All for the Heiress Page 5

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  She opened them to Shane looking down at her with a manic smile plastered across his face. He looked relieved when she blinked a few times and struggled to sit up.

  “Something happened,” he said, voice tight. “The string’s gone. In fact, the wee tree’s gone as well.”

  “Bloody hell, are you serious?”

  She looked around. Things did seem slightly different. It was earlier in the day for one, that was clear, and where she thought the sapling with the bow was, there was now a much larger tree. Had they actually moved position?

  “What do we do?” he asked excitedly, shaking her arm. “Do you think we actually did it?”

  Her heart felt like it would climb out of her body and she stood up and took a few steps, breathing deeply. Not a single coherent thought could be found in her jumbled mind, and she looked up at the sky for answers. Shane breathed hard through his nose and she walked over and put her hand on his shoulder to calm him down so he wouldn’t hyperventilate. Acting out of instinct, and using her helpful nursing skills centered her.

  “Let’s take a peek at the castle,” she suggested, patting him.

  She hoped the walk back would clear their heads enough to come up with a plan, and she laughed a little as they trudged through the undergrowth. They’d covered every base in getting to the past, but hadn’t given a single thought to what they would do once they arrived.

  The small, almost imperceptible differences threw her, and she got more excited with every step they took. Shane walked a few steps ahead of her, but kept glancing back, as if he was afraid she’d disappear, or maybe he was as anxious as she was about what they’d see when they reached sight of the castle.

  A high pitched laugh and the sound of running feet halted them in their tracks and she quickly jumped behind a cluster of thorny berry bushes. Shane stood in the path like a deer caught in traffic before she reached out and grabbed his ankle. He dove behind the shrub and lay beside her. They both peered through the branches and waited.

  The laughter grew louder and a young boy, about ten years old with wavy brown hair, burst from around a bend in the path and turned to holler, “You’ll never catch up, Goldie.”

  A girl who was about a year or so younger made a liar out of him by flinging herself onto his back, nearly wrestling him to the ground.

  “Mum said you need to stay with us, you wicked philanderer,” she said, her cheeks rosy from running, her long, bright red hair in a windswept tangle.

  “You don’t even know what that word means. You need to stop sneak reading mum’s books,” he scoffed, thrashing around until she fell off him. She landed on her bottom with a hard thump, making Mellie wince in sympathy. The boy scowled at her weak attempt to hide her pain, and held out his hand to help her up, mumbling an apology. “You’re supposed to stay near Daisy, so you better run along.”

  “You’re supposed to stay near both of us, Mags, so why are you running off into the woods?”

  Mellie couldn’t help the gasp of shock that huffed out of her. That half-grown, running, teasing boy was fat little roly poly Magnus, who mostly only gurgled and gnawed on his toes?

  Shane gripped her arm to get her to be quiet, but Magnus and the little girl heard, their eyes homing in on the berry bush.

  “Oi, who’s there?” he called in a surprisingly self-assured voice. “If you’re a poacher, my uncle Lachlan will snap you in two.”

  Mellie broke out in a violent attack of goosebumps, finally accepting what she saw. She turned to Shane, whose hanging jaw told her he had come to the same conclusion.

  They’d gone into the future.

  Chapter 6

  Before Mellie quite knew what she was about, she popped up to face Magnus, her goosebumps chilling her nearly to the bone as she took him in. His baby fat was gone without a trace, his small jaw set in a hard, brave line. His downy puffs of hair were replaced by a thick, unruly brown mop. In her time he hadn’t even had his first haircut yet. They must have heard wrong, but he looked so much like a small, unformed Sam that she had to believe it was him.

  Shane looked like he was about to rise as well, and for whatever reason, she planted her foot on his back to keep him down. With barely a glance, she shook her head at him. It was bad enough she’d decided to show herself.

  Before she could speak to reassure Magnus that she wasn’t a poacher or an enemy of any kind, his eyes went round and he turned his head curiously to the side. At her abrupt appearance, he’d grabbed the red-haired girl and swept her behind his back, but she poked her head around his arm.

