Duchess of Mine (2 page)

Think of something else. To my right, she
thought in a flight attendant’s nasal voice, is the gloomy North
Sea, waving in heavy salty air, and to the left is the rich green
countryside, dotted with little houses and occasional gas
station/convenience stores that sell odd things like pickled meat.
Beyond the smell of brine from the ocean, she sniffed the lush
green scent of—was it?—heather? Heather was purplish in color, but
smelled...well, green. The thought nearly tripped her as she tried
to remember the names of the vegetation here.

Concentrating on her breath, Fleur listened
to her lungs shakily inhale and struggled to exhale smoothly. But
it wasn’t happening. Her breath was erratic at best. Then, her
brain skipped to the next discussion, as if it were shuffling songs
on her iPod. She thought of the bone she’d drilled yesterday to
extract DNA. It had been a tiny toe bone and hardly well preserved,
so she wasn’t sure if any molecular evidence remained.

That was why she’d left Ithaca, New York and
was here in Scotland. As a favor for her friend, anthropologist Dr.
Rachel Bestin-Calloway, Fleur was trying her best to trace the
genetic markers of the bones Rachel had excavated last year near
Tongue. Since the tarsals were close to Nordic pottery, Fleur was
to prove through DNA that, yes, the Norse, or Vikings, or whatever
they were called now, got around. She wasn’t interested in the
historic research herself, but Fleur would do almost anything for
Rachel—her first real friend since she was fourteen. And Rachel’s
husband, social historian and fellow PhD, Ian Calloway, had tagged
along supposedly to help pass the time with Fleur and Rachel. He’d
been the one to tell her the names of the different kinds of
greenery, like a tour guide, when this was his first trip here too.
Ah, the power of 4G could make anyone an expert.

But Fleur hadn’t found Ian and Rachel this
morning, cementing her half-hearted plan to run this idiotic
marathon. She shouldn’t have done it, her body screamed at her. She
hadn’t had enough sleep last night. Oddly, she kept dreaming of a
dog jumping on her. Only, it wasn’t any kind of dog, but a coyote.
Never a good sign, her grandmother, Na, would have warned. The
dreams hadn’t been the only thing that had made sleep hard to come
by. The wind almost never ceased around Tongue. She’d heard it was
much worse around Cape Wrath—a tidbit of information Ian had told
her yesterday, reading from his smart phone. What a fitting name.
Wrath. Because she felt like she was about to explode with...God,
was this really anger? What the hell was she angry at? She had a
great life. She made great money. She was greatly respected.

That was one of many mantras she repeated,
but this one she whispered to herself when she felt so fragile she
worried she might break.

Fleur’s vision blurred. Damn, it was hot. The
innkeeper had said they’d been having odd weather, being so warm
and all. Fleur had to agree. Even with the ominous gray clouds
rolling in, it was damn-fire hot. Wow, Fleur hadn’t heard an
expression like that since she’d lived in Texas. Weird to think
about that right now. Well, she was probably delirious what with
running too much. Wearing a black running suit as well as her black
CamelBak hadn’t been her best move. Already she had her running
jacket tied around her waist. Her t-shirt crumpled somewhere in the
pocket of the CamelBak with her iPod and cell. The only color she
wore was her expensive-as-hell athletic shoes with florescent blues
and greens.

Blinking a lot helped with her hazy vision,
but for some bizarre reason it made her feel as if she might cry.
Fleur cleared her throat, tripped a little, then found the worn
dirt path that paralleled the road for a bit and eventually dove to
the shore of the
geodha
then led to the cave.

Just a little more. Just a little more.
Dammit, why was this so hard? Why was life so hard?

She had no clue where that thought had come
from.

Stumbling more than jogging, she was relieved
there were no tourists at Cave Smoo. In fact, no one was around.
Which was good, especially when considering how she’d tripped and
face planted as soon as she found the sandy shore, her muscles
seeming tenderized by her run. But rocks and pointy shells did not
make for a comfortable place to rest. She had to get up to cool
down, stretch.

The tide was low, and Fleur could easily walk
into the cave, although her muscles felt like taffy. Wasn’t this
cavern restricted? Hadn’t Ian said something about not being able
to go inside? But her too hot skin desperately needed the shade
from the cavity, and she sank to her knees as a tear escaped from
the corner of her eye. What the hell? She didn’t cry. She. Did.
Not. Cry.

