Ever My Love

by Lynn Kurland

  She shook her head in spite of herself. There was no possible way he’d known anything about her plans unless he’d gotten it from her father, who she knew had gotten it from her mother. It also wouldn’t have surprised her at all to know her father had put the screws to one of his buddies from her bank—that was something she would be changing when she went home—and gotten more information from him than she would have wanted. Illegal, but her father didn’t let anything as trivial as either the law or good taste stop him from getting what he wanted. He’d been furious when she’d dumped Sheldon, so he’d more than likely decided this was a good way to bring her to her senses.

  She could disappear if she had to. Bertie had given her several pointers over the years that would serve her quite well.

  She shoved that thought aside as perhaps too extreme for the moment and allowed herself the pleasure of thinking about the previous evening. She’d enjoyed a lovely dinner courtesy of a certain St. Andrews alumnus, then dragged that same man on a ghost walk. She’d been fairly sure she’d seen absolutely everything of a paranormal nature the tour guide had suggested they would. Nathaniel had only shaken his head and smiled wryly.

  “Cynic,” she’d whispered.

  “Hopeless romantic,” he’d returned.

  But he’d jumped right along with her when someone had leaped out of the shadows at a particularly spooky spot, then laughed at himself.

  She had decided that if the women who hunted him could see him for who he really was, they wouldn’t give up on hunting him down. He was too handsome for his own good, but seemed absolutely unaware of it. Or maybe he knew and he just didn’t care. His friend Brian was one of the, ah, least handsome men she had ever seen, but that didn’t seem to make any difference to either of them.

  “She’s comparing us,” Brian said in a stage whisper. “Finding lots to loathe about you, no doubt.”

  Nathaniel snorted. “You’re no prize, either. Perhaps she’s deciding how best to run before she’s forced to spend any more time with either of us.”

  “I will do the noble thing, then, and bow out first.” Brian smiled at her. “I’m sorry to leave you with him, but unlike your friend here, I’ve work to get to. Be kind to him. He has a good heart behind that pretty face.”

  “I was up at five working my arse off,” Nathaniel said sourly, “so keep your whingeing to yourself.”

  “Still not too late to run, Emma,” Brian said cheerfully. “I know I would.”

  She smiled at Brian. “I think I’ll survive, thanks.”

  He shook his head sadly, clapped Nathaniel on the shoulder, then paid for their meal on the way out the door. Emma looked at Nathaniel.

  “You’re two of a kind, aren’t you?”

  He smiled and toyed with his espresso spoon. “He’s generous.”

  “So are you.”

  “Can’t take it with you, can you?”

  She leaned her elbows on the table and studied him. He stared back at her, then laughed a little.

  “You’re making me nervous.”

  “You’re a mystery.”

  “Not worth solving, I guarantee it.” He rubbed his hands together. “Where to first, Miss Baxter? I assume you have a list.”

  “I really think you’ll be bored.”

  “’Tis Scotland,” he said, “which is the most interesting place on the planet. I promise you I didn’t see anything important whilst I was at school. Too busy studying.”

  “Do you mind going to Holyrood, then?” she asked. “I’ve always wanted to see the inside of it.”

  “I’ve never been inside, either,” he confessed. “Her Maj always seemed to be camping out whenever I had time for a tour. I don’t think she’s in residence now, so perhaps we might venture down and see what’s to be seen. The walk there is interesting, if nothing else.”

  She left the restaurant with him and decided it was probably best not to mention that he seemed awfully familiar with using back alleys and side streets as shortcuts. That was no doubt from all the seeing of sights he claimed not to have done during college.

  They didn’t get anywhere very quickly, mostly because she couldn’t convince herself to hurry. The ghost walk the night before had been extremely informative, though she thought she might be tempted to take another tour during the daytime when she might have a different view of things.

  “Oh, look,” she said, after a quick duck inside a church, “there’s something down that side street.”

  He looked faintly hopeful. “Lunch?”

  “We just had breakfast.”

  “Brian always kills my appetite.”

  She smiled at him. “How do you know him?”

  “We spent our last year at Eton down at the pub, actually, though we’ll both deny it.” He shrugged. “Two Scots trying to blend in. When he needed funds for a business venture, I invested. And here we are. Handsome, eligible, and rich.” He smiled. “That’s obviously why neither of us is wed.”

  “You two are just too much man for your average girl, I guess. And before you think about that too much, what about that place over there? It looks like a museum.”

  “A small one,” he agreed. “Might as well give them some business. Maybe they’ll have ideas about lunch.”

  She rolled her eyes and walked with him along cobblestones that were less treacherous than she might have thought, given how rainy it was. At least she wasn’t riding over them on the back of a horse. She wondered how anyone had managed that in the past.

  The door opened for them as they approached, which she thought might have been a bit spooky, but she was quickly coming to the conclusion that spooky was going to be her lot for at least the next few weeks.

  “Come in out of the wet, you two,” an older gentleman said, holding the door open for them. “Nice and dry here inside. I’m thinking you’ll want to see my collection of swords.”

