Love Beyond Dreams (A Scottish Time Travel Romance): Book 6 (Morna's Legacy Series) (12 page)

He remembered it all as if it were yesterday.
 

“How can I love someone that I doona know?”

“I knew very little about Adwen when I fell in love with him. I still don’t know everything about him. I’m not sure that I ever will. But you sure won’t know anything about her unless you spend some more time with her. Taking her back with us will certainly give you that.”

He laughed and hoped that he would never again have to spend a day without seeing Jane. She always lifted his spirits.
 

“Aye, ’twould but might require kidnapping the lass. Surely ye doona wish for me to do that.”

“Kidnapping her? Why would you do that? Just talk to her. Tell her. My guess is she will be curious enough to go even if she thinks you’re crazy until she gets back there. Besides, I’m sure she likes you. Any woman with a pair of eyes and a normal sex drive would. Do you have any reason to think that she doesn’t like you?”

Orick shook his head. The things that came out of Jane’s mouth always leaned towards the inappropriate, and he loved her for it.
 

“No, I ken she likes me just fine. She kissed me.”

“Kissed you? Already? Geez, that woman moves just about as fast as I did. I kissed you the first night I met you, too.”
 

“I remember. It nearly brought me to my knees and Adwen as well. I doona think she meant anything by it.”

Jane picked up her pace as she effectively led him back to the castle’s back door.
 

“It doesn’t always have to mean anything. That’s a great start. Now go and talk to her. Then, come morning, when she thinks you’re totally crazy for thinking you are from the past, we will take her back with us and scare the crap right out of her when she sees you were telling the truth.”
 

CHAPTER 17

“Ye have a gift for that, lass. I told Aiden I would come and get ye. He’s cooked the evening meal for everyone, though we asked him to no do so.”

I could lose myself in painting. I would think only half an hour had passed, and I would look down at my watch to find that it had been three. When I heard Orick’s voice calling me to dinner, I could scarcely believe it—surely I’d only ushered Aiden out of the tower moments ago.
 

“It can’t be time for dinner already.”

When I turned to face him, his brows were pulled together in confusion as he pointed out the windows to the darkened sky. He looked better out of my robe and the rags he’d arrived in, and he filled out what I could only assume were Eoghanan’s clothes quite well.

“Aye, ’tis. Did ye no notice the sun set?
 

“No. I didn’t. Time often gets away from me when I’m up here. I get pulled in to whatever I’m painting.”
 

“Might I see yer other paintings? There is one in particular that wee Cooper told me of that has made me verra curious.”

I didn’t see any point in denying or keeping it from him.
 

“The painting of you, you mean? Sure. Here it is.”

I walked over to the wall and flipped it outward so he could see it. He looked it over with great interest, saying nothing while he stared at it. Eventually, I couldn’t take the suspense.
 

“What are you thinking?”

He turned his eyes toward me, and my face blushed immediately—it was the thing I disliked most about my fair skin. Everyone could always tell when I was embarrassed or nervous.

“’Tis an impressive likeness. How could ye have painted me when we only just met?”

I shrugged, knowing that no explanation would sound sane.

“I think something was warning me that you would show up at the castle. I’ve been dreaming about you.”

“No, lass. ’Tis no the reason ye dreamed of me.”

He stepped nearer to me, and I bumped into the windowsill as I stepped back instinctively.
 

“You don’t think so? What was it then? Like you said, I didn’t know you until yesterday.”

He mirrored my position, leaning into the stone wall next to me with his shoulder so that we faced one another. He stayed a good distance from me as he spoke, helping to ease my nerves a little.
 

I knew there was no real reason to be nervous around him. Anyone could see the sort of man he was just by looking into his eyes. There was a kindness in them that gleamed with every expression and gentle authority in every step he took that made him trustworthy.
 

Still, my actions of the night before left me embarrassed. I didn’t kiss men I didn’t know. I didn’t act so impulsively without thinking about the consequences of my actions. I didn’t tend to do things without a point and, kissing Orick, what with him leaving and with my being so emotionally unavailable, was pointless.
 

“Ye could feel my wanting of ye. ’Tis why ye dreamed of me.”
I swallowed hard as I replayed what he’d just said in my mind. He didn’t seem the sort of man to be so forward, and I couldn’t even begin to guess what he meant.
 

“What?”

“Do ye believe in magic, lass?”

My answer came out before I could soften the bluntness of my answer.
 

“No. Definitely not.”

He surprised me by laughing as he pointed to the painting as if to support his case.
 

“How can ye no believe in magic when ye have proof of it right here?”

I stepped away from the wall and walked to the front of the painting.
 

“That is not proof of anything. Maybe proof that I’m slightly psychic or something, but I’ve always felt I was a little bit of that. I can sometimes feel things before they happen, but I don’t ever have enough sense of them to really understand what they mean.”
 

Orick’s face took on a glazed look.

“I dinna ken what ye meant by a word of that. In truth, it doesna matter whether ye believe in it or no, for I know well enough that it exists.”

“Okay, well that’s fine. You’re certainly entitled to your own opinions.” I smiled and looked down at my feet while I searched for a way to change the conversation. “Now that you’ve remembered, congratulations on that by the way, can I ask what part of Scotland you’re from? You speak quite differently from Aiden, what with all the
’tis-es
and the
kens
. You speak like Eoghanan and Adwen. Where do you all come from?”

He smiled, and I couldn’t help but do the same as the corner of his mouth turned up. It was endearing and infectious.
 

