Magnus and a Love Beyond Words Page 7

  “I haven’t. I have one goal — protecting Magnus.”

  “That’s my goal too. So let’s get to it.”

  He cut through my bindings then left to return to his post. I asked the nurse. “What’s your name?”

  “Tess Daniels.”

  “Can you tell me what he was giving Magnus?”

  “A concoction to bring on coma. I think he planned to kill him last night, but then Colonel Donahoe brought you and I don’t think he had a plan after that. I think he was desperate and decided to do it today in front of everyone.”

  “Can we safely stop it?”

  “If we monitor him closely, probably.”

  “Okay, let’s do that then, but he will wake up?”

  “I think you stopped the doctor in time, but I don’t really know for certain.”

  “Great.” I massaged Magnus’s hand, working my way up and down the fingers. Wishing Emma was a phone call away so she could research in her hippy manual some kind of remedy for coma brought on by an evil doctor.

  Tessa said, “I’m really sorry about all of this.” She turned her attention to the machine beside Magnus’s almost lifeless body.

  Mrs Johnstone entered the room. “How is the king?”

  “Thank you for telling me.”

  “Well, Donnan’s son is the rightful heir to Donnan’s throne, god rest his soul.”

  “Oh yes, of course. You did it for Donnan’s son. Perfect.”

  Mrs Johnstone left Donnan’s living room for Donnan’s kitchen in Donnan’s grand house.

  I focused on Magnus, stroking my fingers on his cheek, brushing some hair from his forehead. “She’s wrong. You’re not Donnan’s son, you’re your own man, Magnus. You’re kind and generous and funny and you’re my husband and — I’m so tired. Please wake up. Because I’m kind of overwhelmed by all of this. I miss you so much.”

  I massaged his hand some more.

  “You know, there are a lot of moments in our life when I have to explain the world to you. And when we go to Scotland, you have to explain the world to me, but here — I don’t have a guide to this place. I need you to yell ‘Cruachan!’ and fight this. Come on. Cruachan, my love, please.”

  I was perched on the barstool. My eyelids were heavy, so heavy. I leaned forward over Magnus’s hand, my forehead on the edge of his abdomen, my eyes closed and within a second I was asleep.

  * * *

  I slept so soundly I dreamed. I was standing on the side of a mountain. Magnus was farther up, forty feet or so — he was looking right at me though he wasn’t moving or speaking or — he looked so desperately sad, like his heart was breaking, but he was holding it all inside.

  And I was yelling, “Magnus, don’t leave me!”

  But he didn’t move.

  And I couldn’t get closer — I couldn’t move. So who was leaving? Both of us? Neither of us?

  And so I dropped to my knees. “Please don’t leave me.”

  I put my hands in the grass in front of me, stalks and sticks and thistles and weeds and I dug my fingers down into the base of them, the thick soil around, the rock and solid mass of the mountain and I held it in my grasp and begged, “Please don’t go.”

  Chapter 18

  There was a movement under my head. Slight. A very small twitch of the fingers clasped in my hands. I had a moment of confusion, where was I? Oh yeah, the living room of a grand house in some future world. Why? Because the kingdom was falling or some other bullshit. And who?

  Magnus.

  His face had changed from the sleep mask of the last twelve or so hours to a wince. A furrowed brow. “Oh my god, you’re waking up.” I kissed his fingers, pressed my cheek to his palm and kissed them again. I looked at his face. “Are you waking up?” There was another twitch. I kissed his fingers then I kissed his wrist and his forearm to his elbow. “Magnus?” I pushed my barstool back from the gurney. His fingers twitched more. I pressed my lips to his shoulder and watched his face. “Magnus?”

  He groaned.

  “Oh my god, Magnus!”

  I kissed his fingers and then I climbed a leg onto the edge of his bed and then both knees and I kissed his collarbone and his chin and I leaned over him, a few inches from his face. “Magnus?”

  I put my left leg across his hips, careful not to sit and hurt his injury, crouched over him like a tv doctor performing that chest-thumping technique, except I was kissing and cajoling. “Magnus?”

  His eyes fluttered.

