Free The Laird by Sandy Blair Page B

maximum speed. With his gaze raking the boulders at Blackstone’s base for Beth, he nearly collided with Blackstone’s quay. He threw the engine into reverse. As the engine choked and the sea churned, nearly swamping the stern, he threw a line around a cast iron pole and jumped.
    Yelling Beth’s name at the top of his lungs, he tore through the bailey and into the keep. Heart pounding, palms sweating, he ran up the stairs and into the solar. The room stood empty. He sniffed the still air. Something had caught fire, but what? He bellowed for her again. Silence answered.
    Shaken, fearing Beth had truly drowned and been washed out to sea, he walked to the rumpled bed and spied a bit of torn leather and a wink of gold. He moved the covers and couldn’t believe his eyes. He was staring at the famed Broach of Lorne—-the only tangible proof the MacDougall clan had defeated Robert the Bruce in battle--rested among the coverlet’s folds. His heart nearly stopped. No one had seen the Bruce’s bejeweled ornament in six centuries. He’d come to believe it a legend, just as his treacherous heart had begun to suspect the coming of the one had to be. He reached out a tentative hand to pick it up and realized the bedding was wet. He brought the damask to his nose and sniffed. There was no mistaking the clammy scent. Seawater.
    His heart stuttered with understanding. “She hasna drowned.” His laird had somehow rescued her. Tom fingered the broach with shaking fingers. He listened. Hearing nothing, feeling nothing but a heavy stillness in the room, he took a shuddering breath. “It has begun.”
    Now, all he could do was he pray for Beth. His infant son’s future depended on it.
     
     
     
     
     

Chapter 6
     
    D isappointed by Duncan’s anger and his resistance to helping her, Beth roamed from room to room thumping on panels, spying behind wall hangings, and looking under beds and rugs in the hopes of finding a secret passage that could take her back to her world. When none materialized, she, desperate, sought out mirrors thinking she might be able to pass through one like Alice in the Looking Glass . After hours of searching through the dusty keep and storage rooms, nothing had changed but the condition of her clothing.
    Her only consolation...her head felt better. Whatever Rachael had put in her tea had certainly taken care of her headache. Knowing such medicinal cures existed in this day and time improved her mood marginally.
    Bone weary, she sought refuge from the curious in an out-of-the way sitting room. She ran her fingers over the spines of the books on various tables around the room. Chartier’s Le Belle Dame sans Merci . “Humph, French.”
    Books had become an important part of her life over the years. They were her comfort and respite in an often cold and uncaring world. She desperately needed her copy of Lorraine Heath’s Parting Gifts. She reread the novel during bleak periods when she needed an excuse for a good cathartic cry and the reassurance that good times regularly followed times like these. Or Diana Gabaldon’s Highlander series. She sighed at the irony. Here she had her own flesh and blood Highland hunk--more glorious than she even imagined Gabaldon’s Jamie Frasier to be—-and she was hiding, because she refused to deal with the pain.
    During their discussion it become painfully apparent Duncan couldn’t abide the sight of her.
    She heaved a sigh and opened the elaborately decorated Abby of the Holy Grail and discovered--after much effort--the author wanted to teach her how to build a nunnery in her heart. She snorted. “Not likely.”
    She opened the little The Book of Hours , only to find awkward sounding prayers the author expected the reader to recite eight times a day. Like anyone in their right mind had that kind of time on their hands.
    She examined A Calendar of Saints , innumerable prayer sheets, lyrics sheets, poems, a volume containing recipes for curing bizarre sounding medical