A Scot to Remember (Something About a Highlander Book 1)

by Angeline Fortin

  Hopefully that peace would prevail.

  And she would be victorious.

  Realistically, she knew fixing the past in favor of the ladies in her family wouldn’t change anything for her directly. It wouldn’t direct the mythical white knight to cross her path and deliver up a fairy tale ending for her.

  Nevertheless, there was a reasonable chance bringing ageless love and a legacy of happiness into her family history would engender enough optimism for her to take a chance on love again. To hope again. To wish for more.

  At the moment, all it had proven was that those things had failed her family.

  Recalling herself to the task at hand, she made her way to the far side of the circle, lifted the hem of her skirt, climbed the stairs to the door at number twenty-seven, and banged the knocker.

  The familiar frown of the butler greeted her when the door opened, and her good cheer seeped away. Assessing eyes raked her from head to toe, and then scanned past her shoulder. Though he didn’t dismiss her outright this time, his scowl deepened. “May I help you, miss?”

  Fighting back the urge to fidget under his inscrutable stare, Brontë straightened her shoulders. “Good morning. I’d like a word with Mr. Burnham, please.”

  “Mr. Burnham?”

  If possible, that frown sunk in further and the scathing gaze gouged her once again. Clearly, she’d been found lacking once more, though for the life of her she couldn’t figure out why. She’d passed several ladies along the way, hurrying along to escape the light rain or riding in covered carriages or vintage automobiles, to know her appearance this time couldn’t be the sole reason for the manservant’s disapproval.

  “Yes, please. If you could be so kind,” she said in her most agreeable tone, attempting to instill into it an ounce of the sophistication his possessed.

  “Have you a calling card?”

  That was a real thing? “Um, no. I’m sorry. Really I only need a moment of his time.”

  “A moment.”

  Not a question. Brontë fought to keep a frown of her own from mirroring his. “Yes. I’ll be brief. I promise.”

  “And may I ask the nature of this brief moment?”

  “It’s personal.”

  “I’m sure it is,” he murmured under his breath, then stiffened. “Mr. Burnham has not accepted calls of a personal nature from unaccompanied ladies at this address…ever.”

  She couldn’t determine whether it was the fact that her issue was personal or that she was alone that disturbed him the most. It wasn’t like she was trying to barge into a CEO’s office in the middle of a workday. “Perhaps I could speak with Mrs. Burnham then?”

  His brows lifted, eyes shuttered. Obviously, he didn’t know what to make of her, but Brontë was equally baffled by whatever faux pas she committed.

  “Mrs. Burnham is not at home to visitors, I’m afraid.” He stepped back intending to shut the door. “Good day to you, miss.”

  “No, wait! I —”

  The door closed with a soft snick rather than the decisive slam of her first visit. “What the hell?”

  Confused she went back down the stairs. Thinking she might have better luck with the housekeeper, she opened the gate of the wrought iron fence a dozen feet to the left and descended the stairs to the servant’s entrance. A harried maid, who wasn’t looking at Brontë but rather yelling over her shoulder back into the hall, answered her light tap.

  “Ye’d best be getting those trunks out to the mews straight away, Dugan. His lordship will be wanting to be on his way.” She sighed and turned to Brontë. “Can I help ye, miss?”

  “Yes, can you direct me to the mews?”

  * * *

  “Would someone like to bloody well explain to me what’s causing the delay?” Tris MacKintosh demanded as he strode into the mews-turned-garage that served the residents of Moray Place, himself included. “We’ve been waiting for the motor car to be brought around and no one I send has returned with an answ —”

  He drew up short at the sight of a half-dozen men including the three footmen he’d sent out over the past half hour crowded around Henry Burnham’s new Napier T44. A vehicle currently propped up on a jack and missing a tire.

