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Heat rose to Abby’s cheeks each time her eyes met Iain’s deep, dark orbs. He was as impressive as he was handsome, and she guessed his confidence came from being a laird of a large clan. Having people listen to him and follow his every order had to build character, and it was obvious he didn’t lack self-assurance. Although she imagined some leaders grew power hungry, she suspected Iain was a considerate chief of his clan. He was, after all, cooking them a meal.
“It’s ready,” Iain said.
His voice filled the room and Abby gave a little start. “Good, I’m starving.”
A frown creased Iain’s forehead, and Abby wondered what she had said to make him irritable. It seemed to her every time she spoke, he became annoyed, angry, or exasperated. She couldn’t quite tell which emotion his present expression showed.
The way he had looked at her when she’d reached to pick up the stinging nettles with bare hands nearly made her recoil in surprise. His furious eyes would have made someone less confident than her cower.
She glanced at him. Maybe he was just worried. If she’d touched the nettles, she would have been in pain for sure. She quickly looked away and hid a small smile. It was a stupid thing to do. She’d forgotten about the sting those plants would give, but only for a second. She suspected she would have caught herself before she actually touched them.
Her smile grew. If she wanted to keep him from changing his mind about going after her lost orb, she should just shut up. He was decidedly more relaxed when she kept quiet, so she accepted the bowl of stew and ate in silence as the darkness of a moonless night crept into the room.
Abby had to bite her tongue more than once during the meal. She had to be careful with what she said, and if she relaxed too much, who knew what would come out of her mouth? She took another mouthful of food. She had to admit she enjoyed the stew if she didn’t think about what it contained too much. However, she hated the awkward silence. She always felt as if she should say something in those situations, but she was proud of herself for controlling that side of her and not speaking one word.
Iain ate his food without so much as a glance in her direction. He was obviously glad she’d kept quiet, and she got the distinct feeling if he didn’t think he was in her debt for saving him, he wouldn’t be taking her with him. She gazed at him through her lashes. No. He wouldn’t have left her. He wasn’t that type of man. Not like Peter, running away and leaving her to the muggers.
Thankfully, they soon finished with their meal.
Having already packed earlier, it took no time at all for Iain to collect the partly dried rabbit meat. Abby raised her brows as he tied the strips to his sword before he secured the blade in the scabbard on his back.
She guessed he saw her quizzical look, because he said, “The cold of the night will keep it from spoiling until I can finish drying it in the sun tomorrow.”
Abby wondered again if the sun ever came out in Scotland but kept her thoughts to herself and nodded.
He held out his hand and she stared at it. “Take it,” he said.
Her fingers trembled at the thought of placing her hand in his rough, massive one. She made a fist. “That’s okay, I’ll just follow you.”
“It’s dark and I don’t want us to be separated.” He waggled his fingers. “Take it.” When she didn’t immediately do so, he said, “We’re nae going anywhere until ye do.”
She shrugged and held her breath as she placed her hand in his. She was right; her fingers tingled, and a jolt of electricity speared up her arm. Watching her with his piercing gaze, he tightened his clasp, which only accentuated the effect. Not knowing what else to do, she nodded, letting him know she was ready to go.
All the way back to the moor, Abby prayed the orb was still there. Please be there. Please be there. It kept her mind off the weird feeling her hand in Iain’s elicited within her. If she stopped concentrating on the device for more than a few seconds, her fingers prickled at the warm glow that spread through her body. His skin wasn’t rough exactly, but thick, like tanned hide. She sensed the strength in his hand and was thankful for his company in the cold night.
She had pulled her skirt over her other hand to keep her fingers out of the cold air and hastened her steps to keep up with his massive strides. They kept quiet as they approached the windblown trees they had hidden under just three days before.
Iain pulled her hand down as he stooped low, and then withdrew his hand from hers. Abby bent over, trying to make herself as small as she could, although she doubted anyone would see them. The night was darker than she’d ever experienced. She looked up at the sky. Not one star, let alone the moon. She shivered, surprised at just how cold it had become without his hand holding hers.
He knelt behind a clump of grass and tugged her skirt to indicate she should do the same. She did and pointed to the lone tree ahead of them. “I think I dropped it around there,” she whispered close to his ear.
