Page 9 of Here in Your Arms (Far From Home: A Scottish Time-Travel Romance #10)

“We leave for Dunmara in the morning,” Emmy said to Rose as they sat at the table for supper.

Rose inhaled sharply, blinking as she turned to Emmy, caught off guard. “Right. Good.”

Emmy went on, “Personally—and I’m sure you agree—it was a mistake to stay even as long as we did.” She continued, saying that her husband was anxious to return to Dunmara, listing several things that needed Brody MacIntyre’s attention at home.

Rose only half-listened, digesting the first part—they were leaving Druimlach. Truth be told, she’d have thought she would—or should—feel an instant wave of relief.

She didn’t want to be here, at Druimlach, where too many eyes still watched her with suspicion, where whispers followed her in corridors and through the courtyard, and where Margaret’s mother clung to her like a drowning woman grasping at air, looking at her with a love that had nothing to do with Rose.

She should have felt nothing but relief.

And yet... she didn’t.

Some unsettling thing shifted inside her, a small, nagging hesitation she didn’t quite understand.

“... and Brody’ll want to get going first thing in the morning,” Emmy was saying. “Not that you and I have much to pack, but just so you know to be ready.”

“Nae!”

The gasp, directly behind them, turned both Emmy and Rose around.

Leana stood there, behind the chairs of the dais, her mournful gaze fixed on Emmy. “Ye canna take her.” She turned her attention to Rose. “Ye canna leave,” Leana pleaded, shaking her head, her silver-threaded hair trembling slightly with the motion. “Nae yet, nae now. Ye’ve only just come back.”

The murmur of conversations within the hall seemed to quiet, Leana’s plaintive beseeching having caught the attention of many.

Ignoring the weight of too many eyes aimed at her, Rose looked up at the pitiful woman. “Lady Leana, I am Rose,” she reminded her gently, though her tone was painted with an undercurrent of pleading, begging her to finally see it. “I’m not Margaret. I’m sorry.”

Possibly her words went unheard, the sheer force of the woman’s sorrow making reality an elusive thing.

Leana hands trembled as she reached for Rose, fingers sinking into her shoulder.

“Stay,” she implored softly, her voice thick with emotion. “Please, my love. If nae for me, for him.” She sent a fleeting glance down the length of the occupied chairs, toward the middle of the table, where sat the MacRae laird, Brody, and Leana’s husband, among others.

Rose’s heart stuttered. For him? Margaret’s father? He’d barely given her the time of day. Rose hadn’t spoken two words to him since coming to Druimlach. She swallowed hard, shaking her head. “For your husband?” She asked, wrinkling her brow.

Leana frowned, “Nae, for yer husband. For Tiernan.”

Rose blinked. Tiernan? Who was—?

Tiernan.

Oh, my God.

Margaret. Tiernan.

Rose blinked.

Tiernan!

The name barely had time to land before something in her brain snapped taut—a coil wound too tightly, a puzzle piece locking violently into place. Oh, my God. Tiernan. She knew that name. She’d read that name.

It slammed into her with crushing force, sending a jolt through her limbs, leaving her skin cold and her chest tight. She had seen it before, written in the careful, slanted scrawl of a woman whose words might have been what had brought her here—Margaret’s journal.

Tiernan MacRae was Margaret’s betrothed!

The Maragret whose words she’d read was not just one in a million, not some random woman from the Middle Ages, but this Margaret, the one who everyone said she resembled, who Leana thought she was!

She stared at Leana but saw nothing, thoughts unraveling at a dizzying speed. This—this was too much.

She could have been sent anywhere. Any time, any place.

But she... she was here. At Druimlach. In the very place where a woman who looked exactly like her had lived and died. A woman whose journal she had found and read before she’d even known time travel was possible.

What were the odds? Christ, what did it mean?

Her pulse thrummed loudly in her ears, muffling the sounds of the hall, the scrape of wooden chairs, the distant clatter of plates.

Leana’s hands tightened on her shoulders, warm, firm, desperate.

“Rose?” Emmy’s voice cut through the haze, sharp with concern. “What is it?”

She couldn’t answer. She couldn’t even breathe.

Leana leaned in, her eyes glistening, her face aching with hope. “Ye remember now, dinna ye?”

No. No!

She didn’t remember. Because there was nothing to remember.

But—why was she here?

Why had she , of all people, been sent back? Why to this place, to this time?

A ragged breath caught in her throat, panic curling around the edges of her thoughts.

Emmy reached for her wrist, tugging her back to the moment. “Rose,” she urged. “What’s wrong?”

Everything. Everything was wrong.

She sucked in a sharp breath and forced herself to move, jerking back from Emmy and Leana’s grasp.

“I just... I’m fine. I just need some air,” she murmured dully to Emmy.

