He’d told her Dageus had been killed coming back from the Elliott’s. He’d told her that he’d been betrothed, but she’d died. But he hadn’t bothered to tell her they’d both been killed at the same time!

Why? Had he loved his financée so much, then? Had it been too painful for him to speak of?

Her heart sank to her toes. Not fair, not fair, she wailed silently.

If she saved Dageus, she would be saving Drustan’s future wife. The woman he wanted to marry.

Gwen drew a shaky breath, hating her choices. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. She was supposed to tell him her story, together they would unmask the villain, get married, and live happily ever after. She’d planned it all out this afternoon, even down to the details of her medieval wedding dress. She wouldn’t mind staying in the sixteenth century for him; willingly she’d forfeit her Starbucks, tampons, and hot showers. So what if she couldn’t shave her legs? He had sharp daggers, and eventually she’d quit nicking herself. Yes, it might be a bit rustic, but on the other hand, what did she have to go back to?

Nothing. Not a damn thing.

Empty, lonely life.

Tears pressed at the backs of her eyes. She dropped her head, hiding behind her fringed bangs, reminding herself that she hadn’t cried since she was nine and crying wouldn’t help now. “This is so not happening,” she muttered dismally.

You can’t let his clan be destroyed, no matter the price, her heart said softly.

After a time she turned around and looked at him, swallowing the lump in her throat, acknowledging that there was no way she could stand by and watch him be abducted and his family be destroyed. So what that it might rip her to pieces in the process?

So much for falling in love, she thought dismally.

“Drustan,” she said, striving for the calmest tone of voice she could muster, when inside she was unraveling at every seam, “in the future, the last thing you said was for me to tell the past you the whole story and to show you something. The something I was supposed to show you was my backpack, because it had things in it from my century that would have convinced you—”

“Show me this pack,” he demanded.

“I can’t,” she said helplessly. “It disappeared.”

“Why does that not surprise me?”

She bit her lip to keep from screaming with frustration. “The future you seemed to think you would be smart enough to believe me, but I’m beginning to realize the future you gave you a whole lot more credit than you deserve.”

“Cease and desist with your insults, lass. You provoke the very laird upon whom your shelter depends.”

God, that was true, she realized. She was dependent upon him for her shelter. Although she was a smart woman, she suffered more than a few concerns about how a misplaced physicist might fend for herself in medieval Scotland. What if he never believed her? “I know you don’t believe me, but there is something you must do, whether you believe me or not,” she said desperately. “You can’t let Dageus go get your fiancée yet. Please, I’m begging you, postpone the wedding.”

He arched one dark brow. “Och, have out with it, lass. Ask me to marry you. I’ll say nay, then you can hie yourself back whence you came.”

“I am not trying to get you to postpone it so you’ll marry me. I’m telling you because they’re going to die if you don’t do something. In my time, you told me Dageus was killed in a clan battle between the Montgomery and the Campbell when returning from the Elliott’s. You also told me that you’d been betrothed, but that she died. I think she must have been killed coming back here with Dageus. According to you, he tried to help the Montgomery because they were outnumbered. If he interferes with that battle, they will both die. And you’d believe me then, wouldn’t you? If I foretold those deaths? Don’t make it cost that much. I saw you grieve—” She broke off, unable to continue.

Too many mixed emotions were crashing over her: disbelief that he wouldn’t believe her, pain that he was engaged, exhaustion from the stress of the entire ordeal.

She cast him a last pleading glance, then darted into her bedchamber before she turned into the emotional equivalent of Jell-O.

After she’d slipped inside and closed the door, Drustan gazed blankly at it. Her plea for his brother had sounded so sincere that he’d gotten chills and suffered an eerie sense of disagreeable familiarity.

Her story couldn’t be true, he assured himself. Many of the old tales hinted that the stones were used as gates to other places—legends never forgotten, passed down through the centuries. She’d like as not heard the gossip and, in her madness, made up a story that held a purely coincidental bit of truth. Had she faked the blood of her virginity? Mayhap she was pregnant and in desperate need of a husband….