Page 19 of Beyond Dreams

Chapter Six

To the annoyance ofboth Doirin and Moire, Holly regularly peeked beyond the curtained window of the carriage. The countryside itself, while invigorating for how green and endless it seemed, was not what drew her gaze or inspired her to risk their wrath by moving the curtains. It had more to do with a desire for light, number one, since the interior of the vehicle with the short curtains drawn was really just too dark and unnerving. She half expected one of these rigid-faced women to come at her with a shank, so dark was the ride and so unpleasant their company. But mostly, Holly was looking for the broch, from where she’d been transported, hoping to find and then calculate its direction and distance from Thallane.

In almost two hours inside the stuffy carriage, Holly saw little but the endless fields of golden grain and green pastureland, and more sheep than she could count.

The very first structure she saw since leaving Hewgill House turned out to be Thallane, and her first view of her new home—hopefully a short residence—was both enlivening and terrifying. The party and the carriage rode along a narrow but fairly smooth highway along what Holly assumed to be the North Sea for quite a while, that view not disturbing at all but somehow soothing for the tranquility of the shimmery blue water. And then a fat arm of the shoreline jutted out into the sea, not more than twenty feet above the softly rolling surf, and upon the edge of that promontory stood a castle. Or a medieval fortress, she might guess it was.

“Thallane?” She asked of her mostly silent traveling companions, receiving only a sparse nod in answer. Ignoring them once more, Holly returned her attention to the fortress.

The lane along the arm of land widened only slightly and rose gradually as they made their way toward the impressive, almost overwhelming edifice of Thallane. Plenty of lofty tower houses Holly had seen with their short barmkin enclosures, which had always seemed to Holly to have been useless as defense. Instead, here at Thallane, an impressive curtain of stone, three or four stories high, an entire city block in width it seemed, was drawn across the promontory, it’s dull façade broken only by a bulky gatehouse protruding from the middle of the wall. The huge gate was presently closed, and protected by a portcullis, and this was beyond a deep ditch that had been cut into the rock of the earth over which lay a wooden bridge, wide enough for the width of the carriage to pass over but not much else at the same time.

As she watched, and as the carriage drew closer, preceded by the men riding on horseback, the thick metal portcullis groaned as it was raised, and the double doors of the gate were pulled open. The wheels of the carriage made rickety sounds as they rolled over the bridge and then all was briefly dark as they passed under the gatehouse and through the depth of the curtain wall for a span of at least ten or fifteen feet before the vehicle entered the yard of the fortress.

Holly was surprised to find inside the wall many squat structures made of wood. She’d only ever seen ruins of stone. But then she supposed any wooden structures would not have survived seven hundred years. Perhaps in the twenty-first century, after hundreds of years of being battered by the sea, all that remained were fragments of the curtain wall and any other fortification made of stone. She could not recall any mention of ruins along the shoreline in this area—assuming she was still where she’d been during her Scotland tour.

A figure and shadow passed by where she peeked from the window and the door to the carriage was opened only a second after it stopped, revealing that Duncan MacQuillan had come to usher the ladies from the conveyance. Holly hesitated just enough that Doirin and Moire took the opportunity to exit before she might have. Her husband’s hand was offered again, extending somewhat inside the carriage, waiting to receive her hand. Drawing in a fortifying breath, Holly placed her hand in his much larger one and stepped out into the gray daylight. She sent only a fleeting and reflexive glance at Duncan, pinning on a wan smile, though little could be made of his gaze or his mood. His eye was trained on her chest, as she’d just thoughtlessly revealed more of her daringly exposed breasts—all but spilling them out of the impractical bodice—by the manner in which she’d been forced to exit the carriage, rather hunched and bent.

