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  Bridget’s horse was flying past another hamlet when she heard the thunder of hooves. The soldiers were racing towards what she could only assume was either Balmoral or Skelbo Castle. She hoped it was Balmoral because she feared for Kirk’s safety.

  The next few hours were a blur. Bridget rode her horse through the shadows and held still when he saw the clan armies spill onto the moor from every point of the compass. She said a silent prayer for Kirk’s safety and moved closer to try and see what was going on. She saw the glint of steel in the starlight and heard pistol shots.

  ‘Cowards!’ she shouted at the King’s army, though she knew she couldn’t be heard. She saw men fall from their horses and blood spill from pierced bodies.

  ‘Kirk!’ she began to shout desperately, aware that while nobody else could hear her, Kirk could. ‘Kirk!’

  Through the clash of weapons and the acrid smoke of the soldier’s pistols, Kirk heard Bridget call. ‘Bridget!’ he cried, much to the amazement of the soldier who was crossing swords with him.

  ‘Kirk!’ Bridget cried out, glad to have found him but fearful for his safety. He ducked on this horse to dodge a bullet from a soldier’s pistol and his horse balked and threw him to the ground. ‘Kirk!’ Bridget screamed and sprang forward into the fray, throwing herself over him as she reached him. The soldier began to fire at what he perceived to be Kirk but was actually Bridget and she discovered a new advantage of her condition because the bullets bounced off her and Kirk was saved. As more clansmen arrived on the scene, the soldiers turned around and rode away. Bridget rolled off Kirk and stood up, suddenly bashful, but Kirk said nothing and merely swung her up onto his horse and rode swiftly back to Skelbo Castle.

  ‘Say something Kirk,’ Bridget said as they rode – Kirk behind her, holding the reins.

  In answer he rode even faster, and they bounded over the moors at such a speed that Bridget felt like she was flying. She looked up at the sky and saw the stars flying past her.

  ‘Kirk,’ she said as they reached Skelbo and Kirk leapt off the horse and pulled her down into his arms. He hurried her past the guards and footmen and then swung her into his arms and carried her to his room.

  ‘Kirk!’ Bridget said weakly, ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Bridget Drummond, will you marry me?’

  ‘Yes, I will,’ Bridget said, as Kirk slipped the ring hurriedly onto her finger.

  ‘With this ring I pledge my troth to you,’ Kirk said breathlessly.

  ‘And I to you, Kirk,’ Bridget said. Kirk pulled her into his arms and kissed her with a fierce passion she had never encountered before, either from him or anyone else, and then he pulled her blouse over her shoulders and pressed his lips to her throat.

  ‘I’m sorry Bridget, but I can’t let you go away again,’ he gasped, and with that he tore her clothes off her and threw her onto the bed. She knew he was rushing – and that there was a need for urgency because Allie and her group of searchers might come upon her inert body at any moment.

  ‘Quickly Kirk,’ she urged, even as he dropped his kilt in a single manoeuvre and shrugged off his shirt. She would admire his body later, Bridget thought, as she opened herself to receive him. As he took her - fiercely, passionately, urgently, Bridget yielded herself to him, realizing, with a sense of amazement, that she would now no longer be able to breach the divide, nor could she be reclaimed to the world she had left behind.

  ‘I’m sorry!’ Kirk gasped when he climaxed. As Bridget’s body convulsed, she was surprised at how she could have felt anything at all, given the speed with which Kirk claimed her. He fell back breathing heavily, beads of sweat breaking out on his body. ‘I will be softer, slower and gentler the next time and the next, my dear Bridget,’ he said.

  ‘I’m …I’m yours Kirk,’ Bridget said, ‘Finally!’

  He leaned over her and kissed her forehead. ‘And now you can’t go away from me.’

  Bridget touched his face with a new sense of wonder. It was like she was seeing him for the first time.

  ‘What is it Bridget?’ Kirk asked.

  ‘It’s like I never truly saw you before and this had to happen before I did.’

  ‘What bothers me is that now everyone is going to be able to see you…and I will have to answer questions.

  ‘I need to get some proper clothes for a start.’

