“Do you know who you are?” he prompted kindly when she remained silent.
Grateful for the distraction, Mikah focused on the problem at hand and analyzed his question much as she had everything in the few hours since the accident. Did she know who she was? That question had been perplexing her, causing this war within her fog-ridden brain until it had almost shut her down to shield her from the world around her.
She knew the answer.
The problem was, there were two answers.
She was Mikah Bauer, but the Mikah within her seemed to be constantly struggling against the someone else that she was as well. It made no sense at all and Mikah couldn’t seem to focus in either direction. Her brow wrinkled as she tried to push through the mist engulfing her mind and choose a direction, and her labors didn’t go unnoticed by the man at her side.
The marquis squeezed her hand gently. “I don’t mean to distress you, my lady. Rest now. We can talk later.”
He moved to withdraw and rise but Mikah clutched his hand. “No! I would like you to stay, if you don’t mind. Will you help me?”
Lord Ayr sat back and flashed a half-smile that would have set her knees trembling if she had been standing. Her prone position was good for something, it seemed.
“Of course,” he replied.
“Tell me who I am.”
“It’s possible you have amnesia,” he nodded as if in understanding. “You did take a blow to the head.”
“No, I don’t … I don’t think so anyway,” she argued almost incoherently. That wasn’t it at all. She knew … perhaps too much. “Tell me?”
“You are Lady Hero Conagham, Marchioness of Ayr.”
“Hero?” her brow wrinkled, but then Mikah knew the answer just like that. “My mother loved Shakespeare.”
Mikah couldn’t understand why she was saying this. She was Mikah. Why would she agree that she wasn’t and still feel the answer to be right? Why would she know that tidbit either? Her mother hated Shakespeare … and yet didn’t. She shook her head once more against the confusion.
“I had thought you might have been named from Christopher Marlowe’s Hero and Leander,” Lord Ayr said with a smile.
“No, Mother thought this more amusing.”
“Naming you Hero?”
“No,” she answered and then smiled reluctantly at his jest—she knew he intended the question as a little quip because the crinkles at the corners of his eyes deepened just a bit. It made her feel better, so she tried to focus on him instead of wallowing in the chaos of her mind. “Much Ado About Nothing. Mama thought the play was pure hilarity. She thought that the antics of Beatrice and Benedick were some of the most amusing banter ever written for the stage but she disliked the name Beatrice intensely.”
“So she named you Hero instead.”
No!
“Yes,” she said, and in her foggy mind, she was Hero …
… and Mikah.
And that was the problem. The source of the chaos.
She couldn’t seem to separate the two. It was as if her consciousness had somehow been influenced by this Hero Conagham. She picked away at the back of Mikah’s mind like a termite digging her way in so that she might overrun Mikah’s psyche, battling to be at the forefront of Mikah’s consciousness. The confusion and shock that she had been riddled with ever since the accident had left her in this trance-like state while she tried to comprehend what had happened or at least come to terms with it. Was she hallucinating, perhaps?
Or, considering the appearance of the man before her, dreaming?
Either way, she was still Mikah … but not.
If that made any sense.
Mikah didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry, because she knew it did not. She was afraid that if she did engage in either one, she might not be able to stop. That alone might get her sent to the loony bin, if the insanity in her head did not.
Sensing that her distress was building, Lord Ayr squeezed her hand, “Don’t think about it now, love. Just rest. Tomorrow we’ll go home to Cuilean and there everything will get better.”
Cuilean, Mikah thought dreamily, letting her eyes drift closed. The tension and anxiety drained away. Home.
Love.
Chapter Four
The castle at Dùn Cuilean
On the shores of the Firth of Clyde
Ayrshire, Scotland
June 1856
“Are we almost there?”
“Almost, Papa,” Mikah said without hesitation for the relationship or the question itself. They were nearing their destination. Mikah could feel it in her bones. Every mile the carriage traveled, every sight and smell that assailed her, told her so. She could feel the excitement building inside of her, not just her own excitement but Hero Conagham’s as well.
