Page 3 of Here in Your Arms (Far From Home: A Scottish Time-Travel Romance #10)
“This is Scotland. The year is 1304.”
That’s what Emmy had just said, following her fantastic, laughable statement that she was quite sure Rose had time traveled.
Rose barely registered the slow, steady pace of the horses around her, the rhythmic jostle of the mare beneath her. The countryside, the dirt path winding through rolling hills, the heavy woolen shawl draped around her shoulders—all of it faded into insignificance compared to the absurdity of what had just come out of Emmy Carter MacIntyre’s mouth.
She stared at the woman in front of her, at the back of her head, waiting for her to say she was joking.
When she didn’t, Rose shook her head, her grip tightening on Emmy’s cloak as she struggled for words. “I don’t—excuse me, but what are you talking about? That’s insane. Why are you—?”
“I know,” Emmy said with a sigh. “It’s a lot to take in.”
“It’s more than a lot,” Rose snapped. “It’s impossible. I think you should let me off here. I don’t—”
“That’s what I thought, too,” Emmy said, ignoring Rose’s plea to get off the horse, “that of course it wasn’t possible. I thought I’d bumped my head, or that I was dreaming, or that everyone around me was staging some complex, pointless—cruel!—joke on me. But... you’ll see.”
“No, I won’t,” Rose countered sharply. “Because this isn’t happening. It can’t be happening.”
“I know, I know,” Emmy readily agreed, her voice calm, almost gentle. “It’s science fiction, right? But, Rose, I’ve been here for two years. Two years. Although, actually, I’d been sent back to my time, and then I prayed and hoped and waited to be brought back again.”
“You... wanted to be here?” Rose asked and immediately rolled her eyes at herself—asking such a thing, which was nearly as much as suggesting she believed any of this nonsense.
“Absolutely.” Emmy turned her head slightly, her gaze drifting toward the man riding parallel but a bit apart from them.
Emmy’s husband, Brody.
He’d barely spoken a word to Rose but watched everything.
“I didn’t want to be anywhere else,” Emmy said, her voice softer yet, wistful.
Rose tried to wrap her mind around it, but nothing made sense. None of this made sense.
“Okay,” she forced out. “Fine. Let’s pretend for just a second that you’re telling the truth, that this—this whole thing is real. You’re saying people can time travel? And you’ve said a few things that has me...I’m expected to believe you traveled through time as well?”
Emmy glanced over her shoulder, her expression calm but firm. “I did, that’s how I know what you’re going through and I’m saving you hours and days of confusion, wondering what’s going on, by just putting it out there, as unbelievable as it is. I recall specifically—frighteningly—how scared I was.”
“How did you do it?”
“I didn’t do it,” Emmy was quick to clarify. “Someone—or some thing —did it to me. I don’t know how it works, not really. But I do know that one day, I was walking through a small village in Scotland in the year 2019, and the next, I woke up here."
Rose froze. Her grip on Emmy’s cloak tightened. Good God, but there was so much to process.
"Wait a minute,” she snapped. “Twenty-nineteen?”
Emmy nodded. "Yep. Twenty-nineteen."
Rose stared, her mind struggling to process. "You—you're from the future?"
"To you and them,” Emmy replied, nodding toward the men riding along with them.
Something in Rose’s chest tightened, a sharp pull of panic. "Oh my God," she whispered. "Do they time-travel in the future?"
Emmy barked out a laugh before shaking her head. "No. Or at least, not that I know of. It’s not like people in the future are just jumping through time like it’s a vacation destination. Honestly, I’d never heard anything about it—except, maybe the same as you, in the movies, all that science fiction stuff. But, Rose, it’s had me thinking over the last couple of years—what if all the hundreds or thousands of people who’ve gone missing, say just in our time, weren’t actually dead in their car in the bottom of some lake, or buried in a shallow grave by some madman...but actually alive and well, just in another time?"
Rose gaped at her. "That’s insane.” She sunk a little in the saddle, deflated by another bewildering, depressing thought. Emmy sounded so normal, so matter-of-fact, like she was explaining how to balance a checkbook or bake a casserole—except she was talking about time travel. Time travel! And she wasn’t saying it like a crazy person, either, with wild eyes or a doomsday sign around her neck. She was calm. Rational.
And completely out of her damn mind.
Loonier than a pet cuckoo. Off her rocker. A few records short of a full jukebox.
