A Highlander’s Homecoming Read online

  “Okay, then,” Cate said loudly as she and Mairi backed away from the horses and toward the trees where Cate’s young daughter, Rosie, waited. “You have Leah’s envelope with directions to Dun Ard, right?”

  “I don’t need it,” Leah interrupted. “I told you not to bother. I don’t want anything to do with any Faeries. Not ever again.”

  Cate’s eyebrow rose in a perfect imitation of her husband. “Right. But you do have it, don’t you, Robbie? Just in case?”

  He nodded his reassurance to the woman. Leah might not ever have any need of contacting the MacKiernans, but just in case she did, he planned to leave the envelope, wrapped in its linen disguise, in his mother’s care for the lass.

  “I guess that covers about everything.” Cate ran a hand over the back of her neck, as if stretching out her muscles before exercising. “Both of you need to keep in mind that the most powerful moments for the Magic are when you first feel it beginning to work. Concentrate on when and where you want to go. Clear your minds of everything else but what you want most.”

  “Because it’s what you want most that the Magic will act on,” Mairi added.

  Or, more likely, what the Faerie Magic itself wanted most.

  Robert pushed away the negative thoughts, concentrating on his family estate as it had been in 1272, not the ruin of tumbled stones it was now.

  A gentle breeze wafted through the glen, carrying it with it the sounds of birds in the trees above them. No other sound disturbed the silence as they waited.

  And waited.

  “Shouldn’t something be happening?” Leah hissed his direction, her eyes round with apprehension.

  Robert shrugged, wondering the same himself. Unable to answer her excellent question, he turned to the experts.

  “Ladies?”

  “I know, I know. It’s just that nothing’s coming.” Cate grabbed up Mairi’s hand and they both closed their eyes. “I don’t understand,” she said after a moment. “I’m not feeling anything.”

  “Let me help, Mommy!” Rosie jumped to her feet and ran to join her mother and Mairi. With one last wave in Robert’s direction, the little girl lifted her arms to join hands with her mother and aunt, becoming a part of their circle. “Be safe, Uncle Robbie. See you soon!” she called, a wide grin breaking over her face.

  Returning Rosie’s infectious smile, he only hoped the child was right. For an instant, their gazes locked.

  As sometimes happened when his eyes met those of the child, his thoughts skipped away to another young lass. Isabella MacGahan. She would be only a year or two younger than Rosie. He’d never seen Thomas’s daughter, but he had always pictured her in his imagination to be very much like Rosie: a small, blonde bundle of smiles and giggles with gangly arms and a wild imagination.

  He had long ago lost any hope that he would have children of his own. No matter how much he might want it, finding his Soulmate was surely not his destiny in this lifetime. And even though his deepest desire would not be fulfilled, his life was still good. He had been given a second chance, one that included true friends who had accepted him as one of their family. A family he would do anything for. A family he wouldn’t hesitate to give his life for.

  At this very moment, sitting here in this peaceful clearing, all he truly wanted in life was to deliver Leah to the safety of his family and to see to it that Isabella MacGahan got the life she deserved.

  Was that so much to ask?

  A strange tingle webbed its way around the lines of the mark on Robert’s arm and he realized with a start the Magic had already begun to work while he was lost in his thoughts. Both he and Leah were already encased in a large sphere of wavering emerald with a growing multitude of brilliantly colored sparkles shooting around them like crazed comets in an eerily green night sky.

  Leah reached out to him. Without thought, he grasped her hand, just as the myriad colors gyrating around them hit the peak of their frenzy and merged, turning their world to black and hitting them with a force that felt like it sucked them into a dark, invisible vortex.

  Chapter 4

  As quickly as the black had descended, it disappeared, evaporating around them into a fine green mist.

  Robert shook his head, trying to rid himself of the sense-mangling aftereffects of the time travel. The last time he’d done this, he’d passed out before arriving in the future and slept for days after, so he’d completely missed the entire experience.

