Needed By The Highlander - Rebecca Preston Page 0,9
the quilt back, shivering a little as the cold, damp air reached her body. To her shock, she was wearing new clothing — gone were the comfortable jeans and shirt she’d been wearing for the stakeout. Instead, she was in some kind of long, grey nightgown. It covered her, at least, but she couldn’t help but feel strange about the idea of a stranger undressing and redressing her while she’d clearly been too out of it to even notice what was happening.
She sat up… and a rush of nausea came over her so abruptly that she had to lie straight back down again, her head pounding and her pulse singing in her ears. On the verge of passing out, she fought through the dizziness, feeling panic begin to rise in her again as she realized how weak she truly was. If she could barely sit up, how was she supposed to get out of bed? Why was she so weak? Just how long had she been lying here, anyway… and who had been taking care of her? If she was this sick, surely she should be in hospital… at the very least, an IV drip should be keeping her hydrated. She reached out for the water with a trembling hand and took another shaky sip.
The little boy was still peering at her, a look of slight concern on his face where those gray eyes peeped through a tangled light brown fringe of hair that was in sore need of a trim. He was a young child — Helen wasn’t great at judging ages, but she suspected he was maybe four or five years old. Definitely not old enough to be running around unaccompanied, not in a place where there were sick people lying around. Was this some kind of medieval-style hospital? Or was this just the guest room of a strange family that had pulled her out of the river?
“Are you still sick?” the boy asked brightly.
That accent again. She was pretty sure it was Scottish — she’d watched enough movies set in that beautiful place to tell the difference from other European accents. She didn’t know anyone Scottish. Why would she be in a stranger’s house?
“Yeah, looks like I am,” she agreed, a little distracted by the boy’s continued scrutiny of her. She didn’t really need the third degree from this kid right now. “Can you tell me where I am?”
“You’re in the Keep, of course,” the boy scoffed. “Why do you talk like that?”
“Talk like what?”
“Talk like what,” he echoed her, and she could hear him performing a childish, clumsy impersonation of her accent.
Despite her confusion, she couldn’t help but grin in amusement at the attempt… and the smile must have emboldened the boy, because he crept around the doorway and took a few steps toward her, leaving it ajar behind him. She tried to look through it from her vantage point, but it was too dark out there — she could see a distant glow of light, but not much else.
“It’s my accent. I’m from West Virginia. Where are you from?”
“Here,” the boy said blankly.
She couldn’t help but smile. Children were always so refreshingly direct when it came to cultural differences.
“Sure, but where’s your family from? Not America, I suppose.”
“Where’s that?”
She blinked, a little surprised by that. How could this boy not know the name of the country he was in? Most children knew that almost before they could talk… and while it was possible that that wasn’t the case for kids from overseas, surely he was old enough now to know the name of the country he and his family were presumably living in? “America. It’s where we are now.”
“Is not,” he challenged her stridently, with supreme confidence. “We’re in Scotland. On Loch Ness.”
She laughed. Was this some kind of a game? “Oh, are we? I suppose the Loch Ness Monster is nearby, too.”
“Aye,” the boy said seriously. “But I’m not allowed to play with her. Da said.”
She was amused… but there was a dull pounding headache behind her eye that wasn’t going away with the water she was trying to sip at, and she found herself wishing that this little boy would leave her to rest a little more. She lay back against the pillow, taking a deep breath. The little boy crept a little closer to her, his gray eyes full of curiosity.