Page 28 of All The Time You Need (Magic of Time #1)

Almost home.

The words rang in Annie’s head, weaving a cocoon of happiness around her heart as she sank into the back seat of the big black taxi. Staying at the airport hotel the first day she’d arrived back in Scotland had been a good decision. Now she was fully rested and ready to begin her new life.

The landscape zipped past her window, and Annie forced herself not to think about the differences between the here and now and the much older version of this place where she really longed to be—the place she truly considered home.

When at last the driver pulled into the long, graveled drive, she could hardly wait for the car to come to a complete stop before she stepped out to breathe in the fresh air.

The minutiae of beginning her new life felt as though it was taking forever. She waited as patiently as possible for the last of her luggage to be hauled out of the taxi’s big trunk and deposited on the gravel next to where she stood, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

“Will you be needin’ a receipt then, lassie?”

Annie smiled at the winded request and shook her head as she handed over the money for her fare.

“No, thank you,” she said, slipping a few extra bills into the driver’s hand at the last moment.

The elderly man had already done more than enough, navigating the narrow roads on the trip here from the hotel. And then there was the loading and unloading of all her heavy suitcases, not an easy task for a man of his years.

With a word of thanks and a big smile, the driver got back into his car and pulled away, leaving Annie alone at last, standing in front of Bield Cottage.

She was home.

Or, more correctly, she was almost home. This place, in this time, would be as close to home as she could get. A vision of Alex danced through her mind, and she did her best to banish it. He was never far from her thoughts, no matter how hard she tried to keep him away, always lurking there in the shadows, just waiting for an opportunity to jump out and send her heart flip-flopping in her chest.

With a sigh, she unlocked the cottage door and began the task of hauling all her luggage into the little house, hoping to get them all inside before the gray sky opened up and dumped rain on them. The first bag she dragged all the way back to the bedroom. The other four she left sitting just inside the door. It wasn’t good enough that she’d spent a fortune to bring all of them with her on the plane. Now she faced putting out her back trying to lift them and drag them back to the bedroom.

“Maybe I’ll just unpack them right here,” she announced to the empty cottage.

But not right now. After all, she had all the time in the world to put her things away. Or not. It really didn’t matter. This was her private retreat, just as the name indicated. She could do whatever she wanted.

“Almost whatever,” she grumbled aloud, heading for the kitchen.

Her whole life was turning into a giant almost. She’d need to make some changes if she was going to have any hope of heading off years of self-pity.

And thinking of changes, she really needed to stop talking to herself. Either that or get a cat so that she’d have an excuse for talking to herself.

“I could become the eccentric old Cat Lady of Bield Cottage,” she said, chuckling as she filled the electric kettle and turned it on. “Or a writer, maybe.” She’d read somewhere that writers often talked out loud to themselves, even when other people were around.

With a cup of freshly brewed tea in her hand, Annie wandered outside and headed straight for the overgrown garden. During her time at Dunellen, she’d grown to love her morning walks in the gardens. Strolling through the fragrant plants had sent up a symphony of aromas, with each different herb joining in as her skirt had brushed against it. The wonderful scents would cling to her clothing, accompanying her through her day like a fragrant sachet.

Those walks were only one little piece of what she missed about the small slice of life she’d enjoyed there. But, just maybe, they were the one little piece she could reclaim in this time.

Could any of Dunellen’s herb beds have survived? She vaguely remembered having seen a tangle of vegetation gone wild that first time she’d made her way through the ruins. Perhaps in a day or two, after she’d settled in, she might be ready to face what was left of Dunellen. A trip to see if any of the original plants had survived the passage of time would be a good diversion. As unlikely as it was, if any had, she could transplant them here to her garden.

“Or I could just clean out this mess and start fresh,” she murmured, stopping to sip from her tea.

That was a much more plausible plan. Tomorrow she would tackle this garden. There was a shed out back. Chances were good that the gardening equipment would be out there. If she couldn’t find what she needed, she’d simply have to go into the village and get whatever she was missing.

Having a plan of action made her feel better. Whether it was the act of laying claim to Bield Cottage as her own or simply knowing that she had something planned to keep her busy, she couldn’t say.

