Hunter was in her head and under her skin, and she couldn’t get him out.
He had no business being everywhere that she was. He had no business gazing at her when he was the one who’d pulled away. He had no business kissing her and changing everything she knew about kissing. And he certainly had no business acting all protective, asking her if she wanted him to punish one of his own for being rightfully suspicious of her.
Am I any better?
She couldn’t say she was, when she’d stayed here instead of going to wherever Jane lived to solve the return time-travel situation. That would have been far easier than waiting for Adeline to come back with all of the information, yet the way Adeline had phrased it had made it seem like the best solution at the time.
If she thinks she’s getting another twenty-first-century girl to stay here, she’s going to be sorely disappointed.
Maybe if she were a great inventor or engineer or… a renowned chef, it might have made sense for Adeline to want her to stay. But Nancy was a journalist. What place did a journalist have in the 1700s? She wasn’t even sure they had newspapers, just those men who rang bells and shouted news in the middle of town squares. Maybe they didn’t even have those.
“This is pointless.” She threw back the covers and grabbed a cloak from the wardrobe, throwing it around herself as she slipped her feet into her beloved sneakers.
No one would be awake to see her, so she didn’t need to worry about anyone judging the sorcery of her footwear.
That done, she headed out, pausing to grab a lantern on the way.
She’d lose her mind if she stayed in bed tossing and turning, her wayward brain wishing Hunter were there to do something about it. What she needed was a cold shower to shock that man out of her system, and since there wereno showers here, she knew exactly where to go.
With pleasing proficiency and alotof rehearsed mnemonics about her lefts and rights, downs and ups, she managed to navigate the maze of corridors, hallways, staircases, and passages down to the gardens.
Moonlight peeked bashfully from behind purplish clouds, tingeing the lawns and wildflowers with silver, while stars glittered intermittently and a chilly wind blew across this corner of the Highlands.
But Nancy hadn’t come down there to be warm. She was there to take a cold dip until no heated thoughts of Hunter crept into her head anymore. The chilly breeze was just the prelude.
Holding the lantern up higher to cast more light on where she was going, she found the gap in the wall and, gripping the makeshift rope railing until her knuckles whitened, descended toward the glint of icy-cold water.
“Don’t mind if I do,” she murmured appreciatively as she reached the flat stone edges of the pool and spotted a recess a short distance away. The perfect spot to strip out of her clothes.
Setting down her lantern a safe distance from the edge of the pool, so no splashes would sputter it out, she gritted her teeth against the cold and peeled away her cloak and nightdress.
With a few ragged puffs of breath, like she was blowing on something hot, she hopped across the space between her clothes and the pool and, with zero hesitation, threw herself in before she could change her mind.
Oh… oh… Heck, that’s cold!
The pool was deeper than she’d thought, and though she kicked her legs as far down as they would go, she couldn’t feel the bottom. In the darkness of night, even with the moonlight shining, she couldn’t evenseethe bottom.
A little shudder of unease ran through her, mingling with the tremors of bitter cold that swept through her senses, as she imagined some mythical creature down there wondering if she would make a tasty midnight snack.
Get a grip.
With all the fortitude she could muster, she began to swim, and as she swam, she began to enjoy herself. The cold thawed as she moved her muscles, and the heat of her efforts warmed her, her arms cutting cleanly through the water, her legs kicking fast.
She’d always been a good swimmer, and she wondered why she hadn’t made more use of the heated pools back home.
Something about the water over her ears seemed to calm her, too, as if the liquid itself was creating a blockade that thoughts of Hunter couldn’t breach. It was just her and the water and the mechanical motion of her limbs propelling her through it, over and over, lap after lap, as meditative as anything else she could think of.
This is bliss. I could get used to this.
She smiled to herself as she tried something she hadn’t done in years, not since her school days: a tumble-turn. Her nose burned as she curved into the water, but as her body twisted and her feet braced to push off, she missed the stone wall completely. In the dark, she must have misjudged it.
Panic swooped in, and it didn’t care that she was a proficient swimmer who’d just done fifty laps already. Her hands flailed for a surface that didn’t come, her legs kicking wildly. The moon had hidden behind a cloud, and the world was plunged into deep shadow, making it impossible to tell which way was up or down; her vision was blurred, and fear was robbing her of logic.
All she knew was that she couldn’t breathe, and she had no notion of where the air was.
Just then, the surface rippled and a froth of white danced in her vision, a flurry of bubbles popping against her skin. Strong arms wrapped around her waist, lifting her until her head broke the surface.
She gasped in a shuddering breath, coughing and spluttering as she grasped for whoever had grabbed her. Her fingertips sank into hard muscle, the arm around her like an iron lifebelt, while a broad, slick shoulder provided the perfect place for her to rest her head as she sucked in breath after lovely breath.
