A Kind of Magic by Susan Sizemore

certain.”
    Maddie glanced nervously between the pair. “Uh-huh.”
    “Enough of our babbling,” Rosemary said. “It’s late. We all need to get some rest.”
    Rosemary might not be too in touch with reality but she was right. Maddie was exhausted. She vaguely remembered being in the hall before she woke up in bed. She must have fainted and a flash of indignation shot through her at the realization that she’d let shock overcome her consciousness. Now that she was awake, she found she liked the idea of going back to sleep. Maddie let the woman take her hand. Let her lead her back to the box bed and tuck a warm woolen blanket around her.
    Maddie waited until the women had gone before she considered getting undressed.
    She hated sleeping in her clothes but she didn’t see any other choice. The top of the sweatshirt seemed too tight around her throat when she was lying down. She reached up her hand to pull it down and discovered it wasn’t the sweatshirt but the necklace that was bunched up around her neck. She sat up and felt for the clasp, only to have her fingers burned the moment she tried to unfasten it.
    “Ouch!” She rubbed her fingertips together and blew on them. She could feel the chain against her throat, warm and slightly pulsing. The feeling was not unpleasant but it certainly wasn’t normal. It was almost like an electric current ran through the metal.
    Maddie cautiously touched the clasp again. The only way she could describe the sensation when she did was that she felt a warning. It wasn’t something she could see or hear but a very physical, tactile impression. The impression told her that she better not try to remove the necklace if she knew what was good for her. Just as everything else today, it was totally weird.
    “This is impossible,” she complained. “This is an inanimate metal object.” Perhaps there was some molecular change in the metal that occurred during the time warp. Or she was imagining things. She didn’t know the cause. She just knew that the necklace wasn’t coming off.
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    A Kind of Magic
    Maddie decided to try not to think about wearing a willful piece of jewelry. It was too much to try to comprehend in her exhausted state. So she lay back down and tried to get some sleep. Oddly enough, it wasn’t hard for her to drift off at all. Something familiar tickled at her subconscious, making her feel warm and comfortable and safe. A faint scent lingered on the pillow and in the blanket. Just before she fell asleep, she recognized that she was in Rowan Murray’s bed and the familiar scent belonged to no one but him.
    Hunky hero he may be , she thought just before sleep completely overcame her. But he still isn’t Toby.
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    Susan Sizemore

Chapter Six
    “We’ve been through this before.”
    “Aye. But this time I’ll have my way.”
    This time he’d managed to get her all the way into the little church.
    She’d felt grubby when the women had woken her sometime before the break of dawn. Her loathing of her filthy state played right into their hands. They coaxed her into a wooden tub of steaming water and then into fresh clothes loaned to her from Micaela. They’d fed her fresh-baked bread and the best oatmeal she’d ever tasted. When Rosemary asked her to attend morning services with her, Maddie was lulled into a false sense of camaraderie. She saw no harm in joining the woman in saying her prayers.
    She’d forgotten about Rowan’s wedding plans.
    Until he grabbed her by the arm as she came in the door and marched her to the altar. All the Murrays were in the chapel waiting for her of course. It was an ambush, a trap, and she walked right into it. The priest was in front of her, the Murray clan was behind her and the adamant laird himself was at her side.
    “You have to marry me,” he said, as if reading her mind. “There’s no way out.”
    She wished he hadn’t put it that way. She considered kicking him in the balls again.
    However, she wasn’t a violent