DevilsHeart (3 page)

He drew his brows together. “Twenty-first century?”

“Yeah, twenty-first century. Now do you have a phone or
something I can borrow? Or even a car to take me back into Fannich?”

“What is this ‘phone’ or ‘car’ of which you speak?”

An urge to scream her rage into the forest rushed through
her but then stopped short at the bewilderment in his eyes. She stared back at
him, hunting for any sign of playacting.

“Will you come with me now, lass? You are soaking wet and
likely to catch your death out here like this. Your secret will be safe with
me. I swear it.”

“My secret?”

“That you are not of this world.”

A lump of apprehension lodged itself in her throat. “What
makes you say that?”

The stone warmed in her hand as a cool breeze from the north
penetrated the cover of the trees and swirled around her.

He smiled, his eyes crinkling in the corners. “I know of
another like you.”

The chill from her wet clothing seeped into her bones and
she shifted in growing discomfort, wriggling her tingling toes against the
soggy soles of her shoes. She’d had enough of his game. “Thanks, but no thanks.
I’m sure the house is here somewhere.”

“As you wish, lass. My wife and I will pray for your safe
return to your family.”

David turned his back on her, motioning for his man to
follow, and they disappeared into the woods.

She glanced over her shoulder, hoping the cabin had poofed
back into existence.

Nope.

She chewed on her bottom lip as she turned to inspect the
rock again. Everything looked the same in the dimming light, however, right
down to the orientation of its craggy face and the speckled black-and-white
pattern.

She eased to the ground. None of this made any sense. She
was not a bubblehead. She’d always had a great sense of direction and had
studied countless maps of the places she was going to visit here in Scotland.
Was she just jet-lagged? She had no clue since she’d never flown anywhere
outside the States before.

She drew her knees up to her chest for warmth and her stomach
rumbled. Tears stung her tired eyes as she pulled the woolen blanket around
herself like a cocoon. An owl pierced the silence of the woods with a loud hoot
and she jumped.

Shrinking back, she cursed herself for ever thinking what
she wanted was an adventure. She should have listened to her sister, pushed
aside her paralyzing shyness around men, and asked the cute cabbie to join her
for a bite to eat in the village pub instead of wandering down to the loch when
she was still so loopy from the flight and lack of sleep. At least she would
have been under a roof right then instead of cold and hungry in the woods.

The crunch of sticks crackled across the clearing. Not
daring to move, Leah bit her lower lip and peered around the perimeter of the
woods. Her heart thudded in an erratic rhythm. Was it a wild animal? Or another
human?

Oh, please, please, please have a cell phone…

Then the blond man who had accompanied David emerged from
the thick foliage about twenty feet away. He nodded at her and crossed his arms
as he leaned against a gnarled old oak at the edge of the clearing.

Her shoulders slumped. Well, at least she wasn’t alone. She
smoothed her thumb over one of the amber stone’s facets. Should she say
something? Maybe without David, the reenactor from hell, hanging about, this
guy would be more willing to help her.

“Excuse me, but do you have a phone on you?” she shouted,
her nerves rattling her voice. “I can reimburse you for any charges.”

He stared and then threw unintelligible words at her.

She forced a tight-lipped smile onto her face and nodded.
“Yeah, yeah, I got it,” she mumbled as she shifted her back against the rock.
“You don’t understand me because you live in a fantasy novel every weekend and
speak nothing but Elvish.”

Neither spoke again as the sun fell below the horizon,
sending the clearing into darkness. Leah fought to keep her eyes open, but her
heavy lids won out. Surely, she was safe enough with this guy watching her from
some distance away. If he’d wanted to attack her, he would have done so already
since they were alone. With just a little sleep, she could make her way to the
main road and flag down help in the morning.

* * * * *

Arms slipped under her knees and around her back. She
shivered, her eyelids fluttering open halfway. And then she was surrounded by
warmth. She sighed and curled toward the warm body now holding her as it rose.
Swayed back and forth, she was lulled again toward sleep.

