Ever My Love

by Lynn Kurland

  A ladder was provided, Simon clambered up it, then Gerald put his hand on the wood to steady himself. Actually, Nathaniel supposed Gerald didn’t fancy finding himself locked below and that was simply a bit of security against the same, but in that he couldn’t blame his cousin. He would have done the same thing in his place.

  “Interesting place you have here,” Gerald drawled.

  Nathaniel yawned, though that cost him quite a bit. “Thought I would spend a week or so slumming. Local flavor and all that.”

  “Oh, I think you’ll be here longer than that.”

  Nathaniel looked at him evenly. “What do you want, Ger?”

  “That should be obvious, even for an idiot like you. I want everything you have.”

  “Don’t you have enough of your own?” Nathaniel asked wearily.

  “I want yours.”

  “Your father has been dead for years,” Nathaniel said, supposing he would be doing his uncle John a favor by keeping a few details about the man’s whereabouts to himself. “You have all his—”

  “Grandfather has all his money,” Gerald spat. “He made my sister trustee.”

  “Then you’ll have all Grandfather’s—”

  “He made you his heir, you stupid bastard!”

  Nathaniel shifted to settle the rat atop his head more carefully, then paused to wonder if his buddy might be willing to venture south and clean out his ear for him because he was just certain he’d heard that incorrectly. “He what?”

  “He changed his will! Two bloody years ago. Weren’t you paying attention?”

  “Nay, not really—”

  Incoherent spewing of curses and slanders and other inarticulate sounds ensued. Nathaniel would have enjoyed the sight of his cousin coming completely undone—Gerald was a first-class prat, to be sure—but things were what they were at the moment. When one found oneself chained to a wall, helpless, whilst facing a madman not likewise fettered, one tended to want to keep one’s damned mouth shut. He supposed telling his cousin that he tried never to open any letters from his attorneys might be a less-than-wise thing to say at the moment.

  It made him wonder just why his grandfather continued to try to sue him over his own trust, but he suspected that was less Dexter’s doing and more Gerald’s.

  “I don’t want his money,” Nathaniel managed when Gerald paused for breath.

  “He won’t care!” Gerald wailed.

  Nathaniel had to admit his cousin had a point there. Poindexter MacLeod was a man firmly committed to his own vision. Nathaniel wasn’t sure he had ever known his grandfather to take anyone’s advice but his own, to the endless frustration of his accountants, bankers, and attorneys.

  He had to admit, rather grudgingly, that he liked that about the feisty old fellow.

  Dexter was also, Nathaniel had to admit as well, a very shrewd judge of character. Gerald was not only a prat; he was an idiot with absolutely no imagination. If he’d been in charge of MacLeod Surety’s billions, he would have made a small fortune out of a very large fortune in no time.

  “How did you get here?” Nathaniel asked.

  Gerald looked as if he’d been slapped. “I followed you, of course. How stupid do you think I am?”

  “How long ago?” Nathaniel asked.

  “A couple of years ago,” Gerald said, drawing himself up and puffing out his chest. “It wasn’t hard. Neither was learning the language, but I went to Yale, not Columbia.”

  “So you did,” Nathaniel agreed. “Well done, you.”

  Gerald wasn’t finished, apparently. “I befriended the laird, promised him details, got him details, and waited for when I could put you where you are now.”

  “Where you’ll let me rot.”

  “That’s the plan.” He smirked, then dropped Nathaniel’s dagger again into the muck. “Grandfather will have no choice but to make me his heir once he resigns himself to your being dead. Let that thought keep you warm on your way to hell.”

  Nathaniel would have shrugged negligently, but he was too tired to. He watched his cousin crawl up the ladder, watched the ladder be pulled out of the pit, then didn’t bother to watch the grate be put back in place.

  He hadn’t thought his life would end with such little fanfare, but perhaps it was what he deserved. Recluse in life, anonymous in death.

  He stared at his dagger glinting faintly across the dungeon from him, then closed his eyes. He would die surrounded not by those he loved but by cold, damp, and vermin.

  The only thing he could hope for was that Gerald would be satisfied with all that money and forget about other things. He couldn’t bear to think about what the man might do if he found Emma in a darkened alley—

  Nay, that wouldn’t happen. She would be safe. The MacLeod men would understand what had happened to him, someone would nose out Gerald as having been responsible, and they would take care of her.

  He wasn’t sure he could contemplate anything else.

  Chapter 29

  Emma stood in front of the wall in her cottage, almost blind with weariness, and tried to make sense of what she was seeing. She’d been looking at the same thing off and on for almost a week with no appreciable change in her thinking. She rubbed her eyes, then looked again, because she had to find something that made sense while she still could.

  Nathaniel had been gone a week.

  A week in a dungeon, if that’s where he was, was too long.

  She rubbed her eyes and looked again at what was in front of her. She’d been doing the same thing whenever she’d had a chance, mostly after an interminable day spent with Patrick MacLeod, learning how to be a medieval ghost.

