Chapter 2
Rory stared at Bridget as she slept. Her hand was tucked under her chin and her hair fluttered in the cool sea breeze. He’d managed to get them back on her absurdly named yacht, The Mer Princess. His arms had nearly fallen out of their sockets from rowing them the entire way and did he receive a word of thanks?
No, he did not. She had barked some orders at what was left of her half-terrified crew, stuffed her face full of a delicious meal— he knew it was delicious because he did a bit of stuffing himself— then passed out in a deck chair. All without answering a single one of his questions.
Namely, was her fearsome portal still active? It was her number one argument for not going directly to Scotland on the train, but going the long way around in her wee ship. To check on the bloody time travel portal she’d conjured up in the middle of the sea in order to try and find out what had happened to her husband.
Rory was still partly convinced she’d chucked him overboard while he was too drunk to fight back. Bridget was a wee thing, tiny really, but her temper was one of the biggest he’d seen. And those cold glares she was so good at. He shivered, being the recipient of those glares too many times.
And yet… No. He jumped off of his own deck chair and marched to the rail, hoping a good spray of icy sea water might bring him to his senses. He could not, would not be attracted to the wee witch. It wasn’t a rude slur, it was what she was. Apparently came from a long line of them.
For one, she was married. To a buffoon she didn’t seem to love, but that was beside the point. Rory Ferguson was no adulterer.
But what about that kiss? His traitorous mind would not let him forget what had to be one of the worst mistakes of his life, kissing Lady Bridget. And he’d made some massive mistakes. Trying his hand at piracy, for one.
Thinking of his ship turned his shame and embarrassment of recalling the sizzling, passionate kiss he’d shared with Bridget to shame and anguish. It was because of his idiocy that he’d lost his ship, and so many good men with it. He supposed he deserved the hell he was in now, for letting them down the way he did.
“Lady Bridget,” he said angrily, stomping over to her chaise. Ah, how he wanted to wrap his hands around her neck. “Wake up, ye harpy.”
She stretched lithely, her skirt hitching up to show altogether too much leg. The dresses were already so short in this time it was as if she ran around in her shift. It bothered him in a lot of different ways. She blinked at him sleepily. The way the sun was setting, it cast a golden glow across her beautiful face.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
He scowled at her and shook his head. “Ye’ll catch a cold out here is all. Get ye to your bed to sleep.”
She smiled at him and it was almost as if she was a kind, sweet lass. “Nothing has happened?”
“How could anything happen? Nothing happened all this time and ye expect your dastardly wee husband to show up the moment we arrive back on the ship?”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Ye and your lot showed up,” she said reasonably. “What’s wrong with being hopeful?” She eyed him up and down appraisingly and with so much of her legs showing, he felt a heat rising up the back of his neck. “And my husband wasna wee, he was at least as tall as ye are and maybe a bit broader in the shoulders.”
“That’s a lie as I’m wearing the man’s clothes right now and about to burst out of them.”
She grinned and he cursed himself for letting her get under his skin. The fact that she kept eyeing him as if he was a choice cut of meat didn’t set well with him, either. It should have offended him but all he could think about was how she’d felt in his arms when they danced.
“I suppose ye have your charms,” she said, getting up.
She walked to the rail and gazed out to sea with the same intensity she’d just been using on him.
“Is it still out there, then?” he asked nervously.
The mad portal to other times scared the daylights out of him. A pirate ship with cannons blasting or the fiercest of storms couldn’t phase him anymore, now that he knew what that thing was capable of.
It had saved his life, yes, but now what was he to do with it? Lost in a time where he knew no one, had nothing. Well, he had Bridget, he supposed. He scowled at her as she continued to stare at the waves.
“Aye. Ye canna feel it?” she asked. “I think it may be open right now, the way it’s thrumming.”
He rubbed his arms to banish the goosebumps that had nothing to do with the brisk evening air.
“Thrumming? No, thank the good Lord.” He crossed himself for good measure. Bloody magic, bloody witch he’d gotten himself chained to. “Dinna put one of your hexes on me,” he said when she gave him a filthy look.
She sighed deeply and once again looked small and sweet. Argh! If only he could free himself from whatever enchantment she’d cast on him.
“It’s not evil,” she said. “Ye dinna have to cross yourself.”
“What is it, then? Ye said yourself ye feared it.”
With a shrug, she turned away from the rail. “I do fear it, but only because I dinna fully understand how it works. I guess I mean to say I am not evil.”
He didn’t dare to dispute her on that one. “What now?” he asked. “I thought we were meant to go to your home on the other side of Scotland but we’ve been back on this boat for hours and are still anchored in the same spot.”
She didn’t turn to face him and he knew he wasn’t going to like her answer. If she deigned to answer him at all. After a long moment, she sidled up next to him, looking into his eyes with the bewitching force he’d been fighting against since Blackpool. He tried to look away but couldn’t. She was so damnably pretty.
