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“Ye lie!” Had the Highlanders lost a battle they’d have withdrawn and regrouped as they always did, but never would they have rolled over like lapdogs. And what of the French? Surely they would have come to Scotland’s aid. Eventually sent troops, if not an armada.

He strode toward Claire, ashen and shaking, backed up against the wall. “Tell me all ye ken, lass.”

The more he knew, could take back with him, the more likely he could turn the tide of battle.

She swallowed convulsively, her hands out. “I don’t know all that much.”

Intent on frightening the truth out of her, he growled deep in his throat.

In response she sputtered, “The death toll among the Jacobite forces, mostly Highlanders, was horrendous. They were tired, hungry, poorly equipped and badly outnumbered by the time they reached Culloden. Sometime during the battle—when it became apparent the cause was lost—Prince Charlie told the chiefs it was over and ran. He escaped to the Isle of Skye dressed as a lady’s maid with the help of a woman named Flora MacDonald, never to return. He died in exile. I don’t recall the year.”

Friggin’ bloody bastard! To call his subjects to arms and then run. The cowardly French prick.

Hard pressed not to slam his fists into the wall, he growled, “And what of those he left behind?” What had happened to his clan? To the neighboring clans?

Claire shook her head. “The British general—I forget his name—went down in history as the ‘Butcher.’ All the Highlanders on the battlefield were killed. After that, the British hanged or deported many men, leaving the women and children to fend for themselves. What chiefs remained lost their power to govern. The history books call the postwar period The Clearance.”

“A fucking Clearance?”

Imagining the murder, rape, and pillage an unchecked English army would do storming through his homeland, fury the likes of which he’d never experienced bloomed in his chest. Turned his blood molten. His fists hit the wall, rattling the windows, sinking deep into the plaster and slats of wood beneath. Between his outstretched arms, Claire shrieked.

Christ’s blood.

With tears burning at the back of his throat and eyes, blood roaring in his ears, he backed away, needing air.

He strode to the parlor and Claire ran after him. “Where are you going?”

“Out.”

Where didna matter. He just needed space, a place to think, to breathe.

“At least put these on.” Claire stood with the odd boots in her hands. “Here. Please? You’ll catch your death.”

He snatched them from her hands and jerked open the door. Halfway down the stairs he met Mrs. Grouse, her expression worried.

Without slowing, he jerked his head toward Claire’s apartment. “She’s unharmed.”

Mrs. Grouse, her back pressed to the wall, eyed him warily as he thundered past.

Two hours later, Cameron sat on a long pier staring at vessels the likes of which he’d never imagined. They made slow progress without benefit of sail through the choppy gray channel before him. Towering ships of iron crewed by nary a man, accompanied by a few soaring gulls.

Huddled against a biting wind, he pulled the cloak he’d taken from the pile of garments he’d found on Claire’s storage room floor tighter about him and brushed the errant tears from his cheeks.

Aye, he was in the year two thousand and seven as Claire had said, for all about him was too bizarre to be simply foreign. But there wasna a way in hell he’d slept for four hundred years. No man could live so long no matter what Claire MacGregor claimed. He’d be dead. Mummified. ’Twas magic, pure and simple, that had pulled him through time, and by God that same magic would return him to his home and clan.

He simply had to wait Claire MacGregor out.

And he’d take all the knowledge he could garner from this age with him back to his people. If he had to talk himself blue in the face he would make Da and the rest listen to reason for ’twould be the only way to prevent the defeat of his clan and The Clearance.

The word alone turned his gut to fire, bringing fresh tears.

Worse, he didna need history texts to ken that the horde of Sassenach, their blood hot after battle, wouldna have simply confiscated the Highlanders’ cattle and flocks, but would have decimated their winter stores, then torched as many keeps as possible. Minnie, frail as she was, wouldna have been able to run. Nor would she have survived a blow, much less starvation. And his sisters by marriage, young and bonnie, would have been raped if caught. The bairns … he shuddered to think of what the wee ones had witnessed, had any survived.

Please God, let some have survived.

His clan had nearly been decimated in ’51, had never fully recouped, and was now a sept under the protection of the MacDonald. Had those who remained of his kin been killed?

Thunk, thunk.

Cameron looked over his shoulder and found two men—one nearly as tall as he, the other shorter but burly—dressed in like livery of dark blue coming toward him. Behind them on the carriageway sat a black and white horseless carriage with flashing lights identical to the one he’d seen in front of Claire’s home. The authorities.

“Sir,” the tallest of the two shouted, “can’t you read? The sign says no loitering.”

Cameron turned his back to the pair. He wasna loitering but thinking.

“Hey, I’m talking to you, big guy.”

Cameron blew through his teeth and rose to find the men, knee deep in snow, only yards from him. “What ails ye? I’m doing nae harm to anyone or anything.”

“On his back,” the burly fellow mumbled.

The taller pointed at him. “Sir, is that sword real?”

“Aye. What else would it be?”

“Sir, it’s against the law to carry a concealed weapon.”

Were they daft? “Ye see the sword, so there isna a thing concealed about it.”

“You’re going to have to hand it over.”

“Nay. ’Tis mine.”

The shorter of the two reached for the small black box resting on his shoulder. “Echo 12. We need backup.”

As he continued to mutter, the taller man pulled a long black box from his belt. “Look, mister, we don’t want any trouble. Just hand over the sword and your ID.”

Eye-dee. Claire had used the word but he still had no idea what it meant. He huffed, too cold and emotionally drained to argue. If they wanted him gone, so be it. “Step aside and I’ll take my leave.”

The shorter of the two mumbled to his friend, “Backup’s on the way.” To Cameron he said, “No one’s going anywhere, sir, until we see some ID and you hand over that sword.”

Were they friggin’ deaf? “I’ll hand over naught.”

Cam shrugged and his borrowed cloak fell to the snow, leaving his bare arms free and his sword at the ready. They wanted trouble? Trouble they’d have. Perhaps a fight would rid him of his pent-up fury.

In a voice one might use when speaking to a bairn, the shorter one said, “Look, buddy, all we want is a name.”

“The name is Cameron MacLeod of Rubha.”

“Okay, Cameron MacLeod of Rubha, why are you standing out here half-naked looking like an escapee from Macbeth?”

Macbeth? Cameron glanced left and right and seeing only a lone seagull squatting on a piling, humphed. Ah, the man was taunting him with Shakespeare. Not a good thing given his current frame of mind. “Leave me be and I’ll go.”

“Put your hands over your head,” the taller of the two ordered as he aimed the black box at Cameron’s chest.

Fine with him. Cameron raised his arms, elbows bent, his right hand grabbing his backsword’s hilt. The squatter man—now holding what appeared to be some form of pistol—shouted, “Knife! Left arm.”

Christ’s blood! He pulled his backsword free and metal struck his chest. What … ?

Searing pain, hot and vicious, raced through his trunk and limbs. As his knees inexplicably buckled and the world went black, he heard the unmistakable clatter of metal on stone. He’d dropped his sword. Something he hadna done since being a bairn.