Authors: Pamela Montgomerie

Sapphire Dream (8 page)

BOOK: Sapphire Dream

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Her scalp tingled, the hair rising on her arms as she heard his words fully this time. The third earl.

The words suddenly took on an ominous ring. She remembered the tour guide discussing the theories behind the fire that destroyed the castle in the late seventeenth century.
In 1687, during the time of the third earl, the castle was destroyed.
The tour guide’s voice rang in her head like a death knell.
During the time of the third earl. 1687.

Her breath turned ragged, her pulse racing through her veins.

No. It couldn’t be.

But she thought of the meticulously authentic pirate ship. There had been nothing anachronistic aboard that ship. No errant can of Coke. No cell phone going off in the middle of the night. No muffled sound of a soccer match over the radio. Just pirates in tattered rags as if the past had come roaring to life.

She looked up at the man who held her tight in his grip, his expression grim. If all this was somehow real, if she’d truly tumbled through time, then she was being held by an honest-to-goodness pirate.

Oh. My. God.

Her legs refused to hold her and she sank to the grass, dizzy with denial. This could
not
be happening. Chaos whirred in her ears as it hadn’t since she was a child being pushed and shoved from one foster home to another.

How is this possible?

The pirate squatted in front of her and put his hand on her shoulder, his face etched with concern even as his eyes flashed with impatience. “This is no time to swoon, Wildcat. We’re in great danger. We must be away before they find us.”

“This is Hegarty’s doing.”

“Aye.”

Magic.
She wanted to scream, “There’s no such thing!” But her leg said otherwise.
Everything
said otherwise.

She stared at the castle, glistening silver. “Why? Why did he bring me here?”

“You must ask him yourself.”

Her head snapped up and she gazed out at the sea. “We have to get back to the ship.” But through the breaking mist, she could see nothing on the water but a few bobbing seagulls. “Where did it go?”

“She was put to sail just before our ill-timed swim.” His voice deepened with a rich vein of annoyance. “ ’ Tis a muckle shame ye didna stay in my cabin as I bade ye, aye?”

The truth of his words slammed into her. In escaping, she’d lost her only ticket home. Hegarty.

“My crew will drop anchor and await us once they’re out of sight of Stour. Shouldna take more than a day to reach them.”

“A day? How fast can they sail that thing?”

“How fast do ye walk, lass?”

Walk?
Brenna groaned. If this was really the seventeenth century, then of course they’d be walking. She glanced down at her bare feet, one of which was already bleeding from the rocks, and sighed. Could this day get any worse?

“Come.” Rourke started up the embankment, clearly expecting her to follow. Ten minutes ago she’d been hell-bent on escaping him.

She glanced back at the empty sea, then scurried to catch up. He might be a pirate, but he was her only way back to Hegarty. And it seemed the dwarf was the only one who could send her home.

As they neared the top of the steep path, the pirate motioned her to wait. Slowly, he rose above the level of the ground, his movements as furtive as a spy’s.

A shout rang out and the pirate ducked. He met her gaze, his eyes wide and disbelieving. “Bloody hell.”

“They saw you?”

“Aye.” His eyes turned piercingly intense. “Stay here while I engage them. I’ll lead them away from you. Run and dinna stop.”

“What about you?”

“I can look after myself.”

“Yeah, but . . .”

He stood, hands up, and climbed to the top of the slope. “I mean no harm,” the pirate shouted. “I fell from a passing vessel and was forced to swim ashore. I wish only to rejoin my crew.”

“That will be for the earl to decide,” a deep voice answered.

Brenna’s heart thudded. How was she supposed to know when to run when she couldn’t see a thing? And just where was she supposed to go? She didn’t even know which way the ship was heading. Every time she’d been on board to notice, it had been at anchor.

Damn.
Damn.
The insidious helplessness she’d known as a child tightened around her like a straitjacket. She thought she’d finally shed it once and for all when she reached adulthood and was no longer at the mercy of others for her food and shelter. Yet here she was again.

Wrong. She wasn’t helpless this time. She might not understand what was going on, but she knew what she had to do. Find Hegarty.

And to do that she needed the pirate.

She crept slowly up the hillside until she could see him. And, hopefully, not be seen herself. As her gaze crested the top of the hill, she sucked in her breath at the sight that met her eyes. Stour in all its prefire glory. She’d thought she understood the size of the place as she’d wandered the restored keep in her own time, but the castle in its prime was a sight to behold.

The pirate stood with his hands up, his clothes plastered to his muscled body as two men joined him. Her eyes widened at the sight of them.

The pair looked as if they’d just stepped out of a Shake spearean play, give or take a century. They wore heavy blue coats and tight black pants. One appeared to be sporting a wig, unless he genuinely had a massive head of long, curly black hair. Each wore a gun on one hip—long unwieldy-looking pistols—and a sword on the other.

Either the whole place was one giant reenactment or she was really and truly in the past.

As she watched, one of the guards moved too close to the drenched pirate. Rourke plowed his fist through the soldier’s face, flattening him. But as he turned to mete out the same punishment to the second guard, the man pulled his gun and pointed it at Rourke’s head.

“On your knees.”

Brenna’s heart went to her throat. The bluecoat was about to shoot her ticket home. She had to do something—attract the guy’s attention and fast.

If they catch you, they’ll kill you.

Good grief.

As Rourke knelt, hands on his head, she scrambled onto the coarse ground of the heath, her muscles tensed, every nerve in her body screeching as if she were running into the path of an oncoming car.

“Excuse me! Could you point me in the direction of the nearest Wal-Mart? I seem to have misplaced my Nikes.” Did Wal-Mart carry Nikes? Like
that
mattered.