  That’s what they’d eventually taken to calling what she was going to have to be, because no other persona had a hope of getting her in and out of 1387 with herself and Nathaniel both alive and moving. Her plan was to sneak in, find him, and get them out with as little damage as possible. If she got into trouble, she was going to pose as a journeyman blacksmith and try to buy herself time that way.

  It was too bad Patrick MacLeod wasn’t in a position to go back and take care of things for her. He and Nathaniel looked so much alike, that fact alone probably would have scared Simon Fergusson into coughing up the guy in his dungeon.

  She knew exactly how Patrick MacLeod looked, because she’d spent a week working with him on those medieval ghost skills that Bertie Wordsworth would have salivated to call his own. It had come to the point where she’d asked him to stop being so careful. Jamie and Ian had turned their backs and put their fingers in their ears. She’d earned a bruise or two, but unfortunately that medieval chivalry had been too much for Patrick to get past. She had the feeling he definitely wasn’t so gentle with the men he trained.

  She envied their wives, she had to admit, if those were the sort of men they had guarding their doors and their children, not to mention their own selves.

  She had the feeling her life might look a bit like that, if she could get Nathaniel out of the dungeon and leave him free to possibly ask her for some sort of permanent arrangement.

  It wasn’t that she hadn’t tried to get back to 1387. She had, every day. She was almost tired of basing her dinner takeout orders down at the pub on whatever would add up to that amount so she would get either a bill for it or change back from it. That Keith MacLeod had just looked at her blandly when she’d been standing at his bar every night, calculating furiously, was a mixed blessing. He was helpful, but she suspected he thought she was crazy. She couldn’t blame him.

  She was beginning to wonder about that herself.

  Or she would have, if she hadn’t had the wall in front of her to keep her company every night after she’d failed to get back to where she needed to go.

  But today was going to be different. She’d begun early that morning simply because she hadn’t slept well the night before. Dreams of haggis and
change and a nagging feeling that she was missing something had woken her at dawn and left her pacing, unable to find any relief. She was scheduled to go foraging with Patrick at noon, so she’d taken the opportunity to spend some time with her board. She had added several pages to what was there, but all she could see was how much Nathaniel looked like Patrick.

  It occurred to her with a startling flash of something that felt like Fate clunking her over the head . . . What if Nathaniel was actually related to Patrick, and not with eight hundred years separating them?

  Was it possible Nathaniel was one of Malcolm’s bastard sons in truth?

  She leaned over her coffee table and sorted through papers there until she found the things Alex Smith had sent Nathaniel. She wasn’t so much concerned with Malcolm’s genealogy as she was—

  She realized there was something written on the back of the copy of the parish registry. She felt her way down onto the table and looked at the rather lengthy list there.

  Malcolm’s bastards, apparently.

  She read each name, noting the birth dates next to them, then felt time slow to a crawl.

  Ceana, b. 1372.

  She felt the world shudder. If she hadn’t been sitting down, she would have fallen down. It wasn’t so much the name as it was the date . . .

  Or maybe it was the name.

  She dug under papers until she came up with Nathaniel’s cell phone. She’d charged it, which she supposed might have been the smartest thing she’d done all week. She unlocked it, then scrolled through his contacts. She didn’t hesitate before she made good use of that little telephone icon next to Gavin MacLeod’s name.

  The phone rang several times before it was answered.

  “If this is my ugly brother,” a voice said sleepily, “instead of a gorgeous woman wanting me only for my body, I’m hanging up right now.”

  “Gavin, this is Emma.”

  There was the sound of a phone taking a tumble past a nightstand onto a hardwood floor, then some fumbling, then a less sleepy voice on the other end.

  “Is he hurt?”

  She would have smiled, but she couldn’t. “He’s fine,” she lied, “just a little out of touch. It’s a long story.”

  “I’ll be on a plane this morning.”

  “That’d be great,” she said, wondering if that would be a good thing or she was bringing someone into the mix who should really stay home, “but that’s not why I called. This is going to sound like a crazy question, but what was your mother’s name?”

  “Ceana,” Gavin said without hesitation. “Why?”

  Emma picked her phone—well, Nathaniel’s phone, actually—up off the floor. “No reason,” she said breathlessly. “But while I have you on the phone, I have another question. How old was she when she married your father?”

  “Eighteen, I think.”

  Emma frowned. “That’s interesting.” Interesting, but not very useful. If she wanted to fit Ceana into her storyboard—

  “But my dad met her when she was fifteen,” Gavin added, “if that makes any difference to you.”

  “Oh,” Emma said, feeling her breath be stolen by some unseen force. Curiosity, no doubt. “Do you know where they met?”

  “In Scotland,” he said. “Actually, in Benmore.” He paused. “That’s a little ironic, isn’t it, that Nat should end up there.”

  “Oh, yes,” she wheezed. “Very ironic. I’d love to hear the rest of the story.”

  “Well, it’s more romance than I’m comfortable with,” he said with a bit of a laugh, “but I’ll humor you if you like. My father was in Scotland for a gap year of sorts. He had money enough, but he was a bit of a do-gooder, so he liked to look for ways to make a difference.”

  “Sounds like your brother.”

