No matter. He didn’t need a lot of time. Just enough to settle Leah and to keep his promise to Thomas. Surely he could manage to stay alive long enough to accomplish two simple tasks.
“Okay, then,” Cate said loudly as she and Mairi backed away from the horses and toward the trees where Cate’s young daughter, Rosie, waited. “You have Leah’s envelope with directions to Dun Ard, right?”
“I don’t need it,” Leah interrupted. “I told you not to bother. I don’t want anything to do withanyFaeries. Not ever again.”
Cate’s eyebrow rose in a perfect imitation of her husband. “Right. But you do have it, don’t you, Robbie? Just in case?”
He nodded his reassurance to the woman. Leah might not ever have any need of contacting the MacKiernans, but just in case she did, he planned to leave the envelope, wrapped in its linen disguise, in his mother’s care for the lass.
“I guess that covers about everything.” Cate ran a hand over the back of her neck, as if stretching out her muscles before exercising. “Both of you need to keep in mind that the most powerful moments for the Magic are when you first feel it beginning to work. Concentrate on when and where you want to go. Clear your minds of everything else but what you want most.”
“Because it’s what you want most that the Magic will act on,” Mairi added.
Or, more likely, what the Faerie Magic itself wanted most.
Robert pushed away the negative thoughts, concentrating on his family estate as it had been in 1272, not the ruin of tumbled stones it was now.
A gentle breeze wafted through the glen, carrying it with it the sounds of birds in the trees above them. No other sound disturbed the silence as they waited.
And waited.
“Shouldn’t something be happening?” Leah hissed his direction, her eyes round with apprehension.
Robert shrugged, wondering the same himself. Unable to answer her excellent question, he turned to the experts.
“Ladies?”
“I know, I know. It’s just that nothing’s coming.” Cate grabbed up Mairi’s hand and they both closed their eyes. “I don’t understand,” she said after a moment. “I’m not feeling anything.”
“Let me help, Mommy!” Rosie jumped to her feet and ran to join her mother and Mairi. With one last wave in Robert’s direction, the little girl lifted her arms to join hands with her mother and aunt, becoming a part of their circle. “Be safe, Uncle Robbie. See you soon!” she called, a wide grin breaking over her face.
Returning Rosie’s infectious smile, he only hoped the child was right. For an instant, their gazes locked.
As sometimes happened when his eyes met those of the child, his thoughts skipped away to another young lass. Isabella MacGahan. She would be only a year or two younger than Rosie. He’d never seen Thomas’s daughter, but he had always pictured her in his imagination to be very much like Rosie: a small, blonde bundle of smiles and giggles with gangly arms and a wild imagination.
He had long ago lost any hope that he would have children of his own. No matter how much he might want it, finding his Soulmate was surely not his destiny in this lifetime. And even though his deepest desire would not be fulfilled, his life was still good. He had been given a second chance, one that included true friends who had accepted him as one of their family. A family he would do anything for. A family he wouldn’t hesitate to give his life for.
At this very moment, sitting here in this peaceful clearing, all he truly wanted in life was to deliver Leah to the safety of his family and to see to it that Isabella MacGahan got the life she deserved.
Was that so much to ask?
A strange tingle webbed its way around the lines of the mark on Robert’s arm and he realized with a start the Magic had already begun to work while he was lost in his thoughts. Both he and Leah were already encased in a large sphere of wavering emerald with a growing multitude of brilliantly colored sparkles shooting around them like crazed comets in an eerily green night sky.
Leah reached out to him. Without thought, he grasped her hand, just as the myriad colors gyrating around them hit the peak of their frenzy and merged, turning their world to black and hitting them with a force that felt like it sucked them into a dark, invisible vortex.
Chapter 4
As quickly as the black had descended, it disappeared, evaporating around them into a fine green mist.
Robert shook his head, trying to rid himself of the sense-mangling aftereffects of the time travel. The last time he’d done this, he’d passed out before arriving in the future and slept for days after, so he’d completely missed the entire experience.
And what an experience! It had felt like a thrill ride, similar to nothing he’d ever gone through save for possibly the rush of parachuting out of an airplane.
The mark on his arm felt almost alive, crawling with invisible movement so that he finally gave in to the urge to scratch it.
Beside him, Leah’s whimper drew him from the dregs of his adrenaline high. When she tugged at the hand he still held, he let go immediately.
“Are you no well, lass?” He realized it was a stupid question the minute the words passed his lips.
