by L. L. Muir
“No. If I can’t forgive myself for what I’ve done, I won’t ask him to forgive me.”
“Is that it, then? The reason you greet so? Because ye canna forgive yerself?”
“I guess. No.” She shrugged. “I don’t know.” She had no energy left for thinking.
He nodded knowingly. “Ye’ve had a long day of it. Ye need to close yer eyes and rest a bit.” He took her by the shoulders and turned her toward the bedroom. “Go ye now and lie abed. Nothing will change but the weather while ye sleep. And I’ll give ye privacy, I vow it.”
“You vow it?” She giggled, then remembered the conversation they’d been having before Rick interrupted. He wasn’t even real. She spun around to face him. “Wait!”
He closed his eyes, shook his head, and turned her back around before pushing her through the door. “No waitin’. No thinkin’. Just sleepin’. I promise to be here when you wake.”
“But—”
“I said no thinkin’. We’ll talk later.”
“Talk?”
“Auch, aye. And we’ll maybe kiss a bit.” He didn’t allow her to turn. “But if ye think much about it, neither of us will sleep, will we?”
“What time is it?” She allowed him to steer her to the side of the bed. With the storm outside, she couldn’t even make a guess. Time had gone by at a dozen different speeds since the moment she woke up at Castle Murray while it was still dark outside.
“Time to sleep.” Her protector pulled back the blankets and covered her up after she tucked her feet in. Then he bent to kiss her. But instead of her lips, he swooped up at the last second and kissed her chastely on the forehead, then chuckled as he left.
She threw a pillow at him too late and it hit the door as it closed.
He peeked back in. “Sleep, lass. Through ‘til tomorrow if needs be.” Then he was gone.
~
Chelsea was wrong—it was possible to tell exactly what time it was when she woke up. No need for clocks or to see the position of the sun or stars. It was absolutely, straight down the middle, the dead of night. She couldn’t see her hand in front of her face and she panicked the way people did when they think there might be the slightest possibility they’ve gone blind.
She felt a good old-fashioned freak out coming on for a wholly unique reason.
Instantly alert, grogginess was not her problem. She knew where she was, so there was nothing wrong with her memory, or no after effects of the wine she’d had whether or not it had been drugged. And she wasn’t afraid due to the possibility that a real ghost might be in the next room—the ghost of a Scottish soldier from Culloden Moor, one of the most haunted places on the planet.
No. She was on the verge of freaking out due to the chance that said ghost might be gone!
“Mr. Fraser,” she said. Her voice sounded funny in the dark, so she cleared her throat and tried again. “Alexander!”
The door flew open before the echo of her voice died against the bathroom tiles, so he must have heard the first thing she’d said. The light from the next room was enough to prove she wasn’t blind. And the man breathing heavily, with one hand on the wall and the other holding the door open, proved he hadn’t left her.
With her biggest fear put to rest, she couldn’t think of what to say.
He continued to stare at her while his breathing calmed. “Aye, lass. What is it I can do for ye?”
“Uh… I woke up… And it was really dark… And I was afraid you had…gone.”
He walked quietly toward her. Her heart jumped and started pounding so loud she thought he might be able to hear it too. But he faced the bureau and pulled out the top drawer. After rummaging around for a few seconds, he closed the drawer and left the room, but didn’t shut the door.
So she sat there and wondered what in the heck was going on.
He appeared a minute later with a lit candle in his hand and it was then she realized he was missing his kilt! His shirt was plenty long, however, like an old-fashioned night shirt that went halfway down his thighs.
“If you had a long pointy cap hanging off to one side of your head, you’d be a younger version of Ebenezer Scrooge, waiting for the three Christmas ghosts to visit.”
“I am familiar with Dickens, and the plays on the television.” He didn’t sound too pleased about it. In fact, he sounded a little gruff.
“I’m so sorry I woke you. I should have gotten up and turned on a light. I just…kind of panicked.”
