Beyond the Highland Myst(309)

A hidden room. How fantastic, she thought, and how appropriate for a medieval castle. Curious to see what he kept in there, she slipped past the hearth and entered. The fabric of her gown caught on the rough stones of the rotated hearth and ripped audibly. Busy trying to disengage the fabric from the sharp edge of the stone, she didn't see Circenn look up. Nor did she see his expression.

"Get out, lass," he thundered, leaping to his feet.

As Lisa glanced up, Circenn froze in mid-leap, his plan to thrust her from the room aborted. He watched with dawning horror as her gaze skimmed the interior of his hidden room. He stood motionless, surrounded by incriminating evidence. Standing amid items from her time, he knew that she would never believe him, and worse, that he must leave immediately if they were to prevent the English troops from reaching Stirling by Midsummer's Day.

Lisa was motionless but for her gaze, which roamed disbelievingly over the items in the room. Her eyes widened, narrowed, and widened again as she realized what she was seeing. Weapons, yes. Arms and shields, yes.

Inexplicably, items from her own century?

Yes.

The first wave of emotion that buffeted her was hers: a suffocating feeling of pain, bewilderment, and humiliation that she'd bequeathed her heart so wrongly. The second wave was his: an enveloping cloak of fear.

How could he possess such things? How could he have items from her time, yet not be able to send her home?

Simple. He'd lied. That was the only possible explanation.

"You lied," she whispered. She could have gone home to Catherine, but he'd lied. What else had he lied about?

Her hands closed on a CD player. A CD player! She raised it with shaking hands, peering closely at it, as if she couldn't quite believe what she was seeing. SONY was emblazoned on the chrome-colored case. Eyes narrowed, she flung it across the room, where it shattered into bits of plastic, narrowly missing his head. Unappeased, she reached for another missile, closing her fingers around an oddly familiar cardboard box. She spared it a glance, and her lip curled in disbelief.

"Tampons?" she cried. "You had tampons? All this time? How dare you!"

Circenn gestured helplessly. "I didn't know you had anything to clean."

She growled, a feral sound of pain and anger, as she flung the box of Playtex easy-glide applicators at him. It missed, too, hitting the wall behind him, showering the room with small white missiles. "No!" She raised a shaking hand when he moved to approach her. "Stay there. How much have you lied to me about? How many other women have you brought back here—that you needed tampons for? Did I not rate tampons? Was I won so easily that you didn't have to bribe me with conveniences? Was it all a lie? Is this some sick game I can't fathom? Didn't the fact that my mother is dying touch your heart at all? What are you made of? Stone? Ice? Are you even human? All this time you could have returned me, but you wouldn't?"

"Nay." He moved forward again, but stopped when she cringed back from him. His pained expression deepened.

"Don't even think of touching me. How you must have been amusing yourself with me. Me and my pathetic tears, me and my weeping for my mom, and all this time you could have returned me at anytime. You—

He let loose a bellow of pain and frustration. It had the desired effect of terminating her accusations, silencing her with its sheer volume.

As she stood there gaping, he said, "Listen to me because I doona have much time!"

"I'm listening," she hissed. "Like a fool, I'm waiting for you to give me one decent explanation for all of this. Go ahead—tell me more lies."

He ran a hand over his face and shook his head. "Lass, I have never lied to you. I adore you and there have never been any other women from the future here. And these"—he flung a tampon in the air—"cleaning swabs, I cannot fathom why they upset you so greatly, but I assure you I have never let the maids use them."

Lisa's brow furrowed. No man could be so stupid. "Cleaning swabs?"

He snatched up a gun and jerked the barrel in her direction, and an unwrapped tampon shot out. It was coated with black from the slow corrosion of the steel. She eyed it for a moment, bent, and plucked it from the floor. "You clean your guns with these?"

He lowered the gun. "Is that not the purpose for which they were designed? I vow I could not conceive of another."

"Didn't you read the box?"

"There were too many words I didn't understand!"

Lisa's eyes widened and she reached for him internally, wondering why she hadn't done that first. There, where they joined, he could hide nothing from her. But she'd been so stunned that she hadn't been thinking clearly. She reached and felt…