Morna's Legacy 04 - Love Beyond Measure (2 page)

Even more stunning, and the fact that had caused me to spill my sacred cup of coffee, was that the donor requested that I do the article. All of it. Writing. Photography. He specifically wanted me to author the piece.

I worked hard, but being one of the newest photographers at the magazine, I’d never been given a piece of significant value. I was usually assigned articles like,
How To Pack Everything You Need For 10 days In A Carry-On,
and,
Best Airport Restaurants.
As of yet, the only photography I’d been assigned by the magazine had been photos of the inside of a suitcase and airport. Why the man would request that I do the article was beyond me.

After I’d overcome my initial shock, Perdie and I scheduled my trip for right after my honeymoon, but seeing as that would no longer happen, I saw no reason to wait another second. I imagined that Mr. Perdie would feel the same, especially since the receival of the donor’s money was contingent upon my flight information being sent to him directly after its booking.

“Hey…where’d you go?” Jeffrey pulled into the parking garage below my office building and grasped my hand lightly to pull me from my reflective trance. “We’re here.”

“Sorry, I was just thinking about all of this. Crazy, isn’t it?”

The corner of Jeffrey’s brow pulled up quizzically, much like Cooper’s had done earlier. They were so much alike in behavior and outward appearance that even I often had a hard time believing that they weren’t actually biologically related.

“Which part, Grace? The ‘you and me’ bit, or this work stuff?”

I shrugged a bit, unbuckling and facing him as he slid into a parking spot and stilled the car. “All of it. Everything that seems to be going on.” I reached out to grab both his hands. “I’m so sorry, Jeffrey. I can’t express to you,” I suddenly found myself quite choked up. “What it means…what it means that you’ve allowed me to pull you into all of this. And I don’t just mean now. Always. Our whole lives it seems like I’ve been dragging you into one mess or another.”

He frowned, pulling his hands free so that he could cup both sides of my face. “You dragged me into nothing, Grace. Ever. Your father did, when it came to law school and then joining his practice, but you never did. You’re my best friend, and I consider you my closest family. There is nothing in this world that I wouldn’t do for you.”

“Clearly.” I smiled into his palms thinking of the attire we were both wearing now. No matter how platonic our love for one another, he’d been willing to marry me at my father’s request. “I love you, too. And gosh—Coop and I, we just couldn’t do without you. Are you sure you’re fine with me taking him along on the trip?”

Jeffrey released my face and glanced lovingly into the backseat of the car. “Absolutely. I’d come too, but I have one last case I have to finish before I rid myself of your father’s firm. Coop will love every minute of it and, since we’re going to delay his entry into kindergarten for a year, I have no problem with it.”

“Good. Well, I guess I better go talk to him. Shouldn’t take me long. Be back shortly.”

It took me a good minute and a half to swing my feet out of the vehicle and gather the train and fabric that surrounded my legs and ankles. I moved rather self-consciously through the parking garage, although I went unseen. While I had no qualms about Mr. Perdie seeing me in my wedding regalia, I didn’t really want anyone else wondering who the nut was roaming around in a gown.

I found him in his office, as expected. His glasses set a bit crooked, a mustard stain on his tie. Looking at him, I worried a bit that he hadn’t changed his clothes in the last three days. He was a kind enough man, but just glancing around his office caused a slight rise in my blood pressure. It was surely no wonder that the magazine struggled with organizational skills such as his. How many things that needed to be attended to fell through the cracks in the black hole that seemed to be Perdie’s office?

“Mr. Perdie?”

He jerked up from his desk so quickly, his chair flipped backward onto the floor. “Grace! What in the bletherin’ hell are you doing here? I mean, is everything alright? Of course, it mustn’t be. You’re still in your wedding dress.”

He moved toward me quickly. I instinctively reached out to grasp his hand in reassurance. “Oh yes, everything’s fine. We just called it off is all. Just drove in from…”

The shrillness of the small man’s voice interrupted me. “What do you mean, everything’s fine? Didn’t you just say you called it off? That’s rarely a good thing.”

