“Goodbye, Tris.”
Chapter 12
Present Day
“The conquering hero returns,” Aila called as Brontë walked into the green room of the Lyceum a mere hour after she’d left. Her friend rose to hug her whispering in her ear, “I can’t wait to hear all about it.”
“Not much to tell.” She dropped her bag containing the purple dress into a chair and took one of the chairs. After a sleepless night, she’d joined Hazel and Henry for breakfast before leaving. Leaving despite their invitation to stay for an extended visit and to join them for a house party the MacKintoshes were holding at their ancestral estate in Glenrothes for the next two weeks.
She’d declined with true regret.
After the meal, she dressed again in the purple dress and departed alone on foot despite their offer to send a car for her. Staying meant interfering with their lives more than she already had, she reminded herself. It also meant she’d have to see Tris MacKintosh again and be reminded of her humiliating failure.
Instead of making her way straight to the theater, she slipped behind the rowhouses, hoping none of the residents above — one in particular — spotted her. A footpath led down the steep embankment to the Waters of Leith, a stream weaving through a deep valley bisecting the city. St Bernard’s Well, a rotunda of Roman pillars supporting a frescoed dome, perched on the bank. It wasn’t gated off in 1914, so she climbed up inside to the marble statue of Hygeia, the Goddess of Health to change into her leggings and tee shirt before hitting the center button on the device that would return her to her own time.
Her rash choice left her in a quandary of how to escape the gated structure in the middle of a modern-day afternoon. She huddled behind the statue breathing in the dull, metallic odor of the well’s water and wondering if the mythical healing powers of the water could cure stupid. Getting locked inside an iron gate was the least of the bad choices she’d made.
Finally, between spurts of joggers and dog walkers following the trails along the Leith, she was able to climb the fence and walk back to the theater. Along the way she marked the differences between past and present. Both bustled in their own fashion, but the elegance of an early 20th century New Town had been shadowed by the grime and technology of the modern age, by billboards and lights. Even the exterior of the Lyceum had been subjected to updates. Once a standard neoclassical façade with four Ionic pillars and six standard sized windows, the ground floor had been completely opened up with plate glass windows to display the lobby and souvenir shop inside. The world gone commercial. By the time she made her way to the green room, she’d almost forgotten about Aila waiting for her and the work she had waiting.
“I saved Henry, obviously,” she said to her friend. “And spent the day with Hazel and the kids in the nursery. It was wonderful actually. I’ve made memories of them to remember forever.”
“And?”
“We went to see Cyrano de Bergerac last night,” Brontë answered, studiously avoiding the topic she knew Aila was hinting at.
“Like we do every night?” Aila puckered her lips. “Oh, joy.”
“No, it was rather interesting,” she went on. “So different from what we’re doing here. The costumes were far more flamboyant and the acting a bit over the top but well done.”
Aila rolled her eyes. “And? What about him? Was he there?”
“You do remember, he was not the reason I went, right? But yes, he was and before you ask, that’s it,” Brontë told her. “Nothing more to report.”
“Aye, right! Gi’ over. What happened?” she insisted. Then she frowned studying Brontë’s face. “Are ye a’right?”
“Just a little queasy.”
There was a miniscule ounce of truth to the excuse. The repeated use of the time machine had a way of compounding in her gut. The mental repercussions of her journeys had far more reaching effects though.
To cut the interrogation short, Brontë provided a rundown of the evening, laying on thick Tris’s overly solicitous habits. As the words came out of her mouth, they rang false to her ears.
“Och, sounds like a proper ass to me.” Precisely what Brontë had been hoping for but she found herself defending him with her next breath.
“I don’t know. There’s something kind of nice about being treated —”
“Like a helpless female?” Aila cut in.
Brontë shrugged. “No. With kindness. Consideration. That’s something we miss out on in a world where people care about themselves first and foremost. Knowing the reasons a true gentleman acts as he does rather than assuming he does it because he thinks us incapable makes all the difference.”
“My God.” Wide-eyed, Aila blinked hard. “Ye shagged him, didn’t ye? I didn’t think ye had it in ye.”
Heads from around the room swiveled in their direction with her vocal allegation and Brontë shushed her. “No, I did not.” She looked around the room, face flaming. “I did not shag him, but if I had, not one of you would blame me. He was damned hot.”
Several of her co-workers laughed aloud. “How hot was he?” The actor playing Christian — she still didn’t know his name — lifted his coffee cup. “Here, here!”
“So ye didn’t shag him?” Aila asked as if in need of further clarification.
“No,” she insisted, the tips of her ears on fire.
“Because of some misplaced moral argument?”
“No, I simply didn’t get the chance,” Brontë presented the lie as blandly as she could manage. “It’s for the best. You know I’m not a one night stand kind of girl and that’s all it could have been, right? Better to move on to my next task than dwell on it.”
Aila stared at her, deadpan. “Is that yer plan then? To remember him fondly?”
“What other choice do I have?”
“Was he married? Engaged?”
“No.”
“Then I say ye have plenty more choices.” She pointed to the door. “Go back and bag yerself a hot Scotsman if only to prove they can out-tup an Englishman. And I want pictures this time. Of him, obviously. Not the other.”
