Highlanders destiny, p.1
Highlander's Destiny, page 1
Contents
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About the Author
Also by Blanche Dabney
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Epilogue
Afterword
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About the Author
Blanche Dabney is the author of the bestselling Clan MacGregor books, a series of sweet and clean time travel romances set in medieval Scotland.
Growing up in a small village on the west coast of Scotland, Blanche spent many happy childhood hours exploring ancient castles, all the while inventing tall tales of the people who might once have lived there.
After years of wishing she could travel through time to see how accurate her stories were, she decided to do the next best thing, write books about the past.
She has published more than half a dozen highland adventures, each filled with the passion, danger, and intrigue that are her hallmarks.
Blanche lives in Haworth with her partner and their two children.
Also by Blanche Dabney
The Clan MacGregor Series
The Key in the Loch
The Key in the Door
The Key to Her Heart
The Key to Her Past
The Key to His Castle (Oct 2019)
Highlander’s Time Trilogy
Held by the Highlander
Promised to the Highlander
Outlaw Highlander
Highlander’s Destiny
A Clean Time Travel Romance
Blanche Dabney
Chapter One
Alice was glad to be back in Scotland. It was only the second time in her life she’d visited and she was hoping for better things from this trip.
If no one disappeared while she was talking to them, that would be a start. As would not getting hit on the head by a falling tree branch that had left a two inch scar on her forehead.
She’d set off from York at seven that morning. Four hundred and sixty miles of driving just to look at a painting of a boy she’d seen once for a grand total of five minutes a decade earlier.
The journey should have taken ten hours but she had to stop more times than she anticipated. She planned to drive the entire journey without pause. It hadn’t worked out that way.
Twice she’d had to pull over to calm herself down. Driving always sent her blood pressure soaring.
Reaching the Highlands helped calm her down. The further north she traveled, the more beautiful the scenery. Roads cut between mountains ran down through valleys before climbing back up to ever more spectacular summits.
It was a little after four in the afternoon when she pulled into a layby for the last time. According to the GPS, another hour and a half and she’d reach the bridge to Skye.
Almost there. She had wanted to keep going but her scar was throbbing so painfully it was as if the branch had only hit her minutes before.
It did that. Occasionally out of nowhere the scar would itch and stab pain into her head. She could ignore it most of the time but not when she was driving.
She stood by the car, looking out at the valley below, rubbing the scar with her fingers to ease the pain. There were no other cars on the road. It had been half an hour since she’d seen anything coming the other way.
She couldn’t remember how busy it had been last time. She’d been too young to notice such things. All she remembered was the boy.
Her parents had allowed half an hour to look at the ancient stone circle on Skye. They found it, took a photo, and then turned around to get back to the car.
Rushing off, they didn’t notice Alice struggling to keep up, a painful blister on her ankle slowing her down.
As they marched on, she paused for a brief moment in the middle of the stones, pulling her sock back up, wishing she understood what that strange feeling was that lingered in the air.
She spotted something between the trees to her left. Had they gone a different way back? She set off after them.
Within five minutes she was lost. Within ten she was getting scared. Whatever it was that she thought she saw, it wasn’t them. Only trees and more trees that all looked the same whichever way she turned.
She tried not to panic. She shouted for them but got no answer. There was no sound at all other than the rustling leaves above her head.
She started walking back the way she’d come but there was no sign of the stone circle. Then back on herself again until she knew she’d gone too far.
She managed not to cry for as long as possible but as more minutes passed, she thought about how angry they’d be, how she had no one to blame but herself, how stupid she was for not keeping up. Then the tears came.
She was still crying and shouting for them when she stepped out into the clearing. It sprang up on her from nowhere. Trees and trees and trees and then suddenly nothing but grass.
She was in the open, able to see the cloud covered sky for the first time in what felt like forever. In front of her was a huge tree beside a broad pond.
She sank to the grass under its lowest branches, head in her hands, her body wracked with sobs. She would be lost in the wood forever and it was all her own fault.
She never forgot the feeling of shock when the boy appeared out of nowhere in front of her. One moment she was alone, the next a boy a little older than her was there, asking what was wrong in a thick Scottish accent.
Was it possible he was the boy in the painting she was going to see? Was she actually traveling nearly five hundred miles to find out? It hardly seemed possible.
