Page 24 of Katie's Highlander (Highland Protector 3)
“Ye heard me correctly, lass.” Ramsay shifted his faraway gaze back to her. “I was born in the year 884A.D. and when I was but a lad of sixteen summers, the goddesses lifted us up out of our time and brought us here. We arrived in North Carolina seventeen years ago this past spring.”
“You’re…you mean like…” Katie peered at him closer but even in the hazy lighting of early evening and several healthy swigs of whisky, she was pretty damn sure that Ramsay was telling the truth—or at least he believed what he was saying was true.
For the first time since she’d met him, Katie really believed he’d finally stripped himself of all pretense. Now he stood there with every fiber of his being exposed, waiting for her to react to the implausibility of what he’d just shared.
She pressed a hand against her chest and cleared her throat, doing her best to slow down her wildly thumping heart and keep her stomach from reversing gears and sending the whisky back out. “You mean…like time travel?”
Ramsay lowered himself down to the log beside her, reached around her leg, and helped himself to the whisky. “Aye. Time travel. We were brought forward in time—along with the Heartstone and the sacred weapons that are in our charge—to escape a bloody siege of the horde that wouldha ended the world as we now know it.”
Heartstone. Sacred weapons. Time travel.Katie reacted the way she always did when faced with something incredible. She assumed professor mode.Holy quantum physics…he’s serious.She automatically sifted through memories, in this particular case, she focused on the time that she and her father had spent in Scotland. But nothing in all her studies, or her research, had hinted at anything like this.
The archeologist in her perked her ears and excitedly wanted to know more, every last bit of it. But the vulnerable woman in her whose whispered hopes about the possibility of a budding relationship were about to be destroyed by the realization that the man in front of her, the man she’d been so intrigued by, had to be either delusional or suffering from the brainwashing of a strange cult made her want to scream and make Ramsay take it all back.
She rubbed a shaking hand across her eyes.But it all makes sense. Fits in with what just happened. Druids. Stones. Goddesses. And all the weird secrecy at the keep.Seemed like she’d read a little-known legend about druid clans a long time ago—one that should’ve never been written down precisely because it pertained to druids. She held her head between her hands and massaged her temples. Alcohol was not conducive to memory retrieval.
What had that damn legend said? What was it? Need more data.That’s all she could hold on to to keep from grabbing that whisky bottle and whacking Ramsay with it.Data will explain everything. Logical. Real. I’m smart. I’ll sort through it and figure it all out.
“Um…” She stared down at the toes of her tennis shoes as she nervously tapped them in the leaves. “Could you elaborate? Heartstone? Sacred weapons? I’m afraid I’m not familiar with any historical information on those.” She’d switched fully to research professor mode. Her safe mode. For now.
Ramsay pushed himself back up from the log and took to pacing back and forth in front of her. “Clan MacDara is the chosen of all the druid clans. Chosen by the goddesses, Danu, Bride, and Scota.” He paused in his pacing and glanced back at her. “If ye’ll recall, ye discovered their symbols carved into the haft of my spear.”
Katie just nodded.
Whisky bottle clutched in one hand, Ramsay resumed his nervous walk in a tight circle. “We’re druids, aye? I’m certain ye figured that out when we arrived at the altar. And the other druid clans look to us for leadership and guidance.”
Katie motioned for him to keep talking, not fully trusting herself to speak. The best thing she could do right now was listen and do her damnedest to stay calm—at least until she’d gathered her bearings enough to head down the mountain on her own.
Ramsay mimicked her quick nod as though convincing himself that he still had her attention and she wasn’t distracted by plotting her escape. He took another short sip from the bottle then continued speaking as he slowly strolled back and forth in front of her. “Centuries ago—longer than anyone can say—the goddesses chose Clan MacDara t’guard the blessed Heartstone and gave us the four sacred weapons forged for our duty by the goddess Bride herself. The other druid clans support us in this legacy, aiding us in any way they can. They’re spread all over the world now. Some even in North Carolina. They’ve assisted us down through the ages to ensure our clan doesna fail in its purpose.” He paused for a moment and looked down at her with a pained expression. “And at times, the goddesses send us back through the centuries to aid our allied clans when their survival is endangered. Ross and I go more oft than the others. Alec is acting chieftain here, what withAthairgrowing more addled, and Grant only recently mending his broken oath t’serve the goddesses.”
