Page 39 of Here in Your Arms
Tiernan.
Oh, my God.
Margaret. Tiernan.
Rose blinked.
Tiernan!
The name barely had time to land before something in her brain snapped taut—a coil wound too tightly, a puzzle piecelocking violently into place.Oh, my God.Tiernan. She knew that name. She’dreadthat name.
It slammed into her with crushing force, sending a jolt through her limbs, leaving her skin cold and her chest tight. She had seen it before, written in the careful, slanted scrawl of a woman whose words might have been what had brought her here—Margaret’s journal.
Tiernan MacRae was Margaret’s betrothed!
The Maragret whose words she’d read was not just one in a million, not some random woman from the Middle Ages, butthisMargaret, the one who everyone said she resembled, who Leana thought she was!
She stared at Leana but saw nothing, thoughts unraveling at a dizzying speed. This—this was too much.
She could have been sentanywhere.Any time, any place.
But she... she was here. At Druimlach. In the very place where a woman who looked exactly like her had lived and died. A woman whose journal she had found and read before she’d even known time travel was possible.
What were the odds? Christ, what did it mean?
Her pulse thrummed loudly in her ears, muffling the sounds of the hall, the scrape of wooden chairs, the distant clatter of plates.
Leana’s hands tightened on her shoulders, warm, firm, desperate.
“Rose?” Emmy’s voice cut through the haze, sharp with concern. “What is it?”
She couldn’t answer. She couldn’t even breathe.
Leana leaned in, her eyes glistening, her face aching with hope. “Ye remember now, dinna ye?”
No. No!
She didn’t remember. Because there was nothing to remember.
But—why was she here?
Why hadshe, of all people, been sent back? Why to this place, to this time?
A ragged breath caught in her throat, panic curling around the edges of her thoughts.
Emmy reached for her wrist, tugging her back to the moment. “Rose,” she urged. “What’s wrong?”
Everything. Everything was wrong.
She sucked in a sharp breath and forced herself to move, jerking back from Emmy and Leana’s grasp.
“I just... I’m fine. I just need some air,” she murmured dully to Emmy.
Her chair scraped loudly against the wooden platform as she pushed it back, shoving past Leana, and away from the table.
She barely registered Emmy calling after her as she stumbled away, pushing through the crowded hall toward the door.
***
