“I trust that you and he will find the right path forward,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “I’m just here to help the conversation, that’s all.”
“And I appreciate it.” He looked at her keenly. “Fascinating, the resemblance you bear to Robert’s wife. Baldric tells me the two of you could be twins. But you have no memories of him?”
“Definitely not,” she said, a little thrown off by the question. “I mean… sure, he’s told me I look like her, but all of my memories are of the future, not of the past.”
“I had worried at first that you might have some… softness, toward him,” Weatherby said briskly. “That you might favor his side as a result of your… well, your history with him. But it seems those worries were unfounded.”
“I try to see things from everyone’s point of view as much as I can.” It was a relief to hear that Weatherby didn’t think she was nursing some secret memories of being Robert’s wife. That kind of conflict of interest would have been disastrous in a situation like this. “That includes the refugees, of course.”
“I suppose so,” Weatherby said, though he didn’t seem especially interested in that side of things. Ah, well. It had been worth a shot. “Well, Lady Brianna, I will certainly give some thought to what you’ve said. The double-pronged approach… certainly interesting. Perhaps if the MacClarans are willing to increase security in the area, I could see my way clear to doing something to support those refugees who aren’t making trouble…”
“Like weeding,” Brianna said suddenly, a metaphor occurring to her that might suit Weatherby’s interest in gardening. The man tilted his head, curious. “When you go about getting rid of weeds… it’s important to cut off the head of the plant, but if you truly want to ensure the weeds don’t grow back, you need to dig out the roots.”
“I suppose that’s so,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “The refugees’ lack of food and shelter… that’s the roots. The crime is the plant. Yes?”
“Something like that.”
“Interesting,” he said thoughtfully. “I shall reflect on what you’ve said. You’ll be wanting to get to bed, I’d expect,” he added pointedly.
Sensing that she’d been dismissed, she rose to her feet, offering him a clumsy little curtsey as she did. He waved his hand absently, but she could sense he was pleased with the conversation. Baldric gave her another wink before he cleared his throat and stepped forward to escort her to her room.
The corridors felt chilly in comparison to the roaring warmth of Weatherby’s little sitting room. They were a few paces from the wooden door that had closed behind them with a solid thunk when Baldric turned to her with a broad grin on his face.
“I see why you do this for a living. Masterful work, Lady Brianna.”
She grinned back at him, a little taken aback by the compliment. “I didn’t do much. Just – talked to him. And listened. Listening’s important.”
“Oh, yes.” Baldric’s eyes were glinting. “Every damn fool decision I’ve had to talk him out of has taught me how to handle him… but you just… did it.”
She laughed. “Well, I’ve had a fair bit of experience with rich, entitled men. You have to make them think that everything was their idea.”
“Well, I hope the conversation goes better when we all meet again. Should I organize a meeting for tomorrow?”
She hesitated. “I think it might be best to give it a few days, still. Robert’s still angry… I’ll need to have a conversation with him to make sure he’s in as conciliatory a mood as possible.”
“Good thinking,” Baldric said firmly. “If you’re anywhere near as good with Robert as you were with Weatherby back there… well, we should have this whole crisis sorted by week’s end.” He gave her a formal little bow as they reached her doorway, smiling broadly. “Goodnight, Lady Brianna. Thank you for everything you’re doing here. It’s good to have someone else on the side of reason for once.”
She smiled to herself as she headed into the room, grateful to see that a little fire had been lit and her candles were burning. From what she could gather, it was the tail end of winter, and the weather would soon be warming up… she was grateful, though part of her was a little unnerved by the prospect of seasons coming and going while she was still here. She’d been living from minute to minute, hour to hour – the idea that days, weeks, even months might go past without any change was… sobering. Was this her home now? Was this the shape of her life? Was she ever going to see Chicago again?
The panic was rising and she fought it down, biting her lip hard as she tried to focus on her breathing like her therapist had taught her. Thankfully, a tap on the door distracted her before she could spiral too badly – but she frowned to herself, a little confused. Who would be visiting her this late? Could it be Baldric? Had he forgotten to mention something? But when she pulled the door open, it wasn’t Baldric standing there. It was Robert, blue eyes shadowed, tension in his body.
For a moment, just for a moment, she entertained the idea of throwing herself into his arms and kissing him. But that was a silly idea – especially if she was going to be behaving as though all of this was real. If it was real, she couldn’t get romantically involved with one of the people she was mediating between… could she? She shook off those thoughts, annoyed with herself.
“Sorry to visit so late,” Robert said in a low voice. “We can talk in the morning instead if you’d like, I just wanted to…”
“You didn’t wake me.” She shrugged, grateful that she hadn’t changed out of her gown and into the nightdress that she’d taken to wearing in bed. “I just got back from talking to Weatherby, actually. Do you want to come in?”
Something in the hesitant way he stepped into her room told her that this wasn’t exactly above board. Something about being a woman alone, letting a strange man into her quarters late at night… well, she didn’t know much about medieval courtesies and the like, but she got the idea that this was probably against the rules. But she didn’t care, and if it didn’t bother him, what was the problem?
