Reunited (Book 2 of Lost Highlander series) (23 page)

“I dinna love ye,” Bella repeated succinctly, aiming each word like a poison tipped arrow at Pietro.

He stood up, clutching his bruised ribs. “Aye, ye do.” When she shook her head, he merely held up his hand. “Or at least ye want me. Ye can’t pretend ye don’t.”

“I dinna want ye, either,” she said.

“Yes, ye do,” he said, advancing toward her.

He took her face in his hands and for a moment she closed her eyes and leaned into him. Then she ducked out of his grasp and shoved him. Standing his ground, he shook his head at her.

“I know ye didn’t fake any of it. Shall I tell them how many times ye moaned with pleasure?” His voice reached an angry decibel.

“All right, let’s be a gentleman,” Piper said, taking pity on her bratty little ancestor, whose face turned bright red at Pietro’s allegation.

“I’ll be a gentleman when she starts acting like a lady,” he hollered. He narrowed his eyes at Bella, then turned to Lachlan. “I’ll stay,” he said. “We can ride out for your land tomorrow.”

Piper put her arm around Bella’s shoulder, once again feeling sorry for her. Piper had lived a life of choices, she could come and go as she pleased. Bella burst into theatrical sobs and Piper sighed.

She made a mental note to have Sam help her research her American genealogy. Hopefully she’d find some sanity on that side.

“Perhaps it has already been done,” Lachlan said, flushing with embarrassment and discomfited by the tears. Piper wanted to shake both of them. “Perhaps, ah, she needn’t marry ye and ye may return to yer own time.”

“If ye think that then you’re a bigger fool than ye look,” Pietro said. “What if she’s meant to have more than one child? What if Piper’s ancestor is the second or third? Will ye risk it?”

Piper smiled, remembering that he was related to her. Or she was related to him. He was sane, and kind, and had love in his heart. Without thinking, she stepped over to him and hugged him.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He patted her back and then moved to Bella’s side. “Ye can dry up yer crocodile tears now, lass,” he said, his harsh tone belied by the gentle hand he placed on her back. “‘Tis fate, nothing less, that has brought us together, and nothing less shall part us.”

Piper sighed at the beautiful sentiment, surprised the rugged horse master had such poetry in him. She leaned into Lachlan, who put his arm around her and rested his chin on the top of her head.

Bella made a noise to rival a banshee and soundly kicked Pietro in the shin.

Lachlan nudged her awake as they passed the forbidding stone wall that surrounded the castle in this time, since she’d fallen asleep nestled against his strong chest on the ride up the hill. She scrambled to turn around and get a glimpse of Brian Duncan’s head crammed onto one of the sharp spikes that stuck up at regular intervals.

She was instantly sorry that she had. The man who had tried to kill her in her own kitchen and had haunted many of her nightmares since that terrible night, was now little more than a dessicated skull gazing blankly at her from its empty eye sockets.

She shuddered and buried her face in Lachlan’s kilt, trying to erase the grisly scene from her mind. Even with all the evil he had wrought on this time and her own, she felt no satisfaction in what she had seen.

“Ah, lass, ye shouldna have looked,” Lachlan said, rubbing her back consolingly. “I only wanted ye to see yer castle as I know it.”

She nodded and turned to take it in. Even though it was much smaller without the nineteenth century brick addition, it looked infinitely more menacing. She had worked to make it look as welcoming as possible, more like a manor house, with a wide paved drive and ornamental landscaping. Of course, she actually wanted to attract people to visit it.

In this time, it was a castle. Heavily fortified to keep unwanted people out and protect the farmland all around it.

“I’m surprised it doesn’t have a moat,” she said, craning her neck to see everything.

“It did some years ago, but there was a pestilence upon which it was deemed to be the cause. They filled it in after several people died.”

“Ugh,” Piper said. She’d only been joking about the moat. “I’ll be so glad to get off this horse.”

“Verra soon, my love,” Lachlan said. “Ye’ve had a rough night of it. Hopefully I shall be able to get ye a comfortable bed soon.”

She’d spent the night cowering in a small ball on one side of the crofter’s bed, trying to avoid being pinched or elbowed by Bella. Lachlan and Pietro had slept on the floor, but they both seemed wide awake the entire journey, exchanging stories and information.

During the long ride, before Piper had given up riding her own horse to sit in front of Lachlan, Bella had given her dirty, appraising looks.

“Ye are both from the future, then?” she asked. “Am I supposed to believe in yer wicked tales? That ye’re my how many times removed granddaughter?”

“Can ye not see how much she looks like ye?” Pietro asked.

Bella shrugged, but continued to inspect her. Piper tried to smile, both wanting the ghastly girl’s approval while simultaneously wanting to shove her off her horse.

“All the Glens have the same look about them.” She tossed her long russet hair behind her shoulder and was sullen and quiet for the rest of the journey.

Piper made an effort to explain what had happened to Pietro as best she could, but she still didn’t understand why he had been returned.

If Lachlan’s way of doing the spell didn’t cause a blast radius and whisk people to the past, and he had disappeared before she did her spell, then there really wasn’t any logical explanation for his being there in the eighteenth century.

“Not that any of it’s logical,” she said.

Pietro had just gazed at the back of Bella’s head and smiled like a dope. “It’s magic, right? I mean, yeah, it makes ye feel a bit daft to admit, but we’re both here. Me with a sword slash and ye with the saddle sores to prove it.”

“Yes, gramps, it’s magic.”

He reached over and gave her a friendly poke in the arm. “God, if that’s not weird, though.”

And the whole rest of the ride, she’d caught him looking at her with a combination of wonder and horror. Bizarrely enough, she kept thinking back to all the times she might have dropped a swear word around him.

