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  “I trust ye are recovered, warm and dry?” Colin asked. A crinkle at the corner of his eye told me he was smiling, though I did not see a flash of his handsome smile.

  “Yes, thank you. I’m so sorry I took off like that. More sorry that you had to chase me down and get wet yourself.” I noticed he had changed out of his kilt into a set of dark-blue trousers, a gray waistcoat and a different black jacket than he had worn earlier. White silk ruffles hung from his sleeves, and his neckcloth was freshly tied. He wore no tartan of any sort. I promised myself to ask him about tartans as well, depending on how long I was going to be stuck. Well, stuck didn’t exactly sound quite right, not when I looked into his dark gray-blue eyes.

  I took a big gulp of the hot tea, kept a straight face as it burned my throat, set my cup down on a side table and asked the question.

  “Tell me about this eighteenth century,” I said.

  Colin tilted his head. This time his lips did curve. “Ye sound as if ye live in another century.”

  This time I quirked an eyebrow. “Well, you know very well that I do. I live in the twenty-first century.”

  Colin, in the act of sipping his tea, jerked and sputtered. Tea spilled down the front of his jacket. He set the cup down on the side table with a clatter and rose to stare at me.

  “Mistress! Are ye daft?” He brushed the liquid from his clothing, with little concern for a stain.

  Intimidated by his size as he loomed over me, I jumped up as well. At five foot nothing, the top of my head hardly met his armpits, but I backed up a few steps and stared him down.

  “No, your lairdship! I am not daft. I think it is ye who must be daft!”

  MY LAIRD’S CASTLE

  Bess McBride

  My Laird’s Castle

  Copyright 2015 Bess McBride

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the publisher and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Cover art by Tara West

  Contact information: [email protected]

  Published in the United States of America

  Dedication

  To all my loyal readers who love the combination of time travel romance and the mystique of the Scottish Highlands! This one’s for you!

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Dear Reader

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Books by Bess McBride

  About the Author

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for purchasing My Laird’s Castle, a Scottish historical time travel romance set a few months after the Battle of Culloden. The dialogue is laced with what I hope is enough Scottish dialect to give the reader enough of a historical feeling, but not quite as much as the poet, Robert Burns, might use such that readers have to reference their Scots-English dictionaries throughout. As I did. I hope you enjoy the story of Beth and Colin.

  Elizabeth Pratt, a twenty-first-century librarian from Whitefish, Montana, finds herself accidentally transported back to eighteenth-century Scotland while on a bus tour of the Highlands. She finds Colin Anderson, laird of Gleannhaven Castle—or rather, he finds her, and unsure of what to do with the lost woman, he takes her back to his castle.

  Only months after the Battle of Culloden, Colin struggles with the legacy of his father, who fought for the Crown against the Jacobites. Colin inherited his father’s land and castle, but at great personal cost.

  Beth initially tries to find her way back home, but as she falls in love with the lonely Highland laird, she realizes that all she wants is to stay with him. That is until tragedy strikes, and Beth must return to her own time to save the man she loves.

  Thank you for your support over the years, friends and readers. Because of your favorable comments, I continue to strive to write the best stories I can. More romances are on the way!

  You know I always enjoy hearing from you, so please feel free to contact me at [email protected], through my website at http://www.bessmcbride.com, or my blog Will Travel for Romance.

  Many of you know I also write a series of short cozy mysteries under the pen name of Minnie Crockwell. Feel free to stop by my website and learn more about the series.

  Thanks for reading!

  Bess

  Prologue

  I hopped off the bus as quickly as possible, my legs aching from the inactivity of sitting for far too long. I stumbled, and David, the portly Scottish bus driver, caught my arm.

  “Steady there, lassie,” he said. “Have a care.” His accent, thick with a burr, delighted me, but I had difficulty understanding him. He’d told us he was from Edinburgh.

  “Thank you, David,” I said with a smile, quickly scooting away from the doorway to allow my fellow passengers to descend as well.

  Crowds thronged about in what was basically a gravel pullout on the highway through the Highlands, and I sighed. So many tourists! Of course, I was a tourist too, but still...did there have to be so many? I was pretty sure I would struggle to find the ambience of the legendary remote Highlands of Scotland when I felt like I was in a shopping mall parking lot.

  I had already sworn that I’d never take another group tour in late August again. I’d been on one similar bus trip before to the United Kingdom, which had only ventured into Scotland as far as Edinburgh, but that trip had been in September, and the crowds seemed much lighter.

