Chapter Ten

 

 

Outside a coach roared into life, driving out of the parking lot and away from the old hall. Inside peace descended. One man was left in the building. He stood in the bedroom where Andrew MacIntyre had been born. He didn’t care about the MacIntyres or Scotland. What he cared about was on the other side of the bedroom door. He looked at his watch. Any minute now.

On the other side of the door and eight hundred years before that day Kerry stood, brow furrowed as she made her decision.

The doorway waited as silent as the two people either side of it. Neither of them paid attention to the rough stones that served as both the archway between two rooms and two times. The stones hummed quietly with an energy that was barely perceptible unless you pressed your ear to them.

Taken from an ancient stone circle many centuries before, the individual pieces that made up the doorway had been hewn from a piece of solid rock in an age long forgotten. Back in those ancient days the stone circle had contained a magic all of its own. It had faded over time but a little still remained in the stones that made up the doorway into Andrew MacIntyre’s bedroom.

Not all the stone from the ancient circle ended up in the old hall of course. It had spread around the highlands. Some had made its way to MacCleod castle, used there by laborers with no idea of the power held within the rock. Two stones became part of the window frame in the east tower, the very window from which Kerry fell a week before she stood in MacIntyre hall. A week earlier and yet also hundreds of years in the future.

In the bedroom the man took a step forward, glancing down again at his watch. He had been told in no uncertain terms when she would arrive. She was late. He tutted quietly to himself. Was it possible that he had been lied to?

The two men had been convincing enough. Kerry would walk through that doorway at exactly five past nine. All he had to do was grab her when she did, take her home where she belonged. Back by his side. Sure, he would have to punish her for what she’d done but he wouldn’t be cruel, just firm. She would learn her lesson and then they would both put it behind them and get on with their lives.

He didn’t give much thought to the two men who had appeared on his doorstep with the offer he’d been unable to refuse.

They had worn identical black suits and when he answered the younger of the two smiled in such a cold manner he recoiled from him.

The older one spoke. “Edward Rawcliffe?”

“I haven’t seen her.” He had already prepared his defense. He might have watched her fall from the tower at MacCleod castle but no one else had witnessed it. After glancing out the window and seeing no sign of her body, he’d left immediately. He was home the same day, staying there ever since. “I’ve already had uniform here asking about her and I’m telling you what I told them, I haven’t seen her since we broke up.”

“We know,” the older man said, not smiling as he took a step forward. “We are not connected to the police. We work for…another party. May we come in for a moment?”

“No.”

They were already inside, sitting on the sofa in the lounge as if they owned the place. The older of the two continued. “My name is Mr. Kite and this is Mr. Wint. We have an offer to make you.”

“Get out of my house this minute or I call the police.”

“Go ahead. I’m sure they’d be delighted to know all about you watching your ex-partner fall from a castle window to her death.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You needn’t worry. We have no interest in informing the police in what should remain, for many reasons, an entirely private affair. Kerry did not die in the fall. Would you like to know where she is?”

“What? She’s not dead?”

“Alive and well.”

“So where is she?”

“Twelfth century Scotland.”

Edward barked out a laugh. “Of course she is. Darning kilts and eating haggis, I bet?”

The younger man spoke for the first time. “Kilts were not invented until the sixteenth century.”

The older man waved him into silence. “Now is not the time to give the man a history lesson.”

Edward tapped his foot impatiently. “Come on, this is a joke, isn’t it?”

“I assure you we are deadly serious, Mr. Rawcliffe. We would like to make you a most generous offer and we ask only one thing in return.”

“What? What kind of offer?”

They didn’t tell him straight away of course. Instead they went on for ages about determinism and causality and fixed times in space and all kinds of things he didn’t understand. He nodded along until they finally got to the point.

If he went back to Scotland and stood inside Andrew MacIntyre’s bedroom in MacIntyre Hall at five past nine the next morning he would see Kerry walk through the door. All he had to do then was take her home and keep her there. A happy ending for him and Kerry and he would never see Mr. Kite or Mr. Wint ever again.

He agreed of course. Something about the way they spoke over the course of the hour they were in the house convinced him they were telling the truth. It was only when he stood in MacIntyre Hall the next morning and his watch told him it was six minutes past nine that he began to wonder. Had he been duped?

According to them she had fallen out of the tower and slipped back in time to the twelfth century. It had seemed so convincing but the more he thought about it the more stupid it sounded. It was nonsense. She wasn’t coming through time back to the present.

She was dead and this was some kind of set up to try and get him to confess to killing her. It wouldn’t work. He hadn’t killed her. She had fallen out of the window because she was as clumsy as she’d always been. That was hardly his fault, was it?

“Screw this,” he said when his watch reached eight minutes past nine. He walked out the door into the corridor. He’d been conned. Very funny. He would get home and have some choice words to say to them two if they turned up at his house again.

