Authors: The Last Highlander
In fact, they all had to get out of the car so that Blake could tuck it tightly enough into the corner for the man’s satisfaction.
“Heavy morning,” he offered gruffly by way of explanation then strode off to wave a tractor trailer into position.
“They don’t waste an inch,” Justine said, her approval of such organization clear.
Alasdair scanned the ferry with narrowed eyes, his gaze lingering on pulleys and gears. He said nothing at all, and Morgan wished she could think of something that would reassure him.
But he was so silent that she couldn’t think of a way to start a conversation.
They all went up to the deck to get out of the way and continued to watch the loading from that birds’-eye view. Morgan was astonished as three tractor trailers were parked across the width of the ferry with only inches between them. One was labeled a greengrocer’s truck, one was loaded with roof trusses and the third was a tanker of oil.
“They must have to bring everything in,” Justine murmured.
“We’re supposed to leave in six minutes,” Blake added. They looked simultaneously at the long line snaking along the dock and road. Morgan eyed the waiting vehicles and couldn’t believe the man in charge would manage to get them all in, let alone on schedule.
Justine’s thoughts obviously took the same direction. “There’s not another ferry until this afternoon. Those people aren’t going to be very happy when they don’t get on.”
“Good thing we made a reservation last night and came early,” Blake said.
The loading expert indicated a car pulling a camping trailer and guided the driver to park it under the wings of the passenger deck at an angle. Another one was parked on the opposite side. Two rows of individual cars were waved in rapidly to fill the space in between. Passengers scurried to get out of their cars while they could still escape.
Vans went behind the cars, then a bakery truck, and a good twenty bikers were dispatched to lock their mountain bikes around the perimeter. Only two Volkswagen vans remained on the dock.
“There’s only room for one,” Blake declared.
But the man wasn’t going to give up that easily. The first van had to move back and forth seven times before he was satisfied with its position. When he pointed to the second one, Blake shook his head.
“No way.”
But the man had obviously been doing this job for a long time. The last van ended up parked horizontally across the dock, with appeared to be room to spare.
The loading dock rose with a creak and clanged into its vertically locked position. The loading expert nodded satisfaction and Morgan almost wanted to give him a round of applause. The ferry’s engines rumbled underfoot, the ship vibrated, ropes were cast off, and they eased away from the dock.
Blake glanced at his watch and nodded his approval. “Right on time.”
“Amazing.” Morgan turned to Alasdair, only to find that he was gone. With the noise of the engines, she hadn’t even heard him leave.
She excused herself and darted up the stairs, guessing that he wouldn’t have gone into either the restaurant or the lounge. Morgan made her way to the front of the ferry, where the wind was already whipping at the few stalwart souls standing there. She was rewarded by a glimpse of plaid.
She ducked around the corner and was buffeted by the wind coming off the sea. Alasdair stood with his hands braced on the rail, his feet planted firmly on the deck. His hair blew back from his face, his expression was uncompromising, and he stared into the fathomless silver blue arrayed before them.
He looked superbly alone, isolated from everything and everyone around him. The sight of him there, gold and red, every vibrant line of him such a contrast to the cold white metal of the ferry and the relentless gray of the sea, was the epitome of loneliness.
Alasdair was alone, more alone than Morgan could ever imagine, a man lost from his own time, a man separated by centuries from everything he held dead.
Maybe she should paint him like this, Morgan thought. The idea made a hard lump rise in her throat and she almost turned away. She told herself that she didn’t want to intrude, but she knew that the strength of her compassion for the highlander’s plight had startled her.
Alasdair turned in that moment, as though he known all along that she stood there. The roar of the wind in her ears was so loud that Morgan knew he couldn’t have heard her.
“’Tis a powerful witchery you summon here,” he finally said, though his voice was strained. Morgan heard the doubt in his tone. “There was no need for such a show of wizardry.”
“It’s not magic, Alasdair.” Morgan shook her head. “It seems like magic to me sometimes, but it’s not. Just the marvels of modern engineering.”
