The Wedding Dress

by Kimberly Cates

  Butler’s green eyes blazed even hotter, but something in the taut line of his mouth betrayed him. She’d hit a nerve and damn, it felt good.

  “One thing,” he snarled. “Got it? You can keep one thing. Agreed?”

  Emma tried not to let him see the relief flooding through her. “Agreed.” Instinctively she extended her hand to shake on it. Butler gave her a long look, then his large, work-roughened hand swallowed Emma’s much smaller one in a grasp that was brazenly masculine, surprisingly straightforward. Her fingers, strong in their own right, tested in countless stunts over the years, felt almost delicate for the first time since she’d left her hometown when she was just sixteen.

  Heat pulsed between Butler’s palm and hers. The archaeologist’s eyes widened just a touch; Emma’s breath caught. She pulled her hand away and flattened it on the front of her slacks, as if trying to erase the feel of that strange, hot throb.

  “Maybe we’ll be able to work together without killing each other after all.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it.” Butler folded his arms over his chest, palms against the nubby wool of his sweater, and Emma wondered if he felt the same strange compulsion to buff the feel of her off his hands. It made him seem a tiny bit more human.

  “I’ll give you this much, Butler. At least we know where we stand with each other. Hate at first sight.”

  “You have to care enough about somebody to hate them,” Butler said.

  “Well, all-righty then. That gives me something to aspire to. I assume you have some work to do besides irritating me. So if you could show me where I’ll be staying, we can take a break from each other, at least for a little while.”

  “I thought you’d like to stay in Lady Aislinn’s chamber,” he said so pleasantly that Emma knew damn well not to trust him. And yet, how bad could it be? Emma reasoned. Aislinn was the lady of the castle. It had to be the best room of all. She’d seen those old movies where the beds were draped in velvet bed hangings and the walls were hung with tapestries and fires blazed in hearths the size of garden sheds.

  “Terrific,” she said, her teeth starting to chatter. “I don’t suppose there are any flashing neon signs to show me the way.”

  “No. Just take those stairs up to the top of the tower. I guess we’ll see what you’re made of, Ms. McDaniel. After Sir Brannoc took the castle, Lady Aislinn spent three months in that room. Until Sir Brannoc forced her out. If you can’t manage to stay there for six weeks…”

  “I’ll manage,” Emma insisted, her chin bumping up a notch.

  “Some even claim that she hid the fairy flag right there.”

  Emma’s eyes widened in fascination. “The one that was supposed to keep the castle from falling to an enemy as long as the flag flew inside its walls?”

  “No. The other fairy flag. The one with Tinker Bell on it.”

  Emma ground her teeth, knowing the man was pulling her chain on purpose, knowing, too, that the less she rose to the bait, the sooner Butler would give up his efforts to torment her.

  “What? Nothing to say, Ms. McDaniel?” Butler asked. “Did you expect me to be impressed that you bothered to read the script? The fairy flag is an integral part of the legend.”

  “A gossamer-thin piece of cloth brought as Lady Aislinn’s dowry,” Emma supplied. “A gift of the fairies to be passed down to the most beautiful daughter born to the chief of Clan MacGregor. A hundred suitors filled her father’s hall, all vying to win her hand in marriage so they could become invincible.”

  “A good way to be certain your daughter was well treated once she was married and beyond your care. Husbands had total power over their wives then. The woman who dared put a gold circlet on Robert the Bruce’s head was imprisoned by her angry husband for four years in a cage shaped like a crown hanging outside the castle.”

  “Nice guy. But then, you did warn me to head across the water to Ireland if I wanted charm. What happened to the lady?”

  “The countess survived. God knows how.”

  “A life lesson you should take to heart. Never underestimate a pissed-off woman. She hung on so she could make her husband’s life a living hell. But this whole fairy flag thing—obviously you’re a pretty big boy to believe in the little people, Butler. So what’s the story? Exactly what was the fairy flag really?”