  This time, though, I had booked a tour of Scotland exclusively because I wanted to make it further north and see some of the fabled Highlands. In what was to be a quick one-week jaunt, we had started in Glasgow and would finish up in the lovely city of Edinburgh.

  Now, I searched for an opening through the tourists, who were at present enjoying the music of a roadside bagpiper, so I could admire the mountains before me—the high lands of Scotland.

  They were magnificent, soft where lush emerald grass coated the valleys and bases, and hard where the vegetation thinned beneath craggy granite peaks that pierced the bright-blue sky.

  Though the presence of the bagpip
er, his case open for tips, was as artificial and corny as could be, the evocative music fit the scenery, and I reached into my jeans pockets and dug out what few pounds I had in change to tip him. A wink from one smiling eye thanked me, and I grinned. Dressed in a bright-red kilt, black jacket with gold epaulettes and a pseudo black bearskin hat, the forty-something thick mustached man was indeed a sight to behold.

  I gave him a nod and returned my attention to the vista before me. A few hardy tourists, or perhaps hikers, dotted the valley floor, and a light stream of people followed a dirt trail downward. I checked my watch, unsure of how much time I had. The tour guide, a lanky, elderly English gentleman named John, hadn’t really said when we should reboard the bus, as he normally did. But then again, he probably supposed no one would wander away and disappear on a roadside pullout.

  I couldn’t help myself. An enticing little brook meandered through the valley, and it looked to be only a five-minute trip down the trail. I hurried toward the path and descended carefully, admiring the beautiful purple heather growing along the hillside.

  I reached the stream and turned to look back up the hill. The bus remained in place, and I saw John and David chatting by the door, so I knew I was fine. A path paralleled the stream, and I nodded as several backpacking hikers passed me.

  As all people must do when encountering a delightful little bit of moving water in the Highlands, I knelt down to thrust my hand into the stream to test its temperature. Startled by the icy coldness of the water, I withdrew my hands and patted my warm cheeks. A sense of dizziness hit me, and I blinked and shook my head.

  The dizziness continued, and I dropped my head to my chest.

  “Are you all right, dear?” a female voice asked in a subtle Scottish burr.

  I looked over my shoulder toward a silver-haired woman with a pack on her back. Her companion, a tall, slender senior gentleman also sporting a backpack, eyed me with concern.

  I nodded, but the motion added to my dizziness.

  “Yes, thank you. I’m just a little warm.”

  “Yes, it is a bit hot out here today, surprising for the Highlands,” the man said. “Are you hiking or...” He looked up toward the bus and cars parked in the pullout.

  “No, I’m on a bus tour. That’s us up there.” I pointed toward the bus, still parked, John and David relaxing by the door.

  “Oh, I see. They’re quite close. That’s all right then,” the woman said. “Be sure and drink some water when you return to the bus.”

  “Yes, I will,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “Good day,” the man said as they moved away.

  I raised a hand in farewell and turned back toward the stream, reaching in to cup just a bit more of the cold water to pat my face. My cheeks tingled, and another onslaught of dizziness hit me. The stream disappeared, the mountains vanished, and blackness descended.

  Chapter One

  “Lass! Lass! Can ye wake?”

  I heard the baritone voice as if from within a dream.

  “Lass! Are ye injured? Taken ill? Is there aught wrong wi ye?”

  Arms slipped under my back, lifting me, and my head lolled against something both soft and scratchy, cloth of some kind. The chest underneath was hard, and I opened my eyes.

  A man peered down at me. At least, I thought it was a man. Long, curly black hair hung down on both sides of his cheeks. Yes, a man. A matching dark beard masked the lower half of his face. Eyes the color of slate studied me.

  A flash of white teeth suggested he smiled.

  “Well then?” he asked. “Are ye injured?”

  With a gasp, I jerked upright and twisted out of his arms. I tried to jump to my feet but was disoriented, still dizzy. I fell back to my knees. A quick glance out of the corner of my eye told me I was still by the stream. The mountains loomed overhead. The sky was darker than it had been, gray with blue-black clouds, as if a storm was moving in. How long had I been unconscious?

  “No, I’m not hurt!” I said. “Thank you.” I looked up toward the pullout. The bus was no longer visible. Nor were any cars. In fact, no one was up there.

  “Oh no! My bus is gone!” I tried to stand once again, but my legs seemed remarkably weak. The stranger jumped up and grabbed me just in time to prevent me from keeling over.

  “Well, something appears to ail ye, woman,” he said. He wrapped an arm around my waist. “Come, I cannot stand about out here in the open in my plaid. I suppose ye must come wi me.”

