“I’m going to see her to a room. Ye may make sure she’s cared for, but doona let her outside of the room. I fear she’ll try to leave if ye do so.”
Before I could pull myself up on the horse, Baodan grabbed me off the beast, flipping me over his shoulder so that my head bounced up and down against his back as he carried me off toward the castle.
Chapter 9
I stopped screaming once he stepped inside the main building. It did me no good anyway. He had a firm grip and, no matter how much I banged on him or hollered at the top of my lungs, he didn’t release me. Besides, the interior of the castle was so beautiful and quiet, it seemed quite wrong to disturb the atmosphere by screaming.
My silence seemed to bother him, and he reached up with his left hand that he wrapped around my legs and gave me a quick smack on the rear. “Did ye lose consciousness, lass? I dinna know ye could be so quiet.”
The smack elicited a yelp, and he laughed at the sound.
“Where are you taking me?” The words sounded broken, each step he took up the stairs knocking the air out of me.
“Did ye no just hear what I told Eoghanan? I’m taking ye to a bedchamber, where I will ravish ye before leaving on me journey.”
“What?” Screaming once more, I lifted my left leg and swung it down into his lower stomach just as hard as I could. “You will do no such thing. Sit me down. Now!”
He grunted at the impact but laughed loudly, pinning my legs against him giving me no chance of kicking him again. “Shhh, lass, I jest. I promise I shan’t touch ye. We are only going to have a little talk, ye and I.”
“I don’t want to talk. All I want is to find Bri, shake the crazy out of her, and then get on a plane back to the States.”
He stopped in front of a large door and released the grip on my legs with one of his hands so that he could open it. Once inside, he closed the door and set me down on my feet. Dizzy from being upside down, my head also pounded from the injury. He reached out to steady me as I got my bearings. “I doona know what a ‘plane’ is, lass. Just like I dinna know what a ‘car’ was when ye mentioned it earlier.”
I pulled away from him once my blood seemed to be running in the right direction. “Right, I forgot. We’re in the past. Do they have like cameras watching you guys all the time and if you break character they put you in a dungeon or something?”
Baodan squinted his brows at me and went to sit in a large chair across the room. “Ye are verra strange, lass. Half of what ye say seems like another language entirely. Why doona ye take a seat?”
I didn’t know if it was from hanging upside down, my confusion and rage, or just because it was genuinely warm in the room, but I grew very warm. With a head wound, I thought I better be careful. “I’m really hot. Can you maybe turn up the air in here a bit?”
Again, the same confused expression. I wanted to knock it off of his pretty face.
“I could open a window if ye like?”
I pinched my dress in between my boobs and lifted it up and down quickly to fan myself. Baodan regarded me as if I was doing a strip tease in front of him. “Yes, please do, but can you adjust the thermostat? Hasn’t this place been modernized? If you have visitors everyday, surely it has air conditioning.”
As he opened the window, I moved around the room looking for air vents. With the exception of the window, no source of circulation could be found anywhere in the room. I hadn’t noticed right away, but light from outside illuminated the room, not electricity. Sunlight and candles were the only source of light.
“Where did ye say ye came from? What is a ‘thermostat’?”
The only explanation I could think of was that they’d not modernized anything to preserve the historical value of the place. Regardless, it seemed odd that there wouldn’t be the slightest hint of anything modern in the room.
“I’m from the United States, and I live in Texas. I’m from the same place as Bri.” I moved to sit in the chair across from him. My head was starting to ache again from the cut.
Baodan leaned forward so that his elbows rested on his knees, and he clasped his hands out in front of himself, regarding me sternly. “Well, ye see lass, now ye have given me cause to worry over ye, for ye are either one of two things. Ye are either daft, as Eoghanan suggests, or ye are a liar.”
“Excuse me?” I leaned my elbow against the arm of the chair and allowed the side of my face to rest inside my palm.