If he ever had been blessed with a daughter, he would have wished for one as brave as this girl.
“Robert, lass. Call me Robert. Is there something you need of me?”
She nodded, her eyes fixed on her feet even as the color rose in her cheeks.
“Everyone back there’s pretty excited about planning a wedding. I didn’t want to interrupt them.” She lifted her gaze to meet his steadily. “But I have so many questions. Can you tell me where we’ll go? What it will be like?”
“I can try,” he answered as he led the way to two garden benches separated by a small table.
When he reached toward her, she flinched, a haunted expression fleeting across her face.
How could he have been so thoughtless? Considering what the lass had been through, he shouldn’t be surprised she could bear no man’s touch. The filthy Nuadian bastards had kidnapped Leah and held her captive, poked her with needles as they drained her blood to increase their own powers, and all but raped her.
Stepping back a respectful pace, he waited for her to choose one seat before he took the other.
“You’ve no changed yer mind about going, have you?” Was that the root of her questions?
Her eyes rounded and she shook her head vehemently, her fingers playing over the stone hanging from her neck. “Oh no, not at all. I want to go. We can’t leave soon enough as far as I’m concerned.” She shrugged and looked out over the expanse of garden. “I just... I just want to have some idea of what I’ll be facing when I get there. I mean, it’s not like we’re talking about a trip across the country. I remember from my literature class last year that the language used in medieval Britain was entirely different from what’s spoken today. How are we even going to communicate with people?”
Robert nodded thoughtfully. That one had concerned him, too, when he’d first come forward in time. “You’ll have no problem, lass. I canna explain how, but the Faerie Magic takes it all into account. What you’ll speak, what you’ll understand when you arrive in that time—it will all be the same to yer ears and to those around you. The only difference you’ll note is that some of yer words are unknown to them, so they’ll likely find yer speech patterns to be strange.”
“What kinds of words?” Leah leaned toward him, her thirst for knowledge lighting a fire in her eyes.
“Words for those things they’ve no understanding of. Cars, for example. Or airplanes. Do you get my meaning?”
She nodded thoughtfully, wisps of gold hair falling over her shoulder. “So I don’t need to worry about learning a new language. Do you have any idea where we’ll go?”
It was Robert’s turn to nod slowly. He’d been giving this some thought since the moment he’d volunteered to accompany Leah. “We’ll head for the MacQuarrie Keep. I’m thinking you’d be safe there, with my own family.”
His parents would welcome her into their home even though he wouldn’t be able to stay there himself. Not under the same roof with that redheaded bitch his brother had married. MacQuarrie Keep stopped being his home the day Elizabeth moved in.
When Leah’s brow furrowed, he held up a hand to forestall the questions he saw running through her mind. “It’s where I came from, lass.WhenI came from, to be more accurate. Just over nine years ago, Jesse’s sister, Cate, used her powers to bring me forward in time to save my life. It’s too long a story for now, but I’m sure you’ll hear the whole of it as we prepare for our journey.”
Too long and too painful for him to recount to the lass. Likely the women of the house would fill her in later.
Leah chewed on her bottom lip for a moment before making eye contact again. “Is that why you said you’d go back with me? Because you feel like you have a debt to them? I’d hate to think you’re disrupting your whole life because you feel like you have to.”
He shook his head. It was a debt that was driving him, all right, but not the one the girl feared.
“Dinna you fret yerself over this, lass. Accompanying you is but a piece of my reason for returning. I’ve my own purposes to be met in going back.”
Purposes long past due.
Chapter 2
“You should feel no more than a sensation of movement against your skin.” Dallyn AÍ Lyre, High General of the Realm of Faerie, fastened a strange metal band around Robert’s arm before backing away to resume his position in the circle of men surrounding Robert.
Robert looked around the glen to the faces of the men he knew so well, words failing him at this moment of honor.
And honor it truly was.
Not an hour ago, Jesse had insisted Robert leave the preparations for his trip and join him on a small adventure. The adventure had begun at an ancient circle of standing stones on the property Jesse had recently purchased.
To Robert’s amazement, as Jesse ran his hand over one of the stones, its face changed and they seemed to be looking through an open door into another world. A world Robert had never expected to see with his own two eyes.
Wyddecol. The Realm of Faerie.
When they had crossed through the portal, Robert’s second surprise was the five men who were waiting to greet them. Dallyn, Pol, Ramos, Connor, and even Ian McCullough, all those men closest to him who had ties to the world of Fae.
