Whispers
Romance Books

A Time For Dreams by Jen Holling

EXCERPT

Drochaid Castle, Scotland, 1980

At first Audrey thought there was nothing special about the castle. It wasn’t any different from the dozen or so others she’d seen over the past year. Her mother had a passion for castles, said it was her Scottish roots. There were all the normal castle things to see: chapels, tapestries, goblets, portraits of people with strange, lashless eyes, and always something that had belonged to some long-dead king.

Then she saw the corridor. A wide arched doorway and a hall. At the other end, she could just make out flickering lights.

She pulled on her father’s hand. “Let’s go there.”

“Where?” He looked blankly in the direction she pointed. “That’s a wall.”

“Are you crazy?” She walked closer to it and pointed again. “There’s a hallway right there.” He raised his eyebrows. “Whatever you say, pumpkin.” He rejoined the tour. Audrey looked from him to the corridor. No one else seemed to notice it either. Intrigued, she entered.

The sound of her footsteps echoed strangely. The corridor was illuminated somehow, but she couldn’t see any lights. Each step she took seemed to push the arched doorway farther away. Suddenly the end was directly in front of her. She stepped into a passageway with torches burning on the walls, then looked back down the corridor. She could see the bright electric lights and a few people standing around. That was odd. The corridor appeared much shorter than it actually was.

She hesitated for just a moment before deciding to explore. This must be part of the castle no longer in use. But if it wasn’t being used, why bother lighting the torches at all? A thrill of excitement ran down her spine at the thought of castle ghosts and finding passageways long out of use. Maybe she’d find the hidden treasure or a magic sword from the times of King Arthur.

Audrey hadn’t been walking long when the sound of footsteps caused her to panic. She would be in trouble if anyone caught her here. She looked around frantically for someplace to hide. Not seeing any means of escape, she started back the way she had come, intending to dart back into the mysterious passageway that would lead her to the tour in progress.

She looked over her shoulder and saw a man approaching. She started to run, then stopped. It wasn’t a man after all, just a tall boy, and some of her fear left. He was bigger than she was, but his face was young. He saw her and stopped, too.

He was fifteen or sixteen years old. But there was something odd about him. His clothing was strange. He wore pants that ended just above the knee, with hose covering his knees and calves and ugly shoes that looked more like shapeless slippers. His shirt or coat or whatever it was had a high collar with a frilly little ruffle on it. She covered her mouth and snickered.

He cocked his head to the side and stepped closer. “Pray tell, what amuses you?” Audrey stopped laughing but kept her hand over her mouth, her eyes widening. He sounded like the other Scots, but different somehow.

“You…your clothes…” She dropped her hand. “Is there some medieval fair going on around here? They didn’t say anything about it on the tour.”

He frowned. His hair was reddish-brown and wavy. A curl fell across his brow. As he came closer, she could see his eyes were an unusual light-green color.

“What manner of dress is this that you wear? It isn’t proper for a lass to be roaming about in—breeks?” He phrased the last word as a question, apparently not knowing what to call her jeans. “From whence do you hail? Your speech is odd.”

Audrey swallowed hard. Was this one of the ghosts she was so eager to find? Surely not. He looked real, solid. She reached out and touched his arm. He didn’t move, just watched her action with interest.

“What business have you here? I haven’t seen you about before.” He looked her over studiously.

“I…I’m lost,” she lied. “I’m looking for my father.”

“Who might he be?”

“Captain Daniel Williams.” His frown deepened and she hurried on. “We’re stationed at Croughton in England. We’re here touring the Scottish castles.”

He looked alarmed and grabbed her arm. “Your father’s an English soldier?”

Audrey shrank away from him and started babbling. “Well, he doesn’t like to be called a soldier. Airman really. See, he’s in the air force. You would call someone in the army a soldier or a grunt, maybe. Or is that a marine? No, those are jarheads.”

He looked at her in utter confusion, shaking his head slightly. “Come with me,” he said, and started pulling her. She jerked her arm away, and he made a grab at her. She felt a pull at the chain around her neck and then she was free, running back to the corridor. She heard his footfalls behind her.

“Wait!” he yelled.

Once again the hallway seemed to extend, her running getting her nowhere but farther away; then the doorway was there in front of her. She stepped back into the bright electric lights, slightly out of breath from the exertion and fright.

