A Time & Place for Every Laird

by Angeline Fortin

  “We need to get back to the house. Where is the Tahoe?” Hugh pointed up the hill, and Claire worried her lower lip between her teeth.

  Hugh was at risk now and it was her fault, because they were looking for her. Only her.

  The truth hit her hard. Not only could she not go with him to Scotland—though she hadn’t told him that yet—she was a danger to him every step along the way. Before she had thought that it was better for Hugh to be with her, to have her help, and she had fought against his previous attempts to separate based on that belief. But Hugh had been in the right all along. They were better off apart. Not because of the threat he posed to her but because of the one she presented to him.

  They wouldn’t know who he was if she wasn’t with him. Even if he got caught speeding or without an ID, there would be nothing to link him to Mark-Davis. She did that, and as long as she was with him, Claire was a threat to his freedom. “You should take the car and go, Hugh,” she urged. “I’m leading them to you. Without me, they’ll never be able to find you.”

  “Nae,” Hugh said sternly. “’Tis as ye said, we are in this together. They hae no proof against ye. Now, come, we need tae gae before they wake!”

  “Damn it, Hugh, I’m saying you were right!” Claire cried, standing firm. “I don’t say it often, so please listen! If they find me, they find you. I’ll take my chances that they don’t have anything on me.”

  “Well, I willnae!” he said, commanding as he reached for her, “Come now!”

  “No!” she said, pulling away from his grasp. “You go!”

  “Bluidy hell, lass, we hae nae the time for this!”

  “Hugh! Put me down!” Claire shrieked, beating Hugh’s back as he hauled her away over his shoulder.

  Chapter 36

  With the ferry unavailable to them and Hugh refusing to drive away and leave her, Claire had no choice but to take the wheel and drive them away from the terminal, though she cursed his undignified handling of her person along the way. Taking the main highway north across the island, she mentally plotted an alternate course to Blaine, on the border of Canada, where they were scheduled to meet the boat. The trouble was that without getting to the mainland first, the only other option was an island-hopping adventure across most of Puget Sound. There were some bridges available, but in the end, another ferry would be required. If the NSA was watching one ferry, it stood to reason that they might be watching others as well. That would take the Bremerton and Fauntleroy ferries off their already short list of available options. The Port Townsend ferry on the most direct northern route required reservations as well. Even if they made it going north without incident, they would be at least an hour late in meeting their ride.

  They might reschedule, but if Jameson already knew or suspected that she and Hugh were on Bainbridge Island, as the agent’s presence hinted, would they even have another twenty-four-hour grace period to wait before they were found?

  It was ridiculous, Claire thought as they crossed the first of many bridges, leaving Bainbridge behind. Or maybe she was. All week long, while sharing a solitary existence with Hugh, she had been fine with hiding away from their troubles. Even Hugh, who had originally abhorred the concept of such “cowardice,” had seemed content with their voluntary seclusion.

  So why did scurrying from the agents like a startled rabbit now suddenly seem like too much to bear? Especially when it looked like constant running would be a prominent fixture in her future?

  If what Danny said was true, she could expect to see an unmarked black Suburban in her rearview mirror each time she left the house for months and maybe years to come. It would never end, and she would never again have that solitude with Hugh.

  Claire hated Jameson for that, and she didn’t plan to live out her life in fear.

  So what options did she have? Option A: try to sneak into Canada, save Hugh, and save herself but remain a hunted woman. Option B: turn Hugh over to Jameson, plead coercion, and live in guilt and misery instead of fear for the rest of her days.

  At the intersection of Highway 3, Claire stopped and considered her options. North for plan A, back the way she had come for plan B. Shit, she thought, tapping her fingers against the wheel. Neither one really worked for her.

  Claire gunned the accelerator and turned to the left, heading south on Highway 3, down the Kitsap Peninsula. Screw all the cloak and dagger B.S., she was going to go with Option C, where she ended this thing once and for all.

  “What are we doing here? I thought we were tae go tae this Canada,” Hugh asked, yawning and stretching as they exited the SUV at Danny’s SoDo warehouse almost two hours later, twisting and wincing at the pain in his back. For all that the seats in these modern vehicles were cushioned and well sprung, he would have opted for the comfort of his carriage without a second thought. Travel was always tiring and uncomfortable, but these last couple of hours trapped in the small seat had been physically exhausting.

  “We couldn’t get there in time without the ferries, so we need a new plan,” Sorcha said somewhat evasively, gaining a look of disbelieving surprise from Hugh. She had hinted at nothing of the sort since leaving the ferry terminal, nothing at all to indicate that the plan wasn’t to move forward as they had intended. Hugh had thought her silence nothing more than a female stewing for what she had termed his manhandling and stubborn refusal to drive on without her.

  “Ye said nothing of this,” he scolded. “Nae even when ye had me drive us through the toll road.”

  “What difference does it make?” she grouched irritably, her ire still visibly festering. The drive had been a long one as they had gone south through Tacoma before circling back north to Seattle. The ferry truly was a blessing in comparison to that drive. She stretched her stiff limbs as well, lifting her arms over her head and distracting him from the subject in the process.