It was all still very strange.
When Lord Ayr, the doctor, and the maid, Mandy, had finally left her alone the previous afternoon, Mikah had studied herself in the mirror of the dressing table. What she saw had surprised her. She looked much the same as always, but paler and a little softer, as if she had never been out in the sun and had skipped her twice-weekly Zumba class for months. Her clothing and hairstyle were middle Victorian in styling. Further investigation of the hotel room had revealed furnishings that she considered antique, while a peek through the window showed a world out of time with a smoky, industrial skyline and carriages, wagons, and people dressed much as she was.
Gone was the twenty-first century, and Mikah kept waiting for the dream to end. At any minute she expected to wake up and find herself when and where she belonged. Not in the summer of 1856 but safe and sound back in the autumn of 2012. Her arms would most likely be covered in bruises in the days to come from her constant pinching. When the dream persisted, there had been moments of panic that bubbled up in her chest until she’d been ready to scream.
Then she would think of home. Not Mikah’s home in Milwaukee but the castle, Dùn Cuilean, where they would be arriving shortly. She could see it clearly in her mind, feel a longing for the place deep within her soul.
Her home. Hero’s home. It didn’t matter. It was home.
And Ian Conagham would be there was well.
Those two thoughts had subdued the schizophrenic hysteria that had kept building in Mikah the previous day, leaving her able to consider her situation more logically. Clearly, she must have taken quite a blow to the head, because this was the most absurd dream she’d ever experienced. Whether her dreams were realistic or fantastical, Mikah seldom dreamed that she was someone else. Even if she were a warrior princess from outer space, she was still Mikah, warrior princess from outer space.
On the rare occasion, she might dream that she was someone else, but never both at the same time. That was the part she was having the hardest time understanding. In this dream, she was only—how to put this?—mostly Mikah. Hence the schizophrenic paranoia. She didn’t feel delusional or insane … just sort of dually occupied.
Pushing this Hero Conagham back, trying to stuff her into the back of her mind, was a battle Mikah knew she couldn’t win. It was as if she had been placed in a fantasy world where she was but portraying the lead character. If Mikah tried to inject herself into the role, the script became ambiguous.
Trying to fight it only made her head hurt more, so deciding that things would get easier only if she embraced this weird dream, Mikah let this Hero inside of her take the starring role. Once Mikah committed herself to the character, so to speak, everything was more fluid. What was elusive when she struggled now hovered at the forefront of her mind. The lines rolled off her tongue. Hero knew them all. She knew the rules of this time and place. She knew how to dress. She knew what to say and how to act.
Embracing Hero Conagham fully immersed Mikah in her delusional role. Mikah knew where she was, when she was, and who she was supposed to be. All of Hero’s memories were suddenly there, as vivid and real to Mikah as were her own … and they felt like her own. Every emotion, every moment of heartbreak or
joy, was hers.
She remembered Hero’s wedding to Robert Conagham nine years before when Hero had been just nineteen to his forty-three. The marquisate of Ayr had been just an earldom until Robert Conagham’s father had gained a higher ranking for service under William IV. As a duke’s daughter, Hero had been trained well for her new responsibilities, though her marriage to Conagham had been one more of friendship than anything else. Their marriage had been comfortable, companionable.
Mikah also remembered Robert Conagham’s death—her husband’s death—just nine months before. The wait at Cuilean to see if she would bear the next marquis. Her retreat from her home of almost a decade when it was determined that she would not.
Still, Mikah’s own life and memories were just as clear. Her life and family, growing up near Oshkosh, going to car shows in Stevens Point with her dad. Getting hassled by her brothers all the time and going to the prom with Billy Pierson. Graduating from Northwestern and getting her job at the Milwaukee Art Museum.