With a lighter heart, she turned from the garden and strolled across the drive, listening to the gravel crunch under her feet. It was so beautiful here, with everything still the lovely green of summer. Once autumn made an appearance, the view should be spectacular.

Annie turned her gaze to the distance, trying to imagine how beautiful it would be in just a few months. Her eye followed the gray ribbon of the highway until it disappeared into the valley below.

The village lay in that direction. From what she’d been told, it wasn’t supposed to be too far. Maybe she could even walk there if it was close enough. If she were on higher ground, she might even be able to see it.

She set her cup on the old wooden bench next to the front door and headed across the drive, out to the big rock at the yard’s boundary. Climbing up on top of that would offer her the view she sought. If she kept her eyes focused on the distance rather than on the height of the rock she climbed, she ought to be able to get to the top, have a quick look around for the village and then scramble back down before her fear of heights overtook her. She’d done it twice before; surely she could manage it one more time.

Several feet away from the rock, something caught her eye. Something completely unexpected.

“What the hell,” she demanded of her empty surroundings, stopping where she was, hands on her hips.

A new line had been scrawled through the original heart that Aiden had so long ago carved there for her grandmother.

That some stranger had trespassed on her property was bad enough. But that they’d had the audacity to deface something so ancient, so special to her, felt like a personal violation. She began walking again, her steps picking up speed until she reached the rock. The vandals had added only a single line to the original carving, leaving her thankful that they hadn’t scrawled dirty words or their own names all over it. And, in spite of her indignation about someone having messed with her grandmother’s rock, she had to give them credit for authenticity. They’d actually carved the jagged line into the stone rather than taking a can of spray paint to it.

“How odd. It looks every bit as old as the original,” she said, marveling at the workmanship as she ran her hand over the carving.

The finger she’d traced along the marks came away damp from the moss growing in the groove. How could that be? She’d been away less than a week and yet this thing looked as weathered as the original carving.

Every bit as weathered and perfectly aligned within the original.

Annie’s breathing sped up, turning shallow as her heart pounded in her chest. She stared at the changes in front of her as her mind struggled to accept the meaning of what she studied. If she were a romantic dreamer, she might be tempted to believe that the line carved in the stone represented a broken heart. But that couldn’t be.

Could it?

Laying her hand flat against the carving, Annie let out a shaky breath and tried to organize her thoughts. There had to be some rational explanation for this, but, for the life of her, she couldn’t come up with one.

“Please don’t let me be like this forever,” she whispered, turning away from the rock to walk slowly back to the cottage.

She prayed that there would come a day when every single thing she saw wouldn’t automatically give her some false hope. She prayed that there would come a day when Alex would be only a fond memory instead of a sharp, stabbing pain ripping through her heart.

After retrieving her cup of tea, she went back into the cottage, sidestepping the suitcases she’d left just inside the door. Once again she chose to ignore them. Unpacking didn’t sound at all like something she wanted to do. It was a mindless task that would give her too much time to think. She needed an activity that would fully occupy her mind.

There were still her grandmother’s missing journals to find.

“Thinking bad,” she announced as she decided what she’d do. “Exploring good.”

She stood in the middle of the living room, trying to decide where to hunt first. If she’d kept a journal for years, where might she put all the older copies?

“In my bedroom, of course.”

That was where she’d always put all the things she’d wanted to keep private. Maybe Nana Ellen had done the same.

Once she reached the bedroom, she went through another moment of trying to put herself in her grandmother’s place to figure out where the journals could be. There were two dressers, but Annie had already been through their drawers in her search for something to wear.

Her eyes lit on the closet, and she knew at once that was the obvious place. She’d been only ten or eleven when she’d been with her Nana Ellen in her big house in Denver and found her grandmother putting keepsakes in a shoebox that she stored in her closet. If that had been her habit back home, there was no reason for it not to have been her habit here, too.

Sure enough, tucked on a top shelf in the closet, Annie found a medium-sized box tied up in yellow ribbon. Yellow, Nana Ellen’s favorite color. With growing excitement, she set the box on the bed and untied the ribbon, carefully lifting the lid. Inside, neatly stacked, were several old leather-bound journals.

