Fresh air, she decided. She needed some fresh air… or at least the illusion of it. So she turned and headed for the entrance, desperate suddenly to feel the warmth of the sun on her skin. The wooden doors opened with a gentle squeak and she was in the courtyard, taking a deep breath of the warm afternoon, the air scented slightly with the unmistakable scent of horses. A little curious, she headed toward the stables, remembering the gift shop that had been in their place…
But before she could enter the stables, she heard her name called from behind her in a voice that was already familiar. Robert was striding across the courtyard toward her, his blond hair shining in the sun and his blue eyes bright. She turned to greet him, smiling and blushing a little as he gave her an approving look.
“You’ve changed your clothing.”
“Thought I might as well dress the part,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “One of the servants brought this to me… I don’t know if I’m wearing it right or not.”
“Looks quite alright to me,” he said with a grin, his blue eyes twinkling. “Weatherby has a rather lovely garden around the back… may I escort you?”
She blushed again, smiling as he offered her his arm. For all that this was definitely a dream, she didn’t mind this part at all… had no objections whatsoever to the warmth of his arm in hers as she took it, to the gentle way he adjusted his pace to suit hers so they could stroll comfortably arm in arm around the side of the manor and toward the back. Here, the walls around the manor stretched off into the distance, leaving room for a sizable garden – as she gazed into it, she could make out at least three or four gardeners hard at work, and she wondered what kind of a staff the man maintained to keep the gardens in shape.
Robert led her to a rather beautifully carved ornate wooden bench under the spreading branches of a tree, set on a slight hill that overlooked a carefully tended arrangement of flowerbeds. She gazed down at them, impressed despite herself by the careful positioning of colors, creating a kaleidoscope of color.
“Lord Weatherby does love his flowers,” Robert said, shaking his head. “He planned this garden bed himself, you know.”
“That’s a surprise,” she said, blinking as she thought of the fussy, short-tempered lord. “He doesn’t seem the type to be patient enough for gardening.”
“Well, I doubt he did much of the actual gardening, but the choice of plants and colors… that was all him. Sent for them especially from London.”
“Is that where he’s from?”
“I believe so,” Robert said with a smile. “Though I can’t say I ever ran into him there.”
“You’re Scottish,” she said blankly.
He chuckled. “Aye, born and raised. But my brothers and I moved to London a few years ago, hoping to escape the curse. We didn’t, of course, but…. Well, I spent a great many years there. You’ll hear other Scots make fun of my accent,” he said with a grimace. “Never did like that much.”
She blinked. To her ear, he sounded very Scottish indeed… but then again, she wasn’t exactly an expert. Again, she marveled at how detailed this imagined world was. If her dreams had ever been this detailed, she certainly didn’t remember them. “Well, you sound very Scottish to me.”
“Very kind,” he said with a grin. “You sound very… well, very American, I’d imagine. You sound like the other women up at the Keep,” he said, and she leaned forward, interested to hear more about these women. “It’s a shame I can’t bring you to them.”
“It is,” she said, sighing. “Because of the robbers, right? Can’t your Laird just send some armed guards to escort us?”
“Weatherby would never allow armed MacClarans on his lands,” Robert said, shaking his head. “For all that he’s got a better relationship with the local Scots than most other English lords around here, he’s still a bit of a stick in the mud when it comes to things like that. Even though Laird Donal has saved his hide on more than one occasion.”
“Sure,” she said, shaking her head as a wave of dizziness overtook her. There she went, acting as though this delusion was real again… the minute she let the suspicion in that any of this might be actually happening, the ramifications overwhelmed her. She felt Robert’s hand on her arm, comforting and warm, looked up into the concern on his face, and sighed. “Sorry. It’s overwhelming, all this.”
“You seem to be rather… removed from it all,” he said softly, tilting his head to the side. “Forgive me if I’m overstepping, Brianna, truly, but… well, when my wife passed away I spent days refusing to believe it was true. I told myself that it couldn’t have happened – that I was in some kind of dream or hallucination, that I’d wake any minute to find her lying there beside me. I behaved… rather poorly in those days, imagining that everything around me was unreal. The look in your eyes… it reminds me a little of those times, that’s all.”
That surprised her. She looked at him for a long moment, impressed by how insightful he’d been… then scolding herself, because of course he could be insightful – he was a figment of her imagination. Wasn’t he? Well, if he was, what would it hurt to talk to him about how she was feeling? “That’s exactly it,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders. “I don’t think any of this is real. No offence,” she added with a brief smile. “But … I mean, it’s ridiculous. Time travel?”
“I can only imagine what you’re going through,” he said softly. “But I assure you… everything around you is as real as can be.”
“It feels real,” she admitted, resenting the way her voice shook at that admission. “It feels… incredibly real. But so do dreams. I’m afraid… Robert, I’m afraid I’ve completely snapped. My mind hasn’t exactly been at its strongest over these last four years, ever since… well, something happened that hurt me very badly. And I’m worried that… that something else has just … driven me completely insane.” She sighed, casting her gaze out over the flowers, trying to take some solace in their beautiful blooms. “That in the real world, I’m wandering around talking to people who aren’t there, completely unhinged, while all of this plays out in my mind alone.”
