Page 15 of Her Highland Prophecy
Diana didn’t speak, but he could feel her body becoming stiffer and stiffer as he spoke. Unsure what was going on and hoping that he hadn’t offended her by speaking plainly about his troubles, he continued.
“Dinnae think that she is being forced into it. She doesnae care for me, but she kens that I will inherit the Lairdship in time so she will–”
“Gordain,” Diana interrupted, her voice tense. He stopped speaking instantly. “Can I ask you something, without you thinking that I’m strange?”
“Of course, lass.” He already thought her strange. One more odd question would scarcely add to that.
“What year is it?”
“The year? Why would ye need to ask the year, lass?”
He knew he had promised not to think her any more strange than before, but her question was completely unexpected. He grimaced, wondering who her family was. He was now convinced more than ever that she was simple minded and had escaped her caretaker.
“Please, just tell me,” she begged, turning around in the saddle to look at him. He couldn’t understand what was so important, but he couldn’t resist her wide green eyes.
“It’s the year of our Lord sixteen-hundred and fifty-three.”
* * *
Her first reaction was hysterical laughter. Uncontrollable giggles rose through her, over and over as her mind struggled to comprehend Gordain’s words. Sixteen fifty-three?
“You have to be kidding me?” she managed to say through the onslaught of laughter. She was still turned toward Gordain in the saddle, and his bemused face just started her off all over again.
“Oh my God! You cannot be serious!” she cackled.
Her stomach was starting to hurt from all the laughter when the more serious implications of what he had said hit her.
Was she in the past? How in the hell was she supposed to believe that? There was no way what he just told her was true. It must be part of his delusion or her dream.
As her laughter slowly petered out, she wiped at the tears that had formed in her eyes as an occasional nervous giggle still escaped her. Gordain had pulled the horse to a stop as he stared at her with confusion written all over his handsome face.
“Nice joke,” she said, still laughing a little. “Very elaborate. Will you tell me what the hell is actually going on? Where are we?”
“A…joke? What is a ‘joke’, lass? I dinnae believe I have ever heard that word before,” he said, his forehead creasing as he narrowed his eyebrows. That was not the first word she used that he had seemed confused by, but she hoped the reason he looked so puzzled was that they didn’t use those particular words in Scotland.
“You know,” she said. “A trick? Trying to be funny?”
“A jest? I am nae jesting,” Gordain said, his confusion even more pronounced. “Why would ye think that what I told ye wasnae the truth?”
It was her turn to stare at him in bewilderment. A horrifying realization was starting to come over her. Ice flooded her veins.
“No, no, no! Please tell me it was a joke, Gordain. A jest. Please? There is no way in hell this is true. It has to be a nightmare,” she pleaded with him, grabbing the front of his shirt.
If anything, he looked even more confused. She looked around her again. She had seen no roads at all since she woke up even though they had ridden to the village and back. And the village itself looked like something out of one of her history books.
“Please?” she begged again as comprehension started to steal over her that this was really happening. A tear dropped out of her eye when he didn’t answer her.
How is this even possible?
If she accepted that she truthfully was in the past somehow, there had to be an explanation. People didn’t just magically wake up in the past. It was utterly impossible.
The gypsy’s ominous words suddenly came back to her.
“This will unlock yer fate,” she had said. Diana’s hand tightened around the medallion in her pocket reflexively as she suddenly questioned her wisdom in following the gypsy’s directive to find the cave.
How could I have been so stupid?
And yet there was no way she could have predicted this outcome. She was stranded in the past, alone, her sister and friends on the other side of some sort of barrier she had no idea how to cross to rejoin them.
