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neither useful nor prudent. ’Twas impossible for him to do full honor to a woman by giving her a proper marriage bed and children. Thus he had no business thinking of any woman with longing, especially one so small.
    He had to help his clan first, but once the Gunn were off their land, he’d find the woman’s–Melanie’s–cherished box. She said it was her only way home, and home was precisely where he wanted her. Safe with her own people. Far from his futile desires.
    Mayhap the box was the only possession she had and she meant to sell it to buy her way back to her people. He still didn’t ken what people those might be, but they certainly weren’t Scottish and he believed her when she said she wasn’t English; her odd speech alone proved as much. Whoever her people were, it was plain she desperately wanted to return to them. Well, he’d help her do just that, and good riddance to her.
    By the time he ran back onto the field where his clan had clashed with the Gunn for the third time since Hogmany, and it only April, his kinsmen had driven most of them back over the border. All that was left was to help a few of the battered back to Archie’s wagon where they’d all gather before journeying home to Ackergill.
    He carried wee John, who had a gash to his arse that made walking awkward, while Gabe limped along with a little help from his free arm. After depositing the men in Archie’s clearing and contenting himself with the sight of the woman dutifully washing Symond’s sliced shoulder, he returned to where he’d found her to look for her box.
    It took naught but two open eyes to find it. The thing lay half buried in the same mud puddle he’d pushed her into. He lifted it out of the muck and used a corner of his plaid to clean it. A bonny thing it was. Shiny and smooth with rounded edges and inlaid knotwork of white metal on the lid, just like she’d said. ’Twould certainly bring her enough coin to buy passage on a vessel if ’twas over water she needed to go.
    He turned the box over to scrub mud from the bottom. An inscription emerged: MacLeod, 1542. Inverness.
    He nearly dropped the thing.
    Trusting he’d read the delicate script wrong, he shifted the box so its base better caught the late-afternoon light. He read it again. It still said 1542.
    The little box claimed to be from twenty-five years in the future. Surely someone had forged a few lines to alter the year. Changing a one to a four would be only too easy. But the inscription was written in glossy brown ink beneath the stain. If a forgery, ’twould have had to be done before the piece was finished.
    Might the box actually be from the future? A frivolous and dangerous thought.
    He weighed the object in his hands. Legends were told in pubs about women claiming to have come through the stones like the ones at Loch Stemster from exotic places and future times. He had found the woman near a great stone.
    He snorted and shook his head. He had never put any stock in such tales, and he wouldn’t start now. The box was a simple forgery. ’Twas the only solution. But there were some who were more inclined to believe the worst about a person than to trust in reason.
    And the king of those paranoid fools was Laird Steafan. Ever since losing his son, Darcy’s cousin, at the battle at Creag Kirk four years ago, Steafan hadn’t been the same. He would hardly leave the keep for fear of being cut down and leaving Ackergill without a proper leader. He had little tolerance for visitors, more often than not sticking them in the dungeons for the night, rather than allowing them a warm room with a clean bed for fear of what havoc they might cause. Most of all, he mistrusted anything to which a hint of magic could be credited, and if Steafan mistrusted someone, he dealt with them harshly.
    All for the sake of Ackergill, his uncle claimed.
    For the sake of mild insanity, more like.
    But completely sane or no, Steafan was still laird, and the woman would have a hard