A Laird to Hold

by Angeline Fortin

  “Laird, I thought I’d lost you forever. I couldn’t bear it.”

  “Mo chroí, ye will ne’er lose me.”

  Laird kissed her lightly to seal the promise and wrapped his arms around her, binding her against him.

  But she had lost him. The grief she’d experienced had been so devastating. A remnant of the pain lingered in her heart even as the memory slipped from her grasp.

  What had happened?

  Where was Donell?”

  Scarlett asked the question aloud but no one had an answer. “Where did Donell go? He was hurt. Badly.”

  “So was I,” Connor reminded her, his tone strained with the memory. “Yet I am here. Unharmed.”

  “Not just hurt. Oh, God, Connor, you were dead! I saw…oh, God, I just can’t…!” Emmy cried out and hugged him. Words of love tumbled from her lips. Promises to never leave his side again. To never let him go.

  “Shhh, my love. We are safe. Whole.” Connor smoothed her tangled hair back from her face and whispered back. His thumbs caught the tears at the corners of her eyes. He pressed his lips to her forehead for a lingering kiss. Their expressions were both of devastation over the memory.

  Whatever had transpired, they’d been given a gift, Scarlett realized. A second chance. But wasn’t that what Donell had always been about?

  She glanced up at Laird, met his loving gaze. Raking her fingers along his bristled jaw, she thanked God, Donell, or whoever had orchestrated that chance. She wouldn’t let it go to waste.

  “I love you, Laird. I swear I’ll never walk out another door as long as I live without making sure you know it.”

  “Och, mo chroí, ye’re assuming I’ll e’er let ye oot of my sight again,” he whispered huskily. “I love ye so.”

  He caught her in his arms and kissed her again. Sweet and soft. She’d savor each moment with him until her dying day and never forget what it was like to lose him.

  He was here. Whole. Hers.

  Grief faded and joy burst in Scarlett’s heart. He swung her around until she was laughing.

  God, it was good to be alive.

  Scarlett

  “That’s an unbelievable tale,” Rhys gasped after they ended their narrative of the afternoon’s events.

  “Tell me about it,” Scarlett agreed from where she sat perched on the arm of the chair. Laird had their girls in his arms next to her. Holding them. Cherishing them.

  Their return to the hospital had been met with relief from everyone there. Now that relief was compounded, knowing what might have been lost.

  What had been lost.

  “Do ye think Donell did it?” Hugh asked, holding his wife’s hand tight. As if he, too, had lost his true love and been presented with a second chance himself.

  “It had to have been him,” Emmy maintained. “Who else could have managed it? I guess it really is Donell’s will that we be together.”

  She and Connor were perched close together on the windowsill. She hadn’t strayed from Connor’s side since they’d left the motel. Scarlett doubted she’d ever let him leave her sight again.

  Scarlett envisioned more of the same from herself and Laird. The old adage that you didn’t know what you had until it was gone had been proven in spades to Scarlett twice.

  There was no doubt they would all savor what they had a bit more fully. Live as completely as possible to wring every ounce of love out of it as they could.

  No matter where…or when, they were.

  Donell had been severely injured. There was no telling when he’d be back to send them home.

  Or if he would at all.

  “So, with Donell gone…”

  “Och, lassie, dinnae count me oot just yet.”

  Donell appeared near the door looking no worse for the wear. Scarlett hurried to his side and hugged him hard despite his objection. She’d never be suspicious of the old man again.

  “Enough of that!” he complained, though he patted her shoulder when she withdrew.

  “What happened?” Scarlett asked.

  Laird and Connor bombarded him at the same time. “Is Jameson dead?” “Do we need to fear him still?”

  “Nay. To both.” Donell shook his head. “He lives but ye needn’t fear his interference in yer lives any longer. I took him back a wee bit farther than the last time. He’ll ne’er be bothering anyone again.”

  “What is a wee bit farther?” Hugh wanted to know.

  His inquiry was drowned out by Rhys asking, “What do ye mean the last time?”

