Revenge (Book 3 of Lost Highlander series) Page 5

  It was difficult to tell much without telling it all, so Catie was most likely as clueless as to who they were as before she’d even met them. Pietro tried to be harmless and disarming, and in his weakened, pained state, it wasn’t that difficult a task.

  “So, ye are Lachlan’s bride?” Catie asked Bella when they were all off their horses, and a groom came to take them to the stable.

  Bella’s lip twitched and she looked at Pietro and Quinn before answering. “Aye,” she said slowly.

  Pietro wanted to try to shield her from the uncomfortable onslaught, but was sidetracked from any thought of helping her explain her marital state when a new round of pain started slicing across his temples, completely blinding him this time. He was so alarmed he stopped and groped at the air around him, terrified to be in total blackness.

  Someone small got under his arm and his vision came back, like he was opening his eyes under water. He held onto Bella as she helped him to the door of the house. Catie swung it open and stepped aside to let them enter.

  “What’s the matter with him?” she asked worriedly after he was collapsed on the settee in a cozy sitting room. The fire was blazing and Pietro had never been so grateful in his life.

  “We dinna know,” Quinn said, directing a servant to bring food and drink.

  “Who did that to his face?”

  Quinn sighed and looked to Bella, then at his sister. “Lachlan,” he said shortly.

  Even in Pietro’s current state, he could see that Catie was savvy for her sixteen years. She was adding up the problem of his bruised face, Bella’s presence coupled with Lachlan’s absence, and their being on the run together and coming up with an interesting sum. She went to a carved wooden chest and pulled out a blanket, draping it over him.

  “Well, if he can be made better, we shall do it,” she said. “Oh, Quinn, Auntie Gwen is at market with the chickens. She’ll no’ be back until tomorrow at earliest. We could send someone after her, though, if ye like.”

  “Ah, that’s no’ necessary,” he said, wiping his hands over his face. “But I’ll send a messenger back home with some news. Fetch me the fastest rider ye have.”

  Pietro drifted off after that, coming around again when Bella prodded him to give him some soup. He didn’t think he could stomach the savory clear broth, but she was insistent. It seemed very important to her that he keep his strength up and she wrestled a pile of pillows behind his back so that he was sitting upright, then primly held out a spoonful for him to eat.

  He couldn’t help it, but he laughed at her sitting there looking so dour with her upraised spoon. He didn’t understand her one little bit.

  “I should think it would be in your best interest if I were to just quietly die,” he joked, opening his mouth for the soup.

  She gasped and jammed the spoon in his mouth, nearly gagging him. “That’s a terrible, heathen thing to say. I’d no’ wish my worst enemy dead,” she said.

  “Sorry,” he said, too tired to get into another argument. Also, the soup was tasty and he wanted her to keep feeding him. Just the first bite had restored him somewhat.

  She fed him in silence until he’d eaten the entire bowl and washed it down with some ale and water. He would have rather had tea, but he didn’t want to put anyone out. He needed to remind himself how precarious his situation really was. He was a stranger in this time, with no family or friends. Quinn had been ordered by his brother to keep him alive because he thought Piper’s existence counted on it, but how much of that did Quinn really believe? How much of it did he really believe, for that matter? If it came right down to a clan war, wouldn’t Quinn just turn Bella back over to her father rather than risk countless lives of his loved ones?

  His head had been feeling better until he started obsessing like that. He closed his eyes and sighed, and to his surprise, Bella began stroking his hair and quietly humming. The tune was sweet and mournful and for the first time in a long time, peace enveloped him as he drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter 4

  Piper stared at the book with distaste. She longed to open it and at the same time wanted to chuck it into the fireplace and watch it shrivel to ash. The battered cloth cover seemed benign enough, and anyone who opened it would find a diary full of lists, poetry, recipes and daily musings. Anyone other than Piper.

