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They all spoke Gaelic.

What?

She’d learned a little of Gaelic for her research, but she’d never spoken it. And never in her life had she understood it so well that she wouldn’t have had to mentally translate each word.

“Aye,” the old man said. “Ye’re a strange one. Of course ’tis. Why? Why dinna ye ken where ye are?”

She peered from behind the side of the boat. With a sinking stomach, she saw that this Eilean Donan was not the same castle she’d been at for the wedding.

The castle on the island now had a long curtain wall around the perimeter, three towers, and a low keep—just three stories high—smaller and simpler than the keep where the wedding had taken place.

This looked so medieval! Actually, it looked like the archaeological drawing of the castle from the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries had come alive.

’Tis a Pictish carving that opens a tunnel through time… She remembered Sìneag’s words. Angus Mackenzie is the man for ye…

The glowing rock.

The sensation of falling through something.

The sense of disappearing.

Time travel?

No. No, no, no, no! Impossible. Sìneag had probably drugged her or pushed her, and she was hallucinating or dreaming. Or maybe one of the rocks from the ceiling had fallen on her head and she was now unconscious, experiencing some sort of lucid dream.

As a little girl, she’d imagined so often traveling back in time. When she’d been a child and had gone to museums, castles, and historical ships, she’d often wished she could live in the past for a day. Taste the food, inhale the scents, talk to the people, see the villages and castles for herself, maybe even dance at a medieval feast.

Yes, that must be what it was. So if this were a dream, she wouldn’t get into trouble or danger.

She sat up straight, although not as confidently as she would like, and looked around.

Dornie village, which had been behind the bridge over Loch Long, was bigger than the one she remembered. The white two- and three-story buildings were gone, replaced by stone houses with thatched roofs. Among them, a short, round tower was visible with a flat roof, likely a Romanesque style—the early medieval style that was popular between the sixth and the eleventh centuries. A church! There was no church in Dornie in the twenty-first century.

The old man kept staring at her with a frown.

“Lassie,” he finally said. “Whatever happened to ye? Ye dinna strike me as a whore, and yet ye’re dressed like one.”

Heat crept into her cheeks and neck, and she tightened the bolero on her chest. Another person telling her she looked like a prostitute… Which, she supposed, must be pretty realistic in the Middle Ages, as women’s outfits covered as much of their body as possible, and the lowest a woman’s neckline would go was below the neck. Her dress’s neckline plunged down between her breasts. There wasn’t much to look at, but still. She doubted even medieval prostitutes dressed so provocatively.

Cold wind grazed against her flaming cheeks. The oars splashed in the water, and waves rocked the boat. She was so cold in this dress. Was it possible she’d be this cold in a dream?

She doubted it.

“I’m not a whore,” she said.

He pursed his lips as though he wanted to believe her, but wasn’t convinced and needed more of an explanation.

Ah! Darn it. She probably needed to come up with some sort of believable backstory. Her mind worked fast, thinking of something that would work.

“I was robbed,” she said.

“Robbed of yer dress?”

“Yes.” She straightened her back. “I’m on my way north to Caithness to my relatives, and robbers attacked me, my bodyguards, and my maid. I was able to get away…at a great cost.”

“Ye poor lass,” he said.

To her relief, he didn’t ask any more questions until they arrived at a small port by Dornie. Several jetties stood there with plenty of fishing boats—or at least that’s what Rogene thought they were, based on the reek of fish.