Page 3 of All The Time You Need (Magic of Time #1)

In spite of Annie’s concerns after meeting Syrie, the woman’s directions had been spot-on. They’d led her to turn off the paved country road onto what appeared to be a graveled driveway that circled through rocky rolling hills toward a forest, ending up in front of a small stone cottage that looked like something straight out of the movies.

The cottage was even lovelier than Annie had conjured in her imagination. This was exactly the sort of place where she could see her grandmother coming to escape the pressures of her everyday life. The wild tangle of flowers and plants surrounding the cottage only added to its beauty.

“Good job, Nana Ellen,” Annie said, stepping out of the car to admire the view.

No wonder her grandmother had come here every chance she had. Though Annie had yet to open the front door, she already knew escaping to this place was a tradition she intended to continue. And if Peter didn’t like it?

“Doesn’t matter,” she said aloud, defiantly, as if to challenge the world. “This will be my haven.”

And, unless her feelings about the upcoming wedding changed an awful lot in the two weeks she planned to stay here, she was going to need a haven to escape to in the coming years.

She twisted the gaudy diamond that sat on her finger, wishing once again Peter had consulted her on the choice of the ring. Perhaps that would have given her the opportunity she’d sought to back out of this horrible farce that trapped her.

From the back of her mind, her grandmother’s voice reminded her for perhaps the millionth time that she could call off the wedding.

Well, of course she could call it off . But that would mean thinking of herself instead of everyone else. How could she ever imagine being so selfish?

Calling off the wedding would mean upsetting her mother and her father and Peter and his whole family. It would mean upsetting the plans of all those people who had already been sent invitations. It would mean returning gifts and canceling all the arrangements, all the flowers and the cake and the dresses and…

“I know!” she yelled, throwing her hands into the air before taking a deep breath and releasing it slowly in an attempt to calm herself. “I know,” she said more calmly. “There’s nothing I can do but go through with it.” She was trapped with no way out, like a rat on a sinking ship.

Guiltily, she scanned her surroundings, as if expecting her mother to be standing behind her, ready with her standard rebuke that Annie should behave like the lady she was supposed to be. Thank goodness she was out in the middle of nowhere with no people and no other houses nearby. Anyone who saw her talking to herself out here in the driveway, carrying on like a madwoman, would think their new American neighbor had totally lost it.

And maybe they’d be right.

Annie hefted her shoulder bag out of the car, trying not to think about her missing luggage. The airline had promised it would arrive by tomorrow, and worrying over it now would do no good. Things really could be much worse. At least she had her toiletries and a change of underwear in her shoulder bag, and there should be plenty of Nana Ellen’s clothing inside.

She adjusted the strap on her shoulder before digging in her purse for the little silver key that would let her inside Nana Ellen’s cottage.

“My cottage now,” she muttered as she stuck the key into the lock and turned it.

She stepped inside, and immediately tears began to prickle at the back of her eyes. Her grandmother had described this room so many times, in such great detail, Annie felt as if she’d been here before. From the butter-yellow walls to the light-blue furnishings, the only thing missing was Nana Ellen herself.

The luggage strap slid from her shoulder as Annie sank down on the sofa, her fingers pressed to her eyes. It would be so easy to let it all out. So easy to give in to the grief that hung like a weight on her shoulders.

But that wasn’t the way a Shaw faced life, she heard her mother say in the back of her mind.

“Or a MacKail either, for that matter,” Annie added aloud, remembering with a smile how her grandmother would always add that last bit, drawing a frown of irritation from Annie’s mother.

Not that Ellen MacKail Shaw had ever been intimidated by anything her daughter-in-law did. Quite the other way around, if anything. Ellen had controlled the purse strings of the Shaw fortune for too many years after her husband’s death for Annie’s mother to have dared cross her. Annie’s father wouldn’t have allowed such a thing. And even if she had tried, Ellen had been a formidable woman in her own right. No one intimidated her.

“It’s a shame you couldn’t have left that ability to me, Nana Ellen,” Annie whispered, wiping her eyes as she rose to her feet.