  “I removed Phillip from interfering wi’ my plans once before,” Donell confessed. “I brought him to a time where I thought he could do nae harm. Aboot twenty years ago.”

  “That’s all?” Emmy gaped at him.

  Donell shrugged. “Seemed far enough to me at the time. I thought time would heal his rage, soften his heart. I ne’er expected it to fester so.”

  Scarlett absorbed that information. “So, where is he?”

  “At his motel.” He held up a hand to stall their gasps of outrage. “Or where his motel will be in aboot a couple thousand years. Long before any of ye are e’en an itch in an ancient ancestor’s pants. ‘Twas a violent time. I dinnae expect he’ll last long. And mayhap he’ll die more painfully than wi’ a dagger to the throat. But then, ye ne’er ken.”

  He looked so sad for a moment, Scarlett felt sorry for him. “What was he to you?”

  Donell sighed. “Once upon a time, he was a collaborator on my project. A friend. Also, my son-in-law. He wisnae always as ye know him.”

  Everyone in the room gawked at him, but Emmy spoke up. “Do you expect us to feel sorry for him? He hurt a lot of people today. He killed…”

  She reached for Connor’s hand. The bewilderment they’d experienced earlier still beyond their understanding.

  “I remember Laird dying,” Scarlett told him quietly, the grief clawing at her heart once more. “You were nearly dead, too. What was that?”

  “’Tis an echo ye remember, lass.”

  “An echo?”

  “Aye, of another time, ye ken? A life lived once but no’ again.”

  A glance around the room told her none of the others understood what he was saying any better than she.

  Then Rhys frowned, scratching his jaw thoughtfully. “Are ye saying ye changed the timeline?”

  “Yer book did come in handy, lad.” Donell looked impressed. “Aye, I reset time to the moment before it all went to hell. Before any harm was done to ye…or to myself, no’ to put too fine a point on it. I took Jameson away before ye came. What ye’re remembering, ne’er happened.”

  “But we do remember it,” Scarlett pointed out. “How is that possible if it never happened?”

  He rocked his head from side to side. “Usually the memory isnae powerful enough to carry across the change. Yer grief and pain was strong enough to linger.”

  Scarlett frowned. “You’ve done that before?”

  “Many times.”

  “To us?” Connor clarified.

  “Aye, many times,” Donell confirmed with a nod. The room fell as silent as a lecture hall, the audience engrossed with the oration. “No’ everything works oot as planned the first time around. Adjustments need to be made to get them right. Timing is everything. One wee second can send a ripple down the timeline, mucking everything up. Like a domino effect. Time is nothing to be toyed wi’.”

  An ironic statement coming from a man who’d spent a lot of time trifling with it. Nevertheless, the implications of his explanation made Scarlett’s heart skip with hope. “Can you reset it again? Change it so Tyrone doesn’t die?”

  Donell hung his head and her heart sank. “Nay, lass.”

  “Why not?”

  “I did reset the clock on this day,” he explained. “A dozen times o’er. Each time wi’ different consequences. Some far more disastrous. With many more casualties. The outcome of this one was the least grievous, I assure ye.”

  Claire’s arm slipped around Scarlett’s waist
with a comforting squeeze. Scarlett hugged her back. If Hugh being shot twice was the best the day had to offer, they should both be grateful with the aftermath.

  Perhaps one day she would be.

  Just not yet.

  “Why not just go back and take Jameson out of the picture long ago?” Emmy interjected. “Then none of this would have happened at all.”

  “Ye’re all alive, are ye no’, lass? ‘Tis the best I could manage. I’m nae god.”

  “So we’ve heard.”

  “In truth I would hae liked to remove him, lass,” Donell admitted. “If I’d been able to pinpoint him, I would hae. I told ye Jameson wisnae the only one working against me. Others made it impossible for me to track him. Until today when I was able to follow him to his motel. With the same information ye had. The address.”

  Hugh tapped his forefinger against his lips. “How is that possible when ye can see everything else?”

  “As Emmy has forced me to admit many a time, I’m nae god,” Donell answered. “Or a magician.”