Highlands of Scotland, 1218

“
Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq
,” little six-year-old
Glenna counted as she held up her chubby fingers one at a time.

Leah smiled and nodded. She held up her own thumb and raised
her eyebrows, encouraging her to continue.

“
Six, sept, huit…
” The girl screwed up her face.

“
Neuf,
” Leah reminded her.

“
Neuf, dix!
” Glenna hopped on the bed like a bunny,
her dark hair bouncing around her head.

Leah laughed. “
Oui, trés bien.
”

Glenna’s name was called from the doorway. Leah smiled in
greeting as the children’s nurse, Ina, stepped into Leah’s chamber and spoke to
the girl in Scottish Gaelic. Glenna hopped off the bed and threw herself into
the woman’s arms, eliciting a girlish giggle from the matronly woman.

The woman smiled at Leah and inclined her head before
guiding Glenna out into the hallway.

Glenna waved. “
Au revoir, mademoiselle!
”

Leah plopped her chin onto her upturned palms as she lay on
her stomach across the mattress of her bed. Well, that is if one could call a
rectangular object stuffed with straw a “mattress”.

Nearly two weeks had already passed since John, the blond
man, had carried her to Graham Castle where David and his family had been
staying. One minute she was fighting sleep and the next she was awaking in the
middle of a bed with David’s wife, Mary, by her side. The amber-colored pendant
the old woman had placed in Leah’s hand, however, was gone.

She must have dropped it somewhere along the way. But she’d
had little time to think much about it once David told her the current year was
1218.

1218.

How was such a thing even possible?

Within hours, Leah was whisked into a carriage along with
David’s children and Ina as they set out for home. The long journey east seemed
like nothing more than an eerily realistic dream at first. Rolling, ethereally
green hills and craggy mountains surrounded them. Unable to speak Gaelic, which
was the main language of everyone in the mormaer’s retinue, she could do little
more than passively take in the surreal scenes of simply dressed peasants in
the fields as they harvested or tended to herds of cattle. So many questions
had whirled through her head.

Once David discovered Leah was almost fluent in French and
could read and write in Latin, however, she had had little time to concentrate
on learning their native tongue. If she was not interpreting documents or
writing something in Latin for him, she was teaching his children French. At
first, she was happy for the distraction—even if it did mean she was living a
surreal medieval version of
Mary Poppins
.

But now the reality of her day-to-day life sat upon her like
a lead weight. She awakened each day to the moos and baying of livestock, the
laughter of children, and clashing of swords along with smells of roasting meat
and infrequently washed bodies. Not to mention the chamber pot in the corner of
the room in which she slept. The constant questions of how something like this
could have happened, how she could have ended up eight hundred years in the
past, and what her mother and sister would do when she didn’t come home plagued
her. David knew more than he was letting on, especially after alluding to this
other person “like her” when they first met, but he always turned down her
requests for additional details. All he would say was she was the wife of some
clan chieftain he knew. No matter how much she pleaded, he refused to take her
back to Fannich to search for the pendant.

Shouts from the courtyard pulled her toward the window
opening to the courtyard two stories below. She pushed the fur covering to the
side and propped her elbows on the windowsill. Another clan was arriving. David
had mentioned a gathering of several clans here at the castle to discuss
political issues and other business would be occurring soon. He had given her a
mysterious wink when he used the phrase “other business” but she didn’t press
him. She never had liked prying into people’s private thoughts.

Leah smiled as David greeted the leader of the clan and then
admired the hard and rough but mighty fine specimens of masculinity who had
just arrived. She had witnessed the arrival of several clans over the past
couple of days and one thing was certain—these thirteenth-century men were hot.
Tall, broad-shouldered, powerfully built legs, and sexy, confident swaggers.
Nothing at all like Simon or really even any man she was used to seeing in her
daily life back home.

A thick crop of silky, straight black hair glinted in the
sunlight and Leah’s breath caught in her throat as one of the tallest men she’d
ever seen sauntered up to David and the other clan leader, smacking a greeting
on the back of the latter.