  And what an experience! It had felt like a thrill ride, similar to nothing he’d ever gone through save for possibly the rush of parachuting out of an airplane.

  The mark on his arm felt almost alive, crawling with invisible movement so that he finally gave in to the urge to scratch it.

  Beside him, Leah’s whimper drew him from the dregs of his adrenaline high. When she tugged at the hand he still held, he let go immediately.

  “Are you no well, lass?” He realized it was a stupid question the minute the words passed his lips.

  She sat her mount, her arms clasped around her middle as she bent forward, her eyes closed. After a deep breath she looked up, her face pale.

  “I’m dying here,” she groaned. “Why didn’t somebody warn me there was actual movement? I feel like my stomach is getting ready to spew out my ears.”

  Robert grinned sympathetically. The poor lass had the motion sickness just as her older sister did. “It’ll pass soon. Do you feel up to going on or do you want to wait a bit?”

  “Go,” she muttered, gripping her reins so tightly the gentle horse carrying her whinnied in protest.

  “Give Nelly her head, then, lass. Dinna hold her so firmly. She’ll take good care of you.” It was why he’d chosen this particular animal for Leah. She didn’t need any riding skill at all with this old girl. The horse would do her well for years to come.

  Leah nodded, and after a deep breath as if to steady herself, she gave the reins some slack and they headed out.

  Robert took a deep breath of his own, his nervous excitement building at seeing his family again.

  There had been a great discussion about taking Leah to Connor’s family farther north, but the moment she realized the MacKiernans and MacAlisters were Faerie descendants, she put her foot down. The poor lass had suffered enough at the hands of the Nuadian Fae to sour her on the entire Faerie race. She’d pleaded to be sent someplace where there were no Faeries at all, good or bad, as if in avoiding them she could deny her own heritage. Nothing but pure Mortals would do for her, so here they were, in another time, on their way to MacQuarrie Keep.

  Leah’s stubborn resistance had worked itself right into his original idea of when and where they should go, making his plan to return to his own time, to his family’s keep the best solution.

  Once they’d decided on their destination, they’d picked their starting spot well. Within minutes he and Leah emerged from the trees and onto the hard-packed path that led to his family home. A few minutes more and the castle itself loomed ahead.

  Funny how the memory played tricks on you. Robert would have sworn it an impossible task for the trees to have been cut back so far from the castle walls since he’d been here last. Though he had lived almost ten years since he’d laid eyes on MacQuarrie Keep, he’d been home for a quick, uncomfortable visit no more than three months before he’d left this time. He’d carried the memory of that visit and his family home buried deep in his heart for almost a

  decade.

  As a child, he had never imagined he would live anywhere other than this very place. The people and the land were as much a part of him as breathing had been. He’d seen the straight path of his life stretching out ahead of him. A wife and children who would join him here, making him as happy as his parents had always been.

  But that dream had shattered in his sixteenth year when he’d met Elizabeth Hawthorne. Her father had traveled here on the king’s business, bringing his daughter along. Two years his elder, she’d flirted her way into his heart only to break that heart when she
’d suddenly married his brother.

  Robert had ridden out these gates the day after Richard’s wedding without a look back, pledging his service at Alexander’s court. Only by the grace of men like Thomas MacGahan and Connor MacKiernan had he been accepted into their ranks and trained. Only through their friendship had he managed to live with the loss of his childhood dreams.

  But neither those hateful memories nor the ones from his last visit to his mother and father meshed with what he saw now.

  It all seemed different to him as he stared at the closed gate ahead of them. That was fair odd, too. His father had rarely kept the portcullis set. His eyes scanned up, quickly assessing other changes to his home. It appeared the parapet had been strengthened along the wall walk.

  “They do say the memory goes first,” he muttered out loud. Of course, those types of structural changes would be virtually impossible to make quickly. Work of that nature would have taken years, not months.

  “Hearing,” Leah corrected, her gaze fixed ahead of her, appearing to miss nothing as she soaked in what would be her new home. “I’m pretty sure I read that it’s the hearing that goes first.”

