by Mariah Stone
He kept staring at her, and, if she was right, he seemed less skeptical. There was empathy in his eyes, and he seemed more relaxed.
“We were close,” she said. “My mom was my idol, my hero, my best friend. Though my dad was an amazing man, too. A bit of a mad scientist type.” She chuckled. Though she was sure Angus didn’t know what that meant, she offered no explanation as she wanted to keep telling the story.
She turned to him, putting her knee on the bed. “David and I were staying with my mom’s sister, Aunt Lucy, and my uncle Bob. They had only three kids back then, and we felt very welcome for a couple of days. Then, on the way from Scotland to Atlanta…” Her memory pressed on her skull from all sides like a helmet made of cast iron. “Their plane had an accident and…it crashed.”
She stopped talking and had to breathe for a moment as the grief, the loss tightened around her chest in a painful vise.
“I dinna ken what any of that means,” he said softly. “Except crash.”
“Planes are like huge carriages that can carry hundreds of people and fly from continent to continent. I know this all sounds completely insane to you, but basically all that means is people found a way, in the future, to fly. It requires a lot of resources, like iron and fuel—oil that burns and creates energy for the thing to fly.”
His eyes widened. “I am sorry, Lady Rogene, but going into a thing made of iron that burns oil and can supposedly fly sounds like a death wish.”
Despite herself, she grinned, and her pain lifted and lightened.
“Yeah, it is pretty crazy to think that those things can be safe, but generally, they are…”
She trailed off as a heavy silence hung between them. Generally, they were.
Only not always.
“Engine malfunction…” she said hoarsely, fighting another wall of despair. She pressed out a smile through tears. “Accidents happen. Horses stumble and fall, too, don’t they?”
She knew she was beginning to ramble, to rationalize and evade her grief, which she often did in her own head.
“They do,” Angus said.
Without breaking eye contact, he walked to her. The mattress sank as he sat on the side of the bed. As though someone had turned on a radiator, she began warming up. And it made the next words that she wanted to say easier.
“We got the news in the evening,” she said. “David was already sleeping. I remember it vividly. That ancient clock above Aunt Lucy’s fireplace showed nine thirty-seven when the phone rang. My cousins and I were watching a late-night program while Aunt Lucy was cleaning the kitchen.”
He frowned, and Rogene shook her head, berating herself for not explaining what any of that meant. “Sorry. Imagine a large black object with a moving picture on it.”
Angus blinked and winced. “All this sounds like a faerie land to me.”
She grinned. Strangely, even the worst memory of her life began brightening and gaining colors as she was imagining what it sounded like from a medieval Highlander’s perspective.
“A faerie land…” she said. “All those things sound like magic, don’t they? But, funny enough, it’s science that makes them possible. Not magic.”
“Science…” His eyes were sharp and curious on her. “What is that?”
“Well…it’s about how the world works. What air consists of, how fire burns, how to measure if it’s warm or cold. In the future, there are fridges, machines that keep food cool so that it doesn’t spoil.”
He nodded. “Like root cellars.”
“Yeah.” She smiled. “Like root cellars.”
He blinked. “I’ve always wondered how the world works. I ken ’tis the creation of God, but all those things… I’ve always suspected there must be a more logical, rational explanation. I’d like to ken how it all is explained.”
Rogene smiled at him. She knew he was a smart man, naturally smart. He lacked education, couldn’t read and write, but her brother struggled with reading and writing, and he was one of the smartest people she knew.
“I’d like to tell you everything I know,” she whispered and covered his large, warm hand, lying on the bed, with hers.
As always, there was that jolt of electrical energy between them, only this one was softer, smoother.
“Thank ye,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to be able to read and write.”
“I’d love to teach you.”
His eyes were black and shiny and intense under his long eyelashes and thick eyebrows. The side of his face where Euphemia had lashed the whip was swollen and bruised, and he had the start of a black eye, but it didn’t make him look ugly—not at all. On the contrary, he looked even more masculine and sexy…a bit of a rogue. She wondered, if he had been born in her time would he have become a powerful businessman, or a great leader, maybe—reforming the political and legal system to protect the weak?
