A Highlander’s Homecoming Read online

“Not you.” She shook her head, her hand fisted on the arm of the chair. “I didn’t go through all that agony to save your life just so you could abandon my sister. You need to take care of her.”

  “She already knows that I have every intention of doing exactly that,” his friend responded indignantly.

  This time Robert made no attempt to school his expression. If there was a single soul in the room who couldn’t see how Jesse felt about Destiny by now, they were too far beyond blind for help. They were lost in the land of stupid.

  Those two might need a lot of things going forward, but time apart wasn’t one of them. In fact, there was no one sitting in this room who could afford to take the risk of being left behind in time.

  Except him. Were he to go, there would be no one left behind to worry over his return. No loving wife. No passel of children clamoring for a spot in his lap each evening.

  He pushed the thought away. His was a good life, filled with trusted friends and blessed opportunity. That he seemed destined to live out this lifetime without finding his own Soulmate was out of his control. Had these people not become a part of his life, he would never even have known that he was supposed to have a Soulmate. He would have simply traveled his life’s journey alone, accepting what came to him.

  He wouldn’t waste his days filled with envy for what his friends had found. Perhaps in another lifetime he would cross paths with the one meant for him. For this life, he would simply have to content himself with filling that empty spot in his heart by being the friend, the uncle. He was a warrior. Certainly he could be strong enough to face life alone.

  Besides, this could well be his one and only opportunity to redeem himself. A last chance to keep his promise to a dying friend.

  As far as the risk was concerned? He scoffed at the idea. He lived on the thrills that came from risk. This situation was a gift, pure and simple.

  Taking a step forward, he broke the silence that had fallen in the room.

  “I’ll do it. I’m the one to go with the lass.”

  “Yer sure about this?” Connor questioned, his ice blue eyes intent as they turned in Robert’s direction.

  “Even knowing we can’t guarantee getting you back here?” Cate added, her pretty brow wrinkled with concern.

  Robert shrugged. His going only made sense. He’d sworn an oath. What happened to him was of little consequence as long as he was able to keep his word. “I’ve a small matter left undone by my abrupt departure. It would be good to get it off my conscience after all this time.”

  The one nagging failure of his life. Bad enough to have failed a friend. Inexcusable to have failed a helpless child. Though he would never have children of his own, there was one small girl waiting for him to rescue her, seven hundred years in his past. At long last he’d keep that vow.

  Across the room, Jesse chose this moment to announce his intention to marry the woman who gazed adoringly up into his eyes. Right there in front of all of them.

  About time the man publicly acknowledged what they all could see.

  Robert smiled and shook his head, turning from the celebration erupting around him and heading out toward the silence of the well-shaded grounds surrounding the renovated Scottish castle.

  Though he shared his friend’s joy, he needed to step away from it for a moment. Not that he envied his friend. Not that the couple’s happiness highlighted the empty place by his own side. The empty place in his heart. He was too strong for such womanly feelings as that. No, it was simply that he needed the quiet and solitude to think. He needed time alone. Time to carefully plan.

  There actually were any number of details to take care of before he left. Charlie, his bright-eyed Boston terrier came to mind. He knew Connor would see to picking the dog up from boarding and take it to his home where Charlie would be cared for and well loved. That was no worry. Though the idea he might never see his adoring pup again—that was a bit harder to stomach.

  There were other arrangements to make as well. Legal paperwork of some sort would be required. He should set up a power of attorney, turning all his property over to someone.

  Just in case.

  If all went well, he’d do what needed to be done and then the magic would bring him home. The problem with using Faerie Magic was that it didn’t always do the expected, and Robert knew going into this he could well be giving up the life he’d come to love.

  When a woman with Cate’s considerable Faerie Magic told you she might not be able to get you back home, you’d be well advised to take her seriously. If this was going to end up being a one-way trip, he’d best make sure someone here would have access to his belongings. None of his wonderful toys, not the vehicles or the machinery he’d collected—none of it would do him any good where he was going.

  When he was going, he corrected himself. The Highlands of Scotland in 1272. The exact same time he’d left behind all those years ago. As long as they’d determined to hide Leah in the past, he could think of no better time than the one he’d left. It would suit both their needs. He’d be able to fulfill his vow to Thomas, and there were many people in that time they could trust to keep Leah safe.

  The Nuadians had vowed to hunt her down, no matter where she went. No one in the room he’d just left doubted for a moment they would do exactly that. But as everyone sitting in that living room had reasoned, while the Nuadians might well track Leah down wherever she hid in this world, they’d have no chance at all of finding her in a completely different time.

  He would accompany Leah on her unimaginable journey to thirteenth-century Scotland. He’d see her safely settled.

  And then?

  Then he’d be free to fulfill the oath he’d made over seven hundred years ago. He’d find Thomas’s daughter, Isabella, and take her to his own family’s home, where she would be cared for properly.

  “Mr. MacQuarrie?”

  Robert looked over his shoulder to find Leah picking her way across the damp lawn toward him. Though the young woman herself was almost hidden in the baggy jeans and heavy sweater she wore, she couldn’t hide what she most wanted to remove from her identity. Whether it was the long golden hair tossed by the breeze or simply the way she carried herself, there was no denying her Faerie heritage.

