First Time with a Highlander

by Gwyn Cready

  “Because of me?” she said, surprised.

  “You sent your invitation with a bottle of Kerr whiskey—if that helps you remember.”

  She didn’t register shock, though his words made her lean back in her chair and regard him with something closer to interest.

  “I dinna consider the person who provides the directions to be responsible for the destination the carriage reaches,” she said. “You, sir, will have to take up your complaint with the driver.”

  He put his palms on the table and leaned forward until his face was a foot from hers. “I don’t know where she is. I’m taking it up with you.”

  The circle of onlookers had gathered closer. Disgruntled customers were evidently a rarity in Undine’s business. He was okay being the exception to the rule.

  “Sit down, then,” she said, gathering the cards. “And shuffle these while I think.” Grimacing, she moved a bottle of ink and a quill aside to clear the space. Then she pushed the deck toward him.

  The cards were tattered and worn, with a faded print of a lake on their backs. He shuffled twice, feeling, as always, the skepticism with which he regarded carnival tricks. But he reminded himself he appeared to be sitting in a kilt in a tavern in Edinburgh in 1706. Perhaps he needed to keep a more open mind. He picked up the cards and turned them over in his hand.

  “They’re blank,” he said, surprised.

  Undine’s brow arched. “Surely that can’t make a difference. You dinna believe this works anyhow.”

  Had she seen his skepticism? He’d been told he had a poker face. “I’d be happy to be proven wrong.”

  “I dinna think happy is what you’re going to be.”

  She had the palest green eyes he’d ever seen and a dangerous grace of movement that made him think of manta rays—or rattlers. Her eyes tightened for an instant when she retrieved the deck. “You are a man with a house but no home. You are a man of accomplishment but not substance. You are surrounded by admirers but have hardly a friend.”

  He felt like he’d been sucker punched. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it? You’ve shared the beds of two women in the last twelve hours.”

  The crowd inhaled, and heat rushed up Gerard’s neck. In New York that would barely raise an eyebrow, not that he would have announced it in a room full of people—or even mentioned it at all. But how had Undine known? He longed to point out he had made love to, at most, one of the two women—the redhead—and that assumption was based on fragmentary and, at this point, far from reliable evidence. But he said nothing, just screwed himself deeper into the chair. None of what Undine had said was completely fair, but taken as a whole, it did have an uncomfortable ring of truth to it.

  “I see you’re not quite so quick to make a denial now,” she said. “Come, come. The audience is curious. Are these women pretty? Highborn? Risk seekers? Abandoned? Are they cursed with scoundrels for husbands? Tell us so that we may revel in their disgrace.”

  Gerard was horrified. “I most certainly will not.”

  Undine’s face relaxed. “Good people of Edinburgh, he has demonstrated his true worth by refusing to turn the women into objects of public scrutiny. We can overlook much in a man of chivalry.” She pushed one of the blank cards toward him, along with the quill. “I can see you home this hour if you do but one small thing. Write the names of the women you have bedded on the card and put it in the fire. No one will see the names but you. By the time the card has turned to ashes, the bonds that have held you here will be erased.”

  Gerard looked at the card and licked his lips, which had turned uncomfortably dry. He knew Serafina’s first name, of course, but not her last. And he didn’t know Cinderella’s name at all.

  The crowd turned cooler.

  “Perhaps there’s a reason you find yourself in the sophisticated city of Edinburgh,” the fortune-teller said. “Perhaps there is a lesson or two you need to learn.”

  “Sophisticated? Gimme a break. There’s not enough in this place to engage a turd-throwing chimp, let alone a man of more worldly tastes.”

  “You best take care, sir.” She bit off the “sir” with a hiss of pain.

  Her lids began to flutter, and Gerard realized she was going to faint. He leaped from the chair and caught her before her head hit the desk. He lifted her into his arms and saw a red stain near her ribs.

  “Don’t say anything about the blood,” she whispered in his ear.

  “She’s fainted,” he said to the crowd. “Let me through.”

  Someone cried, “Call for brandy!”

  Gerard pushed his way into the hall, wondering from whom Undine wanted the truth to be hidden. He especially wished for Serafina now. She’d know what to do.

  He dashed into the alley and backtracked to the Hollow Crown, intensely aware of Undine’s small moans as he moved. When he reached the inn, he hurried up the stairs. The door to their rooms was locked and no one answered his knock. He took a quick look up and down the hall, then kicked the door open.

  Serafina emerged from her bedroom and gasped.

  “She’s bleeding,” he said.

  “What?!”

  “Close the door.” He carried his charge into her room and laid her on the bed. “It’s her side.”

  “I’m bruised,” Undine said as Serafina examined her. “I dropped from an upper window. I cut myself landing, but it’s not serious.”

  Gerard looked at Serafina, confused. Why would a fortune-teller need to drop out of a window? Serafina shook her head. She began to loosen Undine’s gown. “Wait outside.”

  After an excruciating few minutes, Serafina emerged.

  “She’ll be all right. I think she may have cracked a rib. She hasna slept or eaten in almost two days. The cut is relatively minor. I dressed it. The bruising though…”

  Gerard made a long exhale. He was relieved she’d be okay. And he was relieved for Serafina too. She seemed quite attached to the woman.