Alasdair looked to the sea again and his brows drew tightly together. “I fear, my lady” – he admitted so softly that Morgan had to move closer to hear the words – “I fear that I have made a grievous error.”
Morgan chewed her lip and didn’t know what to do other than listen.
Alasdair took a shuddering breath. “I fear I erred in leaving my son, seven years past.” He swallowed but said no more.
The confidence he had exuded since they first met had ebbed. Morgan couldn’t stand to see this proud man defeated, and she wanted only to make things right. “We’ll figure it out,” she said, trying to sound convinced of that. “Things that are muddled up can always be sorted out somehow or other.”
Alasdair looked dubious but Morgan nodded with authority. “Trust me. I know.”
A fleeting smile touched his lips, and the heat of his hand closed over her own. His thumb slid across Morgan’s knuckles. “You do have a talent for finding a muddle and making it your own, my lady,” he murmured. Morgan’s breath caught at the affectionate undercurrent in his tone.
It made her heart beat faster. “You couldn’t have known, you know,” she said, in a rush to reassure him. “It’s not as though this kind of thing happens to people all the time. I wouldn’t have believed it.”
Alasdair flicked a fierce glance her way. “And still ’tis naught but a fear. I will know when I stand upon my own soil and see what has been wrought.” His words echoed with resolve. “I will know the truth when I am home.”
Morgan ached at how hard the truth would be for him. Her grip tightened on his arm in sympathy, but Alasdair glared down at her.
She thought she saw a shimmer of tears in his eyes. “Do you think me a feckless fool to believe only what I see with my own eyes?” he demanded.
She shook her head and smiled that he could even imagine such a thing. “No.”
Far from it. Morgan thought Alasdair was just plain wonderful.
The simple truth flooded Morgan’s heart as she held his steady gaze. Alasdair was the kind of man she’d always longed to find, the kind of man who took her weaknesses in stride and savored her strengths. There were times when he seemed to find Morgan as fascinating as she found him.
Even more important, he was the kind of man a woman could count on.
But he was a man whose heart was already claimed. Alasdair would never be happy so long as his obligations were seven centuries away.
That made Morgan suddenly want to cry, even if she didn’t want to think about exactly why.
Alasdair stared into her eyes as if he couldn’t look away, and Morgan wondered how much he saw. His grip tightened on her hand, as though he would reassure her, and her tears welled up. She stared back at him wordlessly for a long moment, then Alasdair pulled her closer, a silent plea in his eyes.
He was alone, but he didn’t want to be. Morgan couldn’t have denied him the comfort of a human touch. And there was nowhere else she’d rather be than here with him.
Alasdair tucked Morgan between himself and the ferry’s rail, the scent of his skin rising to embrace her. Her back was against his broad chest, and Morgan trembled slightly with the power of this man’s effect upon her.
“You will be cold,” Alasdair murmured in her ear and wrapped his arms around her waist, folding her against his warmth. Morgan leaned back against him as they silently watched the sea together.
She could only hope that Alasdair was unaware of the two warm tears that meandered down her cold cheeks.
* * *
Lewis was starkly different from Skye, primal and harsh. The hills were lower, the wind was colder, the vegetation sparse. The icy bite of the north wind mingled with the tang of the sea, the colors that greeted Alasdair’s eye were scrubbed to clean blues and greens.
Yet, the raw, powerful curves of the land were compelling.
Alasdair felt recognition of his home stir within his very bones from first glimpse of land. He clenched the rail of the ferry as the craft slid into port and felt his anticipation rise. Perhaps the veil of Faerie was thinner here; perhaps he but drew near a critical portal.
Whatever the case, Alasdair’s conviction grew with every passing moment that he was truly coming home. Not only had Blake Advisor kept his word, but Morgaine’s tale of traveling through the centuries was certainly wrong.
The town Blake called Tarbert might be jostling with unfamiliar structures, but still Alasdair knew this land. The faces of the locals waiting at the landing were lined, their clothes sturdy and plain, but there was a glint of merriment in more than one fiercely blue eye. Life was challenging here, a feat for the strong alone, and those who survived oft had a powerful sense of humor.