  “Auntie Mellie, what are you doing out here? And in those clothes?” she asked.

  The girl narrowed her eyes and turned her head to the side, mimicking the boy, and it was with this gesture Mellie saw the resemblance and gasped. This girl had to be Evie’s new baby. Her unborn baby. An explosion of stars burst in front of her eyes and Shane grabbed her ankle. She glanced down to see his questioning face. What were they going to do now?

  “Ah, hi kids,” she said, wrenching her ankle out of Shane’s grip and moving from behind the bush. “I was just visiting the historical camp.” She prayed the camp still existed in this time.

  The children exchanged looks and eyed her some more, Magnus’s expression turning more suspicious.

  “Your hair’s different,” he said.

  More footsteps came crashing up the path and he rolled his eyes, shoving his sister in an irritated manner.

  “Ye’re both dead meat,” a little girl with shoulder length black curls said fiercely when she appeared around the bend. “We’re supposed to stay together and ye’re always ditching me.”

  She looked around six, all skinny arms and legs, with an elfish face and large dark blue eyes. There was no doubt who this child belonged to, she was the perfect melding of Lachlan and Piper. Mellie staggered two steps to the nearest tree and held on to keep from fainting.

  “Shut it, Daisy,” Magnus said, dismissing her. “I told Goldie to stay with ye, so cry to her if ye’re going to cry.”

  Goldie frowned at her brother’s harsh words and linked arms with Daisy, who’d just noticed Mellie gawping at her.

  “Oh, hello, Auntie Mellie.” It was her turn to study her for a long moment. “What have ye done to your hair?”

  She reached around and pulled on her long brown ponytail. Her hair had been the same since she was twelve. She needed to get rid of them, as much as she wanted to ply them with questions and hug them.

  “I’m certain you children shouldn’t be traipsing about the forest by yourselves,” she said in what she hoped was an auntie voice.

  Was she a cool auntie or a mean one? Did she take them shopping and drop them off at school? Her eyes prickled with tears, and she realized this was proof that she either came back to her own time, or they never made it back to the eighteenth century in the first place. That thought made her heart sink with disappointment. She wanted at least a shot at a change.

  “Did you say you were going to the historical camp?” Magnus asked. “Can’t we go with you?” He patted his pockets and then turned to his sister. “Do you have the phone? Let’s call and ask if we can go.”

  “No, you cannot go with me,” she said hurriedly, startling all three of them with her harsh tone. She pushed aside the little bit of heartbreak this caused. “Sorry, but I’m in a hurry. You best be getting on. And, er, don’t mention you saw me, will you?”

  “Why not?” Daisy immediately asked. They all stared at her expectantly.

  “It’s a surprise,” she said, thinking of the only surefire way to keep children quiet. “For your mums. So keep it zipped, aye?” She made shooing motions but they continued to stand there, a small wall of belligerent lip jutting and frowns.

  “Are you lying to us?” Magnus asked.

  Bugger. She thought she heard Shane rustle around and forced herself to keep her eyes from cutting to the shrub. First they’d noticed something off about her hair and now he was straight up accusing her of lying. She cursed his astute observational skills, and blamed it on Evie. Of course someone so paranoid would have a child like this.

  “Magnus.” She crossed her fingers behind her back and prayed for forgiveness. “Would I ever lie to you?”

  “Sorry,” he said immediately. Maybe too immediately. “Of course not.” He tugged on Goldie’s arm. “Let’s go.” He led them away, turning several times to get another look at her.

  She stood there waving until she was certain they were well and truly gone, even going so far as to walk down the path to make sure they didn’t stop somewhere to spy on her. When she returned, Shane grabbed her and squeezed her shoulders.

  “Oh my God, did ye see them? Was that really wee Magnus? And the lasses, were they—”

  “Aye, I know,” she said. “We need to get out of here, though. I don’t think they believed me for a second.”