  ‘We will bring a seamstress in tomorrow to outfit you,’ Kirk reassured her, ‘especially since I’m not sure how wearable your clothes are after I tore them off you just now.’

  Bridget giggled and Kirk leaned in to kiss her.

  ‘No,’ she said, pushing him gently away. ‘We must have a proper ceremony first before we ummm…do that again.’

  ‘Cleave together,’ Kirk said.

  ‘Yes…before we cleave together again.’

  Kirk slid off the bed and held his hand out to her.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’

  ‘To your bedroom,’ he said, ‘until such time as we have a formal ceremony.’

  ‘And who will you say I am?’

  ‘Bridget Drummond of course,’ Kirk said, throwing a sheet over Bridget’s nakedness and pulling on his kilt. She turned away from him and dressed herself in the skirt and blouse she had been wearing.

  He held her hand as they walked to her room. ‘Are you afraid?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Bridget replied truthfully, ‘Just a tiny bit regretful at having to run away from Allie.’

  ‘You did what you had to do Bridget.’

  ‘Will they find my inert body?’

  ‘According to the book they will find nothing. You have made the transition.’

  ‘I see,’ Bridget said, glad that Allie wouldn’t have to endure the trauma of seeing her body lying in the dark passage.

  Later she lay in bed, unable to sleep, so she padded down the stairs and went into the room where she knew Kirk had left the book about reincarnation. She found a shawl on the back of a chair and threw it over her shoulders, thankful that the fire still burned in the grate. Then she curled up next to it and opened the book, reading the Gaelic text with ease.

  ‘When souls are kindred, they seek each other through many lifetimes, their despair for each other greater when they have been kept asunder in any lifetime. Through subsequent cycles of birth and rebirth, the souls come together, sometimes even calling out to each other across lifetimes that coexist millennia apart…’

  Bridget turned the page, and as she did so, she heard the guards outside cry out and heard Kirk hurtle down the stairs. This time there was no warning and the redcoats that were thought to have been tired by the skirmish earlier in the day, had returned to finish what they had originally set out to do – to destroy the clan chiefs one by one. Kirk seized his claymore as the King’s soldiers broke through the guards and pounded on the door.

  CHAPTER V

  ‘Bridget, go upstairs and stay there,’ Kirk instructed.

  ‘No,’ Bridget said, more frightened than she dared to let him know, ‘I will stay here and fight alongside you.’

  ‘You have no knowledge of how to do so,’ Kirk argued.

  ‘Kirk, I am a Drummond. I was trained in sword play that I’m sure I will remember.’

  ‘Still Bridget, I must protect you at all costs. I cannot let you stay here when this fight is on. Please lock yourself in your bedroom or you will be fair game for the soldiers.’

  But before Bridget could react, the soldiers had burst through the door and Kirk was fighting them off with his claymore. Bridget ran to the armoury and drew two swords. When she returned, she found more clansmen had come to Kirk’s rescue and she turned on the soldiers with her swords, fighting them with an expertise that took her completely by surprise. But all her swordsmanship was nothing compared to the strength of the soldiers and the unpreparedness of the clansmen. Though Kirk fought hard, he was wounded in the shoulder and Bridget was subdued by the soldiers and held fast.

  ‘Take me and leave her,’ Kirk said, weak from loss of
blood.

  Bridget shouted to the clansmen, ‘Take my laird away from here and have his wounds attended to! Leave me! Go!’

  Kirk fought the men who were bearing him away, even as Bridget was carried from Skelbo castle.

  ‘What will you do with me?’ she asked her captors.

  ‘Have our way with you and then slit your throat of course,’ the soldiers replied.

  ‘Well then, do it here. Why wait?’

  One of the soldiers threw his head back and laughed. ‘Do you take us for fools? If we have our way with you here, your clansmen will be upon us in minutes. Would we risk our lives? I think not.’

  They threw her up onto a horse and one of the soldiers sprang up behind her.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

  ‘Bridget Drummond,’ Bridget answered.

  ‘Drummond, eh? Well, you must know that your clan chief lies in a pool of blood in your castle.’

  ‘We will take her there then,’ another soldier hollered, ‘and have her in her own bed.’