Though she was exhausted after her long drive, there were things that needed doing, and her two weeks would be gone before she knew it. First on her list, she’d get settled in. Since she didn’t have to worry about unpacking much more than her toothbrush and deodorant, she decided to brew a pot of coffee. A little caffeine in her system and she’d be a new woman, ready to begin getting to know her new property.

But half an hour later, even after two cups of coffee, the siren call of the soft sofa was much stronger than her desire to explore. She yielded to the temptation, delaying only long enough to retrieve the e-reader she carried in her purse.

Curled up on the sofa, wrapped in a soft woolen throw that carried the scent of her grandmother’s favorite perfume, Annie prepared to lose herself in a story of romance and happily-ever-afters, her favorite kind of book.

It was only a matter of minutes before the thin electronic device slipped from her fingers as Annie gave in to the decadent lure of a late-afternoon nap.

* * *

Annie awoke to a bright shaft of light shining directly in her face. Disoriented, she pushed up off the sofa and looked around the room, trying to remember where she was. Her e-reader lay on the floor at her feet, while a cup of coffee sat on the table next to her.

She bent to retrieve the reading device to set it on the table before picking up the cup and lifting it to her lips. The big swallow she took very nearly gagged her.

Few things in the world were more disgusting than waking up to cold, stale coffee.

How long had she slept, anyway?

She dug through her purse to find her cell phone to check the time.

“Good Lord,” she said aloud to the empty cottage, double-checking that she hadn’t misunderstood what she’d seen.

Apparently the stress of the past month had caught up with her. She’d slept all afternoon and through the night, waking up to a bright new morning.

She padded into the small kitchen and started a fresh pot of coffee. It should be ready by the time she had a quick shower.

The shower itself left a lot to be desired. The water took so long to heat up, Annie began to wonder if this might have been the lack of modern plumbing Syrie had mentioned. But once the water did heat, she stepped under the hot stream and felt her muscles begin to unwind. She’d just worked up a good lather in her hair when the warm stream turned cold.

“I guess Syrie knew what she was talking about, after all,” Annie muttered, hurrying to rinse under the cold water before drying off with one of the big fluffy towels stacked beside the tub.

First item on her mental list of changes she wanted to make? New hot-water heater. Cold showers were definitely not something she found enjoyable.

Wrapped in a towel, she headed back to the kitchen and the coffee she could smell brewing. There was nothing quite like that first morning sip of fresh, strong coffee to bring a smile to her lips. She lingered for a moment over the steaming cup, admiring the wild garden outside the window. What could be better? She was freshly showered and savoring her morning caffeine, enjoying a view that was like something straight off a picture postcard. Even the bright, blue sky, adorned with wispy vapor trails from the aircraft passing overhead, seemed to be decorated just for her.

After more than a few moments of happy contemplation, she decided she’d better get moving if she planned to actually accomplish anything today. First up? Getting dressed would be a good start. She giggled at herself for behaving in such a lazy fashion, and stopped to refill her cup.

There was no way she was climbing back into the same outfit she’d worn for the last forty-eight hours, and that left only one option for her. With a fresh cup of coffee at her side, she returned to the bedroom and began to rummage through the closet to see if something her grandmother had left behind might fit her. Fortunately, she had inherited her height from her grandmother, so at least she wouldn’t have to worry that whatever she chose would look like she had stuffed herself into something that belonged to a child. And while her grandmother’s tastes in clothing didn’t include the jeans she found preferable, they did share a love of big, sloppy sweaters, so there were plenty of choices.

A gauzy floral skirt caught her eye, and she slipped it over her head, allowing it to fall into place down over her hips. Mid-calf wasn’t her preference, but it would do fine for now, since she was planning a day out exploring. A loosely knit pullover sweater in a solid pastel looked like just the thing to pair up with the skirt. It was a size too large, but she remembered the sleeveless undershirt she’d brought along in her shoulder bag, intending to use it as a pajama top. Once she retrieved that and slipped it on underneath the sweater, the outfit worked just fine. Loose and comfortable were the perfect ways to start her holiday.

