The Highlander's Touch Read online

  “Do you know yours from seven hundred years ago?” Lisa evaded, quickly intuiting where he was headed. He would want to know who won what battle and who fought where and the next thing she knew she’d be all tangled up in screwing up the future. If she really was in the past, she was not going to participate in instigating world chaos.

  “Much of it,” he said arrogantly.

  “Well, I don’t. I’m just a woman,” she said with as much guilelessness as she could muster.

  He regarded her appraisingly and the corner of his lip lifted in a half-smile. “Ah, lass, you are decidedly not ‘just’ a woman. I suspect it would be a vast mistake to deem you merely anything. Have you a clan?”

  “What?”

  “To which clan do you belong?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “Do you have clans in Cincinnati?”

  “No,” Lisa said succinctly. He certainly didn’t have to worry about someone trying to rescue her; she hardly had a family anymore. Hers was a clan of two, and one was dying.

  He made an impatient gesture with his hands. “Your clan name, lass. That is all I am after. Lisa what?”

  “Oh, you want to know my last name! Stone. Lisa Stone.”

  His eyes widened incredulously. “Like rock? Or boulder?” No half-smile this time: A full grin curved his lips, and the impact was devastating.

  Her fingers itched with the urge to smack it off. Enemy, she reminded herself. “No! Like Sharon Stone. The famous actress,” she added at his blank look.

  His eyes narrowed. “You descend from a line of actresses?” he demanded.

  What on earth had she said wrong? “No.” She sighed. “That was my attempt at a joke, but it wasn’t funny because you don’t know who I meant. My last name is Stone, though.”

  “How foolish do you think I am?” he echoed the exact words she’d said to him about his name only hours ago. “Lisa Rock? That will not do. I can hardly present you to my men, should I decide to, as Lisa Stone. I may as well tell them you are Lisa Mud or Lisa Straw. Why would your people take the name of a stone?”

  “It’s a perfectly respectable name,” she said stiffly. “I’ve always thought it a strong name, like me: capable of enduring calamity, mighty and able. Stones have a certain majesty and mystery. You should know that, being from Scotland. Aren’t your stones sacred?”

  He mulled over her words a moment and nodded. “There is that. I had not considered it as such, but aye, our stones are beautiful and treasured monuments to our heritage. Lisa Stone it is. Did your museum say where they found my chest?” he coolly resumed his inquisition.

  Lisa reflected, trying to recall the discussion she’d overheard as she’d hidden beneath Steinmann’s desk. “Buried in some rocks near a riverbank in Scotland.”

  “Ah, it begins to make sense,” he murmured. “It did not occur to me when I cursed it that if my chest went undiscovered for centuries, the person who touched it would have to travel through both terrain and time.” He shook his head. “I have little patience for this cursing business.”

  “It would also seem you have little aptitude for it.” The words tumbled from her mouth before she could stop them.

  “It worked, did it not?” he said stiffly.

  Shut up, Lisa, she warned herself, but her tongue paid no heed. “Well, yes, but you can’t judge something simply by its outcome. The end does not necessarily justify the means.”

  He smiled faintly. “My mother was inclined to say that.”

  Mother.

  Lisa closed her eyes. God, how she wished she could keep them closed and maybe it would all go away. No matter how fascinating this was, how gorgeous he was, she had to get out of there. Even as they spoke, somewhere in the future the night nurse was being relieved by the day nurse, and her mother would have expected her home hours ago. Who would check her medicines to be certain the nurses had gotten the doses right? Who would hold her hand while she slept so if she slipped away she wouldn’t die alone? Who would cook her favorite foods to tempt her appetite? “Curse me back,” she pleaded.

  He regarded her intently and she again suffered the sensation of being examined on a deeper level. His gaze was a nearly tangible pressure. After a long silence he said, “I cannot send you back, lass. I doona know how.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know how?” she exclaimed. “Wouldn’t touching the flask do it?”

  He jerked his head in a sharp gesture of negation. “That is not the flask’s power. Traveling through time—if indeed you did—was an incidental part of the curse. I doona know how to send you back home. When you said you were from across the sea, I thought I could put you on a ship and sail you home, but your home is seven hundred years from happening.”

