With a soft murmur of assent, Trevor hung up.
• 15 •
The day had been sunny and surprisingly temperate for March in the Highlands: mid-forties, a light breeze, the sky dotted by a few fat, fluffy white clouds.
It had been one of the most exhilarating days of Chloe’s life.
After breakfast, she, Dageus, Drustan, and Gwen had driven to the north, taking the winding roads to the top of a small mountain, above the colorful, bustling city of Alborath, where’d she’d met Dageus’s cousins, Christopher and Maggie MacKeltar, and their many children.
She’d spent the day with Gwen and Maggie, touring the second MacKeltar castle (this one quite a bit older than Gwen’s). She’d seen artifacts that Tom would have blithely committed felonies to acquire: ancient texts sealed in protective cases, weapons and armor from too many different centuries to count, rune stones scattered casually about the gardens. She’d toured the portrait gallery lining the great hall, a painted history of centuries of the MacKeltar clan—what a wonder to know such roots! She’d brushed her fingertips to tapestries that should be in museums, furniture that belonged under much tighter security than she’d been able to see on the grounds. Though she’d inquired repeatedly and rather anxiously about their anti-theft system (which seemed criminally nonexistent), she’d gotten nothing but reassuring smiles, forcing her to conclude that none of the Keltars bothered to lock things up.
The castle itself was an artifact, meticulously preserved and protected from time’s gentle erosion. She’d wandered through the day in a dreamy kind of stupefaction.
Now she stood on the front steps of the castle with Gwen in the rosy, early evening light. The sun was resting on the horizon and tendrils of mist were wisping up from the ground. She could see for miles from her perch on the wide stone stairs, past a sparkling many-tiered fountain, out over the valley where the lights of Alborath were nudging back the encroaching twilight. She could imagine how glorious the Highlands would be in spring, or better yet, the full bloom of late summer. She wondered if she might find some way to still be there by then. Maybe after her month with Dageus, she mused, she would stay in Scotland, indefinitely.
Her gaze skimmed the front lawn, coming to rest on the gorgeous, dark man who’d turned her world so completely upside down in just under a week. He was standing, some distance from the castle, inside a circle of massive, ancient stones, talking with Drustan. Gwen had told her the brothers hadn’t seen each other in years, though she’d offered no explanation for their estrangement. Inquisitive as Chloe usually was, for a change, she’d resisted prying. It just hadn’t seemed right.
“It’s so beautiful here,” she said, sighing wistfully. To live here, to belong in such a place. The rowdy enthusiasm of Maggie and Christopher’s six children, from teens down to tots, was unlike anything Chloe had ever experienced. The castle was stuffed to overflowing with family and roots, the air rang with the sounds of children playing and occasional bickering. As an only child, raised by an elderly grandparent, Chloe had never seen anything like it before.
“That it is,” Gwen agreed. “They call those stones the Ban Drochaid,” she told Chloe, gesturing at the circle. “It means ‘the white bridge.’”
“‘The white bridge,’” Chloe echoed. “That’s an odd name for a group of stones.”
Gwen shrugged, a mysterious smile playing about her lips. “There are lots of legends in Scotland about such stones.” She paused. “Some people say they’re portals to another time.”
“I read a romance novel like that once.”
“You read romance novels?” Gwen exclaimed, delighted.
The next few moments were filled with a hasty comparison of favorite titles, female bonding, and recommendations.
“I knew I liked you.” Gwen beamed. “When you were talking earlier about the history of all those artifacts, I was afraid you might be the stuffy literary type. Nothing against literary novels,” she added hastily, “but if I want to get all existential and depressed, I’ll pick a fight with my husband or watch CNN.” She was silent a moment, her hand resting lightly on her rounded belly. “Scotland isn’t like any other country in the world, Chloe. You can almost feel the magic in the air, can’t you?”
Chloe cocked her head and studied the towering megaliths. The stones were thousands of years old and their purpose had long been heatedly debated by scholars, archeoastronomers, anthropologists, even mathematicians. They were a mystery modern man had never been able to unravel.