  I pulled both his hands to his chest and clutched them in mine, kissed his knuckles and peered at him like a ravenously hungry vulture, not at all sure I wouldn’t scare the hell out of him when he came to full consciousness.

  I whispered. “Magnus, wake up, it’s me, Kaitlyn.”

  The living room was completely empty. Tessa must have gone to sleep somewhere. Hammond was out guarding which was good. We needed guarding. Magnus was waking up.

  I kissed his chin, his short beard. I kissed his Adam’s apple and checked his face. Another flutter of his eyes and another wince. “Hey baby, wake up, this is Kaitlyn and you need to wake, okay?”

  His fingers wiggled. His eyes opened and closed tight. He winced again.

  “Magnus?”

  “Tis bright.”

  “Oh my god, Magnus!” I burst into tears. I kissed his lips, his cheeks, his nose, his lips again. “Magnus, you’re alive you — can you move your fingertips for me?”

  His fingers moved on both hands.

  I happy-sobbed. “Can you move your toes?” I twisted to see a lump under the blanket wiggle. “You can! You can!”

  “Tis somethin’ quite heavy pressin’ on my middle.”

  “That’s me! Oh my god that’s me!” I lay my forearms on both sides of his head and held my lips to his mouth. I spoke with my lips against his. “It’s me, right here on you.”

  “Ye must be a figment of m’fancy, yet ye art heavy as a clach-chinn.”

  Happy tears rolled down my cheeks. “What’s a clock-chin?”

  “M’headstone.”

  I shook my head. “Nope, it’s really me, my love, open your eyes, you’ll see.”

  He opened an eye and quickly closed it. A smile worked on the side of his mouth. “Ye art a dream.”

  “I’m not. I swear I’m not. I’m right here on you. I’ll pinch you to prove it.”

  “Nae, kiss me.”

  I kissed him long and slow and sweet. I groaned from the love of it. Chin to chin I looked into his eyes. “I’m right here, my love.”

  His eyes opened. “Truly?”

  “One hundred percent and you’re alive. Wiggle all your parts again. Let me see. I need to know.” I looked around at all his appendages. Every one of them moving and even better when I returned to look at his face it held a smile. A weak smile, but one all the same.

  I put my head on his pillow beside his ear. “Oh my god, I can’t believe it. I came so far and risked so much and I can’t believe you just woke up. I was beginning to think you might not.”

  He turned his head and his lips met mine again and then his left hand raised to steady my cheek while we kissed and oh my god it was the most amazing thing ever to be kissed by Magnus when I was beginning to believe it wouldn’t happen anymore.

  “How are ye here?”

  “You sent me. You told me you needed me, you couldn’t live without me. It was the most romantic and terrifying thing ever, but here I am.” I kissed him again.

  He said, “Och, tis much tae understand, but I am verra hungry.”

  “I’ll ask Mrs Johnstone to bring you something.”

  I climbed off him and dropped to the ground and reached for the call button.

  Mrs Johnstone answered, I said, “Magnus is awake, can you bring him something for dinner?”

  He sat with a groan, pushed the blankets off his lower half, and swung his legs over the side of the gurney. He was completely naked except for a bandage taped to his lower right abdomen.

  “You maybe shouldn
’t get up,” I said.

  “Och, mo reul-iuil, I must pish and I am nae wantin’ tae do it here in this...” He looked around the room with bleary eyes. “Fancy house.”

  “Let me help, you’ll probably be unsteady. Do you want to be naked?”

  In answer he stood, wobbly and a little like he might fall. I jumped under his arm and held around his side, trying to hold him erect, but he was heavy and gravity pulled at him hard. He shuffled, weaving a little. I held him up but started giggling as we made it to the hall, his footsteps plodding.

  “M’lady thinks my plight is humorous.”

  I giggled again. “Your pikestaff is flopping for all the world to see.”

  “Tis nae awake fully.”

  I called, projecting for the upper floors, “Tessa? Tessa, this is Kaitlyn, please don’t come out. I have Magnus up and taking him to the bathroom, and he’s without proper clothes.”

