Time Travel Romances Boxed Set (87 page)

It was only when Morgan retrieved her boots
from behind a stone that she realized something critical.

The crystal from the regalia was gone.
Morgan searched the ground in all directions, ran her fingers
through the grass, but to no avail.

The gemstone was gone. Alasdair was gone.
She looked, but already knew that the white heather was gone
too.

Morgan sat down heavily as the sun peeked
rosily at the world. Had Alasdair really managed to go back to the
past?

There was only one way to find out for sure.
He didn’t have any money, so he would have had to go back to the
bed-and-breakfast to eat. Morgan dressed hastily and ran back to
the Micra, praying that the car would start.

Evidently the car had forgiven her sins,
because it did start.

*

Justine stretched like a cat in the sun,
even though it was pouring rain. She smiled to herself and stirred
the sweetener into her coffee. The one thing absent from Scottish
breakfast tables were those little blue envelopes that she relied
upon keep her hipline trim. At least, they had been missing, until
Justine sat down at the breakfast table at Adaira Macleod’s Rose
Cottage Bed-and-Breakfast.

And Adaira’s coffee was divine. Justine
watched Blake devour his breakfast and smiled some more as she
recalled how he had worked up such an appetite.

“
My Mona Lisa,” Blake
teased. “Are you smiling about the same thing I’m smiling
about?”

Justine just smiled some more. She hadn’t
had much sleep, but she felt very, very good this morning. She and
Blake shared a hot glance of mutual adoration, then she looked
reluctantly at her watch.

“
I guess we should wake up
Morgan,” she said.

“
Oh, I don’t know. It’s a
perfect day for lounging in bed. Or drawing.” Blake winked then
leaned forward and tapped his fork on the tablecloth, his eyes
gleaming. “We could wander back upstairs ourselves, tell Adaira
that we’re packing…”

Adaira herself bustled into the room in a
puff of frilly pink calico, clicking her tongue as she came.
Justine had already noticed that their hostess had a fondness for
pink, but this apron was pinker than cotton candy at a state
fair.

It was a bit of a jolt first thing in the
morning.

“
More coffee?” Adaira asked
cheerfully, and both Macdonalds held out their cups.

“
Your coffee is very good,”
Blake said with approval. “The best we’ve had in
Scotland.”

“
Oh, Mr. Macdonald, all the
handsome young men from abroad say just the same.” Adaira filled
Blake’s cup with a flourish. “The Captain is always warning me not
to go and get vain about my coffee. Adaira, he says, there’s more
to making a success of life than grinding your own coffee
beans.”

Adaira winked at Justine while filling her
cup to the brim with steaming coffee. “But
I
say there’s
more to life than worrying about grand events that have nothing to
do with our own wee lives. I would rather be having a nice cup of
coffee on a rainy morning and looking upon my lovely roses than
worrying myself to death about nonsense brewed up down London
way.”

Justine turned and looked out at the roses
in question. Adaira had a lovely hedge of pink eglantine roses
hugging the perimeter of her well-manicured lawn. They were in
their last flush of blooming before the winter, and Justine had
admired them already.

But today there was another bush in the
middle of the lawn. Justine frowned. She knew it hadn’t been there
before. She’s walked around the yard the previous day, after
all.

There was no way she could have missed this
one. Blood-red blooms the size of her fist adorned the gnarled and
obviously ancient bush. Around its base twined a thorny mass that
had a different kind of leaves.

Before Justine could ask about it, Morgan
burst into the breakfast room. She was wearing the same sweater she
had worn the night before when she’d taken the car.

“
Justine! He’s
gone!”

Justine blinked. Hadn’t Morgan come
home?

And
who
was gone?

Justine had a funny feeling that she’d
forgotten something she really should remember, but she couldn’t
put her finger on what it was.
He
. Hadn’t there been
somebody with them?

Just thinking about it made Justine’s head
hurt. She felt as though she was prying at a door that didn’t want
to be opened. She looked at Blake, but he looked more confused than
she felt.

