Page 66 of Beyond Dreams

She remained where she was, staring at the door. A heaviness of anguish weighted down her body, dropping her to the floor again after a few seconds.

She had some belief, late-coming but not without merit, that she was never intended to emerge unscathed from this ugly business. Possibly not from the very first dream in which Duncan had ever visited her, and every single one since, when all she’d known had been his anger.

The dream then, hadn’t been Fate’s introduction, just her own premonition, that his fury would override all else.

It had been more than a week since she’d been overwhelmed by so sharp a yearning for home, but it wrecked her now with a stab of pain so intense it was impossible to hold it back. And so she continued to weep.

I want to go home.

***

“Bluidy journeyed throughtime, she says,” he muttered to himself. He bent at the waist, leaving his hands on the embrasure of the stone wall, bending in half. He dropped his head between his arms and drew in great gulps of air. It was no use. Pain was everywhere, in his gut, his head, his chest. He was physically ill, felt as if he’d eaten rancid meat, served in a flavorful sauce and spiced well to hide the fact that it had gone bad.

Jesu,that’s what she was. She was rotten meat, cloaked in her sweet body and her delicious kiss and her fetching ways. And he’d sampled her, deceived by what he’d wanted to see and not what was truly there in front of him.

“She’s a bluidy halfwit,” he said, straightening, choking on the bark of self-deprecating laughter that came with how astonishing it all was. How had she managed to hide from him her madness? How had the wool been pulled over his eyes so thoroughly, so effectively? Led by that brainless head between his legs, he decided, refusing to acknowledge all the other parts of himself that had been so happily engaged and regaled and smitten by his wife in the last ten days.

He straightened and stared out over the inky sea, pierced by a straight line of gold, a reflection of the night’s moon. Aside from the pounding of his heart and the unpleasant recriminations inside his head, the only noise up here was the low and regular roar of the surf rolling in.

’Twas just as well, he convinced himself, all of it—that he learned now and not when it was too late, after the MacHeths attacked an unprepared Thallane, or after he’d lost more of his heart to the woman who only pretended to be his wife.

Notmoreof his heart.Anyof his heart. He felt nothing for her. It was done, would be easily left behind.

He turned at the sound of footsteps drawing near, not entirely surprised to see that Graeme had found him up here on the western battlements. His cousin clapped his hand on Duncan’s back, a bit of sympathy extended.

“We always kent it was going to be a gamble,” Graeme said, “that collaborating with the MacHeths was nae ever a sure bet.”

Duncan nodded, his hands still furiously clutching the stone wall. “Aye.”

“She’s a pawn, then?” Graeme guessed, leaning a hip against the embrasure, crossing his arms over his chest. “Nae even kin to the bastards?”

Duncan chuckled mirthlessly. “Och, it’s better than that, Graeme.” He rubbed his hand over his eyes, still having trouble coming to grips with how mad the woman was. “She claims she’s nae even from this time, was moved through the centuries and somehow wound up with the MacHeths, where she was subsequently forced to play Ceri and wed me.”

“Shite,” Graeme breathed, his brow heavily furrowed, a pained expression upon his face that might have included sympathy for Duncan’s untenable plight. “What the—is she daft?”

Duncan frowned at his cousin. “Alas and alack,” he grumbled. “But fie, did she nae...?”

“Appear so normal?” Graeme supplied.

Duncan leapt at Graeme’s understanding. “It was nae just me? I ken there were things I should have questioned—her speech patterns, her lack of knowledge of,Jesu, everything—but she was...she dinna...” He waved his hand, dismissing his own confusion. “It dinna matter. She’s nae Ceri. The marriage is nae binding. The MacHeths have made themselves offensive with this betrayal, but ’twas my own narrow-minded want of an easy truce that allowed this cunning plot to take root and grow.”

They were quiet for a moment, both staring out over the wall and upon the shimmering sea.

“What does she imply?” Graeme asked after a moment. “Moved through the centuries how? Why?”

“God’s bluid, Graeme,” Duncan muttered. “I did nae entertain her fancy, did nae question the particulars of her lunacy. She said she’d come from far away, seven hundred years—’twas all I needed to hear to ken she was nae right. She denied nothing, by the by. Said her aunt—the crone at the wedding—was nae her aunt, but a witch, supposedly the conductor of her—Jesu, listen to me, speaking of it as if it were real.” He fisted his hands, laying them down softly on the stone wall. “I’ll nae stand for her to bide long in this keep. Take her to Hewgill on the morrow. Let them deal with her. Get rid of her.”

“They may nae want her,” Graeme said. “They may...dispose of her for having knowledge of the plot, for having failed in its execution.”

She might be killed.

Her bright brown eyes flashed in his mind, their edges crinkled with her smile, which was ever ready on her lips in this past week. A swell of weakness flooded him until he growled and thrust it away, embracing the anger that had served him so well for so long.

“So be it.”

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