Before he left the bathing chamber, he hung the towel on the hook as she had instructed him. Then he gathered up his soiled and smelly plaid and carried it with him to find Violet.
She was in the great room.
“Violet? I have my plaid. Thank ye for the bath and clothes.”
She was sitting in a chair by the window, drawing. She looked at him and clapped a hand over her mouth, her shoulders shaking.
Duncan narrowed his eyes. “’Tis not amusing.”
“Oh, but it is.” She pointed at his shirt. “The shirt is so tight. I’m sorry. My grandmother and I thought about adding a men’s line and these were samples.”
She got up and went to a basket. “Here, this will help.” She cut the sleeves off the shirt and suddenly Duncan could move his arms.
“Better?”
“Much. I thank ye.”
She turned a fetching shade of pink again. “Um, I didn’t have any underwear for you, but I didn’t think you were wearing any.”
“Were ye looking under my plaid?” He grinned at her.
“I most certainly was not.” She brandished the scissors at him.
“Stand still.” She kneeled and cut off the hose above the knee. “There. Much better, yes?”
Duncan helped her up. “If ye wished to admire my legs, you had only to say, lass.”
She rolled her eyes. “Goodness, you’ve got me all figured out. I lured you into my home to ogle you.”
He threw back his head and laughed.
“You better watch yourself, Duncan McTavish.” She brandished the scissors at him. “I know how to use these.”
He held out his hands, grinning at the feisty lass. “I am a gentleman, your honor is safe.”
“Good.” She picked up his plaid and wrinkled her nose. “I can’t wash your plaid and shirt until the power’s back on, but I’m going to put them in the utility sink in the garage to soak. We need to get the bloodstains out.”
He followed her through the great room and kitchen to another door. It opened to a room with some kind of metal beast.
“We’ll go to the store as soon as we can get out. Get you a few things to wear until we figure out where you live.”
A bang sounded, and he saw a chair fly by the window.
The house shook and once again Duncan wondered if he was in purgatory.
8
Violet was sitting by the window working on her dress sketches when Duncan walked out of the bathroom. Wow. Talk about cleaning up nicely. The man could be a model, posing for some kind of outdoorsy ad with the mountains as the backdrop.
She blinked, focusing on what he was saying. Then she caught sight of the clothes. The sleeves on the t-shirt had to be cutting off his circulation and the sweatpants? More like leggings, so she improvised.
When he followed her to the garage, the guy acted like he’d never seen a car before. He was about to ask her about it when a chair hit the house and went flying past the window.
Once the hurricane passed, Violet would check on her neighbors. Most of them were elderly, and Mr. Williams had his granddaughter staying with him while her parents were away on a trip.
She scooped detergent into the sink filled with cold water and put his plaid to soak. Between the waterway, the blood, and whatever else was on it, the thing stunk to high heaven.
“What is this?” Duncan was running his hands down the sides of her old beat up Saab. It was ancient, painted sky blue, and had a hundred and fifty thousand miles on it.
The car had belonged to a woman one of her neighbors played bridge with. When the lady passed away, Violet bought the car. It was all metal with four doors and a hatchback. She could fit tons of stuff in the back. Violet called the car Bessie. Her mechanic had assured her the car would easily run for another fifty thousand miles or more.
“That’s Bessie. My car.” Then deciding to go along with the total memory loss theory, she explained. “It’s a horseless carriage.”
The gleam in his eye told her he was a car guy, and she’d bet he loved to drive fast.
“You can drive when we go to the store.” She pursed her lips. “Do you know how to drive?”
“I ride.”
“I guess a motorcycle is a similar concept. Hey, you remembered something, maybe your memory is coming back.”
Violet pulled an old sheet off the shelf to reveal three coolers, but before she could reach up, Duncan had pulled them down for her.
“Thanks. I’ll get the ice.”
She opened the freezer, and he jumped back.
“’Tis so cold.”
“It’s a freezer. To keep food from spoiling for a long time.” She handed him two bags of ice.
“Don’t open and close it. We have to keep things cold until the power comes back on.”
He was touching the ice and shaking his hand.
“I’ll get the bottled water.”
“Nay, I will carry the water.” He picked up two cases of water and let the coolers dangle from his fingers. The bags of ice were under his arm. It was nice to have a man around to carry stuff.
“Be careful, don’t open your wound again.”
He scoffed. “Dinna fash. A wee lad could carry as much.”
He carried everything in as she followed behind him, closing the door to the garage.
“I can sense ye behind me, admiring my manly form and my strength.”
Violet heard the teasing in his voice.
“Yep, you caught me. Now move it, buster.”
She had him set up the coolers on the floor in the kitchen and fill them with ice. Beverages went in one and food in the other. She handed him cheese, cold cuts, condiments, a quiche, and chicken breasts. There were crackers, bread, and other nonperishables in the pantry.
He sniffed each item, his stomach growling as he put them in the cooler.
“Wait, don’t put the quiche in, we’ll eat it for breakfast.”
Violet pulled paper plates and silverware out of the pantry. “We’ll eat on paper so we don’t have to worry about washing dishes.”