  She knew the second she touched it, she’d be overcome with sensations, knowledge, and even full blown hallucinations. Whatever tied her to this book and its magic, be it the land, the castle, her bloodline, she didn’t know, but she wanted to find out, because tie her it did. She knew she’d never be free until she fully understood it.

  She sighed, wondering if that was even possible. How could anyone understand magic? It seemed like it just did what it wanted and laughed at you behind your back, even if you thought you had a handle on it.

  Piper knew that she could walk out into the woods and perform the spell to go back in time, but she didn’t know what would happen because of it, who would suffer, who might accidentally get caught up.

  Well, that wasn’t precisely true. She couldn’t do the spell, because for the second time, the bones hadn’t come along for the ride with them.

  The spell needed eleven human finger bones. That was the first hint that it was pure evil and shouldn’t be messed with. The first time she’d done it, she’d found them in Daria’s tomb, and they hadn’t disappeared when she’d sent Lachlan back to the eighteenth century, so she’d packed them away in a wall safe, against her better judgment and everyone else’s advice.

  The second time when both she and Lachlan went back to the eighteenth century, the bones were gone when they arrived. A new set had been left behind when Daria murdered Lachlan’s friend Agnes, but when Piper did the spell a third time to bring them home, once again the bones were gone when they arrived back in the twenty-first century.

  She frowned in concentration. That was something. She quickly jotted down her theory that when one person stayed behind, the bones didn’t disappear. It was the only thing written on the page, and she’d hoped to have a lot more information. She had limited time to study while Evie took Lachlan into town to get her a birthday present. She thought it was a terrible waste of time, and she didn’t like being away from Lachlan, especially after what he’d found out.

  They were still keeping what they knew a secret from Evie, neither one wanting to alarm her, especially since she’d been under so much stress the last eight months, with a new baby, the awful breakup with Sam, and running the estate.

  It seemed that there was a whole string of mishaps ranging from small fires, one actually causing a fair amount of damage to an outbuilding on the far side of the lake, to broken bits of fence that didn’t seem the natural work of time, to one of the golf carts getting all scratched up. These might have been the handiwork of an everyday hoodlum, which was what the groundskeepers all seemed to think when they’d talked to Lachlan.

  Piper supposed they could have been incidents of petty vandalism, but she couldn’t believe anyone from the village, or even the surrounding villages would do such things. Still, it was crazy to think every little bad thing that happened to her was the work of an evil ancestor, and she was ready to blow it off and relax, when Lachlan told her about the sheep.

  Before they left on their mission to the eighteenth century, four of her dozen wonderful little fat sheep had been viciously killed. Gutted with a knife, and definitely the work of a human. When they learned that Daria was still alive, Piper immediately suspected her as being the killer, and had been horrified to think Daria was back in this time.

  Now, while they’d been gone, the sheep had been picked off one by one, each one gutted in the same disgusting manner. A cow had gone missing as well, and though the stable lads all thought she had wandered off into the mountains and died, Piper wasn’t so sure. All signs pointed to Daria. The witch was back.

  Piper hadn’t understood why Evie hadn’t told her about the vandalism and the sheep, but Lachlan thought it
was the same reason they were keeping their suspicions to themselves. Evie just didn’t want to worry her so soon after she got back.

  It made Piper’s teeth clench and her blood boil, thinking about Daria flitting in and out of her life, so close but still so unreachable. She was startled to find she’d snapped the pencil she was holding. She had to calm down and concentrate.

  Ugh. She took another pencil and nudged open the book. If she was going to vanquish the witch, she was going to have to be on her level. Piper shuddered with anticipation and flipped it open to a random page, scared to touch it and see what would happen. Scared, but also excited.

  She stared down at the page which had a drawing of what looked like a dandelion on it. This book had the power to consume her, she knew. She didn’t know if she could come back completely from wherever it took her.

  Just concentrate on Lachlan, she told herself. Lachlan would be her anchor, her lifeline back. With a deep breath, she reached out and placed her finger on the page.