“What happened when the…phone…rang?” he asked.
The memory returned, but it wasn’t as dark and as hard anymore. Somehow, she had more distance from it, more strength to deal with it. “My aunt picked it up and talked, and then she leaned against the wall and slid down on the floor. She was pregnant, and her belly was big and round. She stared at me with wide eyes full of pain and sadness and fear. And”—she choked a little—“even disdain, I think.”
“Disdain?”
“My uncle and she were our only relatives, so she knew what my parents’ deaths meant. She had three kids of her own, another on the way, and she’d just gotten two more mouths to feed.”
Rogene sighed. There had always been this tension between her mom and Aunt Lucy. They were sisters, but her mom had always been “the smart one” or “the educated one.”
“Over the years, she’d have another,” she said. “So she eventually had seven children to take care of, to feed, to help with homework. And my uncle had to support all of us. Five is already a handful, and of course, their own kids came first. David and I were always second. Which meant, I took care of him this whole time.”
His eyes warmed. “I ken what ’tis like.”
“I’m sure you do…from what I heard.”
“Were ye safe?”
“Safe? As in, was I abused? No, thankfully I was not. Ignored, mostly.”
He stared into space for some time, thoughtful. A muscle under his eye twitched.
“That’s how I learned to not rely on anyone but myself,” she said. “David has a learning disability—it’s called dyslexia, which means he has difficulty reading and writing.”
“Oh.”
“In the beginning, we didn’t know, so he got bad grades and complaints from teachers. When he got diagnosed, he got assigned a special teacher who taught him ways to cope. I helped him do homework, learned all those exercises with him. He’s still doing amazing, given he learns in a different way. But he’s too smart for this disability, and he’s suffering because of it, I know that.”
Angus sighed and chuckled. “I can relate to the feeling, lass. And I think ye’re right nae to rely on anyone but yerself.”
“Well, it comes with difficulties. I have problems with my PhD because I don’t trust people. Especially when it comes to my mom’s research. My supervisor told me that because I won’t let anyone work with me on my research, I’m failing. And I may not graduate. They may take away my scholarship, which would mean I wouldn’t have any means to support myself and David.”
Angus nodded. “Ye do have yer brother to go back to.”
She bit her lip. “I do.”
“Ye have yer duty,” he said slowly. “I can relate to that more than ye ken.”
Their eyes met again and something passed between them—heat, desire. There was also tenderness and regret in his steel-gray eyes.
And an understanding. A connection that ran deeper than lust and longing.
A feeling of being known.
Chapter 19
The beautiful lass by his side was a sight worthy of a lifetime. Her story woke up something he’d neve
r realized he wanted.
To share about his worst experience, too.
His family had witnessed it for years, and yet they rarely talked about it. But he wanted to tell her.
Could he trust her with this? Could he tell her about the worst humiliation of his life?
As she was telling him about time travel—he felt it, the truth of her words. No one could come up with all those lies. No one could create all those stories of science and machines and phones. And he’d seen it with his own eyes, the thing that made those pictures, as she’d called them. It had shone in a way he’d never seen anything shine before. And if that wasn’t magic, he didn’t know what was.
So, no matter how strange and ludicrous it all sounded, he believed her. Hard facts—her clothes, her speech, her phone—and the connection to her that he felt in his heart made him trust her.
The thought brought him both relief and pain because it meant he was falling for a good woman, not a thief and a spy. But it also meant that their time together would soon come to an end. It meant she didn’t belong in this time.
She didn’t belong to him.
The thought was like a dagger that someone drove right into his heart.
She’d soon leave. She did have her own duty she had to attend to, and he understood duty all too well. He was about to make himself a prisoner of a hard choice, following his own duty.
“How so?” she asked. “How can you relate? Is it because of your father?”