  “We’ll never know.” An intriguing light sparked in Butler’s intelligent eyes and for an instant Emma glimpsed an enthusiasm, a warmth, a wonder that transformed his face. “If scientists could get their hands on a piece of it now, we’d be able to test it, hopefully date it, compare it to cloth samples from ancient times all over the world. We might be able to make an educated guess…”

  Passion. He radiated it, so hot Emma couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to be the woman who inspired that zeal, that intensity. Her tongue moistened her suddenly dry lips.

  In a heartbeat, Butler seemed to remember who he was talking to. The stony mask of dislike fell back across his face, leaving Emma even colder than before. “It doesn’t matter. The flag was lost forever when Lady Aislinn disappeared.”

  “Maybe I’ll spend my spare time having a look around the room,” Emma said. “Find the fairy flag after hundreds of years.”

  “We archaeologists would really appreciate it. After all, nobody in the past six hundred years has thought to look for the flag in that room. All those treasure hunters over the centuries, countless teams of scholars and experts—we all just wanted to leave it there for you, so you could make the cover of Hello magazine.”

  “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” Emma tossed her hair. “Just think what a great promo it would be for the movie.” She snapped out the handle of her suitcase and started rolling it across the bumpy stone floor toward the stairs.

  “There’s no point hauling that thing up three stories,” Butler warned. “Just take out whatever you need right here.”

  Emma’s cheeks burned. Damn if she was going to let this jerk watch her rummage through her suitcase, let him see…things that were private, things that were precious, things that still made her heart ache. Chinks in the walls six years of living in the public limelight had forced her to build.

  No way was she going to open herself up for more of Butler’s mockery. She was going to haul her suitcase far from his scornful gaze. She was going to slip out her treasure when she was safe, silent—alone.

  If it was the last thing she did, she was going to get her suitcase to the top of the tower.

  “Hey, I told you to open the damn thing here.”

  “So you can sneak a look at my underwear?” Emma said, doggedly hauling the suitcase up the first stair. “Think again, bud.”

  “I may be the one man on earth who doesn’t give a damn what color your panties are, you stubborn little…”

  She smacked her bag against the stone as loud as she could to drown out whatever he’d decided to call her. But she hadn’t bumped the suitcase up half a dozen stone risers before she wondered if doctors in archaeology knew anything about CPR. The weight of the case was going to leave her with gorilla arms stretched down to her knees.

  She heard a growled oath, heavy footfalls behind her. With an unladylike grunt, she was pulling the suitcase halfway up another stair when suddenly Jared Butler grabbed the handle away from her, his hand warm and rough, impatient and unyieldingly masculine.

  For a pulse beat the narrow stairway pushed them together. His arm bumped against her breast. The smell of him—rain and spice and exasperation—filled Emma’s head.

  “I can handle this myself!” she objected.

  “Sure you can. Just like you can play Lady Aislinn.” He was already striding up the dim stairs, both his form and the beam of flashlight vanishing in the shadows ahead.

  Emma did the only thing she could. Stormed up after him. Her lungs were sucking like bellows by the time she reached her room. But in spite of her vow not to let Butler see her sweat, she couldn’t hide the dismay that washed over her as he shone the
flashlight over the chamber.

  Moisture penetrated cracked walls with the kind of dampness that would never really get dry. A bed stuffed with God knew what was blanketed with…skins of dead animals…with the fur still on.

  “What…what are those?” Emma asked, unnerved.

  “Wolf pelts, stag skins. Whatever you could kill hereabouts in the fourteenth century. Pretty amazing, isn’t it? Thinking those skins used to be on some wild animal?”

  “Yeah, well, maybe I’m allergic. You can see the feet and—and holes where the eyes used to be in those things. God knows what else might be under all that fur.”

  “Once we get the hearth burning the smoke should drive out most of the bugs.”

  “Bugs?” Just the mention of them made Emma’s skin crawl.

  “I know how important historical accuracy is to you,” Butler said. “So if you feel any bugs biting you tonight, just chalk it up to research.”

  “You’re hilarious, Butler.”

  “Come morning, you’re going to find out just how much fun I can be. Meanwhile, I’ll send one of the grad students up with your dinner once it gets too dark to dig. Make sure you find your iPod or PalmPilot or whatever is so damned important so that your suitcase is ready to be hauled out of here by then.”