“Lass,” he said, bending to set the candle into a candle holder on the nightstand. “Ye didna wake me. I’ll not sleep away the two days I’ve been given. And I’m happy to be of some service to ye.”
Her head shook quickly all on its own. “You never said anything about two days! You only have two days?”
He tipped his head back and grimaced. “I didna mean to worry ye. Besides, I’ve an entire day left now. I’m certain I’ll manage something before my time is at hand.”
She scooted her legs to the side and patted the bed by her knees. He hesitated, then sat. He put a hand on the bed on the far side of her legs and leaned over her lower half.
“And what happens if you don’t do something heroic before your time is up?”
He tilted his head but said nothing.
Was the answer obvious? If he did succeed, he was going to go get the boy off the battlefield, then…move on to the next life.
“If you fail, you won’t be able to help the boy? Or you won’t be able to move on? Will you be trapped at Culloden Moor forever?”
He frowned and used his free hand to pick at the white tie in the center of a dark quilt square. “I reckon I won’t be able to see Rabby again, to ease his mind. I ken Soni will take great care with the lad, but he…trusts me.”
“Who wouldn’t?” She said it quietly, but his head snapped up. She’d just confessed that she trusted him too, she supposed. But he really shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, she’d called out for him in the middle of the night.
“Truth be told,” he said, and dropped his attention back to the quilt. “There was a lass, nearly three centuries ago, who couldn’t put her trust in me, even though we were to be married.”
Holy cow! She’d never asked him if he was married before. Of course, if any of this twisted fairy tale were true, his wife and family would have died a long time ago, but the idea of kissing a married man made her feel horrible!
“But you didn’t? Marry?”
He shook his head half-heartedly. “Her sister waylaid me in the barn, kissed me. I thought it was my Meredith, but it was Fiona. And the mean lass must have told her sister I’d intended it. Of course, I had no ken of what went on between them. But the next day I was given a note by Merri’s own hand, to meet her at the kirk wall at six o’clock that evening, that she could no longer wait to be married.
“The kirk wall was the place we often sat and spoke of how our lives would be after we were man and wife. It was natural she would wish to meet there. In any case, I bathed and put on my finery, prepared my cottage for the woman of the house, and got myself to the kirk wall.” He swallowed and stopped talking.
She didn’t want to ask the question, but how could she not? Now it was clear, by the reaction he’d had when he found out she was a runaway bride, that he’d been left at the altar himself.
What had he said, that all men are too trusting, until they’ve been betrayed?
She didn’t want to hear the rest, but she deserved it. So she asked, “What happened?”
He nodded, looked her in the eye, then leaned away just a little. The message was clear. He was back to disliking her again.
“I waited what seemed an hour,” he finally said, “but it couldn’t have been half that. And suddenly the church bell rang and the doors swung open. And there was my Meredith, clutching the arm of Paddy Ewing who smiled like the cat who’d spilled the cream. Merri craned her neck to see me, waiting where I’d been told. And the look in her eye was unmistakable. Pure hatred, it was.
“I was stunned, of course. Unable to move while the wedding party paraded past me. Her family avoided looking my way, but Merri stopped. While her new husband looked on, gloating, she tossed a small bouquet of flowers into my hands. Then she stuck her nose in the air and walked on. At the back of the pack was Fiona. She blew me a kiss and wink, and to this day I canna say whether she expected to have me for herself, or just didna want her sister to be happy.”
“Alexander! That’s horrible!” Chelsea leaned forward and gave his arm a squeeze before she remembered he wouldn’t welcome it. She pulled her hand back quickly and folded her arms. “Neither one of them deserved you. You’re such a great guy! Meredith was out of her mind not to trust you!”
Finally, he smiled, but it was a very sad smile. “And your Austin? Ye’ve nary an unkind word to say about him, lass. And I’ve been listening for it…with all my heart.”