  A movement ahead of them caught his attention and the muscles in Robert’s back tensed. His warrior senses on full alert, he grabbed Leah’s reins, forcing her mount to a stop. “Stay behind me.”

  “Why do I have to—”

  “Dinna question me,” he interrupted. “Do as I say. Now.”

  He was sure those arrow loops along the parapet were new. As were the tips of the arrows peeking out the holes.

  All aimed directly at him and Leah.

  “Who goes there?” a man’s voice demanded from the corner of the wall walk. “State yer business or be on yer way.”

  Biting back his irritation at being challenged to enter his own home, Robert paused before responding. The guard must be new not to recognize him.

  “Sir Robert MacQuarrie, younger son to Hugh, laird of the MacQuarrie.” The title came haltingly to his tongue, it had been so long since he’d had need of it. Neither knights nor lairds played any part in his new life.

  “The MacQuarrie heir, are you? Och, aye, of course you are,” the guard yelled down. “And meself? I’m the king of France, I am.”

  Laughter filtered into the air, wafting down from the wall walk, and Robert felt his anger grow. He hadn’t claimed to be the heir. Everyone knew that would be his older brother, Richard, so the comment didn’t bear his response. Whoever the new guard was, the man needed a few lessons in proper behavior, and at the

  moment, Robert began to feel just irritated enough that he might be the perfect instructor.

  “King of France, my arse,” he muttered before yelling back the only reasonable response. “Do yer job, you slackard. I’d have you bring the MacQuarrie himself to settle this.”

  Time lengthened as they waited until at last the chains holding the portcullis groaned and the gate began its slow ascent, allowing them access. The tunnel through the wall of rock seemed longer and darker than he remembered, though common sense told him it was the same ten feet it had always been. He hated small, dark places. With a quick glance back to assure himself Leah followed closely, Robert fixed his eyes on the arch of light ahead of them that opened into the inner courtyard of his family’s castle.

  Four guards, spears at the ready, stepped out to block their path as they came through the archway.

  “Stay yer mounts,” one of them ordered. “You’ll wait here for his lairdship. And keep yer hands where we can see them.”

  Robert glared at the man, a look well calculated to cause discomfort. Only when the guard dropped his gaze to the ground did Robert look away. While he waited for his father, he scanned the inner bailey, absently noting the subtle changes since his last visit.

  There were many.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of brown. A young lad, no more than six or seven, raced across the courtyard to the chapel, his hair flying back from the sides of his head as he ran. Before he reached the small building, a woman emerged, her slow, heavy steps carrying her from the chapel toward the great door of the keep.

  As the boy drew level with her, she leaned down to him, her head snapping up when the boy pointed in Robert’s direction.

  She started forward, her stride accelerating as she approached.

  “Robert?” she called out, her voice firm, sharp, familiar.

  Robert leaned forward, squinting to make out her face more clearly. It wasn’t possible. The voice he knew, but not the form.

  “Mother?” He barely breathed the words, so unsure the appellation belonged to the woman whose steps toward him had turned to a slow jog.

  He slid from the back of his horse, taking no more than a footstep in her direction before he was met with a spear point laid at his chest.

  “Halt!”

  She’d drawn close now and he could doubt it no longer. It was his mother, her eyes, her expression so well-known to him, all encased in a face that had aged so much more than he expected. What could have happened to her in the months since he’d seen her last?

  She ran now, lifting her hands to cradle his cheeks when she reached his side. “Robbie?” She whispered his name, tears filming her eyes. “Praise the saints, it is you. I kenned in my heart you’d return home to us one day.”

  The spear held to his chest wavered.

  “You’ll move that this instant, you worthless oaf,” she ordered, slapping away the spear pointed at his heart before throwing her arms around him.

  The guard took a faltering step back as if unsure of exactly what he should do next.

  Margery MacQuarrie, though barely tall enough to reach Robert’s breast, had always been a force to be reckoned with. He was glad to see that hadn’t changed.

