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“Cam! What in hell—?”

Claire dropped to her knees beside the man lying on her floor, his eyes crossed and mouth bleeding.

Fists on his hips, Cam loomed over them. “He’ll not be taking advantage of ye again, lass.”

“I don’t believe this.” Claire grabbed a cloth from the low table before her sofa and pressed it to the man’s face as he struggled to sit. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Brindle. Are you all right?”

“Yes.” The man snuffled and waved her away then looked up at Cam. “Mr. MacLeod, I presume?”

For reasons known only to Claire, she glared at him as she said, “Unfortunately. Sir Cam MacLeod, please meet your attorney, Mr. Wesley Brindle. Or he was before you clocked him. And why the hell did you do that?”

“Ye’ve been greeting, lass, dinna deny it. And ’tis plain as the blood on his face,” he pointed at the dull white stain on the man’s crotch, “that he’s the cause.”

“Oh, for God’s sake—he dropped a piece of coffee cake on himself. And I wasn’t crying because of something he did but because we were talking about Tavish and this—this ridiculous situation!” She huffed and rose. “Help him up.”

“Humph.” And how was he to know the man hadna done anything? The barrister’s coat was off, his cravat askew. Nay, he couldna be faulted for thinking the worst.

He reached for Mr. Brindle’s arm, but the man waved him away. “No. I can manage on my own, thank you.”

“As ye lust.”

Cam left the man to his own devices and followed Claire into her kitchen where he found her pulling several wee blocks of ice from her cold storage and wrapping them in a cloth.

“Here, give this to Mr. Brindle while I make more coffee.”

“Aye, and I apologize to ye, although I must tell ye I’m loath to do so, for there isna a reason for a man to undress in a lone woman’s presence unless he—”

She pressed a finger to his lips. “Cam, listen to me. You’re in a different place and time now. Customs have changed. If you keep jumping to conclusions you’re going to get yourself in a world of hurt that even Mr. Brindle can’t get you out of.”

Humph! Some things—like keeping one’s garments on while in the presence of a lady not of yer personal acquaintance—never changed. “As ye lust.”

“I do. Now give the ice to Mr. Brindle and maybe we can get on with the business at hand. Namely, keeping you out of prison.”

He found Mr. Brindle sitting on the sofa nursing his split lip. “Here.”

Eyeing him warily, the barrister took the ice and pressed it to his lip. After a moment, he asked, “Are you always so violent?”

“Since when is defending a lass’s honor considered violence?” He looked at the heavy signet ring on the man’s right hand. Ack, a laird. And nae doubt, accustomed to taking as he chose.

The man rolled his eyes and sighed. “Claire has given me her version of events. Now I need to hear yours.” He put down the ice, pulled a sheaf of papers closer to him and picked up his writing implement. “Where were you born?”

The saints preserve him. Here we go again. “I was born in Rubha, Scotland, on Hogmanay in the year of our Lord, 1716.”

Mr. Brindle grunted as he scribbled and continued to ask about not only Cam’s personal life but what he kenned of his ruler, the church, and the townships he visited.

“In how many languages are you fluent?” Brindle asked.

“What does this have to do with my arrest?”

The barrister put down his pen. “Mr. MacLeod, I’m trying to assess the veracity of your story, trying to discover if you are who you claim to be. Trust me. I will be checking every detail you’ve given me. Now, in how many languages are you fluent? In what languages do you read and write?”

“Ack, I ken the meaning of fluent, and the answer is five. How many do ye speak?”

Ignoring Cam’s question, Brindle said, “Please name them.”

“Gael, Scots, English, French, and Latin.”

The man shoved the shaft of paper and the pen across the table at him. “Prove it.”

Glaring, Cam picked up the pen and wrote in five languages, Ye, sir, are an insufferable ass.

As he pushed the pen and paper back, Claire came into the room carrying a tray laden with fresh coffee and what remained of Mrs. Grouse’s cake. He rose, took the tray from her hands and placed it on the table. Waving her to the chair he’d occupied, he said, “Mr. Brindle thinks me a liar.”

Brindle bristled. “I never called you a liar.”

“Ye didna have to.” Cam settled on the opposite end of the sofa and took up as much space as possible, spreading his arms across the back, taking satisfaction in seeing Brindle edge away while still trying to appear comfortable with Cam sitting so close.

Claire looked at Mr. Brindle. “Did he show you the burns?”

“No, we haven’t gotten that far.” Brindle picked up his pen and turned his attention to Cam. “Tell me exactly what you did after you left here and what precisely led up to your arrest.”

Loathe to relive his humiliating defeat—not to mention the gaolers manhandling him—before Claire, Cam did so, but sparingly.

“Did you strike the police officers first?”

“Nay. Had I, they’d be dead. I just wanted to be left alone, and would have wandered away had they let me.”

