Love in the Time of a Highland Laird (A Laird for All Time Book 3) by Angeline Fortin (whitelam books .TXT) 📗

Barbarian? Beast? It irked Al that she couldn’t even put a name to the brute so that she might curse him properly. Carr, the younger man had called him, with a rolling ‘R’ at the end. Was that his name? Or was it Kerr like Deborah Kerr? She wasn’t sure. Perhaps it wasn’t a name at all.

Presumably the young man who’d come in was his brother Oran. An assumption based on the reference of ‘Father.’ Sounded like it might have a capital F to it.

Carr or Kerr, it didn’t matter which, only that he’d just gone off and left her, obviously without a second thought. And in doing so had provided nothing greater to occupy her mind than such inane debates and conversation with rodents.

For all his fervent questioning, clearly his cousin’s fate placed a far second in importance behind his father. It made sense. Most people cared for their sires, though in her experience, she’d found little to appreciate about fathers. Or stepfathers for that matter.

Whatever the reason, he’d left her down in that dank, dark dungeon without much of a word about her to anyone. She might’ve become a veritable afterthought all around were it not for the ragged boy who showed up twice a day with a small plate of food but offered little in the way of conversation or information. He didn’t even seem to speak English, which Al found odd. Even though their accents were thick and often nearly unintelligible, her jailor had spoken English and Oran as well.

“Argh!” Al bit her lip, swallowing the scream of frustration at her tedious thoughts. Banging her head against the hard wood would be no more constructive this time than it had the last. She was just so freakin’ bored.

The only things she’d had on her person when she’d fallen into the portal were her phone, her lab coat, her Mark-Davis I.D. and a keycard to the inner lab. She diminished her phone battery straight away flipping sadly through pictures of Mr. Darcy, reading the rest of a novel on her ebook app, and using her flashlight app to light her cell between the burning out of one candle and the arrival of another.

Her I.D. and keycard had provided no entertainment whatsoever. Her lab coat. Well, it had been torn into pieces and sacrificed for a worthy cause.

How could he have left her to this?

Another squeak in the darkness and Al drew her knees even more tightly to her chest. God, she hated rodents of any sort. Now, more than ever.

A key turned with a heavy grind in the door and Al sat up, ready for her breakfast. Or would it be dinner? She’d forgo both for five seconds of conversation. Which was almost laughable, she’d rarely sought out company voluntarily in her life.

To her surprise it was a woman of perhaps forty or so, dressed in a simple brown dress with a long tartan draped around her shoulders. Unlike the dark blues and forest greens of her jailer’s kilt, hers was brightly colored with lively greens, reds and yellows. Her rich brown hair was pulled straight back from her forehead, laced with a few strands of silver that glittered in the candlelight.

As she came closer, Al could see the familiar blue she’d seen repetitively echoed in her eyes.

Damn, she was one of them.

Did that make her, too, one of the enemy?

The woman looked her up and down, taking in Al’s unwashed body and scraggly hair with what seemed like a gleam of pleasure lighting her eyes. One of Al’s verminous roommates skittered along the edge of her long skirts and though she squealed and leapt back, she seemed even more pleased. Her eyes glowed with inner glee as she met Al’s gaze.

“Compordach, tá muid?”

Al didn’t understand the language she spoke, but sarcasm was universal. The facetious drawl and malicious glee glowing in her eyes told her the woman was delighted by what she saw. Why? The eyes marked her as a close relative. Was she a sister? A cousin as happy as Al’s captor to see her suffer?

Producing a key, she unlocked the wrist shackles Al still wore around her wrists and turned back toward the door, motioning for Al to follow. “Tar liom.”

Wary of both the woman and what might await her beyond those doors, Al stayed put on the bench.

The woman paused at the door and gestured imperiously once more for Al to follow.

“Tar.”

Al held firm. As much as she wanted out of her prison, going anywhere with this woman seemed far more dangerous.

“Do ye nae speak Gaelic?” the woman asked with a frown. “I said come wi’ me. I am tae take ye tae see Keir.”

There is was again, though this time she could make out the burr of the vowels more clearly.

Keir.

Too quixotic a name for such a fierce man.

But it called her involuntarily to her feet, eager to confront him after days alone. She followed the woman down a long corridor punctuated with cell doors, guided only by the candle held aloft by the raggedy boy who led the way. Up they went, the worn stone of the winding stairs cool and smooth beneath her bare feet.

Damn, she forgotten her shoes. There was no chance to retrieve them. A door opened at the top, letting in a blast of heat to warm her as well as a burst of sunlight to blind. Al squinted and glanced around, though it all appeared at first to look like nothing more than an overexposed photograph.

The light dimmed once more as they moved through another door, and leaving the young boy behind, the woman sailed regally through another stone passage. It was cooler again but not as cold as her dungeon. Her eyesight returning to normal, Al could see the improvement in these walls as compared to the ones she’d been staring at. The stonework was tighter. Neater.

Through a kitchen. Another wave of heat. Everyone stopped to stare