Nineteen

O liver walked around the corner of Cameron Hall and was more grateful than he likely should have been that his most recent trip in Cameron's natty whirlybird had been made whilst he'd been unfettered. He was also pleased to think that his zip ties and sundry were still safely tucked away in James MacLeod's hall where they would absolutely be used in the future, and not on him.

He came to a skidding halt on the gravel drive there in front of the hall and wondered when it had happened that he'd so completely fallen into something when it came to a certain woman of his acquaintance.

Something that felt a great deal like love.

Mairead was leaning back against the hall with her hands tucked behind her, watching the sky, a look of such peace on her face that it was all he could do not to trot over to her, drop to his knees right there in the rocks, and ask her to marry him.

In fact, that sounded like the best idea he'd had all day, so he wasted no time in approaching, then attempting the second. Or he would have if she hadn't held out her hand and stopped him.

"The rocks are sharp."

He stopped halfway to his knees, then straightened. "How do you know?"

"One of your mates came out to check on you and forgot his shoes."

He considered. "Peter?"

"Possibly," she said thoughtfully. "He looked at me, squeaked, then bolted back inside."

Oliver smiled. "He didn't."

She smiled in return. "He did blurt out a very polite greeting with my name attached, but there was definitely squeaking. Perhaps he was eager to return inside to their plots and schemes."

He felt his smile fade. "They're very good at this sort of thing," he said quietly.

"I've seen them," she agreed, "but I'll pretend I don't know anything and just enjoy your parley."

Considering the discussion would center around how he was going to get back to her time, avoid a trio of his own eejit selves, and manage to get her to the future before she was slain, he couldn't imagine she would enjoy it much. He took a step backward and made her a low bow.

"I won't fail this time."

"Oliver—"

"You don't need to spare my feelings," he said simply. He paused. "I was impulsive."

"And you're never impulsive."

He lifted his eyebrows briefly. "Not usually. Then again, I've never been trying to get anything I've wanted quite this much."

She waved him away. "Get on with you, lad, and be about your business."

He smiled and nodded toward the door, setting aside thoughts of proposals for a more auspicious moment. "Come with me? I'd like to introduce you to my terrible friends. You've already met my laird."

She nodded, then walked with him to the front door. He opened the door, ushered her inside, then paused for a moment to take the measure of the situation that lay in front of him.

First was the absolute splendor of Cameron Hall. The place had been, as they tended to say on the telly, sympathetically updated and expanded over the centuries until it had its share of homely comforts without having lost any of its medieval glory. He could remember with perfect clarity the first time he'd walked inside and wondered, unironically, if he'd stepped back in time hundreds of years.

Second and perhaps more importantly was the collection of Cameron's modern-day clan clustered around the hearth. There was Cameron himself, of course, and Sunshine, along with Derrick and Samantha and Peter and Ewan. Madame Gies was there, no doubt making certain everyone was comfortable and fed, along with her granddaughter Emily, she of the excellent taste in absolutely everything.

He looked at Mairead, had a nod in return, and walked across the great hall to join them.

He was very grateful that Sunshine immediately came to meet them halfway.

"Mairead," she said with a welcoming smile. "I hoped you would come with Oliver. Why don't you come with me and I'll introduce you to everyone?"

Oliver watched as his self-appointed older sister took his lady in hand—figuratively, for the moment—and led her over to that collection of souls he had to admit he was somewhat fond of. He would be fonder of the men once he'd repaid them all for their part in his holiday, though perhaps his vengeance would be tempered with a bit of gratitude that their actions had led in a fairly roundabout way to his encountering…

He had to take a deep breath at the thought of how easily he could have missed meeting a woman he thought he just might love.

He watched that collection of souls welcome Mairead into their midst—even Peter, who only gulped, then put his shoulders back and got on with business.

He watched the ladies there gather Mairead up and bundle her off to the kitchens where he suspected they would at least try to make her feel as though she could enjoy a cup of tea. He, on the other hand, was abandoned in the spot where he'd stopped. Unfortunately, he was soon joined by a pair of his mates who seemed not in the slightest bit concerned over the fates that awaited them.

"You're still a dead man walking," he reminded Derrick.

Derrick pursed his lips. "I promoted you."

Ewan stuck his head between theirs. "He did? You did?"

Derrick flicked Ewan between the eyes without looking, which Oliver appreciated. He also supposed it might be considered a mercy to keep his boss at arm's length instead of in an inescapable headlock, so he stepped aside and allowed Ewan a bit of room.

"What's your new title?" Ewan asked.

Derrick cleared his throat. "Vice President of Skulduggery and Snoopery."

"It's the other way around," Oliver said crisply.