She pulled her long, unruly hair into a ponytail and slipped on her shoes before returning to the main room of the house to take a seat at the table. After rummaging through her bag for the map Syrie had drawn of the grounds, she traced her finger along the lines to help her remember the paths. There were no distances or markings to indicate how far the cottage was from the old castle, but seriously, how far could it be? The property couldn’t be all that large.

She wasted only a moment in regretting not having paid more attention to all the paperwork she’d signed for Nana Ellen’s lawyers. There was no doubt that the size of the property was noted somewhere in that enormous stack of papers. It just hadn’t been something she had cared to think about at the time.

Besides, it didn’t really matter now. It was what it was. She was here for a whole two weeks with nothing more to do than read the books she loved, explore the property she had inherited and generally hide away from the reality of the world she’d have to face when she returned home. Once she began her explorations, she would discover the size of the property all on her own. After all, she had all the time she needed stretching out ahead of her.

Well, at least for the next two weeks she did.

True to Syrie’s claim, the pantry and fridge were well stocked, and Annie easily found everything she needed to pack a lunch. A sandwich, an orange, a chocolate bar and a bottle of water. She was set for the day.

She paused at the door, considering how to best carry her picnic along with her when her gaze landed on her purse. Of course. With its strap lengthened, she could sling it across her chest and have her hands completely free. But there was no point in carrying all the things she’d considered absolutely necessary to have with her on the plane.

Her key, that was important. She fit the ribbon around her neck, where the little silver key clinked against her grandmother’s necklace. For a moment, she considered taking the necklace off so it wouldn’t get scratched, but it felt good where it was, hanging around her neck.

“Keeping you close, Nana Ellen,” she said with a smile. “We’ll spend the day exploring together.”

Her key, her bottle of water and her lunch. That was pretty much all she needed to carry with her. She debated back and forth on her e-reader, ultimately deciding to leave it behind. If she found a good place to linger and read, she could always retrace her steps tomorrow.

Decision made, she pulled open the drawer of the little desk so she could dump out the contents of her purse, only to stop when she spotted a small, leather-bound journal inside.

Could it be the journal Syrie had mentioned? This she would take along with her on her exploration to find the gated arbor her grandmother had loved. It felt somehow fitting that she should read her grandmother’s journal in her grandmother’s favorite spot.

Annie stepped out of the cottage and onto the pathway that led toward the forest to again study the hand-drawn map and orient herself to the direction she would walk.

It was a beautiful, sunny morning, with just the lightest breeze to ruffle her hair. A few yards from the cottage, she found a massive stone that had been weathered by time to look almost as if it had been carved into a majestic seat, with a rough-hewn design chiseled onto it, as large as a man’s hand. An ancient version of graffiti, perhaps? She ran her finger over the carving to flatten the layer of moss growing in the lines, feeling as if she should know what it represented. It could be something as mysterious as a standing stone erected by some ancient peoples. Or it might just be the remnants of an ice sheet from the last ice age. As she stared at the carving, the design suddenly clicked in her mind, and she jerked her hand away from it to lean in for a closer inspection. No wonder it had seemed familiar. It was the same design as the pendant she wore around her neck, a heart within a heart. Someone in the past had been quite the romantic.

On an impulse, she climbed up onto the top of the rock to stand and survey all that she could see. A thrill of exhilaration thrummed through her body, as if she were a child again, without a single worry in the world. In the distance, the highway she’d traveled to get here snaked around the green hills like a carefully curled ribbon of unmoving gray. The beauty of this place filled her with an uncharacteristic sense of peace.

“Like I’ve come home,” she announced to the world around her. “This is mine. This is where I belong.”

No wonder her grandmother had loved to come here so much. And, for the next two weeks, she planned to love it just as much as her grandmother ever had.