As she spoke, the clouds parted ways and the moon’s light shone over the field. Abby ducked lower. Large shadows of people moved about, and two men in uniform walked toward her and Iain. Abby held her breath. They were going to get caught.
Iain placed his hand on her shoulder as if for reassurance. The soldiers stopped, and one bent down and picked something up, something from near the tree where Abby first arrived on that dreaded moor. It glinted in the moonlight and Abby gasped. She clapped her hand over her mouth before the sound fully escaped, but Iain pushed her down into the earth. She had to use both hands to stop her face from being buried. She wriggled around and tried to stop him from crushing her further.
His hot breath made the little hairs around her ears stand on end. “Stay there,” he growled deep and low in his throat.
Her eyes narrowed, but she did as she was told.
A man shouted, “Sir.”
“What is it?” another man answered.
“We found something.”
“What?”
Boots sloshed in the still-wet ground, but Abby couldn’t tell if they were coming or going.
Iain’s hand moved from her back and Abby lifted her head to peer over the bush. Her hand covered her mouth before she let out a sound.
“What have they got?” she whispered to Iain as the two men walked back to the group of soldiers. A tall, thin soldier met them before they joined the group and took whatever it was from one of the men.
“I don’t know, but it is white and shiny.”
Abby didn’t have to see it to know it was her orb, her time device, her only way home. The soldiers spoke, but Abby couldn’t make out what they said. As the tall soldier turned away, the orb shone proudly in the moon’s light. Abby’s heart sank as her one and only way of getting home was taken away from her.
She couldn’t let that happen. She had already worked out that when she turned the orb, so the gold leaves became whole, it took her back in time. All she had to do was tackle the soldier and take the orb, twist it to break the leaves’ connections, and she would return to her own time. She was sure it would happen too quickly for anyone to hurt her.
She moved to get up, but Iain’s hand pressed down on her back, pushing her into the dirt.
She quickly turned her face so only the side of her head was buried. “I have to get it back. Please let me go,” she pleaded.
“Don’t be an eejit. That man with the ornament is Sir Thomas, one of the duke of Cumberland’s knights. He will not care that ye are a lass. He will kill ye.”
Abby’s shoulders slumped, and she stopped fighting. Butcher Cumberland, that was what the duke would be called in history books. If the man who had her device was one of his knights, then he, too, was a sadistic butcher working to rid the land of Scotland of all his enemies.
Iain must have noticed her give in, because he took his hand off her again. She sat up and wiped the side of her face, first with her hand and then with part of the skirt she hoped wasn’t also sodden with mud.
The one Iain called Thomas mounted his horse and called the men to follow him. Some on horses and the rest walking, they headed toward the other end of the moor.
“I need it,” Abby said, nearly choking on a lump in her throat. She didn’t even try to stop the hot tears falling down her cheeks. She was never going to see home, never going to see Garrett, Max, Izzy, or Bree again.
She dropped her head into her fabric-covered hands and sobbed her heart out.
After a minute, Iain scooped her up into his arms and held her close to his chest. “Shh, lass. All will be well.”
He stroked her head, trailing his fingers along her braid. “All will be well.”
In another time and place, Abby would have enjoyed his ministrations, his every touch, his voice. His strong arms comforted her, and his voice was so gentle, she almost believed that all would be well, but she had to be realistic. She was stuck in eighteenth-century Scotland.
Abby wept quietly at the loss of her family.
“I will get it back for ye,” Iain soothed.
She sniffled noisily but kept her head pressed to his chest, strangely drawn to the beat of his heart, loud and strong, in her ear.
Iain patted her on her back, and Abby pushed away. She couldn’t get too comfortable in the man’s arms. She had to keep her distance. There was no way she could get close to an eighteenth-century Scotsman. The very idea was just too ludicrous.
But did she hear him right? She wiped her wet face on her skirt and looked up at him, almost afraid to ask. She sniffed. “Did you say you would get my, um . . . treasure back?”
***
Sir Thomas and a small regiment scoured the moor for the Laird MacLaren. “I saw him fall.” He rounded on his man. “You didn’t kill him. He has survived.”
“I was certain he was dead, my lord. Someone must have taken his body or, if he was alive, helped him from the field.”