"As if you know anything about either," Ewan said with a snort.

Oliver reminded himself that he needed Ewan alive for at least another twenty-four hours, but that didn't preclude delivering an elbow to the lad's gut.

"Why don't I get a title?" Ewan wheezed.

"You wouldn't like my choice," Derrick said shortly.

Ewan slung his arm around Oliver's shoulders. "When you kill him and take over the company, will you give me a fancy title?"

Oliver shot his colleague a cool look. "What leaves you thinking you'll outlive him?"

"You need my vast stores of knowledge about the fairer sex and how not to make an arse of yourself when you're around them, which, considering your hopeless state, means that I should get a lofty title and a very generous raise."

Oliver had to concede that Ewan definitely excelled where the rest of them floundered when it came to women. The lad was perfectly willing to fling the Cameron name and his own unfortunately abundant amounts of charm around like rose petals, then scoop up all the willing—if not a bit bamboozled—maidens fair who found that sort of thing mesmerizing. Oliver wasn't entirely sure that Ewan could talk about anything besides the hoity-toity rubbish he himself loathed, but there were obviously girls who enjoyed that.

"Kill him first," Derrick advised, "and save yourself the aggravation. Let's go talk in Cameron's office. Your girlfriend can join us any time she likes."

"Girlfriend," Ewan said thoughtfully. "That means there's still hope—"

Oliver wondered if Ewan had permanent bruises from the elbows to the gut he seemed to take regularly, then decided it wasn't worth investigating. He did make his way with his collection of mates to the laird's downstairs office where he found that a detailed outline of Moraig's forest and the surrounding environs had been marked out on a large white board. There were magnets waiting in a patient line down one side, proper black ones only polluted with one pink kitty face.

"For your lady," Ewan said, rubbing his hands together. "She'll appreciate the utter cuteness of the kitten, which will lead her naturally to associate charm and adorableness with your sorry self."

Oliver looked at Derrick, had a shrug in response, then decided that perhaps he wouldn't kill Ewan right off. The man might prove to be useful. He held back and watched as Derrick, Ewan, and Peter arranged things to their liking for a proper strategy session, ignored the fact that they seemed perfectly happy and attached to their devices, and further ignored the truly unnerving thought that he didn't entirely loathe the idea of occasionally being unplugged.

He looked to his left to find the laird of the current clan Cameron standing there, watching him with thoughtfully.

"My laird," he said, making Cameron a small bow.

Cameron only smiled. "How are you, Oliver?"

"Wishing I'd been less impulsive," Oliver admitted.

"If there's anything I would never call you, lad, it would be impulsive, but love makes fools of us all sometimes. We'll help you sort this."

Oliver let out his breath slowly. "Thank you, Cameron." He looked at him seriously. "For more than this."

"Don't get all maudlin on me," Cameron said with another smile. "We'll either drink or weep later, whichever you like. I might also send you and your lady on a proper holiday somewhere sunny after you've rescued her. There's a useful thought for you."

"I won't argue," Oliver said. "And if you'll excuse me, my lord, I'm being summoned to go and play with magnets."

Cameron waved him on to the white board and he went, feeling a bit more himself with each step. He set aside the recrimination that he should have done this the first time around because there was nothing useful to be gained from flogging himself over things that were dead and gone, so to speak. Perhaps there was also something to the old saying that the third time was the charm.

He sincerely hoped so.

"How many lads?" Derrick asked. "And where were they?"

He shook aside his useless thoughts and focused on the discussion at hand. "Which time?"

Peter held out a bag of blue magnets. "Another color for a different time. Want green as well?"

"We'll need both, plus the black," Oliver said grimly. "We'll need to account for the first time and my subsequent two tries."

"Give me details about each," Peter said, setting out magnets, then reaching for a legal pad. "Call them black, blue, then green so I can keep it straight."

Oliver considered, then arranged magnets on the board within the outlines of Moraig's forest to the best of his memory. He put Mairead where she'd been, ignored the improbability of his own damned unconscious self disappearing just inside Moraig's doorway, then stood back and studied the board.

"Is that it?" Derrick asked.

"I'm thinking."

"What did you miss during the first two rescue attempts?"

Oliver found his hand halfway to his chin, which was alarming in and of itself. He stroked just the same and suspected he might understand why Jamie did it so often. He held up his index finger to request a moment, then walked around the perimeter of Cameron's office, ignoring his glorious surroundings and putting himself back in Renaissance Scotland.

He came back to himself an indeterminate amount of time later to find those lads he'd gone on innumerable adventures with in the present—along with that rather alarming trip to 1602—simply watching him patiently. Well, Ewan looked as if he might be brewing up a particularly annoying smirk, but since that was nothing new, it was a bit comforting.