“I’m not just in your mind, Brianna,” Robert said firmly.
His eyes were full of an emotion she couldn’t quite read… and just as she was reflecting on how close to her he was sitting, wondering if it was exactly proper, she felt shock knock her over as he swooped in and claimed her lips in a long, lingering kiss. For all that she’d been operating in what felt like a fugue state for the last several hours, this was like having a bucket of cold water dumped over her. Electricity surged up and down her spine, her whole body tingling with sensation as their lips touched, pressed, parted… she could feel him deepening the kiss, feel the touch of his fingertips on the side of her face, feather-light, pushing the hair back and taking a firm hold of the base of her skull as he drew her closer.
What was a woman to do in that kind of situation? She couldn’t bring herself to break away… the kiss felt so good, so overwhelmingly right, that all she could do was go along with it, melting into his embrace, her hands taking hold of his tartan as she kissed him back. Finally, after what felt like forever, he broke away a little, and she realized to her surprise that she hadn’t been breathing – she took a deep, shuddering breath in, feeling stars spinning dizzily behind her closed eyes. Slowly, hesitantly, her eyelids flicked open, and his blue eyes were inches from hers, intense and powerful… and sending a number of rather inappropriate thoughts rushing through her mind. Like just how alone they were out here… like whether she’d be able to smuggle him up to her room without anyone seeing them… like just how sturdy was that little bed of hers, anyway, and could it support both of their weight…?
“Do you think that was a hallucination?” he asked her finally, his voice hoarse with desire, his breath ghosting warm across her face and sending more shivers down her spine.
She tried to gather her wits, still reeling from the force of what she was feeling. Had anyone ever kissed her like that? Certainly not
Ben – even at their most passionate, there was a cold, aloof feeling to him that she’d never quite been able to break through. But kissing Robert… God, that had been something else entirely. Electrifying. Intense.
“No,” she whispered, drawing a broad smile from him. “No, I guess not.”
So where the hell did that leave her?
Chapter 10
The spell wore off after a minute or two, and she couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed as Robert sat back, clearing his throat as he shifted away from her on the bench.
“Sorry about that,” he said gruffly, avoiding her eyes. “I … got a little carried away. I miss my wife,” he said softly, half to himself.
She shook her head, feeling an odd pang of… was it jealousy? Jealous, of a woman who’d died hundreds of years before she’d been born… a woman who, by all accounts, had looked just like her, had even shared her name. Don’t be stupid, she told herself, feeling panic beginning to rise in her. None of this is real, remember? So why was it bothering her so much? Why was she getting attached to this hallucination of a man?
“It’s okay,” she said finally, resisting the urge to touch her lips, to clear her throat, to get up and throw herself into the fountain she’d seen on their walk over here in an attempt to cool some of the passion that was roaring through her body. How long had it been since she’d felt like this? This infatuation was stronger than any she remembered… “It’s fine, seriously.” She laughed a little, trying to sound casual. “I needed something to shake me out of that, and it was better than slapping me in the face.”
“I would never,” he said indignantly, looking offended at the very thought. “MacClaran men don’t strike women. Ever.” He hesitated. “That being said, I’ve seen Marianne and her husband sparring with swords, and neither of them pull any blows…”
She chuckled. “Marianne. Is she one of the – one of the time travelers?”
“Aye, she is,” he said with a smile. “She’s been with us – oh, a great many years, though she arrived after myself and my brothers left for England. You’ll like her. She and Cora and Audrina are fast friends.”
“Cora and Audrina –”
“Also from your time,” he said. “Cora is the best midwife this county’s ever had, and Audrina was a trauma nurse.”
She blinked, a little thrown by the sudden modern terminology. “You mean she worked in emergency departments?”
“Aye, in hospitals. And from what she’s told us, that word means something rather different to you than it does to us.” She thought of the tall, sleek building where she’d visited her mother after a routine surgery, tried to mentally superimpose it onto the landscape here, and fought the urge to laugh.
“Yeah, it probably does.” She tilted her head. “Who else?”
“Well, there’s Fiona. She’s Laird Donal’s wife – says she was an archeologist, a person who studies the past or so she says, but she's also an inventor of sorts, and I must say she’s installed considerable improvements in the castle. There’s Karin – she was some sort of expert in infectious diseases with the CDC, so she says.”
“The CDC? Center for Disease Control?” She sat back, shocked to hear all this. “That’s… incredible.” What an odd collection of women – why on Earth had her mind conjured such an odd collection of backstories for these women? It was getting harder and harder to maintain her conscious awareness that all of this was a delusion… she kept falling into the trap of thinking of it as real, and that way madness and panic lay…
“Aye, they’re rather an incredible bunch of women,” Robert said with a thoughtful nod. “They’ve changed life around here, that’s for certain. Karin saved everyone from a plague not long ago, and the measures she’s put in place have seen a number of diseases skip right over the Keep and the town and keep on going. And the medicines that Audrina has invented – she claims she didn’t invent them, only remembered how to recreate them here, but I’ve seen her bring men back from the brink of death.” He sighed. “It’s no wonder the Keep’s had its share of trouble with accusations of witchcraft.”
