Time of a Highlander (Arch Through Time, #12) Page 2

  Her father waved the piece of paper at her. “All her details are on here. Check your emails. She’s going to send over the contract.”

  Georgie slowly reached out and took the scrap of paper. On it was scrawled a name and a website. Despite her initial skepticism, she couldn’t quell the little buzz of excitement in her belly. Someone had seen the videos she’d posted? And they thought her work good enough that they’d offered her a contract?

  Her mind flicked back to the words Irene MacAskill had spoken.

  A choice is coming. There is always another path to tread.

  Could this be what the strange old woman had been referring to? Did she have something to do with this after all?

  With a mixture of excitement and trepidation, Georgie opened her emails. Sure enough, sitting in her inbox was an email from a company called Campbell and Associates.

  “What are you waiting for?” her dad said, hovering behind her. “Open it!”

  As the message opened, Georgie found herself leaning forward and scanning the words eagerly. It was a contract, just like her father had said. She was to fly to the Highlands of Scotland, all expenses paid, to begin restoring an ancient building.

  Georgie’s jaw dropped as her eyes alighted on the staggering amount of money being offered. She wouldn’t normally earn that much in a whole year! It would be enough to pay their mortgage arrears and get the bank to back off!

  Unable to believe her eyes, Georgie read the email again. And then a third time. The words didn’t change. They didn’t vanish in a puff of smoke. This was for real.

  “Well, what do you reckon?” said her father. “Didn’t I tell you something would turn up?”

  “You did,” Georgie laughed. “You sure did. Where do I sign?”

  Her father laughed as well. “Slow down there, miss. There is a catch. They need someone straight away.”

  “Right. So when do I leave?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “Tomorrow?” Georgie cried. “But that’s too soon! Who will help you with the Harborough project? And how will we get everything arranged in time? And I don’t even know where I put my passport!”

  Her father squeezed her shoulder. “Calm down. You go pack, I’ll find your passport and make all the arrangements.”

  Georgie regarded her father. “You’re sure you’ll be okay while I’m gone?”

  He rolled his eyes. “I’m sure. This is your big chance, Georgie. Now sign the contract and get packing!”

  Before she could change her mind, Georgie added her electronic signature to the contract and emailed it back. Then she gave her father a hug and hurried upstairs. Her mind whirled.

  What should she pack for the Scottish weather?

  Chapter 2

  Blair MacAuley grabbed the iron bar that formed the lintel over the door with both hands and pulled himself up. He strained until his chin touched the smooth metal and then lowered himself back down again. One. He repeated the movement, ignoring the flare of pain from the shoulder wound he’d taken when Beaumont’s fools had captured him. Two.

  MacAulay fool more like, he thought bitterly as he completed another pull-up. Three. How did I let them sneak up on me like that?

  Anger flared in his veins, hot and biting. Anger at Sir Charles Beaumont, anger at the guards who’d brought him here. Anger at the whole damned world. But mostly, anger at himself.

  Wasn’t Brody always telling him that he should think before he acted? Curse it all, why hadn’t he listened?

  You know why, a voice murmured in the back of his mind. Because you have much to make up for.

  He completed a fourth pull-up and then a fifth, trying to burn away his anger with the punishing exercise. He lost track of time in the repetitive movements and soon his lungs were burning, his limbs were aching, and his hair stuck to his neck with sweat.

  Still, he did not stop.

  Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty.

  Only when his limbs were quivering, his pulse thundering so hard he could hear it, and sweat was pouring off his forehead, did he release the bar and allow himself to drop to the floor.

  He doubled over, hands on knees, fighting to catch his breath, then he straightened, crossed to the bucket in the corner and dashed water into his face to wash off the worst of the sweat.

  When his breathing finally started to even out, he put his hands on his hips and looked around. His cell was not large, around ten feet by ten feet. Three walls were constructed of solid stone and the fourth consisted of a set of iron bars—the ones he had used to do his training. Beyond the iron bars lay the rest of Beaumont’s dungeon—a narrow corridor with cells on either side.

