Noise at the door made Eoin look up.
“Come,” his grandfather called.
The familiar dark head of his little pest peeked in, and his instinct was to yell at her to return to her rooms—or demand to know why she was defying his orders—but Fiona wasn’t alone.
He blinked at the flash of green fabric.
Ashlyn stepped into the room and stood beside his younger sister. She fidgeted at Fiona’s side, her discomfort a live thing he could feel. It didn’t keep him from taking her in, even though it meant ignoring his instinct to reassure her.
His eyes raked her frame, settling above the waist on the exposed expanse of creamy flesh. The air in the room dissipated, and he wanted to tug at the nowhere-near-tight neckline of the saffron leine his grandfather had given him to wear.
Eoin swallowed—twice. He was too hot.
Did the fire need to be banked?
He needed to look at the hearth to check, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the petite blonde lass he’d kidnapped from the future.
She was… Gorgeous seemed too weak a term.
The gown he’d forbidden his sister from wearing was perfect on Ashlyn.
Made for Ashlyn.
Not only did it hug her slender torso and form to it, placing her breasts high and tempting, it flared at the hip, hinting at the rounded perfection there, and flowing down to the floor in a gracious way that made her even more attractive.
“Who is this vision?” Angus breathed, pushing to his feet with his hands held out.
“‘Tis just me, Grandfa.” Fiona beamed, true to her cheeky nature, and their grandfather chuckled.
He shook his head. “Ye are bonnie, as ye well know, my lassie, bu’ I doona refer ta ye, this time.”
Ashlyn flushed that enchanting shade of crimson and it lit the skin of her neck and visible collarbones, too.
Made Eoin itch to run his fingers over every inch of her. He had to avert his gaze. His cock twitched. Which was ridiculous, considering he’d seen her clothed in a whole lot less than his sister’s fancy dress.
The elderly charmer crossed the distance to Ashlyn, and took both her hands in his. “Ye, lass, are a bonnie sight for an old man.”
“Th-th-thank you,” she murmured, but she didn’t look at his grandfather.
Her eyes found his and Eoin needed a distraction. He couldn’t very well ravish her in front of an audience, especially this one.
“Wha’ are ye doin’ ou’ of yer chambers?” he tried to bark at his sister, but the question came out cracked.
Fiona’s sweet smile was replaced by a glare so fast it should’ve made his head spin, but he was used to such things from his little pest. “Grandfa didna agree wit’ yer...orders.”
He frowned.
“Now, now, no’ in front a’ tha guest,” Angus said.
Eoin narrowed his eyes at his ever-the-peacemaker grandfather. “Ye dote on her—”
“Later, Eoin.” Angus’ voice was hard.
Fiona harrumphed and narrowed her eyes, daring him to defy the man who’d raised them.
Ashlyn froze, her unease obvious. She swayed in ladies’ slippers that were no doubt his sister’s. She didn’t pull away from their grandfather’s grip, but Eoin’s gut said she was just being polite.
“I shall have words wit’ ye.” He pointed at Fiona. “And ye.” He pointed to their grandfather’s chest. “As well as Jamie MacLeod.” Maybe he’d replace his cousin as steward.
His sister’s fists were balled at her sides. She wore a scowl that destroyed her beauty. “Ye are a barbar—”
“Lass, return ta yer quarters,” Angus commanded. “We shall speak later, indeed.” He looked at Eoin. “Jamie need no’ be involved. Tha lad was followin’ my orders.”
He frowned again. It wasn’t fair to pit his cousin against his grandfather, who’d been the laird much longer than Eoin himself, but that only irritated him more. He grunted and swallowed some choice curses that would raise Angus’ ire.
Fiona glared at him before whirling away, her skirts swooshing as she obeyed their grandfather, and fairly stomped to the door, which she slammed on her way out.
Ashlyn winced. “I’m sorry.”
His grandfather’s blue eyes were soft when he looked back at her. “No need fer ye ta apologize, lass. ‘Tis a family conflict. ‘Twill be remedied shortly.”
“She willna marry a MacDonald,” Eoin growled.
Angus sent him a silencing glare, then glanced back at his Ashlyn. “Come, lass. Never ye mind my lad here, or my granddaughter. Let us speak of yer journey.”
“My…my…journey?” she stuttered, but let his grandfather lead her toward the fire, and Eoin brought over a chair with a padded seat for her.
She looked at him as she sat, but didn’t thank him.
Not that he blamed her. He was still in the wrong, no matter how lovely she was in attire from his time.
He swallowed a sigh and carried the carved chair from his grandfather’s desk closer to the warm fire. Eoin sat next to her, while Angus asked a few polite questions and Ashlyn answered quietly.
