Ever My Love

by Lynn Kurland

  She wasn’t all that surprised to learn they wouldn’t give her a refund on even what would be unused days. She was fully prepared to just walk away, but Nathaniel shot her a brief look and took her place. He leaned on the counter and smiled at the girl working there. Emma had to admit that if she’d been on the other side of that Formica slab, she would have given him anything he wanted. Whatever his faults and potential nefarious life activities might have been, the man was absolutely charming. No wonder he had so many women hunting him.

  “Surely we can work something out,” he said smoothly. “If not a refund, then an extension or a trade, aye?”

  Emma realized she was nodding in agreement, then rolled her eyes and stopped. The girl across the counter unbent, but only far enough to agree to put the rental contract on hold until Emma could perhaps get to another city in the south and pick up a different car. She wasn’t going to argue. She also didn’t think it was the right time to mention that she hadn’t planned to be in any other cities, never mind somewhere as far south as London. She took the deal, signed what was necessary, then slung her backpack over her shoulder and walked outside with Nathaniel.

  “I’m not sure how soon I can get to London,” she admitted. She looked up at him and resisted the urge to feel a bit faint. “I really hadn’t planned to go that far south.”

  “I hadn’t imagined you had,” he said, “but it seemed wise to throw whoever’s troubling you off the scent. Renting a car there might be a good piece of misdirection.”

  She considered. “I suppose I could try to get one of your fans to pick the car up for me.”

  He pursed his lips. “Don’t think that idea hadn’t already crossed my mind, but I don’t think you’ll need to fall on your sword quite yet. I’ll have my attorney send one of his errand boys to do your dirty work for you.”

  She smiled in spite of herself. “Very kind. And very expensive-sounding.”

  “Considering the vast sums of money I pay him for his services, I think the man can splash out himself for this. Let’s find a place to sit for a bit and I’ll make a couple of calls.”

  “Is there an art supply store nearby, do you suppose?”

  “I imagine so.” He paused and looked at her backpack. “No purse?”

  She was tempted to avoid the question, then decided there was no reason not to be honest. “It’s my go bag.”

  His mouth fell open a bit. “Your go bag?”

  “Yes,” she said simply. “Just in case.”

  “I don’t suppose you have chocolate and packets of crisps stashed in there, do you?”

  “No, just money, a copy of my passport, and survival rations. I have junk food in this other bag.”

  “Interesting.”

  She wasn’t about to tell him about Bertie Wordsworth, spy-turned-chauffeur, who had instilled in her the compulsive need to have that kind of thing always ready. It was better to let the identities of her father’s rather eclectic staff remain safely unmentioned.

  She let Nathaniel put her backpack in his car with her things from Mrs. McCreedy’s, then didn’t argue when he stopped a quarter hour later in front of a shop that looked as if it might have just what she needed.

  “Need cash?” he asked.

  She stopped with her hand on the door handle and looked at him. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “I have plenty.”

  “Exercising my rusty chivalry.”

  “It doesn’t seem all that rusty to me, but thank you, still.”

  He smiled. “I’ll settle the car nearby. Find me when you’ve finished.”

  She nodded, then got out before she could think too much about his offer and weight it with more importance than she should have.

  Rusty chivalry. She wasn’t sure she’d ever experienced even that. She wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, which perhaps said more about the sort of guys she’d been dating than she cared for it to. It was time to make a change, definitely.

  She browsed inside the shop for a bit, picked up a few things to use in keeping herself busy, then paid with cash. That she was having to do that was less frightening than it was annoying—and most likely unnecessary. The only people who had any idea what she was planning were unfortunately her parents. The only thing in her favor was that she hadn’t left them with an itinerary past where she intended to stay for the first week. Throwing them off the scent would be easy enough.

  She stepped outside and took a deep breath before she started thinking about that too much. She saw Nathaniel’s SUV down the street a bit and started toward it. It was only as she got closer that she realized he was on the phone and he didn’t look at all happy. He caught sight of her, smiled, then opened the door for her. She tossed her stuff in the front seat, then decided that giving him a bit of privacy was probably the chivalrous thing for her to do.

  She grabbed the smaller of the sketch pads she’d bought, liberated a pencil from a pack, then went to look for a bench to sit on. That was one thing she thought she might come to truly appreciate about Scotland. It might have been cloudy and threatening rain, but there were benches set in strategic places in spite of that. She took a plastic shopping bag and plopped it down on the bench, then sat and considered what might hold her attention long enough to sketch it.

  The first thing she saw was Nathaniel MacLeod, leaning against the side of his damp Range Rover, scowling into his phone. He would certainly do for the moment. She opened up her book, took pencil in hand, and let her imagination run away with her. The beautiful thing about sitting on a damp bench in a place where it currently threatened rain was that she didn’t have too many expectations for her art.

  She’d been drawing for as long as she could remember. She had branched out as time went on, feeling a definite pull toward creating things with more than just pen and paper, which had likely been what had led her to jewelry. There was something about the riotous colors the earth could produce, aided and abetted now and again by technology, that had sent her careening down paths she hadn’t intended to take.