  Bridget was silent, never letting on that she didn’t belong there and hoping her clothes wouldn’t give her away.

  The horses galloped towards Drummond Castle and Bridget remained silent, trying to form some plan of escape and hoping that Kirk was safe. Maybe he would send some clansmen to rescue her, she thought. Or maybe she would throw herself into the fireplace at Drummond castle and hope that the passage would lead her straight into Skelbo Castle without the soldiers pursuing her. But when they reached the castle, the soldiers surrounded her and she was overwhelmed with fear. She was roughly pushed into a room that was unfamiliar at first and that she gradually recalled as the morning room where the first light filtered through the giant casements. Drummond Castle was beautiful but the soldiers had begun to pull down the tapestries and vandalise possessions that Bridget began to feel a strong connection with. She saw the rocking chair on which her mother, in another time period, used to sit, singing to her baby sister. She saw the fireplace behind which was the secret passage, but to her dismay the soldiers had kindled a fire there and it would now be impossible to use that route of escape.

  One soldier, many days unwashed and reeking of sweat, began to grope her body and attempt to kiss her. Bridget felt the bile rise in her gut and she gagged, spewing vomit on the soldier’s clothes. He cursed and flung his hand against her face, snarling with anger and lust as he ignored her mouth and pulled her skirt up above her knees, spurred on by the soldiers who watched the proceedings as they would a brawl on the street or any other public spectacle - hooting as they did so.

  Bridget looked wildly around for some means of escape but saw none. The soldier began to wrestle with her underclothes, pulling at her panties and parting her legs with one savage knee. Bridget began to shout for help but this only seemed to fuel the soldier’s lust and he tore her panties off her. Bridget lifted her knee at that moment and plunged it into his groin, and the soldier howled with pain and fell back. The others were on her in a trice. ‘She’s a wild cat, this one!’ one of them said, tearing at her blouse and ripping it off, buttons and all. Bridget covered her breasts, protected only by a black lacy bra, a sight unfamiliar to the soldiers who leered and fell upon her – two of them exposing their arousal and inching forward...when all at once a horse came flying through the doorway – an incongruous sight – and a young girl astride it fired from a pistol.

  ‘Get away from her ye savages!’ the girl cried, the intonation of the words that she spoke echoing her Scottish heritage. ‘Bridget! To the nursery! Quick!’ The pistol went off again and the soldiers scattered, though some attempted to pull the girl off the horse.

  Bridget picked up her torn blouse and fled up the stairs to the nursery that she had visited only days before in another world. Memories returned with unimaginable speed and by the time she had raced through the door she knew where the girl wanted her to go. She sprang at the rocking horse and it slid aside, revealing a trapdoor in the floor. Bridget looked wildly around for her rescuer, even as she came through the door, turning about to fire the pistol again, before plunging through the hole in the floor and pulling Bridget in after her. They heard the rocking horse slide over and conceal the opening and then they faced each other.

  ‘Moira!’ Bridget said, and threw her arms around the girl.

  ‘Bridget! Where have you been? I’ve looked for you for so many...years!’

  ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘I no longer live here in Drummond Castle. I return though, to remember times gone by. I live in different places each time I return.’ She paused and looked at Bridget, searching her face. ‘I see you have come here from another place too. I saw you ride through the hamlet I live in.’

  ‘You saw me?’

  ‘Yes, I did. I probably would have been the only one who could have ...and then I sensed something was wrong from the look on your face.’ She smiled. ‘Have you come back for Kirk?’

  ‘I think Kirk actually wished me here and that’s how I appeared. But how did you find me this morning?’

  ‘I felt it in my bones and came here directly.’

  ‘Where did you get that pistol?’

  Moira threw it aside. ‘Am I still holding it? Hateful thing! I got it off one of the soldiers.’

  ‘You are so brave,’ Bridget said.

  ‘You are braver.’ Moira said and then her eyes grew sad. ‘Oh dear Bridget. I have seen you and fulfilled my heart’s desire and now I have to go away.’

  ‘Where to?’ Bridget asked. ‘Why can’t you come and live with Kirk and me in Skelbo Castle?’

  Moira shook her head slowly, her skin going quite pale. ‘Go forward that way,’ she said, indicating a passage ahead of them, ‘And now hug me one last time.’

