Time Travel Romances Boxed Set (82 page)

The color drained from his face, and Morgan
knew that this was precisely where his home had stood.

“
Gone,” he murmured when
Morgan reached his side, as though he couldn’t comprehend the fact.
Then Alasdair turned his tormented gaze upon her, and his usual
bold tone faltered.

“
Morgaine, I have lost my
son.”

And the tears Morgan had glimpsed earlier
spilled down his cheeks. He sank to the ground and stared across
the valley, oblivious to his own tears, consumed by the magnitude
of his loss.

Morgan didn’t know what to do. Alasdair’s
grief was tangible, and nothing she could say would ease the sting
of the truth.

She couldn’t do a single thing to fix
this.

Or could she?

“
I left him when I should
never have done so,” Alasdair admitted, the words obviously not
coming easily to his lips. “In my zeal to protect our honor, in my
quest to set to rest the lies told of me, I failed my only
son.”

He looked at Morgan and her chest tightened
at his despair. “I lost him as surely as if I had denied that he
was blood of my blood.”

Morgan wasn’t ready to let Alasdair be so
hard on himself. It couldn’t have been easy for him to see his lost
love every time he looked at his child, and she couldn’t really
blame him for leaving. Morgan hunkered down beside him and touched
his arm.

“
You did what you thought
was right,” she said gently, but when Alasdair turned to her, his
eyes were blazing.

“
Right? To leave my son
alone for seven years was
right
? To leave my gran to raise
another bairn at her age was
right
? To take the dare of a
wee witch was
right
?”

He shook his head savagely and bounded to
his feet, gesturing wildly in the air. His voice rose to such a
volume that the sheep skittered away.

“
Nay! I acted on impulse
and impulse alone, even knowing that impulse is a poor
master!

His temper spent, Alasdair hung his head and
his words rumbled low. “I believed Angus in good care and thought
no more upon it. Now, both he and I must pay the price of my
folly.”

Alasdair dropped his hands to rest on his
hips, and his eyes narrowed as he eyed the valley. “Indeed, if you
speak aright, Angus has already paid whatever price was due from
him.” His anger faded, leaving him looking more defeated than
Morgan had ever seen him.

“
My son,” he said softly,
“has long been dead. He must have passed from this world believing
that I cared naught for him. And that is the worst travesty of
all.”

Alasdair’s eyes clouded once more, and he
turned his back on Morgan. When he spoke, his words were strained.
“’Twas some legacy I saw fit to leave him.

And Alasdair MacAulay pressed his fingertips
to his brow.

“
Now, wait just a moment.”
Morgan strode to his side. Alasdair didn’t move or otherwise
acknowledge her presence. “You couldn’t have known that whatever
you did would send you forward in time. I mean, how many people zip
across seven centuries? It doesn’t happen every day!”

To Morgan’s relief, Alasdair sent a curious
glance her way before continuing his stoic scrutiny of his toes. “I
do not even know what fate befell him,” he mumbled. “How many years
did he live? Did he wed? Did he have sons of his own?” He
swallowed. “Did he ever forgive me for what I had done?”

Morgan touched Alasdair’s arm. “I don’t
think you did anything so bad as that. Maybe we could find out what
happened to Angus.”

Now she had his attention. “You can do
this?”

Morgan flushed at the admiration in his
gaze. “Well, there have to be record books. It will probably take
some digging to go back that far…”

“
I cannot read,” Alasdair
reminded her in a low voice.

“
I know.” Morgan tugged on
his arm until he looked at her once more. “But I can. We can do
this together.”

Alasdair studied her for a long moment, then
shook his head in disbelief. His tone was gentle. “Why do you aid
me? You have brought me home and shown me with my own eyes that
your tale is of the truth. Why aid me further?”

Morgan’s heart stopped cold, then raced. She
stared back at Alasdair, then swallowed. “I guess because I can
understand how you feel,” she said, then turned away before he
could see the truth in her eyes.

Because Morgan had just lied to him.