  “Fine.”

  “Use tonight to settle in. I’ll be taking the flashlight with me.”

  And then the room would be movie-theater dark. She’d probably break her neck tripping over something. No wonder Angelica Robards hadn’t survived the training process without a trip to the hospital.

  “Terrific,” Emma said, still warily eyeing the animal fur. “It’ll be just me and Bambi here.” Alone. In the dark. With a whole colony of bugs, no doubt planted by Attila the Scot.

  “I’ll light up the fire and one candle for you. After that, you’re on your own. Everything you’ll need for the next six weeks is in that wooden chest over there.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s a medieval Porta Potti in it.”

  “No hot water either. We jerry-built a garderobe in an area beyond the dig site. The student will show you where it is. Starting first thing in the morning you’re going to get a crash course in medieval life in Scotland. You’re going to eat, sleep and breathe the life of a Scottish chatelaine.”

  “A chat-a-who?”

  “A noblewoman caring for her husband’s castle while he’s off fighting for his king.”

  “Isn’t that just like a man,” Emma quipped. “Running off to play with the other boys, leaving the responsibilities to the woman.”

  “Despite all the twisted shite people get fed in movies, with fainting damsels in distress needing to be rescued, medieval women were a strong lot. I suppose we’ll find out what you’re made of.”

  “Yes, you will. May I give you one little bit of advice?”

  “I doubt gagging you with duct tape would stop you.”

  “Try not to drop me over a cliff, Dr. Butler, no matter how great the temptation. Damaging one actress is an accident. Damaging a second would look downright suspicious.”

  “Not by medieval standards. Men could go through a half dozen wives between accidents and disease and childbirth. And in desperate cases you could always lock her in prison somewhere.”

  “Like Henry II did Eleanor of Aquitaine.”

  Butler looked taken aback. “You read about…?”

  “I saw the movie. Lion In Winter. Katherine Hepburn won an Oscar in the starring role.”

  “You’re sure as bloody hell no Katherine Hepburn,” Butler scoffed, starting for the door.

  Cold, wet and tired, Emma sobered. That was what she was afraid of.

  THERE WAS NO QUESTION of escape. Jared glared out the office trailer’s window to where the mess tent blazed with lights, even more dancing shadows silhouetted against the canvas than there had been when he’d checked the same scene an hour ago.

  It seemed that no matter how many times he paced the narrow aisle between his desk and drafting table, every student on the site was determined to wait out his appearance, no matter how physically and mentally exhausted this day full of mud and rain had left them.

  He might as well get it over with, he reasoned, reaching for the cool logic of a scientist. Sooner or later he’d have to face his students and endure their barrage of questions about their famous guest. But damn if he wanted to listen to the kids whose intellect he’d prized raving about Emma McDaniel, dazzled by the glitz and glitter of a world Jared didn’t trust.

  Having her here is the price you agreed to pay, he reminded himself grimly. He hoped he wouldn’t discover that cost was too high. Bracing himself, he stepped out into the night. A hunter’s moon sailed the sky, limning the world in silver.

  Biting wind, still fresh from the afternoon’s storm, tangled invisible fingers through his hair as he removed the battered brown canvas hat he’d hung by its leather cords on the outer doorknob. The wide-brimmed hat dangling there was a signal every bit as dreaded by the students and staff alike as a skull and crossbones would be on the high sea.

  Only someone with a death wish would disturb Jared those rare times the hat appeared on the door. But he’d bet that several of his students had considered braving his wrath tonight. Thankfully, nineteen-year-old Davey Harrison, Jared’s personal assistant and longest-running team member, had managed to dissuade them.

  But damn if Jared was going to waste any more time trying to sort through the feelings Emma McDaniel stirred in him. The anger, the outrage, the sensation of being trapped. Between Angelica Robards’ training and accident and Emma’s arrival, he’d surrendered too many precious days already. With every hour that passed, the end of summer crept closer. And the end of summer meant the dig had to close.

