Highlander Smitten: A Scottish Time Travel Romance Read online

  Highlander Smitten

  A Scottish Time Travel Romance

  Rebecca Preston

  Illustrated by

  Natasha Snow

  Edited by

  Elizabeth A Lance

  Copyright © 2019 Rebecca Preston

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Natasha Snow

  Edited by Elizabeth A Lance

  Similarities to real people, places or events are purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Mailing List

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  About Rebecca Preston

  Also by Rebecca Preston

  Sign up for Rebecca’s VIP reader club and find out about her latest releases! Click here!

  Chapter 1

  “So what are you working so hard on over there, Fi?”

  Fiona looked up and blinked, moving the magnifying attachment from her glasses to see who disturbed her. “Fiona.” She frowned slightly at the curator of the Scottish collection at the San Francisco Museum, she couldn’t recall his name, Hammond? Hornmen? She shrugged slightly, not really caring what his name was as he smiled at her, showing off his handsome grin. He was tall and skinny, like a marathon runner, and his dark hair swooped down over his brow as if he’d styled it that way. “It’s the MacClaran artifacts. I’m studying the crest on this ring. Professor Bisset asked me to begin cleaning the artifacts. Do you take issue with that?”

  “Oh I’m sure it’s fine.” He waved his hand about as if dismissing that thought. “So, what are you doing after?” he asked, giving her another grin as he moved closer to her.

  She could smell his over-powering cologne and she wanted to gag. Fiona lowered the magnifying glass again over her thick glasses and turned back to the ring. “This will take me some time to detail. When I finish with it, I will begin on the other silver pieces they recovered, starting with what appears to be a silver hair comb.”

  Handleman— that’s it! Fiona finally remembered — chuckled. “No, when you leave here, what are your plans?” He picked up one of the tools and held it up to the light, as if he were studying it.

  “Mmm, I have to go to the store and pick up some milk and eggs. Return some books to the library and then I plan to do some studying over fifteenth century agriculture techniques. The soil these artifacts were found in was a bit unusual. I want to see what might have had this effect.” Fiona used a tool to remove a few more minute flecks of the aforementioned soil from the detailed crest on the top of the ring.

  She did her best to ignore him as he hovered over her shoulder, putting his hand on her waist. She really didn’t like the way he got handsy with her. He was one of those guys who could never take a hint. She feared she would have to be a bit more blunt. She didn’t associate with men very often, she hated flirting, because she wasn’t all that great at it. It probably didn’t help that she had a serious crush on Professor Bisset, and he was very much off limits.

  Professor Bisset had the entire MacClaran collection as it was thus far boxed up and brought back to the museum. He was on his third trip to Scotland to go over the dig sites. He brought pieces back as they were found by him and his team of archeologists. Fiona felt she was just lucky enough to be a student in his graduate class, and though she wasn’t at the dig itself, she did get to help clean and log the pieces they discovered. He trusted her to handle everything carefully not only because she was a very trustworthy person, but also because the Chase family was fairly prominent in the community and had loaned their own family heirlooms to the museum. Her family had originated in the same general area of Scotland as the MacClarans, but had spread to larger Scottish cities and then on into England. They hadn’t become as prominent as the MacClarans until much later, closer to the seventeenth century, rather than the fifteenth.

  “You’re going grocery shopping and studying on a Friday? Fi, you should come out with the rest of us. We’re headed to Bender’s Bar and Grill for drinks, then out to Bootie for a night of dancing and then who knows what. You should come,” he said, his voice taking on a peculiar sound that really just annoyed Fiona. He placed his hand on hers and squeezed her fingers.

  “Fiona. And I don’t drink.” Fiona removed his hand from her back and her hand from his, and set the tiny brush down. As she picked up another instrument, she said, “Nor do I dance. Grocery shopping is necessary if I wish to eat a decent breakfast in the morning, which I do. And as I mentioned, I have studying to do.”

  Handleman sighed and shot her a frown. “You are such a stick in the mud. I should have known not to even try to get you to come out with us.”

  “You’re right. You should have known.” Fiona didn’t even look at him as she continued her work. “If there is nothing else, I have things to finish.” She knew she sounded rather bitchy, but the guy just wouldn’t leave her alone. She’d sent out every signal she knew that she wasn’t interested, but he still persisted in bugging her at every turn.

  “Sure,” Handleman snorted. As he walked away, Fiona heard him say, “What a bitch.”

  Fiona frowned after him, but shrugged it off. It didn’t matter to her what he thought of her as long as he left her alone. She had things to do. She wanted to impress Professor Bisset. He was one of the smartest men she knew. It was because of him that she finally chose a major. He made archeology so interesting. History came alive when he lectured and it made her want to learn everything she could.