As he told of his incarceration and subsequent abuse, Claire’s jaw muscles twitched. “Cam, please take off your sweater.”

“Me what?”

She pointed to his chest. “Your woolen shirt.”

Ack, would his humiliation never end? He jerked the blue jersey over his head and placed it on the sofa arm.

Frowning at Cam’s burns and bruises, Brindle murmured, “Would you mind standing and turning around?”

Aye, he minded, but did so, unable to decline the plea in Claire’s eyes.

He faced forward and Brindle said, “Mr. MacLeod, it’s obvious you’ve taken a hell of a beating and we need to document this.” He then reached into the open leather portmanteau at his feet and pulled out a wee silver box.

Having no notion of the man’s intentions, Cam looked to Claire for an explanation and found her glassy-eyed, the knuckles of one hand pressed to her lips.

“Don’t worry,” she murmured. “It’s just a digital camera. You’ll see the photos—images of yourself—when he’s through.”

Cam nodded and gritted his teeth, bracing for whatever would come as Brindle aimed the box at his chest. To his relief, only a bright light flashed repeatedly and he was told to turn right, left, and backward.

A moment later, Brindle said, “Thank you, Mr. MacLeod. You can get dressed now.”

Cam donned his jersey—sweater, as Claire called it—and found Brindle holding the silver box out to him.

“Look at the screen.”

Brindle pushed a button and Cam was astounded to see himself and his wounds at both a distance and at close quarters. More astounding were the size and number of bruises on his back. Shit, nae wonder he was sore.

“What now?” Claire asked.

“Aye, need I go to court?”

Brindle put his silver box away. “I’ll do my utmost to avoid that, but there’s the possibility that the police will insist on pressing charges. I’ll let you know. Right now, we have to decide where you’ll be staying.”

Claire folded her hands in her lap. “Cam, Mr. Brindle and I have decided it would be best if you stayed with him.”

Cam scowled at the pair. “And where might that be?”

“I live in Topsfield. It’s a small community about thirty miles north of here. You’ll be safe.”

Thirty miles north? Were they both as wode as Tillie’s geese? “Nay, I shall stay here.” He wasna letting Claire MacGregor out of his sight. She held the key to his returning to his own time and place. And to his garnering the information about the battle he needed to take back with him.

“Mr. MacLeod, you can’t stay here. Claire has a business to run. She can’t keep an eye on you—keep you out of further trouble—and do what she has to do.”

“Brindle, ye ken verra well I have to be here should she figure out how to undo this curse.” He turned to Claire. “Lass, I’ll not be the least bit of trouble. I can sleep below in yer shop. Ye have naught to fear from me. Besides, having a man about to do a bit of heavy lifting and such could only prove helpful.”

Claire heaved a sigh. “Cam, I know you’d do me no harm, but—”

Craaash! Whoop, whoop, whoop!

“What the—?”

“Oh shit!” Claire bolted out of her chair, grabbed the walking cane from the tall bucket by the door and ran out of the apartment. Cam, recognizing the cacophony reverberating throughout the house as one he’d heard when he’d broken out just the day before, ran after her, Brindle fast on his heels. At the second landing, Mrs. Grouse, rolling pin in hand, came through her doorway. “Oh, no, not again!”

“Stay inside!” Cam ordered.

Heart thudding, Claire punched in the buttons on her security box. As the shop fell blessedly quiet Cam ran past and bolted through the fractured door pane.

Realizing his intent, fearing the thugs might be carrying guns or whatever the hell hoodlums carried, she shouted, “No!” But too late.

He was down the steps and racing after the glow of receding taillights.

“Shit!” She craned her neck to look out the door. Seeing the car nearing the end, suspecting Cam had little hope of catching them, and praying that he wouldn’t, she watched until they all disappeared around the corner.

From behind her, Brindle asked, “Who’d do this?” He was frowning at the broken glass at her feet. About to tell him, she heard footsteps behind her and found Cam, huffing huge white clouds, coming up the stairs.

“I’m sorry, lass. They got away.”

Thank God for small favors. “Thanks for trying.”

Claire flipped the light switch and was somewhat comforted by the warm glow from her six, still-intact, and carefully restored chandeliers until she saw what remained of her mahogany breakfront at the center of her shop, sitting next to the mirror. “Oh no!”

Oh God. If whatever they’d thrown had gone a foot to the left she would have lost her most prized possession. The eighteenth-century baroque mirror. After the first attack, she should have moved the mirror and her best pieces back where they’d be safe. But no, she’d rationalized that the best pieces were safe enough being a good thirty feet inside, because they made a statement, made her shop stand out. And now look at her pretty, bowed glass breakfront …

A hitching sob caught in her throat, and she felt Cam’s arm wrap around her, gently pulling her to his chest. “Shhh, Claire, shhh. ’Twill be all right.”

“No, it won’t. That breakfront was built in the 1820s. The glass is irreplaceable. Worse, the bastards who did this won’t stop … not until I pay them.”

