CHAPTER 17
The clouds drifted leisurely across the sky and piled up in a huddle. I’d been lying on my back, watching. A pebble was
pressing into my right shoulder blade, but I was too tired to flick it away. The small clearing not too far from the
cottage was exactly what my soul needed right now. Payton sat nearby. He had led me here.
This was the moment I had been waiting for—the moment when we found ourselves alone and undisturbed, and when I finally
wanted to tell him the truth. When I could at long last try to make my way home.
But suddenly this didn’t seem so easy. This whole time, I’d been thinking about myself and my miserable situation. I
had wanted to tell Payton everything—knowing then that he would make all the right decisions. After all, this ordeal
was all about saving him. He was the one waiting for help in the very distant future.
But Kyle McLean had changed all that.
I wished I had never met that boy with the beautiful face. It had put me in a terrible, terrible bind. To be aware of
the imminent death of a person you don’t even know is hard enough. But Kyle’s friendly nature and his winning smile
had made it impossible for me to accept what the Fates had in store for him. At the same time, I knew that his death
would only be the start of a series of events that I was not allowed to change. My own life depended on everything
happening exactly the way that destiny had intended.
If I found it impossible to see Kyle die, then how could I possibly expect Payton to be prepared to lead his own brother
“to slaughter”? On the other hand…wouldn’t I almost be guilty of Kyle’s murder if I stood by and watched disaster
take its course?
And it wasn’t just Kyle’s fate in my hands. There was also the fate of the Camerons. Before long, they would all fall
for Nathaira’s malice and deceit and be brutally murdered. Could I allow that to happen? But what would be the
consequences if I decided to change the course of things? Would I even have the power to change the past? Because that
was what I would be doing. I’d be rewriting clan history!
This was too risky. I couldn’t get mixed up in these things. I was an intruder in this era, and I had to try my hardest
to leave as few traces as possible. But how could I explain my situation to Payton without burdening him with all this
responsibility? What right did I have to demand that he accept and allow his brother’s death? To condemn himself to
Vanora’s curse for two hundred and seventy years? How could I be so selfish as to even consider this?
No, as long as I couldn’t be sure that I wasn’t doing any harm, I couldn’t reveal the truth to him.
“You are a strange girl.” Payton shook his head and knitted his brow as if studying an unusual bug.
“What?” I rolled to my side, propping my head on my arm so I could face him.
He plucked a blade of grass from his kilt and stuck it between his teeth before he started to explain. “All right: You
talk strange. You move strange, and you even look a little strange. I’ve never seen a girl like you before. Don’t you
think that’s strange?”
I nervously racked my brain about what I could possibly say in return. Luckily, I had come up with an explanation for my
unusual behavior after my experience with the twin brothers: “I talk funny? Maybe it seems like that to you because I’
ve spent most of my life living outside the Scottish borders. But I don’t think that I move funny—much less look
funny!” I tried to brush off my rising unease.
Payton laughed, and the sound of it touched my innermost self. He sounded less jaded, less burdened in this era than I
knew him to be in my era.
“You look so clumsy when you’re stumbling through the woods, and the way you sit on a horse—I mean, it’s truly
astonishing. You have the natural elegance of a Highland cow.”
“Great, just great! Yesterday I was just a plain old cow—extremely flattering. And today I’ve been upgraded to a
sturdy Highland cow. Got any more of those?”
It hurt that he seemed to think so little of me even though in my eyes he was still the coolest guy I had ever met.
Payton winked and twisted the blade of grass between his fingers.
“Oh, I could think of lots more,” he said, fixing his gaze on me.
Our eyes locked, and I suddenly felt very hot under the collar. But before I could stammer anything stupid, he changed
the subject.
“I am much obliged to you for helping my father. You’ve done us a great service.”
I found it hard to concentrate on what he was saying. There would be butterflies between us, but then a moment later he
’d withdraw back into his shell. I tried my best to keep my cool. I didn’t want him to know he had such a strong
effect on me.
“Thank you. I hope he’ll get well soon. Where did his injury come from? I mean, who shot him?”
Payton tossed away the blade of grass he’d been playing with. He stretched out his long legs and wiggled his toes. His
leather boots lay carelessly discarded beside him.
“That’s a good question. Something’s not right about that. We were tracking cattle thieves. And we caught them, too.
”
He stared at me with an intensity that made it clear he wanted to take in every little bit of my reaction to what he was
about to say.
“They were wearing Cameron colors.”
I sat up. Cameron colors? Was this whole story just now getting started? Was history actually happening?
I must have passed his scrutiny test, because Payton started sounding less tense.
“If the thieves hadn’t shot at us, there would be no doubt in my mind that your clan was guilty of the attack.
However, the arrow that they left in my father’s chest really makes me wonder.”
Cattle thieves, enemy clans, blood feuds—all of this seemed painfully familiar to me, and it didn’t take much for me
to remember that, in another time, Payton had already told me the story of how everything started:
“The year was 1740. One night, a band of young Scots who trusted their brother—for one, because they loved him; for
another, because an oath of allegiance bound them to him—set out to lead a revenge attack against a group of cattle
thieves. Back then, that sort of thing was very common. The Highland clans had been fighting one another for ages. Those
were different times. Boys of sixteen were considered men. They worked, went into battle, and sometimes died in combat.
