The Highlander's Keep Read online

  Josh shook his head. “Ouch! That hurt!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t mean to hurt you. Look at me, apologizing. I’m not even the one breaking up with you.”

  “No, but back to your point. Wouldn’t it be great if this was some wildly improbable Scottish Highlander romance novel? If you could let loose and love me like that?”

  “Josh, if I wanted to lose myself in another human being, I wouldn’t have started living with you anyway. I love that you’re so put together, so calm, so rational, so predictable. You’re the complete opposite of that crazy father of mine, and I love that about you.”

  Josh crossed his arms and shifted from one foot to the other as he continued to lean against the doorsill.

  “That’s the part of me I actually hate, the part my parents instilled in me. I remember seeing a picture of your dad on a dig in Turkey. Remember? You were looking at it once? What a wild man! His long hair was curly like yours when you let it hang loose to your shoulders, which is rare. His beard was down to his chest, his clothes sweaty and dusty. He looked like he was having fun.”

  I pressed my lips together. “I wouldn’t know. If he had fun, it was somewhere else far away from his only daughter apparently.”

  “I know that has hurt you, Cyn. I’m sorry.”

  “No need to apologize. He loved me. My mom loved me. They didn’t much love each other, but that’s okay. They’re both gone now, and I’m a big girl whose boyfriend is breaking up with her right before she leaves for a six-week dig.”

  Josh said nothing but looked at me with sympathy. I didn’t want his sympathy. I just wanted things to be the way they had been only a short hour before.

  “Look—I’ve got to concentrate on packing,” I said bitterly. “I wouldn’t care if there was a store near where I’m going, but I don’t think there is, so I have to make sure I have enough warm clothing.”

  I turned my back again.

  “I’ll let you get to it,” Josh said quietly.

  “Fine,” I said, trying to push memories of my parents out of my mind. I didn’t need to add more grief to my plate. I had lost my parents to death and now I was losing my boyfriend to another kind of death.

  He paused again. Why didn’t he just leave?

  “I really have to focus,” I said in a breaking voice.

  “I know. It’s just—” He paused. “Nothing permanent is going to happen while you’re gone. I mean, I’m not going to get engaged or anything, so if you think absence might make the heart grow fonder...”

  “You’re not going to get engaged?” I squeaked, whirling around. “Are you actually seeing someone?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “That’s the second time you said that. Is that code for ‘yes’?”

  “It’s code for there is someone I might date, but I won’t be married when you get back, so if you discover that you actually love me as much as I want you to love me, then I’ll be here!”

  “Not here!” I looked around the bedroom.

  “No, not in your apartment, of course. You know what I mean!”

  “I do. Now, please leave me alone.”

  “Text me when you get there. I haven’t stopped caring about you.”

  “I know,” I said tightly. “I care about you too.”

  “I have to go to work now. I wish I could take you to the airport, but my shift at the hospital starts in an hour. Are you taking a taxi to the airport?”

  “Yes, I’ll be fine.”

  I felt him approach from behind.

  “Please don’t,” I said.

  I heard his hands drop to his sides, and he turned around and left. By the time the apartment door shut, I was in a ball on the closet floor, crying. Oddly, it was the image of my father’s handsome face smiling at me that brought on another round of sobbing.

  I brought my attention back to the present as I heard Debra’s voice.

  “Here we are!” she said. “Dun Eistean! I know you can’t see the remains of the keep yet, but it’s there—I promise you. Isn’t this great? You’re going to love it here! It’s one of the reasons I’m studying at the University of Glasgow.”

  We had crossed onto the sea stack, and my heart slowed now that I stood on terra firma once again.

  “Is that you, Debra?”

  I heard a male voice. A tall, slender man appeared out of the mist like a mythical figure.

  “Dylan! Good morning! Let’s hope this fog breaks today.”

  “Aye, it is thick. And who is this?”

  “This is the new student, Cynthia Dunnon. Say hello to Dylan. He’s the field team leader.”

  I stuck out my hand, admiring his handsome Nordic blond looks.