  Tessa said from the hall, “You don’t need my help supporting him, Queen Kaitlyn?”

  “No, I got him, he’s actually kind of steady.”

  Magnus bumped a shoulder against a wall. “Ye art a queen, my Kaitlyn?”

  “You’re a king apparently, though your pant-less state says differently.”

  “So I have beaten Samuel?” He collapsed against the bathroom door frame. I propped him there with my hip and turned on the light. I wriggled him into the room and closed the door behind us.

  “You got this, highlander?”

  He leaned on the counter to steady himself to the toilet. Then he directed a loud stream at the bowl. I smiled. He was alive for five minutes and already naked in front of me. There was a sort of happiness in that even with the bandage and the pissing and the wince. “How are you feeling?”

  “My head is verra painful.” He finished peeing. I turned on the water so he could wash and passed him a towel. He stopped drying to check himself out in the full large mirror. “I am a mess, mo reul-iuil.”

  “A mess? You might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  He rubbed along his stubbled jaw. “I have the beginnings of a beard—”

  I grinned.

  “Bandages, bruises.” He inspected an angry bruise on his hip.

  I reached out and brushed my fingers along it. “I’m glad he didn’t hit your ribs.”

  “Aye,” He gingerly rubbed the area where he had been broken not that long ago.

  “I have a lot to tell you about the beard too, but let’s get some food in you first.”

  We padded together barefoot to the living room, he was steadier now. I grabbed the sheet off his gurney and wrapped it around him as a kilt for his royal nakedness.

  We entered the kitchen.

  Mrs Johnstone said, “Good lord! I meant to bring you this meal to the bed!”

  I said, “My apologies, Mrs Johnstone, he needed food and to walk for a moment so we just walked here. If you’d like to head to your room, I can finish up with feeding him. Oh, and this is Magnus. Magnus, this is Mrs Johnstone.”

  She bowed and left, leaving a large tray with two plates filled with steak and mashed potatoes. The full wall of the kitchen displayed videos of battles on city streets. There was a large photo over the sink of Donnan smirking with a flower in his lapel.

  I poured a glass of water and passed it to Magnus. He gulped it down. Then I filled it for myself while he stared at the videos.

  “Och, tis a war, mo reul-iuil. This is because of my ascension?”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “There will be many people losin’ their lives.”

  He struggled to cut his meat, so I sat on the counter and cut it for him.

  He ate ravenously.

  While he ate, his sheet slid down exposing half his ass. “Ye haena wrapped m’kilt correctly, mo reul-iuil, how are ye a proper Scottish wife?”

  “I properly prefer the unwrapping.” I grinned at him happily.

  He put down his fork with a moan. “I needed food.” He moved between my knees, kissed my lips, and licked the corner of my mouth. “Ye had a bit of steak there.”

  “I put it there, so you’d kiss me.”

  “I will always kiss ye.” He held my hand in my lap. “So tell me how ye are here?”

  “When I got to Florida, I waited for you for three days. I knew that meant you were dead, and I...” I smiled sadly. “I couldn’t accept it. Until one night I woke remembering Old Magnus. Lizbeth told me about him. He was often around when she was a bairn. Old Magnus is the reason they called you Young Magnus, but I looked him up once and there was no Old Magnus in your clan. So I got to thinking — what if Old Magnus was you?” I grinned. “So I went.”

  “By yerself? What year did ye go tae?”

  “Yes by myself. To 1679.”

  “Before I was born. Twas verra brave of ye. Why dinna ye take Quentin?”

  “That is exactly what you asked me when you saw me there, and my answer was, I thought it was too dangerous for a black man to be wandering around with me in the 17th century. I might have been wrong, but I wasn’t wrong about you being there. You were! You were in the Great Hall. And this is something big I need to tell you of — you had a beard to here.” I pointed at his chest.

  “I did? What did ye think of it?”

  “I thought it was sexy.”

  “Really?”

  “Och aye,” I joked.

  “So ye rescued me in 1679... how much time had passed for me?”

  I put my hands on his cheeks. “Four years, Magnus, four long years.”

  He winced. “Why hadna I come home?”