He dragged himself to his feet and walked slowly to the door. With a hand on the knob, he faced her with a wide, fake, have-to-be-nice-to-the-tourists smile. “In only an hour or more, dawn arrives. I’ll fix ye a grand Scottish breakfast and we’ll…we’ll hammer out a plan for getting you back to your husband-to-be.”
Chelsea stared at the closed door for at least a minute before she lay back down. As she watched the candlelight dance on the ceiling, she had just one thought.
Meredith, honey, you were an idiot.
And from somewhere deep in her brain came a response.
Chelsea, honey, so are you.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
She woke to the sound of singing.
The voice belonged to her host. The deep rumble of a baritone poured out from under the bathroom door accompanied by the spray of the shower. It didn’t matter what the tune was supposed to be, there was no question it was off. And the words were sung in that impossible Gaelic language that she couldn’t believe anyone could understand—unless they lived hundreds of years ago.
Yesterday, she thought it was a fairy tale meant to distract her from her heartbreak, but by the time she went to bed, she was pretty sure it was true. In the bright, glaring light of morning, she didn’t know what to think.
The guy didn’t act crazy.
Okay, so his clothes were eccentric, his speech patterns, including his vows and words like mayhap, could just be a Scottish thing that wasn’t unusual at all. Heck, for all she knew, he was just an Outlander fan gone rogue.
Of course, she wasn’t about to let him know that she was familiar with the books and the cable show. She’d pretended not to know what he was talking about once, so she had to stick with her story. But damn! He could have walked off the set and decided to spend his vacation in character, to see if he could get some American chick to go all gaga for him.
Well, she nearly had. When he’d come into her dark room and headed for her, in that split second before he turned to the bureau to find a candle, she couldn’t admit what she’d been hoping for. Of course she wouldn’t have slept with the guy even if he’d been the star of the show. But she wouldn’t have minded some lip action worthy of the big screen.
She shook her head and tried to dispel the shadows and images of the night before. The way he’d stared at her, all out of breath, when he’d first burst through the door. The backs of his legs, below his long shirt, when he’d walked away. The way her breath had caught when he leaned down to kiss her goodnight, then planted his lips on her head. And that sexy little smile as he’d turned his head, knowing what he’d done to her.
Yeah. She’d come up with a perfectly logic reason for his odd actions. And if he had walked off the set of some Scottish film—Macbeth, maybe—that would explain why he was so convincing when telling his sad story. I’m a ghost from Culloden who was jilted at the altar.
But that wouldn’t explain what she’d seen—a guy leaning forward at maybe a 30 degree angle, supporting himself on nothing. It wouldn’t explain the rocks. And it wouldn’t explain why she felt, deep in her gut, that there was a clock ticking somewhere that would determine whether or not the spirit of a little boy would be able to finally leave a gruesome battlefield.
Even if it was all bull, even if someone came to the door and said, “Ha ha, the jokes on you,” she was pretty sure that clock thing wouldn’t go away. She would probably never be able to explain it.
Of course, she still had her own problems to deal with. It was mean of her to keep avoiding Austin, but their problems didn’t have a time limit attached to them. If Austin really wanted to marry her, to stay married to her for the rest of their lives, like he’d promised, then they’d be able to work things out once Rick was exposed for the snake he was.
But the fate of Alexander and the little boy would be determined in a day. If she was able to help, she was going to help.
Of course, other people would see that as an excuse, but she didn’t care. Until time ran out, she would just have to trust that Austin would understand. Eventually. And at the moment, trust seemed to be the magic word of the day.
The singing stopped and her heart started pumping overtime. What would she see when he opened that bathroom door?
A coward to the end, she scooted back under the blanket, pulled it up to her chin, and turned her head away.
The doorknob clicked and she froze.
“Good morrow, Chelsea,” he said, and chills shot through her from her feet, which were closest to him, to her ears. She glanced at the mirror and realized his reflection was looking her in the face. Wrapped only in a towel, he carried a pile of clothes in his arms. “May I have use of the bed, lass, to don my plaid?”