  “That’s for sure.” He flipped her ponytail. “What do ye think’s different about your hair that set them off? Do ye go platinum blonde?”

  “Doubtful.” She started jogging, wanting to put this time far away from them, where it belonged. She felt sick and jittery, knowing what she now knew.

  Back at their clearing, she lay down in the leaves and stared at the branches rustling overhead. “What now?”

  “What d’ye mean, what now? We try again.” Shane nudged her with his toe and shook his head down at her. “I dinna know what brought us to the future, but at least it worked. It’ll work again.”

  She sat upright with a gasp. “I think I brought us to the future.” She wiped her hand over her face, and swallowed hard. “I wondered about Mags when I sang the song, if I’d get to see him grow up.”

  “Bloody hell.” Shane whistled and sat down across from her. “That’s amazing. Okay, we know what we need to do, then. You think about that tosser Oliver and I’ll concentrate on Catie.”

  She nodded, not bothering to defend Oliver’s honor, still too shaken up by her interaction with the children. Magnus was a baby, and the girls weren’t even born yet. She kept getting waves of nausea and wondered if it was more than just shock.

  “Do you feel sick at all?” she asked.

  He looked up from grinding the herbs and pursed his lips. “Aye, maybe a bit. It’s weird knowing stuff I guess we’re not supposed to know. It’s messing with our equilibrium.”

  She hoped that was all it was and took out the knife, pricking her own finger this time before handing it over to Shane.

  “Concentrate,” he reminded her.

  He slashed his finger and began the chant. She closed her eyes as she sang, and tried to recall Oliver’s features, Catie’s manner of speech, and the clothes they wore. She pictured herself being helped into a carriage, Oliver gallantly taking her hand and smiling at her. She wanted so badly to see the townhouse in London that he’d spoken of, live the life of a fine lady, adored by …

  “Mellie, wake up.”

  She opened her eyes to find she was flat on her back again, Shane looking down at her. His worried face relaxed when she blinked several times and accepted his help in sitting up.

  “What happened?” she asked, looking around. “I concentrated as hard as I could.”

  “Me too,” he told her, nodding to a tree a few feet away. “I woke up over there a minute ago and have been hollering at you since.”

  An icy blast of wind whipped through the trees and she shivered. Unless the temperature had suddenly dropped thirty degrees in two minutes, they had definitely moved through time, at least further along into winter.

  “Christ, it’s cold,” he said, pulling her to her feet. “We need to get out of this.”

  She was still badly shaken from meeting Magnus and the girls, children who weren’t even born yet. She stepped closer to Shane, both for warmth and because he was the only thing she was sure was real. They were sturdily dressed, swathed in wool and winter underwear, and she still felt cold. Her thick shawl had been perfect for the weather they left behind, but didn’t do much to cut through the biting wind that persisted in whistling all around them. He looked at the sky and shook his head.

  “Come on, Mel, we need to move. It’s gonna rain soon.”

  She laughed, and he peered worriedly into her face. If she didn’t suck it up, he was going to ask her if she was okay, and she didn’t feel like dealing with that question, because she most definitely was not. With a groan, he took her hand and began to lead her away from the castle.

  “We’re going the wrong way,” she said, everything snapping into place at last.

  “No, we’re not going back there. If we did it wrong again … well, I dinna want to get tossed in the tower. Let’s go to the village. Either way we can get warm, aye?”

  “If we came to the right year, we can find Pietro. Don’t you want to see him again?”

  It had taken her nearly an hour to make him believe their old stable master had indeed gone back in time and found love with the daughter of a long ago Glen laird, and not re-enlisted in the RAF like the cover story Piper spread.

  “If we’re even a slight bit off, though, we’ll be faced with a bunch of suspicious Glens, and every story I’ve ever heard of them doesna end well for outsiders. Let’s just go get a pint and figure out what year we’re in.”

  He sounded defeated, and even though he kept a brisk pace, she could see the wilted way he held his shoulders against the wind. She hadn’t been able to make the spell work at all, and he’d done it wrong the first time. His confidence probably wasn’t at an all time high. A crack of thunder put a spring in her step, not wanting to get caught out in a storm.