  She paused. All right, so she’d started off her jewelry career maybe a bit earlier than she wanted to admit courtesy of an unhealthy fascination with Friendly Plastic, but that had pointed her in the direction of seeing what she could heat up, which had left her with countless tiny pinpoint scars on her hands and forearms from her adventures in metalsmithing.

  Where that left her at the moment, she couldn’t have said. She just knew that there was something extremely healing about getting back to her artistic roots with the simplest of tools. And it had to be said that Nathaniel MacLeod was a stunning model, even if he moved so much that she was tempted to call out for him to stop.

  He finally got off his phone, cursed quite enthusiastically for a moment or two, then shoved his phone into his pocket. She looked down to see what had come of her attempts to put him on paper, then froze.

  She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t been paying attention to what she’d been drawing, but there before her was the man she had seen coming out of the mist, the one who had appeared, then disappeared.

  Nathaniel MacLeod.

  “Find interesting things?”

  She shut her book so quickly that she dropped her pencil. He picked it up and handed it to her, then looked at her with a faint frown.

  “Something wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she croaked. “Jet lag.”

  “Hmmm,” he said, studying her. “That does take some time to get over.”

  “Do you travel much?” she asked, pushing herself to her feet.

  “I have family in the States,” he said slowly, “so aye. More than I like.”

  In New York? was almost out of her mouth before she had the good sense to keep her mouth shut.

  “That’s a long trip,” she offered. She picked up the shopping bag, shook the rain off it, then tossed it in the trash. She looked at Nathaniel. �
��I’m ready if you are,” she said.

  He hesitated. “If you want to take in a tourist sight, I daresay we have time.”

  “That would be wonderful,” she said, grateful for any sort of distraction. “What do you suggest?”

  He studied her thoughtfully. “If you haven’t seen the battlefield at Culloden, you should, but perhaps not today. Cawdor Castle is close. It’s been in the same family for centuries, so I understand.”

  “That sounds unusual.”

  “Some canny lads in that lot,” he said. “One of them desired a bit more room, then apparently convinced a few recalcitrant relations to sell him their land by burning a house belonging to one of them to the ground. And ’tis said the Scottish play is based on events that happened there.”

  “Macbeth?” she asked.

  “The very same, though I think that’s made up for the tourist value.” He lifted his eyebrows briefly. “We could go investigate.”

  She looked at him seriously. “This is very kind of you.”

  “’Tis Scotland, lass,” he said with a smile. “Hard not to be a wee bit fond of my native land.”

  Well, there was definitely reason for him to be fond of it, so she nodded, then walked with him back to his Range Rover. She was happy to let him shut the door for her so she could take a couple of deep breaths before they got on the road.

  Her trail was now cold for anyone who might or might not have been looking, she was headed toward a real, live castle, and she didn’t have to look at what she’d sketched until she was safely back in the house James MacLeod was loaning her.

  Things were definitely looking up.

  Chapter 8

  He needed to get out of town more often.

  Nathaniel nodded to himself at the thought as he drove through the outskirts of Inverness and headed toward Cawdor Castle. He had never been, as it happened, only because he’d never taken the time. First he’d had his hands full of school, then he’d been embroiled in business in Manhattan, then he’d been caught up in his ridiculous life in the Benmore forest. The thought of simply taking an afternoon and strolling about a castle and its gardens, even though those gardens had no doubt already been put to bed for the year, was a pleasant departure from his normal routine.

  He soon realized that perhaps a pleasant departure from anything but the castle’s quite empty car park wasn’t going to be possible.

  “It’s closed,” Emma said in surprise. “I didn’t think to check.”

  “Well, the family does live here,” he offered, “so I can’t say I blame them. They likely need some time off from all the rabble tromping through and gaping at their rooms.”

  “Too bad we don’t have any connections,” Emma said. “Apparently they do book private tours.”

  Nathaniel started to suggest that perhaps they could book one of those for a different day when he saw what looked to him to be something of a private tour heading toward the front gates.

  “Let’s see if we can fit in with that lot,” he suggested.

  “Do we dare?”

  Considering what he usually dealt with, the thought of merely muscling his way into a group of well-dressed tourists seemed like nothing at all.

  “Absolutely,” he said confidently. “We’ll see how far flattery gets us.”

  Emma didn’t seem to be opposed to the idea, so he locked up his car and hurried with her to the front gates. He didn’t recognize anything about the collection of souls there except their accents, which he supposed he might be able to imitate with enough effort.

  He engaged the most senior-looking man of the group, expressed his disappointment at having arrived to find Macbeth’s reputed home to be closed for the winter, and wasn’t it the damndest thing when one didn’t check one’s phone often enough, what?

  “Oh, too true,” the man said. He paused. “Don’t suppose you’d want to join us, would you?”

  “Brilliant of you, of course,” Nathaniel said, putting a saddle on his best Etonian accent and taking it out for a bit of a trot. If that accent contained a touch of lesser royal, well, what could he say? He was a damned fine mimic, if he did say so himself. “I can reimburse you now or perhaps later over drinks at the pub—”

  “Dear boy, of course you won’t. What did you say your name was again?”

