Wild Highland Rose (Time Travel Trilogy, Book 2) (8 page)

She frowned at him, trying to understand what could possibly have caused his pain. 
"
'
Tis the spring of fourteen hundred and sixty-eight.
"

It was as though she
'
d struck him with a claymore or stabbed him with her dirk.  What little color remained was gone in an instant, and she feared his very life was draining away.  Without thinking of the consequences she rushed to his side, her warm hand clasping his cold one. 
"
You
'
re no
'
well.
"

"
1468?
"
  The question was pitched so low, she had to lean close to hear him. 
"
Are you sure?
"

"
Of course I
'
m sure.
"
  She spoke slowly, enunciating each word.

His eyes locked with hers, the naked anguish there tearing at her heart. 
"
It
'
s seems, then, that I was right.  I
'
m a long way from home.
"

1468. 

Cameron closed his eyes and then opened them again, taking in the stone room, the chamber pot peeking out from under the bed, the open window with its wooden shutters and the woman standing by the bed.

1468
.

His head swirled, reality twisting in on itself, the truth slamming home with a finality that left him breathless.  He wasn't just inexplicably in Scotland.  He was inexplicably in
fifteenth century
Scotland.  And this woman thought he was her husband.

Terror flooded through him, his mind desperately wanting to reject the facts, but categorically unable to dismiss them.  He wasn
'
t just a man without identity.  He was a man with the wrong identity.  A stranger in body and time.  Or perhaps Marjory was right.  Maybe he was just crazy.

In some ways the latter was more comforting.  At least it was quantifiable.  Scientifically possible.  But he knew it wasn
'
t the truth.  He was sane.  It was the world around him that was certifiable, a madhouse worse than anything Lewis Carroll could have possibly imagined.

Another horrifying thought occurred to him, and he closed his eyes again, trying to envision his likeness.  A picture popped automatically into his head, and he was flooded with relief, but only for a moment.  If he was right, then the face existed only in his mind.

"
I need a mirror.
"
  The words came out on a croak, and he swallowed, his eyes meeting Marjory
'
s.  She stared back at him, his own horror reflected in her eyes.

Obviously, she thought him unbalanced, or maybe possessed.  Which unfortunately was all too close to the truth. 
"
I
'
ve no notion of what it is you want.
"
  She, too, whispered, as if their discussion needed to remain private.

He scrambled for another word, something that would explain to her what he required. 
"
A looking glass."  Her face was still blank.  "Something that will reflect my face.  Marjory, I need to see myself."

She raised an eyebrow in question, but nodded, turning to a chest in the corner.  Opening it, she pulled out a flat piece of metal polished to a high shine.  A shield of some sort.  Still silent, she handed it to him.

He held the improvised mirror out from his face and, heart pounding, took a look.  The man in the mirror was sun-bronzed and heavily muscled.  His hair was long, somewhere between blonde and brown.  His face was hard, his skin toughened by life in the outdoors.  The face was young and old at the same time.  There weren't any wrinkles, but there also were no laugh lines.

The faint white pucker of a scar ran across one cheek, tracing a thin line from his ear to his chin.  Even with the imperfection of the reflection, he could see that his eyes were the same color as his hair.  A lion, the man in the mirror was a lion
—
and a perfect stranger.

This, then, was Ewen Cameron.

Cameron stared at the face in the mirror, his mind recoiling at the enormity of what was happening.  He was looking at himself, and yet it wasn
'
t his reflection.  Not his face, not his century.  He was certain of the fact.  His life, if he still had one, belonged with dream induced memories of rainy nights and a car with a leather interior, and the blonde.

But if all that was true, then there were some pretty overwhelming questions to be answered.  Like how the hell he
'
d gotten here and how in the world was he going to get back?  For that matter, what had happened to the real Ewen Cameron?  Was he dead?  Was he roaming around in someone else's body?  Cameron
'
s body?

The questions built up one after another until Cameron felt as if his head would explode. God, he wished his memory would return.

He blanched as another unwanted thought planted itself firmly in his brain.  What if he never remembered?  What if it was part of the nightmare?  What if he was always caught in some sort of limbo between glimpses of who he really was and tales of who he was not?

No
.

He simply could not, would not accept that.  His memory would come back.  Amnesia was seldom permanent.  He latched onto that thought, forcing himself to ignore the accompanying thought that traumatic head injury didn't send its victim five hundred years into the past.

"
I shouldn
'
t be at all surprised that you
'
d spend the better part of the day admiring yourself.  But I
'
ve work to do and no time for lollygagging about with you.
"

Marjory
'
s voice drew him sharply back to the present
—
the past actually.  He grimaced, and lowered the mirror, trying to hide the turmoil.  Until he knew who he could trust, he wasn
'
t about to share his thoughts.  Especially with Marjory.