“Thank you, Nana Ellen,” she whispered, turning her face up toward the sky. Above her, thin, wispy white vapor trails criss-crossed the sky like hand stitching on a blanket of blue. With only a little effort, she could well imagine her grandmother’s hand at work there. “You always did know what I needed before I did.”

The scene laid out before her began to shift, and a queasy feeling flowed through her stomach as vertigo threatened to rear its ugly head if she didn’t get her feet back on ground soon. She and heights had never gotten along well, and the six or seven feet she’d climbed was no exception. Not wanting to ruin her perfect morning, she sank to her knees and waited for the dizziness to pass. When it had gone, she climbed back down, concentrating on the positives of the moment, keeping her eyes focused on the rock rather than on the distance.

Her feet firmly on the ground, she cleared her throat and took a deep breath. She should have known better than to try such a thing in the first place.

In spite of that one little glitch, it really was shaping up to be a perfect day. The view, the beautiful morning, the whole feel of the place. Every single bit of it was so wonderful, she couldn’t imagine a better harbinger for her day of exploration.

Thirty minutes later she was ready to change her mind. The slippers that had been exactly what she needed for traveling were ridiculously inappropriate for a hike through the forest. She was beginning to regret not having waited for her luggage to arrive with her comfortable sneakers packed inside.

She might even have turned around and headed back toward the cottage if she hadn’t spotted her first glimpse of the castle ruins through the trees.

The sight of the crumbling outer wall filled her with a sense of accomplishment at having found her way to where she wanted to be. If she closed her eyes and held her breath, she could almost believe it all was as it had been in its best days. She could feel the history of the place wafting over her.

“Awesome,” she breathed, hurrying forward with a renewed sense of purpose.

Inside the defensive walls that surrounded the exterior of the castle grounds, she could only imagine how amazing it must have been several hundred years ago, since much of the castle was only portions of what it once had been. These each called for their own exploration, but not today. Today she was here to find her grandmother’s arbor, the place Syrie had assured her was where Ellen had spent the majority of her time at the castle.

Behind what remained of the keep, behind what had once been outbuildings, beyond the tangled remains of what once was a garden, she scrambled over the crumbled stones of what looked like the skeleton of a small building to find a small stone archway butted up against a growth of bushes. With just a little more effort, she pushed through the growth and found herself on the other side of the defensive wall. From there, she followed an overgrown pathway back into the forest she’d been walking in on her way here. At last she found it, set quite a distance outside the protection of the castle proper, a high, circular stone wall enclosing a huge tree and yet more overgrown plants. A large iron gate, long beyond any usefulness, hung agape from one side of the entrance.

Annie skirted the rusty gate and entered the arbor, heading straight for the center and a stone seat that had been placed next to the massive tree that overwhelmed everything else. Its big branches spread over the arbor like a protective roof.

“So this was your special spot,” she murmured, running her fingers along the unusual stone bench.

Someone, likely some highly prized stone-mason, had spent many hours turning a massive boulder into this lovely seat with its high curving back and its oversized arms. Maybe it was this bit of history that had drawn her grandmother to return to this spot over and over again. That or the square that had been carved into the center of the back containing the letters A and E , separated by a deep indentation that looked like an upside-down triangle, though its points were more curved than pointed.

More graffiti? Or perhaps the letters represented her grandmother and the mysterious Aiden, who had given Nana Ellen the necklace that now hung around Annie’s neck?

Yet more questions with no ready answers, something that was rapidly becoming the hallmark of her trip to Scotland.

Annie sat down, at first perching on the edge of the stone as if to test the seat before scooting back and making herself comfortable, her feet drawn up under her. The hike in the fresh air had stimulated her appetite, and the sandwich she’d made for herself was gone in no time. The chocolate bar followed just as quickly. With her hunger satisfied, she drew the little journal from her bag and unwound the leather strings tied around it to open it up to its first page, hoping something inside might provide the answers she sought. Two simple sentences had been written in her grandmother’s neat script.

The heart is the key. Follow your heart.

Nothing else. All of the remaining pages were as blank as the day the book had first been bound. Perhaps it was only the latest in a series of journals her grandmother had kept. When she returned to the cottage, she’d do a proper search to find the others that must have come before this one.

