A Time & Place for Every Laird

by Angeline Fortin

  “Might I nae beat my chest, if only a wee bit?” Hugh jested. “I am a duke, after all.”

  Sorcha laughed at that, the last remnants of her tension slipping away and her shoulders dropping as they drove into the city. “That might fly overseas, but while you’re here you’ll get along fine as long as you’re nice to people. It’s usually so unexpected that people don’t know how to react.”

  Hugh laughed as well, but couldn’t help but add playfully, “That might be difficult. As a rule, I find the general populous tae be intolerable.”

  “So what you’re basically saying is that you don’t play well with others,” she said with a twist of her lips.

  “Just so,” he responded agreeably.

  “Then I’m doubly honored that you tolerate me so well,” she said before falling into thoughtful silence. A few moments later, she spoke again, this time volunteering answers to the questions he hadn’t even asked, pointing out the stadiums side by side where the Seahawks and Mariners played and providing a brief rundown of football and baseball. Hugh took it all in, not realizing that his own head was almost constantly shaking in disbelief or consternation.

  Soon Sorcha took a sharp left and parked in front of a shabby red brick building with large windows dominating the façade. She turned off the ignition and turned to him with a wicked grin that told Hugh he should dread what was coming next. “I know you haven’t had a chance to meet many people here, yet, and in all likelihood, this is not the one I would have chosen to start with, either. My brother is … well, he’s unlike anyone you’ve ever met, and if there ever was a time to play nice with someone, if you want his help, this is it.”

  That she said such a thing, knowing the extent of his travels, worried Hugh. “Sounds ominous. Should I worry?”

  Sorcha’s lips quirked. “I would.”

  Laptop tucked under her arm, Claire led Hugh through a pair of heavy wooden doors at the front of the converted warehouse in SoDo, the aptly named area south of downtown Seattle where her younger brother lived. In an up and coming bohemian area where warehouses like these were being converted into art studios and lofts, Danny had managed to find a home in the grungiest building around. If there was anyone else living in the building, Claire had never seen them.

  The long hallways they navigated were flanked in walls of unrelieved, prison grey punctuated periodically by equally nondescript doors. For such an artsy neighborhood, there wasn’t a spec of culture or decoration in sight. Reaching the end, she jabbed the up button for the elevator and turned to find Hugh eyeing the glowing circle with more than a little suspicion.

  Damn but that look was becoming absolutely adorable.

  Funny, since she’d experienced more conflict with Hugh in three days than she had with Matt in their six years together.

  “You’re not going to ask, are you?” she asked with a broad grin.

  Hugh shook his head. “I doubt I would be pleased wi’ the answer.”

  The doors chimed and parted, leaving Hugh to struggle to contain his astonishment. Claire stepped in and turned to face him. “You’re probably right. Come on. Let’s go.”

  “Where?” he asked, gesturing to the compact container as if the lack of other doors spoke volumes.

  “Up. You’ll love it,” she insisted, catching his hand and tugging him forward. Hugh grit his teeth and stepped in just before the doors slid closed behind him. Claire pushed the button for her brother’s floor and the elevator ground into motion.

  Hugh closed his eyes, a prayer on his lips and Claire couldn’t swallow the giggle that escaped her, drawing Hugh’s apprehensive stare. “Och, I see it now,” he grouched. “For every wrong I hae done ye, there will be a thousand opportunities for retribution found for ye in moments such as these. Do ye enjoy this? My discomfort? Or do all women in this time relish a man displaying such appalling uncertainty?”

  Claire softened at the hurt underlying his words. “Of course not … No, I take that back. I guess I do enjoy it, but only for the joy it brings to introduce you to new things. I like your amazement, your awe for things I consider commonplace. It’s like witnessing the face of discovery. And I personally believe that you are extremely brave for taking such leaps into the abyss, so to speak. I cannot think of anyone I know who would face the unknown with such aplomb. Including myself.”