"I missed someone," he said carefully. "And I changed things, if you want the entire truth. The first time, Mairead remembers having someone stab her in the back, but that changed after my first attempt."

"You stopped that, at least," Cameron offered.

Oliver couldn't bring himself to point out that it hadn't done Mairead any good, so he nodded and continued.

"Time One, I got to Moraig's and realized just how many lads there were. Seven or eight, at least, and not in their right minds." He looked at Cameron. "I couldn't fight that many."

"Not without a sword and a running start on a horse," Cameron agreed. "Trying to stay out of your own way yet rescue your lady is a complicated business. Just out of curiosity, how did the fireworks go?"

"Brilliantly," Oliver said without hesitation. "I suspect it became clan legend, though I haven't had the heart to go dig through history to find out for certain. Thank you, my lord, for such superior firepower."

Cameron nodded and waved him on. "We have more, if that would be useful, though I'm guessing a more surgical attempt would serve you better here."

"Agreed," Derrick said. "What else on the second trip? And leave aside your unconscious self on Moraig's floor."

"Which wasn't there in the past because I'd fallen through to the future," Oliver pointed out.

Derrick looked at him for a moment in silence, then shut his mouth and nodded briskly. "Fair enough, if not a little unsettling. I'm assuming you also avoided your first rescue-attempting self well enough."

Oliver shuddered a little at the memory, in spite of vowing that he wouldn't. "Beyond the absolute barking nature of that, yes, I managed to keep out of sight of my first self, but—" He had to stop and take a deep breath before he could admit the truth in all its unpleasant starkness. "I was tempted to ignore the cosmic ramifications of the first me seeing the second me and simply go snatch Mairead from her cousins, but I'll admit I hesitated. She was barely conscious from being struck in the head, I noticed the gleam of a blade where I hadn't before, and I didn't see how I could carry her and escape seven or eight—"

"Which was it?" Derrick interrupted. "That might be important."

Oliver closed his eyes and ran through the details with a dispassion that was oddly comforting. He considered, then opened his eyes and looked at Derrick.

"Seven I could identify," he said. "Plus one in the shadows who I can't."

Derrick waved him on. "We'll put that lad in red. Peter?"

"Here, boss," Peter said, tossing him another magnet.

"And when you came back through the gate?" Derrick asked.

"Someone followed me at least to the meadow," Oliver admitted. "If I hadn't been looking for his blade in my back, I wouldn't be breathing."

"Same magnet?" Peter asked. "Or do we need two?"

"Two," Derrick said. "We'll toss one if it turns out to be the same lad."

"We also need to know if that person knows about the gate," Cameron said with a frown.

"Or he might just have been following Ollie by chance," Peter offered. "Or one of his incarnations, rather."

"No matter," Derrick said. "We'll keep our eyes open and station ourselves at appropriate spots."

And with that, they were off in strategy mode. Oliver watched those four men then gather around the board and discuss the whole operation as if it had been a stage play with movements they were blocking. He caught an inquiring look from Derrick at one point, but shook his head. He'd already replayed the whole scenario in his mind scores of times and landed exactly where he was: back in the future without the one thing for which he'd gone to the past. He was happy to let them take a crack at it and potentially see something he'd missed.

"Two plans," Derrick said, stepping back and looking over the board. "We'll need a primary and fallback, just in case."

"We," Oliver echoed. "What do you mean, we ? You can't come."

Derrick turned and faced him. "No choice. Sam ordered me to go with you."

Oliver would have gone to find Derrick's wife and first scold her for being willing to put her husband in harm's way, then hug her for being so kind to him, but all he could do was look at his best mate and shake his head. Just once.

"I'll go," Ewan volunteered.

Oliver hardly had the wherewithal to smother his surprise. That was an offer he hadn't expected.

"With all due respect," he said carefully, "this is for all intents and purposes medieval Scotland we're headed back to with swords and witch hunters and many people who will want you dead."

"Sounds like a rough night in Glasgow to me," Ewan said with a yawn. "I'll manage."

"Ewan—"

Oliver heard Cameron clear his throat and he turned to look at his freely chosen laird.

"My lord?"

"I know we all want him dead more often than not," Cameron said with a faint smile, "but he's more observant than you give him credit for being."

"And what," Derrick managed in a strangled voice, "are you saying?"

"What he's saying," Ewan said pleasantly, "is that you are a gaggle of dolts who had no idea what you were looking at all those years you worked for him. I, if I might be so bold, am not so stupid." He paused. "I'm also the one who picked up the phone when Moraig called, then drove Alistair to her house after which I drove both of them to hospital in Inverness."