Did he just say they go back in time…frequently?Shaking her head against information overload, Katie held up a hand to slow Ramsay’s storytelling down. “Wait. I get the goddesses part but what exactly is the Heartstone? A druid amulet or something?” Katie understood how she might not have heard about this particular myth. Druidry and their belief systems were still a very large unknown because nothing was recorded. All things “druid” had been passed down through the generations of believers strictly by word of mouth. That’s why she’d been so surprised several years ago when she’d come across that small bit of parchment vaguely referencing the druid clan system legend. And to add even more weirdness to the situation, that bit of parchment had somehow disappeared before it could be catalogued and placed in a museum.
Ramsay stared at the ground as he paced, rapping his knuckles against the whisky bottle in tandem with every step. “Nay. ’Tis no amulet but an actual stone. Large enough that it could be a cairn in its own right.”
A cairn?Piles of stone used as markers long ago—for graves, passages, anything deemed important enough for the effort required to gather and build such a thing strong enough to withstand the harshness of the land.
“How big is it?”
If Ramsay was telling the truth—or at least his delusional version of it—then he said the goddesses had brought the Heartstone and the weapons forward in time with the MacDaras. And if that was so—where was it now? She hadn’t seen anything at the altar matching that description.
Ramsay extended his hand about waist high—his waist, which was slightly higher than most. “When the base is on the ground rather than the pedestal, I’d say it nearly reaches this high.” With the whisky bottle in one hand, he measured out a space between his hands that looked to be about three-and-a-half- to four-feet wide. “ ’Tis about this wide at the base. Three sides that come to a point and the signs of the goddesses are etched deep in each side.”
“So, it’s a three-sided pyramid,” Katie repeated. It sounded as though the Heartstone was Scotland’s version of an ancient pyramid—but with three sides instead of four. She could see it as clearly as though it were there with them. She rubbed her fingertips together, almost feeling the cold graininess of the roughly chiseled stone. She could just imagine the minute crystals sparkling in the texture of its carved surface. She’d been on enough digs to easily visualize what Ramsay described. “And the weapons?” she asked before Ramsay could either agree or disagree with her description.
“A hammer. A sword. A shield. A spear.” Ramsay stopped pacing and faced her. “My spear.”
“So, that’s why your mother was pissed about the spear. You were traipsing around the woods with one of your family’s ancient artifacts from the goddesses.”
“I dinna traipse.” Ramsay gave her a disgruntled look and returned to sit beside her. “And besides, the spear is my assigned weapon. Scota trained me many hours before naming me Highland Protector and wielder of the spear.”
The goddess Scota? And Highland Protector. Seriously? Sounds like a Scottish comic book hero.If not for her emotions being severely battered and bruised by this situation, Katie would’ve laughed out loud and thoroughly enjoyed Ramsay’s tale of goddesses, warriors, and legends of old. But he was serious. And there was a hell of a lot more he had to tell her. She could see it in his face.
“I see.” She popped her knuckles one by one then reached down and picked up an oak leaf and shredded it into pieces. She’d had a lot of whisky. If she was going to remain coherent, she needed to avoid any more alcohol and soldier through the rest of this shit sober. “Um…Highland Protector. Is that what your clan…and the um…what the other clans call you?”
“Aye. My brothers and myself. We’ve each mastered a specific goddess weapon and trained to protect the Heartstone no matter the cost.”
I actually find somebody I could really get into, somebody who seems like he could get into me too, and he turns out to be a…a…whatever he is.“I am such an idiot,” she muttered under her breath, bending forward and massaging her temples. She was getting one hell of a headache.
Ramsay gave her a sharp narrow-eyed look. “Beg pardon?”
