Love Beyond Time (Morna's Legacy Series) by Bethany Claire Page A

myself? It wasn’t me he was kissing . I was sure that wouldn’t cut it.
    Dread turned to fear as the dank and dirty smell of some place far below ground reached my nostrils. I turned my head to see a row of dark cells, as empty and foreboding as the look on my husband’s face. He carried me down to the last cell in the farthest corner of the room, which could only be described as a dungeon, and roughly threw me onto a stone seat that was part of the back wall. My back hit with a force that sent pain shooting up through my head, and tears unwillingly filled my eyes.
    “Don’t ye dare cry, ye wee bitch! Ye have no one to blame but yerself. What do ye expect me to do? Ye let me take you naked to me bed, and then the same night I find ye in my brother’s arms! Ye are a liar and a whore, Blaire! I’ll continue to protect yer father’s territory for my own father’s memory, but I will never lay eyes on ye again. I will not have a wretch like ye as lady of my keep!”
    His hands were trembling and his face was deep red as he took in a deep, shaky breath and turned away. He threw the door shut and locked it in place, leaving me shaking and gasping as I tried to stop sobbing.
    * * *
    Hours turned into days, and I started to fear that my placement here was not a temporary arrangement made out of his initial anger at finding me in Arran’s embrace. By my count at least four days had passed. A total of eight meals, two a day, had been brought, as well as plenty of blankets. Someone had come to empty my chamber pot three times daily, and I always had plenty of water to drink.
    It could have been much worse, and I was certain that for anyone else who had ever been placed here, it had been. Still, I was accustomed to central heating and air, at least three meals a day, and regular showers. Not to mention a daily dose of television . . . and toilet paper. As far as I was concerned, my pleasant, fantastical coma dream had turned to the worst kind of nightmare. A nightmare that I now firmly believed was not a dream at all, but a state of reality I couldn’t begin to understand.
    Always an over-thinker, I had learned through the years that it was best if I kept busy. Limiting my time spent analyzing and thinking about things too much helped me to stay content with work and a home life spent entirely alone.
    Once the initial shock of being tossed into the dungeon had worn off and I realized that Eoin wasn’t coming back to get me, I was left with nothing else to do but think. The dizzying emotional highs and lows, the elusive mentions of Blaire that I didn’t understand, everything was far too complicated for me to dream up on my own.
    These oddities alone should have been sufficient, but it was the events leading to my imprisonment that finally forced me to face the truth. More than once, I had been awakened from a light sleep, which means, I had been sleeping. The first time, I’d put it off to medication, but it seemed impossible that I would enter some sort of coma dream, dreaming the same thing, over and over again.
    I truly was in 1645 Scotland. Truly in the castle and surrounded by the people my mother had spent her entire life studying. Every time I had felt panic begin to take over, every time some unpleasant thought had tugged at the back of my brain, it had been this realization trying to break through. I had given my greatest effort to push it away. Even the wildest imaginary scenarios seemed more favorable than this startling reality.
    If I believed I was in a coma, there was hope of escape. Hope of returning to my life, my home, my students. Hope of seeing my mother again. Without that hope, I couldn’t begin to comprehend what was happening, how I had ended up here, and what the rest of my life would look like.
    However irrational, I was completely unwilling to give up that hope. Coma or no coma, I would escape from this prison and find a way to get back home. I knew it had something to do with the portrait I’d