Stealing cattle was common—especially when a neighboring clan was in trouble.
The Stuart clan at that time had been weakened. Their clan chief had recently passed away, and the identity of his
successor was in question. Let me explain: The oldest son did not automatically make the best leader. So sometimes even
siblings would fight bitter wars over the issue.
As for the Stuarts, the oldest son—Cathal—had been elected clan chief after his father’s passing, and his men had
sworn an oath of allegiance to him. But Cathal wasn’t the only son. He had brothers, and if he were to show himself
incapable of protecting his clan, then this could very well lead to violent conflict inside his own castle walls.
During that time, many cattle raids happened in the Stuarts’ borderlands. That could very easily cause a rift among
Cathal’s followers. This was something he could not, would not allow. And so it came to pass that one night he gathered
about twenty of his men to pay visit to his neighboring enemy clan. But the endeavor was ill-fated from the beginning.
It would have been better for Cathal not to act in such haste.”
“If it wasn’t the Camerons, then who was it?” My pulse had quickened. I sensed a mystery that was just waiting to be
solved—and I knew that a happy resolution was not necessarily guaranteed.
“Aye, lassie, that’s the same question that’s been floating around in my head. But, you know, I’ve caught many a
cattle thief. And not a single one of them ever carried arrows with a reinforced metal tip. Someone who needs to steal
cattle for a living certainly cannot afford that kind of a weapon.”
I remembered noticing Fingal’s sons taking in a sharp breath as I removed the arrowhead. But I had thought nothing of
it at the time; I thought they all simply felt relieved.
“Why? What else would you use such arrows for?”
“If you’re hunting rabbits or birds, all you need are regular wooden arrows with a sharp tip. Any peasant carries such
arrows with him. But the penetrating power of a metal tip? That’s something you’d only need against an armored
opponent.” He pushed his plaid aside and pointed to his chest. “Such as when you’re trying to cut through a warrior’
s leather chest piece.”
“So why would they have such arrows?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out.”
Payton got up, dusted himself off, and grabbed his boots with one hand while helping me up with the other. He looked
down at me and lifted my chin with the tip of his finger.
“Sam? An e ’n fhirinn a th’ aquad?” Payton asked, holding his breath in anticipation. He didn’t even know why her
reply to this question was so important to him. He should never have told her that he doubted her clan’s involvement.
Not only was she a girl, but she was one of them! A Cameron! But his heart didn’t see her as the enemy—which made this
all the more difficult for him.
Sam looked at him with big, innocent eyes, but she did not reply to his question.
Ifrinn, didn’t she know how important this was for him—and also for her?
He grabbed her shoulders, making it impossible for her to dodge his question any longer.
“The truth, Sam. Tell me the truth. Do you know something about this?”
I got lost in his eyes. He wasn’t hiding anything from me—contrary to the Payton that I knew. I could see all the way
to the bottom of his soul. I saw fear and uncertainty, but I also saw resolve and courage. This man would fight for what
he loved. Right now he was fighting for his family and considered me the enemy. And I didn’t think I could say anything
to change that.
“No, Payton. I swear to God, I know nothing.”
It took all of my strength to fight back my tears. Why couldn’t he see the truth? I didn’t want him to hate or
distrust me! I wanted him to open his heart and feel how much I loved him.
He looked at me for a long time with no reaction. When he finally let go of my shoulders, he weakly confessed, “How, oh
how, can I believe you?”
Payton turned away so he wouldn’t have to face her tears. He wished so much for her to speak the truth, but he didn’t
dare trust her. He’d be a fool to trust anything coming from her lips. But when he was this close to her, he found it
impossible to think straight.
“Why not, Payton?” she cried.
“You’re a Cameron. Your beauty cannot hide the fact that you’re my enemy.”
He had to get away from her. Otherwise, he would throw all caution to the wind and take her in his arms like a wounded
doe—because that was exactly what she looked like with her big brown eyes. She was in terrible agony. Agony he had
inflicted upon her. Despising himself, he walked away.
As if the sky itself felt my pain, the heavenly floodgates opened to wash away my tears. I lifted my face into the rain
and finally felt nothing but the cold water on my skin.
Without giving me another look, Payton had walked back to the cottage.
So I was the enemy. How could I forget. His love for me had been put to the test before—when, after we first met during
my student-exchange trip, he’d realized that I was a Cameron. Back then, love had triumphed over his hatred for my
clan. But things were different then, and the blood feud had long since been forgotten. Now, though, the worst was yet
to come, and his rage against the Cameron clan hadn’t yet reached its heights. I couldn’t bear the thought of his
hating me.
But I couldn’t confide in him or make him believe me. He would never love me—all because I was the enemy.
I had to get out of here, and quickly. I had to get back to the cottage where Ross had found me, and then find the rock
that would take me back to my real life in the twenty-first century. Back to my Future Payton—the one who truly loved
me.