She looked overwhelmed, and with wide brown eyes and the slight tremor to her shoulders, no doubt she was just that.
Guilt swirled around his stomach, jumping up to form in lump in his throat. He didn’t know what to say, so he kept his mouth shut. When he got her alone, she was probably going to flay him open as soon as she regained her composure. Since he couldn’t define a reason for his selfishness, he couldn’t fathom what he’d say to her then, either.
“I’m Angus MacLeod, an’ I used ta be laird, a ’fore this one. I’m grandfa to Eoin, and the lovely lassie who lef’ here in a huff.”
He snorted. Angus’ obvious affection for him and his little bother was evident with the way the man spoke, despite what he’d said about his sister’s current insolence.
“Nice…to meet you.” Ashlyn gained strength with each passing second. She let his scoundrel of a grandfather kiss her knuckles, and her cheeks went pink all over again.
“We lost his da, my lad Gregor, when Eoin was a lad. So I was laird again then, too. So he could finish growin’ an’ learnin’.”
“I’m so sorry.” She looked at Eoin, and the genuine sympathy she wore, shining in those dark eyes, made him sit taller.
His heart stuttered. He didn’t deserve for her to look at him with anything but disdain. “‘Twas a long time ago,” he muttered.
“Where do ye hail from, lass?” his grandfather asked, and she averted her gaze back to the older man, but then Ashlyn pinned her pretty brown eyes on him, her brow drawn tight.
“Eoin?” she whispered.
He cleared his throat. “Ah, go on, lass. Ye can tell him tha truth.”
“I’m from the future.”
****
“I know tha’. Whereabou’s?” The elderly man’s demeanor was gentle.
But maybe Ashlyn needed kid-gloves at the moment. She blinked. He couldn’t have just—
Wasn’t he surprised? Eoin grandfather’s statement was the last thing she’d expected. “Uh…”
How to answer him? He might’ve heard of the US, considering the colonies, but he wouldn’t know what Texas was if she drew him a map.
Angus was looking at her expectantly. His eyes weren’t the least bit clouded with age.
Eoin nudged her shoulder with his and she jumped.
She should yell at him, but Ashlyn couldn’t muster anything intelligent. She hadn’t been a fan when he’d put his chair so close moments before—or more accurately, she’d disliked the awareness that’d shivered down her spine—but she couldn’t shift away without running into his grandfather’s rocker. She was trapped between the two men.
She should be furious with him. She was, right?
“Texas,” she whispered to Angus finally.
The old man leaned forward in his rocking chair and slapped his kilted thigh. “Texas?” he exclaimed.
“Texas mus’ be a popular place ta leave,” Eoin mumbled.
Ashlyn looked at her kidnapper, then at his grandfather and back. “What?”
The men exchanged a look, then the laird took an audible breath. “Ye…ye arena tha first lass ta come here from tha future.” He looked at his grandfather again, and the elderly man gave a nod.
I didn’t come here. You brought me here. But she couldn’t say that; she didn’t want to get snarky in front of Angus. For the sake of manners and all that. “Okay…and?” she pushed out instead.
“From Texas,” the laird said.
“What?” She cocked her head to one side, as if she had a hearing problem and the gesture would help. Wrong. Ashlyn gripped the arms of the chair and leaned forward.
As if it was possible, her current…situation…had just gotten more surreal.
They both started talking at once, but Eoin deferred to Angus, and the older man launched into a story full of magic, multiple instances of time travel, and the Fae—flippin’ fairies. There was also information about the Faery Stones, the portal they’d used to come here.
The Faery Stones were the stalagmites with the unusual crystals on top of them in that cave. They’d looked unnatural because they were. Fae-born, not from what the old man called, the Human Realm. Evidently, Eoin used the Stones a lot in fulfilling his duties as Guardian of the Faery Flag.
Her instinct was to say, ‘No freaking way,’ but she was sitting next to a big hearth where peat moss burned brightly, in a castle in Scotland, next to two oversized men wearing kilts. Then, there was also the 1755 part of her new reality.
Ashlyn’s head started spinning when Angus mentioned his aunt and her sister, and his wife all had been from the future—the first two specifically, from Texas. A few other MacLeods were either Fae, or were from centuries other than the seventeenth or eighteenth, as well.
Oh, then the part that his mother had been a Fae Princess.
Like, an actual fairy—or, faery, as it was in Scotland.
“So, you’re…not human?”
“I’m a halfling, as they say. My da, Alex, was human and the laird of Clan MacLeod for many years. Fae blood runs strong in my lad, here, too.” He gestured to Eoin, who only nodded.
