First Time with a Highlander

by Gwyn Cready

  Colm shook his head sadly. “No, no. A man’s palm dinna count. ’Tis quite different with a lass—”

  “No, I’ve done it with lasses! Lots of them!”

  The pock-cheeked man took a step back. “Maybe the lass didn’t care for such debauchery.”

  “A lot of them don’t,” Colm said. “Did ye mebbe give her the pox?”

  “No. Nor ague, nor the grippe, nor an apoplexy, nor any of the crazy-ass stuff you people have here—though I wouldn’t bet against a bad case of boot-to-the-backside when I catch her. And by the way, is your name Archie?”

  “Alan,” the pock-cheeked cleric said, “and she passed me at the main door. Heading north, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Of course, she did. All right, I’m done here.”

  “You should have held out for the vows, laddie,” Colm called as Gerard raced up the stairs. “Now ye have no leverage.”

  Fourteen

  Gerard stormed past the rows of tents, anger rising. Jerked from the past, showered with lies, mounted, and abandoned!

  He ran into Father Kincaid in front of a shop filled with men’s clothing and caps.

  “There you are,” the cleric said. “I was ducking into the tavern across the street for a wee dram a bit ago when I looked up and noticed your lady friend in the spire. May I assume you found the place, ahem, to your liking?”

  Gerard raised his hand for a high five. “Oh, yes, I did.”

  Hesitantly, Father Kincaid lifted his hand too.

  Gerard struck it hard. “Nailed it, baby! Like Martin Luther and his theses.” Gerard wheeled around and ran directly into a wall of Duncan.

  “What did you say?” His ears appeared to be emitting smoke.

  Gerard held up a finger. “There’s something you’re going to want to hear, and you’re going to want to hear it—”

  The rest of the words and a sizable chunk of the next five minutes were lost in the miasma of pain that followed his balls being kneed into the upper quadrant of his abdomen.

  When the cobbles under his palms swam into focus, he said, “I take it you’re not a Martin Luther fan.”

  Duncan pulled Gerard to his feet. Father Kincaid had taken his leave.

  “Look, I don’t dislike you,” Duncan said. “In fact, in another time and place, I might even—” He frowned. “Is that my plaid?”

  “Um.” Gerard instinctively covered his face. “Maybe.”

  “Here’s the thing, mate. I’ve been where you’re standing. Trust me on this. Between Undine and her magical potions, swords, oaths, quests, some really potent whiskey, and a bunch of bloody-minded clansmen who’d just as soon kill ye as shake your hand, you don’t stand a chance. The deck is stacked against ye, and Serafina will have ye if she wants. So, I’m probably not going to hit you again.”

  Gerard dropped his fists an inch or two. “Really?”

  “But keep a gentlemanly tongue in your heid, aye? Where is she?”

  “Dunno. She ditched me. Told me she was coming back to get me. Never came. I think she’s headed north.”

  Duncan groaned and started scanning the heads of the shoppers.

  “When you said you’ve been where I’m standing,” Gerard said hesitantly, “were you suggesting that you… I mean…”

  “Come from another time?”

  “Yes.”

  Duncan gave him a wry smile. “Not exactly how you thought you’d be spending your Saturday, is it?”

  Gerard was stunned. “Then you… You too…”

  “Oh, aye.”

  Gerard slapped his forehead. “Duct tape! That’s how you knew about me!”

  “God, I miss it. Here, if hammer and nails dinna fix it, you’re done.”

  Gerard tried to sort out a new worldview in which he was no longer the only person in the wrong time. “Did Serafina summon you too?”

  “Nae. Abby. She needed a strong arm.”

  He sized up Duncan’s triceps, which looked about like his. “Are you a black belt or something?”

  “Bond trader.”

  “Oh.”

  “Exactly. I’m a steward here.”

  “Wow.” Duncan pondered this as they walked. “Are you bored?”

  Duncan laughed. “Clearly you haven’t met Abby.”

  “But you must miss our world.”

  “Abby,” he said, shaking his head. “You need to meet her.”