  A blaze of gold light made her squeeze her eyes shut. She heard the sound of metal being hammered and a familiar symbol entered her mind. A few moments later she saw the engraved pendant that Lachlan wore to counteract the terrible effects the spell had on him. She peeled open her eyes and squinted at the page, her vision a disturbing jumble with what she was actually looking at.

  “Interesting,” she mumbled to herself, glancing around to make sure she was truly alone.

  She got such strange notions when she was studying the diary, it was almost as if a goldsmith was in the room with her, hammering away at the pendant. If these really were the instructions for making a protection amulet, that information could come in handy one day. Taking a sticky note from her desk drawer, she carefully marked the page, then put down her thoughts in the notebook.

  While that was good stuff to know, she didn’t feel satisfied with what she’d learned, yet was loath to try another page. The crackled old parchment pages seemed to ooze malevolence.

  Shaking off her fear, she set her shoulders and flipped through a few more pages with the tip of her pencil, hoping one would call out to her so she didn’t use up her valuable alone time. A circle caught her eye and she paused, studying the page. It looked like Daria had traced the circle again and again with her quill, with great pressure. The page was deeply indented where the ink was and there were splotches of splattered ink around the outline. With a shrug, she touched the center of the circle.

  Darkness descended like a blanket being thrown over her head, but she didn’t feel suffocated. A cool breeze wafted around her, rippling her hair around her face. She reached up to push it behind her ears, but found she couldn’t move her arms. Panic should have taken over, but instead she just waited to see what happened next, as if it were happening to someone else.

  She knew someone was about to arrive. Someone or something. There was a rustling in the distance behind her, like beating wings. The air was getting warmer and whipping around her more forcefully. The presence was growing stronger, getting closer. She wanted to turn around and see what it was but could only sit and wait for it. It was so close now.

  “Piper? Where are you?”

  Evie’s voice reached her from a great distance. Actually, she was just in the hallway, and about to find her submerged in the diary. Piper tore her hand off the page and slapped a ledger on top of it, shaking from head to toe and trying to get a grip on what was real.

  She stood up and took a step toward the door just as Evie burst through it, with Magnus in a baby carrier strapped to her chest. They looked heart wrenchingly sweet and normal and the last bit of whatever had swept over her while she was immersed in the book thankfully fell away.

  Evie stopped and looked at her curiously and Piper self consciously smoothed her hair and tucked her blouse into her plaid pencil skirt, hoping she didn’t look windswept.

  “You look different,” Evie said, cocking her head to the side.

  “I do?” Piper asked.

  She pulled Magnus out of his carrier. To be sure she was completely recovered from her hallucination, she sat down on an armchair and propped him up against her knees. “How?”

  Lachlan had said the same thing the night they got back. Was something really different about her?

  Evie shrugged and rolled her shoulders. “I don’t know,” she said, dismissing the subject and melting into another chair. “That baby feels like he weighs a lot more than eight pounds. By the way, Lachlan was so cute while he was shopping,” she said in an undertone, glancing at the door.

  As if on cue, he came into the library, looking worn out and borderline shell-shocked from his day at the shops with Evie. He was wearing his modern jeans and a smart dark blue wool sweater that clung to his muscular chest and wide shoulders. The blue accentuated his eyes and her breath caught when he leaned over to kiss her on the forehead before lying down on the sofa.

  “It’s so verra busy in yer time,” he said.

  “Did you have any fun?” Piper asked sympathetically.

  He covered his eyes with the back of his hand and groaned. “A wee bit, aye. I would have been eaten alive were it no’ for Evelyn, though.”

  Evelyn giggled. “He’s not lying. Who knew there were so many cougars in town.”

  “Did someone hit on him?” Piper asked, ready to take names.

  “It was all harmless,” Evie assured her. “But guess what? Lachlan’s rich. He didn’t need the money you sent with me to give him.”