Thomas glared at the ground as if it had swallowed MacLaren to stop him from finding him. “You were always a step ahead, but in this, you will not evade me, MacLaren.”
A soldier called out, “Sir.”
“What is it?”
“We found something.”
Thomas’s pulse warmed at the thought it was Iain. He had to be certain the man was dead once and for all. He sloshed through the mud. “What?”
The soldier handed Thomas a white egg-shaped trinket. He turned it around in his hand. “Mayhap this belongs to MacLaren. Mayhap I will return it to his sister.”
He smiled at the thought of Maeve thanking him for the trinket. She was a beauty, and he oft thought about her on cold lonely nights.
Thomas pushed the egg into his coat and mounted his horse. A messenger galloped onto the other side of the moor.
“Follow!” he ordered his men.
His men, some on foot, some on horseback, followed Thomas to the approaching messenger.
Pulling his horse up alongside Thomas’s mount, the messenger handed him a missive. “From Lord Cumberland, my lord.”
Thomas read the letter. He and his troops were to go to Aberdeen immediately. He turned and gazed at the place where MacLaren fell. Aberdeen can wait until I have found MacLaren dead or have killed him for certainty.
He gave the messenger a sharp nod of his head, and understanding, the man galloped back the way he had come. Thomas scrunched up the missive and poked it into his pocket along with the stone egg. He turned his horse north. “We ride to Inverell.”
***
Iain gazed into Abigail’s blue eyes, so clear now that they were free of tears, but also so hopeful. He didn’t want to disappoint her, but her treasure was just a thing. His family was his life and he needed to make sure they were safe.
“Aye, I’ll find your trinket, but not this night. Once we get to Dorpol, I will send word out to find yer grandparents, and then I will take my men and find Thomas and yer treasure.”
She lowered her head. Iain hoped she wasn’t going to cry again. He could put up with anything, pain, loss, even someone shouting at him, but he never knew what to do when a woman cried.
One thing he didn’t want was to hold her again. He had done so without thinking earlier, and the pleasure he felt at her warm breath touching the exposed skin below his neck had him pulling her closer. As soon as she was out of his arms, they felt empty, and the sense of loss confused him.
No, he couldn’t risk becoming involved with the likes of her. Not when he was all but promised to another woman. Fiona was Scottish and having the MacKinnons as allies would strengthen his clan.
His gaze took in Abigail. The lass was too different. He tilted his head. Too mysterious.
A gunshot sounded in the distance, and a shout rang out over the moor. Iain recognized Thomas’s voice and snapped his head up. A regiment of English soldiers, Thomas in the lead, raced toward him and Abigail. He threw himself on her, grimacing at the sound of her face being buried once more in the moor soil.
Her cry was thankfully muffled.
“Shh,” Iain whispered into her ear.
The horses galloped past them, and Iain let out a breath of relief. They weren’t after him and the lass. He waited until the foot soldiers ran past before he let Abigail up.
“I’m sorry, but if they caught us—”
“I know, I know, they’d kill us.”
“Aye.”
This time, Iain unbuckled his tartan and handed the copious material to her.
She wiped at her face and glared at him. “Do you have to keep pushing me into that stagnant, putrid mud?”
“I had to hide ye.”
“You could have done that without half suffocating me.” She pulled more of the material to her and kept wiping. “I need a shower.”
Iain gave her a quizzical look and tipped his head back to look at the sky. The clouds were nearly all gone. “I don’t think it will rain, although I see why ye would want it to.”
Her eyes narrowed at him as he flicked a spot of dirt off her cheek. Her mouth formed an O, and his heart missed a beat at the thought of kissing those luscious lips.
He sat up, gazing in the direction the English had gone. Abigail tugged at the tartan to continue wiping away what mud she could.
An orange-yellow light rose above the trees and Iain growled. Thomas had found the blackhouse and set fire to what remained of it after the last blaze. He hoped he and Abigail hadn’t left any tracks that would lead them back to the moor. He jumped up.
“Quick,” he said, holding out a hand to Abigail.
She looked at him questioningly.
He nodded to the fire and she looked in that direction. She gasped and took his hand, letting him pull her up.
They gathered their belongings and Iain guided her east, away from the moor and away from Thomas and his men. He hoped he could find horses to get them to the nearest port.