For now, she studied the words on the page in her hand.

The heart is the key. Follow your heart.

Were the words meant for the person who read the journal or an admonition to Ellen herself? Perhaps she’d run out of room in a prior book and this was a thought she’d continued over to this page. But even if that were the case, the sentiment made little sense. Ellen had never been what Annie would have described as a romantic, and yet the opening comment in her journal, the only comment in her journal, spoke of the heart. The grandmother Annie had thought she’d known so well had obviously kept an entire slice of her life secret and apart from everyone in the family. And how odd that the words she’d written were so similar to the last thing Syrie had said to Annie. It would appear her grandmother’s friend had known more about Ellen’s true feelings than anyone in her own family had.

Perhaps when Annie returned to Edinburgh, she should attempt another visit to chat with Syrie.

The journal slipped from Annie’s fingers as she laid her head back against the smooth stone of the bench and stared up at the sprawling branches over her head. She felt as if she’d stumbled into some alternate world where nothing was as she believed it to be. It felt almost like that time she was in first grade and she’d seen her teacher at the grocery store. She’d been shocked to realize that the woman could exist anywhere other than in the classroom, where she belonged.

Ellen Shaw had experienced a life beyond her family. She’d had a side of her life she’d hidden away, a past that she’d shared with none of her—

Annie’s thoughts abruptly shifted gears as her eyes lit upon an odd stone fitted into the crook of the tree’s branches. She could almost swear it was shaped like a heart.

It seemed so strange, both the shape of the rock and the fact that it was perched on a tree branch. Neither were something she’d expect to find occurring of their own accord in nature. Someone had to have put it there.

Annie almost laughed out loud at the thought of her grandmother climbing up into the tree to hide a stone up there, but, considering this arbor was on her grandmother’s private property, who would be a more likely suspect to have done it than Ellen herself?

Unable to resist the lure of yet another mystery, Annie slipped off her shoes and climbed onto the arm of the bench, stretching up to reach the stone. Her fingertips just brushed against its smooth edge, but she couldn’t quite get a grasp on it.

Holding one hand against the rough bark of the tree, she edged higher, up onto the back of the bench, balancing on her tiptoes. This time when she reached up, her fingers closed around the stone, and with only a slight tug she was able to dislodge it from its resting spot.

Carefully she climbed down from the bench, eager to examine her find.

The stone had indeed been crafted into the shape of a heart, bearing the etching of a large heart on its face. She turned it over and discovered a tiny heart etched into the very center of the stone on this side. Had her grandmother etched those drawings into the stone? She doubted it, since the etchings and the stone itself all appeared to be so old.

More mysteries to pique her curiosity.

Annie knelt in front of the bench and traced her forefinger over the lines of the square that enclosed the carved initials.

If this place had been her grandmother’s favorite, these things must have held some special meaning to that part of her life that Ellen Shaw had kept secret from her family.

“Were you part of that secret life, Aiden?” she whispered.

Examining the carving this closely, she realized that the square wasn’t simply a series of lines etched into the stone. It looked almost as if the square was a separate box that had been chiseled to fit perfectly inside the stone back of the bench, like a drawer. Or a door.

But if it were a door, how would it open?

She slipped her fingers into the opening and pulled. Though her overly excited inner child had hoped the rock would spring out to reveal all her grandmother’s secrets, she wasn’t really surprised when it didn’t.

The expectation had been silly, fueled by one too many movies, one too many fantasy stories that she’d read.

Next time she came here, she’d remember to bring something to pry at the stone. A screwdriver, perhaps. It certainly wasn’t as if she could have a locksmith come make a new key for it.

The heart is the key. Follow your heart.

She looked down at the smooth stone heart in her hand, a flutter of doubt speeding her pulse.

Surely it couldn’t be as simple as that. Could it?