Belatedly and likely red-faced with a furious flush, Holly laid her splayed hand over the middle of her chest, where the skin erupted from the silk, and lifted her gaze to the donjon, the main living quarters of Thallane. This was situated against a shorter curtain wall on the seaward side of the complex, a four story keep of sun-bleached stone, with windows of different shapes and sizes seen on several different floors. The entire structure was massive, forming an L for how it turned around an inside back wall, the three corners flanked by square towers that were part of the curtain wall. Holly counted four different doors but was steered toward the largest one to the far right by her husband’s hand, now at her elbow.

She didn’t resist his handling, but likely she didn’t move at the speed he might have wished, her hesitation wrought by worry. “So, what are we doing?” She asked him and then frowned over the quality of her voice, which had emerged as a frightened croak, she decided.

“We are walking into the keep,” he answered, a bit of an exasperated snarl shading his tone.

“Yeah, I got that. But... I mean, what—? Are we having a meal here? Like a reception? Or is all the wedding day stuff done?” Basically, she needed to know how far away she was from having some privacy and maybe a well-deserved nap since today’s anxiety had essentially sapped every ounce of energy and strength she had. She needed to gather herself, needed to come to terms with this new situation in the ongoing nightmare. Frankly, she wanted nothing more than to sleep and start again when she was fresh. She hadn’t yet grasped what it meant that she’d just married a guy who had first come to her in her dreams—originally in the twenty-first century—and what, if anything, she should or could reveal to him about the truth.

The only thing she’d been told was not to fall in love. That was all the warning or instruction Sidheag had given her. Granted, Duncan MacQuillan was gorgeous, but he’d given her no reason as of yet to imagine falling in love with him was going to be an issue. That simmering and stewing anger, which she’d encountered dozens of times in her dreams, was a little more unsettling in real life. In such close and detailed proximity to his continuous scowl, and with him offering nothing to say that he’d been looking forward to the marriage, she was pretty sure that she would prefer to keep her distance, and what remained of her sanity.

She was then consumed by a fresh fear, wondering if this marriage were even legal, since they’d not used her real name. And then she wondered if it mattered at all. But oh, how she abhorred unknowns and variables and secrets. The mask of deceptive calm she’d employed for the last several hours—for days actually—was beginning to fray.

As they stepped into the house, Holly was overwhelmed by a renewed wave of fear and a palpable lack of courage. Not that Sidheag had been any help to her, but she was truly all alone now.I’m stuck in the past all by myselfhit her hard, mercilessly. Her nose itched and her throat tightened as tears gathered. The hand at her bodice absorbed some of the heaving of her chest, her condition only heightened by her awareness of it. Walking ahead of Duncan MacQuillan, she tried to regulate her breathing before it got away from her. She pursed her lips and breathed with purpose through her mouth and then startled when a hand grabbed at her arm.

She spun around at Duncan’s touch, clamping her lips tight, which forced all the air through her nose in quick breaths. The tears fell as she faced him, humiliated that he should see her like this, so forlorn and cowardly.

“You are weak,” he accused.

It wasn’t said with any intention to belittle her, she believed—or supposed after her initial gasp of indignation. His tone suggested it was something he’d just learned about her, which he did not find appealing at all.

“Yes, very,” she didn’t mind telling him. “I’m not sure what you were expecting, but this is what you’re getting.” She flung her arm out, away from her chest, in a gesture of defeat. “I’m weak. I’m scared and I’m confused and I’m probably going to cry. A lot. Maybe brace yourself. Or get used to it now. Honestly, I’m too exhausted and I’m too tired to pretend anymore that I’m not terrified.”

“You are the wife of the MacQuillan chief,” he reminded her, an edge to his voice now. “Determine now, from here on forward, how to conceal it. Or, more suitably,” he advised rigidly, “get rid of it, the fear.”

“Sure,” she agreed, so far completely unimpressed with her husband’s manner. “Let me just turn off that fear faucet.” When his severe expression clouded with more anger, Holly snapped irritably, “The only way that’s going to happen—the fear going away—is by me being taken out of this nightmare and returned where I belong.”

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