  If he ever had been blessed with a daughter, he would have wished for one as brave as this girl.

  “Robert, lass. Call me Robert. Is there something you need of me?”

  She nodded, her eyes fixed on her feet even as the color rose in her cheeks.

  “Everyone back there’s pretty excited about planning a wedding. I didn’t want to interrupt them.” She lifted her gaze to meet his steadily. “But I have so many questions. Can you tell me where we’ll go? What it will be like?”

  “I can try,” he answered as he led the way to two garden benches separated by a small table.

  When he reached toward her, she flinched, a haunted expression fleeting across her face.

  How could he have been so thoughtless? Considering what the lass had been through, he shouldn’t be surprised she could bear no man’s touch. The filthy Nuadian bastards had kidnapped Leah and held her captive, poked her with needles as they drained her blood to increase their own powers, and all but raped her.

  Stepping back a respectful pace, he waited for her to choose one seat before he took the other.

  “You’ve no changed yer mind about going, have you?” Was that the root of her questions?

  Her eyes rounded and she shook her head vehemently, her fingers playing over the stone hanging from her neck. “Oh no, not at all. I want to go. We can’t leave soon enough as far as I’m concerned.” She shrugged and looked out over the expanse of garden. “I just . . . I just want to have some idea of what I’ll be facing when I get there. I mean, it’s not like we’re talking about a trip across the country. I remember from my literature class last year that the language used in medieval Britain was entirely different from what’s spoken today. How are we even going to communicate with people?�
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  Robert nodded thoughtfully. That one had concerned him, too, when he’d first come forward in time. “You’ll have no problem, lass. I canna explain how, but the Faerie Magic takes it all into account. What you’ll speak, what you’ll understand when you arrive in that time—it will all be the same to yer ears and to those around you. The only difference you’ll note is that some of yer words are unknown to them, so they’ll likely find yer speech patterns to be strange.”

  “What kinds of words?” Leah leaned toward him, her thirst for knowledge lighting a fire in her eyes.

  “Words for those things they’ve no understanding of. Cars, for example. Or airplanes. Do you get my meaning?”

  She nodded thoughtfully, wisps of gold hair falling over her shoulder. “So I don’t need to worry about learning a new language. Do you have any idea where we’ll go?”

  It was Robert’s turn to nod slowly. He’d been giving this some thought since the moment he’d volunteered to accompany Leah. “We’ll head for the MacQuarrie Keep. I’m thinking you’d be safe there, with my own family.”

  His parents would welcome her into their home even though he wouldn’t be able to stay there himself. Not under the same roof with that redheaded bitch his brother had married. MacQuarrie Keep stopped being his home the day Elizabeth moved in.

  When Leah’s brow furrowed, he held up a hand to forestall the questions he saw running through her mind. “It’s where I came from, lass. When I came from, to be more accurate. Just over nine years ago, Jesse’s sister, Cate, used her powers to bring me forward in time to save my life. It’s too long a story for now, but I’m sure you’ll hear the whole of it as we prepare for our journey.”

  Too long and too painful for him to recount to the lass. Likely the women of the house would fill her in later.

  Leah chewed on her bottom lip for a moment before making eye contact again. “Is that why you said you’d go back with me? Because you feel like you have a debt to them? I’d hate to think you’re disrupting your whole life because you feel like you have to.”

  He shook his head. It was a debt that was driving him, all right, but not the one the girl feared.

  “Dinna you fret yerself over this, lass. Accompanying you is but a piece of my reason for returning. I’ve my own purposes to be met in going back.”

  Purposes long past due.

  Chapter 2

  “You should feel no more than a sensation of movement against your skin.” Dallyn AÍ Lyre, High General of the Realm of Faerie, fastened a strange metal band around Robert’s arm before backing away to resume his position in the circle of men surrounding Robert.

  Robert looked around the glen to the faces of the men he knew so well, words failing him at this moment of honor.

  And honor it truly was.

  Not an hour ago, Jesse had insisted Robert leave the preparations for his trip and join him on a small adventure. The adventure had begun at an ancient circle of standing stones on the property Jesse had recently purchased.

  To Robert’s amazement, as Jesse ran his hand over one of the stones, its face changed and they seemed to be looking through an open door into another world. A world Robert had never expected to see with his own two eyes.

  Wyddecol. The Realm of Faerie.

  When they had crossed through the portal, Robert’s second surprise was the five men who were waiting to greet them. Dallyn, Pol, Ramos, Connor, and even Ian McCullough, all those men closest to him who had ties to the world of Fae.

  “You have honored us with your friendship and your unquestioning service to our people.” Pol had stepped forward as the others formed a large circle around Robert. “Now you willingly take on the duties of a Guardian of the Realm in accompanying one of our daughters on a perilous journey. As such, we wish to recognize your service and name you as one of the Guardians.”

  Robert had never considered this could happen to him. Guardian was an elite title held only by Fae descendants.

  “I . . . I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say you’ll accept,” Jesse said, a grin covering his face. “And strip out of that shirt.”