“
He?” Justine asked
carefully.

“
Alasdair!” Morgan was
clearly all worked up. “Alasdair MacAulay.”

Justine blinked, the name ringing a distant
bell.

Morgan clutched Justine’s hands in obvious
consternation. “Don’t tell me you don’t remember. You have to
remember. The highlander. The man in the kilt. He’s tall and blond
and we found him at Edinburgh Castle and you thought he’d be
perfect for me. Justine! He’s why we came to Lewis!”

Blake cleared his throat. “We came here
because you had to see those standing stones.” He rolled his eyes.
“Big old stones. I was thinking we really should head back south.”
He reached down and tugged his tour book out of his jacket pocket.
“I don’t know how you convinced me to drive right past Bannockburn,
but we have to go back.”

Morgan glanced wildly at Blake. “Why do you
have to go to Bannockburn?” she demanded hoarsely.

Blake impatiently tapped his finger on the
table. “Morgan, do you ever listen to anything? How many times do I
have to tell you that Bannockburn was the site where Robert the
Bruce vanquished the English and won Scotland’s freedom? It’s a
tremendous precedent for the referendum they just had here.”

Morgan dropped into a third chair at the
table, her face pale. “Justine,” she said softly. “Is that what you
remember?”

Justine frowned and couldn’t help looking at
the red, red rose growing in the middle of the lawn. What Blake had
said sounded right, but she couldn’t completely shake an odd sense
that there had been another man traveling with them.

She remembered Blake’s flat refusal to come
all the way to Callanish. Yet they were here. She knew that there
had been something – or someone – that changed his mind. Justine
remembered how adamant Blake was about going to Bannockburn, yet at
the same time vaguely recalled his hostility about going there when
they left Edinburgh.

And she had been in complete agreement with
him both times.

As she was now with his insistence that they
return.

How odd. Neither of them were people who
frequently changed their minds. It was really frustrating not to be
able to remember something, especially since she usually had a mind
like a steel trap. She forgot
nothing
, yet now she couldn’t
summon a clear picture of this highlander Morgan was talking about.
She drummed her fingers on the table, ignoring Morgan’s hopeful
gaze, and couldn’t help looking out the window once more.

Justine had an insistent feeling about that
rose.

“
Adaira,” she called on
impulse when the innkeeper bounced back into the room. “Could you
tell me about this red rose?”

Morgan glanced out the window and her eyes
widened in surprise. “It wasn’t there yesterday!”

“
Of course it was!” Adaira
was clearly delighted to tell the tale. “Oh, it’s a lovely old
story, that much is for certain. That rose has been there for
centuries. You see, there once was a man who loved a certain woman
as dearly as ever a man can do. But theirs was a star-crossed match
and they were doomed to part.

“
When his lady love was
stolen away from his side, the man pined frightfully in his loss.
Finally, one day, he planted a briar and a rose together, as
symbols of himself and her sweet beauty. He told all that as long
as his love burned bright, the briar and the rose would twine
together, each a part of the other for all time.”

Adaira shrugged. “Well, the man passed away
eventually, without his lady love ever being returned to him, and
it is said that he was painfully lonely right to the end. Others
say his eyes lit with pleasure as he passed on, and they are the
ones who say he saw his lady love again in heaven’s grace.

“
But either way, none who
has ever lived here would bear to let either plant wither away. The
briar and the rose you see here are not the originals, of course,
but they are the latest of countless generations of briars and
roses spawned from those plants.”

She leaned closer and dropped her voice.
“Truth be told, my Captain has a weak spot for the tale, though he
would deny it up, down, and sideways if you asked him. Sentimental
nonsense he calls it, but he has no less than three of each plant
carefully nurtured in his wee greenhouse. If one of them takes ill,
the other need not endure alone.”

Adaira straightened and wipes a shimmer from
her cheek. “It is the least we can do to maintain a man’s gesture
of undying love.” She hoisted the pot she held and smiled brightly.
“Coffee?”

