“Bugger it, lass, ye’re going to make me miss my train.”
To his utter disbelief, she nodded. “Yes, and when I’m assured that will happen, I’ll happily return them.”
Her brazen gaze drifted over his shoulder and turned wary. Tris turned to find Andy and Ambrose hovering at the door, each with a trunk hoisted on his shoulder. Uncertainty filled their expressions but there was no hesitation in Tris.
“Drop those and help me detain her,” he commanded. “She’s the vandal who punctured his lordship’s tires.”
Both men stared at the woman in shock… and doubt. As if such a bonny lass couldn’t possess such criminal inclinations.
She, too, seemed perturbed by his accusation. “You realize my presence here doesn’t automatically incriminate me in any other incident.”
“Incident?”
With a growl, Tris took another step toward the unsuspecting suspect. Like a startled rabbit, she sprang away and ran past the two agape servants who continued to hold the trunks. Out the door he chased her as she sprinted down the alley. He’d give her kudos; she was a nimble thing. With her ill-gotten booty still clutched in one hand, though, she couldn’t lift her skirts to run as fast as he. He caught her shoulder and spun her around as cables flew into the air like confetti around them.
Gentlemanly instincts ran deep, dash it all. Tris let the precious wires fall to the ground and caught the thief around the waist before she did the same and hurt herself. With a gasp, she grabbed his shoulders for support and stared up at him.
By God but she was lovely. Up close her eyes appeared even deeper blue-purple. Like hyacinth. Damn if she didn’t smell as sweet. Her heart pounded against his chest, hard and fast. Her breath hitched. A potent rush of lust seized and shocked him so thoroughly, his reflex was to drop her like a hot coal.
He did precisely that.
She fell to the ground with a gasp and an audible squish of mud.
“Dear Lord, Tris, what is going on? I could hear you shouting from down the street.”
Tris tore his eyes away from the woman prostrate at his feet to look at his friend as he strode down the alley toward them. “This woman punctured your tires and sabotaged my father’s motor car. There’s not a chance we’re going to make our train now.”
“Yeah? Well, you dropped me in the mud. I mean, look at my dress!” She lifted herself out of the puddle and glared at Tris before turning to Henry. “Obviously his offense lacks the same magnitude but if we’re going to lay out accusations, there you go.”
Henry gazed at her for a long moment, his expression more curious than angry. “What do you have to say for yourself, miss?”
“Christ, Henry,” Tris exclaimed. “The lass is a vandal.”
“Henry? Henry Burnham?”
She looked at him as if he were the bloody king of England. The disparagement served to ratchet Tri’s fury another notch. “We need to summon the authorities!”
“Do we?” Henry’s expression softened further as he studied her. “We are indeed going to miss our train and by extension the sailing of our ship tomorrow morning. Have you nothing to say?”
The woman bit her lip again, her contrition in the face of his friend’s rebuke far more evident than it had been when Tris accused her of the same. “Only that someday, rather soon, you’ll thank me for it. Henry.”
“Thank you for it?” Tris repeated in disbelief while his friend shared a smile with the perpetrator of his business deal’s demise. “I’m appalled ye can stand there and say such a thi… Wait, where are you going?”
He ran after the woman as she bolted, but once he rounded the corner of the mews, she was gone again.
Vanished.
How did she do that?
* * *
Present Day
One of the up sides of being a costume designer was that Brontë knew how to clean clothes as well as make them. Down side, it took hours of careful work on the purple dress to remove all the mud stains and see it back to its original condition.
Good thing. She’d probably lose a friend if it hadn’t come out.
All those hours later, through the laundering of the borrowed gown and the evening performance of Cyrano, her hands shook uncontrollably. In her entire life she’d never been subjected to such a maddening series of events and the corresponding emotions.
Anxiety. Exhilaration. Triumph.
Her great-great grandfather. Though she’d spent less than a minute in his presence, that had been something.
Then there was the other guy.