  She sat there grinning until Piper reached over and slapped her lightly on the knee for leaving her hanging. Evie looked over at Lachlan, but he waved at her to tell the story.

  “Ye lasses can carry on as if I’m no’ here. I shall just rest a bit, aye?”

  “It turns out he had some coins in his sporran from his own time, that he says wouldn’t buy much more than a dinner at a pub, but were worth quite a lot at the antiques dealer today. It seems ever since the historical re-enactors moved in, there’s been a real market for authentic coins.”

  Piper had been only half listening while she tried to get Magnus to smile at her, but her ears perked up at that last bit of information.

  “Wait, what?” she asked. “The historical re-enactors aren’t real. I made them up to cover for Lachlan when he first got here.”

  Evie shook her head. “We really have them now. They’re amazing. They do parades and give lectures at the museum. They pay a nice little fee in rent, and they’ve attracted a lot of new tourists.”

  Piper stared at her blankly, still not sure how her rumor could have become a fact.

  “I think it all started with Padma,” Evie said, squinting at the ceiling as if that would help her remember. Piper raised her eyebrows and Evie blushed. “Yes, I was wrong about her, okay? She’s really very nice once you get past her supermodel looks and Duchess Kate-level shoe collection.”

  “Padma started the re-enactors?” Piper asked, not believing that for a second. Padma was an excellent museum curator but wouldn’t last four seconds living an eighteenth century lifestyle.

  “Well, no. You did,” Evie explained. “With the story you told Dr. Stone about them being unruly and getting into fights on the property? You know that spread like wildfire. But then Padma joined this museum society thing, and at first I thought it was just a way for her to write off her London shopping sprees, but it turns out she really went to this big museum funding gala there. It’s where she met her new boyfriend, too. He’s the drummer in the band that was playing the fundraiser and I’m honestly not too sure they’re right for each other. He’s smoking hot though. But that’s also where she met Archie.”

  “Who’s Archie?” Piper wailed, barely able to keep up with Evie’s twisting tale.

  Lachlan snorted from the couch. Having spent the entire day with her, he’d endured many of her tangents.

  “Archebald Bancroft of whatever-shire. I can never remember his estate name,” she said, eliciting another snort from the couch. “He�
�s the head of the historical re-enactors. I think Mellie has a little crush on him. You’ll get to meet him at your party.”

  “But why did you let them move onto the property in the first place?” Piper asked, reeling from the information overload.

  She didn’t know if she liked the idea of a bunch of strangers living out in the woods, especially if Daria was on the loose. Of course, Evie couldn’t have known that when she let them move in.

  Evie looked chagrined that Piper might be upset with her. “They signed a lease, and promised to be good. And they have been! The villagers love them.”

  Piper sighed and looked down at Magnus, who had been lulled to sleep by his mother’s comforting ramblings. His cherubic lips were slightly parted and his tuft of dark hair was standing up in a little baby mohawk. A shadow of the presence she’d felt when she was under the spell of the diary floated in her peripheral vision and she focused with all her might on the baby so it wouldn’t take her.

  “Are you going to set him up with Mel, since she has a crush on him?” Piper said, forcing her voice to sound normal and not look around the room for any dark presence. There’s nothing there, she told herself. There’s no need to look.

  “Probably not. I think he’s in his late twenties, early thirties, so he’s way too old for her. He’s very charismatic. If I weren’t a sad old single mother, I’d probably have a little crush on him too.” Evie sighed and sank further into the armchair, looking like she needed a nap as much as Magnus. “So, what did you do all afternoon?” she asked, looking over at the desk.

  Piper glanced at the stacks of books, hoping she’d completely hidden the diary. Evie was rightfully scared to death of the thing and would ardently oppose Piper studying it. She wasn’t even sure Lachlan would approve, so she was going to keep it under wraps for a while, maybe forever. If she could find out what she needed to get rid of Daria, she could destroy the diary and be done with all her dark impulses.