  “Then I think we’d all appreciate finally knowing what you are,” Emmy told him. “I think we deserve to know.”

  They all turned to him expectantly, waiting for a response. When it came, it was not the answer Scarlett anticipated.

  “I’m a mere man, lass,” he said. “Human, same as ye.”

  “But?” Scarlett prompted him for more.

  “But from a future time. Far from now.”

  The revelation elicited gasps around the room.

  “I spent my life wi’ one hand up to my elbow in science and wi’ love of history in my heart,” he went on. “Together wi’ other inventors, we developed the technology to travel through time. Rudimentary, at first, like the elementary device Hugh and Claire are familiar wi’ from Dr. Fielding’s experiments. Refined o’er time to be able to move a man through a manifested quantum singularity nae larger than a speck of dust. ‘Twould look like magic to any who witnessed it. I’ve spent many a year traveling through time. Living in the past, meeting all of ye…and others.”

  He reached into his pocket and withdrew the object Scarlett had retrieved for him earlier. They all moved closer to see it. It lit up again at his touch.

  “A push of this will return me to my time. From there I can program any destination. Or pre-program other points in time to take me directly from one to the next.”

  “What about sending me to the past and back again?” Scarlett asked. “You were nowhere near me when that happened.”

  “Me either,” Emmy added.

  Donell shrugged as if he were tiring of the whole conversation. “In yer bag ye’ll find a gold disk aboot the size of a pound sterling. If ye could find it among all that nonsense ye carry aboot wi’ ye, that is. ‘Tis a marker I slipped in there when we first met. Wi’ it, I can track or move ye anywhere from my home base.”

  Appalled, Scarlett wanted to dig it out of her purse immediately and stomp it into bits. She might feel for Donell now, but that didn’t mean she wanted him to be able to yank her chain whenever it pleased him.

  “Why? Why have you done all this?”

  It was the final piece of the puzzle. The final question she had for him. The one they all had.

  “I’ve had a second chance to set my failures to rights,” he said, which was no answer at all. “’Tis no’ for ye to ken or to worry aboot. I’ve spent years browsing through time. Tweaking this and that to set time straight. I look at ye and I’m proud of what I’ve done. Proud of ye.”

  “And our baby?” Claire inquired, returning to Hugh’s bedside. “Hugh insists our baby is part of all this.”

  “Aye, lass. It is.” Donell nodded, his elfin features folding into a smile for the first time. “Because of yer bairn, my time will be saved. Billions of people saved.”

  One over the other, they all besieged him with more questions, but Donell was finished with being so forthcoming. They had the necessary answers, he insisted. More than they really needed to know.

  “Now the time has come to send ye all back home,” he said at last. “Then I believe I’ll take a much-earned vacation in the early-nineteenth century, far away from all of ye and yer constant nattering. Are ye ready then?”

  To Scarlett’s surprise, Emmy and Connor both hesitated. Reluctant to leave. As was she. They’d become a family over the past few weeks. Close as brothers and sisters. It would be heartbreaking to leave them all behind.

  “I can’t believe I’ll never see all of you again,” Emmy said.

  Unexpected tears filled Emmy’s eyes. Scarlett had never thought to see the usually bold woman so emotional. But then, she was too. Sorrow tugged at Scarlett’s heartstrings.

  Emmy brushed her tears away then glanced up at Connor with a tender smile. “Yes, I’m ready to go back where I belong.”

  Donell nodded and they all braced themselves. Nothing happened. To the last, they looked at him for direction.

  “Och, ye’ll have to be taking the car back to Dunskirk first, aye?” He waved a hand petulantly. “Time, no’ space, aye? Besides ye dinnae want to go back dressed like that!”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” Emmy complained.

  Why would he, Scarlett thought, when he so enjoyed having another hoop for them to jump through?

  Scarlett

  It was dark by the time they made it to Dunskirk.

  They’d waited for the baby to be officially released from the hospital and Hugh as well so he could join in their goodbyes. And they’d retrieved a few belongings from the hotel, including their original clothing and car seats for the baby and Hermione.