A chill ran down her spine. “Seriously? Witchcraft?”
“Aye. Accusations only,” he said firmly. “Mostly from people who have no idea what they’re talking about. Frightened of woman with intelligence and power, mostly.”
“Typical,” she said drily. “Even in the twenty-first century I have run-ins with stupid people with similar ideas.” She gave him a smile. “Glad to hear that our times aren’t so different.”
He chuckled. “Well, from what I’ve heard from the other women, that’s not exactly true.” He leaned forward, curious. “But tell me about home. You said your city was called Chicago? Is it anything like London?”
“I’ve never been,” she admitted, thinking about her home. “It’s… hard to describe. Big, busy. Good people, mostly,” she added. “Though being a cop for most of your life will definitely make you think twice about that.”
“Why’s that?”
“You’re just exposed to so much… so much of the worst of people.” She sighed, realizing she was straying dangerously close to talking about something she really didn’t want to talk about. Not now, not here – not in the midst of some kind of stress-induced delusion. “I try to keep faith that most people are decent, and do the terrible things they do because they don’t think they have a choice.”
“That’s very noble of you,” he said softly. “And – I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable, but my Brianna held very similar opinions.”
“She did?” She had to admit, she was a little curious about this medieval doppelganger of hers – especially if she was being asked to believe that this woman was her ancestor. “What was she like?”
“She was stubborn,” he said, drawing a laugh from her. Spoken like a loving partner, that was for sure. “Wildly stubborn. An army wouldn’t move my Brianna if she knew what she wanted. So clever, too. She’d run rings around me in any test of wits, that was for sure. Not sure what she saw in me, if I’m honest,” he said with a grin, lowering his head. “I think I seduced her with my singing voice.”
Brianna realized she’d do almost anything to hear this man sing… then forced that particular instinct down, not wanting to give her silly little crush on him any more oxygen for the time being. “She sounds like quite a woman,” she said softly. “I’m sorry you lost her.”
“Aye, me too.” He sighed heavily. “It’s like you said, I suppose. There are bad people out there, but the good outweigh them.” He rubbed his head with his hands, looking suddenly exhausted. “Speaking of bad people… I really ought to go and find Weatherby. We’ve got much more to discuss.”
“The thing with the refugees?” she asked, curious despite herself. “The Stuarts, the nearby clan?”
“Aye, that’s right. The damned fool could help us resolve the whole problem in a matter of days if he’d just see sense for five minutes.” He stared out over the gardens, looking impatient and frustrated… and she was reminded strongly of her most recent client, a quick-tempered man who’d built his business from the ground up and wasn’t coping well with the business owners he’d sold it to. She got to her feet, stretching a little, and pinned him with a thoughtful stare.
“You look a little restless. Why don’t we go for a walk? You can tell me about what it is you’re trying to get Weatherby to do.”
He looked a little surprised by the suggestion, but soon nodded, getting to his feet, and following her down onto a winding path that led through the garden and away from the manor. It wasn’t long before they were alone, the manor all but hidden from view by topiaries and trees. The late afternoon sun warmed her skin and she couldn’t help but reflect on how pleasant it all was. A dream, of course, she reminded herself sternly – but a very pleasant one. And if it felt good, who cared if it wasn’t real? She’d had her fair share of daydreams about gorgeous TV stars, she never stopped herself from having those even though they weren’t real…
what was the difference between that and taking a stroll with a gorgeous Scotsman on a pleasant summer afternoon?
“I always find it easier to think on my feet,” she said with a smile. “So tell me about the Stuarts.”
“They’re good people,” Robert said, shaking his head. “It’s utterly abhorrent, what’s happened to them. The poor harvests were the direct result of the English presence on their lands, disrupting them during the growing season, picking fights left right and center. And what was worse, they hadn’t brought enough of their own provisions along with them, so they confiscated the Stuarts’ emergency supplies as well. These people literally have no food back home, and nowhere else to turn for help. Weatherby behaving like they’re in such a desperate situation of their own volition…” She could hear his voice shaking with anger, and she put a soothing hand on his wrist.
“He doesn’t understand, that’s all. You’ve got a failure of communication. Now, you mentioned that Weatherby could solve all this in a few days. What would he need to do?”
“Something!” he growled. “Anything but sitting back and having his armed men send the desperate Stuarts back into the streets –”
“What exactly?” she asked firmly, feeling herself shifting into negotiation mode. “In an ideal world, what does Weatherby come to you and offer?”
“Food,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Food and supplies for the refugees. Ideally he’d offer some space in his manor or on his lands, too, but food would suffice. The Keep and the village are doing all they can for the refugees, but there are simply too many of them for us to feed.” He sighed. “If we could get supplies to them to tide them over for a month or two, the raids on travelers would stop, I’m sure of it. They’re good, decent, proud people – they hate stealing as much as we hate being stolen from.”
Highlander Returned: A Scottish Time Travel Romance (Highlander In Time Book 9) Page 7