A Laird for All Time

by Angeline Fortin

  This enclosed courtyard was new to her having missed it the previous day when she had fainted outside the front gates. That open area might have been used in the past for the castle soldiers to train or for work to be done. Today it consisted of a tidy network of pathways and low shrubbery with an impressive stone fountain at its center. Not complicated, but rather sparse overall. Compared with the lush gardens she had seen over the course of her vacation, Emmy appreciated its simple elegance.

  Emmy clutched her blazer around her crossing her arms against the morning chill. The ground of the keep was damp following the storms of the previous evening. It squished beneath her feet as she walked across the paths and through the heavy gate. It was only exit from the entire castle she had yet to find. Down a series of stone steps she went to the drive where the bus had dropped her off the previous afternoon. She paused and turned to look up at the castle, the walls dark in the shadows of the early morning. It looked nothing like it had when she arrived yesterday! Pacing back and forth, she wondered if being in the right spot would whisk her away 115 years into the future. She glanced toward the gates and back up at the keep still shadowed by the castle.

  Nothing.

  She found another spot and looked around again.

  Nothing.

  “Well, hell,” she muttered at her failure to be whisked away to the future staring blankly out over the rugged countryside. Obviously it wasn’t going to be that easy. Maybe she needed to try again around sunset as it had been when she arrived. She nodded, set with the plan.

  Now to get through the day without incident.

  To her right stood the stables in place of the dumpster that had been there the previous day. Flipping a mental coin, Emmy went left and rounded the northern corner of the building coming quickly to an abrupt drop-off at the cliffs which backed the castle. The castle jutted straight up from those rocky crags overlooking the Sound of Mull and the mainland of Scotland beyond. Perfectly built for defense.

  But only half interested in the architecture, Emmy considered her situation with a mind less clouded by the distraction that Connor MacLean had presented the previous evening. Surely something would get her home. Maybe a repeat of her movements at the same time and place would do the trick. Perhaps there was a wormhole that appeared regularly at that spot – assuming this was a random phenomenon and not a government accident of sorts. There was something she remembered – maybe from Star Trek – that a time portal or wormhole might not appear in the same place twice. Perhaps being in the same spot would not work. Wasn’t that how Voyager got stuck out in the Delta Quadrant? Emmy loved a good sci-fi movie but wasn’t sure how the science translated into reality…if it did at all. That’s why it was called science fiction. As for reality, she could remember nothing about Einstein’s theories on the whole mess. What if there was nothing she could do? Emmy had never been good at waiting for others to fix problems for her. She was more proactive than that.

  She leaned over the edge of the drop-off and stared down. It was not a cliff so much as an extremely steep hill with sharp, angular rocks jutting out from it now and then. And it ended not at the water but rather at a plain that angled out to the water. That beach of sorts was rocky and harsh with nary a plant to soften the landscape. It was lovely, she sighed, shading her eyes against the morning sun. The sun glistened and glinted off the rough waters left over from the night’s storms as they splashed and hit the rocks far below. The roar of the waves was louder here filling her ears with their crash and growl. It was violent and terrific. Awe-inspiring, just as she had hoped it would be.

  “It’s phenomenal,” she whispered in wonder.

  “Ye were once afraid to come out here,” came that deep, delicious voice from behind her. Emmy jumped just a bit in surprise and Connor caught her arm to steady her. “Careful now, ye don’t want to fall over the edge. Or were ye planning on jumping? Tis not far enough to kill, I think, but indeed far enough to do much damage.”

  “I would think you’d be glad to see me go.” Memories of the previous night that had disrupted her sleep assailed her once again as the heat of his hand wicked through her jacket and warmed her arm. One touch, she couldn’t believe it. One impersonal touch and she was quivering in her boots with desire. She cursed herself once again for her voluntary abstinence and silently renewed her vow ever to let it happen again. Emmy jerked her arm a bit and he let her go crossing his arms across his broad chest. “How did you know I was out here?” she asked tightly.

