My Heart's in the Highlands

by Angeline Fortin

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, Kris!”

  “Mikes, how did it go?”

  The line was a bit static, so Mikah plugged one ear to better hear. “It was good, but I just wanted to let you know I’ll have to call you later instead. I didn’t want you to worry.”

  “Is everything all right?” Kris asked with some concern.

  “Fine,” Mikah said. “It’s just that the curator sort of asked me out to dinner.”

  “Oh? I thought you hated it when guys from work asked you out.”

  “You know, I normally do, but this one kept his eyes above my shoulders all day, so …” Mikah said with a verbal shrug.

  “Is he gay?” Kris asked. “You know those artsy types …”

  “No, I’m pretty sure he’s straight,” Mikah laughed, knowing Kris had a good point. It wasn’t often Mikah came across a man who could hold a meaningful conversation on art. American men tended to consider an interest in the subject effeminate.

  “Is he hot?”

  “He’s not bad,” Mikah hedged, but Kris only laughed.

  “Wow! That’s high praise coming from my favorite pseudo-nun. Hmm, I can almost picture it: tall, dark, thirty-ish, in a kilt …” Kris sighed and it was Mikah’s turn to chuckle.

  “Tall, blond, and forty-ish. No, kilt.”

  “That’s too bad,” Kris said mournfully. “Tell me he at least has an accent.”

  “He does.”

  “Now I’m jealous.” Kris paused. “Can you get pics?”

  With a honk, Myles pulled to a stop on the opposite curb and got out of his car. He waved an arm and Mikah held up a finger. “I’ll see what I can do. I’ll call you later, okay?”

  “I’ll be waiting and you better be a good girl,” Kris warned. “Your dream man might not like you messing around on him.”

  Mikah rolled her eyes, pushing aside the guilt that was niggling at the back of her mind, as if Mikah were being unfaithful to her dream man by going out to dinner with the handsome curator. “I regret ever telling you about that.”

  “You know I love you.”

  “I know,” Mikah said, darting a quick look down the street to her left before stepping out into the street to dash across the four lanes of traffic between her and Myles. “I love y—”

  The words were cut off with a startled cry as a long series of honks to her right reminded Mikah abruptly that the traffic would be coming from the other direction. Cars swerved around her, wheels squealing and horns blaring.

  “Mikes!” Kris shouted.

  One car that continued to come straight at her caught Mikah. Like a deer in the headlights, she could only stare in horror.

  It sped toward her.

  It galloped toward her?

  Wait! Were those … horses?

  “Mikes!” Kris shouted again, in the background.

  The world went dark.

  Chapter Two

  “Lass? Lassie!” a gravelly brogue cut through her unconsciousness. “Are ye all right?”

  Mikah blinked her eyes and stared up at the faces surrounding her, trying but failing to focus on any one of them. Stars burst painfully in front of her eyes and she squeezed her eyes shut again, raising a hand to her temple. “I don’t think so,” she murmured, but even that little effort felt like it would split her skull.

  “My lady!” a new voice broke through the haze that surrounded her and Mikah cracked her lids apart to squint at the newcomer, a youngish man in a red coat and black hat who looked like a cross between a member of the British Royal Guard and an equestrian rider. He pushed through the crowd surrounding her and came quickly to her side, kneeling next to her.

  He was followed by a young woman in a gray dress, who also dropped down at Mikah’s side. “My lady, are you all right? I couldn’t believe my eyes when that wagon ran into you, then went on as if nothing were amiss!”

  “I don’t … I’m not …” Mikah stuttered, letting them pull her to a sitting position but then staring blankly at the red-jacketed man and the woman in the long dress. “Who are you?”

  “Och, but the lass must have taken a blow to the head!” the older man to her left declared, drawing her attention. He was dressed in rough clothing of browns and blacks and wore a day’s growth of gray beard and a cap on his thinning hair.

  “Do I know you?” she couldn’t stop herself from asking, even though the effort brought further pain to her temple and she tried to rub it away. She heard Kris’s panic echoing in her mind. Where was her phone?

  “I think the question, lass, is whether ye know who ye are,” he said in his thick brogue.