  While the ancient elevator continued its laborious ascension, Claire squeezed Hugh’s bicep before rubbing her hand up and down. The action was meant to comfort and reassure but the feel of that muscle tensing beneath her hand reminded Claire of the tension that had ensnared them on the ferry. She could have sworn for a split second that Hugh had been going to kiss her, and in that moment she had wanted him to. Her earlier resolutions had even prodded at her to lean in and take it for herself, but indecision had won out and the moment had passed with the ferry’s disembarkment.

  Or had she only delayed what was starting to feel like the inevitable? Right or wrong, guilt or not, she did find Hugh incredibly alluring.

  Claire watched Hugh now beneath lowered lashes, sure that he wasn’t contemplating the slow grind of their ascension any longer. He was watching her, his brilliant eyes raking along her length and sending her nerves into a quaking frenzy. He wanted her. Surely it hadn’t been so long since she’d seen that look in a man’s eye that she couldn’t recognize it now.

  Hugh looked down at her hand and then into her eyes, his blue gaze blazing with shared awareness. “Brave, am I?” he asked huskily, bending his head closer to hers. “Even after I confessed my fear of said abyss?”

  “Incredibly,” Claire whispered breathlessly, her eyes shifting to his lips. Even his lips were beautiful. Well-sculpted lips that had been firm against hers yet conversely soft. What would it hurt? One more kiss like the one on the beach, Claire thought. One more kiss that, this time, she could let herself enjoy.

  She took a hesitant step closer and he stiffened beneath her touch as her hand slipped from his arm to his chest. It was as solid with muscle as Claire had imagined it would be. She could feel the heat of his skin through the lightweight knit of his sweater, feel the heavy thud of his heart beating against her palm. Inhaling deeply, Claire breathed in the warmth of him, the musk of the outdoors and the sea. “Hugh,” she whispered helplessly, willing him to do what she couldn’t find the courage to do for herself.

  Hugh groaned, or was it the heavy doors of the elevator as they slid apart? Claire wasn’t sure, but Hugh looked incredibly relieved as he stepped back from Claire hastily and turned on his heel to escape the elevator. Or escape her?

  “Thank God,” she thought she heard him mutter as he walked away.

  For what? That the ride was over?

  Chapter 20

  Stopping at an unremarkable metal door, Claire raised her hand to knock slowly three times and then twice again more rapidly. The pain in her knuckles was nothing compared to the sting of disappointment she had experienced when the elevator doors had opened before that profoundly desired kiss could be obtained. Why hadn’t he kissed her? She couldn’t have been more plain, could she? Hadn’t he wanted to kiss her again?

  She had thought he did, but …

  The door cracked open and a face appeared. Blue eyes similar to Claire’s widened. “Sis, nice to see you. Who’s he?” he added suspiciously, looking Hugh up and down. Claire couldn’t blame her brother for his caution. With his height and size and those meaty arms crossed over his chest, Hugh demanded wariness.

  “A friend,” she answered. “Can we come in? I need a favor.”

  “Twice in one week? Unprecedented,” the young man drawled and opened the door wider to let them in. “Come in.”

  Claire motioned to Hugh and they followed Danny inside his renovated loft. Though Hugh probably outweighed her younger brother by close to a hundred pounds, he was eyeing Danny with equal caution, as if taking her warning to heart. Studying her brother as Hugh might, Claire tried to see him from an eighteenth-century point of view. There was
nothing in her brother’s appearance to threaten or to indicate the brilliance lurking beneath that unkempt exterior. “Danny, this is my friend, Hugh Urquhart. Hugh this is my younger brother, Danny O’Bierne.”

  The two men shook hands briefly. “My pleasure,” Hugh said with what Claire understood now was ingrained ducal courtesy, but her brother just grinned lazily.

  “A pleasure indeed,” he drawled out before turning to Claire. “So what can I help you with, my favorite sister?”

  “Only sister,” she countered by rote.

