Chapter Twenty-Four

The staircase didn’t look familiar and neither had the corridors they’d just left. Somewhere along the way, in escaping Sam and his comrades, they’d made a wrong turn, and instead of going back up, they were going down again. As though she and Logan ran from bad guys on a daily basis, she took the lead, and he made sure they weren’t being followed.

When the staircase made a sharp turn, and widened, there was a cluster of narrow windows. She didn’t remember seeing those on their way to the library or in the secret passage to the dungeons. So much for her foolproof way of not getting lost.

The ceiling over the staircase lowered abruptly. She ducked her head and shouted over her shoulder. “Logan, watch your…

A split second later she heard a loud thunk, followed by a muffled curse as a thin mist of powdery rocks and mortar rained down on them.

“Too late,” Logan shouted back, rubbing his head.

Irene brushed the fragments of rock from his hair. “Are you okay?”

“Are you?”

She knew they weren’t talking about the bump on his head. “I think I’m still trying to process what happened. It seems odd that the men from the café were locked up. I thought they were just asked to leave. I’m unfamiliar with the laws in Scotland, but locking them up seems extreme under the circumstances, and what was Sam doing releasing them, if the sisters did have them put there in the first place?”

“Nothing good.”

“Agreed. Thank you for saving me, by the way.”

He grinned. “All part of a knight’s duty to his lady. But the way I see it, we were a team. You were pretty fierce.”

“Not sure I know where that came from.”

“I do.” He paused, then added, “We should keep going.”

Warmed by his compliments, she continued down the stairs. “Remember to keep your head low.”

“I guess when this castle was built, people weren’t very tall.”

“For the most part you’re right,” Irene said, remembering an entry in her mother’s diary. “But William Wallace was over six feet tall, and I think Mary Queen of Scots was five feet eleven. The real reason for the low ceilings and uneven steps was to slow the enemy down. The placement of the rope hand railing was also strategic. Most people are right-handed, so the hand railing was placed on the right side going up, so anyone attacking and running up the stairs would have to shift their weapons to their left hand, giving the castle guards advancing from above an advantage.”

He chuckled. “Having you along is like having my own personal tour guide.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. You’re passionate about history. I can hear it in your voice. I’ll bet you’re a great teacher.”

For some reason she didn’t want to correct him. As a child, she would line up her dolls and teach them about the great queens and women warriors of ancient and modern times. She’d make crowns and swords out of cardboard and wrap them in tinfoil. When she was older, she’d abandoned her dream of teaching, and to this day she wasn’t sure why. Funny, she hadn’t thought about that part of her life in a long time.

“Both my grandmother and mother were teachers,” she said, knowing she really hadn’t answered his question—or her own, for that matter.

“Do you know why this place was so important to your mother?” He paused. “Or more to the point, to you?”

Irene continued down the stairs, not sure how to answer his question. Before she left Seattle, her goal had seemed easy: find out why Stirling Castle figured so prominently in her mother’s diary. A major part of her believed that her mother had made it all up. Louise hadn’t liked that theory, probably the reason she’d done everything she could to get Irene here, short of pushing Irene onto the plane. Now that she was here, more questions kept bubbling to the surface, like why did her mother and the woman in the portrait look so much alike? Were the earrings connected? And then there was the birthmark. Did they really have a lookalike relative? Too many coincidences. Some people didn’t believe in coincidences. Her mother had been one of them. The biggest question still remained. Who was Connor?

She reached out to the wall for balance as the staircase took another sharp turn. “My sister and I thought we knew everything there was to know about our mother. After her death, her diary was included in the paperwork we received along with her will. For some reason, she couldn’t share her secrets with us while she was living, and my sister and I wanted to know the reason why. Our stepfather thinks we have unresolved mother issues. The classic ‘she didn’t spend enough time reading bedtime stories’ or ‘she expected us to be perfect.’ And the big one, ‘she died so we felt abandoned.’ Except the only one of those scenarios that came close was the last one. My sister and I miss her every day.”

“This is going to sound odd, but in a way I know exactly how you feel. Yes, my mother is still alive, but because of Alzheimer’s, there are times when I feel she’s already left me and my dad. I want to try and reason with her not to leave. To stay. To see me. If I thought she’d also kept secrets, I’d be curious, if only to get closure to unanswered questions. Why do you think your mother left you the diary in the first place?”