Emmy shrugged and said patiently, “Rose, it’s in your best interests to suspend belief of everything you think you know. Honestly, it will just be easier on you if you simply open your mind to the possibility. We just don’t know everything about life, about fate, about true magic, about...oh, God, so many things.”
Rose opened her mouth, then shut it. Her mind reeled.
No. No, no, and no!
She was tired, cold, overwhelmed. This was shock, pure and simple. It had to be. The most likely explanation was that she’d suffered some sort of breakdown, or accident, or medical event, and none of this was actually happening.
She swallowed, forcing herself to stay rational. “I’m sorry, Emmy. You seem very kind, but...I just can’t believe this—any of it.” She wondered what kind of fool would believe such baloney.
“But, Rose,” Emmy said, slowing the horse, angling it sideways, “you’re here, aren’t you?”
Rose barely heard Emmy’s words, her mind too tangled in the utter impossibility of it all. But then, as the horse slowed beneath them, Emmy’s arm stretched outward, gesturing toward something ahead.
Rose followed the motion, and her breath caught.
Looming in the distance, its stone walls dark against the dark gray sky, was a castle . Not a crumbling relic, not the picturesque ruins she had visited on tours—this was a fortress , solid and imposing, rising from the mist like something conjured from a history book. High walls of rough-hewn stone surrounded it, with narrow slits for archers cut into the surface. Towering battlements crowned the structure, their jagged tops like the teeth of some great beast. A massive gate stood at its center, flanked by wooden watchtowers. Beyond it, she could just make out the peaked rooftops of inner buildings and the faint wisp of smoke curling from chimney stacks.
It looked like something straight out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail , which she had seen with her aunt a few years back, only no one was clapping coconut halves together to make the sound of a horse galloping, and she was most certainly not laughing.
This was real .
Certainly, it seemed that way. She stared, her pulse speeding up again.
No spotlights illuminated the walls. No neatly printed plaques stood at the entrance, offering tourists a brief history before leading them to a well-manicured path with a gift shop at the end. No, this place wasn’t stuck in the past, preserved as some grand museum piece. It belonged here. It was the present.
“This is Dunmara,” Emmy said softly. “Home.”
Rose tried to make sense of it, tried again to make it actually be a movie set... or a medieval reenactment village? No—she knew historical sites, and this was wrong . It wasn’t carefully restored—it was lived in . The muddy road leading up to it had been worn smooth by the passage of countless hooves, not the treads of modern hiking boots, not a single tire track. A small herd of sheep grazed nearby, not fenced in by wooden posts, but loosely watched by a boy in a thick woolen cloak. A man hauling a cart of firewood lumbered toward the gates, his plaid fastened with a metal brooch too dull to catch the late afternoon light.
Rose’s mouth went dry. Her fingers clenched again in the wool of Emmy’s cloak. She tried to say something , anything that made sense, but the words wouldn’t come.
Emmy prodded the horse forward again, catching up with the party they’d been riding with all day.
“We’ll just take it one day at a time,” Emmy said gently. “I don’t know another way to make it easier for you.”
They passed through the gates and the horses’ hooves clattered against the cobblestones of the inner courtyard.
A chill passed through Rose, less from the cool night air than from the weight of Emmy’s words still settling in her mind.
This is Scotland. The year is 1304.
The truth should have been impossible. Yet, the past didn’t seem to be only on paper anymore, something to be studied via artifacts. It was all around her.
Ahead, the group had dismounted, soldiers moving efficiently to tend the horses. Brody, already on the ground, turned and approached as Emmy reined in. His sharp eyes flicked from his wife to Rose, with scowling assessment. He reached up to help Emmy down first, his touch brief but unmistakably familiar, his gaze softening for only an instant before shifting back to Rose.
When he extended his hand to her, it wasn’t exactly hesitant—Brody MacIntyre didn’t seem like the kind of man who hesitated about anything—but there was something in his expression that suggested caution, a question unspoken. Either he was trying to make sense of her, or he was asking permission to assist her.
Rose hesitated, not because she feared him, but because she wasn’t sure she could get down without making a fool of herself. As if sensing her reluctance, Brody didn’t wait for her to decide. His large hands closed firmly around her waist, lifting her from the saddle with effortless strength.
Rose barely had time to stiffen before her feet hit the ground. She swayed, unsteady, but Brody stepped back immediately, watching her with the kind of wariness one might direct at a puzzle missing half its pieces. He said nothing, merely gave a curt nod before turning toward the keep.