The bluecoat and Rourke glanced at her and scowled in unison, the soldier’s gun never wavering from Rourke’s head. The pirate looked like he was going to kill her. The bluecoat turned, ignoring her. Guess the drowned rat look didn’t pose much of a threat . . . or much of a come-on. And she had too many clothes on for the wet T-shirt look to work.

The man on the ground began to stir.

She had to do something.

She knew what they’d do in the movies . . . or California. If the assets weren’t showing through the shirt, then pull up the shirt.

No. No way.

The downed guard groaned.

Oh, man.

Taking a deep breath for courage, she gripped the two hems and pulled them up to her shoulders. And stood there, feeling like an idiot. The gentle breeze caressed her half-frozen nipples, but no one seemed to notice.

“Hey!” If she was going to flash, she sure as heck wanted a little reaction. A girl had her pride after all.

She started toward them. “I feel like I have seaweed stuck to me. Can you see? Do I have any seaweed stuck to me?”

The pirate saw her first. His eyes widened. His face turned to stone. The bluecoat did a classic double take as his scowl slid right off his face.

Brenna was beginning to wonder if the pirate was going to take advantage of the opportunity she’d provided him, when he finally moved. In a flash, the bluecoat’s gun went flying.

She yanked the wet fabric down as Rourke and the bluecoat fought. Almost too late, she heard the sounds behind her and whirled to find the downed guard rising and pulling his sword.

The pirate didn’t seem to notice. “Rourke!”

But even as she yelled, he knocked the bluecoat clean out with a right uppercut to the jaw, then grabbed the man’s sword and met the charge of the second soldier.

Brenna watched them in heart-pounding fascination. A real, to-the-death sword fight, not the choreographed kind she’d seen in movies. The two men moved with amazing speed and skill, each desperate to win, for to lose meant death.

And the death had better be the bluecoat’s. She still needed the pirate.

She glanced at the man lying prone and caught a glimpse of his gun. She should get it. Walk over there and steal it. But her feet wouldn’t move. It was like watching the scene, herself included, from afar.

The pirate’s sword took flight. Fear propelled her forward and she ran for the gun. As her cold fingers closed around the strangely elongated pistol, she saw the pirate dive and roll, coming up with the sword in his hand.

Nice.
The guy could move.

Kneeling in the grass, the gun heavy in her hands, she tried to take aim. The pounding of her pulse vibrated through her arms, making the gun shake. She didn’t dare shoot. Not only couldn’t she risk hitting the pirate, but she had no idea what she was doing. She’d never fired a gun in her life.

There was a first time for everything, but this probably wasn’t it.

Eyeing the prone guard uneasily, she remembered how the other had popped back up. He looked dead enough, even though he’d only been clipped on the jaw. Her gaze slid to his boots and she eyed them with more than a hint of envy. His feet didn’t appear to be much bigger than hers. He wasn’t wearing Nikes, but leather boots would protect her feet better than nothing, even if they didn’t quite fit.

Brenna eased toward him, then gathered her courage and wrenched the boots off his feet, one at a time. Grabbing up the pair, she quickly retreated and put them on as she watched the sword fight. The two men were better matched than she would have thought. The bluecoat was wiry and fast, but the pirate was bigger and clearly stronger. He fought with a ferocity and purpose that had her thanking God he was on her side.

She stood and tested the fit of the boots. They were a little big, but surprisingly not too bad. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw their owner lurch to his feet.

These guys just wouldn’t stay down.

He was swaying, looking dazed, but he pulled a knife from his belt, clearly intending to join the fray.

Damn.
She should have taken that knife when she had the chance. She hadn’t even noticed it. Though she’d spent a lot of time learning self-defense, she wasn’t in the habit of thinking in terms of life and death. Clearly, that was going to have to change. The pirate was good, but even he might not be able to handle two men at once.

As the dazed guard started toward the fray, Brenna picked up the gun, gripped it in both hands, and took aim.

I can’t do it. I can’t just kill a man.

But wasn’t that exactly what the bluecoats meant to do to the pirate? And what about her? As soon as the pirate was gone, they’d turn on her as the pirates had done. She had no illusions about that. Especially after she’d flashed the one.

Even so, her finger refused to pull the trigger. She had to do something! Thinking fast, she grabbed the gun like a mallet and started after her target, careful to stay out of his line of sight. She’d almost caught up with him when her toe caught on a rock and she tripped, a gasp escaping her throat. Though she caught herself and kept from falling, it was too late.

The bluecoat whirled and slammed his fist into her jaw, knocking her off her feet in an explosion of pain. Brenna landed with a bone-jarring thud on a patch of hard ground.

She tasted blood. He’d hit her.

But as she tried to scramble to her feet, the hard weight of his bootless foot pinned her ankle to the ground. Above her, the bluecoat raised his knife and aimed it at her heart. The promise of her death shone in a man’s eyes for the third time in less than twenty-four hours.

This wasn’t happening. It wasn’t real. How could she die when she wasn’t even supposed to be here?

The man arched suddenly, a cry exploding from his lips as his face contorted with pain. His knife dropped harmlessly on the ground as he began to fall toward her.

With a squeak of alarm, Brenna rolled out of the way, barely avoiding being crushed. As she sat up, she saw the dagger sticking out of the man’s back.

Dead. He’s dead. Oh my God.
She was going to be sick.

Brenna stumbled to her feet as the pirate raced toward her. Behind him, the other bluecoat lay in a pool of blood.

Dead. He’d killed them both. He must have thrown the knife to kill her attacker. Thrown it far. With deadly accuracy.

BOOK: Sapphire Dream

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