  As fatigued as she might have been, she was still a beauty. Their hours spent exploring the rapture to be found in one another’s arms had been the most fulfilling of his life. He had not only made love to her but had been made love to, as well. She had shared in that passion fully. Just when Hugh had thought he would never see anything as lovely as she, the sight of Sorcha caught in ecstasy’s snare had proven him wrong.

  From side to side she leaned with a low moan and then bent over to touch the ground. Her shirt rode up in the back and her jeans stretched across her bottom, tempting him, and Hugh didn’t fight the impulse, reaching out and sliding a hand over those luscious curves.

  She turned her head with a raised brow before levering herself back up. “What’s with the hand? You think you can just sling me over your shoulder and haul me off like a sack of potatoes and still have the right to cop a feel?”

  “We dinnae hae time tae stop and argue the matter. Moreover, yer so verra bonny, I cannae help myself,” Hugh told her, his voice surprisingly rough, though he punctuated it with a leering grin. Reaching up to pull the band that held her hair back out, he spread his fingers through the auburn masses. Sorcha stiffened, stubbornly refusing to relinquish her anger, but she did not fight him as he brushed a tender kiss across her lips. Hugh wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tightly with a sigh of contentment as the tension finally left her and she rested her cheek against his broad chest. She fit against him perfectly, and Hugh covered her bottom with one hand to pull her in for a tighter fit.

  “Sure, now you get all flirtatious,” Sorcha said with a frown, though her eyes were lit with a touch of humor as she looked up at him. “Days and days of nothing and now, when we’re on the run, you get handsy.”

  Aye, he had wasted those idyllic days.

  Now such moments were lost, at least for the time being. As Sorcha said, they were fleeing their foe with little time for play, now that they knew how close the pursuit was. Once the threat was gone, there would be time for exploring how deeply their passions flowed, Hugh reminded himself. Even so, he knew he would risk much for a chance to hold her in his arms once more.

  �
��I’ve done only what I thought best.” The words encompassed his actions not only that night but for most of the week.

  “Do you think that excuses you?”

  “I think much can be excused if it is done for the right reasons.”

  Sorcha humphed. “I’ll remember you said that.”

  Chapter 37

  “What the fuck? It’s one in the morning!” Hugh’s pounding on Danny’s door was met with those irritable words as it swung open.

  Claire pursed her lips impatiently. “Oh, give it a rest. It’s not like you were asleep yet.”

  He might not have been sleeping but he did look like hell. “Claire? What are you doing here?” Danny scratched his head as he looked with confusion from his watch to the suitcases they carried. “You’re supposed to meet Jake at the boat in like an hour.”

  “Obviously there’s been a change of plans, lad,” Hugh said pleasantly, his present mood clearly a far sight better than either of the siblings’. “Would ye hae us stand in the hallway for the remainder of the night or might we come in?”

  Danny must have realized that Hugh was asking in a far more amiable manner than Claire might have, given her fatigue and raw emotions, because he stepped back and waved them in without further comment.

  “There were agents surveying the ferry,” Hugh continued before Claire could say anything more. “We managed tae evade them but our escape route was compromised.”

  Danny frowned at that. “Why come here? Why didn’t you just call me? I’m sure they would have held the boat for you. You’ll never make it now.”

  “I don’t intend to,” Claire said flatly but didn’t offer anything further on her newly minted plan. Better not to alert either of them at this point and inadvertently compromise her next escape route as well. “We can work it out tomorrow, but right now I just want to sleep. Can we use your room?”

  “What if I was sleeping there?” Danny asked.

  Claire snorted at that, noting that though her brother was alone in the loft, a bank of active computer monitors cast the only light in the room. “Any sleep you get is probably done between eight and noon. Do you mind? Please?”

  “Well since you used the magic word …” Danny shrugged and waved an arm toward one of the bedrooms and turned his back on them to wander into the kitchen. He pulled out a can of Red Bull before returning to his computer station, leaving them to make their own way.

  They undressed in silence down to their undergarments and Hugh pulled Claire tightly into his embrace as they slipped under the tangled sheets. Absorbing the warmth of his presence, she set to memorizing the feel of his body next to hers while in the back of her mind she examined the variables of her plan. “Ye should sleep, lass.”

  “How did you know I’m not?”

  “Because ye keep wriggling yer arse against me. What is on yer mind?”

  “I keep wondering if the sheets are sanitary,” Claire quipped in a whisper and felt the warm rush of Hugh’s laughter against her hair.

  “It looked clean enough,” he said. “I would wager he doesnae rest here often.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  Silence reigned for a moment with only the hum of electronics to break the peace. “I’m going to ask Danny to take you to Canada,” Claire said into the dark room, feeling Hugh’s negative response in the tightening of his body behind hers before he even spoke.

  “Nae, my love. We will go on together as planned.”

  The denial of Claire’s newly conceived Option C came as no surprise. In truth, she hadn’t expected him to accept total abandonment as a possibility any easier now than he had at the ferry terminal. At least now she wasn’t in a position to be forcibly bent to his will.