Emmy’s reassuring hand touched Rose’s arm. “Would you like to rest for a while? I know it’s a lot to take in. Or are you hungry?”
Hungry?
Rose blinked. Food hadn’t even occurred to her.
She hesitated for only a moment before her stomach answered for her, a dull pang of hunger tightening in her belly. She exhaled, realizing she hadn’t eaten since— God, when?
“Food,” she murmured, as though testing the word. She swallowed, then nodded. “Yeah. I think I need to eat something.” It was one thing to pass out from trauma, as she was experiencing now, but she shouldn’t aid and abet it, weakening herself by going hungry.
Emmy smiled, urging her forward with her arm looped through Rose’s. “Come inside, then. We’ll find you something to eat.”
Rose walked beside Emmy, beneath the stone archway and through the heavy wooden doors. Rose’s eyes widened the moment they stepped inside, directly into the great hall of a medieval castle. Whether it truly was 1304 or this was simply a careful restoration, she still wasn’t sure. But the hall was magnificent, though not in the pristine, museum-like way she was used to seeing medieval artifacts. But because it felt so real, so true. Wooden beams covered the ceiling high overhead, blackened with age and soot from countless fires. Rushes covered the floor, woven with the scent of herbs meant to keep pests and odors at bay. The room was vast and dimly lit by a low fire in a massive hearth, and a dozen trestle tables sat in neat rows before a high table which sat at one end on a raised dais. The space felt cavernous, strangely still with all those vacant tables, even as it seemed so... genuine.
Rose barely had time to take it all in before Emmy steered her toward a smaller doorway off to the side. “Supper is done for the day, so we’ll have to go straight to the kitchen,” she said. “Maud and Agnes will take care of you.”
Rose nodded agreeably but absently.
Emmy led Rose through a side doorway and down a corridor, turning around a corner before Emmy stepped into a large, warm kitchen, its packed earth floor seeming as solid as stone for decades or possibly centuries of footfalls. Thick wooden beams above were blackened with the smoke of countless meals. The hearth fire blazed, drawing Rose’s attention, in awe to see so ancient a structure and its many compartments—several built-in cubbies for ovens, two bays of fire as the ‘stove’—in use. A long, scarred wooden table sat in the middle of the room, cluttered with clay bowls, wooden spoons, and the remnants of the evening meal. A collection of black pots and kettles hung from hooks near the hearth, their surfaces dulled with use,
Two women bustled within the chamber. One, taller and leaner with graying brown hair, was kneading a round of dough, her capable hands working the pliant mass with brisk efficiency. The other, plump and ruddy-cheeked, was tending the fire, her sharp eyes darting up when she heard the door creak open.
“Ach, there ye are,” the ruddy-cheeked woman said, addressing Emmy. “And who’s this, then?” Her shrewd gaze flicked over Rose, taking in her pale face, her bewildered expression, and—a frown developing—her jeans and tennis shoes.
“This is Rose,” Emmy introduced, glancing toward the hearth and a few suspended black kettles, as if gauging what might be left from supper. “She’s hungry.” Emmy pointed at the plump woman, smiling affectionately, and said to Rose. “That’s Agnes. You will never go hungry in her presence. And this,” she added, sidling close to the taller woman, her smile becoming more playful, “is Maud, and she—”
“—has work to do,” Maud interrupted, arching a brow at Emmy before turning her gaze to Rose, assessing her with an expression that, while not exactly unkind, was certainly less indulgent than Agnes’s.
Emmy grinned. “Maud rules the roost here, Rose, and while she pretends she’s all tough and scary, she’s actually a softie underneath.”
Rose smiled wanly, offering a quiet, “Hello.”
At the sound of Rose’s voice, Maud’s frown sharpened while Agnes swiveled swiftly from the hearth, where she’d been ladling something into a wooden bowl.
“ Jesu ,” Agnes gasped, crossing herself. Her little round eyes jerked to Emmy. “Are ye attractin’ more of them?”
Emmy reacted quickly, defensively. “Me? Agnes, I had nothing to do with this—how could I?”
Maud’s nostrils flared, her gaze still locked onto Rose. “Ye’re tellin’ me another one’s fallen through time? Just like ye did?”
Rose’s eyes widened and she gaped at Emmy. “They know?”
