Page 15 of Bewitched Before Christmas
And present day disappeared.
Chapter Eight
Christmas Past…
For a moment, Lola tried to fight the vision. She wanted to stay. But as always, she had no choice and her world shimmered and darkened and was gone.
And she was cold, so cold.
She was in a stone room, with an earth floor and it was dark, the only light from the stub of a candle, that guttered and smoked so the air was hard to breathe. At a guess, the past not the future.
A woman sat on a cot bed, her arm around two young girls. Two more sat beside her, blankets wrapped around their shoulders. A dark-haired boy squatted on the floor; arms wrapped around his knees.
“Can we light a fire, ma?” one of the girls asked.
“Don’t be stupid,” another replied. “There are patrols about.”
“Is it really Christmas tomorrow?” the first asked.
“It is, darling.”
“Like we used to have. When da was with us, and there were presents and lots to eat and fires everywhere.”
A look of sadness flashed across the woman’s face but was quickly gone. “Just the same,” she said. “All you need is a little imagination. Close your eyes and picture the tree. Red and silver—it’s in the corner almost as tall as the ceiling. A holly wreath on the door. And there’s a log fire in the grate. Red velvet curtains keeping out the draft. Thick rugs on the floor.”
The door banged open, and they all jumped.
A boy rushed in. He looked to be about eight years old, with dark red hair and clear green eyes and a too-thin face. His expression both fierce and scared.
“There are patrols around the castle,” he said. “But I got past them. The Sassenachs canna catch me.” He’d been holding his hand behind his back now he drew it forward with a flourish revealing two dead rabbits. “Happy Christmas.”
Lola blinked her eyes open. Lachlan was on his knees beside her, his hand gripping hers.
“I saw it,” he said. His tone held a sense of wonder.
Well, that had never happened before. Could it be a side effect of him drinking her blood? She wished she knew more.
She looked into his clear green eyes. “That boy? It was you?”
He nodded. “And my ma and sisters.” His lips curved up. The first smile she had seen on his face. But his eyes were sad. “Morag, Maidie, Katrine, and Jessie.”
And for the first time she heard a faint Scottish burr in his voice. The wonder had faded, replaced by a melancholy.
“And your brother?” she asked, remembering the dark haired boy, sitting on the floor.
“Gabe was my foster brother. His family all caught the pox and died when we were four, and my da took him in.”
“What happened to them?” She had a feeling it was nothing good.
He got to his feet, thrust his hands into his pockets. Why did she think this wasn’t going to have a happy ending?
“It was Christmas. We…I was sure there wouldn’t be another patrol.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “The next morning—Christmas day—ma lit a fire to cook the rabbits. The redcoats came. I was out hunting with Gabe—two rabbits wasn’t a lot to feed seven of us. When we got back, the soldiers were already gone. They’d killed them all. Ma still had da’s old musket in her hand. My sisters were children, the youngest was three years old. And they killed them anyway. Bastards.”
She sniffed, her eyes pricking. His memories made her childhood seem wonderful. She would never moan again.
“What happened to you both?”
“We stuck around for a while. It was easier just feeding the two of us. Then we joined one of the clan armies. Gabe’s da had been a Macleod.” He shrugged. “We survived. Many did not.” He gave another shrug of his shoulder. “Hey, it was hundreds of years ago. It’s the past. What does it matter?”
