Page 65 of Beyond Dreams

“He promised me nothing,” she said, still in that small voice. “But then I really wasn’t given much of a choice.”

“There was some plot in motion,” he charged heatedly. “Your desperate missive to the crone implies as much.” He’d come armed to the teeth with the facts as he knew them, wanting answers to all that he did not comprehend.

“That is...the other part of the whole story,” she admitted, believing it both unavoidable and impractical to keep the greater truth from him.

“I’m listening,” he said, though he remained there across the room, rigid and fierce near the door.

Holly stood from the bed and went to the fire once more, extending her hands to collect some of its heat. “You might want to sit down for this.” She was not entirely surprised by how listless and broken she sounded. She was both those things.

“I will nae.”

“Fine. Then I will.” She sat cross-legged once more, laying her hands in her lap, facing Duncan at the door this time. Possibly, him standing in the shadows near the door was beneficial; she wasn’t sure she’d be able to hold it together if he were up close and in her face with his fury, if she were able to see all the contempt in his icy emerald eyes. “What I’m going to say to you is...will be the most unbelievable thing you will ever hear in your life. And yet it’s the whole truth. Duncan, I only ask—I beg of you—please keep an open mind.”

He snorted out his disdain. “Aye, I’ll keep an open mind to hear more lies. Go on.”

She closed her eyes, wondering where exactly to start, and bracing herself for his inevitable reaction.

“As I said,” she began, lifting her gaze to him, “I didn’t know the MacHeths, spent only a few days with them before the wedding. I...I’d had a fright near those round houses, the ancient brochs, and had passed out. When I woke I was at Hewgill House. Sidheag was there—she’s not my aunt, obviously; I’d never met her before—and I...I think she’s a witch or something because she was there at the broch when I fainted and then there when I woke up. And she said to me that the only way to get back home was to get away from Hewgill House, and the only way to do that was to marry you.”

She gasped herself at this, her hands sliding up over her cheeks. “Oh, no,” she moaned, recalling now for the first time what else Sidheag had said.Dinna fall in love. Those who do never return to where they’ve come from.

All at once her heart was heavy, twisting with dread. She’d forgotten about Sidheag’s warning, had doomed herself. She’d fallen in love with Duncan

“No,” she whimpered. No, she didn’t love him. If she had—clearly over the last week she’d been headed in that direction—she certainly knew she would not, could not love him now. She wouldn’t love someone so cruel.

Callously, Duncan focused on her words, what she’d revealed, and not on her apparent upset.

“She’s a witch?” He snarled at her. “Because she happened to be at the broch and then at Hewgill House. You’re making this more foul than it needs to be with your inventions. Like as nae, she was the one who found you—fainted, you claim—at the broch and had you brought to Hewgill House.” One corner of his mouth turned up in a sneer. “If any of this should be construed as truth.”

And now for the big reveal. Holly had no hope, none whatsoever, that it would be well-received. She was torn then, between wanting Duncan to believe her, and at least try to understand, and some painfully recognized desire that he did not soften at all toward her, that there could be no chance of love between them, that returning to her own time was still on the table as a possibility.

Holly cleared her throat and lifted her troubled gaze to Duncan. When she spoke, her voice was clear and strong. “Yes, but when I fainted at the broch, it was...the year was two-thousand and twenty-one. And when I woke up at Hewgill House, Sidheag said it was 1303. And she was at both places, in both times.”

As expected, he stared at her as if she’d suddenly sprouted a second head. Of course, his disbelief quickly morphed into rage. “I just wasted a bluidy union on you!” He hollered, pushing away from the door. “I canna contract myself again! I dinna have a son or brother—that was our last chance at peace. And you’re going to sit here and profane yourself with this shite, that a bluidy witch moved you through time.”

I just wasted a bluidy union on youhit her particularly hard, made her feel incredibly worthless, without any value at all to him.

“You asked why,” she said, strangely calm in the face of his boiling wrath. “That is why. I was lost and confused and frightened, and Sidheag said I would take Ceri’s place as your bride, that my only hope to return to 2021 was to wed you. I felt I had no choice.” When he only stood there, frozen, seething through his nose, shriveling her with his horrible glower, she went on. “Of course, I didn’t believe it at first, either. It was too...well, unbelievable, too far-fetched. Time-travel isn’t real, I told myself. But I’m still here and it’s 1303 apparently, and I only did what I was told I had to in order to get home. I didn’t mean to cause you any pain, Duncan—”

“You canna bring me pain,” he clipped. “There would have to be feeling to ken pain. For you, I have none.”

She nodded and murmured, “I see,” her gaze once more returned to her lap. “For what it’s worth—”

“There is nae worth!” He bellowed, throwing out his arm to highlight the magnitude of his rage. “Nae worth in you. Nae worth in the marriage—Jesu, there is nae marriage, ’tis all irrelevant, the entire sham. And hence, there is nae peace.”

Silence embraced the chamber for a long moment, neither of them moving. The air was thick, charged with recrimination and shame. Holly watched as tears fell from her cheeks onto her lap, darkening the unbleached linen of her shift. Mindlessly, she edged her forefinger over the wet spot.

Finally, he shifted, moving one foot and then another, heading toward the door. When next he spoke, all the fury had been erased from his voice. He sounded ragged and weak.

“At the very least,” he started and then paused for quite a moment. “If you believe the verra fantastic tale you’ve just told, you are made of madness, your mind deranged. At most, you willfully deceived me and are part of a MacHeth plot.” He pulled open the door.

His seeming despair spoke more effectively to her than had his rage.

“Duncan, I promise you I am telling the truth. I know it’s incomprehensible—as it was to me! But please don’t do this to us,” she implored, rising to her feet. “Let me—”

He snickered at her, his face the cruelest she had ever seen. “There is nae us. We’re nae wed. You are nae Ceri MacHeth, nae my wife. You are just some unbalanced madwoman, playing at some farce. You are nothing to me.”

And then he was gone, had exited the bedchamber and closed and locked the door behind her.

---