What was she supposed to say? She took a breath. “Do you mean to tell me that not one, not two, but three or more women who married into your family were from the future? My century, for the most part, too?”
The old man nodded, and his smile widened.
He’d told her he was ninety-two years old, and while years were definitely present in the lines of his face, he didn’t look his age. Maybe seventy-five. Angus wasn’t ancient-looking, or decrepit like a person nearly a century old should look.
“Aye, my Lila, God rest her soul, came from tha early twenty-firs’ century,” the former laird said.
“So this is like…the MacLeod thing?”
Angus stared at her with Eoin’s eyes. If that wasn’t disconcerting enough, the poor man probably had no idea what she’d just asked.
He surprised her by nodding. “If ye mean, has it been common, aye, t’has.”
What the hell? floated around in her head again. It was becoming too common a recurring phrase, but she’d try to mind her manners and not say it aloud in front of Eoin’s grandfather.
Women swearing wasn’t a common thing in…these days… and Ashlyn didn’t want him to think she was rude. Fiona’s warning was there, too, and she didn’t want to offend him, either. The older man had a kind face, and like the women who’d bathed her, as well as Eoin’s little sister, had been welcoming.
His hair was white and on the unkempt side—in need of a good cut, but she’d bet it’d been sable like Eoin’s when he was a younger man. She could see the MacLeod resemblance, too.
Ashlyn’s hands opened and closed on the arms of the chair of their own accord as her mind went in circles, trying to make sense of all the information Angus had thrown at her. Would make a damn good book—or three. She cleared her throat, but nothing surfaced to speak aloud.
Eoin shifting his big body on the chair next to hers caught her eye, and she spared him a glance. Even uncomfortable, he was breathtaking.
He’d put on a shirt—and wasn’t that a shame?
She should be angry as hell at him for all of this, but she couldn’t muster anything past attraction and fascination. Apprehension had subsided, partly because she didn’t fear for her safety. Like in the bath earlier, she was confident no one would hurt her here.
Ashlyn should roll her eyes at herself—feeling secure with her kidnapper and his family was crazy, but she did.
Hopefully that’s not misplaced positive thinking.
“Are ye well, lass? I know this is much ta take in,” Angus said, again with that quiet and even tone that just washed more calm over her body.
She nodded. “I think so.”
Eoin made a noise in his throat, but didn’t speak.
“Tell me abou’ ye, lass,” the elderly man said. His smile was open and encouraging, and somehow made Ashlyn want to give the information he sought.
“I’m a writer. I…write books.” How would he take that, in an age when most women couldn’t read, let alone write?
“Go on,” he said, his expression sincere, like he was genuinely interested. Angus actually wanted to know more. And it was as if he’d completely understood what she’d meant.
She confessed her love of history, and Scotland particularly, and gave him the elevator pitch of her two completed trilogies that took place in the Highlands. Ashlyn explained she was currently working on the third book of her third trilogy, also about Scotland, but one hundred years after the first two sets of books.
His delight was evident in his posture as she talked about her stories, the ones inspired by Clan MacLeod specifically. Angus inclined his body forward, soaking up her every word. “Yer lass is a seanchaí, Eoin-lad!” He slapped his thigh again and rocked forward in his chair.
Ashlyn’s body flushed with heat, the corset constricted her breathing, and she tried not to wince when her heart skipped. The protest was born in her head, I’m not his lass, but she didn’t verbalize. She could feel Eoin’s uneasiness as he fidgeted on his chair again, but the laird didn’t open his mouth, either. She avoided looking at him, and met Angus’s gaze. “Well, not really…I mean, kinda, I guess. I’m a storyteller, but I tell love stories. Romance; happily ever afters. I think that Gaelic term…means more.”
Both men froze.
“Ye speak Gaelic?” Eoin asked.
Ashlyn shook her head. “No, but I understand some things. Endearments, and some…” Her cheeks heated and she rubbed the back of her neck. She’d had to do research for books. Didn’t exactly want to admit that.
The laird’s gaze locked with hers, and his Adam’s apple bobbed as if he’d swallowed. “Some, what?” he whispered.
No way was she revealing she knew how to say, I love you, in Gaelic. The words floated into her head unbidden. Tha gaol agam ort. She’d watched a YouTube video about a hundred times in order to understand the pronunciation. Learning Gaelic had always been on her bucket list, too.
What would he say to that, anyway? It wasn’t like it mattered. Shouldn’t bother her, either.
She cleared her throat again and looked back at Angus. “That’s why I was in Scotland in the first place. A writer inspiration trip.”