Her fingers trembled from excitement as she lifted the stone toward the opening. With her imagination already working overtime, she could almost swear that the smooth stone began to vibrate against her skin. The thought was ridiculous. Impossible. And yet the stone did feel warmer than it had only seconds before.

A nervous giggle spilled over her lips as she fit the stone into the opening and waited.

And waited some more.

“What an idiot,” she muttered at last, chuckling at her own gullible expectations that something wonderful would happen when she put the stone into the hole. “I hope you’re having a good laugh up there, Nana E,” she said, glancing toward the sky.

Somehow this all had to fit together, if she were only clever enough to figure it out. Maybe she was missing something.

Once again, she studied the carving. “There must be a meaning of some sort,” she said, tracing her finger first over the A on the left side of the square and then the E on the right side. She sat back and squinted at the carving, trying for some perspective. “A, heart, E,” she said aloud, reading the markings as they appeared with the stone in place.

The only halfway clever thing she could make from that was the obvious: Aiden loves Ellen. It was like something kids would come up with in high school.

What if she turned the stone around so that it would read A, little heart, E?

Still not anything that made sense to her. But if it didn’t mean anything, why did someone bother to carve both sides and make them different? Was the carver just practicing his craft?

She sighed, running her hands over her face. Either the frustration or the ponytail was giving her a headache. She pulled the elastic band from her hair and scrubbed her fingers against her scalp. When was the last time she’d had a drink of water? Dehydration headache, maybe? She reached for the bottle she’d brought along with her, and tilted it to her mouth for a nice, long drink.

Maybe it had nothing to do with how the letters and the symbol read. Maybe she was being too literal and the meaning was more abstract. Maybe it had something to do with the overall picture.

One heart was big and one small. How else could she interpret that? One heart appeared far away and one close-up. Okay, if the carvings were somehow related to her grandmother’s situation, maybe there was a way to rationalize their meaning. Maybe that was how her grandmother might have felt about a lost love. Ellen was here and her Aiden was far away.

But why carve their initials on the square, Aiden on one side, Ellen on the other, separated by…what? A hole? And why make each side of the stone different?

“Suppose I put this in the other way around,” she mused, slipping the heart out of its space. Maybe seeing it the other way would trigger some brainstorm that had so far eluded her.

As before, the stone felt warm in her hand, tingling against her skin when she turned it over to face the little heart out to fit it back into the opening where it apparently belonged.

The instant the stone fell into place, a loud buzzing filled Annie’s ears and she ducked, one arm over her head, convinced an entire hive of bees must be after her. At the same time, the breeze picked up, swaying the branches over her head.

“What the heck?” she murmured, unable to spot the source of the odd green light glowing around the heart-shaped stone. It was as if the light came from inside the stone bench.

Around her, the wind continued to pick up speed, whipping her loose hair until it stung against her face and neck. The green light emanating from the bench grew until it filled the entire arbor like some massive spotlight. Tiny shards of colored lights shot past her head. It must be strange insects whose noise beat against her eardrums. Impossible to be sure. Since they moved so quickly, she could only distinguish them as bright points of rainbow-colored sparkles.

With a glance over her head to try to spot where the angrily buzzing insects massed before they attacked, she cautiously rose to her feet. Whatever was going on in this arbor, she wanted no part of it. She snagged her shoes and clutched them to her chest as she started forward but, before she could manage two steps toward the exit, the ground began to pitch under her feet, tossing her backward.

She tensed her muscles, waiting for the impact of the hard stone bench against her body, but she felt only a glancing blow to her cheek, which did nothing to slow her fall. Around her, the green light intensified, multiplied by an array of angrily buzzing, colored streaks, blinding her as she continued to fall. Her descent picked up speed, pitching her forward, faster and faster, as if she were falling into a deep and endless pit.

Her mind struggled to comprehend how such a thing could be possible and then, without warning, her body jerked to a sudden, bone-jarring stop. Suspended in midair, surrounded by a million shards of light and cocooned in a blanket of emerald green, her mind gave up any attempt at rational thought. Her eyes fluttered shut and the bizarre world around her faded away into oblivion.