“What did you talk to Weatherby about?”
“The refugees, mostly.” She offered him a seat at the little table, and joined him there. Having the wooden table between them was a little reassuring… there was something about his physical presence, the weight and warmth of his body, that felt a little… dangerous. As though it was drawing her in, luring her closer…
God, what was the matter with her?
Chapter 14
“What did he say?” Robert, at least, didn’t seem too distracted by their situation. He had the look of a man who’d been stewing all day, and she smiled a little as she looked at him, pouring him a cup of water from the pitcher that stood on her table and that the servants seemed to keep filled up for her. The servants did a lot around here, she’d noticed… and it seemed like she never saw the same once twice. Just how big a staff did Lord Weatherby have, living here all by himself? It seemed obscenely wasteful, especially with refugees starving just a few miles down the road…
“He mostly reiterated his points from earlier.” She shrugged. “He’s worried about encouraging theft and violence from the refugees, worried that giving them food will be seen as a reward for their bad behavior.”
“He’s a damned fool,” Robert said through gritted teeth.
She sighed. “Look, I’m with you, here. I think if people are starving, they deserve to be fed – especially when there are people around with so much more than they need.” A flash of the income inequality from her own time… she shook her head, trying to focus on the here and now. Weatherby wasn’t a billionaire. “But getting angry doesn’t help us get results.”
“You’re right,” he said, shaking his head. “I should know how to manipulate a person like Weatherby. Lord knows I’ve been playing rich patrons since I first played the harp.”
“It’s hard when you care so much about the result,” Brianna said gently, resisting the urge to reach out and squeeze his hand – not
alone with him like this, not with so much tension between them that she was doing her level best to ignore. “When people’s lives are at risk, it’s easy to give in to impatience. But I did my best,” she added, “to plant a few seeds of goodwill in him.”
“You did?” He snorted. “How? Man’s like a block of ice.”
“Well, I helped him see that helping the refugees would take away the drive for them to steal and rob. That giving them some food now will stop them from feeling a need to steal it from travelers. But he’s not satisfied to simply give food away – I think he’s going to want increased security, and severe punishment for those caught robbing people on the road.”
“Then why the hell didn’t he say that earlier?” Robert said, rolling his eyes. “Laird Donal’s got more than enough men to put a few guard patrols on the road for a month or two. That’s something that’s easy to sort.”
She smiled, sensing that they were making progress. “You see? Sometimes it’s just about… giving ideas enough time to come up, waiting for emotions to settle.”
“You’re a miracle worker,” he said thoughtfully, smiling at her across the table. “Just like your namesake.”
She smiled, though there was something about the comparison to his wife that troubled her. “Robert…” She hesitated, not sure whether to bring it up. But if she was going to persist as though this was real, as though this strange place was her life now… she needed to be honest with this man she was so rapidly coming to care about. “I need you to know that I’m not your wife. I wish I could be, but… I don’t have any of her memories, any of the life that you shared together. I might look like her, I might share a few similarities with her personality-wise, but… I’m not her, Robert. She’s gone.” There was a deep silence between them, and she sighed. “I’m sorry, but I just… I needed to say it.”
“Of course,” he said softly, and his voice was thick with feeling. “Brianna… I know you’re not her. I’ve been grieving my wife a long, long time. When I saw you, even… I mean, you looked just like her, but deep down I knew she was gone.” He sighed. “I don’t see my wife when I look at you. I see you, Brianna.”
“Thanks for saying that,” she said softly, full of relief. The silence grew deeper between them, more tense… then he cleared his throat, turning away.
“Now. The idea of posting more guards is a good one, but it’ll take a few days to implement – we’ll need to send a messenger up to the Keep, and they’ll probably need to take the long road around, what with the highwaymen on the high road.” He frowned. “It’s a little late now, but I’ll send someone first thing in the morning, and make sure Donal sends confirmation that he’s posting guards back with the messenger.”
Brianna shook her head, thinking ruefully of her lost cell phone. She’d forgotten that messages took a while to travel. “In my time,” she said whimsically, “we had this thing called e-mail.”
“Oh, aye. Karin told me all about it. Computers, right?”
She stared at him, shocked. “You know about computers?”
“And the Internet,” he said smugly, the word sounding only a little clumsy on his tongue. “You’re talking to a bard, Brianna. Information is my trade… you think I wouldn’t learn everything I could about such a wild, fanciful thing as that? Though it sounds like the kind of thing that would put people like me out of a job.”
She smiled, thinking of the multi-billion dollar music industry. “You’d be surprised.” But she sighed, a little bothered by the situation, still.
Robert tilted his head. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s just frustrating,” she said softly. “Knowing what’s at stake – knowing that there are people, whole families starving while Weatherby drags his feet… and now we’ll have to wait a whole day to get confirmation that a guard has been posted, after which there’s still no guarantee he’ll do anything…”
“Weatherby’s not a complete bastard,” Robert said softly, smiling at her as he reached across the table to take her hands in his. An electric shock ran through her at the contact, and she could tell from his sharp intake of breath that he’d felt it too. They gazed at each other for a long moment, both clearly distracted by the tension between them, and Brianna had never felt more aware of being alone in a bedroom with a man…
“No?” she said softly, trying to keep him on topic.