On the other hand, Mikah vividly recalled the gut-wrenching agony of having several miscarriages and the death of Hero’s infant daughter as if it were her own. The barren life of childlessness. Mikah felt the anguish of that loss acutely, felt Hero’s agonizing pain. As singular friends of Victoria and Albert, Robert and Hero had enjoyed the Queen’s favor. Queen Victoria, who already had eight children, frowned upon the lack of children to the marquisate but had been compassionate to Hero’s struggle. Hero had compensated for her losses by showering attention on the little princes and princesses. She had frequented Windsor and been a guest at Balmoral. Mikah could describe with some accuracy the inside of that castle, just as she knew the history of the one she was fast approaching.
Dùn Cuilean.
Mikah leaned to the side so she could see out the carriage window more fully, hoping to catch the first glimpse of the castle. “See there, Papa? You can catch a glimpse of the castle through those trees.”
Hero’s father leaned forward eagerly. “Do you think they have pudding in Scotland?”
“Of course, Papa,” she said as she patted the hand of the older gentleman by her side. Hero’s father. Her father. “Scotland is not so different from England, and Cuilean’s cook is an excellent one.”
“Perhaps a nice treacle then, as well?” he added hopefully.
Mikah smiled affectionately. Hero’s father was the Duke of Beaumont. He was a tall, thick man of about sixty years with a deep, booming voice that suited him perfectly. His face was deeply lined, creased from years of responsibility and solemnity, but his hair was still dark, with less gray than even Ian possessed, though the duke’s hair stood out riotously from his head whereas Ian’s dark hair was shorter and combed back from him face.
Hero had been raised within the bosom of England’s highest nobility. Mikah remembered the house she had grown up in, her family. Besides her father, she remembered her mother, sisters, and brother.
With every remembrance Mikah embraced, the haziness of the previous day faded and Hero’s memories crystallized. The only conclusion Mikah had reached from the hours of self-analysis she’d had was that either the accident had left her in an unconscious dream state gone wrong or she truly was trapped in some sort of delusional hallucination.
Mikah preferred to think of it all as a dream.
Since she’d always heard about how dreams were some representation of a person’s subconscious desires, it was an easy enough fantasy to believe. A man like Ian Conagham could only come from a dream, and she’d seen his face in her dreams hundreds of nights in her life, always hazy and distant. She’d never before gotten to interact with him, never heard his voice but for that one moment two nights before.
Seeing him in the flesh, so to speak, was literally a dream come true.
Mikah studied him from beneath her lashes as the carriage rocked beneath the archway of an ancient viaduct that marked Dùn Cuilean’s boundaries and her heart raced once again. The new marquis’s attention hadn’t strayed far from her over the course of the last several hours’ journey. He watched her as she watched him. It was comforting to know that he found her intriguing as well. Her girlish fascination with him might have been unbearably embarrassing otherwise.
Neither Mikah nor Hero had ever met a man, or even imagined a man, so compelling. He was a man who sent excitement shivering down her spine with every glance. They shared that, at least.
“Why have we never met before?” she asked, realizing in that moment that her voice was softly cultured and bore a distinct English accent.
“I suppose there was never an opportunity,” he answered. His voice, on the other hand, was a melodic Scottish brogue that was like the finest whiskey. Smooth with no bite where Robert Conagham’s voice had been much more gruff. The Scottish brogue was familiar and comfortable to Hero, but to Mikah, as to many American women, that beguiling tone could stand alone as a tool for seduction. She felt she could listen to him forever.
“I had, in fact,” he continued, “met my cousin only a few times in Edinburgh as a youth while attending St. Andrew’s University. I joined the army after that, serving in England and abroad, and most recently I was in Crimea to repel the Russian problem there. That is where I was when I heard of his death. I certainly never anticipated I would actually be his heir. Might I add how sorry I am for your loss?” he added as an afterthought, as if just remembering that she had lost a husband in order for him to become a marquis.
“Thank you,” she responded automatically, though her mind latched onto something she found familiar. “You fought in Crimea?”
