The Inscription by Pam Binder Page B

of them together. She put her hands on the cool panes of the leaded glass.
    “I don’t know why you are trying to help me.”
    The rushes crunched beneath his feet as he walked toward her. “All who find their way to Urquhart have my protection.”
    Amber turned. He had drawn an emotional mask over his features. She decided he probably would be a great poker player, but she suspected there was a hidden agenda. No one was that nice, not even this guy.
    “So, what you are saying is that you would immediately ask any stray woman, who you pull out of Loch Ness, to marry you?”
    “Nay lass, not all.”
    She felt as though a giant, prehistoric butterfly, like the ones her parents talked about, had taken flight in the pit of her stomach. Her emotions were starting to careen out of control as Lachlan left the room. She stared at the closed door. In the few relationships she’d been in, she was always the one who set the pace, intensity and duration. Already she felt a difference with Lachlan and it scared her. There was one way to make sure things didn’t go any farther. She must find her way home.
    Amber returned to the hearth. Okay, so she had somehow managed to travel back in time to 1566 without the aid of a star ship. That was four hundred and thirty-four years into the past and she had no clue how it had happened. She paused. Don’t panic, there was an explanation for everything.
    First of all, it was probably a dream. She thought of Lachlan, the cookroom and the bathtub. Well, so it’s a sensory-packed, Technicolor-type dream, complete with a leading man who had thrown her into a tail-spin. The dream theory was as solid as a sieve. Or could it be part of some legend her aunt was always talking about? There were some pretty amazing things that went on in the fantasy world of myths. She shook her head and ruled out the notion. Too far-fetched.
    Next idea; time machine. The chance that she would have noticed if she’d stepped into an H. G. Wells contraption was pretty good. The only thing she’d walked into, or rather been thrown into, was Loch Ness. She remembered the sensation of being pulled through the water. She snapped her fingers. Of course, why didn’t she think about it before. The answer was speed. Einstein believed that if you moved faster than the speed of light you could travel through time. One of her students had brought her an article about a physicist, Stephen Hawking, who had tackled the same theory. The only problem with the idea was she had fallen into the water, not onto some futuristic spaceship capable of traveling faster than the speed of light. The dream theory was starting to gain ground again. What she needed were facts. And the only way to get answers was to search Urquhart for clues.
    Old castles were notorious for their hidden chambers. This one was probably no exception. There should be a lever to a secret room. Amber paced back and forth in front of the fire. The walls rose to twice the height of a normal room and were covered in vibrant tapestries. She’d have better luck predicting the weather in the Northwest than finding a hidden chamber.
    She rubbed the back of her neck and went into the adjoining room. In the center was the wooden tub with fresh dry linens lining the bottom and sides. On the far wall were two doors. One led to the bathroom and the other had a wooden bar across it. She smiled. Perfect. A door with a lock. A great place to start.
    The corridor was shrouded in darkness. Lachlan raised his torch to illuminate the outline of the door cut into the stone. He had not visited this tomb-like chamber since the summer solstice and the joining ceremony between Sarah and Madeline. With the sudden appearance of Amber in Loch Ness he needed to examine the clan’s secrets contained within.
    He reached the door and felt above the outline of it on the top edge until his fingers came in contact with a metal bar. He pressed down and stepped back. The door opened slowly, exposing a