Was it not madness to have fallen in love with someone you only saw for five minutes when you were a child? She looked out at the view, thinking back through the years ago to that day they met.
Her cellphone began to ring, the noise jarringly loud in the peace and quiet of the mountain top. “Hello?” She walked back to the car as she listened to the faint voice of her best friend on the other end of the line.
“Alice, how’s it going? Any snow?”
“Not so far.”
“Where are you anyway? You sound really faint.”
“Top of a mountain. Signal’s a bit iffy.”
“Have you seen the painting yet? Is it him?”
“I’m still a couple of hours away.”
“What will you do if it’s him?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“You want to know what I think?”
“I know what you think, Christina. You think I’m wasting my time.”
“I never said that.”
Alice climbed into the driver’s seat, phone wedged by her ear as she started the engine. “No, you just said I should look for a man in the present and not a boy from the past.”
“Did I say that?”
“Don’t you think I’ve already thought about all that? Who drives all the way up to Skye to look at a painting that might be of a boy they met once ten years earlier?”
“Erm, you?”
“Yep, me. Obsessed without any good reason. I mean, what’s the best that happens? I find out he posed for the painting as a kid and is still coincidentally living near where the painting’s on display and then I find him and he falls in love with me and we get married and live happily ever after?”
“It could happen.”
“Look, I know it’s pointless, all right. I just want to prove to myself it’s not him so I won’t spend forever wondering what if.”
“And if it is him and you do end up getting married, can I be maid of honor?”
“I’ll think about it.”
Hanging up, Alice sighed, closing her eyes for a second. The worst thing was Christina didn’t even need to say it. She knew she was wasting her time. What were the chances it was really him? Could she even be sure she was remembering him right?
It had been a decade since she saw him. Her memory could easily be playing tricks on her, making her waste two of her precious vacation days on a pointless journey in a dying car to see a painting of a boy she met once ten years ago.
She needed to stay positive. This was the first time since he’d vanished that she had any clue at all as to his whereabouts. All those years ago he had saved her life and then he was gone.
She was alone in the clearing with a bloody forehead from the fallen tree branch when two minutes later her parents appeared, finding her laid on her back, dazed and muttering about a boy who’d saved her life by shoving her backward when the branch fell.
If he’d not pushed her, the branch would have broken her skull in half. He had saved her life and then he’d just disappeared.
She thought about him on and off for years afterward until her hope of ever seeing him again slowly started to fade. Then out of nowhere the painting appeared on her Instagram feed.
No details underneath, no response to her private message asking who painted it. She looked at
So she booked the time off work and borrowed Christina’s car to get up there. Two days to find out why the painting looked so much like the boy she met ten years ago.
Was he up there? Was it just possible he was living on Skye? What would he look like as an adult? Would he even remember her? She’d obsessed over him for years but he probably forgot her long ago, just a crying girl in the woods, that was all she was to him.
Christina had tried to put her off from going, warned her she might be disappointed. She had even tried to get Alice to join her in the world of online dating as a distraction a week before she set off.
She’d resisted. “It’s because you’re still thinking about him, isn’t it?” Christina said the night before she was due to leave, halfway down her second bottle of wine. “You can still pine after him and have a couple of dates too.”
“No, it’s not that. I’m just happy being single. If I want to go on vacation to Scotland to see a painting on a whim, I can. If I want to spend an entire weekend in my pajamas, I can.”
“Newsflash, you can do that and have a man in your life.”
“Not with my pajamas.”
“Tell me you don’t still have your Star Wars ones?”
“They still fit. Why would I get rid of them?”
“Because they don’t exactly say sophistimacated woman.”
“Neither do you apparently. Want to try that again?”
Christina sounded out each syllable slowly.“So-phis-ti-cated.”
“I knew you could do it.”
“That’s because I’m a sophistimacated lady.”
The conversation moved on and Alice was glad. She didn’t like talking about him. She didn’t even want to think about him. She had a horrible feeling she might jinx things if she did.
She tried not to think about him until she was actually driving north. Only then did she allow a little bit of hope into her mind. The boy she’d never been able to forget.
“Turn left in thirty-four miles,” the GPS said softly as she drove out back onto the road.
“Will do,” Alice replied, settling back into the journey, trying not to feel nervous.
Infuriatingly, when she reached Skye the museum was closed. It was a Victorian building, the only sign a tiny brass one next to the front door.
