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Did he say he was leaving? Abby blinked again, waiting for his words to penetrate her whirling brain. When they did, they sounded so final. He would just up and go? Just like that?
She scooped up his clothes, threw them at him, and spun away.
Facing the side door, she silently agreed with him. It wouldn’t be safe to stay there any longer. The soldiers might return; they probably would. If she recalled the history books right, the English hunted the Jacobites mercilessly after Culloden. She frowned. Or brigands might be scouring the countryside for whatever remnants were left on the dead or alive.
“And where will you go?”
“I must go home.”
He spoke quietly with warmth, and the sound of him handling the soft folds of material had her imagining him dressing.
She shook the image away and was thankful he couldn’t see her guilty blush. “Where is that?”
“Dorpol. An island off the west coast. Ye cannae stay here alone, so ye will come with me.”
An island meant it was a long way from where she had arrived. She couldn’t go with him. She had to get the device.
When she never answered, he must have taken her silence as a no, because he said, “Ye must come with me at least until ye find yer grandmother. Where do they live?”
Uh-oh. Abby had never expected that question from him. She turned away and began folding the blankets on the bed. Think, Abby, what town is close to Culloden Moor? Inverness? It was quite a ways north, but she figured big enough to get lost in. She smiled. That sounded right.
She kept her back to him. “I . . . I think it was Inverness.”
He took her arm and turned her around. He had dressed in his tartan skirt and pinned the leftover material over his right shoulder. It suited him. He would have been a movie star in modern times.
His jawline tightened. “We cannae go there. Cumberland’s army will have taken hold of it by now. Ye saved my life and I am honor bound to keep you safe. Ye must come with me until we can send word to your family.”
His tone sounded like he wished it were otherwise. Maybe he thought she would slow him down or do something stupid to give them away. But she was thankful she’d said the name of the town right, and more especially, that they couldn’t stop there.
Heat filled her cheeks, and she hoped her relief at not being left in some medieval Scottish town on her own didn’t show as she tried to make light of the situation. “Why, sir, I don’t even know you.”
His back straightened, and he placed his hand over his heart. “I told ye, I am Iain MacLaren, laird of Dorpol.”
She snorted. “I’ll just call you Iain, okay?”
The corners of his mouth twitched as if he tried not to laugh. “Iain ’tis.”
Then he frowned. Scrutinizing her, his eyes darkened, revealing warmth, curiosity, decision. “We will travel as man and wife.”
“What? Why?”
“An unmarried lass of yer looks would be fair game to any warrior or brigand.”
Although Abby never saw herself as beautiful, she knew he was right, though she suspected a woman didn’t need to be beautiful in this time and place, just available. She regarded his massive frame. No one would try accosting her with him by her side and anyway, the pretense only had to last until she got the orb to take her home. She nodded. “Fine, but we’re only going to pretend, right? There’ll be no sleeping together.”
“It depends who we are acting for. We may have to share a room, but we have done that already.”
“Fine, but when I said sleeping together, I meant no sex.”
His jaw tightened and his lips thinned, and she thought he would argue, but he said, “I don’t want to sleep with ye that way.”
Abby wasn’t sure if she should be offended at his statement, but she wasn’t going to let him see that, so she grinned. “Shall we go, Husband?”
“Aye, Wife.” He returned the knives Abby had found earlier into the folds of his tartan. “Collect what ye can and we will be on our way to Dorpol.”
Still worrying over the lost device, she hoped with all her heart it would be easy to find, and then she would be on her way all right, on her way home. A frightening thought crossed her mind. If the orb’s not broken.
No, she had faith in its strength. Even after her parents traveled so many years with it, it didn’t have one dent.
Abby dismissed her misgivings and set about putting what clothes and blankets were left in the box in the largest blanket. At least with him, she would have protection.
She glared at Iain, who regarded her with near-unrestrained humor. “Are you just going to stand there and let me do all the work?”
“Ye are the woman, Wife.”
She snarled. “Barbarian.”
He laughed.
With him studying her so intently, she felt clumsy and unfocused. She picked up two small animal skins, probably deer, with thinner strips of skin hanging off them and turned them over in her hands.
“They be shoes.”
“I know that.” She sat on the bed and tied them onto her bare feet. They were a little small, and the straps cut into her flesh. They wouldn’t keep her feet warm, but at least they might protect her soles from small stones and prickles.
She glanced at the muddy mid-heeled sandals she had arrived in. They would be even worse to wear. She picked them up and wrapped them with her modern clothes in a corner of the blanket. Better not let anyone in this time find them.
After wrapping up the blanket, she pushed it into his stomach. “You can carry it.”
“As ye wish.”
Abby walked out of the house with her head held high. She stopped and looked left and right. She wasn’t sure, but she started walking in what she thought was the direction of the battlefield.
His chuckle followed her. “Not that way. We go south.”
Without stopping, she said, “Not yet. I lost something very important, and I can’t leave without it.” In more ways than one, she thought.
“The English will be scouring the moor for survivors and burying the dead. We cannae go that way.”
Abby spun around. “I’m not going anywhere without it, so if you want to go that way, you go. I’m not.”