  They made it to the edge of the forest before the first drops fell in big icy splats, and they stopped dead at their first sight of the village road. Mellie wiped the rain off her face and walked into the middle of the rutted, packed dirt trail. She turned in a circle, seeing the bridge, or a bridge, as it wasn’t the same one she’d crossed thousands of times. And that bridge, her bridge, was almost a hundred years old.

  “I think we did it,” she said.

  Shane stared in the direction of the village, there was nothing hampering the view, and the only things she saw when she followed his line of sight were trees, hills, and the spire of their church off in the distance.

  “Aye, we definitely went backward this time.” He took her hand and pulled her down the middle of the road.

  Her excitement built the closer they got and when they finally made it to the high street, or what must have passed for it, if she hadn’t been shivering violently from the cold rain seeping through her shawl, she would have thought she was dreaming.

  “My inn isna here yet,” he said, stopping and turning. “I think we passed where it was, or will be, I suppose. Nothing’s here.” He laughed. “I dinna know what I thought it’d be like. Not this, though.”

  She pointed to a building further down the street, with a sign and an inviting lantern hung from its porch rafters. “That must be the only one in this time,” she said, pressing her hands to her chest to calm her sudden nerves. In moments they’d find out when they were, and have to speak to people of this time.

  “What should we say?” he asked. “Are ye my wife or my sister?”

  “Wife, to be safe. We don’t look anything alike.”

  She could tell he felt as scared as she did, but he valiantly hid it under teasing bravado as he slung his arm around her shoulder. “Come along then, dear. Let’s get a room.”

  Chapter 7

  Magnus paused outside Daisy’s bedroom door and listened to her and his sister’s squeals of laughter, a movie playing softly in the background.

  He and Goldie were spending the weekend at the castle while their parents were at a book fair in London with his Uncle Martin. Up until now, they’d all three bunked together, but he’d had to go and open his big mouth and complain about how childish the girls were, and how he was far too big to have to sleep in Daisy’s babyish princess explosion room.

  He was promptly assigned his own room, manly grey and beige, with a fully stocked bookcase, but no television and no toys. And the dark wood closet door didn’t shut properly, which didn’t give him the creeps or anything, but still. Thinking about all the games he’d miss out on, he realized he’d made a grave error in pressing for independence. He leaned closer to the door and frowned at a renewed peal of giggles. What was so fun in there, without him? Traitors.

  He tightened the belt of his robe and padded down the stairs. He’d heard his aunt and uncle heading downstairs and he knew he had to tell them what they’d seen earlier that day, even though he’d promised silence.

  Auntie Piper smiled warmly when she saw him peep around the kitchen door. Even though it was close to ten, he knew he wouldn’t be scolded. The weekends he and Goldie got to spend with them were the best. His own mother was a bedtime tyrant, barely giving them an extra half hour, even on holidays.

  “Would you like some hot chocolate, Mags?” she offered, and he nodded eagerly.

  “How’s your solitary room, lad?” Uncle Lachlan asked.

  “Solitary,” Magnus sighed. He noticed them exchange a look and didn’t want to seem ungrateful so quickly added, “It’s really good, thanks.”

  Auntie Piper gave him some apple slices with his cocoa and sat down at the plank table. She patted his uncle’s hand and reached across to pat his as well. He worked very hard not to roll his eyes and sipped his cocoa, building up his courage.

  “Erm, I saw Auntie Mel in the forest earlier today,” he said after a long fortifying swig.

  “Did you? I saw her at the clinic when I got my check up this morning.” Auntie Piper patted her belly.

  Uncle Lachlan smiled and rubbed her big stomach and Magnus grimaced, feeling sorry for Daisy. Whether she had a brother or sister on the way, she was going to regret losing her only child status. He couldn’t remember a time he hadn’t had Goldie around, but he’d always envied Daisy’s freedom. The new kid was going to be a real pain in her bum.