“Pay them for what?”

From behind him, Brindle said, “Someone’s blackmailing you, Ms. MacGregor?”

Loathe to leave the comforting warmth of Cam’s arms, Claire did so. This was her problem, not his. “A street gang, Mr. Brindle. Teenage bastards demanding a hundred a week … to keep my property safe.”

“Have you called the police?”

Claire snorted as she grabbed the tall trash basket, dust pan, and broom from behind her desk. “Ya, three times for all the good it’s done me.”

Cam suddenly cursed as he knelt before the mirror.

Thinking he’d cut himself on broken glass, she went to him. Instead of an injured hand, he held out a brick, some of its old mortar still attached.

“I believe this is intended for ye.”

The blood drained from her head as she read the caulked message.

Until next time bitch.

Oh God, she should have anticipated the threats would escalate. And she definitely had more than broken glass and herself to worry about. She had Mrs. Grouse. What if next time they threw a Molotov cocktail through the door … ?

“What’s going on?” Brindle asked. “You’re as white as a sheet.”

MacLeod crossed his arms over his massive chest. “I willna be leaving.”

Hearing footsteps on the stairs, slow and soft as spring rain, only the wood straining beneath her weight giving Claire away, Cam peeked at the large French clock quietly ticking in hypnotic fashion to his left and sighed. Here he was, at wits’ end with no obvious way out, ’twas three in the morning and the lass had yet to settle for the night, so he might have some peace to think.

If the pattern held, on this her sixth trip down the stairs, Claire would tiptoe across the shop, peer out the windows looking both right and left, test the lock on the barred door—he’d nailed wood from the crates over the openings—then rub her arms, her breath escaping in quick white puffs, as she strained to read the wee thermometer on the wall. She’d then kneel at his side where he lay on a pallet of blankets he’d scavenged from the back room and ever so gently touch his hand, apparently checking his warmth, and then tuck his breachen feile higher about his shoulders. On her last visit, she added a downy counterpane to the mound she’d insisted upon him using, nearly suffocating him.

He watched through lowered lashes as she made her careful progress across the shop, never so much as brushing against an article, so familiar was she with all about her. Apparently satisfied that the street was as she last left it, that the troublesome lads hadna returned, she turned her attention to her odd wee thermometer. Nose crinkled, she shivered and this time gave it a sharp tap, then immediately jerked around to be sure the sound hadn’t disturbed him. When he remained still, she quickly padded away. Thinking she was returning to her apartment, he again pictured the library she would take him to on the morrow and all it might contain, but he couldna focus on anything but Claire MacGregor.

She was an odd duck, to be sure. And her expression when she found him on that moving stairs’ banister … too funny.

Imagining her as she sat across the table from him, her head tipped and eyes narrowed, apparently as confounded as he about his presence in her home, he sighed. What if she couldna reverse the spell? Would he be trapped here for all eternity or just the rest of his life—

Swish, swish.

Ack, not again. ’Twas cotton brushing against long thighs, heading in his direction.

Good God, woman, please go to bed.

He caught the scent of lavender, felt the floorboards beneath him give ever so slightly as she again knelt at his side. He struggled to relax his jaw and breathe in the slow, easy fashion of a man in deep sleep, but then nearly groaned aloud when she lowered a fur pelt over him.

Was she trying to suffocate him?

A gentle finger brushed a lock from his cheek and he caught her hand, cold and white as the snow beyond the panes, causing her to squeak in surprise. “Ssh, lass, I didna mean to frighten ye.”

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Ye didna.” And neither of them would get any sleep this night if he didna contain her. Before she could rise, he rolled, tugging her toward him. She toppled with a squeal, landing on her right side on the pallet. He wrapped an arm about her waist, pulling her back under his dense woolen breachen feile and against his chest. As he bent his knees, spooning her to him, he muttered, “Sssh, lass, I mean ye nae harm. Just bide a wee, else neither of us gets any sleep this night.”

She craned her neck to glare over her shoulder at him, her nails digging into his forearm. “What do you think you’re doing? Let me go!”

“Nay. I’m bone weary, lass. In particular, because of yer gadding upstairs and down on the hour, every hour. And ye need some sleep as well.”

She wiggled, trying to escape his hold and inadvertently pressed her delicious hurdies into his crotch.

Feeling blood race to his groin—no great surprise given he’d been asleep—hadna apparently tupped—in four centuries, he eased his hips away from her. “Damn, lass, yer arse is positively brumal.”

“Brumal?”

“Frigid, lass, like an icy loch.”

“It is not and I’ll thank you not to swear.”

“It is too and ye curse all the time.”

“I do not!”

“Aye, ye do.” He hauled the heavy sheep pelt she’d placed on his back over her and muttered into her fine hair, all glossy and lavender, “Now go to sleep or I swear I’ll squish ye.”