  As far as he could tell, Blair was the only occupant.

  Despite the training, a restless energy still filled him. He began pacing up and down at the front of his cell: five steps turn. Five steps turn. He needed to be out of here. His enemies could be mounting an attack whilst he was trapped here like some caged wolf. What was Beaumont up to? Had he managed to enact his plan? Was he already destroying everything that Blair had worked so hard to protect?

  No, he told himself, clenching his hands into fists and digging his nails into his palm. Dinna think that way. I will find a way out of here and I will stop Beaumont. I must.

  “Ye will wear a furrow into that stone, pacing about like that.”

  Blair spun at the sudden voice, hand groping for the sword that had been taken from him. A figure was standing outside his cell.

  “I want to see Lord Beaumont,” Blair growled. “Or is he too much of a coward to face me himself?”

  “Charles Beaumont isnae my concern,” the figure replied. “Ye, however, most definitely are.”

  Blair paused, eyes narrowing as he stared into the shadows where the figure stood. That was a woman’s voice.

  “Who are ye?” he demanded.

  The figure stepped into the light and Blair started with surprise. It was no guardsman but an old woman, small and round with gray hair tied into a bun. She came to stand directly before his cell and, although he could not have said why, Blair found himself taking a step back.

  The old woman gazed up at him with a solemn expression on her face.

  “Oh, my boy. What have ye done to yerself?”

  Blair watched the old woman warily, as though she was a viper that might strike any moment. Something tingled in the back of his memory, something that whispered a warning. How had she gotten in here? Beaumont’s guards let nobody in or out. His unease deepened.

  “I will ask ye again, woman,” he said. “Who are ye and what do ye want?”

  She cocked her head as she regarded him. Those eyes, so dark as to be almost black, skewered him as surely as any spear point.

  “What do I want?” she said, echoing his question. “I want the same as ye. I wish to safeguard the balance and to help ye find peace. That is why ye are here, isnae it, Blair Macaulay?”

  His eyes narrowed. “How do ye know who I am?”

  “Who else would ye be? Ye are the very image of yer father, Camdan, and if yer current predicament is aught to go by, ye have inherited his fiery temperament as well.”

  She knew his father? A dark suspicion began to grow in Blair’s mind, and he found himself taking another step back.

  “Irene,” he breathed. “Ye are Irene MacAskill.”

  A bright smile broke across the old woman’s face and her eyes sparkled. “Aye, lad. I am mighty pleased that ye recognize me.”

  How could he not? Although he had never met Irene MacAskill personally, he had been brought up on tales of the meddling old woman who appeared out of the blue to turn the lives of the MacAuleys upside down on the path to their destiny. The woman who was no woman at all, but one of the Fae, those immortal beings who interfered in the lives of mortals, moving them around on a whim like pieces on a chessboard.

  Blair’s father and uncles had all once been bound by a Fae curse, and it had been Irene MacAskill who had set in motion the chain of event
s that helped them break that curse. His father had warned him that wherever the Fae turned up, trouble soon followed.

  Yet Blair’s mother took a different view. She saw Irene as a benefactor, a friend even. Whichever view was correct, her appearance here, now, did not bode well for Blair.

  “What do ye want with me?”

  “Havenae I just told ye that? Only what ye already want for yerself. To help ye find the peace ye so desperately long for.”

  “Peace?” Blair snorted. “Hardly. We are in the middle of a war, even if my father and uncles canna see it.”

  The familiar anger flared again. His father had dismissed his concerns as warmongering, his malcontent. But Blair was right. He knew it. And he would stop Lord Charles Beaumont alone if he had to. It was the only way to atone for what he’d done.