  “Nathaniel MacLeod,” he said.

  The man studied him. “Born and bred here in the north, or do I detect other flavors?”

  “Eton,” Nathaniel said with a deprecating smile, “as well as a bit of a slog through the familial firm in New York—”

  “Your grandfather is Dexter MacLeod,” the man said, looking stunned. “I know him. Well, not well, of course, but I’ve crossed paths with him at the occasional soiree. You resemble him greatly.”

  “I could only wish to,” Nathaniel said as humbly as possible. “I wish he were here to walk these halls with us, but he’s comfortable across the Pond.” Actually, he wished Poindexter MacLeod would walk into the Pond and drown, but perhaps that was a bit too blunt for present company.

  He and his grandfather had a complicated relationship.

  “You’ll take good notes for him, then,” the man said cheerfully. “And your girlfriend here?”

  “Emma,” Nathaniel said, reaching for Emma’s hand. “She hasn’t met the old boy yet. We’re saving that for Christmas.”

  “You’ll come to tea next time you’re in London,” the man said. “I insist. I’ll make sure you have my card before we part ways—oh, Helen, you won’t believe who we have joining our little outing today.”

  Nathaniel made polite chitchat with Helen and her husband, Richard, then hung back with Emma as their hosts went ahead. Emma watched them go, then leaned in.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “This is pretty fortunate, isn’t it?”

  Nathaniel had a different opinion, but that was because he felt something breathing down his neck. A draft, perhaps—or perhaps Fate. If it was the latter, he wasn’t going to pay it any heed. He was safely away from his usual time-traveling haunts and had no intention of being thrust back into a spot not at all his own. He didn’t even have a bloody penknife on his person. It was a little unnerving, he supposed, how proficient he’d become at surviving with his bare hands alone, but that was a skill he didn’t particularly want to have to use at the moment. He would be content to simply tag along after his wide-eyed Yank.

  “I have to add that I can hardly believe what I just heard,” she added. “You sound like you should be working for the BBC. Do I want to know where you learned that upper-crust accent?”

  “Probably not,” he said with a smile. He squeezed her hand. “You’re a good sport.”

  “And you’re getting me into a closed castle, so I’ll ignore the fact that you didn’t answer. I wonder if they have a guidebook.”

  Apparently they did. It was provided without her having to ask, along with a personal guide as well. Nathaniel might have felt slightly guilty at how ruthlessly he’d used his connections, but he had indeed put in several years in his grandfather’s firm where his working conditions had been only slightly above Dickensian. He tended to think of his grandfather as less Ebenezer Scrooge and more Scrooge McDuck, but running his grandfather’s Upper East Side accent through a Scottish dialect filter in his brain had been one of his tricks to keep himself sane. If he could leverage some of that suffering to a more pleasant purpose at the moment, so be it.

  As he walked through the rooms, he wondered why he hadn’t come before. Cawdor was a lovely house, full of history and comfort and things arranged to suit the needs of a family.

  The company they had tagged along with didn’t seem to find it as luxurious as he did, but they were Londoners. He wasn’t a snob, if that was the word he was looking for, but he definitely had a fair amount of national pride. If he began to hang back a bit from the group to better appreciat
e a local treasure without their running commentary, who could blame him?

  Emma was apparently torn between watching their surroundings and watching him try not to grumble. He shrugged and attempted a weak smile. She only smiled wryly and continued on.

  He tried to concentrate, truly he did, but his phone was buzzing incessantly, and he suspected that might be for reasons he shouldn’t ignore. He looked at Emma.

  “I need to deal with this,” he said. “Do you mind?”

  “Of course not,” she said. She hesitated. “Think they’ll notice if I just stay back here with you?” She smiled. “I won’t listen.”

  “It won’t be worth hearing,” he said grimly. He caught the eye of their host and made a production of pointing at his phone. The man nodded expansively and had a word with one of their escorts, who stationed herself a discreet distance away. Obviously that was the best attempt at privacy he was going to manage.

  It was, as he could have predicted without having to look at his texts, one of his lawyers trying to get hold of him. He didn’t even have to assign anyone a specific ring tone to know which barracuda happened to be contacting him to give him more bad news. He’d already talked to his solicitors in London that morning about his own business. That he wasn’t able to get through the day without something winging its way from Manhattan shouldn’t have surprised him.

  He dialed, sighing as he did so. His attorney’s assistant picked up immediately, which he supposed should have been gratifying. “Suzie, it’s Nathaniel.”

  “I’ll put you right through, Nat.”

  Well, he couldn’t say he didn’t appreciate that. He closed his eyes and steeled himself for whatever madness he could just imagine was coming his way.

  “Nat,” Peter diSalvio said cheerfully. “You’re hard to get ahold of.”

  “Don’t remind me,” Nathaniel said with a sigh. “What now?”

  “Granddaddy’s making noise about those same bones he’s been gnawing on forever. You know, all that money you have control over that he wants back.”