Page 16 of A Hellion for the Highland Hawk
But these tapestries and banners were pristine, the colors bright and appealing. And none, as far as she could tell, depictedanything quite as grisly as the tapestry she’d pulled down onto herself.
Why did I do that? Why didn’t I just make a run for the exit?
Having grown up in and around New Jersey and New York for a few years, she hadn’t had much training in how to survive an earthquake.
Am I still there, as well as here? People believe in past lives; what if I’ve somehow connected to one of mine, and my future self is wandering around or unconscious at a hospital in 2026?
It was somehow more rational than the other possibilities she’d considered. Nevertheless, her head began to pulse; the complexity of the situation was too overwhelming for her poor brain to process.
Through a labyrinth of hallways that she’d never be able to remember, Isla finally drew her to a halt outside a door. They’d come up a fair few staircases, so Nancy assumed this was somewhere up high. A turret, maybe. Somewhere that she wouldn’t be stupid enough to escape from, since it would take her twenty minutes to get back to the gates where she’d started.
“I think this will serve ye nicely,” Isla said with forced cheer as she pushed open the door and led Nancy inside.
A gorgeous, airy room greeted Nancy’s blurring vision, the casement windows open to let in some fresh air and to graceher eyes with the most beautiful view: a sweeping landscape of dramatic, brooding mountains, full-canopied forests in their spring plumage, and the distant glitter of a river.
Sheepskin rugs created a sort of path across the flagstones, leading to a cheerfully crackling fire, a small but serviceable writing desk, a solid oak wardrobe, and the kind of fairytale four-poster bed she’d probably dreamed about when she was a little kid.
“Ye settle yerself by the fire, lass, while I fetch ye some proper clothes to wear,” Isla added, as she set the sleeping baby down on the bed, fashioning a sort of nest for her out of pillows, before heading to the wardrobe.
Suddenly overcome with the desire to take the weight off her feet, Nancy obliged. She groaned as she sank down into a comfortable armchair, wondering if any chair had ever felt so good.
Across the room, Isla chuckled. “Do ye think ye might have been walkin’ for a long time?”
“I have no idea,” Nancy replied, closing her eyes.
The fire was so warm and comforting, she knew she could easily doze off right there. In a way, she wished she would, because then she wouldn’t have to think about where she was and how she’d gotten there. She could just sleep through the rising panic.
“Are ye really from the Americas?” Isla asked.
Nancy cracked open one eye and stared suspiciously at the older woman with the youthful eyes. “You heard that?”
“Let’s just say I was… waitin’ for the right moment to enter.” Isla flashed her a wink and then returned to what she was doing, sifting through a rack of what looked like… dresses.
Oh God, no. Anything but that.
“So, are ye?” Isla prompted when Nancy didn’t answer, too horrified by the sight of so many flowing skirts and fussy fabrics.
“I am.”
“Cannae say I’ve ever met anyone from so far away before. I didnae think ye’d look so…” The older woman frowned as she searched for the right word.
“Like you?”
Isla frowned. “Aye, I suppose so.”
“There’s a bit of Irish, a bit of Polish, a bit of Russian, and a bit of Scottish in my heritage,” Nancy explained, a tiny lightbulb going off in her mind.
Was that why she’d switched bodies or had taken over the body of an ancestor? She couldn’t remember exactly what her heritage was, but she knew there was some Scottish blood in her. A meager percentage, but maybe enough to confuse whatever was responsible for this time travel event?
“This is insane,” she muttered, propelling herself out of the armchair. “I can’t seriously be considering this. Like, this isn’t just a huge news story. This would be… completely world-altering. This goes against the laws of science and nature. This is…”
She began to pace back and forth on the sheepskin path, toying anxiously with the zipper of her leather jacket.
“It’s what, lassie?” Isla asked, her voice so warm that it thawed the barriers that had been holding Nancy back.
“I was in a museum. I was searching for the Hawk because I saw his name in a note while investigating the mystery of two missing women. My friend is researching him for a book, and it was too weird to me that his name popped up twice. So, I went there, to this museum in North Carolina, on a friggin’ whim. Just following an old note because I’d run out of leads and I was worried someone was watching me and…”
Nancy huffed out a breath. “There was a tapestry there, and… some woman, some teacher, started telling me about it. But then a kid was touching the exhibit, so she walked off… And then there was an earthquake, so I grabbed the tapestry. It fell on me, and… I woke up here, about three hundred years earlier thanwhere I’m meant to be, not far from the gates.” She paused. “So when I say I don’t know how I got here or how to get home, I mean it. I’m in the past, and I don’t belong here. It’s not like there’s a ship or something that can take me to the future.”