  The crowds had thinned a bit, and he and Duncan passed easily into the next lane of shops.

  “Are there a lot of us?” Gerard asked.

  “Like a race of men they’ve kidnapped to serve their dastardly desires?”

  Gerard’s jaw fell. “Oh my God.”

  “Nae. You might think that though, after you’ve fallen in love with one.”

  “I doubt that’s going to be happening. So it’s just us?”

  Duncan clapped him on the shoulder. “So far, mate. But the day’s young.”

  They walked by a bake shop, or what passed for one in 1706. The table held loaves of mud-colored bread, knots of something that looked like fruitcake, which Gerard knew in theory was supposed to be wonderful but in practice tasted like a box of decade-old Jujubes, cardboard and all, and a square cake onto which the baker was pouring icing.

  Duncan walked a few steps and slowed. “You have no feelings for Serafina?”

  Gerard instinctively lifted his fists again till he saw Duncan was still wearing his more domesticated countenance.

  “She’s pretty focused on what she wants. I don’t think that includes me. Which is fine. I mean, nothing against Serafina, but she’ll have her shipping thing going on and I’d just as soon return to New York. I’ve got a job I love, and an apartment and some really good leftover pad see ew still in the fridge.”

  “Pad see ew?” Duncan groaned hungrily. “Who do you work for?”

  “Piper Cornish.”

  “Nice. My friend used to work at an agency. He said it’s like Omaha Beach with status meetings.”

  “No. Seriously?” Gerard was shocked. “It’s like the greatest job ever. I can change lives. I can fix the world. I can take anything and make it better—make people want it like they never wanted it before.”

  “Anything?”

  “Anything.”

  “C’mon.”

  Gerard marched back to the baker. “Excuse me, sir. I have an idea I think you’re going to want to hear.”

  The man didn’t look up. “I doubt that.”

  “How much is that cake?”

  “A shilling.”

  “Can you make the icing pink?”

  The man looked in his bowl, then up at Gerard. “If you pay me. I can do most anything if you pay.”

  “How?” The possibilities were churning in Gerard’s head. He needed some inspiration.

  “With raspberries.” He pointed to a basket of them behind him.

  “Oh, excellent!”

  “So glad you approve.” The baker returned to the icing, clearly unmoved by Gerard’s enthusiasm.

  “And can you cut it into cubes, maybe”—Gerard held up his finger and his thumb, trying to remember the little cakes—“an inch and a half by an inch and a half?”

  The baker put the bowl on the table. “No, why would I do that?”

  “How much does that cake sell for?”

  “A shilling.”

  “How about if I told you that you could sell each little cake for—” Gerard leaned in confidentially to Duncan, who was observing this interaction with fascination. “How many pennies in a shilling?”

  “Pence. And twelve.”

  “Six pence,” he said to the baker.

  The man’s eyes bulged. “Are ye out of your heid? For a bite of cake and pink icing?”

  “Try it.”

  �
��Listen, laddie, if you want me to try it, you buy the cake. One shilling.”

  “I have a better idea. You give me the cake, and you and I will split the proceeds. If I can’t get you your shilling back, I’ll wash every pan here.”

  “For the next three days.”

  Three days. He’d miss the day he’d be made partner. He looked at Duncan, who held up his hands.

  “Don’t look at me. I think the baker’s right.”

  But he wasn’t, and Gerard’s certainty went bone deep. He stuck out his hand. “Agreed.”

  Five minutes later, the baker was pouring pink icing over a dozen little cakes.

  “Now I want you to put a raspberry on each cake, right on top, right in the center.”

  The baker had given up questioning Gerard’s requests. Gerard didn’t know if it was learned helplessness or the shilling sitting in his pocket, though he suspected the latter.

  Gerard admired the baker’s work. “And now…”

  “Diamonds for sparkle? A coat for the cold? Upside down teacups for cake stands?”

  “No, but I like the way you think. Nuts. What do you have?”

  “A couple wee chestnuts and a basket of hazelnuts.”