  Smiling, she picked up a cloth and rubbed it over the ring and then applied the specialized cleaner she’d made out of liquid Ivory soap and water to the cloth and used it to clean every inch of the silver ring, without damaging the patina. After washing it, she dried it and then buffed it with a silver polishing cloth. Once the silver was completely clean, she could make out the interesting details of the MacClaran crest. The small red, black and green stones in the crest, which she’d taken pains to keep out of the silver cleaning solution, she wiped down with a different cloth with a diluted mixture of Windex, and then dried with another soft microfiber cloth.

  She slid the ring on her finger, noting that it was about four sizes too big for her small ring finger. It had definitely belonged to one of the men of the Clan. Before she could remove the ring she felt a wave of dizziness, a hot stabbing pain in her finger that spread up her arm and bloomed in her chest, causing her to gasp. She felt herself start to lose her balance and she bumped the table behind her. Spinning around, she attempted to catch a glass that she’d knocked over, but she missed and it shattered on the floor.

  Taking a deep breath, she gripped her lab table, and slowly blinked. Wh
en she opened her eyes everything seemed normal again. With a sigh, she removed the ring and looked at her finger, seeing nothing. Frowning, she set the ring down on the table she was working on and bent down to clean up the glass. She reached for the largest piece, but just as she did, her tennis shoe connected with the water that had been in the glass and she slipped. The glass went through her hand, slicing it open.

  “Fucking hell!” she muttered pulling her hand back. She should have known better than to attempt to pick up the glass by hand. With tears stinging her eyes, she looked down at her palm and noticed the glass had cut her palm and her fingers fairly deep in a diagonal pattern as if she’d gripped the glass in her hand, but she didn’t recall doing that. She was dripping blood everywhere, so she pulled her hand close to her chest and hurried over to the lab sink.

  She rinsed the area and then using a pair of tweezers, she pulled the remains of the glass from her palm and fingers. A trip to the hospital for stitches was not on her agenda for the day, so she cleaned it really well with soap. “Great Mother, this fucking hurts like a bitch!” she cussed. Once the wound was free of glass, she realized it was still bleeding fairly well. “Damn.”

  Shaking her head she grabbed a clean towel and pressed it to her palm then closed her fist over it. She rummaged through the drawers until she found the first aid kit with the sutures. People were always getting injured in the lab, so they always kept a fully stocked first aid kit on hand. Luckily, before she’d decided on archeology, she’d sat in with some pre-med students and gotten to watch a doctor show the proper way to suture deep cuts on a cadaver. With her eidetic memory, she had perfect recall of how to do it. She pulled one of the suture packages from the kit and opened it using her teeth, not very sanitary, but she refused to get anyone to help her, especially not Handleman. She could do this.

  “Lady please guide my hand and keep me steady,” she whispered as she attempted to thread the needle. It took a few tries, using her elbow to hold the needle still as it sat on the packaging and hung over the edge of the counter so she could get the thread through the eye with her uninjured hand. “Thank you, Goddess,” she commented with a sigh as it finally went through. Removing the cloth from her injured hand, she tied the thread in a knot and then pressing her lips together in determination, sewed up her palm, cussing the entire time.

  When she was finished, she allowed herself to breath and rest for just a minute. Looking down at her palm she realized she’d given herself nine neat stiches across her palm. She spread some Neosporin over them, biting her lip to keep from screaming. Once her palm was taken care of, she put some of the Neosporin on her fingers and bandaged each of them and then used some gauze to wrap her hand and keep it clean.

  She sent one more prayer up to the Lady to let her palm heal quickly and to thank her for giving her the strength to take care of it herself. She cleaned up her mess, pitching the blood covered towel, the needle, which she’d replaced back in its package and other debris in the trash. With that finished, she grabbed a broom and dustpan and went back over to the tables and swept up the glass.

  “Should have done this in the first place,” she muttered as she swept. Her hand stung as she gently held the dustpan, using her other to sweep all the glass into it. When she had every speck of glass in the dustpan, she emptied it in the trash as well and then tied the bag closed and set it by the door. She returned the broom and dustpan to the closet, and grabbed a roll of paper towels to soak up the remaining water and blood from the floor. She really hoped it wouldn’t stain. Once that was finished, she returned to her project.

  She picked the ring up again, slid the magnifier back over her glasses and studied the inside of the ring. There seemed to be a marking on the inside.