  At least not permanently, Jared reminded himself with grim satisfaction. The university that had sponsored the study for students from around the world might withdraw its funding, move its program on to some site in Greece—just for variety’s sake, to give the kids a different kind of experience. And the grant funds he’d hoped for might be promised elsewhere. But Jared had found his own way to keep the dig afloat. By selling the rights to his book to Hollywood, making a pact with the devil. It seemed even Jared’s soul had its price. The hard part was forcing his pride to pay it.

  He’d imagined celebrity mania would poison the kids when they heard of Jade Star’s imminent arrival. The reality was even worse.

  From the most insecure undergraduate to his most trusted assistant, they all but stampeded him as he entered the mess tent, the kids barely giving lip service to his questions about any finds that had been made in his absence.

  “What’s she like?” a breathless kid on foreign study from Northwestern University pleaded.

  Too brave. A little wild. Trying to protect that air-brained girl in the airport the only way she could.

  “She’s a pain in the arse,” Jared said.

  “Is she really as beautiful as she looks in the movies?” Nigel Sutherland asked.

  Jared didn’t bother to hide a smug grin as he recalled Emma McDaniel’s rain-soaked million-dollar face, with ropes of wet black hair straggling across it. That picture made him feel better. The poor wee bairn, going to bed with sodden hair and not a blow-dryer in sight.

  “With all those movie tricks they use, Hollywood could make me look like Prince Will i am,” Jared growled.

  “That would be a crying shame,” a coed named Gemma whispered to Veronica Phillips, a fresh-talking doctoral candidate from St. Andrews who had made it obvious that the body she hoped to uncover this summer still had plenty of life in it and belonged in her bed, not some museum.

  “Why tamper with perfection?” Veronica teased, flashing Jared a sultry grin.

  Jared was man enough to be tempted on a purely physical level. It had been a long time since he’d let himself take what a woman offered, but he knew firsthand that the price was too high. The danger too great. That part of him was dead. He’d killed it, as surely as
he’d killed Jenny.

  Where had that thought come from? He’d buried Jenny, the way Vikings buried their treasure hordes, then tried to forget where he’d left all the memories, all the self-blame.

  He’d become an expert at seeming oblivious to women’s flirtations, ignoring Veronica’s comment as he had all the other glances filled with soulful feminine longing that had been thrown his way over the past ten years. Damn, if they knew how much he hated it, that adoring light that told him what they were thinking—that they fancied him a modern-day Lancelot come to save his fair lady from the stake.

  If only they knew that was one quest he’d already failed.

  “Emma McDaniel’s coming here is quantitative proof that life is not fair,” Davey Harrison said at the edge of the crowd. The favorite student Jared wasn’t supposed to have shook his head wistfully, then plopped a canvas hat identical to Jared’s down on his flyaway dark blond hair.

  “Exactly what do you base your conclusion on, Mr. Harrison?” Jared asked.

  The kid actually smiled. “In the men’s dorms back home, every other room had a poster of Jade Star on the wall and the ones that didn’t only took ’em down because their girlfriends made ’em. And what does God do? Dumps the goddess herself into the lap of the one man on earth who hasn’t fantasized a hundred times what he’d do if he could get his hands on her.”

  “Hey, Einstein’s right!” Sean Murphy jabbed his nearest cohort with an elbow. “That’s what I call a crying shame.”

  Jared shot both kids a quelling glare. “What’s a shame is wasting time on this nonsense when we only have three months before this dig closes for the year,” he growled. “Fall term will start faster than you know and then it’ll be back to school for the lot of you. Of course, you can read about my brilliant discoveries in National Geographic.”

  Davey grinned, worlds different from the anguished fifteen-year-old who’d first come to the castle on a field trip four years ago. “Internet’s faster, chief.”

  “So you keep telling me.” Jared grimaced. Davey was right. The information superhighway put a wealth of research at people’s fingertips. And as a scientist, Jared had to learn to access it. But somehow all those flashy graphics never felt as right to him as the solid weight of a book. Computer-generated illusions, everything from dinosaurs to heroines like Jade Star, airbrushed so her body was centerfold perfect the way a real woman could never be. It was one more way to con people into believing the impossible existed.