Stretching felt as if her limbs were no
longer her own, and small gray dots began to float in her
periphery. One of the dots moved in her line of vision, and she
swore it looked like a...Shit. A coyote.

A deep male laugh echoed through the
cave.

“Did you just—” she asked the shaggy, skinny
canine. Her voice trembled. Her breath caught in her throat. Her
heart pounded ferociously beneath her ribs. No, she’d imagined the
chuckle, she told herself, trying to calm her goose bump filled
skin, settle the hair standing on her arms and the jittery feeling
at the nape of her neck. But as she gazed at the dog, she wondered
if it was smiling at her. Shaking her head, she speculated about
hallucinations from severe exercise.

That was when she heard a groan. A very
disappointed, as if she were the dumbest person on earth, kind of
groan.

She swallowed slowly, checking the dog again.
It had to be just a dog. There weren’t any coyotes in Scotland.
Were there?

Feeling overwhelmingly hot, she took off her
CamelBak and flung it toward the front entrance, close to a large
limestone rock. But without the small backpack, a chill ran along
her spine, penetrating through her skin. Too hot, now too cold—she
zipped into her black jacket. Drink some water, she sluggishly
reminded herself, but it was just too wonderful to sit. Suddenly,
she realized she wasn’t sitting any longer. Prickles of panic
perforated through her when she realized her cheek was against the
sand, and she could smell the salt from it. While running, she’d
pushed herself too far, a bad habit she perpetuated in other facets
of her life.

The dog began to bark excitedly, but she
could hardly keep her eyes open enough to gauge what he was yipping
at. He jumped up and made funny little yelps, almost sounding like
guffaws. Running in a tight circle a couple times, he then made an
incredibly high leap straight into the air. And hovered there.

Fleur blinked. Weakly, she sat up and stared
at the canine floating above ground. Then, its body shifted so the
stomach flattened around a man’s dark head. On top of the man’s
scalp sat the coyote’s, still looking as though it smiled. Under
the coyote pelt, clad in doe-skin leggings and a breechclout, a man
materialized, standing on the beach, looking eerily like a long ago
Lakota warrior.

It might have taken a thousand years, since
time seemed to drip by like a glacier melting, but the man
eventually gave her an enormous smile. Bright-as-snow teeth beamed
down at her, and he chuckled again. It was deep and rugged. And
altogether too real.

He strode toward her, reached down, grabbed
her arm, and gently lifted her. That was very, very real—his hold
on her, the warmth and strength of his fingers and calloused
palm.

“Why didn’t you take a break, Fleur?” he
drawled. The man spoke as if he had lived his whole life in the
Badlands, on the Sioux reservation.

She wouldn’t answer him. There was no use
talking to something provoked by running too hard. This was just in
her mind. This was just in her mind. This was...

He shook his head slowly and guided her out
of the cave. Although Fleur couldn’t see it, the sun felt calming,
comforting, and no longer too hot.

“Baby girl, don’t you remember your grandma
telling you running too long with no food would give you a
vision?”

She breathed out a puff of relief. “That’s
proof then. I’m just hallucinating. That’s all.”

Then, he really laughed. He laughed so hard
he had to tilt his head back. “You wish, little girl.”

She tried to step away from him, but he held
her firm.

“This can’t be real. This can’t be real. This
can’t be—”

“Oh, but this
can
be real. This can be
real. This can be real.” He mimicked her chanting. “Do those
mantras really work? I mean, really? If you say it enough, it will
come true? Is that what you think?”

As if he’d found a gigantic needle to pop
through her skin, she felt as though she was billowing away from
her corporal form.

“D-don’t—” was all she could offer to defend
herself.

His face went dark. His grip tightened around
her arms. The planes of his cheeks tensed and the parenthesis lines
around his mouth whitened.

Suddenly his grip shifted, softened
incredibly. In the span of a heartbeat, she was suddenly in his lap
while he cradled her as if she were child with a skinned knee,
caressing her hair from her face. Oddly, she felt consoled, but
even that was too unsettling for her to wrap her head around.
Rattled, she tried to pull away, push against him. He let her sit
up and away from his lap, but still held her arms.

