Scotland to the Max

by Grace Burrowes

  “That’s the trouble with castles,” Michael said, scowling at the rocks scattered about the gap in the wall. “Damned things need defending. Lovey, where did I put my skin?”

  She passed him what looked like a goatskin bag of the sort shepherds used to carry water, and Michael squirted a stream of liquid into his mouth, then held the skin out to Max.

  “Have a nip, Maitland. Nothing like good Deeside water to refresh a working man’s energies. At least that hasn’t changed. What manner of enemy threatens our castle?”

  The castle belonged to the people, the people belonged to the castle. The concept would strike Americans oddly, but in Scotland, the notion had long created permanence in a dangerous world.

  Hence, our castle.

  “Nothing I can’t handle,” Max said. “My current challenge is to figure out a way to connect the castle and Hall without using dynamite.”

  Michael kicked a sizable rock. “You’d use blasting powder on the castle?” He might as well have said blasphemy powder.

  “No, I will not. No sane engineer would, but I need to get the two buildings functioning as one, or the choice to stay in Scotland will be taken from me.”

  The couple exchanged another look, one that held volumes of marital information and brought them to some shared conclusion.

  The lady took the goatskin bag from Max and jammed a cork in the top. “I refuse to squirt myself in the face with water as well, Mr. Maitland. Michael spent time in the Pyrenees and fancies himself quite the Continental swell.”

  Max was still learning the local turns of phrase, though the lady’s word choices struck him as old-fashioned.

  Michael blew his wife a kiss. “I’m your Continental swell, lovey. Always will be. You say Elias is happy with his new lady? They had a grand wedding up in the main hall. Had the place looking festive.”

  “You are not using that wee pebble to balance yon boulder,” the lady said, snatching a modest chunk of rock from her husband’s hand. “You are daft, Michael. Too much time on the Spanish plains. Ask Elias about the time he got lost in the wine cellars, Mr. Maitland. Poor lad had just buried his parents, and a more pathetic sight you never saw. He loves that castle, though. He must place a great deal of trust in you if you’ve been chosen to defend it.”

  “You heard the man,” Michael said, rearranging his rocks. “Elias is in love. Brodie men fall hard and permanently. Do ask his lordship about his adventure in the wine cellar. Gave us all a fright. I must say, whoever built this wall did a fine job.”

  “So modest,” his wife scoffed, though as far as Max knew, the walls in this valley had been built centuries ago, back when farming was a communal venture and stone was the only available building material.

  “Consider this,” the lady went on. “In former times, having a lot of servants scurrying about in plain sight was not considered the done thing, and yet, the Hall was built to be a family wing for the castle, in a manner of speaking.”

  “The first earl and his lady had seven children,” Max murmured, studying the castle and the Hall. From this angle, one sat directly below the other. If the Hall had been built a few stories higher, or situated higher up the hill, then a skyway to the bailey might have been possible… Though hard to design aesthetically.

  Still, a skyway was possible. The Hall would need a tower, the bailey wall an opening. It could work.

  “Seven children,” Michael said, wedging a bread-loaf-size piece of granite into the gap. “A fine, loud lot of Brodies, whom their mother doted upon, but didn’t necessarily want underfoot as they matured and started their own families. Nonetheless, a mama wolf would worry about her cubs.”

  British country manor houses had hidden stairways, priest holes, and secret passages—were famous for them, in fact.

  “I’ll leave you to your work,” Max said. “If I’m talking to Elias, whom shall I say was asking after him?”

  “Auld Michael and his lady,” the woman said.

  “I’m no’ so verra auld,” the man grumbled. “But do give Elias our regards, and good luck defending the castle. ’Tis a sorry day when a man’s alone with that task. Dearling, where’s my flask? All this mending wall has my throat parched.”

  Max left them to their bickering and rock-wrestling and resumed his hike around the base of the hill. The castle and the Hall were connected, by history, by family, by proximity. The hour was still too early in the States for Max to call Elias, but as Max completed his circuit—past hairy red cows chewing their cuds, sheep munching on summer grass—he felt a sense of hope.