  “Of course, I do,” she answered immediately. “I’m Mikah …”

  Mikah halted with a frown, for that seemed suddenly wrong, though she couldn’t understand why. She was Mikah Bauer, no doubt about that, but at the same time, she wasn’t. It made no sense at all and merely made her head hurt more to contemplate the incongruity, so she just shook her head.

  Taking her head shake for a negative, the older man grunted as if his theory had been confirmed, but the younger woman, seeming eager to please, said, “This is Lady Hero Conagham.”

  “The old Conagham of Ayr’s widow?” one of the crowd asked, and the young man nodded in confirmation.

  “Thought she were down in Lundun these days,” the old man argued. “Been over a year since the old laird died. What’s she doin’ up ‘ere now?”

  “Step aside!” A new voice rang out over the chatter of the onlookers. It was a deep, aristocratic burr, unlike the comfortable brogue of those around Mikah, yet it held enough authority that the spectators parted immediately, allowing the newcomer to come to her side. “Lady Ayr,” he said. “Are you quite all right? I thought we were to meet you at the train station and …”

  “It’s you,” Mikah whispered, staring up into the man’s handsome face as he bent over her. His words staggered to a halt as he looked down at her in surprise.

  Mikah gazed intently at the handsome man hovering over her. It was him. The man who had haunted her dreams her entire life and most recently with unimaginable passion. He was at once both familiar and foreign. She wanted to look him over, to memorize every detail before he faded away, but she couldn’t tear her gaze from his. Deep chocolaty brown, warm and mesmerizing, his eyes were filled with concern and more than enough surprise to match her own. Finally, Mikah asked the question she had long wondered about: “Who are you?”

  “She doesn’t seem to know anyone, my lord,” the woman in the long dress offered nervously. “Not even me.”

  “It’s all right,” the man replied without taking his attention away from Mikah. “We hadn’t met before so, in this case, it’s a valid question. My lady, I am Ian Conagham.”

  His voice became slow and demanding, as he tried to gain her attention. Though she hadn’t stopped looking at him, he seemed to sense that her attention had moved beyond him, as if she’d mentally drifted away from the crowd surrounding her. Perhaps she had. In her dreams, this man had always been blurred, hazy. Now he was right in front of her and was incredibly alive.

  The crowd eased back with a murmur akin to awe that was apparent even to Mikah’s mulled brain, though he ignored them all. “We need to get you out of the street,” he said. “Can you rise?”

  “Home,” Mikah muttered, surprising herself in the process. It was if a voice inside of her had forced its way out. This certainly wasn’t her first thought. The part of her mind that wasn’t wallowing in pain was focused on touching him, finding out if he was real. “I want to go home.”

  The man—Ian Conag … Cunningham? Mikah’s head throbbed painfully— pulled her to her feet then as if her spoken words were a command to be acted upon without question.

  No, Mikah thought. She wanted an ambulance and the shortest possible route to a hospital. She tried to force the words out but her head swam and her mind blanked as they stood her on her feet. Mikah wavered, black spots flooding her vision. She was going to faint for sure,
she thought, and the wonderfully handsome man must have thought the same, because he swung her easily up into his arms and carried her out of the street.

  “What’re ye goin’ to do wi’ her?” the older man asked, his voice barely audible through the roar in Mikah’s ears.

  “Don’t worry,” her rescuer assured the crowd. “I’ll keep her safe.”

  Braver than the rest of the crowd, the old fellow who’d first come to her aid stepped boldly forward. “Hope yer nae thinking to take her all the way to Dùn Cuilean tonight, m’lord. ‘Tis more than forty miles away. Ye’ll nae make it, mark my words. Ye’d best get a doctor for her.”

  The man’s steps paused and Mikah could almost intuit his desire to be home as well. She could see the hesitation his eyes before resolution set in. They wouldn’t be going anywhere that night. His gaze shifted back to the old Scot. “I will get her to the doctor. Worry not.”

  “What’s going on?” Mikah whispered as they loaded her into a black … carriage? The woman climbed in with her. Her mind felt foggy and unfocused, and for some reason she was unable to comprehend what was happening around and to her.

