Elesyria paused, her hand halfway to her mouth with another bite. “Twelve . . . ninety-two? Ninety-three? I have trouble keeping up with how you Mortals delineate time.”
“Twelve ninety-four,” Patrick interjected. “November, twelve ninety-four, to be precise.”
Dani paled again and Malcolm grabbed for her elbows, but she shoved his hands away, instead dropping down onto the seat she’d earlier occupied, her hands splayed open on her cheeks.
“Holy shit,” she breathed, turning her eyes on the Faerie. “Holy. Freaking. Shit. What were you people thinking? I can’t be here. I’m like seven hundred years away from where I belong.”
“Be that as it may. This is where you must be to fulfill your purpose, my dear. That was what you wanted, wasn’t it?” Elesyria shrugged and popped another bite into her mouth. “Thisis where you belong.”
Malcolm flickered his gaze between the two women, feeling as if they shared some enormous secret that they were willfully withholding from him.
It didn’t matter. All that did matter was getting this woman back to her own home so he could turn his attention to all the other problems plaguing his life. It was time he took charge. Secret be damned.
“Who are her people? Where are they? She’s obviously no from around here.”
Dani snorted in a most unladylike fashion. “Give the man a blue ribbon for understatement of the year.”
He decided to ignore her nonsense, continuing to address his questions to Elesyria.
“Where is she from?”
“When,Malcolm, notwhere. Don’t be obtuse.Whenis she from,” the Faerie corrected, smiling up at him as if it were all some wonderful jest.
“When,” he repeated, having no clue what the woman meant.
“When!” Dani asserted. “Unbelievable. I wait fifteen years for these damned Faeries to pay the slightest bit of attention to me and then when they do, they send me seven hundred years into the past.”
“Into the—” Malcolm caught himself repeating her words and clamped his lips tightly together as understanding washed over him. “Yer trying to tell me they’ve brought you here from the future?”
Dani gave him a look, her lips pursed and her eyebrows raised. “So it would appear.”
He sat down hard on the bench next to her, sparing a thought as to whether her tendency to swoon might not have transferred to him.
Eleven
WHY ARE WEwasting our time doing this when Elesyria’s already told us it won’t work?”
The question had been circling around in Dani’s thoughts from the moment she and Malcolm had first mounted the horses on which they rode. The Faerie had told them that the Goddess had brought her here to serve out her purpose. That she belonged here, so there was no way she could go back home.
And yet, here they were, wrapped in woolens and furs, traipsing hours through the frigid wilderness, headed for a stone circle where Malcolm claimed to have found her.
“I canna claim for a fact that Elesyria speaks the truth. This is something I must try.”
“But she’s Faerie.”
“All the more reason to doubt her,” Malcolm muttered, lifting an arm to point toward the woods they were about to enter. “We’re very close now. Do you remember any of this? It’s just through these trees.”
Dani shook her head in answer. She had only a vague memory of awaking in this man’s arms and feeling frightened and very, very angry. As if in response, a twinge of pain rippled through her right hand and another memory shimmered into being.
A memory of her drawing back her fist and connecting with his jaw.
Her gaze slid to his face, studying the strong chin covered in a day’s growth of beard. The shadow of whiskers was dark against his skin, but the stain of color beneath was unmistakable.
No wonder he was so anxious to be rid of her. He’d ridden all this way out into the middle of nowhere to save her life and what was her response? A little gratitude? A hearty “Thank you for not leaving me out here in the cold to die”? No, not her. She’d tried to clean his clock.
An apology would probably be in order. And she’d give it to him, too. Just as soon as she could figure out how to word it while leaving his male dignity intact. He didn’t strike her at all as a beta kind of guy who might not mind admitting a woman had bruised him.
Besides, riding single file through the trees staring at his horse’s rear end didn’t seem the appropriate time to give it a go even if she’d figured out how to approach him.