“No,” he agreed. “He’s not completely insensitive to people starving on his doorstep. At the very least, it makes him look bad… and it’ll make him look like a conquering hero if he comes to their rescue. You’ve done well to talk him into seeing his way clear to lending aid, Brianna. You’ve already sped these negotiations up. Without you, we’d still be fuming at each other… it might be days before we made this step.” He smiled, squeezing her hand again. “You’ve done well.”
“I’m glad I can help,” she said softly, smiling. And before she could stop herself, before she could argue that it was a bad idea, she felt her body leaning in to meet him – he, too, was leaning in, and their lips met again with an electrifying spark that shot straight down her spine and set fire burning through her body. He broke away a little, his eyes gleaming in the candlelight, wordlessly checking in with her – she reclaimed his lips again, the table between them stopping her from throwing herself bodily into his arms… which was probably for the best. She wasn’t sure how long they kissed for, but he broke away quickly at the sound of footsteps in the hallway, his eyes full of worry.
“We can’t –” Brianna started, still disoriented by the kiss but aware that being caught making out with Robert might not be good for the negotiation. He glanced back at her, pressing a finger to her lips in a gesture that made her giggle, and the two of them waited as the footsteps faded away into silence at the other end of the corridor.
“You’re right,” he said softly, though his eyes were twinkling. “The servants and guards around here are notorious gossips. If we get caught … it’ll get back to Weatherby.”
“And he won’t see me as an impartial observer any more, that’s for certain,” she said, shaking her head with amusement. “Shame,” she teased him. “Shame we have to negotiate, or I might suggest…”
“Wicked woman,” he growled, though the laughter dancing in his eyes took the sting from his words. “Leading poor souls astray…”
“Begone, then,” she said archly, gesturing to the door.
He swooped in for one last, fierce kiss that left her breathless. Then, with the ease of practice, he listened at the door for a moment – then tipped her a wink and slipped through it and into the darkness of the corridor, leaving her alone in her room and grinning giddily into the gloom. Had that really just happened? Had he really just kissed her like that? Her heart was pounding, and as she slowly undressed for bed, her mind racing, she realized the significance of this kiss. He didn’t see her as some carbon copy of his dead wife. That meant that any feelings he might have for her… they were real.
As much as anything was real around here, she told herself firmly, remembering belatedly that all of this was likely a dream. But it was getting harder and harder to maintain that belief with any real conviction. How could a dream be this real? How could even the steamiest of dreams make her feel the way she felt right now, after just a couple of stolen kisses in the dead of the night? How could anything around her be a delusion, when she’d been searching for days on end for any sign of inconsistency?
And more to the point… if it was a dream, it was a good one. And didn’t she deserve a bit of happiness after what had been an incredibly hard few years?
She tucked herself into bed and shut her eyes, grinning into the darkness as she thought of Robert. It took her a long time to get to sleep with the giddy rush of adrenaline still coursing through her body, but she didn’t mind… she had such pleasant things to think about that it was hardly a problem to be lying awake with them. And when she finally did get to sleep, all of her dreams were just as pleasant – so much so that she wok
e at dawn with a blush suffusing her entire body. Those dreams had been… well, they’d been graphic, that was for sure.
Still in the same giddy mood, she got up and began to dress, reminding herself as she did that she’d better keep her feelings for Robert to herself. No matter how gorgeous he might be, it wouldn’t look good for Weatherby to discover that… well, that whatever it was that was happening between them, was happening. At least until the negotiations were done and dusted… then, if she hadn’t woken up from this bizarre dream by then, she could think about following him down that rather enticing road…
Still, she was in a good mood over breakfast, and even Baldric commented that she must have slept well. Weatherby had elected to join them all that morning, and though his greeting to Robert was stiff, it was a huge improvement on the tensions of the previous day. She couldn’t help but think about her mother’s two pet cats – they’d never gotten on with each other, but begrudgingly tolerated each other’s presence where they had to, occupying separate rooms when possible and keeping as great a distance from each other as they could. Robert and Weatherby reminded her of those cats, now – she noticed that Weatherby chose a seat as far from Robert as possible, and even though they exchanged stiff pleasantries, the tensions were high.
Baldric had been right, she thought to herself with a smile, catching a furtive wink from the man across the table. It was definitely best to wait until the next day to return to the negotiating table. Maybe by then this bristling would have calmed down and they could actually get something done.
But Robert did clear his throat at one point, raising his voice to address the table, and Weatherby looked up curiously at what he was saying.
“I sent a messenger early this morning to the Keep,” he said casually, gesturing over his shoulder toward the road that Brianna understood lead to the Keep. “Laying out a suggested plan to Laird Donal of posting guard patrols on the high road until the refugee crisis has eased somewhat.”
Highlander Returned: A Scottish Time Travel Romance (Highlander In Time Book 9) Page 10