He nodded. “Aye.”
Gathering his thoughts, he lay back on the bed and put his hands behind his head.
“My father was someone who demanded a lot of attention,” he started. He felt her shift and sit against the pillows next to him. The soft warmth of her hip brushed against his side. He stared at the dark wooden canopy above them. He remembered one particular night, after Raghnall had angered their father so much that Father had chased him away and banned him from the clan.
Raghnall was gone, and there was nothing Angus could have done. He remembered lying in this same bed, staring at the canopy boards with a grave intensity, feeling acutely that his brother’s bed, which had been here, too, was empty. Despite his anger and distress, he’d breathed lightly as his cracked rib hurt him. Studying the dark paneling above his head, he’d wished that he’d had the strength in him to rebel against his father and chase him away from the clan instead of Raghnall. That he’d followed his heart and not his duty to his father and his laird, to be loyal no matter what.
He could have been the laird himself then. He could have spared his mother and his siblings the pain and grief and emotional suffering as deep as physical wounds.
“He’d always been a difficult man,” Angus continued. “He liked to talk of himself a lot. He’d always been the best landowner, the best warrior, the best father… There was no one better than him. And if someone contradicted that… If Raghnall said that he’d shot an arrow right into the target three consecutive times, Father would say that it must have been a coincidence and that it was hard to be as good an archer as himself. If my mother said she admired the sermon of the priest in Dornie, he’d say that the priest had obviously missed the correct Latin pronunciation of this and that word. No one could be more perfect than he was, and if they tried…” He chuckled. “His fists, his knees, and his feet weren’t the worst of what he could do. His words wounded more deeply.”
Rogene blinked. “He sounds like a narcissist.”
Angus frowned. Her head was above him, and her eyelashes looked especially long from this perspective. “A narcissist?”
“Yeah. People with a narcissistic personality disorder have a huge sense of self-importance. They don’t feel empathy for others and demand attention and admiration.”
He rose on his elbows and sat up, leaning on the headboard. “Disorder? Like a sickness?”
“Well…in a way, yes. Only a mental one. I’m not a psychologist, of course, but I know that usually people who suffer from it have very low self-esteem deep inside, and they guard it in their perverse ways.”
Low self-esteem? It seemed that there was no one with a higher regard for himself than his father. Anger roared in Angus. How could this be possible? She couldn’t be right. He shook his head once and ran his fingers through his hair to calm himself down.
“I doubt that, lass,” he said as he leaned on his elbows, which rested against his knees. “And even if ’tis, it doesna change anything. It doesna give me back the years of living in a twisted family where there was just one rule: whatever Kenneth Og said was law. And that law changed every day like the wind.”
He shook his head, the middle of his chest tightening as the memory clawed at his mind.
“The night I realized I had to stand up to him was deep winter, the time when the wind wails in the through the windows and the snow melts on their sills. I was thirteen then. Father sat in the warmest spot by the fireplace, and I remember a golden glow around his dark, graying hair like a crown. I thought if Father could see himself, he’d be very pleased. Despite the puffiness of his face and a belly as big as a barrel, he was a handsome and strong man.”
Oh, so strong. Angus knew it well. The bump on his nose hadn’t gone away after being broken twice. Once, he’d had a broken rib, but he’d still had to work in the smithy and train on swords.
“Mother sat by Father’s side,” he continued, “working on another embroidery, squinting and wincing as she brought the fabric closer to her eyes. If Father told you to do something, you did it, no matter how little light. It was so quiet in the great hall. In winter, and especially in such a storm, there’s nothing to do except huddle by the fire. Father sat on a great chair, Mother on a small chair next to him. Laomann was carving something, sitting by his side. Ever Father’s pleaser, he was always near, but Father found even that irritating from time to time.
“‘Stop with yer constant arse-licking,’ he’d boom. ‘Ye will be the chief after me. Ye need to grow a spine.’