Oliver staggered. He tripped over Derrick who had also staggered and found himself sitting in an untidy little heap with his boss on Cameron's office sofa. He looked at Derrick, then at Ewan.

"My ears are going," he said faintly.

"I won't offer details you both are incapable of understanding," Ewan said archly. "I'll just say that I know Ian MacLeod very well and John Bagley keeps my Claymore in the back of his studio so I don't have to carry it around like a Year Four lad totting his lunchbox."

"When?" Oliver asked blankly. "When did you find out anything?"

Ewan rolled his eyes. "I grew up here in the hall. Old Alistair was also my great-uncle, which you should know if you don't. Did you think I hadn't paid attention to happenings in the clan?"

"And you didn't want the title?" Oliver managed. He shot Cameron a look. "Before, I mean."

"I would have had to fight Derrick over it and that might have mussed my manicure."

Oliver felt his eyes narrow. "You're responsible for the mani-pedi, aren't you?"

Ewan only returned his look mildly. "When one has spent, as I have, an enormous amount of time becoming proficient with a wide variety of weapons including steel, one's hands occasionally require attention lest the fairer sex complain."

Oliver shuddered. "Shut up, I beg you."

"And nay," Ewan said, making Cameron a brief bow, "I never wanted the title. I was thrilled when Cameron hopped over all those centuries to take up his rightful place yet again." He smiled briefly. "As for the rest, anything for a brother, aye?"

Oliver nodded sharply, because that was better than looking around for a handy corner in which to bawl like a bairn. He looked at Cameron who only smiled.

"Go take a nap in front of the fire for half an hour," Cameron said, nodding toward the great hall. "You already know what needs to be done, but we'll have a proper schematic plotted out for your approval. You and Ewan can fly down and be there well before dusk."

Oliver would have protested, but he found himself hauled up from the sofa and shoved out the office door. It was shut in his face, so he supposed he had no choice but to leave his mates to their discussion of magnets and Highlanders with swords and eejits with books to complete.

He imagined the best use he could make of his time was indeed to nap even for a few minutes, so he walked across the hall, then cast himself down on that very comfortable sofa he'd used more than once in the past. He closed his eyes, then felt Mairead sit down with him.

He was almost certain he could feel her hand on his head.

"I love you," he said quietly.

"I love you as well."

He smiled a little in response, then considered his afternoon. He would listen to whatever his mates had to add to his plan, pretend he'd offered Mairead an unexceptional kiss on his way out the door to go to work, then he would do what needed to be done, simply and perfectly.

He had no other choice.

He circled around the far side of Moraig's hut just before dusk, Ewan directly behind him. He supposed they were hidden well enough, dressed in black with ski masks over their faces and minimal gear shoved in cargo trouser pockets. If nothing else, they would frighten the holy hell out of a few lads who definitely deserved it. He looked over his shoulder, had a curt nod in answer, then turned his mind to their plan.

It was beautiful in its simplicity and terrifying in the possibility of having a single wrong step send the whole scheme spiraling out of control. He did, however, have absolute faith in his ability to memorize things, and he knew from adventures in the present that Ewan was far cannier than he let on. Having Ewan with him in superspy mode was almost the same as having Derrick there.

He heard the low conversings of lads coming up the path to Moraig's and wondered how he'd been too stupid to notice that the first time. What he also hadn't interpreted properly was that it was Lachlan himself shouting at them from what he gathered was the edge of the forest. The only thing he remembered properly was that it was indeed Tasgall shrieking that he'd caught sight of the fugitives coming toward them.

Oliver wished he'd been quite a bit less polite in the past to Mairead's brother.

"Timing still good?" Ewan murmured.

"Still good," Oliver said quietly. He was very grateful that their closed-circuit communications of earbuds and mics seemed to work in whatever century they found themselves.

And if that knowledge wasn't enough to merit a few ticked boxes in his damned book, he didn't know what was.

"I'm going to have a proper scream after this," Ewan muttered.

Oliver smiled to himself, then continued to listen until he heard the unmistakable sound of clansmen announcing that their unwitting guests had arrived. He held up his hand, waited, then dropped his hand in the pre-appointed signal.

"Mark one," Ewan said quietly. "Three… two… one…"

Oliver slipped with him around the east side of Moraig's house and flattened himself back against the side of the croft. He heard himself clunk his head against the threshold, heard the shouts that accompanied that, watched whichever clansman his second incarnation had beaned with a rock go sprawling, then looked at Ewan.

"Let's go."

Ewan nodded shortly, then stepped forward to become the diversion he absolutely needed.