He carried the quiche to the table and stretched his long legs out.
Violet cut the quiche, giving Duncan a large piece. She pulled out two cans of Coke, handing him one. She popped the tops and took a drink. Duncan copied her.
He put the can down. “This drink bubbles in my throat and up my nose.” He took another sip. “I find I like this drink.”
Then he poked the quiche with the plastic fork. “What is this?”
She sighed. “It’s a fork. You use it to eat.” Violet pointed. “This is quiche.”
At his blank look, she took a forkful and held it up.
“Pie crust with eggs, spinach, cheese, and bacon. It would be better heated, but I think you’ll like it.”
He took a bite, his eyes closed. “Delicious.”
Between them, they ate the entire quiche. She had two large pieces. It was a huge plus that he didn’t make a single comment about how much she ate. Of course, he was busy polishing off the rest of the quiche so he might not have noticed.
Duncan threw away the paper plates and aluminum pie plate without her asking. It was nice to have someone in the house with her while the hurricane raged outside. What if she hadn’t heard him? He might have drowned or worse.
Duncan stretched out on one sofa while Violet took the other.
“Is this the room ye wish to paint?” Duncan squinted at the walls. “The color reminds me of the green bits at the edge of a loch.”
“The green is awful, isn’t it? Yes, I want to paint it white to show off the artwork.”
She took a sip of water. “It’s going to get hot inside when the rain stops, but for now it’s not too bad in here. I didn’t see any keys or a wallet. Do you have ID?”
“Keys?”
“To your house? Or for your bike?” Violet was getting a funny feeling about him. “How about a wallet or phone?”
He shook his head. “Nay.”
“They
probably fell in the waterway or you lost them somewhere along the way.” She shuddered. “You could have ended up as food for the gators.”
Duncan sat up, his hair still wet and just touching his shoulders. “Gator? You mean the black beast with the red eyes?”
“Yes. I told you about Spot last night, but you were out of it. I’ll show you pictures later. I want to conserve the charge on the phone and tablet.”
“Surely such a beast comes from hell.”
Violet laughed. “I guess, growing up here in Florida, I like the alligators. When I was little, I used to sit on the dock and throw marshmallows to them.”
She coughed. “I’d sing to them. They’d swim close to the dock and roll back and forth.” She smiled, remembering the alligators.
“Guess I was lucky they didn’t want to eat me. They can jump their length. It would have been easy for them to snatch me off the dock. I was a little thing, not much meat on my bones for them.” She sighed. “Now we know not to feed them. They get used to humans and can become aggressive.”
Duncan scratched his cheek, and she made a note to give him a razor later so he could shave.
“The beasties liked your singing. Are ye a faery, then?”
A laugh escaped. “No, I’m not.”
“Are you afeared of the alligators?”
“No, I like and respect them. They’ve been around a long, long time. Now snakes? Don’t get me started.” Violet shuddered. “Has your memory come back? Maybe you were evacuating from the hurricane. From a theater in Naples? I’m guessing you must have been in a play about Scotland in medieval times. Somewhere along the way you hit your head and now you think you’re from the past.”
Duncan rested his elbows on his knees and regarded her with dark blue eyes. “Nay, lass. I come from Scotland.”
“You might think so, but there’s no way.” She sat up and crossed her legs. “Duncan, this is the year two thousand and twenty, not the middle ages.”
He blanched. “What is the date today?”
Violet told him again. She cocked her head, watching him, the feeling in her stomach growing stronger as she whispered, “what year do you think it is?”
“We are in Florida now?”
Violet nodded.
Duncan seemed to be carefully choosing his words. “Where is Florida?”
“In America. The beach is a few miles down the road.”
He looked panicked.
“Nay, it canna be.”
His hand trembled as he scraped his hair back. Without thinking about it, Violet handed him a ponytail holder. While her hair was too short now to pull up, she still had the elastics lying around from before she’d cut it all off. She showed him how to put it in his hair.
Troubled eyes met hers, pleading. “I was in the woods. It was snowing. The Campbells were going to run me through.”
“Where were you?” Violet leaned forward.
“Inverness. Scotland.”
“Scotland.”
“Aye.” Duncan looked lost and alone. “It was the middle of February. The Year of Our Lord 1350 when I was in Scotland.”
“Well, that’s quite a difference from 2020.”
Violet patted his arm. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure the amnesia is temporary and will pass.”
“I left my cousin. The sickness was spreading, and I knew I was dying. I wanted to die under the sky, not in a dank cold room. The Campbells came upon me in the snow. I fell. There were too many.”
She patted his knee. “It’s okay. You think you’re from the past. It sounds like medieval Scotland and the Black Death was spreading through the country, so that must have been the role you were playing when you hit your head. But I don’t know how you ended up in my backyard. We’ll figure it out.”
But Violet wondered? Could his story be true?
“Any idea if Duncan is your actual name or your stage name?”
Duncan sat up straight. “I am Duncan McTavish of the clan McTavish.”
Violet took his hand in hers, feeling the calluses on his palm. “It’s okay, just checking on what you might and might not remember. Let’s see. How old are you?”