Underneath hung a laminated plastic sheet listing opening times. It looked more like someone’s house than a museum, curtains drawn in the windows that blocked her attempts at getting a glance inside.
Trying not to feel disappointed, she headed for the campsite she’d chosen for the night. It was on the north side of the island.
Was he here somewhere? On the island? What would she even say if she did find him?
“Hi, you saved my life ten years ago and I’ve been obsessed with you ever since you did your disappearing act. So, how’ve you been? Fancy getting married or want to get a drink first?”
Yeah, that wouldn’t sound weird at all.
She would see the painting, prove it wasn’t him, then go home and get on with her life. She would forget about him, go back, join those online dating things that Christina kept suggesting, find a boring, ordinary man and have a boring, ordinary life.
All she wanted was to see him one more time. Was that too much to ask? Prove to herself he was real, that she hadn’t imagined him.
She took hold of the ring she’d found after the boy vanished. It was attached to the thin chain she always wore. “Let me see him again,” she said out loud, wishing on the ring as if it could hear her.
“Let me see him again,” she repeated, looking out at the sea. Nothing happened of course.
She let go of the necklace and resumed setting up her tent. A great distance away someone heard her prayer.
Chapter Two
For the briefest of moments when Ramsey woke up each day he would feel at peace. He would come to in the darkness and for a second he wouldn’t know where he was. In that instant of time, he was free again. Then reality came crashing back and the dream vanished.
He wasn’t free. He was chained to a wall in the dungeon of his own castle. The only options seemed to be death by starvation or execution. He could feel himself wasting away to nothing the longer he was in the darkness.
He was sleeping for greater spells of each day though never long enough to dream. It was a light painful sleep, that of a man whose chains are not long enough to ever lay flat. He could only slump forward.
There was no chance of escape, there was no one coming to save him. He could take that. It was knowing the damage being done to the clan that hurt him. They were starving and living in fear up there. No Highlander should live in fear of their laird.
He had wanted only death but now he had to live. She was coming back. He could feel it in his bones.
Ever since he’d seen her, Nevin and Marsali had tried to bring her back. He saw a crying girl who needed help. They saw a chance to hurt him.
The ring had sent him forward in time. A test before Nevin was willing to use it. He had to go forward and return to prove it was safe. He arrived in the stone circle and saw her crying. The sorrowful girl.
When the tree branch began to fall, he shoved her backward to safety, taking the force of the branch to his own skull, wrenching him back through time.
He woke up with Nevin screaming down at him for losing the ring, spitting curses at his failure.
He called her silently inside his head. Dinnae come back, he shouted without moving his lips. You are safe where you are. Dinnae come back. You’re walking into a trap. Stay away.
He tugged again at his chains, trying to twist his wrists through the manacles, hoping he’d lost enough weight to squeeze them through the holes. The effort made him cough and he retched so long his empty stomach ached from the effort.
It was a pain he’d grown used to. All he had to eat for months was stale bread soaked in the water that ran down the middle of the dungeon floor and out the other side.
The generation before him, the castle had the river channeled to create a sewer underneath the lowest floors. Rather than go around the dungeon the master mason let it run straight through the middle.
In his chains, Ramsey could not reach the water, leaving him the agony of seeing it passing by while his throat remained parched. He could only lick the few drops of damp that ran down the wall beside him, twisting his neck as best he could to quench his ever present thirst.
He stood upright against the wall, taking several deep breaths, trying to think clearly. He attempted to focus on her, telling her to stay away.
When he’d failed to bring the ring back, he’d been banished from the castle, turned at once from a MacClean to an outlaw. At the age of thirteen he was cast out through the gates in the middle of the night and told he would be killed if he were ever seen on castle grounds again.
Which was all well and good if he had just gone. But, no, he had to go and grow up and then get himself an army of other outlaws with the foolish notion of taking back the castle.
More and more of them joined him, the women and children heading to the Isle of Rhum, the men going with them.
By the time he turned twenty-two, he could wait no longer. The stories of Nevin’s profligacy had grown too extreme. Using the winter grain in summer, not paying for decent masons so the work became more and more slapdash.
Nevin ordered the finest silks from the continent with payment dependent on future wool. The clan was on the brink of ruin.
He was a fool to think he could win with so few men but he had youth and a sense of justice on his side.