The tour had moved on, so Audrey hurried after them, looking furtively around for the strangely dressed boy. She spotted her parents in the midst of the small crowd of tourists and slipped her hand into her father’s. He smiled down at her.

She didn’t see the boy again or anyone else dressed like him. She was beginning to wonder if it had really happened. Had she talked to a ghost? Or had she passed out and had some strange dream? Her parents were looking in one of two glass display cases, and she stood close, afraid to stray far from their side.

“Look, Audrey!” her father cried excitedly. “It looks just like your locket.”

Audrey peered into the case. Sure enough, there it was. Looking old and tarnished and chainless. The hair on her neck prickled as she read the placard next to it:

“Sixteenth-century locket from the Countess of Irvine Collection.” Her hand slowly rose to her throat, only to find it bare.

Scotland, 1980

That night, after returning from the castle, the dreams began. Sometimes Audrey saw the boy, except now he was a man. She knew it was him from the eyes—those unusual light-green eyes could belong only to him. His hair was darker and short, but his clothing was the same. Sometimes he looked at her earnestly, other times sadly. She could never hear his voice, though his lips moved and she knew he was trying to tell her something. She also saw a woman. She was always richly clothed in velvets and silk and praying with a rosary. Then came the executioner. His face was dark and inscrutable. He held an ax, sharpened to a glistening edge. There were often variations in the chain of images, but it always ended the same way. The woman mouthed the only words Audrey understood in the whole dream.

“Sweet Jesus,” she would say, as blood filled her mouth and ran across her white skin.

Drochaid Castle, Scotland, 1570

Brenden lay in bed, staring at the back of his brother’s head. He would be lying on his back, but since his father had practically beaten the skin off his arse, that wasn’t possible. Thinking about the beating made the heat creep up his neck.

He couldn’t sleep. The events of the day kept running through his head. Surely the lass hadn’t walked through a wall. “Witch,” he muttered under his breath, then froze. The blond head in front of him didn’t move, and he exhaled.

He hadn’t really believed there were English soldiers about, but he’d thought it a good idea to inform his father of the incident. To his surprise, his father not only had not believed him but had also accused him of stealing the locket and lying about it. A severe beating followed.

Afterward, Brenden covered every square inch of the castle looking for the lass but was unable to find her. Had it even happened? Could he have imagined it? He knew he’d seen her walk through that wall, her skin blending right into the stones as though she were made of air. He’d touched her, though, and knew she was real.

He’d thought she was sweet when he saw her. Her eyes were enormous and gray, gazing innocently at him. She looked about ten and wore such strange clothing. She’d commented on his own clothes as though they were odd to her. He frowned. He didn’t know what to make of the incident but planned to get the locket back.

He sighed and began drifting to sleep. His dreams were troubled, filled with strange images. She was in them.

Copyright © Jen Holling. All rights reserved.

I was born in Oklahoma and spent most of my childhood dreaming of leaving, going to faraway places that had castles and knights and dragons. I was a voracious reader, so this only fueled the desire to escape and see whatever else was out there (hopefully, castles and knights…).

Wanting to see the world, I went straight from high school into the Air Force. I met a few dragons in boot camp, and I eventually met my knight. True, his armor was Air Force blue, and he wielded a voltmeter and screwdriver, rather than sword and shield, but the principles of chivalry and honor were there, and that was enough for me. We have two beautiful daughters, Bridget and Sierra, and saw some of the world, well… we lived in Turkey for a year, and saw Europe as we flew over it.

I had been writing all my life, but after six years as an airman, I decided to get serious and do it full time. In the beginning it seemed logical that I should write military novels; after all, I had always been told "write what you know." But this just didn't fire my imagination. I took a break to do what I love-read historicals-hoping for inspiration.

I have always loved history. I am one of those people that read history books for pleasure. All this got me to thinking; maybe I shouldn't just write what I know, but what I love. The result is my first book, A TIME FOR DREAMS, about a military woman who travels back to sixteenth-century Scotland. The research for DREAMS has given birth to countless other ideas, both time-travels and historicals. One of those ideas, ONCE A BRIDE, is due out from HarperPaperbacks May 2000.

As for traveling the world . . . after we left Turkey, the Air Force sent us back to Oklahoma. I live about half a mile from my folks. I write during the day-when not chasing my two daughters around the house-and I attend college in the evenings where I study history.