  “Do ye deny that it is peace ye seek?” Irene said. “Ye have always had a restless spirit. A fire burns inside ye, Blair MacAuley, and that fire can push ye down dangerous paths if ye let it burn out of control. Be careful it doesnae consume ye.”

  The look she gave him was deep and penetrating, as if she could see right into the core of him. Shame washed through him, dampening his anger. Did she know what he’d done?

  Of course she did. She was one of the Fae.

  “It’s too late,” he whispered. “It’s always been too late.”

  “Nay, lad,” she replied with a shake of her head. “There is always a way back but ye must make that choice willingly, aware of what it will cost ye. Are ye willing to make that choice?”

  Blair stared at her. Her words made hope spring to life inside him. A way back? Really? Was it possible? Then he remembered his mission. Remembered what he was trying to make up for. No. What right did she have to speak to him as though she understood his innermost desires?

  “I have no time for yer meaningless riddles, woman!” he snapped. “Unless ye have a lock-pick that can get me out of this cell, I suggest ye leave. I have no desire to become embroiled in yer games.”

  Irene watched him for a moment longer, a deep sadness reflected in her eyes.

  “As ye wish. But think on my words. There will only be one chance.”

  Then she turned and walked away. Blair pressed his face up to the bars, staring out into the corridor outside his cell but Irene had disappeared.

  Blair curled his fingers around the bars in the exact same spot Irene had done. The metal felt strangely warm from where she’d touched it. A shiver went through him.

  Fae, a warning whispered in his head. They canna be trusted. Dinna listen to her.

  And yet he couldn’t shake the sensations that her words had stirred up.

  Hope.

  But first he had to figure a way out of this cell. He slid down the wall, stretched out his long legs and settled down to think.

  GEORGIE SQUINTED AT the parchment lying on her workbench and then at the block of stone sitting half-finished in front of her. She put her chisel down and stretched her arms over her head, working out the aches in her shoulders.

  She’d been working on this painstaking design for a keystone all morning and it was so intricate that only now was it starting to take shape. It had been slow and infuriating work and was making her back and shoulders protest no end.

  It didn’t help that the diagrams she’d been given to work from were centuries old with faded ink and descriptions written in Gaelic—of which Georgie understood not a word. Even after working with them for two weeks now, she found the blueprints difficult to follow.

  She peered at the parchment. Spaced around the edges were small diagrams indicating designs for different styles of arches—one of which Georgie was working from now. But the parchment was incomplete and looked like it had been torn in half right down the middle. The tear went straight through the design for another arch, one more complex than the one she was working on now, that was made of two concentric arches.

  The design intrigued her but its completed shape would have to remain pure speculation since half was missing. Connecting lines radiated out from this arch to the others dotted around the outside—lines that looked like what you would see on a map. Georgie had no idea what it all meant. Where had Adaira got it from? She’d learned better than to ask.

  “Well?” said a voice from the door suddenly. “Is it finished yet?”

  Georgie looked up and her heart sank. Adaira Campbell, CEO of Campbell and Associates—and Georgie’s new employer—stood in the workshop doorway. Perhaps a decade older than Georgie, she had high cheekbones, long dark hair, and the sort of penetrating gaze designed to make people uncomfortable.

  It worked a treat on Georgie.

  She crossed the workshop to stand by the workbench, her high-heels clicking on the hard floor.

  Georgie breathed deeply. Adaira seemed to think it her personal mission to ensure her employees didn’t slack for even a minute. She was obsessive about the stonework she’d commissioned to a degree that Georgie found a little unsettling. Every inch of every ashlar, voussoir, jamb, coping or cornice had to be perfect, had to match the designs on the parchment to the barest millimeter—which was why it was taking so long, of course.

  “Um, not quite,” Georgie replied. “But it’s getting there.”

  Adaira’s painted lips pressed into a hard line. “So when?”

  Georgie schooled her patience. What did her father always say? The client was always right? Even when they were overbearing and impatient?

