Beyond the Highland Myst(329)

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A sennight later, Besseta stood with the gypsies and their leader—a silver-haired man named Rushka—in the clearing near the little loch some distance west of Castle Keltar.

Drustan MacKeltar lay unconscious at her feet.

She eyed him warily. The MacKeltar was a large man, towering and dark, a mountain of bronzed muscle and sinew, even when flat on his back. When she shivered and nudged him gingerly with her toe, the gypsies laughed.

"The moon could fall on him and he wouldn't waken," Rushka informed her, his dark gaze amused.

"You're certain?" Besseta pressed.

"'Tis no natural sleep."

"You didn't kill him, did you?" she fretted. "I promised Nevin I wouldn't harm him."

Rushka arched a brow. "You have an interesting code, old woman," he mocked. "Nay, we did not kill him, he but slumbers, and will eternally. 'Tis an ancient spell, laid most carefully."

When Rushka turned away, instructing his men to place the enchanted laird in the wagon, Besseta heaved a sigh of relief. It had been risky—slipping into the castle, drugging the laird's wine and luring him to the clearing near the loch—but all had gone according to plan. He'd collapsed on the bank of the glassy lake and the gypsies had set about their ritual. They'd painted strange symbols upon his chest, sprinkled herbs and chanted.

Although the gypsies made her uneasy and she'd longed to flee back to the safety of her cottage, she'd forced herself to watch, to be certain the canny gypsies would keep their word, and to assure herself Nevin was finally safe—forever beyond Drustan MacKeltar's reach. The moment the final words of the spell had been uttered, the very air in the clearing had changed: she'd felt an uncommon iciness, suffered a sudden, overwhelming weariness, even glimpsed a strange light settling around the laird's body. The gypsies indeed possessed powerful magic.

"Truly eternally?" Besseta pressed. "He will ne'er awaken?"

"I told you, old woman," Rushka said impatiently, "the man will slumber, frozen, utterly untouched by time, ne'er to awaken, unless both human blood and sunshine commingle upon the spell etched upon his chest."

"Blood and sunshine would wake him? That must never happen!" Besseta exclaimed, panicking all over again.

"It won't. You have my word. Not where we plan to hide his body. Sunlight will ne'er reach him in the underground caverns near Loch Ness. None will e'er find him. None know of the place but us."

"You must hide him very deep," Besseta pressed. "Seal him in. He must never be found!"

"I said you have my word," Rushka said sharply.

When the gypsies, wagon in tow, disappeared into the forest, Besseta sank to her knees in the clearing, and murmured a prayer of thanks to whatever deity might be listening.

Any idle feelings of guilt were far outweighed by relief, and she consoled herself with the thought that she hadn't really hurt him.

He was, as she had promised Nevin, unharmed.

Essentially.





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highlands of scotland

September 19, Present Day





Chapter 1




Gwen Cassidy needed a man.

Desperately.

Failing that, she'd settle for a cigarette. God, I hate my life, she thought. I don't even know who I am anymore.

Glancing around the crowded interior of the tour bus, Gwen took a deep breath and rubbed the nicotine patch under her arm. After this fiasco, she deserved a cigarette, didn't she? Except, even if she managed to escape the horrid bus and find a pack, she was afraid she might expire from nicotine overdose if she smoked one. The patch made her feel shaky and ill.

Perhaps before quitting she should have waited until she'd found her cherry picker, she mused. It wasn't as if she was drawing them like flies to honey in her current mood. Her virginity was hardly presented in its best light when she kept snarling at every man she met.

She leaned back against the cracked seat, wincing when the bus hit a pothole and caused the wiry coils of the seat to dig into her shoulder blade. Even the smooth, mysterious, slate-gray surface of Loch Ness beyond the rattling window that wouldn't stay closed when it rained—and wouldn't stay open otherwise—failed to intrigue her.

"Gwen, are you feeling all right?" Bert Hardy asked kindly from across the aisle.

Gwen peered at Bert through her Jennifer Aniston fringed bangs, expensively beveled to attract her own Brad Pitt, Right now, they simply tickled her nose and annoyed her. Bert had proudly informed her, when they'd begun the tour a week ago, that he was seventy-three and sex had never been better (this said while patting the hand of his newlywed, plump, and blushing bride, Beatrice). Gwen had smiled politely and congratulated them and, since that mild show of interest, had become the doting couple's favorite "young American lassie."