  Emma agreed with him that shelter was very desirable and refrained from comment about swords. She didn’t dare look at Nathaniel to see if his opinion on the matter showed on his face. She simply followed their host into his lair and happily listened to him introduce himself as Thomas Campbell, describe for them what they might expect to see, and begin the tour. Metalsmithing was metalsmithing, perhaps, regardless of what one was forging.

  “It must have been a very hot business during the summer,” she remarked at one point.

  “You mean for a day or two in June?” Mr. Campbell asked with a laugh. He looked at Nathaniel. “Ye ken what I mean, aye?”

  “Och, aye,” Nathaniel said.

  She feigned a sudden interest in a glass case full of daggers as curator and Highlander launched into a hearty bit of what she assumed was Gaelic. She decided right then that if she had the chance she would find some sort of crash course in it. Maybe she could bargain for some lessons from her nearest neighbor, though she wasn’t sure he would want either earrings or portraits of his very handsome self.

  She definitely wasn’t going to show him the sketch she’d done of him in Inverness.

  She memorized the contents of three glass cases before Mr. Campbell looked at them both, his eyes bright with excitement. “I don’t usually make this offer, but would you care to see my dearest treasure?”

  “Definitely,” she said, realizing as she said it that Nathaniel had expressed basically the same sentiment. She looked at her traveling companion, shrugged with a smile, then followed the collector of treasure to the back of his place.

  Mr. Campbell stopped in front of a glass case that was as tall as he was. Oddly enough, it held only a single, foot-long dagger. She wasn’t sure how the blade was suspended to make it look as if it were simply hanging there in the air, but she had to admit it was well done.

  “We’ve done a bit of investigating about this piece,” Mr. Campbell said, “though I’ve drawn the line at testing the metal. I
believe, based on my own experience and expertise, that the dagger was made in the fourteenth century— Oh, lad, you don’t look well all of the sudden. Need something to drink?”

  “Water,” Nathaniel croaked.

  Emma turned and grabbed his arm as he swayed. She suppressed the urge to pepper him with questions about his tendency to swoon over historical items and instead put her arms around him to keep him up. “Bad eggs?” she asked.

  “I don’t want to think about eggs,” he said with a bit of a groan. “I’m not sure I want to think about anything.”

  She wished she could say the same thing, but she had too many questions that needed answers. Apparently the odd things that seemed to seek Nathaniel MacLeod out weren’t limited to Inverness and all points to the north and west of it, and she wanted to know why.

  He sat, under protest, in the chair Mr. Campbell provided and leaned his head back carefully against the wall. She supposed it would be impolite to study him like a science project, so she offered her best nursemaiding instead. If she simultaneously and quite furiously filed away details to think about later, well, who could blame her?

  Mr. Campbell returned again with water, then accepted an invitation from Nathaniel to distract everyone with a bit more information about that dagger there in the case. She watched Nathaniel out of the corner of her eye, partly to make sure he wasn’t going to faint and partly because she wanted to see what the depths of his reactions to a medieval blade were. He had some water, but that didn’t seem to help much.

  What was going on with him?

  Nathaniel was staring at that dagger with an expression she could only identify as horror, as if he’d just seen Death peeking at him from around a curtain, scythe in hand. She decided the kindest thing she could do was get him some peace and quiet, so she drew the curator aside and asked for his views on metalsmithing in the Middle Ages.

  It was fascinating, she had to admit. She supposed the forge might have been a decent place to be in the Highlands, especially in the winter, but it seemed like dangerous work. She had scars enough from her own modest forays into silversmithing, so she could only speculate on the potential for injury working on a much larger scale.

  In time, Mr. Campbell excused himself to attend to other patrons. Emma glanced at Nathaniel, but he was only continuing to stare at that blade as if he expected it to leap out of the case and bury itself to the hilt in his chest. That was a different sort of horror than his previous expression, though she wasn’t sure how to qualify either. She decided after a minute or two that he looked like he’d just seen a ghost.

  He started to speak, then his phone rang. He pulled it out, then looked faintly relieved.

  “My own business for a change,” he said hoarsely. “Sorry, I need to see to this.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I understand.”

  “And you’re pitying me for it, I can see,” he said, heaving himself to his feet. “Brian has another phone waiting for you at the hotel, so don’t think you’ll be free of this sort of thing forever. Do you mind if we step outside?”

  “Not at all.” She didn’t bother to protest a new phone for herself. She’d already tried and been politely ignored. She did follow him out of the museum, though, thanking Mr. Campbell on her way out.

  She leaned back against the stone of the building and wondered about that dagger. She didn’t suppose she would have a chance to look at it herself without Nathaniel in tow, but it was tempting to find a way. She watched him pace in front of her, content to let the cadence of his words wash over her like a soothing wave. He seemed to have a different accent for different sorts of business, which would have made an interesting study all on its own. She wondered if he realized it himself.

  He hung up, then looked at her. “Again, sorry. Hard to keep up with things at home with no signal.”