“A score and two.” He squeezed her hand.
She blinked “That would be twenty-two. Are you married?”
“Nay.”
The scent of apples from the shampoo filled the room when he shook his head.
“But how can you be certain you’re not married with a bunch of kids?”
“I would know.”
“You have the accent down. Of course, you’d have a Scottish accent, the best, dreamiest accent in all the world.”
Violet closed her eyes. “I said that out loud, didn’t I?”
“Aye, lass.” His hand warmed up and Duncan grinned. The wolf come to eat unwary little girls lost in the deep dark woods.
A nervous laugh escaped. Violet couldn’t turn him out in the streets after a hurricane. There was nothing to be done. She’d have to take care of him until the power came back on or his memory came back.
Needing a bit of space, she moved to the other end of the sofa. She had work to do, hurricane or not, so he’d just have to respect her time to work and entertain himself.
“Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out. Guess you can stay here until we find out who you are and where you live.”
Duncan looked so shocked, Violet wanted to laugh, but something made her keep a straight face.
“Stay here? Sleep here? With you? ‘Tisn’t proper. Your reputation would be at risk.”
“I’ll sleep in the bedroom, you can sleep on the sofa.”
Violet pulled her t-shirt away from her skin. The temperature in the house was already going up, it was going to be sticky and hot by tomorrow night.
“I think we’ll be sleeping on the chaise lounges out on the lanai until the power comes back on. It’s going to be too hot to sleep inside even with the windows open.”
Guess she had a houseguest for the foreseeable future.
9
It rained so hard, Violet couldn’t see the waterway. The sound of the rain, the watercolor landscape outside, and Duncan in her home, blurred the lines between waking and dreaming. As if she fell asleep, Violet might not wake for a hundred years.
Forced together, they spent the day talking, getting to know each other better. He made her laugh with the stories he told. The man was a natural storyteller and charming. She appreciated the effort he’d made to put her at ease.
It was late morning when the rain finally stopped.
“I’m sorry I don’t have any shoes that will fit you. Your boots look funny with your cutoff sweatpants.” She smiled. “Not that I’m judging. Normally I’d tell you to go barefoot, but I’m not sure what debris might be in the yard.”
Duncan looked down at his boots. “I much prefer my footwear to your pink shoes.”
“Pink sneakers rock.”
She grabbed several heavy duty trash bags from under the sink and they went out through the garage.
“Let’s put the cushions back on the furniture first. We won’t want to be making up our beds in the dark tonight.”
Duncan gathered up all the cushions in his arms. The towering pile obscured his face.
“Lead the way, lass.”
“You’re handy to have around. Follow me. I’ll keep talking so you don’t bump into anything.”
She led him out the side door to the garage. From there, it was only a few steps to the door that led out to the porch.
“Hold on a minute and I’ll get the door.”
Violet had unlocked the doors before they’d gone outside. Before the storm, she’d shut the lanai door tight and locked it so it wouldn’t fly off and end up in another county. She pulled the door open.
“Take three steps forward.”
Duncan put the cushions on the chaise lounges, marveling at the bright fabric. He sat down and ran his hands over the cushions.
“These are most comfortable.”
&
nbsp; “Good, because we’re sleeping here tonight.”
Before he could protest about her reputation again, Violet held up a hand.
“You’ll sleep on your chair and I’ll sleep way over here on mine, it’s perfectly innocent.”
Not that her porch was huge, but at least the chairs weren’t right next to each other. Last night was different. She was watching over an injured man. But tonight? It would be strange sleeping with a stranger so close.
He looked doubtful, but nodded. “As ye say.”
When she saw him wince as he bent down, then rub his shoulder, she ran in the house. Violet found Duncan in the yard, stuffing trash in a bag when she came back out, meds in hand.
“Time for more medicine. You could go inside and take a nap.” She handed him the tiny pills and a bottle of water.
“’Tis stiff, nothing more. I will labor and the stiffness will abate.” He lifted the bag of trash.
“Where do I put this? Do we burn it?”
“No burning trash. The green cans in the garage?”
When he nodded she continued, “You can put them outside, they go in that area next to the door. The trash goes inside the can.”
“Are the cans magic? Does the trash vanish?”
“No. Men come in a big truck and take it away to a landfill, that’s where trash ends up.”
Violet looked at her grapefruit and orange trees in the backyard.
“I hope they’ll be okay.” There was fruit all over the ground and some floating in the waterway. “I would have had a great crop this year. Oh well, at least the trees are still standing.”
Duncan picked up a grapefruit and sniffed.
“Smells like the soap I used.”
“It’s a grapefruit. The smaller one is an orange.”
He sniffed the orange. “It smells nice. Do ye eat them?”
“Yes. They’re delicious. But they’re too small. Usually I pick them starting in November.” She looked at the small fruit on the ground. “Let’s clean these up so they don’t all roll into the water. For now, we’ll put them in the garage on the floor.”
Violet pointed to the fruit. “Don’t eat them, they aren’t ripe and will taste terrible.”
Falling Through Time: A Lighthearted Time Travel Romance (Knights Through Time Romance Book 13) Page 5