  Bridget held her sister wondering why she had suddenly gone so pale. And then she saw the blood oozing through her thick plaid dress and knew that she had been shot before she reached the doorway of the nursery. She felt the tears roll off her cheeks and onto Moira’s face, and a memory returned – of her doing exactly that so many years ago, in exactly that place. She lay her sister down when she could no longer feel a pulse and then ran along the passage, pulling her torn clothes about her. She was half way through when she paused, her breath coming in huge sobs as she fought for composure. Then she continued on her way, the route quite familiar now and secure in the knowledge that she would reach Skelbo Castle. She stopped when she saw the trapdoor and hesitantly released it, hoping it was not bolted from the other side. She pulled herself up and peered through the door, seeing the interiors of an unfamiliar room, which appeared to be a cellar with sealed vats and unopened kegs, logs of wood and large urns. Bridget made her way through these, taking care not to make a sound. She came to a door and opened it – finding herself in a dimly lit passageway – one she had not been acquainted with during her time at Skelbo. She entered a large room, shivering when she realized it was an underground crypt. She read the inscriptions on the stones, reciting the names of all the Drummond chiefs before Kirk. And then she looked up in horror as she saw, right before her, Kirk’s body lying on the flagstones.

  ‘Kirk!’ Bridget cried and ran to him, throwing herself down on the flagstones weeping.

  ‘Bridget,’ she heard him weakly call to her. ‘You’re alive... and now I can live too.’

  ‘Kirk! What happened? Oh my dear, thank god you’re not dead!’ Her body convulsed with sobs. ‘Oh the horror of what I just felt at the sight of you here - lying so still, my love!’ She stroked his face and kissed his lips. ‘Oh Kirk, why are you here? Why are you in this crypt?’

  ‘Because I tried to save you and couldn’t. I was too weak from loss of blood and my clansmen wouldn’t let me get to my horse. Word came to me that you had been taken by the soldiers and that they intended to use you and then leave you dead...’ Kirk’s voice broke. ‘Nobody told me you had escaped, and I asked to be brought here to die, because that’s what happens when our souls finally cleave toge
ther as ours did last night, and then are cast asunder again.’

  ‘Last night? How many hours have passed since that ordeal?’

  ‘I do not know, my dear Bridget. All I know is you are alive. When souls cleave and one leaves, the other cannot last on its own and must follow...especially when we have waited so many lifetimes to be together.’

  Bridget leaned over and kissed him again, and then searched his body for the wound. She ran back to the cellar looking wildly for a receptacle of some kind. When she found a small vessel, she picked up a metal rod she found lying on the floor and used it to puncture a vat. Filling the vessel with the liquid that gushed copiously from the vat, she rushed back to Kirk and began to bathe his wound with the alcohol.

  ‘Is it safe to go upstairs?’ Bridget asked, after the wound was cleansed.

  ‘Yes,’ Kirk said, ‘I hear that a deputation of Lowlanders went to the King to ask him to back down from his assault upon us. So for now, we are safe.’

  ‘I will go and summon help to take you up to your room,’ Bridget said, and found her way up the darkened winding stairways to the kitchens, and shouted for help for the Laird. The kitchen staff looked at her curiously, noting the torn clothes she struggled to hide her body with. One old lady came forward and handed her a shawl, leaning forward to whisper, ‘Ah, my lady Bridget, did you come back for my Laird then?’

  ‘Yes,’ Bridget smiled, thanking her for the shawl, ‘Yes, I came back for my Laird.’

  CHAPTER VI

  ‘I wish I could have Allie...or Moira...to walk beside me today,’ Bridget said as Peigi - the old lady from the kitchen - helped her dress.

  ‘Who is this Allie that you speak of?’

  ‘My best friend...whom I had to leave behind,’ Bridget said, her eyes filling with tears.

  ‘tis not good to cry on your wedding day,’ Peigi said, expertly winding her tresses – now back to their auburn hue - into curls and ringlets. ‘Remember your loved ones but do not mourn for them today.’

  ‘What about Moira?’

  ‘Her too. She would not want you to shed tears today of all days.’