Quinn greeted them at the stable and helped her down from the horse, giving her a quick wink, before he went to help Bella. He gave Bella a deep mocking bow.

“Greetings, sister,” he said as he straightened up.

“I shall break yer teeth if ye do not shut yer mouth,” Lachlan said as he dismounted, barely giving his brother a glance.

“Stay with Pietro while I settle things with Bella’s father,” he said to Piper in a low voice, taking Bella firmly by the arm and leading her away.

Piper and Quinn looked at each other, and Piper saw a glimmer of hurt in his eyes as he watched Lachlan stomping off.

His face soon rearranged itself into the look of pity she’d seen before, but now she knew it was because Quinn thought she was Lachlan’s long suffering mistress, who’d just had to ride half the day beside his rightful wife.

She almost had to put her head between her knees again at the thought of it. Instead, she tried to keep her chin up and smiled at him bravely, even as her face was suffused with heat.

She longed to chase after Lachlan into the castle and run through every room and touch everything and meet everyone, but she was nothing to them. She as much as didn’t exist in this time and she’d have to keep a low profile so she wouldn’t accidentally stop existing in her own.

The way Bella was acting, things were already precarious enough. If they weren’t extremely careful everyone who was directly related to her from Bella, all the way down to her mother in Texas, could be in danger. To avoid obsessing over that unsavory line of thinking, she took in the differences of the castle and its grounds, no longer hers, and tried to seal it all in her mind.

She squeezed Quinn’s arm, causing him to look fairly alarmed, before hobbling after Pietro into the barn. The long ride the day before, sleeping a scant few hours on a lumpy pallet while getting pummeled by Bella, then having to get back on the horse again this morning and she was a cooked noodle.

Her legs felt like they’d been popped out of their sockets and put back on in the wrong position, her back was screaming, and she was quite sure her behind was never going to stop feeling numb. A year of yoga and hot baths wouldn’t fix this.

Pietro strode over to her as she leaned wearily against a stall door. He looked like he was made for this time, crusted with dirt and a rugged hint of manly stubble on his bruised jaw. Only the faintest glimmer of worry passed over his features and it was directed at her.

“Are ye all right?” he asked, squeezing her shoulders and digging his thumbs into the balled up muscles of her upper back. She wanted to slump with relief, but nothing was working right, so she just stood there rigidly, hoping he wouldn’t stop. “I know ye aren’t used to that amount of riding.”

“I don’t think I like horses anymore,” she joked, giving him a weak smile.

He laughed and gave her one final squeeze, and helped her to sit on the edge of a bench. When she considered what he might have been through the last few days, and the fact that he and Lachlan had both slept on a hard packed dirt floor the night before, she felt guilty for being such a baby.

“What about you?” she asked, reaching up to look at the wound on his arm.

When he had quietly told the story of being chased by the guard and almost being mowed down by a sword, she’d felt sick.

He shrugged off her concern and grinned. “I swear but I feel fine, bruises notwithstanding. At first I thought I was in some sort of hallucination, but I just kept going. And now I know I was meant to be here, it all makes crazy sense.”

She grabbed his hand and frowned at him. “You know that you can still get hurt though, right?” she asked. “Fate and all that hogwash aside, you’re not invincible just because you’re meant to be here and lived through a sword fight and a beating.”

She watched him mull that over and finally nod. “Aye, I see what ye’re saying. I’ll be careful.”

“Good. And not just because everyone I’m related to from this side is counting on you.”

His face lost a few degrees of color at that.

Lachlan burst into the barn and his presence was like an aspirin to her aching soul. She hadn’t even realized how tense she was while he was gone until her seizing muscles relaxed a bit when he charged through the stable doors and filled up the place.

She tried to get up so she could rush to his side and throw her arms around him, but it was lucky her spaghetti legs wouldn’t cooperate. She had to remember Lachlan was married to someone else, and they were surrounded by workers. She recalled Evie’s number one piece of advice about the eighteenth century. Don’t get burned at the stake.

Lachlan dragged a pouting and tear stained Bella behind him, and he looked grim.

“We must leave at once. We willna stay for the celebration.” He glared at Bella, looked stormily apologetic at Piper, and called impatiently for his brother.

Piper managed to hoist herself to standing and went to Bella and patted her arm.

“He willna even let me get my belongings,” she cried, looking dangerous.

Piper led her out of hitting or kicking range of anyone, and looked questioningly at Lachlan.

He threw up his hands and glared some more. “Because of this lass, we are most likely to end in a war between the clans. She has run once, shall I give her the chance to try it again? She stays in one of our sights at all times.”

“But Lachlan,” Piper started, thinking about the things that might be important to the poor girl.

Clothes could be replaced, but life was so much more than clothes. She’d want her special keepsakes.

“Her maid is packing her things,” Lachlan roared, then raked his hands through his hair.

He walked over to Piper and looked down at her. His expression softened, but his eyes were still stormy.

“I wouldna have ye think me cruel as well, Piper,” he pleaded. “But her father is a hairsbreadth from havin’ my head out on the wall along with Brian’s.” He turned to Bella and his face became a mask of anger. “Because of this one’s constant stream of lies, relations between our clans may never be repaired.”

“Is it no’ the truth that ye were fornicating with this …“ Bella said in a carrying voice and waved her hand disdainfully at Piper.

Piper gaped as all the stable lads stopped what they were doing to have a look.

Lachlan sagged with relief when he saw Quinn. “Take them,” he bellowed. “Now.”

Quinn took each of them by the arm and hustled them out the back of the stable, motioning for a lad to bring horses. The prospect of having to get back in the saddle so soon made her angrier at Bella than her childish insults did.

“You’re a dreadful little brat, young lady,” she said, shaking her thin shoulders. “You’re one to throw around accusations of fornication.”

“Ye should respect yer elders,” Bella said to her, nose in the air.