  “Hazelnuts,” Gerard said. “Sliced thin and chopped in two.”

  The baker returned with the prepared nuts. “And now?”

  “I need you to put them around the raspberries like little leaves. Maybe five or six each.”

  The baker looked at him.

  “What?” Gerard said.

  “If you want leaves, you’ll have to do it yourself.”

  Gerard was not afraid of a little pastry work. He started poking the nut slices under the raspberry.

  “Oooh!” a voice squealed. “What is that?”

  Gerard turned. A well-dressed young woman stood with an older man.

  “These are…” God, what had Cinderella called them? “Pinafores. No, petit fours.”

  “They’re little posies!” She clapped her hands. “May I have one, Papa?”

  “Two for a shilling,” Gerard said, quickly decorating the second and a third.

  “We should get a couple for your mother as well,” the gentleman said, digging into his purse.

  Astonished, the baker wrapped the cakes.

  “Blimey,” Duncan said when they’d walked away.

  “This is where you’re going to be sorry you didn’t underwrite me,” Gerard said, tossing the shilling to the baker.

  By the time the next woman walked up, the remaining eight petit fours, each with hazelnuts and raspberry, stood on a platter atop a ceramic stand borrowed from the jeweler next door.

  The woman gasped. “Och, look at the wee sweets!”

  “A shilling each.” Gerard winked at the baker.

  “Oh, I shouldn’t.”

  “It’s like eating joy.”

  She dug a coin out of an embroidered pouch and ate the treat while she stood there.

  Ten minutes later, Gerard was seven shillings richer than he was when he’d walked up. There was one petit four left, and he gave it to a little girl in a threadbare dress who’d looked on, openmouthed, as he’d conducted the last two transactions.

  “The key,” Gerard said to Duncan, “is to remember the attraction of even the tiniest moments of true happiness.”

  “And the magic of a strong margin.”

  “There you go, friend,” Gerard said to the baker. “Boxes with bows, baby zoo animals, anything with flowers.” Gerard combed through the list of the things that pleased women that could also adorn pastry. “Jewelry things—maybe a ring. Whatever princesses wear or do—I have no idea. A wedding cake. Lace. Figure out what makes your wife squeal—within reason of course—and execute it in pink.”

  They left the baker staring into his bowl, murmuring, “I canna believe it.”

  “Well done,” Duncan said.

  “Twelve shillings,” Gerard said, jingling the coins in his shirt pocket. “I’m on my way.”

  “I have nae doubt you’ll do well here.”

  “If I were staying. I’m not.” A pair of earrings on the table of the jeweler who’d lent him the stand caught his eye and he stopped. “Hey, how much would a nice pair of earrings be here?” he said to Duncan. “Emerald, I should think, for that hair.”

  “And you still think you’re going?”

  “I know I’m going,” Gerard said.

  “Well, we’d better find Serafina first,” Duncan said, pulling him on. “Undine isn’t going to do anything about you without her agreement.”

  Gerard stopped. “Are you effing kidding me?”

  “Welcome to life in Clan Kerr, my friend.” Duncan began weaving his way through the crowd, with Gerard on his heels.

  “Speaking of Undine,” Gerard said, “I have a receipt for her from the tailor here and the stole is in the carriage.”

  “Oh, good.”

  “What is she doing anyway? Is she a spy?”

  Duncan pulled him instantly into a deserted stall. “You canna be saying things like that here. She’s working to keep Scotland from being swallowed whole by England in the treaty they’re trying to pass.”

  Gerard looked both ways then back at Duncan. “You and I both know she fails.”

  Duncan fell silent. “No one knows whether it’s possible to change what happens. Not you, not I, not Undine. Abby and I are helping the cause. I can’t not help. Too many lives are at risk.”

  “But aren’t you afraid if the treaty is stopped that you’ll suddenly be a citizen of the United States of Canada, or Belgians will rule the world, or your mother will marry Hitler or something—you know, that step-on-a-butterfly sort of thing?”