  I jerked against him, unsure of what he was doing or even what he said. If I had ever thought David’s accent was hard to understand, I was mistaken. I really could not understand this man at all. Well, maybe every third word or so. I deduced that he wanted me to go with him.

  “What? No! I’m not going with you. Are you crazy?” I noticed for the first time that he wore a blue-green plaid kilt, which ended just above dark muddy boots. A swathe of the same tartan draped across one shoulder, and it was that cloth that had initially scratched my face. Underneath his dark-gray jacket, a belted beige waistcoat buttoned down the front. The neck stock of his shirt was white.

  “Nae me, lass, but I do be wondering if ye are. Come now, or I must leave ye to the wolves, the soldiers or the pending storm, any of which will bring ye great distress.”

  “Wolves? In the Highlands?” I squeaked. “No, I don’t think so.” I was pretty sure they’d been hunted to extinction in Scotland. Hadn’t they? Of course, they could have been reintroduced.

  I planted my feet and resisted his efforts to move me. At over six feet in height, he could have dragged me easily, but he seemed reluctant to do so. Fortunately!

  With a heavy sigh, he dropped his arm. Without his support, I wavered slightly, but I broadened my stance and remained upright. The stranger eyed me—all of me—and smiled.

  “Yes, wolves,” he said as if distracted. “Are those men’s trousers?” he asked, staring at my legs.

  I looked down at my blue jeans.

  “What? No, they’re mine.”

  “Yer trousers?” His voice was somewhat incredulous. “Yers?”

  The roll of his r’s was impressive...and very hypnotic. So, this was what real Highlanders sounded like.

  I had the distinct impression I was talking to someone from another century. While David had used the word “lass,” he had never used the pronoun “ye.” Perhaps that was more common to people from the Highlands?

  And his clothing. Was he another bagpiper, playing for the tourists? He wasn’t toting one of the big instruments.

  “Yes, of course they’re mine,” I said. I looked up toward the pullout once again. I couldn’t see the road from the bottom of the valley, but something looked distinctly different up there. The heather was much thicker than I remembered from my climb down the hillside.

  “Look, do you have a cell phone or anything?” I asked hurriedly. “I need to call the tour company. I can’t believe they just drove off and left me. It’s not like they couldn’t see me from up there.”

  He followed my eyes. “From up where?”

  “Up there,” I pointed. “The road.”

  “Aye, the road,” he said with a nod. “And what is a bus? For that matter, what is a sell fone? Ye surely do speak with a foreign tongue. Where might ye hail from then?”

  “I’m American,” I said, taken aback. “Surely we’re not that deep into the Highlands that you don’t recognize an American accent? You do have TV, right? Or did you think I was Canadian?”

  Dark eyebrows lifted, and he tilted his head and stared at me with narrowed eyes. Unfortunately, his beard covered the majority of his mouth, and I couldn’t decipher his expression.

  “America,” he repeated softly. “Ye surely are far from home, lass.”

  I nodded at the softening of his tone. “I am,” I said. “So, please tell me you have a cell phone in a pocket of that kilt of yours, because mine is in my purse on the bus.”

  He tsked and shook his head. “Mistress, I think ye must come wi me now.
I dinna have this thing ye ask for, but we truly canna stay here. A storm threatens, and the night will bring nocht but misery for ye.”

  I looked around. He was right. Shadows climbed down from the mountains, and I did feel cool. Storm clouds threatened. I couldn’t just hang out in the Highlands on a path in the dark in the rain. I had to go somewhere.

  “Look, if I go with you, where exactly are we going? Do you have a wife in your house? Family?”

  A flash of teeth reassured me. Surely a killer wouldn’t have such a handsome smile, would he?

  “Aye,” he said. “Do ye need help to rise?” He moved closer as if to slip an arm around my waist, and I shook my head.

  “No, I’m fine. Just lead the way, and I’ll follow. How far is your house?”

  “Isna far,” he said reassuringly. He led the way, and I followed, throwing several glances over my shoulders as if wolves indeed followed in my wake. Wolves, indeed! I suspected he just made that up to scare me.

  I couldn’t help but admire the sway of his kilt and the dark curls of hair that fell to his shoulders. What might have seemed feminine looked very, very masculine. Something metal swung at his side, but the voluminous folds of his plaid hid it from full view.

  We followed the stream for a short while before turning left toward the mountains to cross over a small rock bridge. Ahead of us lay a forested valley nestled into the hills.