  “That’s why you’re my favorite.” Danny turned and led them deeper into the wide-open space of his loft. It was a standard renovation. The kitchen, dining, and living area open with two bedrooms and a bath walled away, but unlike many others, her brother had packed his small dining area with a couch and huge television, with the console holding every conceivable gaming system and game, while the “living area” presently housed no less than a dozen tall racks filled with internet servers, fans blowing from every side to keep them cooled. Nearly a dozen workstations were set up on tables along the perimeter of the room, most of them manned by young men who turned to look at Claire as if she were some rare, exotic specimen.

  The examination was par for the course when she came to visit her brother. She was a woman in a room full of computer geeks. Danny himself had equated the phenomenon to them seeing a copy of Marvel Comics No. 1 at Comic-Con. It was rare and beautiful, but they didn’t dare touch it or believe it was real. Claire waved at them merrily, seeing new young faces in with those she recognized. To a one, they blushed and turned away without a word.

  “Did you bring your laptop for me?” Danny asked, dropping into his office chair.

  She handed her laptop to him. It had been stupid of her to use it to search for Hugh’s history. If Jameson got ahold of it, she might as well have written a confession of her collusion.

  “Don’t bother with that just yet, Danny,” she said, glancing up at Hugh, who was looking around the room as she might look at Mars. “There is something else I’d like you to do.”

  Danny rocked back in his chair, scooping up a slice of pizza from an open box next to his keyboard as he did so. “Ah, yes, favor number two. I am intrigued.”

  Knowing there was little that could actually shock this particular brother, Claire laid her request out in no uncertain terms. “I’d like you to hack into Mark-Davis and find out what you can about a project being run by Dr. Roy Fielding.”

  “Is that all?” Danny wrinkled his nose and sniffed with some disdain as he took a bite of the pizza. “I thought it might be something more interesting.”

  “Oh, it should be interesting,” Claire promised and scrunched her nose as well. “Don’t you ever eat anything besides pizza?”

  “Why bother when the four basic food groups are so brilliantly combined in one handheld delight?” he responded ridiculously before spinning his chair and dropping the pizza back into the box. “Do you want to wait?”

  Claire blinked. “Can you do it that fast?”

  “More than likely.” Danny dropped into an office chair and rolled to a table with three large monitors arranged around the keyboard. Pushing another empty pizza box aside, he began to type faster than Claire thought him capable of moving. “These high-tech guys think they’re all that, but …” he shrugged as if the rest of the sentence were an obvious one and applied himself to the keyboard. For a few moments only the hum of the numerous servers and fans and the tapping of keys broke the silence of the room.

  Danny grumbled incoherently and Claire felt her hopes plummet. “Are you not going to be able to get in?”

  “Your company is so untrusting,” he complained. “Even the government doesn’t try this hard to hide things.” He typed again, the screens bringing up page after page of what looked like gibberish to Claire. “Ahh, there we are. Oh, that’s interesting,” he mumbled more to himself than to her. “Might have to go back and look at that. Fielding, you said? There are five projects he’s head of.”

  “Five?” Claire frowned. “Is there one that shows any connection to INSCOM?”

  Danny’s brows rose but he said nothing and went back to work. He snorted a few times, humphed once or twice, and rifled through a box with several labeled USBs before picking one and inserting it into the portal. “Really? Man, they don’t want you in there, do they? These military types …”

  Still, less than twenty minutes after they walked in the door, Danny pushed away from the desk, rolling back several feet as he gestured toward the monitor with a broad sweep of his arm. “Ta-da.”

  “Danny, you are a genius!” Claire announced, bending to kiss his cheek.

  “Don’t I know it? Well, pull up a chair and let’s take a look. With all that encryption, it must be something good.”

  Claire turned to Hugh with a winning smile. “You ready?”

  Hugh nodded in the face of her enthusiasm, though he wasn’t at all certain on the matter. Sorcha had been right. What good would it do to know how he had gotten here? The knowledge would not give him power. It would not give him understanding. It would give him nothing if the key to his return were not there as well. Given Claire’s previous comments on the matter, it sounded to Hugh as if even Dr. Fielding had no control in the matter.

  It was not for him, the fantasy of home.