Emmy smiled gently at Rose. “Yes, almost from the start. It was Maud and Agnes—and Ailis, I’m not sure where she is—who kept me from completely losing my mind.” To the hard-working maids in the kitchen, Emmy said, “Ladies, please recall how frantic I was in those first few days. Rose has...just arrived”—she paused and turned a curious frown onto Rose—“how long have you been here?”
Rose shrugged, not exactly sure. “Maybe a day,” She ventured, having no idea how long she’d lain in the forest, unconscious. “Er, almost twenty-four hours, I guess.”
Emmy opened up her hand to the older women, as if to say, See?
“There you have it,” Emmy said. “She’s still traumatized because it’s all so new, and because it was only in the last hour that I explained what I believed happened to her.”
Agnes crossed herself again.
Maud thinned her lips and glared at Emmy. “I kent it was just ye, lass. If ye’re inviting others—and somehow now I’m in danger of being sucked through time, tossed around, landing somewhere I dinna ken—I’ll nae take kindly to it, and I’ll hold ye to blame for it.”
Emmy was unruffled by the woman’s harsh attitude, literally waving her off by flapping her hand. “Maud, I have nothing to do with this, and we only stumbled on poor Rose—it wasn’t like she came here , to Dunmara. Anyway, the point is, let’s be kind and patient and help Rose and not worry about things that haven’t happened and are probably unlikely to happen.”
Once again facing the hearth, her back to the room, Agnes murmured, “Who’d want to take her?”
After a narrow-eyed glare at Agnes’s back, Maud wanted to know, “And what does the laird say about this?”
“He’s the one who found her, actually,” Emmy said. She addressed Rose, still hovering near the door. “Sorry, we’re being rude. Come on in. Sit down.”
“Aye, and we’ll fix yer hunger, lass,” Agnes declared pleasantly, bringing the bowl to the wooden table. “Sit yerself down, and we’ll see ye fed proper.”
Because the kitchen was wonderfully, blessedly warm, Rose shrugged off the stolen shawl and began to unbutton her coat. Emmy came forward and took the shawl and then Rose’s coat when she took that off, and then gaped at Rose, looking her up and down.
Rose glanced down at herself, wondering if she was in worse shape than she thought. But no, her lavender blouse was surprisingly intact, the pointed collar, columns of ruffles, and the pearly buttons all neat and clean. Her jeans, however, were another story, wrinkled and mottled with mud stains from the knee down. Her tennis shoes had fared no better in the fourteenth century, the rubber soles and the three white stripes of her Adidas sneakers streaked and caked with mud.
She glanced up at Emmy, a blush rising.
“Oh, wow,” Emmy said, a smile curving her mouth. “You really are from 1978.”
Rose exhaled a breathy laugh, nervously pulling down the tapered, ruffled end of her long sleeve.
“Sit, sit,” Emmy said quickly, shaking herself out of her seeming fascination. She pulled out a tall stool from beneath the long table and moved it in front of the bowl Agnes had set down. While Rose sat, Emmy darted away, still holding Rose’s coat and the shawl, and returned to the table, setting down a small metal spoon.
“They didn’t have these—not for eating—when I first came,” Emmy explained. “But I’m slowly bringing a few necessities to Dunmara...well, maybe they’re more luxuries.”
Rose smiled her thanks and did so again when Agnes placed a wedge of brown bread in front of her. Rose bent and sniffed at the contents of the bowl, which resembled any modern-day stew, she supposed, and then sagged in relieved joy at the savory scent, and for the first real meal she’d had in... however long it had been since she’d last eaten. Her first taste was surprising, a rich combination of flavors, none of which she could confidently name, and bits of tender meat. The coarse, dense bread was fabulous at soaking up the broth.
Rose felt eyes on her and glanced up to find Maud studying her like a hawk as she ate, her thoughtful gaze not entirely charitable at the moment.
“Good Lord, Maud,” Emmy complained as she laid the shawl and coat across a clean part of the table, “stop trying to figure her out—your stare is lethal sometimes. Rose is simply as lost and as confused as I was.”
Maud offered no reply but did drop her gaze from Rose.
“Whether ye want to or nae, lass,” Agnes spoke up, “ye best get used to it. Seems time’s got a strange way of tanglin’ itself up in these parts.”
Emmy sat down on a stool next to Rose, smiling warmly at her. “I think in order to help you make sense of this—as much as possible—that we should—”
She paused, her gaze arrested on the doorway.
