And what about the price the woman will pay? his conscience chided.
"I have no choice," he muttered darkly. He plunged his hands into his hair and massaged his temples with the heels of his palms.
He knew by rote the formulas for the thirteen stones, but he did not know the critical three, the ones that would specify the year, the month, the day. It was imperative that he return to the sixteenth century shortly after his abduction. Whoever had lured him beyond the castle walls would not be able to penetrate the fortress of Castle Keltar—even with a full army—for at least several days. The castle was too well-fortified to be taken easily. So long as he returned a day, or even two, after his abduction, he should still have time to save his clan, castle, and all the information within its walls. He would defeat his enemy, marry, and have a dozen children. With Dageus dead, he finally understood the urgency Silvan had tried to impart to his sons to rebuild the Keltar line.
Drustan, you must learn to conceal your arts from women and take a wife—any wife. I was blessed with your mother;'twas a miraculous and uncommon thing. Though I wish the same for you,'tis too dangerous to have so few Keltar.
Aye, he'd learned that the hard way. He rubbed his eyes and exhaled. He had a minuscule target at which to aim, and he'd never studied the symbols he now needed. He'd been forbidden to travel within his lifetime, so there had been no reason for him to commit to memory the symbols spanning his generation.
Yet… in a dark moment of weakness and longing, he'd looked up the ones that would have taken him back to the morning of Dageus's death—and from those forbidden symbols he could attempt to derive the shapes and lines of the three he needed now.
Still, it would be a guess. An incredibly risky guess, with dire consequences if he didn't get them right.
Which brought him back to the tablets. If Silvan had been able to hide them somewhere on the grounds before he'd suffered whatever fate had befallen him, Drustan wouldn't have to guess—he could calculate the symbols he needed from the information on the tablets, with no fear of error. He felt fairly certain that if he returned himself to the day after his abduction, the leagues between his future self and his enchanted body, coupled with the thick stone walls of the cave, would be enough distance between them.
He had no choice but to believe that.
Drustan glanced around the ruins. While he'd brooded, full night had fallen and it was too dark to conduct a thorough search, which left him tomorrow to hunt for the tablets and try to recall the symbols.
And if the tablets weren't there?
Well, then, that was why there was wee, sweet, unsuspecting Gwen.
* * * * *
Wee, sweet, unsuspecting Gwen perched on the hood of the car, munching celery sticks and salmon patties and absorbing the remaining warmth of the engine. She glanced at her watch. Nearly two hours had passed since she'd left Drustan at the ruin.
She could leave now. Just hop in the car, slam it into reverse, and squeal off to the village below. Leave the madman alone to sort out his own problems.
Then why didn't she?
Pondering Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation, she considered the possibility that since Drustan's mass was so much greater than hers, she was doomed to be attracted to him—so long as he was in her near vicinity—as much a victim of gravity as the earth orbiting the sun.
Lost in thought, she hummed absently as she huddled on the hood, shivering as the indigo sky deepened to black cashmere, arguing with herself and reaching no firm conclusions.
She couldn't shake the feeling that she was overlooking one or more critical facts that might help her figure out what had happened to him. She'd never given any credence to "gut instinct"; she'd believed the gut controlled hunger and waste, nothing gnostic. But in the past thirty-six hours, something in her gut had found a voice, it was arguing with her mind, and she was baffled by the discord.
She had remained in the stones and watched him for some time before she'd sought the warmth of the hood of the car. She'd studied him with the remote candor of a scientist observing a test subject in an experiment, but her study of him had only revealed more contradictions rather than resolving any.
His body was powerfully developed, and a man didn't get a body like that without extraordinary discipline, effort, and a mind capable of sustained focus. Wherever he had been before she'd found him in the cave, he'd lived an active, balanced life. He'd either worked hard or played hard, and she decided it was more work than play, because his hands were callused, and no stuffy, jock-type aristocrat had calluses on fingers and palms. His silky black hair was too long to be considered apropos on a twenty-first-century lord and gentleman, but it was glossy and well cut. His teeth were even and white, more evidence of care for his body. People who devoted attention to their physical health were usually healthy in mind as well.