He stopped dead when he saw someone in the distance. A woman was walking out the front door into the morning light. It was her, he was sure of it.

She wasn’t in the past but she was in the hall. What was more, she hadn’t spotted him yet.

He crept toward her as she headed outside. Reaching the doorway a few seconds after her, he watched as she crossed the grass.

Wait. Grass? Why was there grass outside? Had he got lost in there and come out by a different entrance?

It didn’t matter. What mattered was that the woman he loved was running after a man in bizarre clothes, a man who was turning to face her with a smile on his face. Beside the man, a horse stood patient.

Edward wanted to kill the horse and the man. How dare he smile at her? Jealousy flared inside him.

“I’m staying,” Kerry said, her voice loud enough for him to hear from the doorway. “I want to stay, Callum. With you. If you’ll have me. I…I love you.”

The jealousy inside Edward began to boil over, turning into white hot rage. She loved that…that mud splattered bum over there?

“I love you too,” the man said, taking hold of her hands. How dare he touch her?

Edward didn’t hear anyone coming up behind him until he felt a tap on his shoulder. “A word,” a voice said in his ear. “Before you do anything rash.”

“Rash?” he said, spinning around to find himself facing the two men who’d sent him to Scotland in the first place. “You told me she would run back into my arms. Look at her.”

“You were supposed to wait in the bedroom for her,” Mr. Kite said. “It is not our fault if you cannot follow simple instructions.”

“Hey,” Edward snapped. “I did as you said. She didn’t come through. How is that my fault?”

“What?” Mr. Wint sounded shocked. “Are you sure?”

“I gave it until ten past and nothing. It was only when I left that I saw her.

The man turned pale, muttering to his colleague. “How was that possible?”

“She is far from her path,” Mr. Kite replied before realizing Edward was staring at him. “No matter. He can still get her.”

“No I can’t,” Edward said, looking outside again. “They just rode off on his horse together like it’s the end of a western.”

“Then you better be after her, hadn’t you?”

Edward shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere until you explain to me why this matters so much to you two.”

“It matters not one whit to either of us.”

“Then why are you shoving me after her? What’s in it for you?”

“You might as well tell him,” Mr. Kite said.

Mr. Wint sighed. “You saw the man she rode off with, correct?”

“The bum?”

“That bum was heir to the entire MacCleod clan and he just rode off with your partner to live happily ever after in his castle. Are you not concerned?”

“His castle? What is this, Game of Thrones?”

“No. This is twelfth century Scotland and you are wasting time. Go after them and get her back.”

“Not until you answer my question. Why do you care so much?”

The two men looked at each other before turning to face him again. Mr. Wint spoke. “Very well. Callum MacCleod is betrothed to Nessa MacKay. Our employer wishes for the wedding to go ahead and the odds of that are somewhat diminished if your partner remains with Callum. Do you understand?”

“Oh, I get it. Your boss is Nessa’s dad, right?”

“That’s not important right now. You need to find a horse and get after them.”

“And what do I do when I catch them?”

Bring Kerry back with you to the twenty-first century where she belongs. Leave Callum to marry Nessa as planned and everything goes back to the way it should be.”

Edward smiled to himself. He would bring Kerry back all right. That would be simple enough. She was weak willed and easy to persuade. That was what had drawn him to her in the first place. He had always been attracted to the gullible, those he could manipulate into becoming reliant on him. The fact that she had been the first one to leave him only made her all the more desirable. She wouldn’t leave him again.

“Are you coming?” he asked, stepping out onto the grass. They didn’t move. “You can’t, can you? You can’t leave the building. Why not?”

The two men glared at him. “We cannot interfere with the past directly,” Mr. Wint said. “Just be sure you get her back to your time within the next forty-eight hours. They will stay at a tavern called The Red Wolf tonight. It is twenty miles south of here. You should get moving if you want to get her back. Remember, leave Callum alone. He must marry Nessa as planned.”

“I’ll get Kerry back,” Edward replied, not adding that he had no intention of leaving Callum to marry another woman. The man had set hands on his woman.

He set off walking, not looking back. He would catch up with them soon enough. After all, he had true love on his side. That and the wickedly sharp flick knife he kept in his back pocket. With both he had no doubt at all that he would succeed. Present, past, future. Who cared really? What mattered was that she learned her lesson and that Scotch prick learned to keep his hands off another man’s woman.

Behind him the two men walked back to the bedroom. “Will this work?” Mr. Wint asked as they went. “Time is against us.

“Isn’t it always?” Mr. Kite replied, walking through the doorway and vanishing as if he’d never been there. But of course he was there. He had just taken one step through space and eight hundred years through time. His companion followed a moment later.

Eight centuries earlier, Edward headed south.