With her eyes glued to his tough, lean form, she bit her
lower lip. If she hadn’t been alone in the room, she would have turned away
before anyone was the wiser. But she was safe to wallow in the delicious
sensations the man stirred deep within her belly since no one else was
watching.

He moved to stand beside the other clan laird and turned to
face David. He crossed his arms, his massive shoulders threatening to bust out
of the sleeves of his long white shirt open at the front in a “V” shape and
belted at his trim waist. Strength radiated from his devilishly handsome face
with his square jaw and rigid profile. The crinkles of amusement at the corners
of his lips as he spoke, however, softened his angular features.

Then he lifted his head and turned it toward her as though
he could sense her attention. She froze as their eyes clashed, her heart
threatening to stop dead in her chest. One corner of his mouth turned up in a
devastating grin and he winked.

She pushed herself away from the window and yanked the fur
closed. Her cheeks heated in mortification. She laid her palm on her chest in
an effort to calm her thundering heart as she leaned into the wall to catch her
breath.

She blew a heavy exhalation past her lips as her heartbeat
slowed.
Duh.
Just because she was alone in the room didn’t mean she was
hidden from view. Surely he couldn’t be the first guy to notice her stares over
the past couple of days.

Pulling the fur away from the window just a bit, she peered
through the slit as the man walked back across the courtyard. His thigh muscles
rippled beneath his tight brown breeches, every movement exuding pure, raw
power.

Her stomach flipped and she snapped the fur shut again. Her
nipples ached beneath the chemise and soft green overdress she wore and she
shifted in discomfort. She may have been covered from neck to foot, but she
hadn’t gone without panties and a bra in ages. Way too much sensation on such
sensitive areas of her body.

She must stop leering after all of these men surrounding
her. Between the testosterone saturating the air and clothing dragging back and
forth across her nipples, all it would take would be a few drinks and her
inhibitions would probably fly right out the window. And without access to
condoms, there was no way she should think about sex with anyone here. The last
thing she needed in the thirteenth century was a baby and no husband.

And the last thing she wanted after that was a husband. Not
now, anyway. And certainly not here.

The man’s flirtatious grin flashed through her mind and she
slumped against the wall. He had walked with such sinuous ease, power radiating
outward with every movement. The chiseled turn of his jaw and black-as-sin hair
only added strength to his self-assurance as he conversed with David and the
other clan laird.

She shook her head as though to dislodge the errant train of
thought. This was dangerous. It was much more important to find a way home than
to dwell upon her attraction to a man who probably never would look her way if
she hadn’t already been staring at him like an animal in heat.

It was time to explore the courtyard again. If David was
right, then her only way out of this century was the pendant the old lady had
given her. Playing medieval governess had been fun for a while, but time was
slipping away. Someone else could discover it before her. It might already be
too late.

Leah bounded across the room and peeked into the corridor.
It was empty and she dashed toward a staircase at the back of the castle. With
all of the new arrivals milling around in the front of the courtyard, the back
courtyard would be the best place for her to explore undisturbed.

She reached the bottom of the stairs and hauled open the
large wooden door. She should have arrived back home by now—four days ago, to
be exact. Her mother and sister must be worried sick about her.

The sun hit her full in the face and she cast her eyes to
the ground as she walked. The image of her worried mother pacing back and forth
in the kitchen of her tiny ranch house in suburban Minneapolis consumed Leah.
She chewed on her thumbnail. Could she leave some sort of clue here in the
thirteenth century that would be unearthed in her own time and the message then
delivered to her mother? Was such a thing even possible?

A loud shout from behind tugged her to a stop. She dropped
her hand from her face and a hard mass slammed into her. Large arms encircled
her, crushing her ribs, and she flew through the air before her hip smacked
into the ground. Pain radiated through her bones and the air was torn from her
lungs. Her vision turned hazy as she spun and landed facedown.