The whole thing had shaken her so thoroughly, she’d almost forgotten to stop her other self from intervening. All the bouncing back and forth in time hadn’t helped to calm her nerves either.
“Who was he?” Aila asked after Brontë completed her recounting of what happened.
Or rather, after Aila nearly fainted when she’d finally strode into the theater, muddy and wet, over a half an hour after she’d vanished from the costume shop. While there was some thrill in that, a perfectly executed plan would have seen her disappear and reappear in a blink. In nearly the same spot. Instead, she’d been forced to stroll through present day Edinburgh’s city central wearing an Edwardian era dress and be stared at by curious passersby.
All thanks to that guy.
Her friend read from the diary while Brontë scrubbed the dress and they determined the mystery guy was Henry Burnham’s lifelong friend, Tristram MacKintosh, who’d accompanied Henry on the trip to New York.
“Tristram?” Aila repeated. “What kind of name is that?”
“Henry called him Tris.”
“I’d have a nickname, too, if I were him.
“Keep reading. Did they miss the Titanic?”
Aila skimmed the page and flicked to the next. “Aye. She writes that both men were most disheartened,” — she emphasized the words with a grin — “I like that. ‘Most disheartened to have missed the inaugural sailing of such a notorious ship but were able to catch a smaller liner out of Liverpool a day later. Something Henry and his steward had been arranging since they heard about the mysterious tire damage to his car.’”
That explained why Henry hadn’t been as angry as Tris over her sabotage. He’d already come up with a Plan B. The level-headed sort. She’d sprung from a farsighted gene pool for all her careless planning.
“Sounds like ye liked this other fellow, too,” Aila said when Brontë paused in her description of him.
Laughter sprung from disbelief. “Like him? He didn’t exactly gallop in on his white horse to sweep me into his arms. Isn’t that the standard we’re looking for?”
“Nay, we determined nae man was going to do that.”
“Right. I stand corrected.”
Aila was right, though. She had — perhaps not liked exactly but been fascinated by — the more mercurial Tris… in retrospect, at least.
When he’d first surprised her, her impression had been of a man as starchy as his stiff collar. Dark hair slicked back. Unflappable in his proper gray wool suit with shirt buttoned high, tie tight, vest form fitting down his lean body. Regardless, he was striking enough to take her breath away. Then she’d been struck by how stoically handsome he was. Fierce, yet composed. His jaw set, teeth clenched. Eyes hard. Body tense with purpose. His passion — for his cause, as it were — had stirred a dash of admiration in her.
When the damn had burst on his temper, releasing that sweet Scottish brogue and bringing a flash of heat to his deep olive-green eyes…well, she’d found surprising pleasure in that moment. Pleasure mixed with fear when he’d chased after her, and when he’d caught her and held her against him, she could have sworn she saw a hint of a different sort of heat in his eyes.
Obviously, she’d been mistaken.
“He dropped me in a mud puddle. I get we agreed a girl can’t hope for a white knight, but I hope we can wish for more than that.”
Whatever he’d done, her relief that he hadn’t been related by blood to her had
been palpable and surprising. And she was woman enough to admit that unleashing the beast within had provided a wee bit of a thrill.
Brontë inwardly cringed at the thought then grimaced at her reaction. Was she so fundamentally broken that she couldn’t look into the moody green eyes of a handsome man and acknowledge that finding him attractive and sexy wasn’t a terrible thing? Attraction was healthy. Normal.
Perhaps her joking comment to Granny wasn’t far off the mark. Her loins had been ignored for far too long. She might be wanting a man more than she’d imagined. This wasn’t that man.
“Even if I were interested in dating, you know I don’t go for guys younger than me,” Brontë reminded her friend. “They’re too immature, mentally and emotionally.”
Tris hadn’t come across that way. Though thinking back, she decided he had to be a few years younger than her. Such self-possession was unusual in a man so young. Maybe they raised them different back then.
Maybe it didn’t even matter.