  “So curse something else to send me back!” she cried.

  “Lass, it does not work like that. Curses are wily little creatures and none can command time.”

  “So what are you going to do with me?” she asked faintly.

  He rose to his feet, his face devoid of expression, and he was once again warrior-lord, icy and remote. “I will tell you when I have decided, lass.”

  She dropped her head in her hands and didn’t need to look up to know he was leaving the room and locking her in again. It offended her that he was so much in control of her, and she felt an overwhelming need to have the last word, childish though the impulse was. She decided that making small demands early on might strengthen her position.

  “Well, are you going to starve me?” she yelled at the closed door. She’d also learned years ago that mustering defiance could prevent tears from spilling. Sometimes anger was the only defense one had.

  She wasn’t certain if she heard a rumble of laughter or if she imagined it.

  LISA WOKE WITH SORE, KNOTTED MUSCLES AND A KINK in her neck from sleeping without a pillow—sensations so tangible they shouted, Welcome to reality. She was surprised she’d managed to fall asleep at all, but exhaustion had finally overcome her paranoia. She’d slept in her clothes and her jeans were stiff and uncomfortable. She was cold, her T-shirt was twisted around her neck, her bra had come unsnapped, and her lower back ached from the lumpy mattresses.

  She sighed and rolled over onto her back, stretching gingerly. She had slept, dreamed anxious, eerie dreams, and awakened to the same stone chamber. That sealed it: This was no dream. Had she any residual doubts, they disintegrated in the pale light of dawn that lined the edges of the gently blowing tapestries. No nightmare could have conjured the nauseating food she’d choked down late last night, nor in any dream would she have subconsciously surrounded herself with such primitive amenities. Fertile though her imagination was, it was not sadistic.

  Although, she reflected, Circenn Brodie was indisputably the stuff of dreams.

  He’d kissed her. He’d lowered his mouth to hers and the touch of his tongue had sent heat lancing through her body, despite her fear. She’d trembled, actually shaken from head to toe, when his lips had bruised hers. She’d read about things like that happening but never thought to experience it. Before she’d fallen asleep last night, she had filed every detail of the kiss away in her memory, a priceless artifact in the barren museum of her life.

  Why had he kissed her? He was so intent and controlled, she had imagined that if he ever touched a woman it would have been with a disciplined caress, not such a kiss as he’d given her—one that had been wild, hot, and uninhibited. Bordering on savage, yet infinitely seductive. Made a woman want to toss her head back and whimper with pleasure while he ravished her. He was skilled, and she knew she was out of her league with Circenn Brodie.

  It must have been a strategy, she decided; the man dripped strategies. Perhaps he’d thought to seduce her into compliance. Given his appearance coupled with the dark sexuality he exuded, he’d probably controlled women all his life in such a fashion.

  “Somebody—anybody—please help me,” she whispered softly. “I’m in way over my head.”

  Pushing the memory of his kiss far from her mind, she
stretched her arms over her head, testing for bruises from their skirmish last night. When she heard a scrabbling at the door and the sound of the bolt being slid, she squeezed her eyes shut, pretending she was asleep. She was not ready to face him this morning.

  “Well, come on with ye, lassie! Ye willna escape by being a lie-about in bed all day,” said a mischievous voice.

  Lisa’s eyes flew open. A boy stood beside her, peering down. “Och, aren’t ye the bonniest lassie!” he exclaimed. The lad had auburn hair, a gamin grin, and unusually dark eyes and skin. His chin was pointy, his cheekbones high. Quite a fey-looking child, she thought.

  “Come! Follow me!” he cried. When he darted from the room, Lisa tossed back the covers and dashed out the door behind him without a second thought. Heavens, the boy was quick! She had to stretch her long legs to keep pace as he skimmed over the stones toward a door at the end of the dim corridor. “Here, quickly!” he cried, as he ducked through the doorway.

