Time Travel Romances Boxed Set Read Free

her own eyes. The prophecy was a lie, after
all!
    But before Aurelia could argue, the whirling
iridescent cocoon surrounded her and caressed her, lifted her so
high that she could not even feel the weight of her father’s hands,
let alone see the troubled blue of his eyes.
    She could not leave him! She would not leave
him!
    But Aurelia was to have no choice. She
faintly heard the clash of steel on steel, she struggled to join
the fight to defend Dunhelm, but felt herself swept away. She could
see nothing but thousands of shimmering lights dancing all around
her.
    And then Aurelia knew no more.

    *

Chapter One

    Dunhelm Castle
    March - present day

    The thorny brambles had no chance.
    The hedge clippers Baird had borrowed from
the groundskeeper were fiercely sharp and he wielded them with
characteristic determination. The brambles, though, refused to
surrender without a fight. Baird had never seen brambles grow so
big, so tangled or so robust.
    They must be ancient, like everything else
at Dunhelm Castle.
    Another massive thorn bit at him and Baird
cursed under his breath. No wonder the groundskeeper had refused to
clear this corner! Talorc could blame local superstition but the
truth was that he was just avoiding a miserable job.
    It was raining this morning, as it had
rained every day since his arrival at his new holding, but the
light drizzle didn’t bother Baird. He was getting used to
Scotland’s wide variety of rains, as well as the national refusal
to let poor weather change plans for the day. After all, the skies
could change in the blink of an eye.
    What wasn’t changing was the way Baird felt
at Dunhelm, and he wasn’t having an easy time getting used to that.
He felt as though nothing else mattered in the world except Dunhelm
and his being here.
    Baird felt at home in the old ruins.
    For a man who had never had a home, who had
been certain he never wanted one, and who had always made a point
of not settling anywhere for any length of time, this was more than
unusual.
    It was downright weird.
    Baird meant to put a stop to Dunhelm’s
strange effect on him, and he was going to do it today.
    Dunhelm Castle - or what remained of it -
occupied a jagged point of an island dropped into the misty gray of
the North Sea. Although the grass was as level as a bowling lawn
where Baird worked, rocky cliffs fell unevenly to the crashing sea
beyond the encircling stone walls. There was a beach on the east
side of the peninsula, though the wind was cold enough to flay the
skin of anyone foolish enough to swim there.
    All around Baird were the walls, the
crumbled ruins that once had been towers and halls and kitchens.
The wind from the west whistled through the ruins, and at dusk, the
castle seemed alive with whispers of forgotten times. Baird did not
consider himself an imaginative man, but Dunhelm seemed to pulse
with the heartbeats of all the people who had lived here over the
millennia.
    He wondered whether it was the age of the
place that entranced him. Certainly, he had never owned anything a
thousand years old. And he couldn’t think of any other reason why
one sight of Dunhelm had been enough for him to make his decision.
It was almost as though he recognized the castle from some
long-forgotten dream.
    But that would have been irrational and
Baird Beauforte was a supremely logical man.
    All the same, from that very first glance,
Baird had known that this was the property for Beauforte Resorts to
establish its toehold in the European market. He told himself that
this was finely honed instinct at work, an understanding of the
market based on years of experience. A logical recognition of
opportunity.
    But even to Baird’s own ears, that claim was
beginning to ring hollow.
    One thing was for sure - Baird had never
felt such satisfaction in signing his name to the contract that
would make a property his own.
    It was good that he was so committed to this
place, for Dunhelm was the largest renovation Beauforte Resorts