"
I thought it might trigger memories,
"
he shrugged. 
"
But there
'
s nothing.
"
He handed her the shield, forcing himself to breathe normally, there was no sense in panicking.  If he was going to make sense of this nightmare, he had to get out of this bed, and to do that he had to hold his cards close to the vest.

Marjory was staring at him through narrowed eyes, her expression somewhere between pity and contempt. 
"
Grania says they
'
ll come back.
"

They
'
d covered this territory before, but this time Cameron was determined to get more information. 
"
Until then, I have some questions.
"
  He tried to make his tone pleasant.  To keep at least a semblance of normalcy. 
"
Please stay.
"
  He patted the bed next to him in what he hoped was an inviting manner.  In truth, his head was pounding and what he wanted most was to be alone, but that wouldn
'
t get him answers.

Marjory glared at him suspiciously and then, apparently making up her mind, ignored the spot he'd indicated, and sat instead in the chair vacated by Grania.  He sighed.  The woman had a will of her own.

"What do you wish to speak about?"  She sat perfectly straight in the chair, poised on the edge, obviously ready to make a hasty retreat if necessary.

He wondered what Ewen had done to make her so wary of him. 
"
Maybe we should start with why you hate me so much.
"

She flinched, obviously not expecting the question. 
"
'
Tis mutual.
"

It wasn
'
t an answer, but it spoke volumes just the same. 
"
Whatever I felt before I don
'
t feel it now.  You
'
re a stranger to me.  And I can
'
t move forward with my life until I at least have a rudimentary understanding of who I was before I fell.
"

She looked as though she didn
'
t believe him, which given the circumstances was perfectly reasonable, but he was oddly disappointed nevertheless.

"
So if we hate each other, why the marriage?
"

She eyed him distrustfully. 
"
You're a Cameron and I'm a Macpherson.  Our families are enemies and, in their infinite wisdom, they decided a marriage between our clans would lessen tensions."

"You, I mean,
we
,
"
he amended,
"
were the sacrificial lambs, I take it?"

"Aye."

"Did it work?"  The situation sounded like something out of a macabre fairy tale. 
"
Did your marriage to Ewen ease the tension between your clans?"

"
You speak as if you are not he.
"
  Her expression held both fear and puzzlement.

He cursed his choice of words, he
'
d have to be more careful.  If these people perceived him as insane, his chances for escape were nil. 
"
I
'
m sorry, it
'
s just that hearing all this is like listening to a story.  Someone else
'
s life.
"

She sighed, her expression softening. 
"
I can imagine the way of it.
"

"
So did the marriage solve the problems between our clans?
"
He pulled the focus of the conversation back to the past
—
his past in some weirdly twisted way.

"Nay.
"
she shook her head. 
"
The sacrifice, as you call it, was for naught."

"I see."  He paused, looking down at his hands
,
or more relevantly Ewen
'
s hands.

She followed his gaze, staring for a moment and then looking away in seeming embarrassment.  Without thinking, he reached out and touched her hand.  Electricity flew between them almost as if there were actually a current of some sort.

She pulled her hand away, anger sparking in her eyes. 
"
I've no more time for
blathering
blethering
,
"
she snapped, jumping up from the chair. 
"
There's work to be done and it won't take care of itself.  Your
father
,
"
she spat the word as if it were a curse,
"
will be here soon.  Whatever it is you need to know, you can learn it from him.
"

Without giving him time to answer, she fled, leaving Cameron with the uncomfortable feeling that she
'
d taken the sunshine with her.

*****

"I dinna know what it is, Aimil, but he is no' the same."  Marjory raised the linen to her lips and snapped the embroidery thread.

Aimil
frowned.  "Not with yer teeth. 
Ye were raised to be a lady no'  a stable boy.  And change or no'
,
the mon is still a Cameron and in my books that makes him the enemy.  Have ye forgotten so quickly then what his family did to yours?"

Marjory bit her lip in concentration as she tried to thread the small needle.  Finally, in frustration, she handed it to Aimil who deftly threaded it and handed it back.  Marjory sighed, failing to see the importance of being able to thread a needle.  There were far more critical things to worry about.  And best she could tell, there was no one at Crannag Mhór who cared at all if she could embroider tapestry.  Well, no one except Aimil.

She picked up the piece and earnestly began to stitch.
 
"Of course I haven't forgotten, Aimil.  I live with that legacy every day of my life.  I was only saying that I think Ewen has changed."  Her body fairly sang at the thought of the physical changes.  But that wasn
'
t all of it.  There was something more, something she couldn
'
t put her finger on.  Something she was hesitant to even think about, let alone believe.

"
Ye sound as if yer taking an interest in the man.
"
  Aimil shot her a concerned look over the top of her tapestry frame.