Page 42 of Here in Your Arms
“What?”
Dropping her gaze to his chest, she shook her head frantically, refusing to say more. Just as quickly, she jerked her blue eyes back to him. “It was at that exact moment—inside a brick and stone building, with running water and electricity, in the year 1978—and as I was reading Margaret’s journal that I blacked out. That’s the exact moment I was...pushed, shoved, flung—whatever—thrown back in time. When I woke up, I was in the woods—outside, in the morning!—and...and I wandered, lost, confused, and finally Emmy and Brody found me.”
Tiernan stared at her, his mind working through the pieces of her frantic, impossible story.
She was telling him that she had been reading Margaret’s words seven hundred years in the future. That she had been in some strange archive, in a world beyond anything he couldcomprehend, and then, in the blink of an eye, had been pulled from it and thrown back here.
It was madness. Lies, of course. It had to be. His jaw clenched.
There were other explanations, he decided. Simpler ones. Margaret had only been here at Druimlach a week ago. Perhaps Rose had indeed found her journal here, in this very keep. Perhaps she had read it just days ago and was using it now, weaving some elaborate tale to gain his—or someone’s—trust.
But for what purpose?
His gaze flicked over her face, searching for the telltale signs of deception—the careful pauses, the too-measured cadence of a well-rehearsed lie. He saw none. She wasn’t calm, wasn’t composed. She was breathless, frenzied, raw. Her entire body shook beneath his plaid, her fingers were still cold beneath his. Her lips trembled as she spoke, but there was no cunning in her eyes. No slyness, no coy tilt of her mouth as if she were playing him for a fool.
She looked... wrecked.
His stomach turned. Was it possible? He denied the possibility outright, immediately. There was no magic strong enough, no force in this world capable of wrenching a person from one life and placing them in another.
And yet... something was afoot, as he’d believed from the moment he’d laid eyes on her.
She had Margaret’s face, so alike in feature that Leana had clung to her with a desperation bordering on madness. Even he had struggled, for the briefest of moments, to separate them when he first laid eyes on her. That alone was too great a thing to be written off as mere chance.
Rose stood before him, silent now, finally, her wretched unblinking gaze locked on his face, waiting.
Waiting for him to understand, perhaps, or simply to say he believed her.
He could do neither.
And yet, a deep, unshakable certainty settled in his bones once again, stronger than before: She could not leave. Whatever trickery or truth lay at the heart of this, he would not let her slip away before he unraveled it. She had been sent here—by fate, by design, by enemies of the MacRaes, or by something beyond his reckoning. And until he knew why, until he had torn apart every thread of this mystery, she would stay.
Tiernan straightened, slowly pulling his hands from hers, severing the contact that had unsettled him more than it should have. Stepping back, he rolled his shoulders, as if shaking off the strange pull of this conversation—ofher—but the unease within him did not settle.
The wind cut between them at once, lifting the edges of his plaid and stirring the loose strands of her hair, yet she barely seemed to notice. Suspicion crept back into his thoughts, replacing the brief, inexplicable concern that had taken hold when he watched her flee the hall, bloodless and shaken.
He exhaled slowly, forcing himself to push aside the restless certainty that she could not leave, that something about this was too great a coincidence to ignore. “Ye canna leave now,” he said.
“What?” Rose breathed.
“Ye canna leave Druimlach,” he repeated, “Nae until this is...until we’ve sorted this out.” Clearing his throat, he adopted a taller, more formidable stance. “I will inform Brody that ye will not be leaving in the morning,” he said, his voice steady, controlled. “Ye need to stay here, for the time being at least.”
She stared at him, searching his face as if trying to decipher something—perhaps hoping for reassurance, perhaps just seeking to understand. If she expected either, she would be disappointed.
Her voice was quieter when she spoke again. “You think I’m lying.”
He met her gaze without hesitation. “I dinna ken that ye are nae.”
She flinched, a small movement, but enough for him to notice. Her throat moved with a hard swallow, and she pressed her lips together. And then she, too, straightened, while a veil of indignation fell over her face.
“I’m not lying, not about any of it,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
Tiernan studied her for a long moment, taking in the stark pallor of her face and the way she still clutched the folds of his plaid as though it were the only thing holding her together. He was struck by the notion that she feared letting go—not just of the fabric, but of herself entirely, as if releasing her grip might cause her to come apart at the seams.
A fleeting sense of pity stirred within him, compelling him to temper the bluntness of his doubt. “It’s... what ye’ve said will bear some thought. I canna make sense of it just now.”
She exhaled a brief, humorless laugh. “Nor can I,” she admitted. “Every time I try, it only seems more impossible, more unreal.”
His jaw tightened. For all his doubt, for all his wariness, one thing remained certain—he could not let her go.
