by Lynn Kurland
“I’ll see to it.”
Nathaniel nodded, listened to Patrick open the door, then heard Emma gasp.
“Is he all right?”
“The patient is alive and complaining,” Patrick said, “which should tell you all you need to know. Here, let me take those and you can go see for yourself.”
Nathaniel stood up, came close to falling onto his stove, then managed to catch himself on his counter. He almost immediately found Emma ducking under his arm and pulling it over her shoulders.
He looked at her. “I think I might feel faint.”
“Let me help you.”
“This may last several months.”
She rolled her eyes, then looked at him critically. “You look better. At least you’re not drooling any longer.”
“Blame his wee lordship there for anything untoward I’ve done in the past twenty-four—”
“Forty-eight,” she corrected.
He had to take a deep breath, then he shot Patrick a look of promise over her head. “Whatever he gave me over the past forty-eight hours almost finished off what Simon Fergusson began.”
Patrick looked thoroughly unimpressed. “I’ll cook something for you,” he said, “and put the rest in the fridge.”
“Mrs. McCreedy sent along soup,” Emma said. “She said it was very helpful for those recovering from a shock.”
“That woman,” Patrick said with a smile. “She knows more than she lets on.”
“I don’t want to think about what she knows,” Nathaniel said with a sigh. “I think I need some fresh air. Emma, if you’ll excuse me?”
“Notice he doesn’t ask my leave,” Patrick said sadly. “The lack of respect is truly a comment on the state of affairs these days, isn’t it? Emma, did Nathaniel tell you that he thinks we might be cousins, bastard though he is—”
Nathaniel thought it best to leave the kitchen before he killed Patrick MacLeod. He shot him a murderous look before he put on a coat and went outside to breathe in the air of freedom.
It was glorious.
• • •
The afternoon was waning as he woke from yet another in a series of naps he couldn’t seem to stop himself from taking and saw Emma standing near his stove, putting on the kettle for tea.
“Ah, a proper Scottish lass you are,” he said with a smile. “Tea for her man. Now, when you begin to forgo the tea and go straight for the appropriate liquid, I’ll know something has truly changed.”
She turned to look at him. “You don’t drink very often, do you?”
“Not anymore,” he said lightly. “I had my brush with too much drink after my mother died. But I’m surprised to find that an abrupt trip to the past has an immediate effect on one’s alcohol consumption.” He pushed himself to his feet, swayed, then walked over to her. He put his arms around her and sighed deeply. “Have I thanked you properly for the rescue?”
“I don’t think so.”
He smiled. “You cut your hair and braved a medieval forge. I’m not sure there are adequate thanks.”
“The forge was a cakewalk. It was that dungeon that was really disgusting.”
He smiled, because they’d already discussed that more than he supposed either of them wanted to during the parts of the afternoon during which he’d actually managed to stay awake. Staying on his feet with any success was a bit more difficult, so he didn’t argue when Emma pushed him over to the couch and told him to sit down.
He accepted tea, drank, then leaned back against the sofa. He waited until she’d joined him before he spoke. “I have an invitation to extend,” he said slowly.
She curled her feet up under her and turned toward him. “What?”
“I had a phone call with your father today.”
“Did you?” she asked. “Before or after Jamie almost drove him to a heart attack in the lists?”
“After,” he said pleasantly.
She smiled grimly. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to him yet.”
“Well, I did and we worked a few things out. You may not like them.”
Her mouth fell open. “I think what I’m not going to like is how much my hand is going to hurt after I punch you. And stop looking for blades in my hands,” she snapped. “I left mine in my house, but I can certainly go get it if necessary.”
He decided the present time was likely not the proper time to point out to her that she was discussing stabbing him with a dirk as easily as she might discuss slapping his face. Truly, their lives were very strange.
She looked at him in shock. “I can’t believe you called him.”
“I didn’t call him,” Nathaniel said slowly. “He called me while you ran home for pen and sketch pad. I think he doesn’t quite know how to apologize to you, so I agreed to be the messenger. Never hurts to butter up the in-laws.”
“Still not a romantic proposal in sight, is there?”
