Somewhere My Lass by Beth Trissel Page B

than I could imagine, only…” she trailed off, wistfulness in her voice.
    He sensed what she’d left unsaid. “Nothing here is as you expected, is it? Do you want to go home?”
    “How can I?”
    How indeed, and how could Neil let her go?
    ****
    Mora savored the near unimaginable delight of Neil’s arms around her while wondering and waiting. As expected, Fergus jumped in.
    “She’s right,” he declared. “She can’t go home the usual way. From what I’ve been able to learn, your lives are somehow entwined.”
    This much Mora knew.
    He bore on. “And I suspect that key in her cross, literally, unlocks the secret to all of this.”
    She listened in stunned silence.
    Neil loosened his divine hold on her. “But I found nothing missing in the house, and have no idea what this MacDonald was seeking or if he found it.”
    “Either way, he’ll be back,” their host predicted, “because he doesn’t have the key.”
    Chill fingers, like the icy grip of a banshee, clenched Mora’s innards. Instinctively, her hand went to the sacred relic at her throat. “And me wearing it round m’ neck.”
    Neil held out his hand. “No longer. Give the cross and the key it holds into my care.”
    Despite everything that had passed between them, Mora had to be certain. “Ye said I was to have its keeping.”
    “But now I’m asking for its return.”
    She looked long into his eyes. “Are ye the same Neil as him who did the giving?”
    He sighed. “God only knows what’s going on.”
    “And him alone,” Mora agreed.
    Fergus gave a low whistle. “My research may be of some help. It seems in the fall of 1602 Mora Campbell married Calum MacKenzie. Their son had a son and so on until this Neil came along.”
    Mora absorbed his words in disbelief. How could he know events that had not yet occurred?
    Neil scrutinized his friend as though he were a lunatic—a distinct possibility.
    “Just a minute, are you trying to tell me that Mora is my great-grandmother a zillion generations back?”
    “Technically not yet.”
    “What do you mean not yet ?”
    “She’s caught in a time warp where she hasn’t yet wed Calum.”
    Neil flung up his hands. “What happens if she doesn’t?”
    Fergus seemed stunned by his own admission. “You don’t exist.”
    “Plainly I do. I’m right here.”
    “What’s today?” Fergus mused, “November 3rd? She doesn’t wed Calum until the 5th. We’ve got two days to get her back where she came from.”
    Mora didn’t want to marry Calum. Judging by the expression in Neil’s eyes and the way he’d held her, and kissed her the evening before, he didn’t want her to either. Was Fergus the most unlikely of prophets or insane?
    “My mother might have some deeper insight,” he offered with a shrug of his slender shoulders.
    “Great,” Neil muttered. “All our hopes rest with Psychic Betty.”
    Mora lifted the crucifix. “And with the Lord. Surely, ’twas he who sent me to ye.”
    Neil eyed her in what could only be confusion. “I assumed it was the airlines, but it seems there’s far stranger stuff at work here.”
    And growing more so by the moment.
     

 
    Ch apter Eleven
    With a hand on Mora’s arm, Neil walked with her up the pavement in front of his house. She staggered in the green stilettos. He steadied her before she fell or caught her pointed toe in the sidewalk crack.
    The afternoon sky held that purity of light seemingly unique to autumn. Sunshine poured over Mora with the burnished glow of stained glass. Cathedral light, perfectly suited to her and reminding Neil of a painting by Vermeer. Even with her hair up on her head in that ridiculously overdone style, she was more radiant than ever, her skin dewy, eyes troubled but stunning. And her hair lent itself to that Renaissance look.
    The southerly breeze was mild, yet Mora clung to the arisaid wrapping her like a child in a favorite blanket—a meld of the old and new. Beautiful and adorable, she was a lethal combination,