  But she couldn’t bend him to hers, either, which left them at an impasse of sorts. During the nearly two-hour drive it had taken to get to her brother’s loft by swinging completely south of Puget Sound and traversing Tacoma, she had weighed her options, hoping for inspiration. The term stubborn Scot was something Claire had heard before, but with Hugh she now knew exactly what it meant. He was stalwart and implacable in the face of her pleas to drive on without him. Even if she refused to drive the car any further, there was nothing she could do to force him to drive it away from her. She was stuck with him, Hugh said, and there was nothing she could do to change his mind.

  But she had to try.

  “A logical man, a man of reason,” she drew out the word, “would see that you would have better success without me.”

  “I suppose that would depend on how ye define success,” he whispered into her ear. “If success tae me is having ye wi’ me and that instinct is pursuant tae my pleasure then reason argues that I hae the right of it.”

  Of course Hugh would pull out a classic argument of Voltaire’s from the enlightenment period that a man’s desire to pursue his personal happiness above all else was instinctive and therefore reasonable. Self-entitled duke or not, Claire thought it was awfully convenient that he would argue such a thing now, and told him so, adding as she rolled onto her back to look up at him, “That’s a pretty liberal interpretation of the original philosophy. Voltaire didn’t mean that just because you want something, that makes it all right.”

  “Betwixt the two of us, who can better say what he meant?” Hugh argued, pushing himself up onto one elbow, his free hand splayed across her midsection. “Personal freedoms are given tae us by God and right.”

  “This is no time for a philosophical debate, Hugh,” Claire said, though as with many conversations they’d had over the past week, a thrill of challenge shot through her at the thought of engaging in just that. That they would do it half-naked and in bed made it all the more interesting. There could be nothing sexier than Hugh arguing philosophy wearing nothing but his boxers, and nothing harder than making a logical argument due to the distraction offered by the same. “A statement like that can lead to all sorts of arguments, like the rights of governments and monarchs over those personal liberties you use so high-handedly. What do you do when their edicts and the law are at odds with your personal desires?”

  “What did my countrymen do at Culloden? What hae ye done for the past sennight?” Hugh countered, making a fine, irrefutable point, much to Claire’s consternation. Everything she had done for the past week had walked a fine line between what was right and what was legal. “A man’s will is nae alone in driving his reason. Reason itself is often a slave to his passions.”

  “You’re going to pull Hume into this? Your buddy Francois-Marie said that if a man did whatever his passions led him to do then he was putting morality at risk.”

  It was a springboard launching them into free will, and Hugh latched on to the topic happily; clearly it was a favorite of his, arguing against his old friend’s well-documented philosophies and supporting individual freedoms and free will.

  “So ye see, moral distinctions between good and evil are nae derived from reason at all,” Hugh pointed out. “Besides, if we have nae free will and our fate is already determined, why do we fight at all?”

  “Hume again?” Claire sighed, wondering when her argument had been lost. Not defeated but rather misplaced amid what had been a remarkably enjoyable—if somewhat off-topic—debate. Damn, she wanted more of these mad, outrageous, wonderful moments with him. She reached up to caress his whisker-roughened cheek. “Ah, Hugh, I’m sure we could argue all this for days on end, but it’s past two in the morning, we’ve got the NSA closing in on us, I’m too tired to think straight anymore, and we haven’t even gotten to Kant yet.”

  “Kant?” Hugh asked. “Immanuel Kant? That puppy?”

  Claire stifled a laugh. “I’m not going there right now, and I want to be well rested before we get to Sartre.”

  “Who is that?”

  “Later.”

  “Later?” he questioned with a smile, skimming his hand over her ribs and under the T-shirt she wore to cup her breast.

  “Much later,” she said, taking a deep breath to fi
ll his palm more fully. It was no use. The time had come for truth. “Oh, Hugh, you do know that even if I did go with you to Canada, I cannot come to Scotland with you.”

  His hand stilled on her breast. “I see.”

  “No, you don’t. Danny was right.” Claire clutched his hand to her breast, refusing to let him pull away, and explained to him all of the annoyingly logical points her brother had made. “I guess we both just thought that once we were out of the country it would all be over, but it won’t. If I go with you, Jameson will follow.”

  “I will stay here then.”

  Claire shook her head, though her heart ached tenderly that he should even voice such a sacrifice. “Then what? Live out of a suitcase for the rest of your life? Survive off of three pairs of jeans, a few T-shirts, a couple dress shirts and a sport coat for the rest of your life? It’s just like what I was saying before. I am the danger now. You will never be free to live your own life as long as I’m around.”

  “We will find another way.”

  “Do you want to live the rest of your life looking over your shoulder?” She smoothed his hair back from his forehead with a tender hand, meeting his gaze and reading there all the resolve she had been trying to overcome still burning strong.

  “I will, if need be.”

  He was never going to let it go. Ignoring the dangers, he would have an answer for everything. If she had it in her, she would truly do what was best for him. There were any number of things she could say to force his abandonment. Things that would have made him angry enough to leave. Things to make him hate her. She could convince him that she’d had enough of him and was ready for him to go. But she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t cheapen what they had shared together. Claire sighed heavily. “Another way it is, then.”

  “Does that mean ye’ve given up this mad notion of me leaving ye behind?”