“Raghnall, who was eleven, was playing with a puppy in the other side of the hall. Six-year-old Catrìona was sitting by my mother’s side and working on a small embroidery of her own—a cross. Mother prayed with Catrìona every morning and night, and my sister thought God was one of the family members—though invisible—but kind and protective.
“Sadly, God didn’t manage to protect her from the wrath of Kenneth Og Mackenzie.
“And I…I eyed the chess table. I’d always wanted to play chess, but Father had called me stupid and said that all my huge body was good for would be to become the first meat in a battle. I was unworthy of knowledge, he’d said.”
Rogene shook her head. “That’s such an awful thing to say.”
“He’d done worse. I was so lost in my own thoughts that I wasn’t aware of a heavy glance that landed on me.
“‘Tired of sitting like a log, Angus? Doing nothing?’
“No one looked directly at me or at Father, and yet everyone stilled
“‘What do ye want me to do, Father?’ I asked.
“Father’s face lost its contemptuous-bored expression and went completely still. I realized I had been wrong to ask that. To ask anything. A question meant defiance.
“‘How about going and scrubbing the stables, huh, lad?’
“‘Nae in the storm, Father,’ Raghnall said.
“I cringed. Raghnall, ever the rebel. No matter how many times Father had tried to beat it out of him, he never could. Even at eleven years old, Raghnall wasn’t afraid to stand up to him. My father’s gaze on Raghnall chilled me.
“‘And whyever nae, lad?’ he said. ‘Are ye saying I dinna ken what one can do in a storm and what one canna?’
“I kent the evening wouldna end peacefully. Raghnall walked towards us, the stick he’d been throwing to the puppy still in his hand. With my stomach in knots, I realized it looked like a weapon. By God’s blood, he didn’t look eleven at all. My wee brother had more courage and spirit than an army of grown men.
&nbs
p; “Father rose, casting a shadow from the fire that danced and distorted on the stone floor.
“‘Ye wee shite,’ he muttered, ‘ye need to be taught a lesson.’
“Another beating? God’s arse, Raghnall had just had one the day before. As I always tried to calm the situation down, I said, ‘Father, please. He only meant—’
“‘Shut up,’ Father barked.
“Mother looked at us with worry. She’d aged so much in recent years. She was pregnant again, but she looked like an old woman with a big belly, nae like a glowing woman with child.
“‘Ye ken what a punishment was from my own father, lad? Ye must think me cruel. In the old days, my da would have put yer sorry arse out in the cold and let ye freeze, lose a couple of toes to frostbite. How would ye like that?’
“‘Better than being in a room with ye,’ Raghnall said.
“Mother gasped. Catrìona’s eyes were as wide as two full moons. Laomann paled.
“By God’s bones, Raghnall was playing a dangerous game. He hadn’t so openly challenged Father before.
“‘Brother, take yer words back,’ I whispered. ‘Before ’tis too late.’
“‘’Tis already too late,’ Father said as he marched towards Raghnall, harsh decision written on his face. A vein began throbbing in his temple. He came to my brother and tried to grab him by the collar, but the lad ran away. Father’s cheeks reddened. His upper lip curled up in a soundless snarl. Even more determined, he marched towards the other end of the hall where Raghnall was.
“The puppy barked—worried barking, confused barking. Mother stood up from her seat, helpless whimpers coming out of her mouth. Worried, Catrìona rose to her feet as well and held the skirt of Mother’s dress.
“My own heart drummed. I suppressed the urge to grasp Father’s clothes and stop him.”
He remembered thinking he could. Taller than most, and strong and solid, he often felt like a boulder, or a post for people to lean on. Being the middle child, he didn’t react as strongly to Father’s whims and mood swings. Where Laomann ran to satisfy Father’s requests, and Raghnall did everything to defy him, Angus went for observation and trying to find the way to calm the situation down for everyone. Which was probably why Father had called him stupid—because he didn’t have something to say every time. He also didn’t want to make it worse, especially not for his siblings and his mother.