Page 54 of Dark Victory

She trembled and turned, meeting Macleod’s gaze. “So you brought me back to 1298.”

“Aye,” Macleod replied, his gaze holding hers. “With MacNeil’s help.”

Now Tabby recalled every moment they’d spent at the Met. She trembled with anger, getting to her feet. She had said no. She had told him that she would not go back in time with him. But he hadn’t listened. Of course not.

She looked at Macleod’s chest. Now he was an incredibly incongruous sight, in his sweater and jeans, standing in front of a castle in thirteenth-century Scotland. The blood on his sweater had already dried, perhaps from the speed of time travel. The sweater was torn from where the bullet had struck him. “Are you hurt?” she asked tersely. She thought she knew the answer.

He shook his head, his expression a bit wary. “MacNeil healed me, too.”

“Good.” With that established, she saw red. She did not want to be there! He had ignored her completely. Her hand lashed out, as hard as she could, and she struck him across the face.

His eyes widened as the slap resonated like the crack of a whip in the quiet afternoon.

“How dare you!” she cried, shaking with fury. “I was very clear. I said in plain English that I would not go back in time with you!”

He rubbed his jaw. “’Tis the second time that ye’ve hit me.”

“So what?” A part of her was shocked that she had struck him again. But mostly, she was so angry she didn’t care—even though the ground seemed to shift a bit beneath her feet. “Oh, wait! You’re a savage brute so now you’ll beat me for my sins? Because that’s what big macho medieval jerks do to their women, right?”

The ground moved violently beneath them. “’Tis nay safe in yer time.”

“Like it’s safe here?” she shouted. She simply didn’t care that his temper was igniting.

“I dinna wish to leave ye behind to fight the deamhan ghost alone,” he snapped.

“And that makes you my hero? I don’t think so!” He darkened. A wind kicked up. “I am not a piece of baggage, to be shipped here or there at your whim! I am a modern woman, and modern women control their choices, their lives, their Fates. Damn it, Macleod, I do not want to be here. I do not belong here. Send me back.”

He folded his massive arms across his huge chest and glowered steadily at her. “Nay.”

That single word, spoken in an uncompromising tone, was like ice water. She did not speak, panting and breathless, staring at him. He had abducted her and he wasn’t going to send her back. She saw it in his eyes and in every set line of his face. It was unacceptable.

But maybe this was what she deserved for going to bed with him! She’d known all along that doing so was wrong, that it was like opening a Pandora’s box.

She turned to the golden Highlander. Tabby knew she should take a few deep breaths and find her inherent good manners, but she said abruptly, “In my time, men are imprisoned for what you did. It’s a felony and we call it kidnapping.”

The golden Highlander looked as guilty as a twelve-year-old boy caught red-handed with the neighbor’s pretty daughter. “I’m very sorry, lass,” he said softly. “But Macleod needs ye fer a bit. An’ no one decides their own Fate.”

Tabby really looked at him. She remained very angry, but she did notice that MacNeil was drop-dead gorgeous and massively built. Like Macleod, he had the powerful body of a warrior-knight. But she didn’t care. “Who are you? The dispenser of wisdom? An oracle, a seer—a Gypsy fortune-teller?”

“I ken ye’re very angry. I dinna blame ye, lass.” And as he sent her one of the most disarming and seductive smiles she’d ever received, Tabby became slightly less angry. His mouth curved with good humor. “Sometimes, when the gods allow it, I see a great many things.”

She became still. He meant it—he had wisdom that came from the gods. Macleod couldn’t leap, but this man could. “Are you a Master?”

“Aye.” He shrugged nonchalantly. “I am very pleased to meet ye, Tabitha Rose. I knew yer grandmother, once.”

Tabby gasped. “Are you kidding?”

His beautiful smile vanished. “Sara was a powerful woman, an’ ye remind me of her greatly. I wouldna jest.”

She inhaled. Her grandmother had time-traveled. It was mind-blowing. “Do you know why I’m here? Do you know why my spell to bring Macleod to me in New York worked?”

“But ye ken the answers, Lady Tabitha. Macleod needs ye an’ ye need him.”

Tabby started and glanced at Macleod, who was grim. He’d rescued her at school and had been at her side during the ghost’s attack, but she refused to admit that she needed protection from him. But she thought about that boy again, and the older man who’d suffered in the fires of An Tùir-Tara. “I don’t think he’ll need me until 1550,” she said. “Which begs the question, am I in the right time?”

MacNeil smiled. “I dinna claim to keep all wisdom, lass, just some of it.”

Tabby looked at Macleod, who was staring at her. She felt his sharp interest. She was going to have to forget about his needing her in another two-hundred-and-fifty years. She had better stay in the here and now—which was 1298, with a super-macho, supermedieval protector she didn’t want and was mad as all hell at. And he certainly didn’t need her now—except, maybe, for sex.