Her chair scraped loudly against the wooden platform as she pushed it back, shoving past Leana, and away from the table.

She barely registered Emmy calling after her as she stumbled away, pushing through the crowded hall toward the door.

***

Having heard the plaintive rise of Leana de Moubray’s voice, though not the words she had spoken, Tiernan turned his attention toward the end of the table. His brow furrowed deeply as he watched Rose react—her expression shifting from confusion to outright horror at whatever had just been said.

A moment later, she pushed back from the table. Pale and stricken, she fled, stumbling through the crowded hall, pushing past those in her way in her desperate attempt to reach the door.

The scowling crease in Tiernan’s forehead deepened.

His gaze snapped down the table to where Emmy MacIntyre sat, her face drawn with concern, her body tense. As she made to rise, Leana de Moubray’s fingers curled firmly around her shoulder, holding her in place. Emmy balked at the pressure on her shoulder, turning angry eyes onto the older woman, but Leana’s grip held, her knuckles white as she shook her head.

What the devil?

At that moment, Brody, apparently having witnessed Rose’s flight as well, rose to his feet, watching Rose disappear through the door, out into the night, before sending a questioning glance toward his wife. Emmy met Brody’s gaze, her expression bewildered, shrugging as if to say she had no idea what had just happened.

Tiernan waited, assuming Brody would give chase, bring the woman back inside.

Yet Brody remained standing but a moment before sitting back down again.

Incensed, Tiernan shoved away from the table, nearly upending his chair, and followed the woman himself. He ignored the startled looks from those seated nearby, his gaze already fixed on the doors Rose had disappeared through.

Dammit, but he’d told her not to wander—numerous times now!

He had little patience for any woman flouting his orders, but for Rose Carlisle, it was different. More than any other, she had reason to heed him. The rumors, the whispers—the danger. He could not force fools to hold their tongues, but she should at least have the sense not to fuel the talk. Wandering alone at night, unescorted, in a place where too many still thought her something other ... it was reckless.

And now this. What had been said? What had sent her running this time?

His jaw clenched as he strode into the night, the crisp air biting at his cheeks and hands. The gates were closed, meaning she was still within the walls. He cut through the courtyard, his sharp gaze sweeping the keep’s grounds, his anger flaring hotter with every empty shadow.

Where in God’s name had she gone?

He checked the stables—nothing. The kitchen door was shut tight. The bailey was empty, save for a few passing guards who watched their laird but said nothing.

He scanned the battlements above, circling his gaze over the top of the wall, passing over one and then another familiar figure, the wall guards on duty. And then he saw her, a smaller, more slender figure, framed against the deepening twilight while she tugged at her loose hair.

His scowl deepened as he took the stairs two at a time, the chill in the air forgotten beneath the heat of his irritation.

She didn’t turn as he approached, didn’t acknowledge his presence even as his boots struck the stone beside her. She stood with her back to him, arms wrapped around herself, staring out at the darkening hills beyond the walls.

As he neared, he realized she was shivering.

Tiernan exhaled sharply, some of his anger bleeding away—but only some.

“What in God’s name are ye doing out here, Rose?” His voice was rough, edged with the frustration. “And what the devil was said back there that sent ye running like a frightened hare?”

She turned then, her eyes wide and wild, her breath uneven as if she’d been running much farther than only the distance from the hall to here.

“I didn’t know your name,” she said abruptly. “Your given name.”

Tiernan frowned, taken aback. “What?”

She swallowed hard, her lips trembling. “You’re Tiernan.”

He stared at her, waiting for more, some greater explanation. But whatever storm raged inside her had left her unsteady, her words tumbling out in disjointed, breathless fragments.

“The journal,” she rushed on. “I—I didn’t—” She paused, too scattered to form a clear thought. “Margaret—your betrothed, she—”

Her voice broke.

Christ, she was shivering so hard now he could see it, the nearly violent tremors wracking her petite frame. Without thinking, he pulled his plaid free and whipped it around her shoulders, draping it over her trembling form.

She didn’t seem to notice.

She only kept talking, words spilling from her lips like water from a broken dam.

“I read it,” she continued. “Before—before I came here. Margaret’s journal. I read her words. I saw her name. I saw your name—but I didn’t know your name, not here. Not until Leana just said it.” She pressed a shaking hand to her forehead, her eyes darting past him, unfocused. “I don’t understand. I don’t—I don’t know what it means —”

The wind bit through the night air, cutting against them both, and still she hadn’t reached for the plaid. Hadn’t held it closed. It was bothering him more than it should. Tiernan scowled, grabbing the edges of the breacan and pulling them together himself. He caught her hand, lifting it to the fabric, pressing her fingers against it as if she needed to be reminded of her own body.