Maybe she could understand what he felt.
Maybe she felt sorry for him in this predicament. But the real
reason she wanted to help him was much simpler.

Morgan was in love with Alasdair.

She wanted to see him happy more than
anything else in the world. Unfortunately, the only way to do that
was to send Alasdair home to his son, his gran, his home.

And the vivid memory of his dead wife, who
still held his heart in thrall. That was a particularly bitter pill
but Morgan swallowed it deliberately. Then she linked her arm
through Alasdair’s.

“
Come on,” she urged. “We
can stay at this little place. It’s nice and close to your home.
Let’s go and meet Blake and Justine, then come back here. Then we
can start looking for those records.” She squeezed Alasdair’s hand.
“That way you’ll know what happened to Angus.”

Alasdair heaved a ragged sigh. “’Twould ease
my mind to know that he lived long, even in my absence.”

And Morgan hoped heartily that was the
case.

*

Finding these records Morgaine claimed were
available was not so easy as Alasdair had understood. ’Twas
frustrating to be able to do so little himself, for not only could
Alasdair not read, he could not fathom the workings of the world
Morgaine occupied with such ease.

They spent the rest of the day crossing the
island, fruitlessly to Alasdair’s mind, rushing from here to there
with naught to show for it. Blake complained heartily about people
not having phones – whatever that meant – but he went as Morgaine
bade him.

They returned to the inn when the sky was
dark, their bellies full of sausage that Justine proclaimed too
greasy but Alasdair found comforting in its familiarity. Though he
was bone-tired, there was not a chance that he would sleep anytime
soon.

Alasdair sat on the broad steps before the
inn’s door, propped his elbows on his knees, and stared into the
darkening sky. The view was so familiar to him – with the road and
the parked cars behind him, the valley was spread at his toes as
always it had been. Indeed, if he ignored the porch, Alasdair would
never have imagined that he was anywhere but home.

’
Twas impossible to believe
that everything he knew, everything he loved, had been swept away
from him for all eternity, and that in the blink of an eye. If the
evidence had not been surrounding him on all sides, Alasdair knew
he would not have believed it.

But he had no choice. His home was gone as
surely as if it had never been. He watched the silvery crescent of
the moon launch across the sky, ached with the familiarity of the
moonbeams dancing on the sea, and wished fervently to find these
records.

Alasdair only wanted to know the truth.

’
Twas then that he became
aware that he was not alone.

He glanced back and Morgaine smiled
tentatively from the shadows by the door. She was a marvel, even
more so now that he knew she was as mortal as he. The compassion
that so awed Alasdair shone in her eyes, and he knew that she
understood how deeply this day’s events had pained him.

And she respected his disappointment enough
that she did not force him to talk about it.

Morgaine sat down beside him when Alasdair
moved aside in silent invitation. She mimicked his pose and heaved
a sigh that was doubtless for his benefit alone.

“
I can’t sleep,” she
complained. “Could you tell me a story?”

“
We should make an
exchange, my lady.”

Morgaine looked up with curiosity.

“
I shall tell you all the
tales you desire to hear, if you grant me the chance to look upon
your drawings again.”

She flushed in that enticing way. “They’re
not done. I don’t usually show them to anyone before they’re
finished.”

“
Ah, but I have had one
glance and ’twas my undoing,” Alasdair confided. When he looked
into her eyes, he knew ’twas not the drawings that had captured his
heart.

’
Twas the lady
herself.

Alasdair cleared his throat and tried to
tease her. “There is wizardry in your fingers. I know it to be
true.”

To his delight, Morgaine smiled. “I told
you, I’m just an artist.”

“
And I tell you, I must
look upon your work again to satisfy myself that no witchery
conjured them before my very eyes.” She bit her lip in hesitation,
and Alasdair leaned closer, his voice turning sober. “My lady, I
would have the chance to gaze upon them with leisure. If the
thought offends you, I apologize for being so bold.”