I was utterly shocked to see such concern from him, and it made me believe that perhaps I’d judged him wrongly for many years. “Yes, I promise. Everything is great. We just, we couldn’t go through with it. But, Jeffrey and Cooper are waiting in the car, so it was really no tragedy or anything.”

He patted my hand in a grandfatherly manner, although still a good many years off from being old enough to be anyone’s grandfather. “Well good, Grace. Honestly, I’ve never really seen it between the two of you. It shocked me when you announced you were to be married.”

I squeezed his hand in return, a sudden sensation of closeness growing between me and my quirky boss that I’d never felt before. “Well, Mr. Perdie, I must say I’m rather surprised by you. I never knew you to be so perceptive.”

“Ms. Mitchell, perhaps it is you who lacks perception. I can assure you it’s not a new quality I have developed. I know most of the time it appears that I can hardly keep my head screwed on, but I do notice almost everything.”

I smiled and nodded before continuing on with the reason for my late night office visit. “I’d like to take on the Scotland job now if that’s alright. Leave tomorrow if at all possible. And…” I hesitated. It didn’t truly matter whether or not he objected, but I still hoped he would have no problems with Cooper coming along for the trip. “Cooper is coming with me. I hope that won’t be a problem.”

“Of course you may start right away. As long as you complete the article and do a wonderful job of it, I have no problem with you bringing along your son. I believe we will have more than enough from our benefactor to pay for his flight, as well. I will book the flight for you both right away and will forward you the details when complete. Pack your bags, dear.”

I nodded. As he turned toward his desk, I started to take my leave, but not before I heard his voice, laced with anxiety, follow me down the corridor. “And for the love of all things holy, Grace. Do not screw this up. We’ll be without our jobs by Christmas without this money.”

The Inn Near Conall Castle

Present Day

This time proved far easier than the last, but his scars still ached something dreadful. Each dab of the warm cloth that Morna pressed against the angry red line that now marked the entire length of his body caused him to grind his teeth to keep from screaming out.

“I’m sorry, lad, but I must first clean it before I place the salve upon it. Talk to me. It will help to distract ye from the pain a wee bit, though it must no be hurting ye as much as it did when ye first arrived here. Does it, Eoghanan?”

It took some effort to loosen his jaw enough to speak, but eventually he forced the words to come. “Nay, it doesna hurt as much as then, but if I were standing, it would do a fair job of bringing me to me knees, all the same.” The old witch was right, releasing the tight clench of his jaw did seem to ease the pain a little, or at least it helped him to notice it less. Decidedly, he thought it best to keep talking. “I saw her again. The same lass as the last time. Her and the wee lad both.”

“Ah, and what lass is this?”

Morna’s voice gave nothing away, but her hand momentarily stilled along the side of his neck, all but confirming what he already suspected. She knew well enough the woman he spoke of.

“I suspect that ye know the lass far better than I, doona ye? I’ve only watched the lass, but ye have sent me to her twice.”

This time the old woman remained entirely un-bothered, continuing her slow and steady cleansing of his injured side. “I doona wish to disappoint ye, but I am no familiar with who ye speak of, and I have sent ye nowhere, lad. ’Tis no the way this magic works.”

Eoghanan struggled to sit up but was restrained by Morna’s hand moving to press his shoulder back down onto the bed, causing his frustration to rise even further. “I doona believe ye. Is it no yer magic that no only brought me here but sends me back now? What I canna figure out is the purpose behind it. Why no send me back to a time earlier, but still in this verra spot if I canna yet go home? I doona know where I have been the last two times, but it wasna Scotland. I’d bet me verra life on that fact.”

Eoghanan watched as resignation washed over his bed nurse. The lines of her face softened slightly. He hoped answers might finally come to him.

“Ach, ye are a stubborn lad, are ye no? But still…I suppose ye deserve an explanation, so that I shall try to give to ye.” She pulled the cloth away from the top of Eoghanan’s shoulder, her once red hair now graying from the effects of time, dipping into the water as she reached over the basin sitting beside her to ring it out before draping it over the side of the bowl. Hands free, she leaned back in her seat, crossing her arms before continuing. “Though, I’ll no lay blame on meself for not providing ye one earlier. Ye were in such a rush to travel back to yer home, that ye wouldna have listened to anything that I said. Ye dinna even allow me the chance to tell ye that yer first travel wouldna be to the time ye wished it.”