Annie’s hands trembled as she lifted the first one to gently thumb through the pages.

“Jackpot,” she whispered, her eyes flitting over the pages filled with her grandmother’s scrawl.

Thankfully, Nana Ellen had dated her entries, making it easy to quickly discover which was the oldest book. Annie kicked off her shoes and climbed up onto the high bed, stuffing both pillows behind her back to get comfortable before she opened the cover and flipped to the first page. There was nothing like starting a story right at the beginning.

To her disappointment, Annie realized after a few moments of reading that the oldest journal didn’t begin at the beginning. It appeared to have been written after Nana Ellen’s encounter with Aiden, picking up as if it were a continuation of the story her grandmother was writing one day at a time. A quick search showed that it was, in fact, the oldest book in the box. With a sigh, she began to read again, coming to a halt when she reached the August 15th entry.

Aug 15 - Each day I visit the rock that bears my beloved’s message and, as Syrie predicted, today I found his gift tucked away in the bench. After adding my own heart to his, I’ve placed it on a chain around my neck, and that is where it will stay for as long as I live. My heart held inside of his. Curse my cowardly soul! Oh, that I couldn’t be clever enough to convince my beloved Aiden to join me here or brave enough to stay in his world with him.

Annie read the words her grandmother had written over and over again, as if she might garner some new meaning from them if only she read them one more time. No matter how she tried to spin what Nana Ellen had written, there was only one meaning that she could see. The carving on the rock outside, the heart within a heart, had been done as a message to Ellen after she’d returned from her visit back in time. And, just as Lissa had claimed, Aiden had made the heart Ellen had worn. But he’d made it after Ellen had returned to her own time, not before.

As the implications of Annie’s new knowledge sank in, she hopped off the bed and slid her feet into her shoes, running for the front door almost before her shoes were on.

Had Alex, in the tradition of his grandfather, sent a message to her?

She stopped for a moment at the rock, assuring herself that the jagged line through the original heart really existed. She hadn’t simply imagined it there. It was real. And it was old. Centuries old.

Annie began to run, toward the forest and through the trees, dodging branches and bushes as she hurried toward her destination. Her grandmother had written that she’d found Aiden’s gift tucked away in the bench, and there was only one bench that Annie could think of that her grandmother could have meant.

By the time Annie reached the gate to the old arbor, she was forced to stop, leaning over, gasping for air. Her breath came in rough, winded pants, and her heart beat as if it would pound its way right out of her chest. Still, she paused only long enough to catch her breath before approaching the stone bench.

Now that she was here, a panic set it, clawing its way up into her throat. Whether the fear was that she’d find something or nothing at all, she couldn’t say, only that she had to force herself to take the last two steps and drop to her knees beside the big stone seat. With a shaking hand, she reached for the heart-shaped hole to probe deep inside.

When her fingers encountered the small bundle, she closed her hand around it and pulled it out, clutching it tightly in her fist.

It was from him. It had to be. The hole had been empty when she’d taken the stone heart out just a week ago.

Slowly, she opened her hand and stared at the little bundle resting in her palm. It appeared to be tied up with some sort of string or perhaps leather, too deteriorated over time to tell for sure.

She wouldn’t open it here. At the cottage, she could take her time and use more care to peel back the covering.

If she could survive the wait.

* * *

Annie’s journey back to Bield Cottage from the arbor felt as if it took her longer than anytime she’d made the trek so far. Likely it was the small package clasped in her sweaty palm that made it feel so.

After digging around in the desk drawer, she found a small pair of scissors and carried them with her to the table. She sat, unmoving for several minutes, working up the courage to confront whatever she might find within the package.

Slowly, carefully, she snipped the bindings and unwrapped three different layers of what appeared to be ancient oiled leather. Inside the final layer she found the item that had been so carefully packaged. A small heart made from twisted metal, a twin to the one she wore. The one Aiden had made for himself, perhaps?

“What are you trying to tell me, Alex?” she whispered, sitting back in her chair.