He smiled and laced his fingers with hers. “Your mother apparently told your father that if he didn’t mend fences with you, she was going to leave him, but only after she’d rolled his Bugatti off the end of the pier. She already had burly lads retained for the job.”
She let out her breath slowly. “My family has an interesting relationship with the lake.”
He smiled. “So I hear. And just so you know, after I buttered your father up, we had a substantially less lovely chat.”
“Did you chew him up and spit him out?”
“Thoroughly.”
“Hmmm,” she said. “Then what?”
“He admitted that he’d been astonished to find out Sheldon’s true character, but even more surprised to receive a bit of intelligence from an unnamed source.”
“Intelligence?” she asked skeptically.
“Notes from Alexander Smith, of course. I thought your father might appreciate them. Let’s just say that I don’t think Sheldon will be bothering with you again.”
She looked at him in surprise. “My father is coming to my rescue?”
“He is.”
“And you inspired him to.”
“I only talked to him on the phone, Emma,” he said carefully. “He came to that decision all on his own.”
“Jamie might have helped.”
“That’s a possibility as well.” He shifted. It was less uncomfortably done than he’d dared hope, which he supposed was progress.
Her smile faded. “I want to be done with this.”
He looked at her for a moment or two in silence, then reached for his phone and handed it to her. “Check the alarm.”
She turned his phone on, entered his password whilst ignoring his feigned protest, then looked at the timer he certainly hadn’t set for himself. He actually wouldn’t have been surprised to learn Patrick MacLeod had done so simply to annoy him.
Emma met his gaze. “1387.”
“Feel anything?”
She paused, then shook her head. “But that doesn’t mean anything, I don’t think. What about you?”
“I think we could try an experiment,” he offered. “We could sit here for the evening, watch a little telly, then open my door and see what’s there. If we see medieval clansmen, we’ll just shut the door right back up. Or we could just lock the windows, bolt the door, and not venture out for a few days.”
“I could cook,” she offered.
“Or you could watch me cook.”
She shot him a disgusted look, but moved closer to him. “I’m not that bad,” she muttered.
“I think I should just keep my mouth shut.”
“I rescued you from a medieval dungeon.”
“And that, darling, has earned you a lifetime of my cooking and occasionally cleaning up after myself.”
She smiled and looked at him. “Will I hurt you if I put my head on your shoulder?”
“’T
is a pain I’ll gladly bear.”
“You talk altogether too much, Nathaniel MacLeod. But while you’re talking so much, why don’t you tell me how it feels to now be related to the guys up the way?”
“Bastard cousin and all that.”
She put her arm over his waist. “Your grandfather no doubt wishes he had such a claim to that lord’s chair.”
“We’ll go find out later, then see if there’s anyone still breathing who has a birth date more recent than 1400. With what I hear has been going on in those lists, I’m not sure we’ll find anything save James MacLeod cleaning off his sword.”
She shivered. “I think I could be done with the past for a while.”
He thought he might want to be done with it forever, but he wasn’t sure that was going to happen any time soon. He understood that Jamie had a family ring waiting for him to use if he cared to handfast soon with the woman falling asleep in his arms. He also suspected he would be driving either his grandfather or Emma’s father or the both of them to a certain curator of blades in Edinburgh to see what could be made specifically for them. That would be made substantially easier given that said blacksmith, who was supposed to be across the Pond, had apparently been putting his feet up for the past few days down at Roddy MacLeod’s inn.
Gerald, he supposed, would come to terms with his life or he wouldn’t. There was nothing to be done except contemplate that patch of nettles in Patrick’s garden, but he supposed he wouldn’t be contemplating very long. He’d seen enough death for a lifetime.
All of which could be thought about on the morrow. For the moment, he had numbers on his phone that didn’t disturb him, a warm fire in his stove, and the woman he loved in his arms.
That was enough present for him.
Epilogue
Emma sat in a lovely floral chair in a sitting room that overlooked an adorable little street in Notting Hill and stared at the man sitting across from her, reading in the sunshine.
That man happened to be her husband, but perhaps that wasn’t anything unexpected.
He was reading, for what she was sure was the thousandth time over the past six months, a letter his mother had written him.