His mouth hardened in a straight line and his jaw twitched as he glared at her.
She blinked at his expression. He was stronger than her and could easily make her go with him, but she set her jaw and pierced him with a firm gaze. She had no choice; she had to get the orb.
After a moment of staring at one another, he said, “What is so important that ye would risk yer life?”
“It’s an ornament and it’s precious to me.” She turned away. “That’s all I want to say about it.”
Gently turning her around, he gazed into her eyes. “I can see it is very important. We will go, but we will have to wait until nightfall.”
She nodded, scared to say something that might change his mind.
He let go of her arm and made his way back into the cabin. By the time Abby joined him, he had a knife in each hand.
“We need food,” he said matter-of-factly, and strode back out through the door.
Abby stood staring at the still-open door, hoping whatever he brought back was edible.
***
Iain had an empty stomach and if they had to stay there until nightfall, he needed to try to find a rabbit or a pheasant to make a stew. He wasn’t a stranger to throwing knives, but he wasn’t as good as some, especially his sister, who always beat him in a throwing competition. He moved the knives around in his hands. Mayhap with a hungry stomach, my aim will improve.
He walked noiselessly through the heather and over the low bushes, wishing he had his dogs or at the very least, Donal and his hunting falcon. He crouched among some wind-stunted rowan trees and kept his eye on the mounds of grass tussocks close by. He held the knives ready to throw. He scanned the area for rabbits and after some minutes, he was rewarded with a ball of fluff scooting from one grass mound to another.
He threw the first knife, missing by a hair’s breadth, but by the time he had the second knife up and ready to throw, the rabbit had bounded into the grass. He swore under his breath.
Mayhap the rabbit had family close by. He hurried to collect the knife and returned to his hideout and waited.
A memory stirred in his mind. The strange couple his father had befriended when Iain was six years old. They were from America and stayed with the MacLarens often during that year. Their speech was similar to Abigail’s dialect; mayhap they had come from the same area. Iain, always a curious child, never discovered how they came and went. They didn’t ride in on a coach or horses, nor had Iain ever seen them walk into the keep. They just were there, dressed in Scottish garb, and kept close to Iain’s father. He never saw them leave either, and when he asked his father, he would joke and say the wood nymphs spirited them away.
Iain guessed their visits were secret, but when they left and never returned, Iain forgot about them as he grew older. He spent the next hour trying to remember their names.
The rabbit still hadn’t ventured out of the grass, but another hopped toward the clump. He held his breath and threw the knife.
Picking it up, he said, “We have need of ye, my friend, and I thank ye.”
On the way back to the blackhouse, he wrapped his tartan around his hands and carefully picked some nettles and then collected some mushrooms. Once he’d skinned and cleaned the rabbit, he pushed the door open.
Abigail turned startled eyes to him and then smiled. “Did you find anything?”
Iain held up the rabbit. “Ye can make a stew with half the rabbit, and the other half I will cut into strips to dry by the fire until we leave.”
Abigail stood staring at him, so he pushed the rabbit forward. “Take it.”
“No. I don’t know how to make rabbit stew.”
“Ye don’t? Ye must be highborn to have servants do your cooking.”
“I can cook, sort of, but I haven’t cooked rabbit before.”
Iain frowned. Rabbits were an abundant food source; how could she never have cooked the animal? He mumbled, “Mayhap I should have tried to get a deer.”
Her eyes widened in surprise or fear, Iain didn’t know, but she didn’t say anything.
He deposited the nettles and mushrooms on the floor, moved to the fire, and added some more water to the cauldron.
“Make sure the nettles and mushrooms are clean, cut them into pieces, and put them into the pot. I’ll look after the rabbit.”
Iain began cutting up the rabbit as Abigail reached for the nettles.
“Stop!” Iain shouted. Abigail froze with her hand just above the pile of nettles. “Not with your bare hands. They are stinging nettles.”
Abigail sat back. “Oh, of course.”
Eyeing her, Iain had the strangest feeling she had never seen a stinging nettle before, let alone cooked with it, although she appeared to understand when he spoke. Had she eaten nettle soup before? He knew it was a popular dish in England, and he assumed it would be so in the Americas.
He kept silent, however, and added her actions to the list Iain was storing in his mind of the strange things Abigail did and said. He would find out the truth of her appearance on the moor and why she spoke differently from any other person Iain had met, be they Scottish, English, American, or French.
He would not risk the safety of his sister or his people by allowing her onto his lands. His only thoughts thus far were, was she a witch or worse, an English spy? If he could get word to her grandparents, he would learn the truth. Once he reunited her with her family, he could travel much more quickly to Dorpol alone.
When he was sure she was safe from the stings, he set about his work but watched her closely. He cut half the rabbit into chunks and put them into the pot. The other half he sliced into thin strips and hung above the fire along a length of chain he’d fitted there.
Soon, the aroma of rabbit stew filled the cabin and they both watched the pot. While waiting for the stew to finish cooking, Iain glanced at Abigail, who was looking at him with a curious expression. Their gazes met, and Iain, thrown by the blush that came to Abigail’s cheeks, pulled his gaze from her and leaned forward and stirred the pot. It was either that or kiss the woman.