  “Nat is my father, only mouthier,” Gavin said dryly. “Anyway, apparently my dad was doing some odd jobs in the area, and he happened to meet my mum while she was doing the same. It was a love match from the start, though she was obviously too young for anything serious. My mother was an orphan, so Dad asked one of the local couples to foster her.”

  “Very chivalrous,” Emma murmured. “Do you know who they were?”

  “Ryan Fergusson and his wife, Flora. My father paid for all her expenses as well as contributing heavily to village coffers, in spite of the Fergussons’ protests. My mum always used to say Ryan and Flora were the only Fergussons she ever liked.”

  “I think I’d have to agree with her at least in principle.”

  “I haven’t been there enough to know, so I’ll take your word for it.” He paused. “You know, if he wasn’t such a jerk, you would probably get along with our cousin Gerald. He’s into genealogy, too.”

  Emma was starting to think Gerald might be a little too involved in that sort of thing, but she didn’t think that was something Nathaniel’s brother needed to know.

  “The other thing is, my mum always talked about someone named Moraig,” Gavin said thoughtfully. “She was a MacLeod woman who lived in a little house near Benmore castle. Everyone always claimed she was a witch.”

  “I don’t believe in witches,” Emma said without hesitation.

  “Neither do I,” Gavin said wryly, “but don’t tell my brother the dreamer. I’m sure Moraig was nothing more than a woman who liked to keep all that rubbish about Highland magic being in the forests alive. It’s just tourist stuff, don’t you think?”

  “Why would I think anything else?” Emma asked with a light laugh. “Got to keep them coming somehow, right?”

  “Absolutely.” He was silent for a moment or two. “Have you talked to Nat lately?”

  “He’s out of range,” Emma said, hoping she wasn’t interfering where she shouldn’t. “I’m sure he’ll get back in touch with you the moment he can. He’s talked about you a lot.”

  “It was good to reconnect,” Gavin said. “I don’t want to lose that. You only have one set of siblings, I guess.”

  Fortunately was what almost came out of her mouth, but she stopped the word just in time. Her siblings were who they were and they did what they had to, but that didn’t mean she had to like them.

  “On second thought, I don’t think I’ll fly over unless you need me,” Gavin said slowly. “Nat won’t like to have me nanny him. But you’ll let me know, right?”

  “I will,” she said. “Thank you, Gavin.”

  “No problem. Keep my brother honest.”

  She was more concerned about keeping him alive, but she agreed that she would before she hung up and came to terms with the things she’d just learned.

  A girl named Ceana was listed as one of Malcolm MacLeod’s bastards. She had been born in 1372. Nathaniel’s mother was named Ceana and she had apparently been an orphan in the Benmore village at age fifteen.

  Coincidence?

  There was only one way to find out.

  • • •

  An hour later, she was past frustrated with things she couldn’t seem to control.

  She looked for the dozenth time at the page from Jamie’s book that she’d ripped out. It was full of holes, but that might have been because she’d spent the past hour first looking at it pointedly, then repeating the numbers 1387 out loud until she’d been tempted to shout them, then taking a pen she’d been using to make notes with and stabbing it through those numbers with more enthusiasm than she likely should have used.

  A knock sounded on her door, almost sending her pitching forward onto the floor. She set her pen aside very carefully and deliberately, then went to open the door.

  Mr. Campbell stood there.

  She was so surprised to see him, she hardly knew what to say. “Um, hello” was the best she could manage.

  He took off his cap and smiled. “Sorry to startle you, Miss Baxter,” he said, with a nod. “I went to see the young Himself and he sent me here. Said you’d
be interested in what I have.”

  “Patrick sent you?” she asked blankly.

  He nodded. “Said you’d be interested.”

  “Given your extensive collection of wonderful things and your knowledge of blacksmithing,” she said without hesitation, “I am definitely interested in anything you have.” She stepped back. “Please come in.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want to intrude,” he said. He bent and pulled something out of a leather satchel at his feet. He handed it to her haft first.

  It was the dagger from his collection.

  Nathaniel’s dagger.

  “I know you admired this and so did the young Master Nathaniel,” Mr. Campbell said with a smile. “I thought perhaps you both would like to tend it for me for a fortnight or so. I’m off to see cousins in Florida, you see, and don’t particularly want to leave it in my shop.”

  Emma took the dagger and felt the world shift. She could almost hear the gate opening. She suppressed the urge to throw her arms around the man standing in front of her.

  “I would love to,” she managed. “I mean, Nathaniel would love to, I’m sure. I’ll get it to him right away.”

  Mr. Campbell beamed at her. He picked up his satchel, then looked at her. “I’ve been doing some research on blacksmithing.”

  “Have you?” she asked, wondering if it would be rude to just shove him off her porch.

  “Guild secrets and all,” he said. “I read the other day that there was a particular guild here in the Highlands, smiths of course, who were mightily fierce at protecting their own.”

  “Sounds plausible,” she said, trying not to hop up and down in her frustration.

  “Passwords and all,” he continued. “Funny thing, that, isn’t it? Today we have them for our mobiles and back then, they had them for their business. Siubhail was a word I stumbled upon. Means traveler. Interesting that, aye?”