Irene paused to look over her shoulder toward him. Light and shadow reflected off his features. The smoke and age-stained walls faded into the background until the only clear image was of Logan.

She turned to face him in the tight confines of the staircase. He was so close his breath warmed the chilled air. She’d not expected to feel so much in such a short span of time. Her journey here was about closure. Instead it had opened up a flood of emotions. “I wish I knew the answer. But other than my sister, you’re the only person who’s asked me that question. My sister and I knew our mother only in her role as mom. She never lived long enough for us to have the chance to become friends. When she knew she was dying, I think she felt the same sense of loss.” Irene’s words trailed off.

Logan reached out for her hand. She nodded and let out a breath. “I’m okay. I’m starting to think my mother’s diary was a way for her to bridge that gap. I just wonder why she felt she had to keep her time here a secret.”

Her words caught in the air and lingered. Irene continued the rest of the way down the stairs in silence broken only by the sound of her footfalls and the lingering question in her thoughts. What if the real reason her mother had kept the truth a secret was that she was afraid of what her daughters might discover?

With each step the passageway narrowed and the closer it came to the ground floor. When Irene neared the last step, the air chilled and her breath frosted the air. The staircase ended at a thick door rounded at the top and studded with iron rivets. A crossbar lay horizontally across the door and was secured in place by metal hooks.

“We keep getting lost,” Irene announced.

“We could retrace our steps?”

“Except we’re lost.”

Logan grinned and blew on his hands. “Well, there is that. I’m actually enjoying this adventure. The best things happen when you’re not looking.”

Her first impulse was to look for sarcasm in his expression. Instead, she found something unexpected. Smoldering like a banked fire was desire. Had a man ever looked at her in that way before? She shook her head, answering her own question. Her skin flushed. “You are weird.” Irene groaned at her response. She sounded like a teenager talking to her first crush.

He winked. “Not the worst thing I’ve been called.”

“I’m not going to ask. But unlike you, I don’t like feeling this way. I mean…feeling lost.”

“You mean feeling out of control?” he joked.

She didn’t really know if that was what she’d meant. She did know that she loved their easy banter. She anchored her hands on her hips in mock protest. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be in control.”

He raised his hands in surrender. “Don’t misunderstand. I understand completely what you’re going through. My dad thinks I invented the label ‘control freak.’ One of the issues on my list of things to fix.”

Irene fought back a smile. “Sounds like you have a long list.”

“You have no idea. So what’s the plan?”

Pausing to take in how well he’d come to know her in such a short time, she said, “You’re supposing that I have a plan.”

“Don’t you?”

“Of course. Just testing.” Irene nodded toward the door. “I suggest we open the door and go around to the front of the castle and enter through the café and changing rooms. From there it seemed like a straight shot to the Great Hall.” Irene tried the door handle beneath the crossbar, but it was locked. “How good are you at picking locks?”

Logan removed the crossbar and placed the palm of his hand against the wood, giving it a testing push. “I could break it down?”

“Really? These doors are solid oak. At least six to eight inches thick.”

He arched an eyebrow and grinned. “Your point?”

She knew he was joking. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. So far, this was a very unorthodox tour experience, to say the least.

Logan ran his hand over the wood panels. “All kidding aside, you’re right about the door. I thought it would be weaker because it was at least three or four hundred years old, but the panels look almost brand new and the iron hinges newly forged.”

“The brochure said most of the castle was restored.”

“Have you wondered why there always seems to be a logical explanation?” he said absently. Logan turned the handle. It wouldn’t budge. “If the builders replicated the locks exactly as they were from the thirteenth century, picking it shouldn’t be that difficult.” Logan reached under his belt and produced a Swiss army knife he’d attached by a cord. He flipped open the nail file.

“The sisters would be upset if they knew you brought something from modern times.”

He cast her a sly grin. “You needed your mother’s diary, and I never go anywhere without my knife.” Logan knelt down, inserted the nail file in the lock, and turned it. There was a clicking sound. He pulled back and put his knife away. “Moment of truth, as they say.” He turned the handle and pulled the door open slowly.

Wisps of snow drifted through the opening on a current of cold air.

Surrounded by the swirling snow, Logan stood as still as the statues of the knights that guarded the Great Hall. His muscles tensed. “Something’s not right.”