  From the center of the group, Henry’s driver, Ambrose, rose along with Andy McGhee, Tris’s family’s long-time stable master-cum-mechanic. The chauffer shuffled his feet, but Andy had been with the MacKintosh family since before Tris was born and familiarity eased his approach, though he looked shamefaced. He tugged his cap off his head and wrung the wool in his hands. “Napier’s gone flat, sir. Lads sent for me to try to figure it out.”

  “What’s there to figure out? Change it,” Tris advised, tempering the heated impatience that had announced his arrival. “We’ve got to be on our way soon or we’ll miss the train, ye ken.”

  “Aye, I understand that, sir.” Andy nodded. “A wee problem though. All four tires are flat, ye see.”

  “All four?” Tris blinked at the news wondering how such a feat were possible.

  “Aye.” Andy scratched his head as if he were as puzzled as Tris. “’Twas but two at first. We changed one with the spare then took the other down to the smithy to patch and refill it. When we got back, the other two had gone flat, too.”

  Tris tried to process the unlikelihood of such an occurrence. “They’re all leaking air?”

  “Nay, sir.” Henry’s driver spoke up with a shake of his head. “Been punctured, all of them.”

  “With what?”

  “This most likely. It was laying on the ground when we returned.”

  Andy dangled a pry bar, flat on one side but with a sharp wedge on the other, between them.

  More questions crowded Tris’s mind and he ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. Who, for one. Why, for another. He swore again, this time under his breath. There was no time for this nonsense. He’d notify Henry so his friend could pass along the news of the lawless mischief to his steward to report to the police, however time was wasting. They needed to be on their way.

  “Have the trunks moved to my motor car.”

  “Pardon, sir, but yers dinnae hae the boot space to hold them and I doubt ye’d hae me strap them on back.”

  The thought of his Stutz Bearcat suffering the scrapes and damage a pair of heavy steamer trunks could produce was more than enough for Tris to agree with Andy’s protest. Besides, the Stutz was built for speed and accommodated two passengers without room for a third to return the car to the mews. That was why they’d planned on using Henry’s touring coach to get to the train station. Purchased in the anticipation of a growing family, it could seat six in a pinch and had a rack on the back to transport additional luggage that wouldn’t fit in the boot.

  “Ready my father’s Daimler then,” he ordered. It wasn’t as large as the Napier but would do. “If that doesn’t work, load the luggage into the carriage and take them to the train station. We’ll follow along.”

  Andy tipped his hat and hurried to unstrap the trunks from the back of the Napier as Ambrose rushed to help. The other footmen dispersed without a word.

  Tris tipped back his head and closed his eyes. Deep breath in, he released it slowly to recover his composure. Bugger it. It was dashed difficult to remain calm when everything related to this trip seemed determined to go awry. On top of it all, Henry’s young wife had been in tears all morning bemoaning their departure…

  Aye well, not bemoaning so much as suffering from morning sickness so vile it had brought tears to her eyes and a groan to her lips. This according to Tris’s mother who’d gone to offer assistance and comfort. To hear her tell it, it had been Henry who bewailed their parting and lamented the journey that would tear him away from his beloved bride and soon-to-be mother of his first child.

  Having grown up two doors down from Henry Burnham, Tris was more familiar with the boisterous lothario he’d known all his life than the love-struck Romeo who nowadays inhabited his best friend’s person. As he’d never been gutted so thoroughl
y by Cupid’s arrow himself, Tris couldn’t fully sympathize with Henry’s condition. Nevertheless, with a large extended family who’d all managed to succumb to Eros’ spell with similar fervor, he understood Henry’s hesitance to leave.

  To a small degree.

  That didn’t mean they could put off their departure much longer, though. Already they’d waited an extra day, and because of that would arrive in Southampton late in the evening — assuming they made first their train from Edinburgh and then the connection in Newcastle on time. The bloody train waited for no one.

  He doubted the ship would either.

  Titanic.

  Numerous tales about the goliath had been sallied about for months. Unlike many, Tris cared little for the publicity surrounding the ship and far more about the speed the White Star Line promised it would bear them to New York. His focus was on the business deals waiting to be born there. While he appreciated the elevated circumstances of his birth and the monetary inheritance that would be his one day, far in the future hopefully, he looked forward to cultivating a fortune of his own. One born from his own hard work and innovation.