“Let me try and see if I can figure out how to work it. If I can get back to before Albert disappeared …”
“Let’s say ye can do that. Which so far ye’ve had no success at all in controlling your blasphemous creation. What of me, then? I wasna here when your daft husband fell or was shoved into the deep. Will I be sent to my own time again as if nothing ever happened? Or will I be stuck with the both of ye? Why do ye even want the scoundrel back?” he demanded.
What he wanted to do was put his hands around her pale, graceful throat and squeeze. What he did was rest his hands on her shoulders and pull her closer to him.
She put her hands on his chest and he waited for the push that would send him to his death in the drink. Instead she curled her hands in the cloth of his shirt— no, her bloody husband’s shirt— and leaned into him. He could feel her heat through the thin fabric of the modern, summer clothes.
“I dinna want the scoundrel back,” she said. “I only want to clear my name.”
“Or right a wrong ye now regret?” he asked cruelly. He wouldn’t have blamed her if she did try to shove him into the sea.
“I dinna regret anything,” she said, pressing her body against his. “I only want to be free.”
Chills coursed through him despite her warmth. Pleasant ones, tightening every inch of him. Her hands slid up his chest and around his shoulders, fingers gliding through his hair. His head lowered against his will.
“Free for what?” he choked out.
Her lips touched his and he was lost. When her tongue darted between them he no longer cared where he was, when he was, or how bewitched he might have been. He slid his hands down her arms and wrapped them around her waist so there was no space between them.
There was only Bridget. And as long as she was in his arms, that was all that mattered.
***
Bridget paced in her cabin, rubbing her arms. She couldn’t be distracted by the remaining tingles Rory’s touch had caused. She had to stop tossing herself into his arms as well. Bloody Albert disappearing had thrown a real wrench into her life. It might not have been happy— well, it wasn’t happy at all— but it was predictable.
She and her husband would have a row, then stiffly and politely pretend they were no longer angry at each other until the next row. They always, always had smiles for the cameras. It was difficult for her to want him back, but she knew finding the louse was the only way she could prove she hadn’t murdered him and get back to her original plan. Though it seemed like that plan would never work. But she still couldn’t let it go. Not yet.
And damn Rory still didn’t believe she was innocent. She could tell. Which made it all the more confusing as to why he kept letting her toss herself into his arms. One minute he reviled her as a witch and the next he was making her weak with his caresses. She paced harder, trying to break a sweat so she could pretend her heated body was from exertion and not Rory’s kisses.
She snorted a laugh as she passed the mirror and saw her pink cheeks and wild eyes. Perhaps if Albert had been such a good kisser they would have got along better.
No, as soon as she informed him her vast property in the Highlands wasn’t up for his grubby hands to try and make money off of, he stopped loving her. If he ever did.
Thinking of the castle stole the color from her cheeks and the warmth from her very soul. How she hated that place. The way it whispered to her to go look for things. It was the castle’s fault she conjured up that absurd portal in the first place. The castle or whatever demons inhabited it. The portal to open up a rift to the past seemed like a good idea at the time.
It had opened a rift, that was certain. But it didn’t bring Albert back. It brought forward a trio of new thorns in her side. If the one thorn hadn’t been so attractive, she might have chucked them all back into the sea and been done with their mad ravings.
She lay down on the bed and fitfully tossed on top of the covers. Were the mad ravings really that mad? Catie seemed to know so much about what would happen to her. She was to have a daughter named Fenella— the more she thought about the daft name, the more she liked it— who would eventually go on to have her own children, and somewhere down the line one of them would be the woman Catie’s brother was now currently married to. It made her head spin.
As much as she wished she could flee to America and be done with all of it, the thought of all those people not existing rankled. She wasn’t a monster. She knew she had to figure out what happened to Albert regardless, now that it seemed her original plan wasn’t going to work. She supposed if she found him, she’d do her duty and remain his wife. At least until sweet Fenella was born.
“Foolish woman,” she hissed, angrily kicking the bedclothes so she could get under them. “Who are ye calling sweet? That imaginary babe? Ye’re sounding as mad as Catie and Oliver. Thinking they can find some wee herbs and skip about in time whenever they may please.”
“Bridget? Are ye all right in there? Who are ye talking to?” Rory called through the door, his deep voice full of concern.
She reached for the glass on her bedside table and tossed it at the door, satisfied at the crashing sound when it shattered.
“Bugger off and leave me alone. What’s it to ye if I’m talking to myself or not?”
She heard him mumble “wicked wee witch,” and felt a second of shame for her outburst. One second. Rory was dangerous to her. Not just the sinful attraction she felt, but the fact he kept trying to get her to go home. To her judgmental, cold parents. To that pile of rocks that sought to drive her to lunacy.
No, she’d stall and watch over the portal for as long as she could. She imagined she could keep Rory distracted. Thinking of keeping Rory distracted brushed all her anxious, tormented thoughts about the castle straight back into the deepest corners of her mind. Where they belonged.