Page 18 of Beyond Dreams

“Opportunity for what?”

“To get back to your time.”

“What will that look like?”

“Sure and you will ken it when you see it.”

Another enigmatic reply. Holly wanted to strangle the old witch. Through gritted teeth, she advised her, “Word of advice, Sidheag: next time you decide to play God with a person’s life, knock it off with the cryptic BS, just answer the friggin’ questions. This is traumatic enough and honestly, you’ve done little to help it—or me. If I’m stuck here for any length of time, I’m blaming you and your want to be some mysterious and cagey witch instead of simply telling me what I need to know.”

But she kept it up. “When the time comes, you will ken all that you are meant to.”

Rolling her eyes, Holly breathed out a frustrated, “Whatever. Fine. Goodbye.”

She turned, sparing a glance over the gathered crowd, unable to read their mood. She was still lanced with many curious and oddly timid gazes, but Holly could not say if the people of Hewgill House were now pleased for her imminent departure or if they were a bit peeved that they’d come to a wedding but were not treated to the reception that should have followed.

Still, nothing made sense.

She faced the two women with whom Duncan MacQuillan—her husband, for crying out loud!—had left her with.

“Sorry,” she murmured to the one with the heavy red make-up, Doirin, as she appeared tight-lipped and frowning with disapproval, as if displeased that she’d been kept waiting. God, she hoped she hadn’t overheard her frantic conversation with Sidheag. Since no alarm seemed to brighten her red cheeks any further, Holly guessed she had not.

The woman’s mouth remained pinched, even as she said something in Gaelic and then whirled around with all the aplomb of a pissed-off monarch and headed toward the door.

Holly moved her exasperated gaze to her daughter, Moire, and received much the same, a snarly look of disdain before that one, too, turned and walked away from her.

“Great,” Holly fumed, but did follow as she supposed she was expected to.

Nice husband, she thought, finding him nowhere in sight.

She trailed after the two women out of the house and into the yard, where waited what looked like a full army of mounted and armed men. Her face reddened again, feeling more curious stares heavy upon her, reminding her angrily of the very unseemly gown she wore.

The man she’d first thought might be her groom now stood at the side of a carriage and offered his hand to Doirin and then Moire as they stepped into the vehicle. Holly slipped her hand into his and was startled by the wink and grin he gave her before moving his hand to urge her forward and inside the carriage. As the mother and daughter sat together on the rear bench seat, Holly took the open seat, directly behind the driver.

She blew out a breath and collected their stares, the mother’s being less charitable than the daughter’s, she gathered, the woman’s mouth pinched so tightly, the area just around her lips was white.

“Sorry about that,” Holly said, having no idea what else she might say to excuse that swift fiasco of a wedding, which surely was not what they’d expected, certainly was not what they’d dressed for. “I didn’t know—”

She was interrupted and harshly so by the red-faced woman, Doirin, who spoke mostly in her own language, though peppered a bit of her tirade with a few words that Holly did understand,English, noble, andfilthyamong the words needing no translation.

And Holly had no problem interpreting the woman’s grand finish, where she pretended to spit, once to the left and once to the right, her mouth puckered with disgust before she quieted, as abruptly as she’d begun her outburst, staring out the window, refusing to look at Holly.

When Holly moved her stricken eyes to the daughter, Moire, she was sure for one millisecond that she saw a smattering of sympathy, maybe an apology in her gaze, before she, too, gave all her attention to the curtained window.

Holly swallowed, her eyes darting around the carriage, the frame made of wood, the joints and planks not smoothed very fine; the seat had no cushion, was hard beneath her butt, the road uneven enough that she was sure by the time they got where they were going, her ass would be black and blue. So, while these two in the carriage with her might be the evil stepmother and stepsister, this certainly wasn’t Cinderella’s golden pumpkin chariot.

And then it became even less interesting, the crude vehicle, when Doirin lifted her hand and drew the short curtains sharply closed on one side, directing Moire to do the same on the other side, shrouding the carriage in obscure and unsettling darkness.

Bleakly, Holly decided that this entire day wasn’t exactly how she imagined her wedding day. If she ever had. She’d not dated anyone for any length of time, or with strong enough feelings that she’d ever started dreaming and planning her wedding. Still, she was sure if she had, this wouldn’t have been it. But geez, the uninspiring, near-calamitous wedding was not what she should be fussing about now.

Maybe because she felt as if she knew him—the man of her dreams who was now apparently her husband—she felt really bad for having deceived him. But then she wondered, since they hadn’t used her real name, was this legal?

Was any of this real?

---