told Gertrude the whole sad tale and she offered me a chance to live another life. As I said, I didn’t believe her, but I thought I could help her. So I did what she said to do, to prove her wrong. Only…she wasn’t wrong…it worked.”

“It seems that it did.”

“Ye believe me?” She asked incredulously.

“Aye, Maggie, I do. The tale ye tell is simply too fantastic for Margaret to have imagined.” But even as he admitted believing her, he feared he was about to lose her. He had never imagined what it be like to choose his own bride, but given the option, he would have chosen Magdalena Mitchell. “What are ye going to do?” he asked tentatively.