  Had it been anyone but a child she would never have blindly followed, but waking up and being granted a chance to escape by an innocent child overrode her common sense, and she found herself trailing him into a small turret. As she ducked in, he closed the door swiftly. They stood in a circular stone room, with stairs winding both up and down. When he grabbed her hand and started to pull her down the stairs, Lisa’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. Who was this child and why was he intent on helping her flee? She resisted his grip so suddenly that he stumbled backward.

  “Wait a minute.” She held him by the shoulders. “Who are you?”

  The boy shrugged innocently, dislodging her grip. “Me? Just a wee lad who has the run of the keep. Dinna fash yerself, lassie, no one notices me. I’ve come to help ye escape.”

  “Why?”

  The boy shrugged again, a hasty up-and-down of thin shoulders. “Does it matter to ye? Dinna ye wish to flee?”

  “But where will I go?” Lisa drew several deep breaths, trying to wake up. She needed to think this through. What would escaping the keep accomplish?

  “Away from here,” he said, peeved by her obtuseness.

  “And where to?” Lisa repeated, as her sleepy mind finally started functioning with a semblance of intelligence. “Become one of the Bruce’s camp followers? Go talk to Longshank’s son?” she said dryly.

  “Are ye a spy?” he exclaimed indignantly.

  “No! But where am I going to go? Escaping the keep is only the beginning of my problems.”

  “Dinna ye have a home, lassie?” he asked, perplexed.

  “Not in this century,” Lisa said, as she sank to the floor with a sigh. Adrenaline had flooded her body at the prospect of escape. Vanquished by logic, it now fled her veins as swiftly as it had arrived, and its sudden absence made her feel limp. Judging by the coldness of the wall behind her back and the chilly draft circling through the tower, it was cold outside. If she left, how would she eat? Where would she go? How could she escape when there was no place for her to escape to? She eyed the boy, who appeared crestfallen.

  “I dinna ken what ye mean, but I thought only to help ye. I ken what these men do to the lassies. ‘Tisna pleasant.”

  “Thanks for the reassurance,” Lisa said dryly. She studied the lad for a moment. His gaze was bright and direct, his eyes were old for such a young face.

  He sank to the floor beside her. “So, what can I do for ye, lassie,” he asked dejectedly, “if ye haven’t a home and I canna be freeing ye?”

  There was one thing he could help her with, she realized, for she certainly wouldn’t ask the illustrious Circenn Brodie this question. “I need to … um … I drank too much water,” she informed him carefully.

  A quicksilver grin flashed across his face. “Wait here with ye.” He dashed off up the stairs. When he came back he was carrying a stoneware basin that looked identical to the one she had struck Circenn in the head with last night.

  She regarded it uncertainly. “And then what?”

  “Why, then ye dump it out a window,” he said, as if she were daft.

  Lisa winced. “There is no window in this tower.”

  “I’ll dump it for ye,” he said simply, and she realized that this was the way of things. He’d probably dumped hundreds of them in his short life. “Och, but I’ll be giving ye some privacy for the now,” he added, and dashed off again up the stairs.

  True to his word, he returned in a few moments and dashed off a third time with the basin.

  Lisa sat on the stairs, waiting for the lad to return. Her options were limited: She could foolishly escape the castle and likely die out there, or go back to her room and get as close to her enemy as possible in hopes of finding that flask—which she had to believe was a two-way ticket. It was either that or accept that she was condemned to the fourteenth century forever, and with her mother dying back home, she would sooner die herself than accept that fate.

  “Tell me about Circenn Brodie,” she said when the boy returned. He hunkered down on the step beside her.

  “What do ye wish to ken?”

  Does he kiss all the lassies? “Is he a fair man?”

  “None fairer,” the lad assured her.

  “As in honorable, not attractive,” Lisa clarified.

  He grinned. “I ken what ye meant. The laird is a fair man, he doesna make hasty judgments.”

  “Then why were you trying to help me escape?”

  Another shrug. “I heard his men speaking last night of killin’ ye. I figured if ye was still breathing this morning I’d be helping ye go free.” His thin face stilled and his eyes grew distant. “Me mam was killed when I was five. I doona like to see a lassie suffer. Ye could be someone’s mam.” Guileless brown eyes sought hers.

