She sucked in a deep breath, uncertain of whether she felt relieved or worse. Laid out like that, it didn’t seem any less crazy.
You’ve done it now, you idiot. They’re going to think you’re some kind of lunatic, a sorceress, or a mythical monster.
She glanced at Isla with worried eyes, suddenly very afraid. “You must think I’ve lost my mind, and I know it sounds impossible, but it’s exactly what happened. I swear it on my mother. I swear it on my best friend.” Her throat bobbed. “She’ll be so worried about me.”
Isla abandoned her search for frocks and wandered over to rest her hands on Nancy’s shoulders, looking her square in the eyes. “I’d say that stranger things have happened, lassie.” She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Ye have to remember, ye’re in Scotland now. There are things in these lands that nay one can explain: spirits, creatures, monsters, myths, ghosts, any strange thing ye can think of.”
A wary frown creased Nancy’s brow. “You’re being very open-minded about this, Isla. Even I don’t know if I believe it.”
The older woman seemed completely unfazed, in fact.
“Aye, well, I’ve a friend who often tells me wild tales,” she replied with a shrug. “Yers is nothin’ compared to hers.”
Nancy had to wonder if she’d actually fallen asleep in the armchair and this entire exchange was some kind of fever dream. How could this woman be so okay with the idea of time travel? How could anyone just nod and accept it when the very idea was a struggle to wrap one’s head around?
“Now, ye get into bed and have yerself a wee sleep while I choose somethin’ appropriate for ye to wear so ye daenae stand out,” Isla instructed, with the stern but kind voice of a mother who wouldn’t tolerate any refusal. “I’ll drape it over that chair over there and have a maid come to help ye, or I can come back and help ye.”
Nancy swallowed thickly. “You’re not going to tell the Hawk, are you?”
“Yer secret is safe with me, lass,” Isla assured her with a smile. “Others may nae be so forgivin’, but they need never ken. And his name is Hunter, nae ‘the Hawk.’ None of us call him that here.”
Hunter… of what, exactly?
If it was the truth, then it was going to be a very awkward stay at the castle. A man like that, so stern and serious, would never understand. If Nancy told him what she’d just told Isla, he’d have had her back in the dungeons faster than she could say,You’ll die in a month.
A horrible tremor ran through her as she pictured that tapestry in her mind’s eye. She’d completely forgotten her dazed horror when he’d told her the date. But if all of this was real, and she actually had traveled three hundred years into the past, then… his time was running out.
But he had a wife. Is he engaged again?
A funny feeling coiled in the pit of her stomach, her face heating up as she thought of him leaning in to whisper those titillating words.A pity.
She managed a small nod in Isla’s direction. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“And remember what we said,” Isla pressed, ushering her toward the bed and pulling back the blankets for her. “Ye’re a nursemaid.”
As if to punctuate the ridiculousness of that, and probably her protest, the baby on the other side of the bed began to cry.
Nancy knew just how the poor thing felt.
CHAPTER 7
The doorsto the Lesser Hall squeaked open, and Hunter’s eyes snapped toward the sound.
His aunt came into the room first, looking rather pleased with herself. A moment later, he understood why, as a vision in a gown of purple and green tartan swept in behind her.
They weren’t his clan colors—in truth, he wasn’t sure who they belonged to—but they became her well, complementing her dark hair and sun-browned skin.
Now, that’s a Scottish lass.
A tight bodice finally allowed him a full picture of Nancy’s curves, her ample bosom rising and falling with obvious nerves, while an overskirt seemed to have widened her hips, a crisp white petticoat showing through the gap between. Draped sleeves gave her slender arms a certain elegance, though she moved as if she wasn’t quite comfortable.
He set down the leg of pheasant he’d been about to bite into, and as his eyes roved over her hourglass figure, and the glimpses of bare skin at her throat and bosom and forearms, he had a sudden craving for something altogether more satisfying. To sink his teeth into something more tender.
Ye should have let me chain ye up, lass.
She looked at him then, her dark blue eyes shining, her cheeks flushed a pleasant pink hue—the kind he couldn’t help but imagine in a more intimate setting, without all those layers hiding what he’d so admired in those inappropriate trews, that honeyed skin slick with sweat.
He bit into the pheasant anyway, hoping the taste would distract his mind from wandering where it shouldn’t. But if the lasshadbeen sent here as a trick, to entice him and slit his throat while he slept, he sensed he was in a little more danger than he’d realized.