“That’s not how it works. I can’t keep going back.”
“Why? Because ye’ll change history? News flash. Ye already have.” Aila crossed her arms over her chest with a scowl of disappointment. “Ye ken what yer problem is?”
“I’m sure you’ll tell me.”
Her friend snorted indelicately. “Ye’re so afraid of getting smacked down again, ye can’t even put yerself out there anymore. Not even when ye’re forced into it.”
There it was. Out loud. Where she couldn’t deny it. True, her failure with Jake had left her wary of rejection. The scars ran deep.
“In my defense, I did try.”
“How hard?” Aila pursed her lips and shook her head. “I ken ye think ye dinnae need a man, but why deny yerself one when he’s tossed in yer path like a juicy bone?”
“I should screw the first guy who comes around then?”
“He isn’t the first. Not by a long shot,” Aila said. “Och, Brontë, I ken ye’ve been lonely even if ye haven’t realized it yet. Ye dinnae like what this time had to offer and look what happened. Fate has a way of putting ye places exactly when ye’re supposed to be there. Take what it’s offering ye. I dinnae think the whole reason ye’re getting this chance is to save Henry’s life alone. It’s to save yer own.”
Though her statement hit Brontë with all the force of a hurricane, she said only, “How prosaic. You should be writing Hallmark cards.”
“I’d make a bloody fortune.” Aila set her mug aside and slouched back in her chair. “Gah, so depressing. Give me something up beat. How did Henry and Hazel’s story end up this time?”
“Fine, I suppose.” Grateful for the subject change, she relaxed in her seat as well. “I haven’t read it. I just got here.”
They stared at each other for a moment before Aila’s eyes shifted.
“Oh no, you don’t! I get to read it first!”
But
the other woman had already scrambled away from the table and was sprinting down the hall toward the costume shop.
* * *
“Are ye feckin’ kidding me?”
“Give it to me!” Brontë forcibly tugged the journal away from Aila and scanned the page. “’A lovely visit from my distant cousin…’”
As much as she wanted to read more about that, she skimmed the page searching for the source of Aila’s outburst.
“There.” Aila jabbed a finger at the bottom of the opposite page. “Read that.”
Brontë scanned the words in disbelief then read them aloud more slowly, “‘My darling Henry is dead. The guiding light of my life extinguished so cruelly. I still cannot comprehend how this came to be though it has been days since my love was so abruptly whisked from my life. Perhaps I will never understand…’”
“What. The. Fuck,” Brontë cursed in disbelief and read on silently before flipping back to read the few entries leading up to that day.
“I’ll say,” her friend agreed. “There’s something awfully karmic about all of this, wouldn’t you say? As if ye’re not meant to —”
“Don’t say that!” Brontë protested. “Don’t even think it. Henry is a charming, wonderful man. A devoted husband and father. If there’s anyone who deserves to live a long fruitful life, it’s him. But…”
She went back and re-read the entries about her brief visit with them and the days that followed at the MacKintosh house party. There was so much joy in the pages. Optimism and anticipation for the days and years ahead. How could something like this have happened again?
“Ye’ll have to go back and try again obviously.”
Brontë looked up from the pages to her friend’s knowing smirk. “This isn’t funny, Aila. This is life and death.”
Aila flicked her fingers dismissively. “That I ken ye’ll fix. I love the notion that ye’ll be having the chance to fix a few other things as well.”
“Nope, not going to happen.”
“Why not? Ye said before ye’d be tempted by a man if they knew how to do it well,” she reminded. “Does this Tris strike ye as an utter dunderhead?”
In many ways, yes, but not in the way her friend meant. There was little doubt in Brontë’s mind, regardless of the evidence to back up the belief, that Tris would excel in lovemaking. “No, but I’m telling you, it doesn’t matter.”
“Why not?” Arms akimbo, Aila stared her down. Expression set and resolute. She’d never let it go without an explanation so Brontë gave her the truth.
“He didn’t want me. That’s why.”
Chapter 13
Brontë jogged along the streets near Granny’s house with the dulcet tones of Panic! At The Disco blaring through her headphones, loud enough it should have driven away all conscious thought. The heavy bass and wicked electric guitar riffs couldn’t manage to drown out the rhythmic thought that had been pounding in her head since she’d left 1914 and returned home.
He’s just not that into you. There was a powerful lesson to be learned in the phrase.
She should have seen it coming. The way he kept a polite distance between them when they walked, despite the way she canted toward him. The way he looked at her as though she were an alien when she rejected the fur. She’d thought he felt some attraction toward her. Either she’d misread him, or he simply wasn’t going to act on it.
Denying herself that one kiss though had been impossible. One kiss to carry home with her, to remember. God, her head buzzed, and her knees twanged like rubber bands after that simple kiss, she’d hardly been able to walk away and climb those stairs.
For the first time, she understood the difference between lust and undeniable desire. One you could fight and dismiss.
The other…
The impact of that simple kiss lingered on her lips even now, a week later. She could’ve sworn he experienced it, too. His heart had thudded hard against his chest, his breath as ragged as hers as she stepped away. He’d wanted her.