  He enfolded his mother in his embrace, holding her tightly to him for only a moment before she pushed away, again lifting her hands to his face.

  “I can hardly believe my own eyes. They told us you were killed in the king’s service. But I’d no given up hope, Robbie. When they couldna bring yer body home to be buried, I told yer father they had to be wrong. I said my prayers and lit my candles daily. And now you’ve returned to us as I prayed you would.” She let go of him and wiped a hand over her damp cheeks.

  Robert stood silently watching while this amazing woman morphed from Mother to Lady Margery in less than a heartbeat. Her back straightened and the emotion swept from her face in the transformation of composing herself, as if only now she realized that everyone closely watched her actions.

  “It’s yer son, Hugh,” she called, her eyes focused over his shoulder. “Come home to us at last.”

  Robert turned his head, words abandoning him for perhaps the first time in his life as he watched the large man headed in their direction, his progress slowed by a decided limp. Hugh MacQuarrie? The man was far too old to be his father. How was this possible?

  Could their time travel have missed its mark by a few years?

  The guards scattered backward as Hugh approached. He moved in closely to stare into Robert’s face. After a moment or two, apparently satisfied, he threw his arms around his younger son.

  “Welcome home, my lad, welcome home. We’d all but given up hope.” Margery cleared her throat and he added, “Well, yer mother never did.”

  When his father stepped back, Robert was shocked to see a glassy sheen of tears in the old man’s eyes.

  “Mind yer manners, Hugh. Robbie’s brought someone with him. A wife perhaps?” Margery rested a hand on Robert’s forearm as she spoke. “Though much too young for you,” she added quietly, her disapproval clear in her tone.

  “Wife?” Leah squeaked from her perch on top of her mount. “No!”

  Robert’s own hurried “No!” all but drowned out Leah’s protest.

  He stepped to the side of her horse, holding up his arms to lift her down. Though he knew she would prefer to avoid his touch, after only the slightest hesitation she leaned into him
, her hands grasping his forearms to allow him to lift her down.

  A sharp pain twinged through his chest when he took her weight, and as soon as her feet hit the ground he dropped his hold. That was odd. She was such a tiny thing, less than he bench-pressed on a regular basis at the gym. Whatever it was, it wasn’t something he had time to worry about right now.

  “No my wife,” he repeated, catching Leah’s gaze as he continued. “My daughter.”

  Her eyes widened and her lips tightened but, to her credit, she made no comment refuting his claim.

  He’d considered using this story from the start but had worried he’d have problems convincing them he had a daughter her age they had never known about. Still, it seemed his best ploy and was the only story he’d managed to invent. The result of an indiscretion he’d learned of only recently, a deceased mother, all good reasons to bring her here for their care.

  In the seconds after his claim, his mother swept forward, a joyous smile breaking over her face. “A daughter! Och, Robbie, you’ve made me a happy woman indeed.” She threw her arms around Leah, hugging the girl closely to her. “With nothing but sons of my own, you’ve no idea how I’ve longed for a lass over the years to join our family.”

  Robert tightened his hold on his emotions. Absurd to feel this pressure in his throat. Still, it did his heart good to see his mother so happy. Bringing Leah here had been a good thing all around. Though he’d never know the comfort of having his own children, his parents would feel the pleasure of thinking their bloodline continued in the form of a granddaughter.

  As for Leah herself, though she was obviously surprised at the welcome, she handled it all quite well. This was going to work out even better than he could have hoped.

  Now, before he had to face his brother, seemed an opportune time to come straight to the point.

  “I’ve come to ask yer indulgence in allowing my Leah to remain here with you.”

  “And why would she no?” his father boomed. “As yer daughter, this is her home as much as yers.”

  His mother, arm around Leah’s shoulders, herded the lass toward the keep, her expression shuttered as she cast one last look in his direction. “Bring her things, Robbie. I’ll be about getting our bonnie lassie settled and then we’ll have a grand visit, just the two of us.”