  He should have questioned Michael and his wife more closely, asked them for any local lore or legend that related to the castle bowels or the building of the Hall. He made the full circuit of the hill and returned to his backpack on the porch steps only to find the diker and his lady assistant were nowhere to be seen.

  And the wall undulated across the pasture in a perfect, unbroken line.

  Jeannie basked in the lovely weight of sunlight on her closed eyelids. Was any sensation more benevolent than the warmth of sunshine gaining strength on a Scottish summer morning?

  She should get out of bed, of course. More to the point, she should wake Henry up. The wee pest had awakened shortly after Jeannie had finished her conversation with Elias, and the rest of the night had been a succession of catnaps, lullabies, and half-finished baby bottles.

  Henry had fallen asleep well after sunrise, and Jeannie had sought refuge in the earl’s bed what felt like five minutes ago.

  The mattress dipped, and the instant before Jeannie would have screamed, Max’s scent came to her. Woodsy, clean, freshly showered.

  “You’re not in America.”

  His hair was damp, his eyes tired. His smile was pure mischief. “I am in your bed. If that’s not okay…”

  Jeannie kissed him. “I want to hear why you aren’t in America, but later, Max.” Two condoms later, at least.

  He climbed into bed with her, not a stitch on him. “I’ve been thinking.”

  “I’ve been dreaming.”

  Max got himself situated between her legs, and the lovely man was already aroused. “I’ve been doing some of that too.”

  About damned time.

  Max was intent on that lazy, leisurely, stealthy lovemaking that made Jeannie frantic. She wanted no parts of that—this time. “We’re going to need a condom, Max.”

  He nuzzled her throat. “Soon.”

  “Now, before the scourge of Deeside wakes up. That baby had me on my feet half the night, which is why you catch me abed at this disgraceful hour. He’ll sense that you’re here and make a fuss, and—”

  Max kissed her on the mouth. “Right. Did you know that Scotland is a first world nation where all manner of conveniences are for sale?” He climbed off the bed, fished around in the pockets of the jeans draped over a chair, and held up a small box done in red plaid. “Whisky-flavored, no less.”

  “Max, if you are not back in this bed immediately…” Her threat evaporated as he unrolled the condom. He stood halfway across the room, out of tackling range, though the rug burns would have been worth the reward.

  “I still don’t know how to connect the castle and the Hall,” he said, prowling toward the bed. “But for damn sure I want to connect me to you.”

  As he crouched over her and Jeannie wrapped herself around him, she wondered if Max had referred to a connection in the temporary, erotic sense, or if his presence in her bed meant something more.

  He surged over her and into her, a masculine force of nature as cherishing as he was relentless. Jeannie mapped his body with her hands, caressed contours and textures into her memory, and met Max thrust for thrust and kiss for kiss.

  This loving was different. Max was present in a way he hadn’t been on earlier occasions. He was with Jeannie, as an urge to cry battled against growing arousal.

  “Don’t leave me,” Jeannie whispered, though she hadn’t meant to speak the words. She’d meant to communicate that plea with
her touch, with her passion.

  “I’m here to stay,” Max said, gathering her close. “With you.”

  The big bed rocked in slow rhythm with them, a galleon on waves of unspoken emotion, and everything—sunlight, hope, desire, pleasure—converged inside Jeannie with all the fears and angers she’d been taking to bed for too long.

  She keened, she wept, she shook, and she clung, the force of her cataclysm wringing her out as sunlight scatters the evidence of a storm. She tucked her face against Max’s throat as his hand stroked gently over her hair.

  “You okay?” He sounded concerned, but calm. A mere bout of erotic hysteria wouldn’t scare him off.

  “I hated to think of you so far away.” Not what she wanted to say.

  Max kissed her temple. “You were afraid I wouldn’t come back.”

  “Yes.”

  He would soon slip from her body. Jeannie stole a few more moments of absolute bliss in her lover’s arms, then patted his butt.

  “Up you go. I missed you.”

