She sat her mount, her arms clasped around her middle as she bent forward, her eyes closed. After a deep breath she looked up, her face pale.
“I’m dying here,” she groaned. “Why didn’t somebody warn me there was actual movement? I feel like my stomach is getting ready to spew out my ears.”
Robert grinned sympathetically. The poor lass had the motion sickness just as her older sister did. “It’ll pass soon. Do you feel up to going on or do you want to wait a bit?”
“Go,” she muttered, gripping her reins so tightly the gentle horse carrying her whinnied in protest.
“Give Nelly her head, then, lass. Dinna hold her so firmly. She’ll take good care of you.” It was why he’d chosen this particular animal for Leah. She didn’t need any riding skill at all with this old girl. The horse would do her well for years to come.
Leah nodded, and after a deep breath as if to steady herself, she gave the reins some slack and they headed out.
Robert took a deep breath of his own, his nervous excitement building at seeing his family again.
There had been a great discussion about taking Leah to Connor’s family farther north, but the moment she realized the MacKiernans and MacAlisters were Faerie descendants, she put her foot down. The poor lass had suffered enough at the hands of the Nuadian Fae to sour her on the entire Faerie race. She’d pleaded to be sent someplace where there were no Faeries at all, good or bad, as if in avoiding them she could deny her own heritage. Nothing but pure Mortals would do for her, so here they were, in another time, on their way to MacQuarrie Keep.
Leah’s stubborn resistance had worked itself right into his original idea of when and where they should go, making his plan to return to his own time, to his family’s keep the best solution.
Once they’d decided on their destination, they’d picked their starting spot well. Within minutes he and Leah emerged from the trees and onto the hard-packed path that led to his family home. A few minutes more and the castle itself loomed ahead.
Funny how the memory played tricks on you. Robert would have sworn it an impossible task for the trees to have been cut back so far from the castle walls since he’d been here last. Though he had lived almost ten years since he’d laid eyes on MacQuarrie Keep, he’d been home for a quick, uncomfortable visit no more than three months before he’d left this time. He’d carried the memory of that visit and his family home buried deep in his heart for almost a
decade.
As a child, he had never imagined he would live anywhere other than this very place. The people and the land were as much a part of him as breathing had been. He’d seen the straight path of his life stretching out ahead of him. A wife and children who would join him here, making him as happy as his parents had always been.
But that dream had shattered in his sixteenth year when he’d met Elizabeth Hawthorne. Her father had traveled here on the king’s business, bringing his daughter along. Two years his elder, she’d flirted her way into his heart only to break that heart when she’d suddenly married his brother.
Robert had ridden out these gates the day after Richard’s wedding without a look back, pledging his service at Alexander’s court. Only by the grace of men like Thomas MacGahan and Connor MacKiernan had he been accepted into their ranks and trained. Only through their friendship had he managed to live with the loss of his childhood dreams.
But neither those hateful memories nor the ones from his last visit to his mother and father meshed with what he saw now.
It all seemed different to him as he stared at the closed gate ahead of them. That was fair odd, too. His father had rarely kept the portcullis set. His eyes scanned up, quickly assessing other changes to his home. It appeared the parapet had been strengthened along the wall walk.
“They do say the memory goes first,” he muttered out loud. Of course, those types of structural changes would be virtually impossible to make quickly. Work of that nature would have taken years, not months.
“Hearing,” Leah corrected, her gaze fixed ahead of her, appearing to miss nothing as she soaked in what would be her new home. “I’m pretty sure I read that it’s the hearing that goes first.”
A movement ahead of them caught his attention and the muscles in Robert’s back tensed. His warrior senses on full alert, he grabbed Leah’s reins, forcing her mount to a stop. “Stay behind me.”
“Why do I have to—”
“Dinna question me,” he interrupted. “Do as I say. Now.”
He was sure those arrow loops along the parapet were new. As were the tips of the arrows peeking out the holes.
All aimed directly at him and Leah.
“Who goes there?” a man’s voice demanded from the corner of the wall walk. “State yer business or be on yer way.”
Biting back his irritation at being challenged to enter his own home, Robert paused before responding. The guard must be new not to recognize him.
“Sir Robert MacQuarrie, younger son to Hugh, laird of the MacQuarrie.” The title came haltingly to his tongue, it had been so long since he’d had need of it. Neither knights nor lairds played any part in his new life.
“The MacQuarrie heir, are you? Och, aye, of course you are,” the guard yelled down. “And meself? I’m the king of France, I am.”
Laughter filtered into the air, wafting down from the wall walk, and Robert felt his anger grow. He hadn’t claimed to be the heir. Everyone knew that would be his older brother, Richard, so the comment didn’t bear his response. Whoever the new guard was, the man needed a few lessons in proper behavior, and at the
moment, Robert began to feel just irritated enough that he might be the perfect instructor.