The Micra lunged from ferry to road as though it too was intent on seeing the highlander finally home. Alasdair leaned forward in the seat, and anxiously directed Blake across the island. The glossy black roads followed the lines of tracks he had walked with his sheep during days that seemed an eternity ago.
But every curve was yet familiar.
’Twas the towns that revealed Morgaine’s hand, for though they were sited as Alasdair recalled, they bore little resemblance to the places he knew. The land though, the land, had escaped her magical touch and was achingly familiar on all sides. Alasdair anticipated every mount, every valley and its view, his excitement rising with each passing moment.
He was nearly home. His heart began to pound with anticipation. How tall was his son? What tales had his gran to tell? How fared the cottage, the garden, the sheep? When Alasdair glimpsed the standing stones in the distance, his heart nearly stopped.
They alone were precisely as he recalled.
“There,” he breathed to Morgaine, hating the way his finger trembled when he indicated the stones ahead. “There, my lady, are your standing stones, as ever they have been.”
Morgaine looked to the enigmatic circle, then back to Alasdair, a gleam of anticipation lurking in her magnificent eyes. Her fingers closed over his own and squeezed, the gesture making Alasdair’s heart leap.
Nay, ’twas only that he was nearly home. Indeed, his humble crofter’s cottage lingered just over the far hill. Seven years fell away and Alasdair remembered pausing on this very rise to look back one last time.
He would not consider that it might truly have been his last time. Only now did Alasdair question the nobility of that impulse, only now did he wonder what he might have sacrificed by following Robert the Bruce.
Had he the chance to do it all again, Alasdair vowed silently, he would not stay away those seven years. Countless opportunities there had been to turn back and go home, but Alasdair had pressed on, determined to see the quest fulfilled, determined to prove his honor beyond doubt.
One of those expanses of black was spread before standing stones - as it did not in the world Alasdair knew - and half a dozen chariots parked there. Alasdair refused to accept the incongruity and directed Blake determinedly down a road just beyond.
They neared the portal between their worlds, he knew it as surely as he knew his own name. When he was safely home, Alasdair vowed silently, he would set his many wrongs to right.
The road turned to gravel within moments and narrowed with familiar ease. The surface became rougher and the Micra bounced along at much slower speed. A light drizzle of rain had begun and a mist obscured the road ahead, a road that Alasdair knew as well as the back of his own hand.
A heavy mist closed the space before them, a space where Alasdair knew the hills framed a view of the endless sea. And here, he now understood, was the place Morgaine’s world touched his own.
At least, it did in this moment. Alasdair recalled well enough from his gran’s tales that the portals to the world of Faerie were oft moved capriciously by immortal denizens.
But now, ’twas here.
One lone sheep glanced toward the Micra, the expression on her dark face almost knowing. Then she turned and skipped nervously along the road, ahead of the chariot. The mist swallowed her whole and she disappeared with nary a bleat.
Alasdair’s mouth went dry. She was gone, home to his world.
As he soon would follow.
When they bounced out of a particularly deep rut, Blake stopped the Micra and glanced over his shoulder. “Are you sure this is the right way? It doesn’t look as though anyone has passed here for a while.”
“Other than the sheep,” Justine commented.
Alasdair would have expected naught else for a portal between the worlds. “’Tis the right way, but I would walk this last.”
As soon as the words left his lips, Alasdair knew he had made the right choice. He would return as he had left, upon his own two feet and not in some magical chariot.
He would simply walk through the mist and arrive home. Tales of those lost to Faerie returning home years after their disappearance flooded into his mind and for the first time, Alasdair feared what he would find at his own hearth.
Had a year passed for every day he had been in Morgaine’s domain? Would Angus have grown to manhood? Would his gran have passed away without knowing where he had gone?
Alasdair could linger no longer without knowing the whole of the truth. Justine let him out into the rain and Alasdair suddenly wished he had his great woolen cloak. It had served him well for many a winter and he regretted casting it aside in that exploration of Edinburgh’s great keep.