"Car wreck?" he asked softly.
She struggled to explain. "Machines. The Mercedes was a car. In my time we don't ride horses, we have metal"—she searched for a word to which he might relate—"carriages that carry us. Fast, sometimes too fast. The tire… er, wheel of the carriage came apart and we crashed into other machines. Daddy was crushed behind the steering wheel and died instantly." Lisa blew out a breath and paused for a moment. "When they released me from the hospital, I found a job as quickly as I could, and a second one to take care of me and Mom and pay the bills. We lost everything," she whispered. "It was horrible. We couldn't pay the lawsuits, so they took our home and everything we had. And I'd accepted it—I had—I'd accepted that was how my life would be, until you took me away in the middle of something that I have to finish. My mother has cancer and only a short time to live. No one is there to feed her, pay the bills, or hold her hand."
Circenn swallowed. He could not interpret much of what Lisa had said, but he understood that her mother was dying and she had been trying to take care of everything for quite some time. "She is entirely alone? There is no other of your clan left alive?"
Lisa shook her head. "Families aren't like yours in my time. My father's parents died long ago, and my mother was adopted. Now there's only Mom, and I'm stuck here."
"Och, lass." He drew her into his arms.
"Don't try to comfort me," she cried, pushing against his chest. "It's my fault. I'm the one who had to work in a museum. I'm the one who had to touch that damned flask. I'm the selfish one."
Circenn dropped his hands and expelled a frustrated breath. There was not one selfish bone in her body, yet she was lambasting herself, carrying the blame for everything. He watched helplessly as she rocked back and forth, her arms wrapped around herself—a posture of deep grieving he'd seen far too many times in his life. "No one has ever been there to comfort you, have they?" he asked grimly.
"You carried the weight of it all alone. This is untenable. This is what a husband is for," he muttered.
"I don't have one."
"Well, you do now," he said. "Let me be strong enough for both of us. I can, you know."
She wiped angrily at her tears with the back of her hand. "I can't. Now do you see why I must return? For God's sake, will you please give me the flask? You promised when we were at Dunnottar that if there was a way for me to return, you would help me. Was that something you said merely to placate me? Must I beg? Is that what you want?"
"Nay, lass," he said violently. "I never want that from you. I will give you the flask, but I must collect it. It is in a safe place. Will you trust me? Will you go to your chambers and await me there?"
Lisa searched his face frantically. "Will you really bring it?" she whispered.
"Aye. Lisa, I'd bring you the stars if it would cease your tears. I did not know. I knew none of this. You did not tell me."
"You never asked."
Circenn scowled as he mentally kicked himself. She was right. He hadn't. Not once had he said, Excuse me, lass, but were you doing something when I snatched you out of time with my curse? Were you wed? Did you have children? A dying mother who relied upon you, perhaps? He helped her to her feet, but the moment she had her balance she tugged her arm from his hand.
"How long will it take you to retrieve it?"
"A short time, a quarter hour, no more."
"If you don't come to me, I will return with a bigger knife."
"You won't need a knife, lass," he assured her. "I will bring it."
She left silently, carrying part of his heart out the door with her.
* * *
Circenn opened his secret chamber and grimly retrieved the flask from the hidden compartment in the stone floor. It had never occurred to him that she'd had a full life in her time; he'd been so selfish that he'd never once asked her what he'd taken her away from. He had seen her only as proud, tenacious, sensual Lisa, as if she'd lived nowhere before she had come to him, but now he understood clearly. She had sacrificed most of her adult years caring for her mother, carrying burdens a laird would stagger beneath, nurturing the only clan she had left. It explained much: her resistance to adaptation, her continued attempts to search his castle, her illogical unwillingness to give up on the flask as a way to return home. He knew Lisa was an intelligent woman, and he suspected that deep down she realized that the flask wouldn't return her, but if she formally gave up on the flask, she would have no hope. People often clung to irrational hopes to avoid despair.
His heart wept for her, because he knew that the only man who could return her would see her dead first. For the first time in his life he was furious with himself for refusing to learn the things Adam had so often offered to teach him.