  With a frown, Fiona brushed a stray red hair from her forehead with her uninjured hand, adjusted the magnifying lens to a stronger setting, and squinted. It looked like the letter ‘D’, but it was so small and worn, it could have been a ‘B’. She’d have to have the Professor take a look when he returned Monday from the dig site in Scotland. She set the ring down, removed the magnifier and jotted down her notes. Luckily the glass had cut her left hand, and not her right.

  Once she was finished, she placed her notes to the side, put the ring in the box she’d acquired for it once it was cleaned, and set it back on the shelf of the cabinet they were using to store the MacClaran collection. She locked the cabinet and cleaned up her station, being sure to secure the soil samples in the jar she’d been using to save it and set it in the cabinet also.

  With one last look at the room, Fiona took off the white lab coat she’d been wearing, and realized it was covered in blood. She’d have to bleach it when she got home. She rolled it up, hiding the blood, and put on the lightweight jacket she’d worn into the building. She picked up her backpack and the bag of trash, went out the door, and locked it behind her. Feeling accomplished, she tossed the bag in the large dumpster behind the museum and then set off to get her errands taken care of before she headed home for the night.

  * * *

  With books on agriculture of different countries through the ages spread out over her kitchen table, Fiona sighed. The microbials she’d found in the soil from the dig shouldn’t have been there. Not if, as they suspected, the site was from the early fifteenth century based on the trinkets, pottery, stoneware, and tapestries they had discovered buried beneath the soil in what appeared to be the ruins of the MacClaran Clan’s holdings.

  “The soil shows that there was an excess of organic matter and nutrients, which, as I suspected, is unusual for the time period, unless the entire area was destroyed by fire, which is not what has been theorized by Professor Bisset,” Fiona spoke into the mini recorder on her phone. She much preferred speaking her thoughts as they occurred to her, rather than writing them down, it seemed faster and more efficient. “Check with Professor Bisset to see if there are other signs of fire which might have led to the destruction of the MacClaran Clan.” She clicked her phone off, and stretched. Her hand throbbed and she wondered if she could take some more pain medication.

  A glance at the clock told her it was nearing nine p.m. and she knew she could take some more naproxen. Pulling a plastic cup from the cabinet, she poured a glass of water from her filtered pitcher in the refrigerator. Putting the tablets on her tongue, she swallowed. She finished the water and set the cup in the sink.

  It was getting late, and she yawned because she rarely stayed up past nine thirty. A good night’s sleep was important to keep her brain active and engaged during the day. She quickly cleaned up the books, stacking them neatly to be returned to the library the following day. She’d learned all she could from the books, having an eidetic memory helped. Anything she read, or saw she tended to remember it. She’d return the books first thing after breakfast and check out a few books on the history of Scotland, just to see if she could get a better picture in her head of how the MacClaran Clan may have lived during the early fifteenth century. She knew quite a bit about Scotland from her own family history, but she wanted to brush up on some of her facts.

  She brushed her teeth, and dressed in her long white nightgown. Carefully, she unwrapped her hand from the gauze and studied her palm. “Strange,” she commented looking at it. The stitched cut across her palm already looked days old instead of hours. She took the Band-Aids off her fingers and noticed that they too had closed and were nearly healed.

  “Thank you, Lady and Great Mother, for healing me so quickly,” she murmured. Being neo pagan, she always thanked the deities who helped her through the day.

  Digging through her cabinet, she pulled out some clean gauze from her home medic kit. She opened the package and then rewrapped her hand. Throwing the trash away, she returned to her bedroom and climbed into bed. As she slid between the white cotton sheets, she sent another simple prayer up to the Lady, to watch over her as she slept. Much to her family’s dismay, she had embraced the family’s heritage right down to their original religion, paga
nism. Of course now she called herself a neo pagan, as her coven did. And with thoughts of her coven in her head she added, “My dearest Lady, please watch over Marianne, wherever she may be. So mote it be.”

  Feeling peaceful, Fiona drifted off to sleep with her mind lingering on the MacClarans.

  * * *

  “Fiona!”

  Fiona struggled against the men holding her captive as their vicious dogs snapped and snarled at her feet. She couldn’t see them very well as she squinted at them, attempting to get away, but every time she got out of one grasp, she was bitten by one of the dogs and held until one of the men grabbed her again. She could feel the bite marks in her legs beginning to swell and they ached with the worst pain she’d ever felt. It was dark and all she could see were their glowing torches and the silver glinting off their swords in the torch light. She screamed as one of the men pulled her long red hair, yanking some of it out at the root. “Let me go, you fucking yaldson!” Fiona screamed as she jerked herself from the hand pulling on her hair.

  “Thisss witch is a f-feisty oone,” one of the men holding her slurred as he shouted.

  “Fiona!”