Blake accepted, then Adaira trotted away.
Justine looked back to the rose with the briar tangled around it,
feeling as though it was trying to tell her something. It seemed to
her that just behind the rose and briar, a little bit out of focus,
she could see a tall, blond highlander with sadness in his
eyes.

Blue eyed. Very blue eyes.

Everything came back in a rush, as though
she had pried open that stubborn door in her memory and forced its
contents into daylight. Justine remembered suddenly the way that
very man had looked at Morgan, his insistence that he couldn’t be
parted from her, the way he had made Morgan laugh once again.

She remembered Alasdair MacAulay filling the
back seat of the Micra. Justine recalled how he sang for Morgan,
how protective he was of her, how dismayed he had been when she
rebuffed his advances, and her heart warmed.

She had watched Alasdair fall in love with
her sister.

She turned to Morgan, and the expression on
her sister’s face told Justine that the feeling was more than
mutual. She covered Morgan’s hand with her own and gave those
chilled fingers a squeeze. “Did you tell him? Did he know how you
felt?”

Tears shone in Morgan’s eyes as she
nodded.

Justine waited, because she knew there was
more.

“
We made love,” Morgan
admitted finally with a flush and a glance at Blake. “And then –
and then, he was gone.”

The confession told Justine all she needed
to know. Alasdair MacAulay was not the kind of man who took
advantage of women or who would have used her sister for his own
satisfaction. Furthermore, he wasn’t the kind of rat who would run
out on a woman he loved. Something had happened, something had
forced him to leave, and Alasdair had had no choice but to go.

But he had wanted Morgan to know the truth.
Justine was certain of it. She gave Morgan’s fingers a stronger
squeeze. “He planted them for you, as a sign that he loves
you.”

“
Oh, Justine, I don’t
know…”

In that moment, Justine hated Matt Reilly
with every fiber of her being. He had destroyed Morgan’s faith in
the simple fact that she was lovable, by stealing away a precious
cornerstone of her confidence. Somehow Justine was going to repair
the damage.

“
I know he loves you,” she
said firmly. “I knew he was the one for you all along.”

“
You remember him, then?”
Morgan asked, the hope in her voice almost tangible.

“
Remember who?” Blake
demanded, but both sisters ignored him.

“
Yes.” Justine turned to
look into her sister’s eyes and used her most reassuring smile.
“You have to tell me what happened so we can figure out what to
do.”

“
Okay.” Morgan exhaled
unevenly and smiled a little bit. Relief surged through Justine
that her baby sister wanted to share the story. “I’d like
that.”

“
Who are we talking about?”
Blake asked in obvious exasperation. He looked from one sister to
the other and must have seen something in their expressions because
he threw up his hands in defeat. “Okay, okay. Chick stuff. I’m not
listening.”

Then he propped his elbows on the table.
“But could we at least think about heading back to the mainland
today or tomorrow? We’re running out of vacation and there’s still
a ton of things to see!”

Justine leaned across the table and cupped
Blake’s face in her hands. “Maybe you could pack while we’re
talking,” she suggested gently, then gave him a great big kiss.

That ought to give him enough to think about
for a while. Or at least, long enough for Justine to ease the
shadows from her baby sister’s eyes. All she had to do was convince
Morgan of the simple truth – that Alasdair MacAulay loved her to
distraction and that she should take a chance on love.

Whatever that meant.

One look at her sister’s troubled expression
made Justine realize that convincing Morgan of the truth wasn’t
going to be easy.

Fortunately, that kind of challenge had
never stopped Justine before.

*

Alasdair felt himself tumbling away from
Morgan and the stones. He panicked as he fell, but could do naught
to stop himself.

Until he rolled into a tree and came to a
jarring stop.

He felt the sun upon his shoulders and
opened his eyes warily, for he knew ’twas still night.

Yet ’twas not night where he lay – ’twas a
broad sunny morning. He must have fallen asleep in Morgan’s embrace
- and somehow tumbled down the grassy bank beside the standing
stones. Alasdair was alone, the standing stones a goodly distance
away.