  “Just call me Cyn. How do you do, Dylan?”

  “Very well, thank you. Welcome to Dun Eistean. I hope you enjoy your time here. Are you all set up at the MacIvers’ then?”

  “Oh yes, they’re lovely. Thank you!” I was boarding with a sweet older couple nearby.

  “I know that Ann found the MacIvers to be very hospitable last year as well,” Dylan said.

  “Ah, Ann Borodell!” Debra said. “Another American student. Yes, there was some mystery about her. I never did figure it out, and Dylan won’t say.”

  “Really?” I asked, slightly intrigued. “What mystery?”

  “She disappeared for a while, or was it permanently? Like I said, Dylan won’t say, will you?”

  “Nonsense,” Dylan said. “No mystery at all! Come. Let us show you around, Cyn. Stay away from the edges of the tabletop, mind. It would be easy to get lost in the fog and fall off the cliffside.”

  “He’s right. Stay close,” Debra said as she fell into step behind Dylan.

  I closed in, following them single file through the fog. Though I couldn’t see much of the tabletop at that moment, I had already seen photographs of the ruins of Dun Eistean and knew that a series of grassy mounds covered the remains of crofts, several boathouses, a kiln and the keep from which the fortress took its name. The tower, once standing about sixteen feet high, had stood guard over the small sea stack as the Morrisons sought refuge from rival clans bent on destroying them.

  Now little more than a mound itself, the keep lay buried in the centuries of dirt and turf that had grown up over it. The stones forming the upper half of the tower had been carried away over the centuries, and archaeologists climbed down into the hole that formed the walls of the keep rather than climb stairs to the top.

  “You can set your backpack down here,” Dylan said, arriving at a set of folding tables weighted down from the wind by stones. He set his own pack underneath. “I’m going to pour myself a cup of coffee. Would you like one, Cyn? Debra?”

  “Yes, I’ll have one,” I said. “I’m a bit jet-lagged.”

  Debra declined. I watched as Dylan picked up a thermos and poured out two cups of coffee.

  “I’m just going to go peek over there,” I said, pointing to the largest mound near where the tables had been set up. I suspected that was the keep.

  “Don’t stray near the edge, Cyn,” Dylan said again.

  “Check,” I said. I wandered over to the mound, remembering that the keep was toward the western edge of the sea stack but not so far as to be on the cliff edge. I stepped carefully as I climbed the hill. I couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead of me in the fog, and the sensation was disorienting.

  I paused for a moment to get my bearings. Rotating, I was unable to spot Dylan or Debra or the tables through the thickness.

  “Hello?” I called out, searching for a sonar ping more than anything.

  “Hello up there! All right?” Debra responded.

  “Oh, yes! I’m fine. I was just wondering where you were.”

  “Are you at the top of the keep?” Dylan called out. “I should have told you to mind your step up there. It’s a bit of a drop—”

  Those were the last words I heard as I took a step forward and into air. I scrabbled for a hold as I fell, my fingertips
scraping painfully across the jagged and wet stonewalls of the keep. I caught hold of something cold and metal protruding from the wall, but my weight dragged the rod loose, and it fell with me.

  Chapter Two

  I felt someone nudging my shoulder, awakening me. Spasms of pain shot down my back, and I cried out.

  “Please stop. Please stop! That hurts!” I opened my eyes and looked into a pair of sapphire-blue eyes with white speckles close to my face. A red beard tickled my chin, and a shock of bright-red ginger hair ringed the face of the man kneeling at my side, peering at me.

  He pulled something from my grasp, the metal rod that I’d caught, and he stowed it out of sight.

  The pain in my back throbbed and pulsed, and when I tried to sit up, I fell back down in agony.

  “Where are ye hurt, lass?” he asked, his voice gruff and deep, a baritone.

  “My back. I hurt my back when I fell! Is it broken?”

  “I dinna ken, lass. But dinna ye try to rise just now. I will send for her ladyship. She will ken what to do wi ye.”

  “Her ladyship?” I tried to think through the pain, but I couldn’t. “I think I need a doctor!”