  “You took a bit of a blow to the head when that wagon hit you as you were coming out of the Exchange, my lady,” the woman answered, patting her hand. “My lord is going to take you back to the hotel and call for a physician.”

  “Hospital,” Mikah muttered disjointedly, but the woman looked aghast at the suggestion.

  “Oh, no, my lady!”

  “Why?” Her voice was faint.

  “Because, unless you’re mad, that’s the last place you want to go,” Ian said as he climbed into the carriage with them.

  Head swimming, Mikah pressed her hand to her temple as she tried to focus on the man once more, but his image swam in duplicate spotted with black. “But I know you,” she murmured before the blackness took her.

  Chapter Three

  Back at the hotel, Ian sat at Hero Conagham’s bedside while she slept. So this was the former marchioness, or rather, since Ian wasn’t married, she remained the current Marchioness of Ayr. His cousin’s widow.

  He couldn’t have been more surprised when he’d seen her lying there on the street. Far from her fifties, as the old marquis had been, the marchioness was perhaps closer to his age, in her late twenties, and was as fair and slim and lovely as any imagined Sleeping Beauty might have been when first glimpsed by her prince. And, like any man in his position might have, Ian was seized by pure male appreciation.

  Not only because she was so extraordinarily lovely that any man might stare.

  No, Ian had another reason as well. He had seen her face a thousand times already in a large oil painting that graced his bedchambers at his newly inherited castle, Dùn Cuilean. Since his arrival there a month before, Ian had been fascinated by the portrait and the woman it portrayed. With a wry smile, Ian admitted that he had spent most of his nights staring at the portrait over his fireplace, wondering who she was and what she had been thinking during the long hours of posing while the artist worked.

  If he had been entirely truthful, he would also admit that he had lusted over the unknown woman who might have lived a hundred years past.

  He had never thought to meet the woman who had inspired his desire and imagination so. Whom he had felt so inexplicably attracted to. He had never imagined her in flesh and blood. Her pulse beat visibly in her slender neck, and his fingers itched to feel that life beating through her.

  “This is the marchioness?” he couldn’t help but ask the woman’s maid, who lingered nearby. He felt a fool for doing so and compounded his idiocy by adding, “My cousin’s wife?”

  “Yes, my lord.” Her maid, Mandy, bobbed a curtsey and departed when Ian waved her off.

  Ian had met his cousin, Robert, only a spare handful of times, the last more than a decade before. He could not imagine that pretentious, unappealing gent ever winning the hand of a woman like this. As alluring as her portrait was, it didn’t hold a candle to the marchioness in person. She was incredibly beautiful. Her hair was golden, her skin flawless and creamy from her high cheekbones to the curve of her jaw. She had finely arched brows of dark brown. Similarly dark, long lashes fanned out against her pale cheeks. Her straight nose led down to full rosy lips that parted with a sigh even as his eyes took her in. How breathtaking she was, he thought, even as his pulse increased in response to the visual buffet before him and an unwelcome arousal stirred.

  As lovely as she was, this woman was a recent widow, and for the time being, his guest and responsibility. The old Conagham of Ayr, as the locals referred to their resident marquis, had been active and hale by all accounts despite his years. Certainly not a man one would expect to drop dead of a heart attack in the middle of a dinner with Prince Albert in London as his cousin had. Not well done of him at all. Prince Albert, it seemed, was a pleasant man who hadn’t taken it personally.

  With no warning, Ian had become Marquis of Ayr, laird of the clan Conagham, a score of years earlier than anticipated. After just one short month in residence at Dùn Cuilean, he still wasn’t entirely certain as to the extent of his responsibilities, so when he’d received a letter from his cousin’s widow, begging him to allow her to come “home,” he’d given in without argument.

  At the time, the greatest consideration Ian had given the matter was to think it curious that a society matron would willingly give up the season in London to reside in Cuilean’s isolated locale. Surely no marchioness of his imagination would choose to go there of her own accord, and he wondered what might have prompted her to do so. Before seeing her, he’d thought she was probably just getting old. Tired of the bustle of London and looking to summer somewhere cooler and quieter …

  Now he didn’t know what to think.

