He walked until he came to the invisible border that lay between MacLeod and Cameron lands, then turned to face the more-than-visible doorway that had simply opened up between the centuries.
On the other side of that threshold stood none other than Mairead MacLeod, who he was beginning to suspect had a level of curiosity that rivaled his own.
There was a little voice in the back of his head that told him he was about to make a colossal error in judgment, but he ignored it. He was being polite, nothing more.
He made her a bow. “Good morning, my lady.”
She smiled. “And to you, good sir.”
He clasped his hands behind his back and found, to his utter lack of surprise, that small talk eluded him. Unfortunately, his companion seemed to be just as bad at it.
“How is the weather there?” he asked, finally.
She looked at him, then laughed.
Oh, that was bad on so many levels. He needed to keep his wits about him, concentrate on getting himself free of Scotland, and convince that woman there that she should remain in her proper time. But if her smile was like sunlight after weeks of rain, her laugh was closer to having an angel standing above his head, pouring that same sunlight onto only him.
“Damp and cold,” she said politely. “And on your side of the doorway?”
“Warm and sunny.”
“Are you certain you’re in the Highlands?”
“At the moment, my lady, I’m not quite certain of anything.”
Her smile faded a bit. “I wanted to see if I’d lost my wits entirely.”
He shook his head. “Still there, I’d say.”
She hesitated, then nodded. “I should likely turn for home, then.”
He could think of a dozen reasons why that made the most sense of anything he’d heard in days, but he couldn’t bring himself to voice a single damned one of them, so he settled for an innocuous platitude.
“Probably so,” he agreed.
“I shouldn’t come through the gate again.”
He nodded slowly. “Probably not.”
“It would be… imprudent.”
He nodded again. “A bit.”
She said nothing else, she simply stood there and looked at him, silent and grave.
He considered all the reasons why he should give her a friendly wave, tell her to behave herself, then turn and bolt for Moraig’s. He reminded himself of Jamie’s single lifting of a single eyebrow on his way out the door that morning that warned him he was playing with fire. He even groped mentally for the modicum of good sense that would surely bellow at him that if he were going to date, he should likely find someone who was born in at least an adjacent century, not four hundred years in the past. He marshalled all that good sense and prepared himself to do the right, if not the difficult, thing.
And found himself holding out his hand toward her.
She closed her eyes briefly, then looked at him and put her hand in his.
He pulled her into the future and heard the gate close behind her with a soft click. She looked over her shoulder in alarm, then back at him.
“Will it open again?” she asked breathlessly.
Hopefully notwas almost out of his mouth before he stopped it. He managed a smile instead.
“If not, there are others.”