  He kissed her nose. “I missed you too.” Then he was off the bed and strolling into the bathroom. “Is Henry teething?”

  “Probably.” What a delectable backside. “We have to get you into a kilt one of these days.”

  “Maitlands are Lowlanders,” he said from the bathroom. “The tartan is green, black, blue, yellow, and red. The next time I’m in Edinburgh, I’ll stop by one of those fancy kilt shops and get measured.”

  Jeannie’s heart beat a slow tattoo against her ribs. “A fancy dress kilt will cost you a fortune.” A fortune Max ought not to spend, unless he meant to stay—truly stay—in Scotland.

  “No more than a tux. I wear mine about three times a year.”

  A conversation held across the bedroom as morning sun poured through the windows and afterglow sang through Jeannie’s body should have been a mundane pleasure. One of the small gifts any couple could enjoy while the baby slept.

  Jeannine nonetheless felt a sense of portents, of her life shifting on its axis, a heavy portcullis lifting.

  “What do you think of connecting the Hall and the castle through a skyway?” Max asked, climbing back onto the bed. “Add a couple floors to the Hall, punch a hole through the curtain wall? If the skyway angled straight back from the Hall, the current profile of the two buildings and their arrangement on the hill wouldn’t change from most perspectives.”

  I think I’m in love with you. She knew that for a truth beyond fact. “A skyway is like a bridge over dry ground?”

  Max lay back and looped an arm under Jeannie’s neck. “It’s a possibility. I took a hike around the entire hill and for the first time considered the Hall from the fields that ran along the main drive. The roof of the Hall sits about thirty feet below the foundation of the curtain wall. The buildings seem farther apart when viewed from the parapets, because the top of the castle walls sits another thirty or fifty feet above the bailey.”

  He fell silent, and Jeannie could feel him thinking. No sound came from across the hallway, suggesting Henry had got his days and nights truly confused.

  “This is how I am,” Max said. “I get stuck on a problem and it consumes me. Just smack me if I’m being oblivious.”

  He spoke as if he were offering advice for the long-term, and the thumping of Jeannie’s heart quickened.

  “You’re here to fight for the castle. That’s why you’re not in America, isn’t it?”

  “I’m here to fight for the castle,” Max said, “and for my job, but mostly, Jeannie Cromarty, I’m here to fight for us.”

  The words washed through her, brighter than sunshine. “Explain yourself, Mr. Maitland.”

  He wrestled her over him, so they were face to face. “I can get another job if the wheels come off this one. I can keep adding to my sister’s trust fund, some years more than others. I can explain to those who need to know why Sutherland is being such a horse’s backend, but if I fail here…”

  Jeannie sifted her fingers through his hair. “It won’t be your fault. They can call their board meeting, Max. You can’t stop them. I studied all the by-laws and articles and whatnot last night.”

  “They can hold their board meeting, but Maguire is unhappy, and he’ll be here tomorrow. I don’t want to have to be the guy who explains to Henry why the family castle sits in ruins, or worse, why the build-out turned it into a horror instead of a living monument to his family’s history.”

  “Elias would never forgive you if that happened.”

  “Elias chose the lady over the castle,” Max said. “I don’t have that luxury, because you would never forgive me if the castle fell into the wrong hands. I’d never forgive myself.”

  Jeannie folded down onto his chest, and his arms came around her. “I won’t forgive myself if the castle deal falls apart either. You’d have a hard time staying in Scotland for very long without a job that requires you to be here.”

  “This occurred to me as I was waiting to board my flight.”

  “So you’re truly not fighting only for the castle.”

  He started a pattern of slow caresses on her back. “I’m fighting for the castle, for my professional reputation, for the crews who depend on me to keep the whole thing from going off the rails, for Henry’s legacy, and for the people in the village whose livelihoods will improve if the castle thrives. Mostly, though, I’m fighting for us. I want a future with you, Jeannie, and the best way to keep that possibility alive is to prevent Sutherland from banishing me back to Maryland.”