  “This is the last piece,” she replied, pointing at the voussoir—a wedge-shaped block of stone that would form the keystone of an arch. “And the most intricate. It can’t be rushed but if I have no more interruptions,”—she noticed Adaira’s look of annoyance at that comment—“I should have it finished for you by tonight.”

  Adaira’s dark eyes roved over the stonework. Something flashed in them. Something that looked a little like greed. She reached out and ran her fingers lightly over the carving—a stylized garden of knot work and Celtic animals.

  “Yer work is beautiful,” she breathed. “More accurate than any I’ve seen. But it must be perfect if it’s going to work.”

  “What are you talking about? If what’s going to work?”

  Adaira regarded her. “What I’ve been working for all this time. To open a way. To blast open the doors of time and get my revenge.” Her hand snapped out, fingers curling around George’s wrist painfully. “Do not let me down.”

  Then she marched out of the workshop.

  Georgie watched her go. Okaaay. What on earth had that all been about?

  It doesn’t matter, she thought. Just get the job done and get paid. That’s all you’re here for. If Adaira wants to act a little odd, that’s her business.

  In the two weeks she’d been here Georgie had not been able to figure out Adaira Campbell at all. The woman was cold, aloof, and fastidious to the point of obsession. She’d already fired three stonemasons before Georgie arrived because their work wasn’t quite perfect enough. Georgie was determined not to become the fourth. She and her dad needed the money too much for that.

  She sighed, staring out of the open door. The workshop was a small timber building—little more than a shed—which had been erected at the far corner of Adaira’s excavation site. Georgie had left the door open to let in some air as the July day had become hot and stifling and through the door she could see the site stretching out: pits and trenches, crumbling walls and ruined doorways that made up the ancient church that Adaira Campbell was so determined to restore.

  Beyond the site lay the Highlands of Scotland, wild and glorious beneath the warm summer sun. An eagle circled in the endless blue sky and the sun glimmered on the waters of the numerous small lochs that filled the valley.

  I wish Dad could see me now, she thought. He would love this.

  Pushing Adaira’s demands from her mind, she picked up her chisel, bent over the block of stone, and began tapping away again. But she was still a little rattled by Adaira’s visit and her concen
tration wavered for a fraction of a second. That was all it took. Her hand slipped, the chisel blade smacked into the workbench and snapped clean away from the handle, clattering to the floor with a metallic ring.

  “No! Oh no!”

  Heart hammering, Georgie bent over the stone to check whether any damage had been done. She examined every inch meticulously, making sure no gouges or chisel marks marred the design. To her relief, it was intact.

  She bent and picked up the chisel, frowning at the broken blade. It was no wonder it had broken. Adaira Campbell had provided Georgie’s tools and everything had copper blades rather than the usual steel or iron. Copper was weaker, more prone to breaking, and was another reason it had taken Georgie so long to complete the carvings. Why Adaira insisted on using copper tools, Georgie had no idea and she’d told Georgie to mind her own business when she’d asked.

  Georgie groaned. She would have to replace the chisel. Again. Pulling off her apron and dropping it on to the workbench, she stepped outside into the warmth of the day and set off, navigating her way carefully around the trenches and half uncovered ruins towards the tool shed—where Adaira insisted everything was kept and carefully cataloged.

  As she walked, she passed several small groups of people—archaeologists and ancient buildings experts who were busy cataloging and unearthing the ruins. They worked in near silence and not one of them spoke to Georgie. Even back at the hotel where they were all staying there was little socializing. She could count on one hand the number of conversations she’d had with any of them in the time she’d been here. It was most strange.

  But the archaeologists weren’t the only people on site. They were far outnumbered by the countless security guards Adaira had guarding the place. To Georgie’s mind there were far more of the hard-eyed, taciturn men than required to keep a small site like this safe. They guarded the perimeter and stood around in groups, saying little, but watching everything that happened. One such group stared at Georgie suspiciously as she walked past towards the tool shed.