  “My rooms overlook the courtyard and this side of the castle,” he tossed his head back toward the keep. “I saw ye come out and decided to make sure ye weren’t out to kill yourself.” Connor had been dressing near the window when he saw her pass with her manly stride so visible with the tight trousers she wore. Her garb was so mannish, so inappropriate, but he confessed to himself that she looked lovely this morning. Tendrils of hair had escaped their loose knot and danced across cheeks bitten rosy by the brisk October winds. He fought the urge to cup her face in his hands to warm them.

  “Believe me, buddy,” she sniffed taking in his trousers and half buttoned shirt. She wondered if he had dressed in a hurry to come save her from herself. “This whole situation isn’t that bad yet. I’ll take a lot more before I’m ready to off myself. How ‘bout you though? You look pretty rough,” she couldn’t resist adding as she cast a critical glance noting the bags under his eyes and bloodshot eyes. “Nursing a hangover?”

  “Hangover?” he parroted inquisitively.

  “You know? Hit the bottle a bit hard last night and are regretting the result?”

  “Don’t give yerself the credit for any such condition. It had been my plan for evening long before ye arrived,” he told her coldly with a curl of his lip at the reminder of his annual observance of his greatest humiliation. “I saw no reason to change my plans simply because ye were here.”

  “Ouch,” she said lightly. So her arrival or the arrival of his wife, as he thought she was, had not prompted a night in the cups. He had been planning on it anyway. Interesting yet sad that Connor seemed to have allowed the woman who had abandoned him all those years before to still hold such control over his life. It softened her a bit toward him and, changing the subject, she offered pleasantly. “Actually, I just came out for the view. I’ve always loved stuff like this. Waves crashing, thunderstorms, lightning, that sort of thing. Nature at its most violent and beautiful.”

  “As I recall, ye once expressed a fright of those same things,” he commented.

  Emmy sighed and wondered if she could really do as Dory suggested and ride out this identity crisis with Connor. He obviously thought of her as his missing wife and there was nothing she could say that was going to change his mind on that point. The laird was dug deeply into his beliefs and even Dory didn’t even believe that her word was going to change his mind until it suited him to do so. She forced herself to recall that she just needed to go with the flow as Dory had said. After all, she needed a place to stay until she figured out how to get back home. Surely somewhere someone was working on the fix for it. She shivered at the passing thought that no one knew what was going on.

  “Come, ye’re cold,” he offered his arm in a most gentlemanly way to her. “Come inside and breakfast with me.”

  Emmy took the arm he held insistently out to her but withdrew with a start when her hand touched the bare skin of his forearm. Hot. Electric. How was she to do this if the slightest touch had this effect on her? Connor had jerked away as well confirming her suspicion that it effected him equally. She thrust her hands into her coat pockets and stared up at the side of the looming castle aware that he pocketed his hands too. “I’ll have to bring my camera out later when the sun is higher and take some pictures,” she offered in way of light conversation as they walked side by side. Connor opened the heavy gate and bowed with a sweeping arm that she should precede him into the courtyard.

  “Ye own your own camera?” Connor asked in surprise stopping to stare down
at her upturned face as she registered the shock in his question. Why should she gaze at him with such confusion? he wondered. He knew of no one save the photographer in Inverary across the sound who owned their own camera. “Are ye a photographer then?”

  “Only as a hobby.”

  “You must have done verra well for yourself in America to own such a thing. Did you marry a rich man?”

  “I’m not married,” she replied.

  “Are ye not?” he questioned softly, irony readily recognizable.

  “Let’s not go there today, okay?” she sighed again trying to keep Dory’s recommendation in mind, but she didn’t like being the object of Connor’s constant bitterness. She wanted him to like her. For what reasons, she chose not to examine too closely. “Listen, can’t we just have a nice breakfast without an argument?”

  Connor shrugged, surprised by her request. He realized that he would like that with her. “Aye, I suppose. What are we to talk about then? What are yer plans?”