  “There is a very long story, something we need to figure out, but the short version is there’s a man named General Reyes. You had been fighting him the whole time and he has a way of monitoring when you time-jump into Florida. We can’t go back. We have to figure out another way.”

  His brow furrowed. “We have much tae do, mo reul-iuil.”

  “True that. I think once you said to me ‘we arna used tae easy.’ It’s so terribly true, but at least we’re together while we solve it.”

  “Tis verra hopeful of ye, I am glad ye are still guidin’ us.” He stroked the empty space on my ring finger. “You haena your ring, I dinna get it for you? Tis unlike me...”

  I rubbed his ring, turning it on his finger. “No, you didn’t. You hadn’t gone to see Lizbeth or Sean yet and we didn’t have time to, not really.” I smiled. “We did have time for a few things though...”

  “Like what?”

  I raised my brow mischievously. “We had sex standing against the wall!” I giggled.

  “In castle Balloch?”

  “Yes, on that one circular stair to the left of the Grand Hall, you know the one?”

  “Aye, I ken it.” He winced. “I daena think… I daena want tae think about it, tis verra much like hearin’ ye speak of another man.”

  “Oh yeah, that makes sense. But I should also tell you — you took me to Kilchurn.”

  A smile spread across his face. “Kilchurn castle?”

  “It was summer, you showed me the loch, the mountains, the water, and where you slept. We sat on the dock and dipped our feet—”

  “Twas like ice I would guess.”

  “It was. It was really beautiful. I understand why you think of it as your past home. I could imagine you playing with Sean on the mountains there. It reminded me of Maine and you told me to tell you we should go to my grandparents’ lake house. He promised me you’d get me there.”

  “Consider it done,” he joked, “as soon as I find m’kilt.”

  “And then we walked into the mountains, found a beautiful hidden spot, said goodbye, and I jumped from there to here.”

  Hammond entered the kitchen. “Oh, excuse me, your um, Majesty.”

  Magnus pulled the sheet up and closed it in the front with a laugh. “Och, tis a fine way tae greet me when I am standin’ naked in the middle of a strange kitchen.”

  Hammond bowed his head. “I am Colonel Donahoe,
sir.”

  I dropped from the counter. “Magnus, this is Hammond, or Colonel Donahoe. When I left you in the past, you told me to find him, to ask him for help. You told me you trusted him. So when I got here I demanded to see him and he brought me to your hospital room. He has helped me so much.”

  Hammond said, “The rebels are laying siege to the castle, Your Highness. I moved you and Queen Kaitlyn here to Donnan’s safe house. My apologies the household is so small, I had to arrest half the staff and most of your medical team because they were siding with Roderick.”

  “And Roderick is…”

  “Samuel’s son.”

  “Of course, there is always a son tae deal with.” Magnus asked, “How is the battle going now?”

  “Are you ready to be briefed on the encounters?”

  Magnus shook his head. “Nae. I am feelin’ the weight of living in my limbs. I needs tae be in the bed. Can it wait until the morn?”

  “We won’t need any big decisions until tomorrow.”

  “Thank you Hammond for the care and attention ye shewed Kaitlyn. I appreciate it and winna forget it.”

  Hammond said, “Yes, sir, thank you, sir.” He left the kitchen.

  I said, “He’s a good man. I think you’ll end up being friends.” Magnus looked a little green. “Let’s get you back to the bed.” I put my arm around him, trying to hold him up as we shuffled.

  Magnus groaned, “I daena want m’bed in the midst of the Great Hall.”

  So we continued shuffling until we found a small unused guest room. The bed was covered in fancy pillows and a luxurious silk cover. I helped him to it, pulled all the decorative pillows to the ground, yanked the covers open and helped him lower. I pulled the covers to his chest.

  The nurse found our room then. I sat to the side while she fussed over him, checking his vitals, giving him some painkillers, and examining his wound. She left telling him to get some sleep and making me promise to get her if anything was wrong.

  I climbed next to him and curled against his left side. “Do you need anything?”

  “Nae, only some sleep, mo ghradh, I’ll feel better in the morn.”