  Yes. Yes, yes, yes. “So what’s your strategy?”

  “Right now,” Max said, “I want to make love to the scourge of Deeside’s mother. Then we strategize.”

  Jeannie had just kissed her assent to that plan when the scourge himself began to fuss in his crib across the hall.

  Sunday got away from Max.

  Henry was fussy, Jeannie was tired, and Max’s brain would not wrap itself around the concept of a skywalk between the Hall and the castle.

  “A skywalk is certainly novel,” Jeannie said as she made her tenth circuit around the kitchen with a grumpy Henry in her arms.

  “You mean it doesn’t fit the medieval castle or the baronial hall.” Max replied, staring at the sketch he’d made. “I also haven’t figured out how to poke a hole in the curtain wall that won’t ruin the profile of the summit from most perspectives. Give me that baby.”

  “Gladly.”

  She passed him Henry and took a seat at the table. “You could build a covered walkway from the top of the skywalk around to the postern gate.”

  To Max’s way of thinking, covered walkways were an acceptable compromise between the eras he was trying to connect. The Georgians and Victorians had glassed-in conservatories, greenhouses, follies, and other structures. A walkway with that feel—a space between natural and man-made—could work.

  “Maybe.”

  Henry swatted him on the chin. “Mah.”

  “Are you saying Max, little dude, or Mama? Do you mind if I take Henry out for a walk?”

  “Am I welcome to join you?”

  Jeannie’s question illuminated another aspect of the day making Max unhappy. In bed, he’d offered Jeannie the closest thing to a stirring declaration he could muster—he wanted a future with her—but she hadn’t replied with the same assurances in Max’s direction. She’d been pleased, she’d been passionate, but had Max spoken too soon? Too honestly?

  She’d said she loved him, but she was an affectionate woman. What did I love you mean when people came from different sides of an ocean? The odd disjunction in their conversations throughout the day suggested Max had been too something, though Henry’s crankiness wasn’t helping.

  “You are certainly welcome to join us,” Max said, “or to grab forty-five minutes of well-deserved rest. A hot soak, or a cup of tea. I kept you busy yesterday, and this will be your only day off this week.”

  Unless, of course, Sutherland fired her along with Max at tomorrow’s board meeting. Maguire could
probably protect Jeannie’s job, at least temporarily, but Max hadn’t asked it of him.

  Yet.

  Max wrestled Henry into a jacket, a process complicated by Henry’s ability to sprout six extra arms, each one more wiggly than the last. Jeannie produced a wool cap that Henry knocked off as soon as she’d got it on his head.

  “So much contrariness in such a wee man,” Jeannie said. “This is why people have only children.”

  How many times had Max’s mother wished aloud that she’d had only one child? “What time is it?” Max asked as he coaxed Henry into the infant carrier.

  “Going on five. I can start dinner while you’re hillwalking. What did Maura say about rescheduling your visit?”

  Henry escalated from making faces to ba-hoo, ba-hoo’ing. Max jammed the hat back on his little head, and that Didn’t Help.

  “Maura has not returned my calls or my emails.”

  “Ah.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Jeannie got a teething biscuit from the breadbox and passed it to Henry. He took one look at it and would have flung it across the kitchen, except Max caught his fist and stopped him.

  “No. You either gum that thing, or wave it around like your light sword, but you’re not throwing it against the wall and making one more mess for your loyal minions to clean up.”

  Henry broke into affronted wailing. Jeannie gave Max a dirty look, and Max almost pitched the biscuit himself.

  “You’re worried about her,” Jeannie said, lifting Henry from the infant carrier. “She’ll be angry with you, is that it?”

  “She’ll be worse than angry. Maura doesn’t have a lot of friends, doesn’t have much of a social life, but she has a serious temper. I asked Elias and Violet to take her out to lunch, though they’ll have to drive halfway to Baltimore to do it. For all I know, Maura refused to talk to them.”

  Jeannie peeled Henry out of his jacket and cap, which seemed to make him less unhappy. “Call Elias or Violet, then.”