  “My plans involved sightseeing, perhaps a boat ride around the sound, a bit of shopping and much relaxation,” she told him. “But, strangely, I don’t think I am going to get any of those things now. Certainly not relaxation.”

  Her tone was sharp and filled with a scorn and sarcasm that Connor felt was odd coming from such a lovely face. There were little crinkles in the corner of hers eyes and a slight natural tilt to her mouth that told him that she smiled and laughed often. He had not seen her do so as yet…at least from actual good humor. “Ye seem verra angry, Heather, and bitter. Yet yer face tells a story of a happier life,” he touched the corner of her eye lightly tracing the tiny lines there. “Did ye not come here of yer own free will? I do not understand at all why ye insist on pretending ye do not remember what once occurred here.” He pointed to a detailed metal and glass door set in the right wing of the castle. “The chapel where we wed,” he pointed out.

  Emmy stared up at his handsome face filled with almost caring concern. His brown eyes in that moment were tender and warm. Yet, his face was not one that showed a life of laughter, she noted. There were lines, yes. A frown line between his brows. A mouth that turned down just a bit at the corners as if he had not smiled in a long while. He was an angry man, she realized, bitter from the embarrassment this Heather had once served him. Had he loved her so much then that he had not been able to live happily without her? She reached up and rubbed the hard line between his brows away with the pad of her thumb. “I am sorry that you haven’t been able to move on with your own life, Connor. It must have been pretty hard on you.”

  His gaze hardened as Connor frowned and pushed her hand away. “Spare me yer pity! Ye know nothing, Heather, of my life.” He informed her in clipped tones as he turned away and headed for the castle door in angry strides. He spun back suddenly stopping Emmy in her tracks as she moved to follow. “I looked for ye for years!” he shouted angrily with a slash of his hand. “I went after ye!”

  Emmy stared back into his angry eyes. “Out of love, Connor? Or pride?” she asked softly.

  Connor snapped his mouth shut and turned away disappearing into the castle without another word.

  Chapter 7

  Taking a small plate of food from the buffet that was being laid out in the dining room as she passed, Emmy went straight up to her room intent on avoiding the laird until his temper cooled. He ran hot and cold without warning and she wasn’t in much of a mood to tiptoe around him. She shouldn’t have pushed him though with that last volley, she scolded herself. She was used to getting the last word in and sometimes spoke without thinking. As Dory had warned, he would probably be a perfect boar because of her thoughtlessness.

  Her room or suite as it appeared was actually a bedroom and sitting room with the large dressing room and bath attached. The door to the sitting room had been closed the previous evening but had been opened when the maids had straightened up this morning. Where the bedroom was light and feminine with its light grays and lilac, the sitting room was more gender neutral to use the modern phraseology. The antiques were, of course, not actually antiques in this time but new. Classically Victorian in styling but comfortable and upholstered in neutral grays, blues and whites that went well with the scrolled and flocked wallpaper that was typical of the era. Several landscapes and portraits dotted the walls.

  Two striped wingbacks faced a settee adjacent to a large fireplace with a mantle that was a work of art in its own right. Intricate scrolling woodwork facing that swept all the way to the ceiling. A large carpet kept the wooden floors from chilling the rooms which were heated by vents that Emmy assumed led to a boiler somewhere. The air forced through the venting was warm but damp and did little more than cut the worst of the chill. Thankfully, fires burned brightly in this room and her bedroom. She ate her breakfast while pacing the space holding the plate in front of her but finally choose a chaise near what was one of the few windows available in the room to sit down and relax in. The castle had been built for defense, she recalled. The few windows to the outside were very small. These in the sitting room faced the side of the keep she had visited this morning while her bedroom cornered the building to the same side and back of the castle overlooking the sound.

