Chapter One

Dungarbh Castle, stronghold of the MacCowans on Loch Garry, Scotland, 1689

“So you’ve returned,” Duncan rasped, the words catching, slicing through a too-dry throat. “The woman who one moment handfasted with me”—he swallowed to ease his throat and blinked, hoping to keep the phantasm in view—“and the next turned me out of bed in disgust.”

Was…was the lovely nighean wiping his brow indeed his Fiona?

His Fiona.

Ach, fever-addled his mind was. The handfasting, her disappearance… But that was several weeks past. More events had transpired, he was sure.

Sharp pain speared his shoulder and filtered across his chest, a reminder.

The battle…

“What happened?” The words scratched past his parched throat, but he’d be damned if he let that stop him. Wincing, he rolled upward, but his muscles protested, and he dropped back against the unforgiving mattress, jarring the pain in his shoulder. The movement set his world spinning, his head strangely a-whirl. Mo Chreach, what ailed him?

He clamped his eyes closed, as if to shield his roiling stomach.

A warm hand pushed against his chest, the touch gentle but firm. “Easy now,” her melodious, oddly accented voice said near his ear.

Day and night that voice had haunted him since first he’d heard it.

She pushed her arm under his shoulders and gripped him tight, the fabric of her clothing cool against his heated skin. Her scent, like the freshest grass in spring and the sweetest flowers, enveloped him. “Try to drink this.” She raised him slightly.

He cracked an eye open again. Aye. ’Twas Fiona. Feverish he might be, but never could he be forgetting the night she secretly pledged herself to him and then pushed him away.

Nor could he ignore how her nearness now acted as a balm. A balm which soothed his confusion and pain.

His eyes had a dry, dragging weight to them. He blinked. Forced them open. Though darkness cloaked the room, save a lone, flickering candle near the bed, he recognized the bare stone walls and sparse furniture of his own chamber. How…?

“It wasn’t disgust.” Her voice was small, tentative.

Before he could reply, she pressed the tin cup to his mouth, the metal cool against his parched, dry lips. He took a sip, quickly swallowing. Bitter. Metallic. Not as putrid as old Hamish’s concoction. Och, she could be poisoning him, to be sure, but his mind was so clouded, his body so racked with pain, that he cared not.

He eased back against the pillow and closed his eyes, the exercise strangely exhausting.

“What happened?” he asked again.

“What do you remember?”

Smoke from the discharge of hundreds of rifles and the scattered cannon of the Williamites. Confusion as the battle waged in the twilight. The vacant eyes of their chieftain fixed on the blue-night sky. And then… “Yourself. And Traci appearing at the battle. Dundee, shot.”

“No,” she whispered. He shouldn’t find even the tone of her voice lovely, but curse him, he did. “You were shot. You took the bullet meant for him.”

Shot. He edged his hand up his chest, the action disconcertingly hard to achieve. His fingers searched, touched. Met with stiff fabric. That explained his shoulder. The ungodly pain. But he’d suffer that and more if it meant Dundee lived.

Did he? “And Dundee? Iain?” He dropped his arm back to his side.

“Both survived the battle.”

A light feeling suffused him, the relief easing the last of his tension, though it highlighted the pain clamping down on his shoulder, throbbing. “I must be going to the great hall. Help me arise, woman.”

She pushed against him, her enticing scent shrouding him anew. Near her elbow, the candle lent enough light to caress the gentle, sloping line of her neck, delicate jaw, round cheek, and…

Holy Mother. Those eyes. Those gray-blue, intelligent but playful eyes. Eyes that had also drawn him that first night they’d met.

So enthusiastic, she’d been. Her smiles. Och, made just for him they seemed, though he’d told himself it couldn’t be so. But as the night spun onward, and his defenses crumbled, he’d thought… Well, he thought he’d finally found the one person who made him feel wanted for himself, not for what he could do for them. Aye, he’d finally and inexplicably felt at home.

As they handfasted in secret, trusting his instincts, he spun fancies as to the shape of their shared life. The little ones they’d create together. The belonging he’d feel. Already felt.

However, when they were to lay together, she recoiled, and he cursed himself for a fool. Cursed the whisky he’d consumed. For he’d forgotten his heart’s poor judgment. Longing speared through him anew, rivaling the pain in his shoulder.

