The men held his hands up and stilled. Why did he look so familiar? Those high cheekbones, the almond-shaped eyes of a warm-brown color… He had a long, almost shaggy beard and his hair looked like it hadn’t had a woman’s touch for a very long time. And his eyes… There was pain in them, and sadness, and a desperate, desperate hope.
She’d seen those eyes before, but the man they belonged to was dead.
“’Tis me, Ian,” he said.
The ground lurched under her feet and slipped away. She waved her free hand in the air, looking for something to lean on but found nothing. She stepped back and found her balance again.
“Ian…” she whispered.
She looked to her right, to where the small Cambel cemetery was, to where Ian’s grave was with a headstone dedicated to him.
But if time travel was real, there was more magic possible. She turned to Colin, who kept staring at Ian with a frown. She gestured to him, and he hurried into her arms. Once he was in the security of her hug, she looked at the apparition before her.
“Are ye Ian’s ghost?” she said.
His eyes clouded with an inner turmoil, and he pressed his lips tightly together in his beard. “In a sense, I am. The Ian ye kent died, Marjorie. But I’m flesh and blood.”
Her vision blurred with tears, and her hand holding the dagger shook violently. “Ye didna die?”
“Nae.”
She released the air in her lungs, but something in her refused to completely believe him, and she still held the dagger.
“Where have ye been?”
He swallowed. “The MacDougalls sold me into slavery to Caliphate. I’ve been a slave over there all these years.”
Her arm fell. A slave! Ian had been a slave… A tear left a burning trail down her cheek. Her dagger fell in the soft grass, and she left Colin and marched towards Ian.
He took her in his huge arms, and she fell into them, crying, inhaling his dusty, dirty, dear scent.
“Ye came back,” she whispered as he tightened his embrace. “Oh, thank God! Oh, thank God…” She leaned back. “Colin, come meet yer Uncle Ian.”
Colin came sheepishly, his eyes carefully estimating Ian. Marjorie let go of Ian and came to stand behind Colin and put her hands on his shoulders. “Ian, ‘tis my son, Colin.”
Ian’s eyebrows rose. “Yer…son?”
“Aye,” she said with her head raised.
Ian nodded respectfully as way of greeting. “Pleased to meet ye, lad. I’m so glad to have lived to see ye with my own eyes.”
“Hello, Uncle,” he said simply.
Marjorie sighed and felt a huge smile cut her face in two. “Come now, ye must be hungry and in need of a bath. I’ll order one for ye, and ye can sleep in—” Her voice stumbled as she almost said he could sleep in Konnor’s chamber. But it wasn’t Konnor’s any more. “In the guest chamber next to mine.”
Ian beamed. “Aye. Gladly, thank ye.”
As they turned and walked to take his horse and go into the castle, Marjorie squeezed his hand. “Ye must tell me everything that happened to ye.”
Colin kicked the ball towards the castle and ran after it. As Ian and Marjorie followed him, her cousin’s face darkened. “I canna tell ye everything. Some of it isna for a tender lass’s ears.”
Marjorie laughed. “Tender lass? I dinna ken of whom ye speak. I have just led a strong defense against a MacDougall army six times bigger than my forces. And I won.”
He looked at her with a blank expression on his face. “Ye? Alone?”
“I wasna alone. I had fifty men.” And one of them from the future, without whom she probably wouldn’t have made it. “But my father, yers, and Uncle Neil, together with all my brothers and many other Cambel men, are in the north-west, fighting for King Robert the Bruce.”
“Marjorie, I dinna ken what to say…” Tears welled in his brown eyes. “I remember ye broken, curled into a ball, with nae will to live or go out to see the sun. And now ye have a son, and ye fight the battles that nae every man can… Lass, I’m so proud to be yer cousin. Ye’re a true Cambel.”
Gratitude spread through her chest like the warm rays of sunlight. “Thank ye, Ian.”
They reached the castle and went through the gates. Colin took Ian’s horse and led it into the stables. Ian looked around and took a deep breath, then he let out a long, long exhale.
“I didna think I’d ever see Glenkeld again,” he said. “Have ye been to Dundail lately?”
Dundail belonged to Ian’s father, Duncan Cambel. It was about a day’s ride away. It was Ian’s home when he wasn’t fostered with the Cambels in Innes Chonnel or Glenkeld.
“Nae since we were children,” Marjorie said. “I ken yer father has been unwell recently. He hasna been on many battles ever since yer burial. He is in Inverlochy now. A rider came yesterday to say my father and brothers are there taking a brief rest.”
“Then ‘tis where I go on the morrow.”
Marjorie nodded and smiled. “Aye. I’d like to see my brothers’ faces once they see ye, but I must stay here to guard the castle.”
She took him to the tower with the bedchambers.
“Where’s yer husband, Marjorie?” Ian said.
“Husband? I have nae husband. Colin is Alasdair’s.”
Ian shook his head once. “Ye’re a remarkable woman. After what he’d done to ye, ye love his son.”
“Alasdair’s seed conceived Colin, but there’s nothing of that monster in my son. He’s a Cambel. And I’m proud to be his mother, no matter what. It only made me stronger, Ian. It made me who I am.”
And as she said that out loud, she realized her biggest fear, of being a coward, was gone, too. She wasn’t a coward. She never had been. The fact that she’d been kidnapped wasn’t a sign of her weakness. She’d fought as much as she could, and she hadn’t submitted to Alasdair, no matter how much violence he’d wrought upon her. She didn’t give up—not on herself, not on her child.
She hadn’t even given up on love. Only that had gone to shite.
“Aye, I dare say it did, lass,” Ian said. “Do ye nae want to get marrit?”
She looked at the courtyard thoughtfully. The men carried rocks up the towers and onto the northern wall. Now that they had time and peace to repair it, Marjorie wanted it done as soon as possible. They’d reclaimed the rubble from down under the wall to save money, and the clansmen who were normally engaged in sword training were doing the repairs.
“I didna for a long time. And then I met someone.” She nudged a small stone with the edge of her shoe and kicked it away. “I…fell in love with him, and despite the heartache of my experience, I started seeing the possibility of being happy. He did that for me.”
“Is he a good man?” Ian said. “Not that ye need my approval, but I will break his neck if he as much as looks at ye the wrong way.”
She sighed. “He is a good man. Colin opened up to him, too. He saved both our lives.”
“So where is he now, this good man?”
Marjorie hugged herself. “Far away.”
“And ye love him?”
“Aye.”