The Wellspring (Kaitlyn and the Highlander #12) - Diana Knightley Page 0,50

tourists, headaches and lines and crowds, but it all fell away and I was transported back in time to the sixteenth century.

Hayley said, “So you were here?”

“Aye, I held Katlyn much like this, right along this low wall.”

Without letting go I said, “We weren’t certain we’d ever get to go home so we just came here and looked out over the countryside. I was so sad, I missed you so much,” I said to Isla in my arms, “but also I had to keep your da from being so sad. It was really…”

Magnus said, “Twas verra heavy on us.”

I nodded, “Yeah, it was very, very heavy.”

Fraoch gestured out over the landscape, which wasn’t really land at all, not anymore, now it was buildings and roads and houses and cars and the crowds of tourists filling the castle. “Twas all like this?”

“Nae, twas most of it woods.” And then we all pointed and talked and discussed the changing skyline. I knew we had to be boring Hayley and Fraoch with our memories. We were feeling deeply nostalgic, woven through with melancholy. It had been a long desolate time and this was cathartic as hell to be able to visit it, the world that had been such a prison before.

Hayley and Fraoch took Isla and Archie to see the big cannon and because Magnus and I had seen it before, we decided to stay in our spot — he sitting on the low wall, with me in front of him. He opened his sporran, pulled a pen from inside, and twisted it in his hands. “Tis a pen that saved us.”

“It’s so true.” He pulled my arm toward him and pushed my sleeve up and wrote with the pen on my arm:

Is ann leatsa a tha mo chridhe gu brath

I said, “My heart belongs to you, forever…” because I had heard him say it many times. “What made you want to do that?”

“I daena ken, I wanted tae use the pen here for somethin’ important. Tis tradition.” I wrapped my arms around his neck. He pulled up my locket between us and opened it’s wee latch. Inside was a photo of Archie and now Isla.

He kissed the locket. I kissed his cheek.

He said, “If we had carried the locket in the sixteenth century, twould hae made our remembrances much easier.”

“I’ve wondered about that. I wish I would have had my act together, to have Isla’s photo in the locket, but I didn’t, and didn’t have it with me. But it was just as well, it would have been confiscated at Balloch. It might hae been lost forever.”

He brushed my hair back from my face. “Thank ye for bringing me tae Scotland.”

“You’re welcome my love. I knew it would be important, but I didn’t realize how much it would make me feel, like I don’t know, like so deeply reminiscent. I am so glad to be home, but I miss us back there.”

“Aye, me as well.”

But then his eye caught something behind me and he bristled.

Startled, I glanced over my shoulder as Magnus shoved me behind him. Isla and Archie across the way, gleefully running toward us, Hayley a few feet behind. I put my arms out, come on, come on!

Fraoch followed Magnus’s gaze and then shoved through the crowd in that direction.

I threw my arms around the kids, and yelled at Hayley, “Don’t let them out of your sight!”

“They weren’t, they were right there, chill out.”

“Yeah, yeah.” We both stood on tiptoes trying to see where Fraoch had gone.

He pushed his way back. “There were three. They got away, but they were watch—”

Archie’s face was worried.

Fraoch said, “Nae worries, wee man—”

Haley said, “Uncle Fraoch thought he saw someone he knew, he made a mistake.”

“Aye, twas nae him.” His eyes remained focused on the direction of the stairs.

Magnus and I passed a look.

Careful.

Why?

Be watchful, I daena ken why.

He ran his hand through his hair and grinned to set Archie at ease. “Dost ye like the castle, Archie? Tis nae as big as our own.”

“It’s better, I like it old.”

“Me as well.” He lifted Archie up to sit on the wall and stood beside him holding Isla in his arms. I took a whole lot of photos, then Hayley took photos of all of us — a family portrait at the walls of Edinburgh Castle while Fraoch stood guard.

We stayed in Edinburgh for that night. There were many things to see, but sadly the house we had lived in had been renovated into an