  In New York, he’d have that chance.

  If he ever got there.

  Impatient to fetch Henry, Tris turned on his heel in time to see the swish of black and purple skirts rounding the corner of the open doors. Perhaps the wife or sweetheart of one of the staff coming to visit, embarrassed to be caught in the male dominated space by one of the residents. He was inclined to dismiss her presence without further thought. When he emerged from the garage, he spotted the same woman jogging down the length of the mews and his interest commenced anew. At each door, she curiously paused to peek inside before hurrying to the next. Clearly, she was looking for someone or something.

  In any case, that something was unrelated to him, and he had other worries. Those issues notwithstanding, the way she moved, so light on her feet, retained his attention…and interest. As if she ran often, which was unlikely. She lifted her skirts high enough for Tris to see she wore no stockings.

  Far more unusual. On both fronts.

  At the last door, she stopped. Her shoulders drooped in defeat then tensed with discernable frustration — a familiar sentiment he’d suffered time and again through the morning. He wondered what trials she experienced to rouse her annoyance, before his jaw fell as the most unfemininely uttered curse he’d ever imagined passing a lady’s lips met his shocked ears.

  To his further astonishment, she disappeared in a flash.

  Chapter 5

  Present Day

  Honestly, how was she supposed to identify a Daimler beyond recognizing the name as a defunct hyphenation of the Chrysler Company?

  Finding the first car had been easy enough. Brontë simply followed the maid’s directions to the mews tucked on a side street adjacent to the circle and waited for a footman bearing a trunk over one shoulder to pinpoint the correct garage and hence the car. He’d dropped the trunk at the rear of a long vintage-looking car with another steamer already set on the back and left, providing her the opportunity she’d needed to do what it took to stop Henry Burnham’s imminent departure.

  What that something was momentarily stumped her.

  Aila had been right. Brontë’s recklessness left her wholly unprepared for her task beyond the need to act. Her plan of attack had centered around an abstract imagining of horses and a wagon of some sort. Not a car. She’d seen a few gurgling, backfiring automobiles on the walk over from the theater. On the other hand, there’d been equal numbers of carriages. Faced with disabling a motorized vehicle rather than perhaps cutting a few harnesses, she’d been nonplussed by indecision. As a teen, her dad had insisted all his daughters know how to change a tire and add major fluids, yet somehow, he’d neglected detailed instruction on the mechanics of early engine function.

  She’d been fumbling with the latch to open the hood when approaching conversation had forced a more primitive — not to mention, criminal — tire slashing. When they changed one tire with the spare and left to fix the other, she’d struck with the fait accompli of skewering the remaining two. And it had worked. She’d hid around the corner, pleased by the delay and considered her mission accomplished… until the option of alternate vehicles was mentioned. Frantic, she’d raced off in search of the other car until she realized she had no idea what kind of car she was looking for.

  Honestly!

  With no internet connection to help her out, she fished the time travel device out of her purse and pressed the pulsing center of the glowing circle that she’d learned would return her to the moment in time that she left, praying they hadn’t expanded the mews outward over time. Blinking away the blinding white flash and ignoring the churning of her stomach, she leaned against the modern reincarnation of the mews turned houses, took out her phone and waited for her cell service to reconnect. Googling the car style was easy enough. The Daimler was basically a more compact version of the long, early-era mom-mobile she’d already disabled. A few doors back in the garage she’d seen a blue one just like it. Blue. The color had struck her as unusual. Her impression had always been that all old cars were black.

  Obviously not.

  For extra credit, she zoomed in on the picture until she could determine where the hood latched in case there wasn’t a sharp, pointy tool handy again. Pulling a bottle of water from her purse, Brontë took a sip and rubbed her stomach. This time travel thing had a way of upsetting her stomach. If she’d known, she would have brought an antacid or taken something for motion sickness. Something to remember next time she needed to invade the space-time continuum.