She supposed thousandth was an exaggeration. He’d read the letter many times during the few days after he’d retrieved it from the box his mother had locked it in, a box his grandfather had told him about on the day of their wedding.
The combination had been 1387.
Neither of them had been surprised.
The letter was long, written in a rather medieval-looking hand, detailing Ceana’s adventures with her natural father Malcolm, who had been very kind to her, and her subsequent desire to test the secret of the MacLeod forest, which had also been very kind to her, if not a bit terrifying.
Emma didn’t envy her, having had her own brush with the secret of that forest.
Ceana had written of her struggles to assimilate, her desire never to go back in time, and her very lovely marriage to Nathaniel’s father. Her children had been her joy and her former life had seemed like nothing but a dream until she had, one fine day in the fall of Nathaniel’s eighteenth year, looked at him and noticed something she’d almost forgotten.
He was the lad she had helped rescue from the Fergussons’ dungeon who had in turn rescued her from the Fergussons’ keep.
Emma watched Nathaniel turn the last page, sigh, then look at her. He smiled.
“Sorry.”
She shook her head. “Don’t be. I’m happy she had a good life with your father who adored her and you and your siblings who loved her so dearly.”
“I imagine she did,” he agreed. He smiled, folded the letter and put it away, then leaned over and kissed her. “I’ll go make tea.”
She watched him go, then stared out the window and considered the state of both their lives.
Gerald was, it had to be said, struggling. Their grandfather had sent him to the Hamptons as a restorative measure, but that hadn’t seemed to help. Emma didn’t know that what would have served him better wouldn’t have been a quick trip back to medieval Scotland, but that wasn’t for her to judge, she supposed.
Nathaniel’s sister, Sorcha, had turned out to be a lovely if not slightly mysterious sort who seemed to love the social scene but had something else going on inside her that Emma couldn’t seem to pinpoint. Gavin had become a regular visitor to wherever they were staying at the moment, something she knew Nathaniel treasured.
She thought he treasured a bit less dealing with the realities of being his grandfather’s heir, but she supposed he would deal with that as well when he had to. If Poindexter and her own father had become inseparable golf buddies, well, she hadn’t begrudged Nathaniel and his brother any time spent with them on the course.
Life was very good.
She had seen her family several times, most notably at her wedding, where James MacLeod had officiated. If her father had still been unnerved by the sight of Nathaniel in proper Scottish dress, he hadn’t said anything. Her brothers had looked terrified, which had made her happy, and her sisters had simply gaped, but she couldn’t blame them for it. She had, after all, married a very desirable, extremely handsome recluse who had been hunted by more skilled girls than her own flesh and blood.
She had seen her mother perhaps most of all, which had been a sweetness added to her life she hadn’t expected. Her mother had gone shopping with her in Paris, then made regular trips since to wherever she and Nathaniel were calling home at the moment.
She looked up as the man she loved brought in tea, set it out, then poured her a cup. She accepted, then smiled.
“Thank you.”
He only smiled in return. “I was thinking about summer in Paris.”
“Can you do business there?”
“Occasionally,” he said. “If you don’t mind.”
She didn’t. It wasn’t the money. He had too much, she didn’t need any, and they lived as simply as they could considering the places they called home.
But investing was in his blood, and his grandfather seemed to feel that his legacy might be salvaged if he funneled money to worthy charitable things. In addition to everything else, Poindexter had hired Nathaniel’s company to do just that, and their budget was staggering. Nathaniel turned his own profits into loans for others who were trying to make their dreams come true.
And if there was one thing, among all the things her husband was, he was a dreamer.
Scotland in my dreams.
She looked at that man sitting across from her, the one who turned dreams into reality, and wondered what he would say if she told him that’s why she’d gone to Scotland in the first place.
She suspected he would understand.
Visit bit.ly/2m3Drdx for a larger version of this family tree.
Visit bit.ly/2mk6BGk for a larger version of this family tree.
Lynn Kurland is the New York Times bestselling author of Stars in Your Eyes, Dreams of Lilacs, All for You, One Magic Moment, and the Novels of the Nine Kingdoms, as well as numerous other novels and short stories. Visit her online at lynnkurland.com.
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