She wondered what sorts of stories might have been related by the scribe who had written down the Duke of Birmingham’s tale.
She took a deep breath, then took another look around herself to make certain there were no faeries peeking out from behind trees to see if she might suit a piece of their mischief, then turned and walked away before she lingered overlong. No sense in tempting fate—or any number of her kin—to be more curious about her doings than necessary.
She walked out from under the last of the trees and came to an ungainly halt.
There was a man walking toward her. He wasn’t wearing light-colored breeches and a dark coat; his trews were a bluish color that she would have found at the loch that lay farther east from her home and his coat was black. She honestly had no idea if he wore boots or not.
What she did know was that the morning sun peeking over the mountains behind her had fallen on his hair that was still the color of golden summer grasses. She could scarce believe her eyes, so she rubbed them, then looked again.
He was gone.
She whirled around but only found herself with a face full of morning sunlight.
Well, it was obviously something… she took a deep breath. She didn’t believe in faeries or sprites, though she wasn’t above the odd charm put in her pocket or the willingness to concede that there were a few mysterious happenings in the distant aforetimes of her clan.
She shook her head, then turned away from the sun and continued on her way. She had spent far too much time looking at the painting on the front of her book and it had inflamed her frenzied imagination—her uncle’s words, not hers, though he was scarce one to be criticizing anyone else for that sort of thing. She hadn’t just seen a fair-haired man walk past her; she had seen a shaft of sunlight and drawn a finely fashioned lad out of her imagination.
She rubbed her arms and walked quickly back to the hall to get on with her endless list of sensible, unmagical tasks.
Life was far safer that way.
Three
Oliver was beginning to suspectthe place between too much sleep and not nearly enough might be the only spot where a man didn’t need to consign what he thought he might be seeing out of the corner of his eye to either a hallucination or an overly rested imagination.
Day Two of the Horrible Highland Holiday was off to a brilliant start.
He squinted against the rays of post-dawn sunlight that filtered through the trees, catching motes of whatever it was trees deposited in the air—it was for damned certain that those same flickers of light weren’t revealing a woman dressed in a rustic Highland gown, wearing a shawl, and no doubt looking for a hair band to catch up absurdly long waves of hair. He would have hazarded a guess at the color, but he was obviously hallucinating so perhaps the color could be up to him.
He considered, then shook his head. He had been too long out of the company of women, which left him obviously needing to hallucinate one. Maybe he needed to date more. Unfortunately, he seemed to be limited to an excruciating and ever-lengthening series of terrible first dates. He wasn’t certain why he seemed to frighten off all sensible dating partners so quickly, though that might have been his inability to make inane small talk, which left him discussing things that interested him.
Perhaps 12th-century art, Renaissance swordmaking, and the inner workings of not only Regency pistols but how quickly a man might down half a bottle of port yet still accept the invitation to pick the lock to his equally Regency-era mis- tress’s bedchamber weren’t interesting to anyone else.
All the other things he could have discussed—several things that flirted quite heavily with the line between good taste and illegality—were likely best left alone, along with attempting to unravel what he might or might not have just seen out of the corner of his eye.
He liked to be thorough, though, so he took another look around himself to see if there were any lost Scottish maidens to rescue. He found none, so he turned himself back to the matter at hand which was to get himself to what the MacLeods referred to fondly asthe witch’s house up the way. He’d also heard it referred to as Moraig’s house, a woman he knew had been the last clan witch to live there. He hadn’t quite managed to investigate the illustrious Miss MacLeod past her name for the simple reason that, the surrounding environs being what they were, he wasn’t entirely certain he wouldn’t run afoul of her birthdate finding itself firmly entrenched in some century that would make him uncomfortable. He shivered in spite of himself, then carried on to the cottage twenty feet away.
That cottage had been offered to him as a spa-like retreat from the cares and worries of the world, though the pithy warning he’d had from Jamie that morning on his way out the door had been limited tomind the threshold.
He stopped on the edge of that threshold, looked up to make certain nothing was going to drop on his head and kill him, then looked at the lock there. Completely inadequate given that a small running start and a firm shoulder against the door would easily accomplish entry, something he imagined Jamie also knew. He pulled a pair of well-loved tools from their usual resting place on the underside of his watch, made quick work of the deadbolt in front of him, then let himself inside. He flicked on the lights and caught his breath a little at the sight that greeted him.
He felt as if he’d stepped back in time half a century.
He looked over his shoulder to make sure that wasn’t the case, but the outside looked as he’d just left it. He’d heard the story, of course, about how Robert and Sunshine Cameron had tried to cross that threshold together and wound up in two entirely different places. He had no reason to disbelieve it—and several reasons to accept it as the absolute truth—but that had nothing to do with him.
He set his bag down on the floor near the kitchen, propped his sword up against the small counter that separated that same kitchen from the rest of what seemed to serve as a reception room. He made note of the sleeping nook that absolutely wasn’t going to allow him to do anything but curl up in a ball and hope for the best. Maybe he would throw a blanket on the floor in front of the fireplace and call it good.
He heard the crunch of tires against gravel outside and was half tempted to go hide in the loo. A coward he was not, though, so he took a firm grip on his company manners and went to stand in the doorway. Sunshine Cameron was being given a hand out of the car by one of Patrick MacLeod’s lads, Bobby, who fortunately for his ability to continue to breathe hadn’t been a part of the recent madness. Oliver nodded at him, had an answering nod that obviously contained a fair amount of manly sympathy, then made his laird’s wife a low bow as she approached.
“Lady Sunshine,” he said politely.
She inclined her head regally. “Master Phillips.”
“Perhaps you would care to take your ease by the fire I haven’t built yet, my lady?”
She laughed a little. “That would be lovely, but you know me and doorways. Well, particularly this doorway.”
“I understand,” he said. He paused. “Not sure I believe it entirely, but I understand.”