She sat up and sprang to her feet, averted her eyes, and hurried through the bathroom door behind him. She had to pee anyway.
When she turned the lock, she could feel the vibrations through the wood.
He was laughing at her, and what his laughter did to her insides turned all her newfound trust into a bowl of warm, melting Jell-O that couldn’t even be trusted to stay on the spoon.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Alexander used all the knowledge he’d gleaned from the tellie to cook Austin’s bride a proper Scottish breakfast. There were no mushrooms left, and he’d been unable to find any edible ones outside to replace those he’d used for Mushrooms with Parsley Mud the night before. He only hoped she would be thirsty, for he had plenty of juice, milk, and tea.
“You sure don’t cook like an eighteenth century man,” she said when she came to the table. “I kind of expected you to be roasting it all on a stick over a fire in the backyard.”
She was wearing the sheet again, but her shift poked out the bottom. Another layer between them, for which he was grateful.
“I know the clothes aren’t all clean, but the body is,” she added cheerfully. But she must have read his discomfort on his face, for she cleared her throat and tried again. “I mean, I had a shower and washed my hair. So, you know, I won’t stink or anything.” She ultimately dissolved into a blushing mass of damp curls and hid her face behind her hands.
He couldn’t seem to stop his hand from reaching for one of those curls and tucking it behind her ear, revealing part of that lovely face and inviting her to come out from behind her hand.
“We’ll neither of us stink, then.”
They shared a laugh while he put the plate of back bacon on the table. When he folded his hands together for grace, she followed suit, then peeked at him the entire time he recited the prayer.
They ate in companionable silence while he waited for her questions. He was so certain she would have some. But he was wrong. When their plates were clean, he wondered if she had forgotten all that had transpired the day before.
“I’ve been thinking.” She stood and began clearing the table. “What if I climb up on top of the roof and, you know, fall off or something? You can catch me. Save me from breaking my neck. Do you think that would work?”
Well, she’d at least remembered his quest. But what did she think about returning to Austin? He dared not ask
until his breakfast had settled in his stomach.
“Soni’s a canny lass,” he said. “She’d recognize a set-up in a trice, I’m fair certain of it. Besides, she likely has a plan. I must simply wait to see what that plan entails.”
Chelsea nodded and bent to the task of washing the dishes. “I’m good with waiting.”
A short while later, they strolled down to the glen to see about catching a fish for lunch. He used the fishing tackle he’d found in the house, added a worm to the hook, and dropped a line in the water just above a shadowy spot that ran deep and smooth.
“I was thinking.” The lass perched on the flat top of a large mossy stone. “This Meredith chick sounds pretty mean. It’s one thing to marry another guy, either because she liked him better or she was mad at you.” She toyed with the edge of the water with her bare toe. “But to invite you to watch? That was so mean! I think you dodged a bullet.”
Her gaze flew to his and she grimaced, no doubt sensing she’d said something insensitive to a man who had probably died from a bullet he hadn’t dodged. But he waved away her concern. His own death didn’t bother him much after all that time. Not nearly as much as the wound to his heart had, at least.
“Women are mean creatures by nature, of course.” He grinned when she gave him an indignant gasp. “Men are much more forthright.”
She rolled her lovely eyes. “And this is coming from a soldier? Men kill each other all the time. How can you say women are meaner than that?”
To avoid scaring away their lunch, he moved closer to the lass and lowered his voice. “To kill a man in battle is not so mean at all, to my way of thinking. There is something honest and simple about it. One man says I will fight to the death for what I believe. The other says I will fight to the death to prove ye wrong. And they fight. A promise given, a promise kept. One man survives and has proven his point. The other man proves himself with his own spilt blood. There is nothing mean about it.”
“The mean part is what happens to the women who loved the ones who don’t come back.”