Her husband, Brody MacIntyre, stood there.
He didn’t step into the kitchen but remained in the doorway, and somehow he still managed to shrink the room. All eyes jerked to him. He didn’t speak right away, but he didn’t need to—his dark, evaluating gaze swept the room once, flickering over Rose with a mysterious expression before it landed on Emmy, and stayed there.
Agnes snickered good-naturedly as she flung a cloth over her shoulder, letting it rest there. “Nae ever seen a man so much in the kitchen as this one, always looking for that one.” She inclined her head toward Emmy with a knowing grin.
Emmy, unperturbed, batted her lashes and said airily, “He’s in love, Agnes, and how could he not be?” Emmy teased, rising from the stool and making her way around the table.
Agnes chuckled while Maud rolled her eyes and muttered something unintelligible.
Rose kept her gaze on Brody MacIntyre. He remained as severe looking as he had earlier, all sharp lines and quiet intensity, but there was something behind his dark eyes that gave Rose pause. His gaze was riveted on Emmy as she walked toward him in such a way that made Rose’s breath catch slightly. He looked frighteningly serious, yet there was a quiet reverence in his expression, an unwavering devotion that softened the harshness of his features. He watched Emmy as if she were the only person in the room—as if she were the only thing in the world that mattered.
How sweet , Rose thought, adjusting her opinion of him slightly.
With another fleeting glance at Rose, Brody tilted his head toward the corridor, his meaning clear without words. Emmy sighed theatrically but obeyed, following his direction. He placed a firm hand at the small of her back as he guided her out into the low-ceilinged corridor.
Neither Maud nor Agnes reacted to Brody’s abrupt—wordless—summoning of his wife, suggesting this was not a rare happening.
Rose, however, was markedly curious. She strained to listen, catching only pieces of what seemed a fairly heated conversation. Emmy’s voice was urgent but calm, and Brody’s was low and firm.
She overheard something about... the lass, the resemblance, he needs to be told.
And then other words, heard only in snippets, that meant nothing to her. Druimlach...On the morrow... Tis nae for us to decide.
Rose’s stomach turned slightly, her pulse quickening. Were they talking about her ? She had to assume they were.
Maud, possibly sensing that Rose was attempting to eavesdrop, plopped the kneaded dough into a large wooden bowl and heaved a vocal sigh. “Ye come from the same time as our mistress, do ye?”
The question was loaded to the brim with doubt and suspicion.
Rose cleared her throat, shaking her head, feeling weary again suddenly. “No. Well, close to her time, but about forty years earlier, I guess.”
“And what?” Agnes asked, perhaps prompted by Maud broaching the subject to have her own questions answered. “Ye felt the air shift, same as the lass did? Felt ‘something was off’ as she says, and then... then ye simply woke up here? With us? Er, in our time?”
Rose shrugged, suddenly curious about Emmy’s event. “Yeah, basically, that about sums it up. Well, I’m not so sure I felt anything different in the air, so to speak. But the lights flashed and,” she shrugged, recalling as much as she could from that moment inside the reading room, “and then everything was bright white for a moment. I felt as if I passed out. And...yeah, I woke in the forest—I guess not too far from here. But before I was...here, I was in Glasgow in...1978.”
Once more, Agnes made the sign of the cross over her ample bosom.
To hopefully relieve some of the rampant suspicion aimed her way, Rose shrugged again, and declared weakly—the truth, “I don’t know any more than you do, any more than that. I can’t explain it.” Her lips trembled as helplessness overwhelmed her.
Emmy returned to the kitchen then, her wide—possibly purposeful—smile faltering as she caught sight of Rose’s face. “Oh, no, honey. It’s all right. Everything’s going to be all right.” She marched directly around the table and approached Rose, wrapping her arms around her as she stood beside her.
Afraid and still terrifically confused, Rose leaned into her, trying valiantly to prevent herself from crying. Emmy’s warmth and compassion were welcome, though it did nothing to quiet the chaos in her mind.
“I know,” Emmy said. “It’s terrifying. It’s hard to understand. But, Rose, I’m here for you and I’m going to help you through this.”
Rose squeezed her eyes shut, inhaling a shaky breath. She wanted to believe her, wanted to hold onto that promise. But deep down, a gnawing fear curled in her stomach, whispering that she might never truly understand what had happened to her... or worse, that she might never be returned home.