Angry, gasping, and confused, she struggled to push up. She
froze as she came face-to-face with the black-haired man she’d been lusting
after earlier in her chamber.

God help her, she was
on top
of him.

His mouth, simultaneously hard and soft, cracked into a
sensuous grin. He parted his lips, speaking to her in Gaelic, the throaty,
melodious tone of his voice mesmerizing her.

She opened her mouth, but a mere breathy whisper escaped.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

His dark brows drew together in confusion as his smile
faded. As fast as a wolf attacking his prey, he flipped her over onto her back.
Her head spun. She struggled, throwing legs and arms at him, but he straddled
her hips and captured her wrists, pinning them to the ground to either side of
her head. Brilliant green eyes bored into hers.

“You are English.” His tone was accusatory as he loomed
above her.

She couldn’t even guess the number of times over the past
two weeks she’d been accused of this because of her native language. “No, I’m
not.”

“Then what are you, if not English?”

She had yet to give a satisfactory answer to that question
to anyone here. David had long ago given up trying to understand. It was only a
few days ago David told her to say she was Gunn from up north who had spent
most of her childhood in England. He’d said most people wouldn’t question her
further since Thurso was so far away they wouldn’t know anyone there. He had
assured her it was for her own safety. Perhaps, but she still hated lying.

“I am a Gunn.” She took a deep breath, inhaling the man’s
masculine, woodsy scent. The rest of her explanation drifted away as her voice
faltered.

His eyes roved over her face, drawing an unwelcome flush of
heat up her neck to her cheeks. “You are the woman who rescued David’s son,
Alexander, from the loch, are you not?”

She swallowed the nervous lump in her throat as his eyes
roved over her features. His thick, roped thighs on either side of her hips
tensed and her stomach fluttered. She nodded, her throat drying.

“Well, my lady, it appears you needed a bit of rescuing
yourself today.” He gave her a crooked grin as he dragged one finger down her
upturned palm. “I am happy to be of service.”

The tiny, almost imperceptible movement sent an
all-too-pleasant swirl of heat through her skin. Her breathing shallowed,
drying her lips. She attempted to assuage the discomfort by moistening them
with her tongue. “What do you mean?”

His gaze dropped to her mouth and she pulled her tongue back
inside. He sucked in a breath, his nostrils flaring. His lips parted and every
muscle in her body softened as though surrendering to the growing heat between
her thighs.

And then he broke the spell. “You were nearly run though,
lass. Did you not see the swordplay all around you?”

Snapped out of her aroused daze, her eyes widened. “What?
No, I…”

She turned to the side. A pale-faced young man on his knees
stared at her with a sword lying on the ground before him.

The blood drained from her face. “Oh, I am so very sorry!”

The man on top of her leaned forward. “He does not speak
English.”

His breath fell across her cheek, the warmth easing into her
skin. She dared not turn toward him for fear of losing the small bit of control
she’d just regained. “Then how do I say it?”

“
Tha me duilich.
” The soft burr in his voice sent a
heated sensation through her belly to her toes.

Raising her voice, she repeated the phrase. The young man
nodded, his face relaxing, and spoke as he reached for the sword before him.

“He is asking you if you are all right.”

She paused, searching for one of the many fragments of
Gaelic phrases she had picked up over the past two weeks. “
Tha gu math.
”
Her tongue tripped over the unfamiliar words.

The man above her chuckled. “Close enough. Are you certain
you are not hurt?”

“Really, I am fine. Perhaps a bruise or two, but I will
recover.”

A faint hint of a smile played at his lips and he broke the
stare, his eyes dropping to her lips again.

“Perhaps you should be inspected, just to be sure.”

The thinly veiled suggestion wedged between them. She
cleared her throat in discomfort. Game over. The anxiety barreled down on her
like a freight train. Dani would’ve known exactly what to say to keep the verbal
sparring match alive, but Leah had no clue. She should’ve taken notes or
something, considering how often she’d seen her sister weave her spell over the
hottest guy in the room.