  Hugh watched Sorcha, her head close to her brother’s as they explored together. “There,” he heard Sorcha say as she pointed at the screen. “Try that.” Danny complied and another screen appeared.

  Danny O’Bierne was an interesting specimen of a man, Hugh thought, studying the young man in turn. Sorcha had called him her younger brother but Hugh could scarcely credit it given the man’s appearance. He was tall, but long and lean with scraggly ginger hair and sparse beard. He was incredibly pale as well, more so than Hugh was after his recent incarceration. Danny had the look of a man who hadn’t seen the sun in many a year, and Hugh had to wonder if he had been imprisoned until recently. In any case, he looked years older than Sorcha.

  “Let me try this one, my sister,” Danny said in slow, drawn out words. His manner of speaking puzzled Hugh as well. He’d never met a man who had seemed so vague yet held stark intelligence in his eyes. He was more unusual than Sorcha had hinted.

  Leaving Sorcha and her brother to their reading, Hugh turned his back on the alien room and went to the windows, noting the heights the moving compartment had allowed them to reach. How long would it take before nothing surprised him anymore? How long before he didn’t take absurd satisfaction in knowing a simple colloquialism when it fell from another’s lips?

  How long would it be before the esteem in Sorcha’s eyes faded into disgust?

  It was a game to her now, this thing she referred to as the joy of watching discovery, but surely the novelty would erode over time and her frustration with his inadequate knowledge would grow. He would become an annoyance to her while to him she was an ever-expanding source of fascination. Sorcha was incredibly complex, and Hugh longed to explore each and every facet of her. Perhaps all women of this time were equally complex, but Hugh doubted there was another who possessed such an intriguing combination of intelligence, pointed wit, vulnerability, and veiled passion.

  And such beauty. She had glorious hair, fiery and full as it fell around her shoulders. Hugh wasn’t accustomed to a woman wearing her hair so outside the bedchamber, though he knew she didn’t wear it so all the time. The previous day it had been twisted untidily at the back of her head and secured with a large clawed comb. Nor did she dress provocatively as a rule, though she did favor the surprisingly comfortable if snug jeans. The tight blouse of the first day of their acquaintance and the snug cardigan were juxtaposed by the much larger cardigan she wore over a t-shirt today. This sweater hung to her hips but couldn’t entirely disguise the luscious curve of her bottom.

  Everything about her begged to be desired.

  Hugh thought of that moment on their upward journey when
she had looked up at him with such beguiling wonder, when they had been caught together in Eros’s web of mutual desire. Of course, it was cruel of Sorcha to entice him so when she was the one who had extracted his vow not to lay his hands on her. How she tempted him to break that vow as he had on the beach! She had tempted him a dozen times since then to take her in his arms and strip away her reservations, revealing a passion sure to match his own.

  Only the opening of those doors had precipitously stopped him from throwing his honor to the wind once more.

  “Tell me, are you INSCOM?”

  Hugh turned to find Sorcha’s brother at his shoulder and thrust his lustful thoughts aside. “Nae.”

  “Did you meet Claire at work, then?”

  “After a fashion.” Hugh felt bedeviled enough to add, “Ye could say I’m a part of Fielding’s project.”

  “Some righteous stuff there, man,” he nodded with some appreciation, taking a bite of the odd food—“pizza,” Sorcha had called it—that he carried with him. “I can’t wait to read through it when Claire’s done with it. But she didn’t say why you needed it.”

  It was a prompt for information Hugh chose to ignore, but Danny wasn’t finished.

  “Normally, I wouldn’t care, but it worries me that Claire would stick her neck out for just any random guy.” Another pointed statement.

  “As she said, we are friends,” Hugh responded.

  Danny raised a doubtful brow at that. “My sister hasn’t talked to a man in years, much less brought one home to meet the family. The only pictures she posts on Facebook are ones of our nephew. The only thing she Pins are recipes and cleaning gimmicks and she’s never even clicked on a dating site. Not once. No secret life, no porn. Nothing. She’s got the tamest cyber-life of anyone I’ve ever known.”