  All of that had led up to this moment, the moment when Dallyn placed the large bracelet-like band around Robert’s bicep before rejoining the others in the circle. Each of the men in the circle bowed his head and a hush fell over the group as Pol spoke once again.

  “You undertake this sacred pledge of your own free will?”

  “I do.” Robert nodded, still in awe of the honor his friends offered.

  “So be it. Know, then, that Guardians serve as instruments of the Magic, to repair that which was torn asunder. Grant that the power to reunite the broken Soul Pairings might reside in us that we might bring harmony and peace to the divided worlds. Until that day, we protect those unable to protect themselves, bending only to the will of the Magic.”

  Pol’s words echoed eerily through the glen, and as the last sound died away, a strange humming noise filled the silence, resonating around Robert like voices heard from very far away.

  As the tenor of the sound increased, he felt the first sensations against his skin, underneath the band Dallyn had placed there. Small, wispy movements, like grass blowing in the wind, tickled his arm. The feeling grew, building to a crescendo in time to the vibration of the voices until the pitch became almost too high to hear.

  It was then the power of the Faerie Magic flooded Robert’s body, passing through him in a burst of energy, leaving him weak in the knees and gasping for breath.

  The men around him broke into cheers, clapping their hands and slapping him on the back. Dallyn removed the large metal band and Robert felt the shock of recognition at what he saw on his skin where the bracelet had been. A tattoolike mark, exactly like the one adorning the arms of each man in the circle.

  The Mark of the Guardian.

  Pol stepped forward once again and they all fell silent.

  “All of Wyddecol will recognize you by your Mark as one of our own. Welcome to the brotherhood, Guardian.”

  Chapter 3

  “There’s one more thing I want you to keep in mind, Robbie.” Cate MacKiernan lifted her hand to his stirrup, casting a quick look to the woman at her side, Mairi MacKiernan Navarro. Cate spoke quietly, her words clearly intended only for the three of them.

  Moments from now, these two women, Faerie descendants both, would be the ones to send him and Leah hurtling through time.

  They’d come to this relatively secluded clearing not far from the ruins of where his family keep had stood in the thirteenth century. He and Leah, dressed in authentic garb for where they were bound, sat on horseback, waiting for the moment they would travel into the multicolored lights of the Faerie Magic.

  Robert cocked an eyebrow and leaned down toward the two women, waiting for whatever they wanted to tell him. He knew there was no rushing them. Cate would finish in her own good time. From the looks she and Mairi exchanged, this clearly concerned something the two of them had already discussed.

  “You do understand that there are no guarantees for how the Faerie Magic works, right?” Cate glanced to Mairi once more.

  “And you realize we’ve little control over the process if the Magic itself takes over,” Mairi added as her fingers worried at her long blond braid. “It’s no at all a scientific process.”

  Robert nodded, watching both of them closely. He knew them too well. There was more. He could feel it in his bones. “I never thought it was. And?”

  Cate needlessly cleared her throat. “You’re going back to a time when you’re not supposed to exist. If the Magic seeks to equalize what should be with what is, you could be in real trouble. There’s a chance that because of your unique situation you could be in even more danger than anyone else who might go back.”

  “Mairi survived the same herself, did she no?” This woman standing in front of him had returned to a time where she wasn’t supposed to exist, either, and she’d come back from it unharmed.

  Cate gla
nced to Mairi, who avoided his gaze, instead looking down at the braid she held in her hand. Nerves? That wasn’t a sign he liked to see from women as powerful as these two.

  “It’s not quite the same, Robbie.” Cate shook her head and took a deep breath before continuing. “When we pulled Mairi from the past, we did so under the assumption that she would be killed. Nothing had actually happened to her yet. You had already received a mortal wound. There was no doubt as to what your fate would have been if we’d left you behind. It was only by bringing you to our time, by getting you immediate medical attention that didn’t even exist in your time, that your life was saved.”

  Mairi stopped twisting the end of her braid long enough to add, “We just can’t be sure what will happen. You know how Pol always says we can’t change history, only alter the circumstances? Well, yer being alive in that time is no what history had in store for you. If you want, Robbie, there’s still time to change your mind about going. One of the others can take Leah back.”

  Robert snorted his derision, smiling down at the women in an attempt to reassure them. “If that’s the problem, then we’re simply looking at it all wrong. Instead let’s choose to think of my being there as a small alteration of history’s course, no an attempt to change it. How’s that work for you? There’ll be no changes in our plans at this late date. My decision’s firm. I’m the one who’s going, so let’s get on with it.”

  Robert gritted his teeth against his irritation. Wasn’t that just a lovely bit of news they’d saved up for him? Not only was he staring down the possibility of never being able to return to the time he’d come to love and think of as his own, but now he’d also need to keep an eye out for the Magic trying to eliminate him entirely from the spot where he was headed. So bloody typical of the damned Fae. Their magic was as fickle as a redheaded woman.

  No matter. He didn’t need a lot of time. Just enough to settle Leah and to keep his promise to Thomas. Surely he could manage to stay alive long enough to accomplish two simple tasks.