  She understood that. She also suspected she was beginning to understand other things as well. “I couldn’t help but eavesdrop on that conversation,” she said mildly. “I heard several terms the average guy doesn’t generally use while simply hanging out on a freezing November morning. Any brushes with law school you’d like to come clean about?”

  He looked like he was near to hedging, then he sighed heavily. “I have my degree from Columbia and I passed the bar in New York. I would rather starve than work for a firm, though.”

  She was unsurprised. “And your undergrad?”

  “I read Medieval Literature.” He shrugged and smiled faintly. “I like old things.”

  She imagined he did, regardless of how they seemed to affect him. She smiled. “I think your path to this spot is just as convoluted as mine.”

  “I think you might be right,” he agreed. He looked up the street, then back at her. “I think I definitely want lunch, but perhaps a bit of a walk first. I’m restless. Would a little ramble toward the castle suit?”

  “Absolutely. Especially if we can visit a couple of those shops that sell tartans on the way.”

  “I’ll splash out for a shawl for you,” he said gallantly.

  “Fergusson colors?”

  He shot her a look. “I’m not going to dignify that with a response, never mind that my mother was a Fergusson.” He shut his phone off and put it in his pocket. “I’ll do whatever you like as long as I can pretend I dropped my phone down a storm drain. I need some distance from—well, just some distance.”

  She made a noncommittal sort of noise, then walked with him back to their hotel. She understood wanting to get some distance from life. It was, after all, the main reason she’d flown halfway around the world. She wondered what Nathaniel was trying to escape from.

  She also wondered why antiques, from dead trees to worn blades, left him so unsettled. There was something going on in his life that seemed very odd indeed.

  It was none of her business, of course, but the man had made her breakfast when she’d needed it and was currently gifting her a couple of days in a beautiful medieval city. Nosing about in his private affairs with good intentions seemed like the least she could do in return. That dagger was a very tangible clue, and she wondered how she could ditch him long enough to go have another look at it.

  She had the feeling she would regret it if she didn’t.

  Chapter 12

  Nathaniel leaned against the wall outside the hotel, considered the gray sky above him, and wondered if the present moment was perhaps one of those times when a man simply had to cross the border and get himself out of Scotland.

  That wasn’t something he considered lightly. He had, of course, lived in England whilst at school, and he continued to keep a flat in London simply because he did so much business on that end of the island, but he much preferred to keep himself safely north of Hadrian’s Wall. That he was even entertaining the idea of heading south in an effort to escape his life spoke volumes about the sort of day he’d had so far.

  Seeing a dagger in the present that he had lost in the past—a dagger that bore a mark he had no trouble identifying—and seeing it in a place where it definitely shouldn’t have been had come close to leaving him in a swoon.

  There were strange things afoot in the world.

  Those things were, he had to admit, almost enough to leave him convinced that perhaps Edinburgh was simply not far enough to escape his doom. He might have to take his life in his hands and cross the border. Perhaps if he didn’t move too quickly, he wouldn’t startle the natives unduly. Heaven knew he could sympathize with being unsettled by strange things, having had his own brush with things that shouldn’t have belonged to his safe, sensible life.

  He jumped a little when he realized Emma was standing next to him.

  “Sorry,” he managed. “Distracted. Lunch now?”

  “We probably should,” she said. “I think you had a serious case of low blood sugar back there in that museum.”

  He nodded, because
he wasn’t about to tell her that his near collapse in the shop had been less from lack of sustenance than it had been a full dose of shock over seeing that blade.

  His blade, as it happened. The one he’d had made by Malcolm’s blacksmith half a year ago. It had been made to suit his hand, obviously, and he’d reached for it scores of times in the past. There was just one problem with seeing it, seasoned as it seemed to have been by hundreds of years of time, in that man Campbell’s most treasured case.

  That blade was also currently sitting in the back of his closet, bright and relatively new.

  He supposed the answer could be as simple as someone having made off with it in the future in the past. It was possible the thief had died of shame shortly thereafter and the blade had gone missing for several centuries. No doubt someone in the present day had found the old thing lying beneath the rubble in an inherited shed and voilà, in no time it had been handed off to a man in Edinburgh whose business antique blades was.

  “Nathaniel?”

  He dragged himself away from his uncomfortable speculations. “Aye?”

  “There’s a guy fifty feet to your right who’s looking at you as if he’s seen a ghost.”

  Nathaniel was frankly rather grateful he was accustomed enough to surprise that he didn’t immediately turn and gape at the man in question. “You noticed?”

  “I always notice. You?”

  “Hadn’t a clue,” he said honestly. “But my father didn’t have an under-chauffeur with interesting skills.”

  She smiled. “You’re distracted.”

  “Hungry, rather, and I’ll likely pay for that someday,” he said grimly. “Recognize him?”

  “Nope,” she said. “Want me to stand on your other side so you can have a look?”

  “Very sporting of you.”

  She looked at him and smiled a very small smile. “This is very odd.”