“Hold it,” he muttered.

She blinked, her face still drawn with frantic confusion. “Thank you,” she said absently, then kept right on with her chaotic fragments, none of which thus far explained... anything.

“I don’t know—why was I brought here? It can’t only be coincidence—I didn’t know the journal belonged to... Margaret is a very common name. I never... put it together.”

Tiernan exhaled sharply through his nose, his patience threadbare, even as her words began to sink in, as he began to actually hear her.

Margaret’s journal?

His frown deepened. “Hold,” he said, gesturing for her to stop.

She didn’t. Her words kept tumbling out, frenzied and uneven, her breath catching between them.

Tiernan caught her hands where they clutched his breacan, his warm fingers curling firmly around her ice-cold ones. “Rose, cease. Breathe.”

She stilled at the command, her gaze snapping upward, lifting from his chest to his face. She stopped blathering, but her chest still rose and fell in quick, shallow bursts, the force of whatever had shaken her still rattling through her.

“Aye, that’s it,” he said, his tone quieting. “Just breathe.” He waited a beat, then another, before speaking again, employing more patience—more gentleness—than he’d ever been called to use. “I need ye to start at the beginning, Rose.” His voice was calm, but firm. “Explain everything—whatever has ye in distress—slowly, one thought at a time. Put them in order.”

She jerked her head in a quick, nervous nod.

Tiernan studied her critically. She wasn’t crying, but she looked as if she might. Her hands were cold in his, trembling faintly even as he still held her fists in his. She was bloodless, drained of all color, and her eyes were dark and wide. She looked small suddenly, and much younger, fragile in a way he’d never noticed before.

It unsettled him.

She had been, thus far in his encounters with her, brave-mouthed, sometimes sharp-tongued, and full of defiance. But this—this was something else.

His grip on her hands tightened slightly, steadying her.

“Go on then,” he said, his voice lower now, quieter. “Tell me.”

Rose dragged in a long breath through her nose. “I was working in an archive,” she began, her voice still uneven. “At a university. My job was to sort through old estate records, documents from the 14th and 15th centuries—accounts of lands, transactions, ledgers. Most of it was dry, just numbers and names.”

Tiernan said nothing, but his grip on her hands remained steady, firm.

“But somehow, mixed in with all those records, I found a journal.” She let out a small, unsteady breath. “It shouldn’t have been there. It wasn’t an official document, not something meant to be cataloged with accounts and ledgers. But it was there. And I read it.” She shifted slightly, her brow furrowing as she looked up at him. “It was written by a young woman sent to a convent. She wrote about how lonely she was. How much she missed her family. How she used to run free as a child, but now spent her days shut behind stone walls, kneeling on cold floors, forced to pray all hours of the day.”

Tiernan studied her, his sharp gaze unwavering as he realized where she was going with this.

“She had no word from the outside. No news of the war. No letters from her father, her mother. She felt like she had been buried before she even had the chance to live.”

“Aye,” Tiernan said when she paused, encouraging her to continue.

“The journal belonged to a woman named Margaret—her name was written on the first page.” Rose exhaled shakily, but the longer she spoke, the steadier her voice became. “Then the journal changed. For a long time, there were no entries at all. And when she finally picked it up again, her words were different. She’d resigned herself to life at the convent—actually, it seemed like she really liked it. But then she was summoned home. She wasn’t... she didn’t seem to be too happy about it.” The wind stirred around them, but Rose didn’t react. “She started writing about her betrothal—to you.” She swallowed, and then added unnecessarily, “Tiernan.”

Tiernan stilled, his entire body stiffening at the sound of his name from her lips.

Rose shook her head, as if still trying to grasp it herself. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

He didn’t, not at all. She’d somehow found Margaret’s journal, she’d read his name... but what?

“I never put it together,” Rose said, seeming upset with herself over this fact. “Not until tonight. Not until Leana said your name.” She shook her head, bewildered, shaken to her core, breathless again even as her voice was stronger. “I was reading the journal in 1978—reading the words and thoughts a woman—Margaret—had written almost seven hundred years ago. And I was nearing the end, reading about her journey to—to here, to Druimlach—to wed you. She was...she seemed...”

“What?”

Dropping her gaze to his chest, she shook her head frantically, refusing to say more. Just as quickly, she jerked her blue eyes back to him. “It was at that exact moment—inside a brick and stone building, with running water and electricity, in the year 1978—and as I was reading Margaret’s journal that I blacked out. That’s the exact moment I was...pushed, shoved, flung—whatever—thrown back in time. When I woke up, I was in the woods—outside, in the morning!—and...and I wandered, lost, confused, and finally Emmy and Brody found me.”

Tiernan stared at her, his mind working through the pieces of her frantic, impossible story.