  “I, ah, never asked your name—your last name, that is.”

  Serafina looked at him, surprised. “Fallon. My name is Fallon.”

  “Ah. Very nice to meet you, Serafina Fallon. I’m Gerard Innes.”

  She curtsied, and he surprised himself by attempting a bow.

  It dawned on him that there were no emergency rooms in 1706—or penicillin or Vicodin. Even a moderate wound would probably be fatal. People here must lose friends and family members as often as he lost paper clips. He regarded the world around him with renewed concern. He barely made it through blood donations.

  “Why would Undine be jumping from buildings?” he asked.

  A curl loosened itself from Serafina’s pins and fell nearly to the neckline of her gown. She tucked it absently behind an ear. He wished she’d left it dangling.

  “I dinna know for certain,” she said, keeping her voice low, “but I think she may be involved in things she doesna talk about—political things. I walked in once on her and Abby—you haven’t met Abby. As I said, she and Duncan are set to marry. You’ll recall Duncan.”

  “Oh, I doubt I’ll forget him anytime soon.”

  “And she and Abby were talking about something that was going to happen when one of the Queen’s advisors was visiting Edinburgh. They stopped when they saw me, of course. But ’twas the way they acted…”

  “Is she a spy?” Gerard did not have a great grasp on Scottish history, but one of the campaigns he’d worked on for Highlander Whiskey had begun with a montage of key events in Scotland’s tumultuous relationship with England. The spots ended with the modern drive for Scottish independence. Scotland always won or held their ground—cue “Scotland the Brave”—but Gerard knew five hundred years of tragic, deadly losses had been glossed over rather egregiously.

  “It wouldna surprise me,” Serafina said. “She’s nae a supporter of war.”

  And theref
ore an enemy of both sides. “She’s not a Scot though, is she? Her accent—”

  “She’s English, aye. From Cumbria, though she recognizes no borders. She has a house near Drumburgh.”

  “Yes, she mentioned that, right before she gave me my performance review. Let me tell you, for personality summaries, Myers-Briggs has nothing on her.”

  “She told your fortune?”

  “Yes. I had some spare time after I’d been ditched.”

  Serafina flushed. “I didna mean to leave you, but I had nae desire to speak to the man in the doorway.”

  “The ship’s owner…or the other man?” He wanted to see her reaction.

  “Either of them.”

  “The second man said he had a message for you.”

  Her face tightened. “What was it?”

  “I don’t know. I told him I wouldn’t deliver it, so he didn’t tell me.”

  She relaxed. “Good for you.”

  “You say you didn’t mean to leave me, yet when I came in here you didn’t really look like you were rallying a rescue party. In fact”—he pointed to a bag on the floor of the sitting room that appeared to be filled with her clothes—“it sort of looks like you were planning to disappear.”

  “I-I…”

  “Look, I don’t much care what you do after you reverse this process. We drank, we met, we…did something all night long, then we did the whiskey a-go-go. Fine. Whatever. But I need to get back. I’ve got a partnership coming, and I have no plans to die of an infected hangnail.”

  “Doesn’t having a hangnail imply you’ve actually done something?”

  “Ooh, good one. I guess getting roughed up by your sidekick and helping Elphaba in there doesn’t count as doing something in your world. Is she awake?”

  “Do you need to do it now?”

  “I realize the Great and Powerful Oz is a very busy personage. But unless you’d like to escort me back to the land of club chairs and heated toilet seats on your own, then, yes, now is when it needs to happen.”

  Serafina sighed. She called for some soup and coffee for Undine, then led Gerard back into her friend’s room.

  Undine leaned against several pillows, her hair loose around her shoulders, writing on a portable desk. Her room looked like a cross between a military campsite and the apothecary’s shop in Romeo and Juliet, neither of which gave him a very good feeling. There were dozens of bottles and twists of orange paper lined neatly on the room’s chest of drawers, and unless one counted the half-drunk glass of water on the table by the bed, not a single item of a personal nature was visible.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be resting?” he said.

  “I took some tincture of willow bark and am feeling a bit better. Would you have preferred to interrupt my sleep?”

  “You didn’t seem to mind interrupting mine. I need to get back. I need you to reverse whatever you’ve done.”

  She sighed and laid down her quill. “I am not in the habit of responding to demands. However, I do owe you a debt of kindness.” She ducked her head in what appeared to be an unpracticed display of gratitude.

  “You’re welcome,” he said.

  “Perhaps the substance I said you lack is merely a deficiency, not an absence.”

  He bowed. “You are too kind.”

  “Serafina?”

  Serafina, who’d been fidgeting behind him, squirmed by. “I’m sorry. I told him he shouldna—”

  Undine waved away her concern. “I am assuming you ignored what you knew to be my wishes and mixed your own potion.”

  Serafina lowered her head. “I did, aye.”

  Undine made a short, unhappy noise. “Bring me the herbs. I need to see what you’ve done.”

  Serafina slowly lifted her head. “What do ye mean?”

