The Highlander's Touch
Page 20

“Much of it,” he said arrogantly.
“Well, I don’t. I’m just a woman,” she said with as much guilelessness as she could muster.
He regarded her appraisingly and the corner of his lip lifted in a half-smile. “Ah, lass, you are decidedly not ‘just’ a woman. I suspect it would be a vast mistake to deem you merely anything. Have you a clan?”
“What?”
“To which clan do you belong?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “Do you have clans in Cincinnati?”
“No,” Lisa said succinctly. He certainly didn’t have to worry about someone trying to rescue her; she hardly had a family anymore. Hers was a clan of two, and one was dying.
He made an impatient gesture with his hands. “Your clan name, lass. That is all I am after. Lisa what?”
“Oh, you want to know my last name! Stone. Lisa Stone.”
His eyes widened incredulously. “Like rock? Or boulder?” No half-smile this time: A full grin curved his lips, and the impact was devastating.
Her fingers itched with the urge to smack it off. Enemy, she reminded herself. “No! Like Sharon Stone. The famous actress,” she added at his blank look.
His eyes narrowed. “You descend from a line of actresses?” he demanded.
What on earth had she said wrong? “No.” She sighed. “That was my attempt at a joke, but it wasn’t funny because you don’t know who I meant. My last name is Stone, though.”
“How foolish do you think I am?” he echoed the exact words she’d said to him about his name only hours ago. “Lisa Rock? That will not do. I can hardly present you to my men, should I decide to, as Lisa Stone. I may as well tell them you are Lisa Mud or Lisa Straw. Why would your people take the name of a stone?”
“It’s a perfectly respectable name,” she said stiffly. “I’ve always thought it a strong name, like me: capable of enduring calamity, mighty and able. Stones have a certain majesty and mystery. You should know that, being from Scotland. Aren’t your stones sacred?”
He mulled over her words a moment and nodded. “There is that. I had not considered it as such, but aye, our stones are beautiful and treasured monuments to our heritage. Lisa Stone it is. Did your museum say where they found my chest?” he coolly resumed his inquisition.
Lisa reflected, trying to recall the discussion she’d overheard as she’d hidden beneath Steinmann’s desk. “Buried in some rocks near a riverbank in Scotland.”
“Ah, it begins to make sense,” he murmured. “It did not occur to me when I cursed it that if my chest went undiscovered for centuries, the person who touched it would have to travel through both terrain and time.” He shook his head. “I have little patience for this cursing business.”
“It would also seem you have little aptitude for it.” The words tumbled from her mouth before she could stop them.
“It worked, did it not?” he said stiffly.
Shut up, Lisa, she warned herself, but her tongue paid no heed. “Well, yes, but you can’t judge something simply by its outcome. The end does not necessarily justify the means.”
He smiled faintly. “My mother was inclined to say that.”
Mother.
Lisa closed her eyes. God, how she wished she could keep them closed and maybe it would all go away. No matter how fascinating this was, how gorgeous he was, she had to get out of there. Even as they spoke, somewhere in the future the night nurse was being relieved by the day nurse, and her mother would have expected her home hours ago. Who would check her medicines to be certain the nurses had gotten the doses right? Who would hold her hand while she slept so if she slipped away she wouldn’t die alone? Who would cook her favorite foods to tempt her appetite? “Curse me back,” she pleaded.
He regarded her intently and she again suffered the sensation of being examined on a deeper level. His gaze was a nearly tangible pressure. After a long silence he said, “I cannot send you back, lass. I doona know how.”
“What do you mean you don’t know how?” she exclaimed. “Wouldn’t touching the flask do it?”
He jerked his head in a sharp gesture of negation. “That is not the flask’s power. Traveling through time—if indeed you did—was an incidental part of the curse. I doona know how to send you back home. When you said you were from across the sea, I thought I could put you on a ship and sail you home, but your home is seven hundred years from happening.”
“So curse something else to send me back!” she cried.