She found herself pulled aside and expected to find Oliver there. Instead, she encountered her brother who looked just the slightest bit unsettled. Perhaps he realized too late that the flames he had been fanning the night before had gotten far beyond anything he could control.
She looked over her shoulder, away from the hall, toward what was left of a wall that had once surrounded the keep. She watched a Highlander vault easily over it and stride forward, keeping to a larger part of the crowd, but moving with a purpose. It occurred to her with a start that the man had to be James MacLeod himself. She watched him clap a hand on Oliver’s shoulder and pull him away, back toward the wall, in a direction that would eventually allow them both to trot back up the meadow and return to Oliver’s proper time.
Oliver argued with Jamie for a moment, then closed his eyes and nodded.
She found his gaze locked with hers and suspected that he might have uttered a pleasing sentiment or two if he’d been able.
“Where is that fair-haired Englishman!” Master James yelled suddenly.
Mairead exchanged another look with Oliver, then turned away and made her way forward to face the man behind the current madness. She had scarce begun to wonder what she might say when she found herself shoved so hard that she went down to her knees. She jumped back to her feet partly because her father had taught her to do so that she might either fight or run without delay and partly because her brother had just taken his wife by the arm and pushed her into a spot directly in front of Master James.
“Test her,” Tasgall said, his chest heaving. “I cannot listen to another moment of her screeching.”
Mairead felt the weight of the decision she knew she had no choice but to make fall upon her without mercy. Deirdre was unpleasant and shrill, but she was Ambrose’s mother and the bairns needed her still. Mairead knew very well what it was like to lose a mother as a child. Her mother had been a cold, distant woman, even less affectionate than Deirdre, but the loss had still grieved her.
She couldn’t let that happen to Ambrose and his siblings.
She caught sight of Oliver once more, wished him every happiness in his future, then turned back to the madness before her. She couldn’t help but wonder how a stake had been found so quickly, who had cut it, and how many of her cousins had been willing to see one of their own sent to it. She could scarce believe that she was surrounded by people who had lost their wits entirely, but she had to admit that Master James had been persuasive.
She stepped forward through the insanity that surrounded her, pulled Deirdre out of the way, then stopped directly in front ofMaster James. She took a deep breath, then pushed her gown off the very top of her shoulder.
There was a mark there, not quite in the shape of a flower, but not quite a perfect circle either. She’d had it from the moment of her birth and thought nothing of it.
Master James didn’t seem to share her indifference.
And she had thought Hell had already arrived.
She’d been wrong.
Thirteen
Oliver cursed his way upthe meadow, barely scratching the surface of all the languages in which he knew how to find the loo.
He knew he couldn’t stay. He knew Mairead couldn’t come to the future with him. The knowledge of both those things was so awful, he couldn’t find words in any of those languages to describe the depth of the agony that knowledge dealt him.
The only thing that made it any better at all was the equally terrible knowledge that it was Deirdre headed toward the pyre, not Mairead. He absolutely hated the thought of that happening to her, but what was he going to do? For all he knew, it would be better for Ambrose and his siblings to have Mairead as their mother. His own governess had been a far better mother to him than his own mother had been during the first six years of his life until they’d dumped him at boarding school.
Now, if there just hadn’t been something about the whole scene that had seemed… off. He hardly knew how to describe it and wasn’t entirely sure he was in a fit state to analyze it. Had there been a look he couldn’t quite remember, or a word he didn’t quite understand, or a direction he hadn’t been looking in that he suspected he should have been?
He made it all the way to the gate in the meadow before what he’d seen finally sank in.
Mairead had been standing in front of that crowd of nutters, looking at Deirdre with compassion in her expression.
She couldn’t possibly have intended to take her sister-in-law’s place…
Jamie’s grip on his arm was like an iron manacle. “We must gonow.”
Oliver would have fought him—indeed, he tried briefly—but Jamie’s sword was sharp and he looked perfectly ready to use it for business Oliver decided immediately he didn’t want to be a part of. He also thought he might be in shock, which he suspected was substantially less terrifying than what Mairead would be facing—or had already faced. He heard shouting coming from the keep in the distance, shouting mixed with curses and perhaps even a scream or two, but before he could decide, Jamie had pushed him into the future and the gate had closed behind them both.
Oliver stumbled away, then leaned over with his hands on his thighs until he’d caught his breath. He waited another moment or two until the urge to kill the current laird of the clan MacLeod had receded, then heaved himself upright.
“I have to go back.”
“You cannot.”
“Cannot,” Oliver said, “or should not?”
Jamie resheathed his sword over his shoulder with an unthinkingness that Oliver had to admit was highly unsettling. He could scarce bring himself to imagine how many times the man had done just that very thing, unthinkingly.