  “You used the herbs, did ye not? Bring me the whiskey and what’s left of the herbs, so I can estimate the potency.”

  A tiny muscle under Serafina’s eye began to twitch. “I used them all.”

  The desk overbalanced and the inkwell crashed to the floor. “You did what?”

  “All of it. The whole packet.”

  “Gods in heaven. How did you eat so much?”

  “I didn’t eat it. I drank it. In whiskey.”

  “In whiskey!”

  “You said to.”

  “I said I recommended putting my marigold tisane in whiskey. I said nothing about the mixture I gave you. Well, I hope you two enjoyed your little liaison. I’m surprised either of you can walk…or talk…or”—she looked at Gerard’s midlands with such naked curiosity he took a step backward, tripping over the threshold and only barely catching himself with the back of the settee—“or anything, frankly. Did you drink it too?”

  Gerard hesitated. “I drank whiskey, yes. In the twenty-first century though. Not here.”

  Serafina, who’d swept the pieces of broken inkwell onto a sheet of writing paper, dropped them with another crash. “You’re from the twenty-first century?!”

  Undine collapsed back on her pillows. “Oh, this is recuperative.”

  “That’s three hundred years from now!”

  “There’s no slipping anything past you.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “Why didn’t you say you summoned me with magic?”

  “Stop!” Undine cried. “Both of you. Fortunately for us, ’tis very little trouble to reverse a love potion.”

  “It wasn’t a love potion!” they said simultaneously.

  Undine rolled her eyes. “Call it what you like. The mixture of invocation and fornication you gave form to could have powered Paris and his kinsmen throughout the entire Trojan War.”

  Gerard grinned. “Trojan. Heh.”

  Undine pointed to large jar on the chest, which Serafina retrieved instantly. Undine shook the gray, powdery substance into her palm. “To summarize, we have a man from the future summoned to the past for a single night of passion. You didn’t leave these rooms except to find me, and you didn’t talk to anyone else. Is that the sum of it?”

  Gerard looked at Serafina; Serafina looked at the floor.

  “We didn’t make love,” Serafina said, busying herself with the glass.

  “Except we did,” Gerard said. “And I think a lot else happened too.” He cleared his throat. “Quite a lot.”

  Undine flung the powder back into the jar and brushed off her hands. “What exactly? I have to know everything.”

  Serafina said, “I want to tell you. I do. But the problem is I can’t.”

  Undine gave her a fiery eye. “Have you taken an oath?”

  Gerard said, “She can’t tell you because she doesn’t know. Neither do I. It’s as simple as that.”

  Undine closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Gerard could almost feel her counting to ten.

  “’Tis not simple at all,” she said, opening her eyes. “Nor do I have time to explain why. I have an urgent task that must be done. But I cannot undo anything the two of you have done until I have a full and detailed accounting of the things that need to be undone. Where is Abby?”

  “I dinna know,” Serafina said. “She and Duncan were here this morning when this all began, though she was sleeping—”

  “Sleeping. What a notion. I shall need you to deliver this note, then. I was supposed to do it myself, but I don’t think I can. It’s to a tailor on Canongate, who is apparently a friend of the cause. There’s a coach rented in my name in the stables. If you can do this and put together your list of activities while I rest, I’ll be much better situated to help you later. I promise.”

  Serafina nodded. “Of course.”

  “But don’t tell anyone else I’m here. After last night, I need to stay as invisible as possible.”

  “We’ll be back with our list before you awaken.” Serafina gestured to the
door, and Gerard followed.

  “Oh, and try not to imbibe any more herbs until the current ones wear off,” Undine said to her friend. “You may find yourself running naked through the streets.”

  Eight

  Naked through the streets. Now there was an image Gerard was unlikely to get out of his head soon. Nor, to be fair, did he want to. The carriage was waiting, and Serafina bristled as he tried to lead her onto it. This was a woman who didn’t like to be told what she had to do. There was only one thing to be done for that.

  “Sit down,” he commanded.

  The flash of her eyes had the approximate radiant flux of a small volcanic eruption. He felt like Vulcan, the all-powerful god of fire.

  The driver appeared in the open door. “You’re sure you want to take your lady to this place, sir? ’Tis not the most salubrious part of Edinburgh.”

  Several spurts of lava blasted into the air.

  “Aye,” Serafina said through gritted teeth. “I thought I made that clear when I told you the address.”

  The driver bowed politely at her before catching Gerard’s eye for the official answer.

  He nodded. “I can look out for her.”

  “As you wish.” The driver shut the door and disappeared.

  Serafina arched a brow. “You can look out for me?”

  “I can.”

  The carriage burst into motion, jostling her hard enough to knock another curl loose. She was sitting across from him, and with the sun on her face, he could see a spray of very fine freckles across the bridge of her nose, like caramel stars in a vanilla sky. He had a sudden desire to kiss them.

  “And how might you do that?” she asked. “You dinna have a sword or a pistol or even a knife.”

  “I’m actually pretty smart. I can finesse just about anything I put my mind to.”

  She made a small snort. But her amusement fell away when his gaze didn’t waver.

  “I hope for your sake we dinna have to test it,” she said, cutting her attention to the street beyond the window.