The entry in Nana Ellen’s journal said that she’d found Aiden’s gift, just as Syrie had predicted. What was it that Syrie had known that allowed her to make such a prediction? What might the odd little woman know now?

Whatever Syrie knew, it was more than Annie knew and that was all that mattered.

She dumped the contents of her purse out on the table next to the small metal heart and dug through the papers until she found the one she wanted. The one with Syrie’s telephone number scrawled on it.

“I need your help,” she said when her grandmother’s friend answered.

“Annie?” the woman queried, pausing for only a second. “Oh, dear. It is you, isn’t it? I’m taken a bit off guard by your call, my dear. I’d hoped you might have found what you were searching for and stayed with…well, here you are. What is it you need of me?”

“You know, don’t you? You know where I went,” Annie said. “ When I went.”

Silence greeted Annie’s comment, so she chose to continue without waiting any longer.

“I think I might have made a terrible mistake. Coming back, I mean.”

Annie waited through the other woman’s silence this time.

“You just might have,” Syrie said at last. “Tell me everything that’s happened and we’ll see if we can’t figure out what you want to do next.”

Annie spent the next several minutes going over everything that had happened to her from the moment she’d first entered the arbor. The weeks at Dunellen, her marriage to Alex, her coming back to this time. Everything, right up to and including the tiny package she’d found in the arbor.

When she finished, Syrie’s first response was a long sigh.

“Why is it that the pleasures of youth are wasted on the intellects of the young? You silly girl. Don’t you realize your husband was telling you that he loved you in the only ways a man of his time would think necessary? Alexander MacKillican was never…what is the word you girls use nowadays? Oh, yes. I remember now. That man, in fact none of the men in that century, were beta hero types. They were alphas. That was simply the way of the world.”

“I know that,” Annie said, a touch of indignation coloring her voice.

Did the woman honestly think she didn’t know that? Of course she knew it. At least, now she did.

“Then what do you think you should do about all of this?” Syrie asked.

What should she do as opposed to what could she do? Annie hadn’t the least idea of what she should do. She only knew what she wanted to do.

“If I had it all to do over again, I’d stay with Alex.”

“You would, would you?” Syrie asked, doubt ringing in her voice. “You’d give up everything you have here? Your family, your daily conveniences, all that which you take for granted in your modern life? You’d give all that up just to be with him?”

“If I could,” Annie said, knowing she spoke the truth. “In a heartbeat.”

“Then I fail to understand your dilemma, my dear. What’s stopping you?”

What was stopping her?

“I guess I didn’t think I’d be able to. Nana Ellen didn’t go back to her Aiden, so I guess I thought it was a one-time thing.”

A sound suspiciously like a snort came from the other end of the line. “Faerie Magic has never been a one-time thing. That arbor is built upon a Faerie circle. Believe me, Annie, when I tell you, the Magic in that place will survive long after you and I are gone. And as for your grandmother, she didn’t go back because she chose not to go back. The way was always open for her. As it is for you.”

Then there was nothing stopping her. Nothing standing between her and the man she loved. Nothing…except her own foolish fears.

“Annie? Annie!”

“Yes? Sorry. I guess I was lost in thought for a moment.”

Lost in thought, already planning her trip back to the time where she really belonged.

“There are a few things you should probably do before you go. Arrangements you should make. Someone trustworthy needs to take charge of the property. I’m sure you can understand the importance of that. We can’t allow the arbor to fall into the wrong hands. You should prepare your family for your going, as well. Leaving them with no word would be cruel.”

Syrie was right. There were a million things Annie needed to do before she left.

“I think I know the perfect person to look after Bield Cottage, but I’ll need to speak to the lawyers to set up a trust. And coming up with something to tell my folks might take a little while. Somehow I doubt they’d be too accepting of the truth. There’s just so much to do, Syrie. I don’t see how I’ll have enough time to get it all done.”

“Not enough time?” Laughter like the tinkling of silver Christmas bells rang from the phone in Annie’s hand. “Analise Shaw! Think of what you’re saying. Time is hardly an issue for you. You have all the time you need.”