  They’d stopped at a secluded spot along the way to change their clothing. Donell was right, it wouldn’t do to shock everyone at home with her showing up in pants.

  Their two cars pulled up side by side in the empty parking lot. At least there wouldn’t be an audience to witness their coming and going this time.

  A moment after their arrival, Donell joined them, having preferred his peculiar method of travel to their more primitive one.

  “Ready then?” The question wasn’t really much of a question. More a move for action.

  Emmy embraced Claire, kissed her cheek and smiled at her affectionately. “I’m so proud to know I’ll have such a kind and wonderful great-great granddaughter.” She turned to Hugh and kissed him, too. “Take good care of her.”

  “I will,” Hugh vowed and returned her kiss. He shook hands with Connor.

  More farewells, tearful yet joyous, as they all hugged and kissed one another. No impossible promises to write. To call.

  Scarlett held on to Hugh the longest, thanking him again for all he’d done for her girls. She knew she’d leave a piece of her heart here when she returned home. That was okay. She’d learned there were more rewards than risks in caring deeply.

  Emmy even hugged Donell.

  The cantankerous old man backed away, glassy-eyed. “None of that. Are ye ready?”

  “Yes—no, wait!” Scarlett ignored Donell’s impatient eye roll and turned to Rhys. What was in her mind would be difficult for her heart to accept. “Rhys, I think you should stay here.”

  Shock hardened his handsome features. “What? Why would ye suggest such a thing?”

  Why? Fate had been unkind to Rhys. First putting him an intolerant time when it came to homosexuality. Then taking the life of the young man he’d anticipated sharing the rest of his life with. In the twenty-first century, he’d thrive free of societal confines and have a chance to truly be himself for the first time in his life. He deserved it.

  Besides, he loved it here. More than any of them, he’d fit perfectly into the time. Maybe better than she ever had in her whole life. A little old-fashioned, perhaps, but adaptable.

  She tried to explain it to him but he shook his head, jaw clenched. “I want nae part of a world wi’ a jackanapes like Jack Prescott in it.”

  He was hurt now. Stubborn, but he’d move on eventually with or without Jack.

 
“I want you to have a future worth living, Rhys,” she said quietly, looking up at his beloved face. “I want you to be able to love freely. Openly. I want to know you are truly happy.”

  He shook his head again, every line in his body set. “Are we no’ friends any longer? The verra best of them?”

  A tear splashed hot on her cheek. “We always will be. Always. I love you, Rhys. I always will.”

  “Then why push me away?”

  “Sometimes we need to sacrifice for the welfare of others. I only want what’s best for you.”

  “Scarlett’s correct, brother.” Laird’s burr was weighted with emotion, his eyes suspiciously wet, but he nodded in agreement. “Ye hae a chance for the life ye deserve here. A better life. I’m sure Hugh and Claire will be happy to guide ye through it, aye?”

  The couple nodded in unison, their joy at the possibility of retaining a slice of the friendship that had grown amongst them obvious.

  Rhys looked down at Scarlett, his fingertips gentle along the line of her cheek. Then he turned to Laird, meeting his gaze steadily for a long while. Hermione turned in Laird’s arms and reached for him. Rhys took her and hugged her tightly. Still holding her, he squatted down next to the baby ensconced in her car seat.

  “I dinnae ken if I can leave my fair lassies.”

  “But ye will,” Laird said softly.

  Rhys slowly nodded. “Aye, but no’ wi’oot knowing my wee niece’s name first.”

  Scarlett smiled up at Laird. “Halli. For Tyrone’s sacrifice. Halli Emily Claire Hepburn. And she’ll know about all of you. I promise.”

  Pleasure illuminated Claire and Emmy. Hugh seemed pleased, yet saddened, having known the name but not its origin. Rhys nodded and kissed the baby. He hugged Hermione one last time, then hugged his brother hard before handing the toddler over to him. Hermione clutched the magic wand he’d bought her in one fist, staring at him solemnly.

  He turned to Scarlett and she threw her arms around him. “I will miss you so much.” She sniffed back her tears and withdrew. Miss couldn’t begin to encompass the truth.