“Ah.”
They probably wouldn’t understand the concept of vacation, so Ashlyn didn’t go there.
“‘Tis a lovely paintin’ of my lad, ye found.” He reached for the canvas from a small table beside him. Unrolled it and studied the image of his grandson. “Glad ta see it survived tha years.”
“Ah, thanks. I like it very much.” She could feel Eoin’s stare, but didn’t want to look at him. She’d probably light up, blushing to her ears—something that was way too common around the stupid man.
The Faery Flag sat folded on the corner of the tiny table, and she stared for a moment, wanting to explore it, but she didn’t have the guts to ask.
It meant so much to Clan MacLeod. A sacred relic. Ashlyn had been fascinated with the legend behind it for years, when she’d discovered the stories. She could ask Angus about it, if she ever got the guts to do so. Instinct told her he’d love to gush about it.
She wished she had a paper and pen. The man could be a walking, talking encyclopedia for her, if she’d let him.
“Where did ye come across tha paintin’ of my lad an’ our Flag, anaway?”
“At an antique shop in Inverness.”
Eoin jolted. “Enchanted Keepsakes, by chance?” His voice was just short of a demand.
She whipped around to meet his beckoning gaze, and her tummy fluttered at the intensity in her expression.
You really have to stop jumping when you just look at him. Focus on the whole kidnapping thing, dummy!
“How did you know?” she croaked.
“Was there a lass called Korinna?”
“I don’t know her name, but there was only one person in the shop.”
“Bonnie lass, wit’ flame-colored locks?” Eoin asked.
Ashlyn forced a nod, but she didn’t like him calling another woman pretty. Again, something that shouldn’t trouble her, but did. She tried not to frown.
He said something in Gaelic under his breath, and his grandfather frowned, but his mouth rippled, as if he was holding back amusement.
“Lad, doona say such things around a lady, even if she doesna understand ‘em. Besides, ye already suspected ’twas the witch, did ye no’?”
Eoin didn’t look like he appreciated the admonition, but he gave a curt nod.
“Witch?” Ashlyn asked.
“Ye tell her, I’m too angry.” He gestured for good measure.
“Doona fash yerself, lad. What’s done is done.” Angus nodded.
“I don’t know if I can handle magic, time travel, the Fae, and witches all being real,” she said.
The elderly man threw his head back and laughed. “Poor lass. ‘Tis all real; witches, too. I havena met her, but from wha’ I hear, Korinna is a powerful witch.”
Eoin nodded and sighed. He ran his hand through his hair, mussing his dark locks and making her want to slip her hand there instead.
Cursing herself didn’t dispel the urge. Ashlyn must be a fickle weakling if she could let her attraction to him override good sense. Kidnapping was illegal wasn’t it? At least in her time. She shouldn’t forgive him, right?
“Aye, she is,” the laird said. “She vowed I wouldna have ta run tha centuries chasin’ tha Faery Flag.” He launched into a story from three years before.
They’d met on one of his missions to retrieve the Flag. His frustration was evident when his broad shoulders tightened. He made a fist and pinned it to his lap as he spoke.
She couldn’t tear her eyes away. Ashlyn almost forgot Angus was in the room. Eoin’s brogue was thick, but his voice was smooth, and she caught herself leaning toward him sometime during the recital. She needed to get closer, but then caught herself, sitting taller and pressing into the back of her chair.
A part of her didn’t like the way he’d talked about the ethereal beauty she’d met in the shop. Especially when he explained how he’d learned all about technology and modern conveniences from the woman. All that stuff implied they’d spent a great deal of time together.
Had they been lovers?
She frowned.
Stop. It wouldn’t matter if they had.
But…Eoin had kissed her twice.
Ashlyn’s stomach flipped and she tried to banish the memories of his taste, the heat of his body and how his chest—and the rest of him—looked. How hard his muscles had felt against her. Especially that one part of him that’d been…well, hard.
Be mad at him, Ashlyn George. Stay mad at him!
“Tha witch put tha Flag wit’ yer paintin’ a’ purpose,” Angus said, tugging her from Forbidden Land.
She should thank him; thoughts of naked Eoin were useless. It wasn’t like she was going to sleep with him. It took her mind a second to catch up and process what older man had said.
“Aye, I’d gathered,” Eoin said.
“But why?” she blurted.
The laird and his grandfather exchanged a look she didn’t understand.
Angus sat taller and stilled his gentle movements of the rocking chair. He pinned them both with his very blue gaze.
A quiver went down Ashlyn’s spine before his lips even parted.
“Fate,” he whispered.
What the hell does that mean?