  Although, she tried to read one of the books she had picked up at the airport, Emmy’s mind kept wandering helplessly back to Connor again and again. Should she apologize for deliberately goading him? Should she just let it go? Where was he? What did he do to keep busy all day? Emmy spent most of her morning in her room with her book, but could not refrain from appearing from time to time to inquire about the laird’s whereabouts. When asked, the butler, Chilton, told her the laird gone riding, gone into Craignure or anywhere elsewhere. ‘Rather than stay here and face his issues,’ Emmy thought.

  Morning turned to afternoon. Margo, the maid Dory assigned to her, offered to bring her a tray to her room for luncheon. Accepting, Emmy felt as she, too, were hiding out rather than facing the mysterious nineteenth century outside the doors. Garnering her courage, she finally begged Margo for a tour of the castle. Half of the second floor was occupied by bedroom suites with more on the third floor and servants quarters and nurseries on the fourth. There was a small family parlor as well on each of these floors. The second floor also housed a large library. In all the rooms the outer windows were small, but for those that faced the inner courtyard, they were larger allowing more light into some of the main rooms.

  On the main floor were the drawing rooms – large and small –parlor, chapel, the laird’s office, billiards room, dining room, morning room and kitchens. The kitchens, Margo told her, had once been housed in a separate building but the restoration of the castle had seen them moved inside to the first floor.

  Like the main hall, all the rooms were large and luxurious, almost too formal in reflection to the medieval skin of the castle. Rich carpets covered the tile and wood floors. Inlaid patterns bordered the rooms. The furnishings were all beautifully carved or gilded and upholstered in lush velvets. Draperies were velvets as well with ornate fringes along the edges. They were thick so they could block the cold air from emanating through the windows in the colder months. A logical idea, though Emmy had never seriously considered the practical applications of window treatments before. With the energy efficient windows of her time, who needed to?

  It was overall an amazing example of Victorian architecture and décor. None of the museums she’d ever been to had shown the level of richness and opulence this period was clearly capable of. But for some reason, she just didn’t feel that it suited Connor well. Of course she had only just met him, but still…it gave her something to think about.

  Emmy thanked Margo for the tour and was grateful of her offer to build up the fire when they returned to Emmy’s rooms. The afternoon had turned chilly and rain slapped once again on the windows. An array of clothing had been laid out in her bedroom, from Mrs. MacLean, Margo informed her. Dorcas, Emmy assumed. Margo left her alone and Emmy resumed her place on the chaise near the
fire. She tried once again to focus on her book, but as the warmth of the room rose and the previous day’s travel set in, Emmy slipped off into slumber.

  It was with some surprise that Connor found Heather asleep on the chaise in the sitting room shared by the earl and countess’ rooms. For some reason he had expected her to be hiding out in her rooms as she had done the day they married, hesitant to face him after a long day in his company. Lowering himself onto a small ottoman near the chaise, Connor studied Heather as she slept. She was reclined in the chaise, one bare foot tucked up under her other leg. She wore spectacles today. They were dark framed in tortoiseshell, he believed. Narrow in height and wide across giving her a studious air even in sleep. He wondered if she needed them all the time or only wore them for reading.

  Reaching over, he gently removed the glasses and rescued her fallen book placing them together on a nearby table. There a glass held melting ice which he assumed had previously been her odd libation of tea over ice. He wondered again what the little pink packets had held. Perhaps they were medication of some sort. Perhaps powders for headaches or illness. He knew almost nothing about her, he realized. Despite their new attraction, she was as much a stranger to him today as she had been ten years before.

  He brushed her long bangs back across her cheek and noticed that, though the rest of her hair was still bound in some sort of clasp at the back of her head, some long pieces had escaped. He followed the tress with his fingers. How long it was! Laying it over her shoulder, he stroked the silky length then her cheek. So soft as was the texture of her skin. He had heard before the Americas were a harsh place where conditions outside the cities aged a person before his or her time. Clearly Heather had not suffered in her time away. She had left with little money or possessions he knew. How had she supported herself? Images flew through his mind as he wondered if she had sold herself for monies.