“This could be yer trickle-down man. Did ye think of that?”
“Yeah, right.” The notion summoned a choked laugh. “It’s not as if I’ll ever see him again.”
“Yet ye’re still talking about him,” Aila pointed out. “He must’ve been a proper hottie. Was he?”
Dark hair, those deep green eyes? If he unbent a bit, yes Tris MacKintosh could be a certifiable hottie. “He was handsome enough that any woman would stop to take a second look,” she allowed. “I’m only human.”
“Good. I was beginning to wonder.”
Fine, she’d been attracted to him. There, she admitted it. It still didn’t matter.
“My mission’s accomplished. Henry didn’t die aboard the Titanic.”
An electric shock raced through Brontë.
Nor had Tris.
Gratification followed in a heartbeat. Rather than being consigned to an icy grave, Tris MacKintosh had survived along with Henry. That vital, dynamic man lived on. She was thankful for that.
She hadn’t saved one life. She’d saved those of Henry’s friends and the servants that had accompanied them as well.
Would that she could have saved the whole boatload of victims. Unfortunately, she could think of no way to convince someone in a position of power that the unsinkable Titanic would flounder after all. Yet.
For now, she’d take her win and be content with it.
“So, what next?” Her best friend was now a true believer in the power of the time travel device. “If ye’re done with it, I’ve got a tidy notion or two I’ve been toying with while ye were gone.”
Brontë clutched the gadget protectively. Immediate plan or not, she wasn’t giving it up any time soon. Not to Aila or even Donell.
She might never give it up.
“I’m not sure yet,” she hedged. “On to Hyacinth, I suppose. First, I can’t wait to read about the rest of the changes my visit made.”
Chapter 6
Nothing had changed.
Brontë dropped the bacon she’d been nibbling on while she read through Hazel’s post-Titanic entries the next morning and scanned the words again with disbelieving eyes. She’d been expecting to enjoy her day off with years and years more of blissful prose that would carry Hazel and Henry into their old age together.
Instead in August of 1914, she’d gotten:
“My darling Henry is lost to me. Perhaps it is only fitting that an aberrant accident take him now when by Fate he should have been lost along with so many others aboard the Titanic two years ago. Our dear Lord spared him then but has called him home now.” Dried tears smudged the words, then, “There is naught to soothe my grief.”
Two more years. That was it.
Two more years and nothing to show for it.
Well, not nothing, technically speaking. Hazel and Henry had another daughter in addition to Brontë’s great-grandmother Hyacinth. There were numerous entries regarding their two sweet lasses, both who charmed their father right down to his toes. Short snippets of glowing bliss…
Right up until the bleak entry of Henry’s death when the baby, Carrie, was only four months old. And all the equally depressing pages that followed. Each more profoundly sorrowful than before. As if the gift of a few more precious years had made her husband’s sudden death more difficult for Hazel to bear.
Ravenous appetite vanquished by the knot growing in her gut, Brontë pushed away the remainder of her breakfast. Some things had changed but not enough. Despite her best efforts, Henry had still died a young man.
Henry. Not merely her great-great grandfather any longer. She hadn’t gotten the chance to meet him — properly, that is. Their short exchange provided nothing about him she hadn’t known before.
Yet meeting him allowed her to replace the typical visualization most people probably had of a great-great anything. Though she’d seen an old faded photograph of him before, she’d somehow always pictured him in sepia tones as an old man, gray and wrinkled, despite the fact that he’d never lived more than a quarter of a century.
Because Brontë failed in her mission.
Back to square one.
Now her task had a dual purpose. She’d gained the perspective of knowing Henry Burnham as something more than a name in a family tree. As a semi-fictional character in Hazel’s journals. Not only had her hope to spare Hazel a broken heart been renewed, she also needed to save the very real person Henry Burnham had become in her memory. A young man, blond, with a kind smile and engaging twinkle in his eye. Animated and in color. A man with his whole life ahead of him.