  He turned and looked over his shoulder.

  “Laddie, run and get her ladyship.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a young teenage boy run out the entrance, his kilt flying behind him. The entrance? To what?

  “Where am I?” I whispered. It hurt even to breathe, much less to talk.

  “At Dun Eistean, mistress, in the keep.”

  “How did I get here?”

  “I canna say. I heard ye scream, ran down the steps and there ye were, clutching—” He stopped short.

  “What?” I breathed. Waves of pain lashed at my back.

  “Naethin,” he said tersely.

  “I need to sit up.” I felt so disoriented, so dizzy. I needed to right myself to see what I’d fallen into.

  “Nay, ye best lay still for now.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Torq.”

  “Are you a local? Or...” I had finally spotted the man’s kilt, a massive piece of cloth that dragged the ground behind him as he knelt beside me. Of a muted scarlet shade, the plaid pattern featured gray, black and hunter green. Belted at the waist and unhemmed, it was a beautiful reproduction. A once-white linen shirt, open at the throat, underlay a padded gray sleeveless vest. A length of the kilt draped over his shoulder like a sash, a pewter brooch holding it in place. The ornate basket hilt of the sword protruding from his belt looked lethal.

  “I am a Morrison, aye.”

  I looked at his wild curly mane of ginger-red hair again, darker-red beard and bright-blue eyes, and I thought of my father once again. He would have enjoyed this character.

  “Mr. Morrison, can you please help me sit up? Is Debra here? Dylan? I think I need a doctor.”

  “Nay, I will no be helping ye up till Lady Morrison comes.”

  “Is Lady Morrison your wife?” I asked.

  “Nay. I have none such.” I heard something in his tone, but I couldn’t make out the emotion.

  A woman rushed into the doorway then, the boy following close behind her. She clutched her muted red tartan skirts and knelt at my side, studying me with hazel eyes. Gingerbread colored hair, caught up into a bun at the back of her head, reminded me of fall colors.

  “Oh my word! I can’t believe this,” she breathed. She turned to Torq. “Where’s the dagger?”

  “Beside me, yer ladyship. I will get rid of the cursed thing for once and for all.”

  “No!” she exclaimed. “We can’t do that! Just keep it safe for now, but keep it away from me and from her.”

  I watched the interaction in a blurry haze of pain, barely noting that her accent was American. She turned back to me.

  “How are you? What happened? Are you hurt?”

  “She claims her back is paining her,” Torq said.

  “My back,” I whispered. “I fell down the keep. My back is killing me. I hope I didn’t break it.”

  “Oh, I hope so too! Wiggle your toes.” She looked down at my hiking boots. “Well, I wouldn’t know if you were wiggling them or not. Can you move?”

  “I’ve been trying to get Torq here to help me sit up, but he wouldn’t let me move until you came. Are you a doctor?”

  “No, but I’m the best you’ve got. Here, let me help you.” She slipped her hand under my back, but the motion sent waves of pain and spasms into my back and down my legs.

  “No. Stop! Stop! It’s hurts too much.”

  She lowered me gently and sat back, biting her lip.

  “I don’t know what to do. We don’t have any medical equipment here.”

  “Can you send for a doctor or an ambulance or something? I can’t believe this. I just got here!”

  “You mean, you just got to the archaeological site? To Dun Eistean?”

  “Yes, and I mean just... I didn’t even get a chance to dig.”

  “Where did you find the dagger?”

  “Dagger?”

  She shook her head. “Never mind.”

  “Torq, can you pick her up and carry her into the keep? I’m afraid to take her to my croft in case the children disturb her, especially the bairns.”

  “Aye, I will carry her.”

  “Andrew, could you go get Mistress Glick and ask her to come with her pain medicine?”

  “Aye, yer ladyship.” The boy fled the keep again on another mission.

  “Pain medicine sounds great,” I mumbled.

  Torq picked up the rod, which in truth appeared to be the hilt of a gleaming silver dagger, and he stowed it in his belt behind his back. The woman rose, and Torq slid his arms under my back and legs. I tried to bite my lip against crying out, but I couldn’t help it. Spasms of pain ripped through my back.