  “I can only worry about what’s happening now, and now a union would be a verra bad thing for Scotland, which means it would be a verra bad thing for the woman I love. There’s an English major, Lord Bridgewater, who leads England’s northern armies—a nasty bastard if there ever was one. If Scotland falls to England, he won’t rest until he destroys the clans.”

  “Jesus.”

  “And there’s a party Monday night—”

  “At Lord Hiscock’s.”

  Duncan lifted a brow, impressed. “How did you know?”

  “The tailor.”

  “Aye, well, Abby will be going—and I will too. As her advisor,” he said with a hint of unhappiness.

  Poor guy. Gerard had never seen a man as in love with a woman as Duncan seemed to be with Abby Kerr.

  “All the big players will be there,” Duncan added, “and I have a sense the party is where the final deal on the treaty will be made.”

  “So, if the party’s Monday, why the fancy duds today?”

  Duncan looked down, embarrassed, at the gleaming breeches, polished boots, frilled shirt, and knee-length frock coat. “Och, we’re calling on the bishop tonight. He’s one of the biggest buyers of Kerr whiskey. But I’ll be wearing this to the party as well. Abby says wearing a plaid would be a sign of disrespect given Lord Hiscock’s staunch pro-treaty views. I say, fouck ’im, but you know how women are.”

  “I hear ya, friend. I have to say, while getting a plaid on is a challenge on the level of solving a Rubik’s Cube, wearing one is actually pretty damned comfortable.” He gave Duncan a jocular poke of the elbow. “And you gotta admit, pants-less ain’t a bad place to be when you’re ready to”—the words died under Duncan’s gaze—“take a piss. Say, how long have you been here, anyway? You seem to know a lot.”

  “A few weeks, no more. Like you, I was determined to go back too…until I wasn’t.”

  “Abby?”

  “Aye. Then I found myself sent back when I wasn’t ready. Fortunately, my grand-da had traveled back here before me and knew how to help me get back.”

  “Really?”

  “A
pparently, he’d fallen in love with a golden-haired lass from Dingwall while he was here many years ago.”

  “Dingwall?”

  “Aye. It’s up north. Apparently, the lass had been sold off in marriage to a merchant. She and my grand-da met at an inn. She was supposed to take a carriage to Edinburgh to meet her husband-to-be, but it didn’t arrive. They took a tinker’s wagon instead and the banging of the pots kept them from sleeping. They fell in love at once, and, well, pretty soon the pots weren’t the only things banging. But then he was whisked back to the present day as quickly and with just about as much warning as he’d been whisked away.” Duncan gave Gerard a look of embarrassed pride. “Sixty, the man was.”

  “Whoa! I take it your grandmother never found out.”

  “Long dead—which was lucky for him, as she would have kicked his arse to Inverness and back.” A pleased, faraway expression came over Duncan’s face. “Actually, Abby rather reminds me of her.”

  They had reached the street and found the carriage waiting but no sign of Serafina. “Do you think she went back to the inn on foot?” Gerard asked. “I’m a little concerned because the men at the inn followed us to St. Giles. We managed to ditch them, but they could have come back.”

  “Let’s hope she’s there. She’s been mulling over some sort of plan, and I know it involves the arrival of a red barque, but—”

  “Oh, shit. I know where she is.”

  * * *

  When the carriage started down the Royal Mile, Serafina stepped from behind the tent of a shop, her purchases under her arms.

  Nailed it, did he? She’d never heard the phrase before, though it hardly needed translating. Idiots boasting of their exploits with women were identifiable in any language they spoke. She only wished it had been her knee in his stones, not Duncan’s.

  Given Gerard’s unenthusiastic support for her plan, she’d decided in the steeple to disentangle him from it. Now she was doubly glad she had. She didn’t need a man. Not anymore. She tucked her purchases under her arm.

  “Did you buy your sweetheart a new sark?” a jeweler in the next tent asked, ducking his head toward the shop she’d just exited. “If so, he’ll need a new brooch for his plaid to go with it.” He held out a beautiful hand-worked circlet of silver bisected by a pin as sharp as a blade. “You could surprise him.”