  Ian hadn’t imagined the marchioness like this at all. Looking at her now, so wounded and still, Ian cursed himself for not arriving on time to pick her up from the train station. The marchioness had left word that she’d taken a hotel room in Glasgow, but on his arrival there he’d found only the lady’s father and servants, who had directed him to the Exchange. Ian had arrived just in time to see Lady Ayr’s maid and coachman racing across the road.

  A chill had run up his spine when he had seen the lady lying in the street. If he’d been more prompt, the accident might never have happened at all. Guilt weighed heavily upon him.

  The marchioness drew in a deep breath at that moment. Her chest rose and her breasts strained against the bodice of her gown. She turned her head toward him, her eyelids fluttering, and Ian held his breath. A moment later, he found himself drowning in eyes that were a mosaic of flecks of pure green near the center melding into azure blue at the edges of her irises. Those mesmerizing eyes flared as she stared at him much as he was staring at her, and for a moment, Ian felt his heart stop. Never had Ian felt more like a fool than he did gawking at the young lady before him, but he could not bring himself to look away.

  “Am I dreaming?” she asked in low dulcet tones that caused a shiver of pleasure to cross his skin, leaving goose bumps in its path.

  “No. I am Ian Conagham. The Conagham of Ayr. The marquis. Lord Ayr, take your pick. Your husband was my cousin,” he clarified, forcing the arousal aside. Surely she would expect her husband’s heir to treat her with detached respect, not tethered lust.

  “I’m not … I don’t feel right,” she went on, moistening her lips with the tip of her tongue in a gesture that clenched every muscle in Ian’s body. “Like I’m dreaming or something. Foggy. Disoriented. I can’t explain it. Are you a dream now? You’ve always been a dream before.”

  “I apologize for not getting to the Exchange earlier so that this incident might have been avoided,” he told her with clear regret, not knowing how to interpret her words. Was she saying that she had dreamed of him? Or that everything now seemed a dream? “You were hit by a wagon.”

  “That’s what I’ve heard.”

  Her response was so dry that Ian stifled a chuckle of
amusement. It must have shown on his face, though, because the corner of her mouth drew up just a bit as well. “Do you remember who you are? Where you are?”

  Mikah truly didn’t know how to respond as she stared up at his beguiling face. On one hand, she was awash with confusion, while on the other, with him in her sights, all felt right with the world. As it should be.

  As it was meant to be.

  Ian, he had said. Lord Ayr. She finally had a name to put to the face she had known for so long. He was a beautiful man. So handsome she wanted to touch him and make certain he was real. He had fairly dark skin, as if he were Spanish or Italian, but not olive toned so much as … swarthy. The word was one she was certain she had never used before, yet was equally certain she had. The dichotomy brought a furrow to her brow, but she pushed the nagging confusion away to study the handsome lord some more.

  His face was angular, with smoothly planed cheeks and a strong jaw and chin that held the shadow of a beard he could never entirely shave away. There were crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes and lines around his mouth that indicated he laughed often; his thick brows arched low over dark eyes that seemed permanently narrowed as if against a bright light. His lips were full and held that same indication of humor in the corners. He was lovely in a masculine way, with his dark hair broken by a light sprinkling of gray, premature most likely, as he appeared to be only in his early to mid-thirties.

  He was almost Clooney-esque, Mikah thought, though the thought made no sense at all even as it did. It was as if half of her understood the reference while the other half wallowed in confusion.

  She couldn’t understand why her thoughts were so jumbled; yet perhaps the blow to her head explained it all. “What did the doctor say?” Mikah whispered softly, as if she was suffering a hangover and loud words might make her head burst.

  “He thinks you’ll be fine,” Lord Ayr answered. “He could find no other damage beyond the single injury to your head. He worries about the memory loss.” The marquis reached out and took her hand in his. The intimate contact startled her and she looked down at her small pale hand in his large one, his tanned skin sprinkled with dark hairs. The feel of his rough fingers against her palm fascinated Mikah and she was embarrassed by her schoolgirl response to him. It was like being thirteen all over again and coming face to face with your teen idol. Giddy, jittery, silly … and horrifying in retrospect. She could only hope he wasn’t aware that she was nearly awestruck by him.