“’Tis no a matter of where we are from, but when.”

“Okay…clearly you are going to make me ask. What exactly does that mean?”

He surprised me by reaching for my hand. I allowed him to take it as I followed his lead down the stairs. He didn’t answer me until we were near the bottom.
 

“Ye say that ye doona believe in magic. If I asked ye to allow me to prove it to ye, would ye allow me to do so? ’Twould require ye to accompany me on a journey.”

I trusted him, but I also realized that such a trust was rather foolish. I didn’t know him—he’d done nothing to earn my trust. And despite what I felt in my gut about him, scenes from criminal case television shows flashed in my mind at his question.
 

“A journey? Would this journey end with me shoved into the trunk of a car with duct tape across my mouth?”

Orick looked horrified and completely confused.

“Again, I doona ken, but I believe I can say no. Jane, Grace, Eoghanan, and all their children will accompany us. Allow me to show ye.”
 

Curiosity got the better of me, and I knew I couldn’t say no. Not only that, being around him seemed to make me impulsive. Whether it was pointless or not, I wanted to spend more time with him.

“Fine. Show me.”

“We will all leave come morning. Tonight, we shall all tell ye everything over the evening meal.”
 

CHAPTER 18

Aiden and Anne looked entirely too calm. How were they not as shaken by everything as I was? It didn’t make any sense to me at all.

“I’m going to repeat myself once again because obviously you guys weren’t paying attention at dinner. They are convinced they live in the seventeenth century—every single one of them. How is that not certifiably crazy? I’m really half tempted to call someone, for Cooper’s sake if nothing else.”

Anne laughed and dismissed my concern with absolute certainty.
 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Gillian. Cooper is the most levelheaded and well cared for child I’ve ever seen. If anybody needs to be called on, it’s you. Just take a breath and think about everything that they said.”

What was there to think about? The very idea that I was the one out of line or acting crazy baffled me completely.

“Aiden, back me up here. It’s crazy, right?”

“No, I doona think so. Why doona ye go with them and see for yerself?”

I collapsed in frustration onto one of the couches in the sitting room.
 

“Are you telling me that you believe them?”

Anne came over and gave me a shove so that I would scoot over as she sat down beside me and looked up at Aiden.
 

“Should I tell her or should you? Which one of us is more likely to get through?”

Aiden smirked and pointed at Anne.
 

“I vote for ye. Yer American. Ye can relate to her close-mindedness and lack of belief in anything out of the ordinary.”

Anne glared at him then turned to face me.
 

“Okay, Gillian, I’m going to tell you a story. I know you won’t believe most of it, but at least listen. After I’ve finished, you can leave with Orick and the rest of them and see for yourself that I’m telling the truth. My hope is that with this story, you’ll be able to understand why we believed them so easily.”

I ground my teeth, crossed my arms, and settled in to listen to her fairy tale.
 

“Fine.”

“I’m not sure how you thought Aiden got this job. I’m sure Tracy made it sound like she did it out of the goodness of her heart. I can assure you, that’s not what happened.”

I never believed Tracy did anything out of the goodness of her heart. Everything that Tracy did—good, bad, or indifferent—was in her best interest.
 

“No, I just assumed she hired him because she knew him from college and he does good work.”

Anne winked at Aiden and smiled with pride.
 

“Both of those things are true but no, that’s not why she hired him. Or at least, maybe that is why she hired him, but it’s not as if she called him to inquire about the job. We had to come to her, and we wouldn’t have even known about the possibility without the help of a little magic.”

I kept my mouth shut, as promised, while I waited for her to continue.
 

“Two weeks before Tracy hired Aiden for this job, he was about to send all of his team members to look for work elsewhere. We were about to sell our house and were talking about moving to the States and living with my family for awhile to get back on our feet.”

I would never have suspected that they were struggling in such a way. I reached out to squeeze Anne’s hand.
 

“What happened?”

“You see how remote everything is here. It was hard to find work, and slowly our savings ran out. Anyway, right when we were ready to make the call, our phone rings and it’s some old woman out in the middle of nowhere—a few hours outside of Edinburgh—who wants to have some work done in her kitchen. Aiden drives out there to meet her, some lady named Morna, and she’s decided she doesn’t need any work done after all.”

Anne paused and looked at Aiden knowingly.
 

“I’m sure he was ready to throttle the lady, what with the hope it had given us and the hours he had to drive when we hardly had the gas money. Anyway, right as he’s starting to leave, she tells him she’s caught wind of a job that would be much bigger for him and proceeded to tell us about someone buying Cagair Castle and putting up the money to restore the place. He could hardly believe it when she said Tracy’s name. He called her right away and, by that night, he had the job, a job that was guaranteed for at least eight months and where he would make enough money to pay himself and his workers enough to last them well over a year.”

Job tip aside, the situation would have frustrated me if I was in his shoes. Why would the old lady have him drive all the way out there just to change her mind?

“Why didn’t she call and tell Aiden she didn’t want work done and give him the tip on Cagair Castle anyway?”

Anne nodded and smiled as if I were finally catching on.
 

“That’s exactly what I said. It didn’t make sense. Regardless, I thought we owed her a thank you for the tip. It was one of those days where I was feeling rather cooped up anyway, and Aiden was already hard at work making plans for Cagair, so I decided to drive out to Morna’s house myself and thank her in person. Aiden gave me very specific directions. When I got there, the house was completely gone, as if it never existed at all.”