  Lisa’s heart went out to the motherless boy. She understood all too well the pain of losing a mother. She hoped his “mam” had not suffered long, but had met with a swift and merciful death. She gently brushed his tangled hair back from his forehead. He leaned in to her caress as if he’d been starved for such a touch. “What’s your name, boy?”

  “Ye may call me Eirren, but in truth I’d answer to anything from ye,” he said with a flirtatious grin.

  She shook her head in mock reproach. “How old are you?”

  He cocked an eyebrow and grinned. “Old enough to know yer a bonny lassie. I may not be a man yet, but one day I will, so I better be getting all the practice I can.”

  “Incorrigible,” she murmured.

  “Nay, just thirteen,” he said easily. “The way I see it, a boy can get away with a lot a man can’t, so I’d best do it all now. What else did ye wish to ken, lassie?”

  “Is he married?” What kind of wife could handle a man like him? She could have kicked herself the moment she said it, but then she decided Eirren surely wouldn’t understand her interest.

  “Ye wish to tup him?” he asked curiously.

  Tup him? Lisa puzzled over that for a moment. “Oh!” she said, as she realized what he meant. “Stop that!” she exclaimed. “You can’t think like that! You’re too young. Tup, indeed.”

  He grinned. “I grew up hearing it from the men, how could I not? I haven’t had me a mam in a long time.”

  “Well, you need one,” Lisa said softly. “No one should be without a mother.”

  “Did he kiss ye?”

  “No!” she lied hastily. She ducked her head, bringing a fall of hair forward to hide her blush from the too-perceptive boy.

  “Fool he is, then,” Eirren said with his gamin grin. “Well, lassie, ye better be deciding what ye wish to do. If yer not going, yer staying, and if yer staying ye best go back to yer room afore he discovers ye missing. He doesna like rules bein’ broken, and ye escaping yer room would fair give him a fit.” He rose to his feet and dusted off his scabbed knees.

  “You need a bath,” she informed him, deciding that if she had anything to say about it while she was there, he’d have a mother of sorts.

  “Aye, and there are some things I dinna miss about me mam being go
ne at all,” Eirren said cheerfully. “Come on with ye. I see ye’ve decided to stay in the cave with the bear, which isna all bad; his growl is much worse than his bite, once ye get him to relax.”

  Lisa smiled as she followed him from the stairwell. Young Eirren saw far too much for her comfort, but he might prove a useful ally for that very reason. Scampering about like a busy mouse, the inquisitive lad probably knew every nook and cranny of the castle. She would do well to cultivate his company, surreptitiously of course. As if he’d read her thoughts, Eirren spoke, as he gently pushed her back in her room. “Doona be telling the laird about me, lassie. He willna like me speaking with ye. It must be a secret between only two. I ken ye wouldna wish to get me in trouble, would ye now?” He held her gaze.

  “Our secret,” Lisa agreed.

  CIRCENN SMACKED DUNCAN’S THIGH WITH THE FLAT OF his blade. “Pay attention, Douglas,” he growled. “Distraction will kill a man in battle.”

  Duncan shook his head and frowned as he counted off five paces and faced Circenn. “Sorry, but I thought I saw a child dart into the bothy behind the keep.”

  “Most likely that young serving lass Floria, who scarce reaches my ribs,” Circenn said. “You know no children are permitted at Dunnottar.”

  “If so, it was a bloody small lass.” Duncan leveled his sword with a smooth flick of his muscled forearm. “And although you and Galan think I like ’em all, I doona like ’em that young.”

  Their swords met in a clash of steel that sent sparks cartwheeling into the mist as dawn broke over Dunnottar. Dimly visible beyond damp low-hanging clouds, the sun bobbed on the shimmering horizon of the ocean, and the mist that had blown in with the night tide began to steam off slowly.

  “Come, Douglas, fight me,” Circenn goaded. Duncan had trained with Circenn since youth and was one of the few men who could hold his own in battle against him, for a short time, at least; then Circenn’s superior strength and endurance finished him.

  Parry and thrust, feint and spin. The two performed an ancient warrior’s dance around the courtyard until suddenly Duncan penetrated Circenn’s protective stance, the tip of his blade resting at the laird’s throat.