But he watched her leave.
That was it. The end.
Right where rash impulses tended to lead her. To regret and disappointment.
And now she was supposed to go through it all again?
Be constantly in the company of a man who’d shut her down?
It would be too much to bear. Not that she had a choice in the matter. She couldn’t let Henry die. Again.
Slowing the last block as a cool down, Brontë arrived at her front door panting and sweaty. The solid oak portal reminiscent of the one she’d stood at that night, where all the failure she’d felt as a woman when Jake had left her had been reborn. With a sigh of disgust, she went inside and into the kitchen for some water.
“How was your run, dear?” Violet asked from the kitchen table while Brontë chugged a liter of water at the sink. She nodded while she drank and gave a thumbs up that made her grandmother smile. “A few more weeks and I’ll be able to join you again.”
She lowered the bottle and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Doctor said to take it slow.”
Violet wrinkled her nose and sipped her tea. “Doctors are a nuisance.”
“Remember that next time you feel like falling down the stairs and breaking both legs,” Brontë retorted.
“One ankle, one foot,” her granny corrected, swiveling in her seat to stick her legs out pointedly. “Lest ye forget.”
“Thanks for the reminder.”
Both legs were now in walking casts. Since her grandmother could do for herself as long as they kept her bedroom on the ground floor, they’d both been glad to see their day nurse retired for the time being. The atmosphere of oppression gone, their home was once again a happy one.
Too bad her inner cheer couldn’t be reinstated as easily.
“You got a message while you were out.” Violet gestured to Brontë’s open laptop. “I heard the ping.”
“Who was it from?” If Aila had been trying to reach her, she would have texted and Brontë had her phone with her.
“What makes you think I looked?”
“You always look,” she said. “You’re a compulsive busybody.”
“We share a computer.” Her grandmother bit back a grin. “And it’s called looking out for my favorite granddaughter.”
Rolling her eyes, Brontë bent to kiss her granny’s cheek before sitting at the table across from the older woman and looked at her Facebook messenger.
Del. She frowned in confusion before it hit her. Oh, that Del.
Ugh.
“Are you going to go?” Violet asked, eyes glued innocently to the magazine in front of her.
“Hell, no. I’m not getting my ear talked off twice in a lifetime.”
Silence hung heavy for a few moments before her grandmother spoke again. “You know what your problem is, dear? You’re a runner.”
Brontë lifted a leg in the air and waved a hand. “Hence the running shoes.”
“I’m serious,” Violet retorted. “You think running from the past can make it all better.”
“I would argue it was worth running from.”
Granny flipped her magazine closed and set her elbows on the tabletop to prop her chin in her hands. She studied Brontë for a long while, a hint of sadness in her eyes. “Everyone has something in their past worth running from, dear. It’s fighting the urge and facing the past that brings the best changes to the future.”
Granny must have been talking to Aila.
“I’m not running from the past.” Violet quirked her lips and Brontë added defensively, “Not any more. In fact, I would argue that I’m actively seeking a better future.”
Not for herself precisely but for her great-great-grandparents. Fighting for true love, the noblest of pursuits. Not that she could tell Granny about it. She wanted to and planned to as soon as she could think of a way to bring it up without giving the dear old girl a heart attack.
“What would it hurt to go out with this Del person again?”
�
�My ears,” she shot back tightly and pushed away from the table. Aiming for an escape that wouldn’t actually be one and hurt Granny’s feelings, she opened the fridge in search of calorie-ridden comfort.
“You’ve no plans for your day off that I know of,” Violet persisted. “I can take the bus to physical therapy. No excuse not to go.”
Brontë surfaced with a pint of Luca’s Toffee Fudgy Wudgy ice cream and went in search of a spoon. “Except that I don’t want to.”
“You’d rather sit home than go out with him?”
“Yes,” she muttered around a mouthful of chocolate bliss.
“Ice cream makes for a cold bedmate.”
“And a sticky one, too,” Brontë added for the sake of argument. “You need to let this one go, Granny. I’m not going out with Del again, no matter how much you pester me.”
“Come now. Remember, if at first you don’t succeed…”
She had tried. Again and again. And she’d been disappointed. Again and again.
Happy endings were a myth. Love didn’t last forever. Hell, she couldn’t get one night to go right.
“I’ve told you before, Granny. I don’t need a man to make me happy.”
“There is something the feminists of today could learn from those of my day, or my grandmother’s,” Violet told her. “It doesn’t make you less of a woman to find joy and comfort in male companionship. Point of fact, back in the sixties when my sisters and I took part in the UK Women’s Movement, most of the women were happily married to spouses who supported them and shared their triumphs with them. That is what I want for you, dear. An equal partner to share in your ups and downs. There is no victory as a woman if all you gain from your effort is a cold bed and a brittle heart.”
Brontë rolled her eyes. Violet and Aila really must have been comparing notes. Either that or they both saw more of her than she knew.
Her grandmother released a long-dissatisfied sigh of her own. “I wish you’d take a chance and put yourself out there more often, dear.”
A Scot to Remember (Something About a Highlander Book 1) Page 12
