Falling Through Time by Nancy Scanlon

Author:Nancy Scanlon [Scanlon, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2018-05-03T04:00:00+00:00

• • •

Gwen blinked slowly, the sound of Reilly’s voice realigning her senses. She wiped her mouth, immediately embarrassed about losing the contents of her stomach all over Reilly’s leather boots.

She focused on them. They were not the riding boots he’d had on earlier. There were no laces to the shoes he now wore; instead, they looked like they’d been stitched out of large pieces of leather and crisscross tied, all over, with smaller straps of leather.

Ry’s words filtered to her brain, but they arrived in a different order than how he spoke them. She raised her eyes to him, still unable to process what was happening, but wanting very much to do whatever he said. He sounded anxious.

That couldn’t be right, though. Reilly was never anxious.

He was saying the words again, and she concentrated hard to understand him.

“Gwendolyn, we need to move. We’re too close to the border, and we risk discovery on unsafe land.”

She nodded, swallowing past a very dry throat, and wished for water. He understood what she needed, and he helped her up.

“We will stop by a stream a bit further on. Hurry, Gwen.”

They began walking at a pace mall walkers the world over would envy.

“Too fast,” she managed.

He shook his head. “Nay, lass, not this time. If you can’t keep up, I’ll carry you.”

Well. She didn’t care to be carried. She picked up her pace.

“Was it real, Reilly?”

He didn’t pretend to misunderstand, for which she was grateful, and replied grimly, “Unfortunately, aye. I suspect he was a MacDermott. There’s a large clan war happening in this time, if we’re in the time I think we’re in, between the MacDermotts and the O’Malleys. He was going to kill me and take you.” He slid a look to her. “Your fate would’ve been worse than what was promised to Eleanor.”

Gwen felt the bile rise again; with effort, she pushed it back down. Ellie had been kidnapped in medieval Ireland, where she was almost forced to wed a very unpleasant, very forceful, and very nasty man. Ellie had been shell-shocked for quite some time after that affair, and had flashbacks every once in a while.

Gwen had enough flashbacks of her own, but she was rational enough to know that Reilly did what had to be done. Death was never easy…yet it was sometimes necessary.

It was that man’s life or Reilly’s. There was no gray area there, and, understanding the difficulty of that stark contrast, Gwen understood the necessity of it. The brutality of the times.

It wasn’t so different from her time. She’d had many dreams where she redirected that grenade back to the ones who threw it at their caravan, and she knew that, if she had been given that chance, she probably would have done just that.

Their lives, or her friends’ lives. Black and white.

“Thanks,” she finally whispered.

He nodded curtly. “Keep up, lass.”

Mentally girding her loins, as it were, she put everything out of her mind and hurried onwards.

An hour or so later, after being bodily placed on a sturdy log, Gwen felt a little more like herself.

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