Concern marred her forehead, but he’d be unwise to believe it meant anything more. They’d handfasted, aye, but that meant nothing if the other didn’t acknowledge it. Especially in these modern times with the Kirk frowning on such declarations, and with no witnesses.

“You’re not going anywhere.” She leaned away, settling the tin cup on a nearby stool, the action stretching the fabric of her light blue petticoat taut against her small but curvy torso. She leaned toward him again, her skirts rustling as she settled. “Not for a while yet. Duncan, you were badly injured at that battle. You’ve been mostly unconscious since.”

He tore away from those bewitching eyes. “Unconscious?” He frowned at the unfamiliar word. ’Tis possible he misheard, though she occasionally peppered her Gàidhlig with English words.

She curled her fingers into tight fists in her lap. “Knocked out. Mostly asleep?”

He nodded. “Awake now. I must be discovering what’s transpired.”

She turned her head to the door, her face now in shadow. “Nothing that you can’t miss. All is well.” Because he watched her every move, she caught his gaze when she returned her scrutiny to his weakened shell. “You need to heal. Iain will need you.”

He’d not be showing weakness by glancing away. “He’s the new chieftain then?”

“Yes.”

Good. As it should be. “Still, must arise.” He rolled to his uninjured side and propped himself on an elbow. Iosa Criosd. That minimal movement winded him. To cover his distress, he feigned taking a moment to appraise her. When he was assured he could arise without falling on his arse, he would do so.

Aye. Any moment now.

Unfortunately, from this angle he was level with her lovely bosom. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a simple knot, a few curls framing her strong jaw and slim neck. Even in the room’s dim light, the dress picked up the blue flecks in her gray eyes. Which were staring at him. Assessing.

Because he’d made the mistake of feasting on those eyes. On her lovely face. Again.

He cleared his throat.

Her gaze dropped to his chest, and her jaw tightened. He glanced down. His blanket had slipped, and instead of wearing a nightshirt, he was bare from the waist up.

Oh aye. His scar. The source of her revulsion, deny it though she would. Never had he been ashamed of that mark. Not in a vanity sense. Until her, everyone saw it as another battle scar. The tattoo below it was a simple knot.

No, he didn’t view the scar as shameful, though he did in its getting. For he’d not received it in battle. He’d received it the last time he’d ever acted foolishly over a woman.

Oddly poetic that the very woman who brought out that foolish side again was turned off by the scar. As if the scar and tattoo were a shield. A shield protecting him forevermore from heartache.

Fiona dug her fingers into her knees, her nails poking into her skin even through the cloth of her skirts. Inside she was all fluttery pulse and swooping butterflies, because…Duncan. Right here in front of her. And his pull on her hadn’t lessened since the night they’d met a couple weeks ago. Not one bit. Nope. Not at all.

Dammit.

And despite his injury-induced weakness, he was still a hunk of a Highland warrior. Strong jaw and chin, high forehead, aquiline nose—a great collection of parts, no doubt. But it was his brown curly hair which had fascinated her from the start, because it cavorted as if against direct orders from his calm, understated demeanor. Even now, though he’d been feverish and ill for days, one little bit curled against his ear, and another lay against his forehead, making a playful spiral.

He lay stretched full length along his glorified cot, and while his bandage masked his shoulder, plenty of bare skin remained for her gaze to lap up. Bare, muscly skin. Skin that was somehow otherworldly in the soft glow of the flickering candlelight. Skin that made her want to touch, feel, and…and…lick. Until her gaze snagged on the scar-tattoo combo, and ice again crystallized in her gut.

Shit.

Quite the reminder. She straightened her back. Time to seize this rare chance to be alone with him and get answers. Downstairs, everyone had been too busy celebrating their new chieftain to notice her absence.

No surprise he was all I-gotta-get-up, but she couldn’t let him. Not yet. Not until she was positive he wouldn’t rip open his stitches and infect his wound all over again.

His condition had been touch and go on the trip back from Killiecrankie.

Maybe she could distract him long enough with her idle conversation for the sleeping pill she’d crushed into his drink to kick in. She’d brought a few essential medicinal supplies back with her for cases like this. She pulled in a bracing breath. Okay. Time for answers disguised as chatter.

Despite Iain’s assurance that his clan no longer believed her and her sister Traci to be Campbell spies, Fiona was still conscious of how her words could be perceived. Iain, the new chieftain—and her sister’s new husband—was the only one who knew they’d come from the future.