“You have Lakota blood in you,” he whispered,
his eyes turned miserably sad. “You are my family. I cannot stand
idly by while you are a shell of who you could be.”

She shook her head. Confusion coursed through
her, making everything blurry and hurt, because she did feel
something familiar about him. Familial. But the words he’d said
felt like nails that kept hitting her too tender skin over and over
again. She was bleeding interiorly. Maybe exteriorly too.

“This is for your own good, Fleur.”

“What?” she finally seemed to have the
capacity to ask.

He looked up as two long shadows drew near.
They were women. Beautiful, glowing-like-gold women with glittering
turquoise eyes.

Recognition flashed through Fleur as she
noted their gold running suits. They no longer wore their matching
hats and larger-than-life sunglasses, but they were the twin-like
women who’d sat under a giant umbrella by the side of a road, as if
that was a natural vacation destination. Not a beach, but the side
of a nearly desolate thoroughfare. Fleur struggled to stand to run
away from the man, from the strange women, from the moment. In her
attempt to flee, she caught the gaze of the coyote still on top of
the man’s head. Something in her snapped back in time to her
grandmother warning her about, Coyote, the trickster god. The man,
the god, not the pelted canine, reached out for her easily enough
as if she weren’t fighting with every last ounce of her strength,
and with tender but calloused hands he drew her closer to him.

He gazed deeply into her eyes. “I’ve had
enough, Fleur. I want so much more for you.” Clearing his throat
the way men do to counter a cry, he looked at the two women, then
slowly nodded.

“We’re giving you a
glimpse
,” one of
the women spoke in a hushed tone. “You’ll stay here, in the
Highlands, but go back a long time ago.”

“What?” Anger surfaced for not having enough
wits to ask anything other than that one useless word. But Fleur
was far too freaked to figure out many other questions. And through
it all she heard...she heard a heartbeat. Her own, or maybe the
trickster god across from her, holding her still in the wet sand,
she didn’t know. But she heard it.
Thump-
thump
,
thump-
thump
,
thump-
thump
.

“I want so much more for you,” he
repeated.

“What?” Fleur heard her own voice, sounding
small, almost child-like.

Coyote’s lips curved at just the tips,
looking almost proud of her. “Always the one with the questions, my
girl.” Then he nodded and glanced at the women again. “How does it
work?”

The woman closest to Fleur raised an elegant
hand. “You’ve had some problems understanding the accents here, and
where I’m sending you the Gaelic is even thicker, but no worries.
You’ll understand them, and they’ll understand you.” Then, she
gently smiled down at Fleur and snapped her fingers. The world was
awash with the scent of salt, the noise of the incoming tide, and
totally usurped by blackness.

Chapter 2

Cave Smoo—a little outside Durness,
Scotland

September in Our Lord’s year of 1653

D
amnation, it was almost autumn,
Duncan MacKay
thought to himself. It wasn't supposed to be this
hot. Instead of the usual continual rain for this season, it was
more like a wicked summer, with the sun lashing down rays as
vicious as a cat o' nine tails until sweat
ran down his body
in rivulets. Well, running for almost thirty miles—beginning in
Tongue then ending here—would make a grown man sweat too.
Certainly, Highlanders were used to sprinting for long distances,
but son o’ a bitch this was a bit much for a simple training,
especially with men so green. Some of the troops were mere lads,
not even ten and four years of age. Even younger than his own
brothers.

He winced at the thought, reminding himself
to steer clear of such considerations, except when he was alone.
And drunk.

That’s when he realized he
was
alone.
He’d somehow outrun the new recruits. And he was the old man, eh?
Well, of course they’d call him that. He was two and thirty, while
they were almost twenty years his junior.

Standing beside Cave Smoo—the troops
destination before they retired further in to Durness, his
hometown—Duncan focused on the deep, greenish gray Geodha Smoo, the
bay that licked at the cave. Making sure no one was close by of the
few houses on the other side of the dirt road, he took a deep
breath. Or tried to. After the run, he was puffing like an old man
who couldn’t get enough of his pipe. Walking again made him feel as
if he was flailing about similar to a wounded stag. All for his new
captain, Rory, the MacKay’s brother fresh from the Lowlands,
thinking he’d teach his recruits a thing or two about military
discipline by running the devil out of them.