Problem was, the exact details of his demise this time weren’t recounted in the diary other than to say he’d been hit by a motor car and the day. No time. No location. If she were going to figure out how to save Henry again, she’d have to get inside that townhouse.
Which meant figuring out where she’d gone wrong before.
Her studies toward her master’s degree at NYU had required many classes on the history of clothing and textiles, on the impact of war, religion, and innovation on fashion. None of them included class structure in Britain or anything about the social interactions of the times that might help her figure out where she’d erred. Required classes in her undergraduate studies and high school had prepared her even less. Brontë set the diary aside and looked at Violet across the breakfast table. “Granny, why would your grandfather Henry have been referred to as His Lordship?”
Her grandmother sipped her tea and set the cup aside. “What makes you think that he was?”
“Something I read in the diary,” she lied. “I can’t remember exactly what.”
“I can’t think I recall it being mentioned.” Violet frowned, probably trying to mentally place the fictional entry. “My grandmother never gave two shakes for my grandfather’s title.”
“His title?” She shook her head. “You mean like a duke or something?”
“Earl, actually,” Violet corrected. “He was the Earl of Montrose.”
“How has that never been mentioned?”
“It’s hardly relevant anymore,” her grandmother argued. “After my grandfather died, the title went off to some distant cousin. Though since in Scotland ladies are entitled to inherit a title in their own right, my grandmother might have appealed the decision for my mother’s sake. Instead, in her grief, she packed up my mother and Aunt Carrie and moved back to America. It wasn’t until some years later that my mother returned to Scotland. She was a lady by birth even if she didn’t retain the title of countess, and Henry’s mother insisted she have the proper education.”
“So, Hyacinth came back to Scotland for school and met your father?”
Violet rocked her head from side to side. “In that order, yes, but they met at a ball when Lady Montrose sponsored my mother for the Season.”
“Sponsor?” Brontë asked. “And what is the Season?”
“I thought you enjoyed reading romance novels? All this is described in detail in them.”
“I do. Not t
he right sort, it seems. What is it?”
“The Season was a period each spring when the upper crust would attend a series of balls and the like,” her grandmother explained. “A sponsor was someone who introduced a young lady to Society and chaperoned her through the Season.”
It finally clicked together, what Granny was saying combined with bits and pieces of what she’d read…and experienced in real life. “I suppose a young unmarried woman couldn’t just walk around town on her own, right?”
“They were different times,” Violet confirmed with a nod. “With different rules. Ones you’d have trouble conforming to, dear.”
“Because I’m so independent?” The question held some irony.
“And outspoken and willful and… er, unique in your expression of your beliefs.”
Brontë followed Violet’s gaze down to her t-shirt with a graphic of the Notorious RBG and grinned. “You don’t think my feminist agenda would’ve gone over well back then?”
“Hardly. Though my great-grandmother, that is Grandmama Hazel’s mother, was presumably something of a feminist herself,” Violet said. “A suffragette in New York long before women were granted the vote.”
“That’s awesome. I love my gene pool.”
More and more with each passing day.
All the more reason to ensure its longevity.
“Do you have any plans for your day off?”
Many, Brontë thought as she gathered up their breakfast plates and took them to the sink to wash them. Fortunately for her, all of them could be accomplished in the blink of an eye. “Not much.” She shrugged. “I need to run into work later on to mend a couple of problem pieces before tomorrow night’s show. First though, we’ve got your physical therapy appointment this morning, remember?”
“Oh, pish. We needn’t bother with that.” Her grandmother flicked her wrist dismissively.
“Oh, yes, we do.” Brontë pinned her with a fixed look. Violet Graham was a feisty adult with her own agenda in life, one that Brontë could not and dared not try to steer when it came to anything other than her granny’s health and wellbeing. On this single topic, she stood firm. “If you want out of that chair, we’re going.”
A Scot to Remember (Something About a Highlander Book 1) Page 5