She was telling him that she had been reading Margaret’s words seven hundred years in the future. That she had been in some strange archive, in a world beyond anything he could comprehend, and then, in the blink of an eye, had been pulled from it and thrown back here.

It was madness. Lies, of course. It had to be. His jaw clenched.

There were other explanations, he decided. Simpler ones. Margaret had only been here at Druimlach a week ago. Perhaps Rose had indeed found her journal here, in this very keep. Perhaps she had read it just days ago and was using it now, weaving some elaborate tale to gain his—or someone’s—trust.

But for what purpose?

His gaze flicked over her face, searching for the telltale signs of deception—the careful pauses, the too-measured cadence of a well-rehearsed lie. He saw none. She wasn’t calm, wasn’t composed. She was breathless, frenzied, raw. Her entire body shook beneath his plaid, her fingers were still cold beneath his. Her lips trembled as she spoke, but there was no cunning in her eyes. No slyness, no coy tilt of her mouth as if she were playing him for a fool.

She looked... wrecked.

His stomach turned. Was it possible? He denied the possibility outright, immediately. There was no magic strong enough, no force in this world capable of wrenching a person from one life and placing them in another.

And yet... something was afoot, as he’d believed from the moment he’d laid eyes on her.

She had Margaret’s face, so alike in feature that Leana had clung to her with a desperation bordering on madness. Even he had struggled, for the briefest of moments, to separate them when he first laid eyes on her. That alone was too great a thing to be written off as mere chance.

Rose stood before him, silent now, finally, her wretched unblinking gaze locked on his face, waiting.

Waiting for him to understand, perhaps, or simply to say he believed her.

He could do neither.

And yet, a deep, unshakable certainty settled in his bones once again, stronger than before: She could not leave. Whatever trickery or truth lay at the heart of this, he would not let her slip away before he unraveled it. She had been sent here—by fate, by design, by enemies of the MacRaes, or by something beyond his reckoning. And until he knew why, until he had torn apart every thread of this mystery, she would stay.

Tiernan straightened, slowly pulling his hands from hers, severing the contact that had unsettled him more than it should have. Stepping back, he rolled his shoulders, as if shaking off the strange pull of this conversation—of her —but the unease within him did not settle.

The wind cut between them at once, lifting the edges of his plaid and stirring the loose strands of her hair, yet she barely seemed to notice. Suspicion crept back into his thoughts, replacing the brief, inexplicable concern that had taken hold when he watched her flee the hall, bloodless and shaken.

He exhaled slowly, forcing himself to push aside the restless certainty that she could not leave, that something about this was too great a coincidence to ignore. “Ye canna leave now,” he said.

“What?” Rose breathed.

“Ye canna leave Druimlach,” he repeated, “Nae until this is...until we’ve sorted this out.” Clearing his throat, he adopted a taller, more formidable stance. “I will inform Brody that ye will not be leaving in the morning,” he said, his voice steady, controlled. “Ye need to stay here, for the time being at least.”

She stared at him, searching his face as if trying to decipher something—perhaps hoping for reassurance, perhaps just seeking to understand. If she expected either, she would be disappointed.

Her voice was quieter when she spoke again. “You think I’m lying.”

He met her gaze without hesitation. “I dinna ken that ye are nae.”

She flinched, a small movement, but enough for him to notice. Her throat moved with a hard swallow, and she pressed her lips together. And then she, too, straightened, while a veil of indignation fell over her face.

“I’m not lying, not about any of it,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

Tiernan studied her for a long moment, taking in the stark pallor of her face and the way she still clutched the folds of his plaid as though it were the only thing holding her together. He was struck by the notion that she feared letting go—not just of the fabric, but of herself entirely, as if releasing her grip might cause her to come apart at the seams.

A fleeting sense of pity stirred within him, compelling him to temper the bluntness of his doubt. “It’s... what ye’ve said will bear some thought. I canna make sense of it just now.”

She exhaled a brief, humorless laugh. “Nor can I,” she admitted. “Every time I try, it only seems more impossible, more unreal.”

His jaw tightened. For all his doubt, for all his wariness, one thing remained certain—he could not let her go.

“Rose, ye canna return to Dunmara, nae yet,” he reiterated.

She nodded once, a small, resigned motion, then let out a heavy sigh. With deliberate movements, she unfurled his breacan from around her shoulders and pressed it back into his hands. “I agree it warrants investigation,” she said, her tone distant, almost detached. “And that is best done here, where Margaret was last.”

When she lifted her face to his, the haunted look had faded, replaced by something sharper. Determination. Conviction, mayhap.

“I want answers as much as you do,” she said, her voice steady now. “But now more than ever, simply so I can prove to you and everyone else that I am not Maragaret and I’m not pretending to be, and more importantly, that I am not a liar.”