Duncan was still focused on her, but he blinked once. Twice. And swayed. He shook his head, his curly, longish hair falling away from his forehead, and pushed himself into a sitting position, but it took an effort. He tried to mask it though, the candlelight still teasing her, highlighting the hard planes of his chest. So inviting, but gah—unfair. No guy had ever made her want to touch, to hold, so badly. And just her luck, when one finally did, he was the one guy she absolutely could not have.

“Where’d you get the scar?” she blurted. She couldn’t very well spit out, Do you know William Campbell?

“So ye admit ye find it distasteful,” he rasped.

Lord knows she wished she did. “Not at all.”

He sat on his bed, stiff with pride. You’d think he was ready to fight in a battle, he radiated such fierceness and capability. Too much and too close in the room’s small confines. But his face had drained of color when he’d fully straightened, and a tightness rimmed his eyes and mouth. Bless him, he was trying to pretend all was well, but he was in pain. A lot of it.

She should have crushed another sleeping pill into his drink, dammit.

“I’m just curious how you received it. It’s an unusual shape, combined with the tattoo.”

It exactly fit her granpappy’s description—a crescent-shaped scar above a Celtic knot tattoo. On the chest of a MacCowan warrior. The flickering shadows played across it, God, just like the first time she saw it that night at the inn. A rush of memories swamped her. As if the candlelight’s glow gave it the heft and portent of legend. A legend made real. Sitting at her granpappy’s feet. Listening to his aged voice intoning the memorized lines of the legend. She’d eaten it up. Every damn time. Like she did with all family stories. But this one? This legend? It had been her favorite. And only partly because it concerned her namesake.

She leaned forward, eager for his answer, and her necklace swung into the candlelight. Duncan’s feverish gaze landed on the family heirloom. She clasped it, breaking his eye contact.

He brushed a hand over the puckered skin of his scar and tattoo. God, how her fingers itched to follow behind his hand and stroke his skin, feel its smoothness, its strength. How could the urge to touch that scar, touch him, be so strong it was almost a physical ache? And yet that scar-tattoo combo was the reason she couldn’t touch him.

“A fight,” he bit out.

She barely refrained from rolling her eyes and saying, “No shit, Sherlock,” but not only would that be unproductive, he wouldn’t even understand the reference.

She fingered the necklace—her talisman—the cool metal and soft leather a familiar comfort in all this strangeness. Tangible proof of her purpose here in seventeenth-century Scotland. Her excitement. One of a pair of silver buckles made by her ancestor, engraved with the name FIONA.

Receiving it on her sixteenth birthday was still the best day of her life. Once a generation, the buckle was refitted with a new leather holder and fastened with the new recipient’s birthstone—anyone named in honor of the Fiona of legend. She was the first Fiona in long memory, her granpappy told her, to have the blonde hair of the Fiona of legend, a seeming coincidence brought about by her mom’s DNA.

Receiving that necklace had made her feel valuable for the first time in her life. Part of the family’s history.

It still shocked her. In the quiet moments when she took in her surroundings. She was in friggin’ seventeenth-century Scotland. Here on a wish from the magical calling card case her sister had received from a friend. She’d seen an actual historical battle. There were men in kilts everywhere.

Before she could figure out a way to ask about her ancestor, William Campbell, Duncan’s upper body rotated in a slow circle, his eyes lost their focus, and he slumped heavily onto the bed.

About damn time those suckers kicked in. She stared at the man she couldn’t have. The man she’d declared herself to at the inn. She blinked away a tear and swallowed hard at the truth she was only now admitting—the excitement she’d felt at their handfasting had rivaled the excitement she’d felt at receiving the Fiona necklace.

And, dammit, she’d thought she’d be more excited to be here. Back in time. She was. It was just…complicated. And somehow still too surreal.

Because just when everything had felt so right, she’d seen his scar and realized everything was so wrong.

He was the MacCowan warrior of her favorite family legend.

But not in an oh-cool way. Oh no. Of course not.

When they’d secretly committed to each other that same night as Iain and Traci and she’d seen his scar, the significance of it and his name had slapped her, and she’d gone cold. And then she’d panicked and pushed him away.

She gripped the silver buckle necklace and drew strength from what it represented.

Because this man, the one she felt drawn to more than anyone ever, was the man of the legend. The one who would try to kill her ancestor. And the Fiona of her family legend? Herself.

She’d have to fight him. And soon.