Taken by Angeline Fortin (great books of all time TXT) 📗

“Are ye alright?” he yelled above the din and Rhys nodded, wiping blood from his brow as he pushed himself to his feet.  His eyes widened as he saw Scarlett behind him but there was no time for comment.  Savage cries, echoed around them and the two men put Scarlett between them, facing the English soldiers pressing in.

Once long ago – or far in the future, depending how one looked at it – Mark Twain was quoted as saying that ‘The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.’

Now Scarlett knew why.  She had done it!  She had saved Laird, who in turn had saved Rhys.  Firing her pistol again and again, she was determined to keep it that way.

The crowd thinned, only requiring a slash here or there to make a path for them.  Scarlett fired once more and then they were to safety, running toward the River Till to the east.  All around them, the Scots were retreating knowing that defeat was upon them.

The battle was over, but not finished.  They had to run as the Englishmen would follow, looking to strike down any stragglers.

Tripping along after Laird’s long strides with his plaid trailing out behind her, Scarlett’s legs were burning against the exertion.  Then numbing.  She stumbled as weakness washed over her. “Laird,” she cried out, tripping over her skirts and landing on her knees. Something was wrong, terribly wrong.  “Laird,” she whispered weakly.

Laird turned and frowned down at her taking in her pale face, nearly translucent skin.  “What is it?  Are ye injured?”

No, that wasn’t it at all.  Weeks ago, she had taken Laird’s sword in her hand and begged for someone to save her.  She had come to him and now saved him in return. The circle was complete.  She knew it with a sickening certainty.  “Laird, oh no!  Oh, God, not now.  Not yet!”

Her eyes met his beloved gaze, seeing the confusion there.  He didn’t yet understand what was happening, but he would all too soon.

His gaze narrowed and then his jaw set with familiar stubbornness.  “Nay, yer no’ goin’ anywhere, lass.  Fight it.”

“I can’t,” she gasped. Laird dropped his sword and fell to his knees, locking his arms tightly around her.  Scarlett held on to his shoulders, hoping beyond hope that she might hold him tightly enough to carry him with her.  “Oh Laird.  I want… Take care of Aleizia and Aileen.  Don’t make her marry the earl.  And, Rhys.”  His eyes flared as she cast her eyes north.  Realizing they weren’t following, Rhys had stopped and turned back.  “Don’t let anyone make him marry at all.  He and Willem…”

Laird’s eyes widened in understanding.  “I won’t but ye hae to fight it, mo chroí.”

“I can’t.”  Weakly she lifted a hand to stroke his cheek, but already she was fading.  “Be the heir you were meant to be.  Maybe not in position, but at heart.  Take care of them all.  I love you, Laird.  I will always…”

“Scarlett!  Na-a-ay!”

James beat his fist down on the ground where Scarlett had just sat but there was nothing there.   She was gone.

How?  Why?

His fingers found the warm blade of his sword and curled around it, so tightly that it cut into his fingers.  His palm.  Blood oozed from between his clenched fingers. The pain was nothing compared to that impaling his heart and spiking through his chest as if death itself had seized him in its grip.  So much he had gained.

“Nay, mo chroí.  Stay wi’ me,” he whispered.  “Please, please, dinnae go.”

“Laird,” Rhys shouted running back to his side.  “We maun go.  Now, Laird!”

“Nay, I cannae.”

“Aye, ye can, ye spleeny bastard!  She dinnae come all this way to hae ye die on yer knees,” he yelled, fisting his hand in James’ shirt and dragging him to his feet.  “Now, come on!”

As dark descended around them, the battle was all but over.  His misery was just beginning with her loss.

41

September 9, 2013

Flodden Field, the north of England

The battle was still raging.  Scarlett stared dumbly at the sight as the numbness faded.  Hope speared through her but faded quickly.  Where it had been blood, guts and ugliness before, the spectacle before her was too small, too clean… too kind.

Staged.

Only a few hundred men were on the field.  A field dotted not with the bodies of the dead and injured but with rounded hay bales.  Atop a low hill not far away a stark granite cross rose in memorial against the blue sky.

A plane flew overhead and Scarlett’s head whipped from the left to the right taking in the evidence of a modern day Flodden.  Cars, cameras.  Spectators.

It was a reenactment, she realized.  It wasn’t real at all.  Laird was truly gone. Dead now by about five hundred years.  “No, no, no,” she whispered, denying the truth.  Digging in her purse, she found her phone and turned it on.

But there it was.  September ninth, twenty-thirteen.  Five fifty-seven p.m.  Just as when she’d left, she’d come back through time exactly five hundred years almost to the minute.  And almost a month had passed since she travelled back in time.

A month where her life had changed completely.

And now Laird was gone.  Torn away from her forever by time and space.  Scarlett felt her shoulders heave in a bone-jarring but silent sob, then another that ripped through her chest like an alien trying to force its way out, but even that pain couldn’t have matched this torture.  She couldn’t take a breath; her throat was clenched too tightly.  The burning in her breast spread, radiating outward as hot tears rolled down her cheeks.

No.

The cry of her soul echoed by Laird a half a millennia before as her fingers curled into the moist earth of Flodden.

“Oi, there!  You alright, miss?” a deep, brusque voice said nearby as a strong hand wrapped around her elbow