Eoghanan succeeded in sitting up this time, determined to look at Morna straight on as she spoke to him. His own red hair hung frustratingly in his face, covering his green eyes. He blew the strands upward to clear his vision before he spoke. “Aye, I am in a hurry to return home. Me brother’s wife is with child, and I doona wish to miss the bairn’s arrival. I have stayed too long here.”

Morna’s head shook forcefully in denial of what he’d said. “No. Ye havena stayed nearly long enough. Do ye no remember what happened to ye the first time I sent ye back? Why yer wound split partially open, and ye nearly died…again! If I were ye, I wouldna wish to go knocking on death’s door another time. Ye probably havena heard it, but there’s something that people say in this time—third time’s a charm. Ye go visiting death again, and he might just decide to answer the door.” She paused momentarily, lowering her voice which had grown rather excited. “That being said, I will do all that I can to make sure ye will be strong enough to return home before the child’s arrival, but in order for ye to be so, we must keep working to send ye back, but no so far so quickly.”

A fortnight earlier, after spending months nearly entirely bedridden, Morna’s announcement that she was ready to use her magic on him had indeed excited him so much that he’d not allowed any further instruction or explanation. He demanded that she use it on him at once.

The result was an experience so shocking and strange that Eoghanan still could not fully process all that he’d seen, only holding on to the one piece of serenity he’d found in the chaotic world he’d been sent to—the beautiful lass and the young boy by her side.

For as the spell had begun, Eoghanan expected to arrive back on the shore of McMillan Castle’s lake in precisely the same year that he’d left—1647. Instead he’d landed in a frightening and very noisy jungle filled with tall structures and foul smells. Thankfully, he woke in the shadows and went unnoticed, free to observe the oddities so foreign from all that he’d known.

Pushing thoughts of the experience aside for a moment, he returned to the conversation at hand. “Aye, I doona wish to meet death any time soon. I do wish, however, that ye’d silenced me long enough to warn me of what I would see. I’d like to think that I am no a man easily frightened, but arriving in a place so different from what I expected…” His lack of comprehension stopped him, “was…verra unsettling. But never mind. Tell me about the magic, for if ye doona keep sending me to the same lass, why is it that I end up in her presence each time?”

Morna sat quietly for a moment. Eoghanan assumed she wondered how best to try to explain it to him. Eventually, she spoke. “Do ye remember the stone that brought ye here?”

He nodded, though the memory was a vague one. There’d not been much life in him when he traveled forward. “Aye, I do. What of it?”

“That stone is verra much me own magic. Created by me for the use of yer sister-in-law Mitsy, and now for yerself. But the stone is tied directly to one location and time—yer own. I know enough of how the time travel works and what it does to one’s body, essentially ripping ye fair apart before placing ye back together, to know that yer wounds were no healed enough to take ye all the way back that many centuries. I thought it best to use spells already in place for many years, created by others with magic, to allow ye to build up yer strength before such a long travel. They allow me to decide just how far back I wish ye to go, but there are powers greater than me own that choose just exactly where ye end up.”

Eoghanan’s brows pulled in, displaying his doubt before he had a chance to mask it. “And just what powers are these?”

“I suppose everyone thinks of such a power differently. Ye could call it fate, I suppose. Perhaps, ye are meant to know the lass?”

“No, though she is a lovely sight to be sure, I willna be here long enough to know anyone, save ye and yer husband, Jerry.”

Morna said nothing, merely reaching back to grab the cloth, rinsing it once more before gesturing to him to lay back again. “Let me tell ye now, so that there will be no more questions about me being truthful with ye, how I plan to build up yer strength. The first time I sent ye back was to nearly three months ago, and it was too far for yer first trip. This last time was doable, only a week back, but as it still caused ye some pain, I think it best if today’s journey only takes ye back a few hours—a day at the most. Tomorrow we shall go a bit farther, a week and a half, I reckon, and then the next day a bit shorter, and so on and so on. One day far, one day close, until we build up yer strength. Is this acceptable to ye?”