  “There, lass, I dinna mean to hurt ye,” Torq soothed as he carried me slowly into an interior room. From my elevation above the ground, I realized that he was an extraordinarily tall man. Strong too.

  “Where are we?” I asked again of the woman who followed. “You’re American, aren’t you?”

  “We’re in the keep. Yes, the intact keep,” she said with a nod, as if she preempted my next question.

  “And yes, I’m American...or was. Just take it easy for now. I’ll explain everything in a little bit, but the last thing you need is more shock. Just trust me.”

  “I do,” I whispered, trying hard not to use any muscles around my chest, my back. “I trust Torq too.”

  Torq glanced down at me, searching my face. He laid me down on top of a thin mattress of a narrow bed. I looked up to see a glassless window high in the stone keep.

  “How is that window open to the sky? What’s left of the keep is buried under dirt and turf, isn’t it? I don’t understand how the walls can be so high. I thought only about five feet of stone remained.”

  It hurt to talk, and I didn’t know why I was doing it. Perhaps to distract myself from the pain.

  “Just relax now. I’ll explain everything in a minute,” the woman said, pulling up a stool and sitting down at my bedside to study my face. “I’m Ann Morrison, by the way. And this is Torq.”

  “Morrison,” I said. “Are you two related?”

  “Not by blood,” Ann said.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Cyn Dunnon.”

  I heard a grunt from across the room where Torq leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, his height even more evident in the pose. He stared at me unsmiling, all garbed out like a Highland warrior and looking the part. I had no idea what his grunt meant, but it sounded like disapproval.

  Unsure of what I had done wrong, I dropped my eyes and looked at Ann. She too looked the part of a Highland warrior’s wife, decked out as she was in the voluminous tartan skirt over a white linen shift and dark-blue bodice.

  “You all are so dressed up! What’s the occasion?” I said with a faint smile, wishing I could chuckle.
/>   “I know you must have a ton of questions, but you’re not going to like the answers, so I want to take it slow,” Ann said. “I promise I’ll explain everything soon. Is Cyn a nickname? That’s pretty memorable.”

  I had heard the comments before. To my mother’s dismay, my father had called me Cyn as a child, and the nickname had stuck.

  “Yes, for Cynthia.”

  Across the room, Torq said something that I couldn’t make out. Ann replied in an equally unintelligible comment, a retort from her stern expression.

  “What’s going on? What are you saying? What’s he saying?”

  “Sorry. We’re speaking in Gaelic, though I only know a little bit. Torq is asking about your nickname. He thought he heard you say your name was Sin and says he won’t use such a name. I told him to chill, basically.”

  I looked beyond Ann to Torq. So that was what the grunt had been about. His dark-red brows were drawn together in disapproval. She gave him a conciliatory crooked grin.

  “Cynthia then,” I whispered.

  He tilted his head and nodded.

  The door opened, and a small elderly woman with wispy white hair entered, also dressed in traditional costume. Sharp pale-blue eyes in a rosy-cheeked face surveyed the scene as she set a brown glass bottle down on a small wooden table near the bed. I noted the table contained several pewter cups and a candlestick. Across the room, near Torq, a battered sideboard held a porcelain basin.

  “Well, what have we here, Ann?” the older woman asked. “Is this someone ye ken? A friend of yers?”

  “No, Mistress Glick. I’ve never seen her before, but she’s in a lot of pain. Somehow, she fell from a height, and I’m worried about her back. I don’t even have any ice for it. Should we treat her with the usual pain medicine?”

  “Auch, I am so sorry to hear the lass suffers. Aye, dear, it must be the usual. That is all we have.”

  Ann grimaced, and I broke out in a sweat. I threw a terrified glance toward Torq, as if he could help me. What was the usual pain medicine?

  “How are the bairns?” Ann asked Mistress Glick. “Are they still asleep?”

  “Aye, the bairns sleep, and Sarah plays wi her doll. I left Andrew to watch over them.”