  Rolling back the dial on the device once again, she added on a few extra minutes to vandalize the alternate vehicle and locate the optional carriage as well. Just in case.

  * * *

  April 11, 1912

  He’d blinked. That was all.

  A long blink, obviously. There was no other explanation for the woman’s sudden disappearance other than he’d imagined the whole thing…

  An alternative Tris was beginning to consider with some seriousness. Long strides driven by bewilderment and curiosity carried him down the mews to where she’d been. He searched the immediate area and found no trace of her.

  With a shake of his head and a mental reminder that time was wasting, he turned back toward his own garage. Andy and Ambrose were no doubt on top of transferring the trunks, but it wouldn’t hurt to make certain. He’d load them himself if need be to move things alon…

  For the second time in as many minutes, his jaw fell as reached the door only to be greeted by the sight of a feminine bum bent under the open hood of his father’s Daimler. The same woman he’d seen but moments ago some fifty feet away straightened with a fist full of cables raised like a trophy under her triumphant smile.

  How had she gotten around him?

  He took in the pile of wires and hoses on the ground by her feet.

  How the hell had she had time to do all that?

  “What the bloody hell do ye think ye’re aboot?”

  The woman started at his incredulous bellow, whipping the collection of auto parts in her grasp behind her back like a naughty child caught sneaking a sweet. As if hiding them might belie what he’d witnessed. For a heartbeat, time seemed to pause as he absorbed her. She stilled as well. A Highland deer with its nose to the wind, she gaped at him from beneath the brim of her hat with wide eyes of such an unusual blue they almost seemed lavender. Absurdly thick black lashes made them appear even larger, and he was struck by the thought that she looked familiar.

  That could hardly be the case as he was unfamiliar with members of the criminal element. Female or otherwise. The reminder spurred time back into motion.

  “Speak, lass!” he commanded loud enough that she jumped and finally blinked.

  “Who are you?”

  Her accent was familiar to him. A couple of his aunts hailed from the other side of the pond. Henry’s wife originally did, as well. What an Amer
ican woman would be doing here was far more difficult to decipher.

  “I’m the son of the man whose property yer vandalizing. And who the bloody hell are ye to be coming in here making mischief on unsuspect…” The thought trailed away as another replaced it. “Ye’re the one who damaged Lord Burnham’s tires, aren’t ye?”

  She opened and closed her mouth, drawing his attention to her full pink lips. Her bottom lip then drawn between her teeth, the gesture expressing indecision. Of confessing her sins, Tris reminded himself, denying the unwilling attraction that stirred within him.

  Aye, the lass was a bonny one. Deep set, hypnotic eyes balanced by dark, arching brows. High cheekbones with a hint of a blush and a pert nose, her skin was luminous. And those rosy lips, the top one slightly fuller than the lower were tempting beyond explanation.

  “Gi’ me those,” he demanded, holding out his hand. She shuffled another step back. His temper boiled at her hesitation, rousing the Scot in him. “I willnae bring charges against ye if ye hand them over.”

  He could see it — the minute shake of her head, the more obvious denial in her eyes. She wouldn’t give up the parts she’d torn from the auto back willingly. Every delay cost him a potential fortune and his sanity, as well.

  “Give them to me.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Her voice was soft with regret. “Sorry. It’s nothing personal.”

  A beauty she might be, she was also a miscreant of the worst order. A roadblock between him and his destination with a fistful of evidence in her hand. That made it personal to him. Unfortunately, a gentleman didn’t brawl with a lady or he’d force her to give them up.

  Or perhaps he wasn’t as much a gentleman as he thought.

  She retreated as he stepped forward, rightly sensing the threat he represented. Anger and impatience drove him toward her again and she skittered back out of his reach.

  Blood raced hot through his veins and Tris lunged at her, reaching for the cables. She danced to the side, rotating to keep them out of reach.