The rest of the night drifted by as we dreamed with our arms wrapped around one another, only waking when Cooper’s fist knocked on the door, his voice barely reaching the bed as it traveled across the vast expanse of the suite.
“You guys missed breakfast which is sure a shame ’cause it was real yummy. It’s okay though, cause there’s some out here for you. Aunt Jane, you better get up and dressed pretty fast. Morna’s in the lobby, and she’s real anxious to talk to you.”
CHAPTER 34
She had great timing, I had to give her that. I spent the better part of a year being so angry at her I thought I’d spit in her face if I ever saw her again. Instead, still high on Adwen’s adoration, I couldn’t bring myself to feel anything other than mild irritation as we sat down together.
During my first few months in the seventeenth century, when I’d been so mad and angry and frankly, rather crazy, I turned her into some sort of wart-faced monster; in truth, looking at her now, I knew this woman would be beautiful even at a hundred and five years old. For all I knew, she might actually be that old—perhaps even much older than that.
“I must say, lass, there are no many people who dislike me as much as ye do. It has taken more energy than I have to give to win ye over.”
I kept my mouth in a thin line, my eyes squinting in suspicion as I looked at her. “About that…why have you been trying so hard? I wouldn’t think that you would care if I liked you or not.”
“It wouldna matter if ye were wrong to be angry at me, but I can see now that ye have every right to be so.”
“What?” I’d played our conversation out in my mind a thousand times. In every different scenario, I never expected an admission of wrongdoing.
“I am a witch, lass, no a saint. Often times when helping another, I get carried away, no thinking of the others that get carried along with it. When I sent Kathleen back, ’twas for Jeffrey, though I used yer search for Grace as a means to send ye back. I used ye for her sake, justifying to myself that it would be good for ye as well, for ye would be reunited with yer sister. I’m sorry for that. Though I do believe that yer future lies in the past, ye should know that ye doona have to return if ye doona wish it. I could help ye in gathering the pieces of yer old life. Would ye like to stay here, Jane?”
“No. I want to go back.” It surprised me how quickly and effortlessly I answered her. I never even thought of the possibility of staying here, not because I thought it impossible but because, in truth, I didn’t want to. My home was centuries behind me. All I’d wanted was to be given the choice. “I think maybe it’s me that should apologize.”
“For what, Jane?”
“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking rather unkind things about you. All because I didn’t want to realize that someone else knew what I needed more than I did. I chose to feel like a victim, all because my life took a path I never envisioned for myself. It’s a foolish way to think. That’s what life does, doesn’t it, even if you don’t have a meddling witch hurtling you through time? We never really know when things are going to change.”
“I doona care for the word meddle. I am a lass whose life has been intertwined with two verra different times. It seems that my family’s destiny is much the same. All I do is help them along.”
“That’s just semantics, isn’t it?” I grinned teasingly.
Morna shrugged. “Perhaps, but the word meddle has a connotation that I doona care for.”
She sipped her tea and looked silently at me as I thought.
The last few days had healed things in me I hadn’t even realized were hurt, but I worried that it had come at a great cost to the one person we came all this way for.
“Morna, do you know why Cooper went through? Why we are all here?”
She sighed and nodded. The grimness on her face made my worry grow.
“Aye, I knew that the lass was ill—I could see Cooper’s worry over her when ye were all at McMillan Castle, but once we made it to Cagair Castle, I couldna see ye. I dinna know ye were coming until ye’d already passed through the portal. ’Twas a surprise that caused me to nearly choke on my dinner.”
I thought back on all the tiny details that were taken care of by the time we arrived—the passports, plane tickets, suitcases of clothes, even the hotel yesterday evening.
“How is that possible?”
“Every bit of magic I’ve ever done, every lass I’ve sent back or forward have all been within my realm of power—in the castles of my family or in a territory or realm no already claimed by another of my kind. Cagair Castle has never been within my ‘meddling’ power. The witch who holds it lives in the past but dinna survive as I have, for she is dead now. ’Tis why I dinna know of the portal and why once ye left McMillan Castle I could no longer see ye, no until ye passed through to this time.”