“Balaklava, actually,” he amended. “We were just being sent out to put a siege on Sevastopol when I was called back.”
“You just missed it,” she said.
“I wouldn’t have thought a lady such as yourself would be versed on the details of our wars,” Ian’s said, his brows rising in surprise, “but, aye, I missed the battle at Balaklava by just a week. Many of my friends and comrades were killed there.”
Half a league, half a league, half a league onward, all in the valley of Death rode the six hundred. Forward, the Light Brigade! Mikah thought, remembering her history and English literature classes. “You were lucky. The casualties were very high.”
The marquis just nodded, and she felt that he was uncomfortable with the topic so she let it go. “How long have you been here, then?”
“Just over a month,” he told her. “I like it very much already though.”
“It’s hard not to,” she sighed with heartfelt feeling. “I’ve missed it here.”
As if he caught the wistful tones, Lord Ayr was quick to assure her. “You and your father are certainly welcome to stay for as long as you like. It is your home, after all, and I would be thankful for the company.”
A feeling of elation washed over Hero, as this was exactly what she was hoping for, and she bestowed a radiant smile upon Ian. “Thank you, my lord. We will endeavor not to intrude upon your privacy.”
“Not at all, Lady Ayr. I am happy to have you here,” the marquis assured her. “You are my cousin. You and his grace are my family now as well.”
Mikah could feel Hero’s joy as the worries of being ejected from the property, which had been weighing her down, released, unleashing her buoyancy. Pushing herself fully to the front of Mikah’s consciousness, Hero suddenly asked, “Have you seen the dungeons yet?”
Dungeons? Mikah wondered, though a mental image immediately followed.
“I have not,” Ayr replied, grinning boyishly in response to her enthusiasm. “I believe my steward mentioned their presence, but I hadn’t thought they were of much note.”
“Oh, but they are!” she rejoined earnestly. “I’ve been telling Papa all about them, about Cuilean and the Firth and the gardens. The dungeons are vastly interesting and quite unlike anything I’ve even read about. You simply must see them!”
“And so we shall. It will be too late to do so when we arrive, but perhaps you might join m
e for a walk in the morning?” he asked politely, and when she nodded, he added, “and perhaps dinner tonight if you’re not too fatigued from our journey?”
Mikah felt a rush of blood in her cheeks and knew Hero was blushing over the masculine appreciation in Lord Ayr’s eyes and voice. Had she been more naïve, a blush might have been her first response as well. Even so, she was positively giddy at the thought of his company tonight, tomorrow, and in the days to come. “Yes, my lord, that would be lovely.”
Turning to look out the window once more, Mikah’s breath caught at the sight of the old castle breaking through the dense trees. Dùn Cuilean! Her heart leapt in time with Hero’s.
Home, they thought together, and Hero’s joy mirrored Mikah’s own.
Chapter Five
Later that evening, Ian stood in the pillared circular hall that marked the center of the castle, waiting for the marchioness to join him for dinner. The sweeping central staircase had become a symbol of the majesty of Dùn Cuilean to the new marquis, a visual focal point for the pride that engulfed him whenever he thought about being the Marquis of Ayr. That pride flooded him whenever he put a foot on that first tread or descended them, as he just had.
Dùn Cuilean was a magnificent castle, ancient in history yet glorious. This central hall, for example, was comprised of a wide white marble staircase to the first floor split at the landing into two white wings that wrapped back around to the first floor, curving along the sides of the oval. On each level, the balustrade was made up of an ornate railing of wrought iron shields upon long spikes that awed visitors with their metaphor of power. Twelve Corinthian columns and arches encircled the oval hall on the ground floor and were topped by Ionic columns on the first floor in a reversal of classic style that emphasized the height of the hall. At the top of it all, a glass-domed cupola allowed a shaft of light to beam down at the marble floor of the lowest hall as if the place were under the grace of God himself.
My Heart's in the Highlands Page 3