Morgaine stared at him for a long moment,
then shook her head, that beguiling flush tinting her cheeks again.
“No,” she said huskily. “I’m flattered that you like them.” Her
gaze flicked away, then back to Alasdair. She offered her small
hand with a shy smile. “A story for a look doesn’t seem like a very
fair deal.”

Alasdair captured the delicacy of her
fingers within his hand and smiled down at her. “My lady, ’tis
clearly to your disadvantage, but you have already accepted the
terms.”

Morgaine laughed and did not pull her hand
away. Alasdair looked down at their entwined fingers. Their hands
were so different, yet they fit together as if halves of a single
mold.

Was there more than a witch’s whimsy behind
Alasdair’s journey to this woman’s side?

He could not think upon it, not with her
perfume flooding his senses and her shoulder lightly touching his
arm. So, Alasdair turned to the stars, the lady’s fingers secure
within his grip, and began to tell her a tale.

*

The local population was small, so the less
critical ‘official’ capacities of local government jobbed out to
private citizens all over the island. It was much harder than
Morgan had expected to find the information they sought. With every
day that passed, Alasdair seemed a little less of himself. He
clearly believed that he had failed his son and not knowing what
had happened to Angus was eating away at him.

But Morgan had to respect him for keeping
his word to her. Alasdair declined every well-intentioned offer of
a drink, giving her a significant glance when he intoned that he
had made a pledge. They shared a room at the bed-and-breakfast but
the situation was far from intimate. Alasdair seemed to be lost in
contemplation of what he had lost, though whenever Morgan spoke to
him, he roused himself to respond.

And when he looked at the drawings his
stories had inspired, he smiled with a wistfulness that tore at
Morgan’s heart.

The sight of him so saddened by his loss
redoubled Morgan’s determination to see him home and happy. And so,
Morgan latched on to the record quest like a dog on a bone.

It took a week to determine that the old
archival records were packed into the spare bedroom of one Frances
Fergusson. Frances was among those without telephone service and
the third time that they visited to find her not at home, Morgan
had had enough.

“
We’ll just wait,” she
informed Blake.

He looked dubious. “You don’t even know if
she’s around.”

“
Of course we do,” Justine
interjected crisply. “The curtains have moved since
yesterday.”

“
And the cats are in
instead of out,” Morgan added. A pair of ginger cats eyed them from
one window, then set to cleaning themselves as though people waited
on the porch all the time.

Alasdair sat down on the bottom step with a
thump
, the sunlight burnishing his hair like spun gold.
“Aye, Morgaine speaks aright. We shall wait.”

Blake hesitated. “How are you going to let
us know when you want to come home? She hasn’t got a phone.”

Justine slid her arm through his. “We’ll
come back at dinnertime,” she said with a smile. “Now, let’s do
some exploring of our own.” Her glance was smoldering and on any
other day, Morgan would have smiled at the way Blake jumped to head
back to the car.

She slanted a longing glance at Alasdair and
admitted that she had a rare talent for falling in love with Mr.
Wrong.

At least Alasdair
could
have been Mr.
Right - as opposed to Matt - if he hadn’t been seven hundred years
older than Morgan and desperately in love with a dead woman. Morgan
sat down beside him dejectedly and couldn’t think of a thing to
say. She didn’t even have the heart to ask Alasdair for a
story.

Fortunately they didn’t have to wait
long.

A woman came sailing over the fields where
peat had been cut away in squares. She carried what looked like
boards under one arm and a toolbox in the other. A floral skirt
swirled above her green wellington boots, a waxed canvas hat was
jammed down on her head. She moved with surprising speed and
agility, a bouquet of purple foxgloves bobbing in her grip.

Morgan noticed that the cats stood up, their
gazes fixed on the woman marching closer, and flicked their tails.
This must be Frances Fergusson.

When she came closer, it was clear that the
boards were really canvasses. Frances was a painter. When Frances
smiled, waved and tripped over the end of her driveway, Morgan felt
as though she’d found a kindred spirit.

“
Well, hello!” she called
from the end of the path. “You must be those people looking for the
records. My neighbors said you’d been here.”