A Laird for All Time

by Angeline Fortin

  “What do you mean ‘willingly’?” he rose and turned her to face him gripping her upper arms. The poker clattered to the floor.

  Emmy hedged in hesitant embarrassment. She had never told anyone about that before. She should not be ashamed, but she was. She didn’t know why she had admitted it to Connor of all people, but there was just something about him that made her want to talk to him. To let him know her…all of her. “Well, there was an incident my sophomore year of college.”

  She lowered her eyes away from him but with a finger on her chin, he compelled her gaze to return to his. “Ye were raped?”

  “’Date rape’ they call it these days. Slipped me a Mickey and took advantage of me while I was passed out.” She closed her eyes against the humiliating memory. “I woke up half way through to find him on top of me and tried to fight him off, but I was so out of it. I was so bruised after while he joked to all his friends about it. It was awful. Worst part was that I knew him. We had several classes together. He had asked me out a couple times but I never did like him and he knew it.”

  “I will kill him,” he threatened with real rage. “Tell me where to find him.”

  Amazedly, Emmy chuckled at his protectiveness. “My knight in shining armor.”

  He cradled her face between his hands. “My love, I am sorry yer flight from me resulted in such a painful incident for ye.

  “Wow,” she breathed in surprise raising her brows. “That is so…compassionate of you. What, no recriminations? No saying that I brought it on myself? Most of the men I know would think so.”

  “No woman deserves to be so ill-treated at the hands of a man.”

  “Unwilling sex you forgive but the four I chose you don’t,” she mused and caressed his cheek before placing a light kiss there. “I have never told anyone about that before. I don’t know why I told you. I have always been afraid that people would give me that look that said it was my own fault.”

  “The only fault that can be laid at yer feet would be that if ye had never left it would not have happened at all,” he chided.

  “Connor,” she sighed regretfully pulling away from him. “Enough of this. I know that some small part of you must realize that I am not Heather. Admit it.”

  He shook his head and turned searching for his pants and pulling them on. “Ye have changed, beyond any doubt. Ye are in many ways, a completely different person from the woman I knew, but yer appearance on that day of all days? And look at ye! I cannot look at ye and believe it ye are anyone else. It might be possible for two women on this earth to look the same but three? Impossible.”

  “You are going to have to accept it sooner or later, Connor. Honestly I think you already have, but are denying it for reasons of your own.” She turned back to the revived fire and stared down into the flames.

  As his silence reined, Emmy turned back to him and pressed on softly. “You haven’t called me by that name since the night before last when we almost…made love. You call me ‘my lady’ and ‘my dear’ but not that. Do you even think of me by that name anymore? Just say it one time, Connor.” She reached for his hand and pressed it to her cheeks looking up at him with pleading eyes. “Say Emmy. Call me by my own name.”

  “What did you expect when ye came here? That I would welcome ye with open arms?” he said evasively pulling away once again and sitting on the edge of the bed as he rubbed his face with his hands in exasperation. “Are things not turning out the way ye thought and you want to leave? If ye can convince me you are not Heather, then I have no hold on ye. Is that it? Is that what yer insistence is all about?” Awaiting the answer to that impulsive question left him on edge. He dared not look at her as dread filled him.

  Did she want to leave? It was the question that had been plaguing her since she had seen Donell that morning. It was a question that was getting harder and harder to answer easily. Her future as she had always imagined it or a life here? And was that even a choice? She had come here suddenly, what was to stop her from being snapped back to her own time without warning? On the whim of an old wizard or whatever he was? Did she have a choice in her destiny? She wasn’t even sure, so did it matter what she wanted? She didn’t know. She knelt on the floor before him and urged him to look at her.

  “What I want has nothing to do with this insane insistence that I am Heather,” she argued loathe to think any longer about her dilemma. “You have already admitted that you’ve gotten a divorce. Even if I was Heather I could leave at anytime, don’t you realize that? What other benefit is there for you if I am Heather?”

  ‘I have a chance to keep ye,’ he thought grasping her hands in his. If she was Heather, there was a tie between them however tenuous. As long as she was Heather he had justification to keep her here if not for himself than for her sister. If he conceded she might not be, she had every right to walk out the door if she wished just as she said and his hold on her already felt too fragile. How could he explain that to her? “If ye’re not, why haven’t ye left already?”

  She had nowhere else to go but it went deeper than that. She didn’t want to leave him. She wanted to stay with him, near him at least for the time being, but if he wanted her, she wanted him to want her for herself. Emmy wanted him to know that he wanted her not Heather.

  “This thing between us, Connor, this chemistry,” she fumbled for the words, “it is worth exploring, isn’t it? I am staying for this, for now. But I am not Heather, I swear to you, and if you want me to leave because of that alone, I will go. If you want me to go, tell me now.”

  Connor looked down at her lovely face so familiar and yet so new. Heather or not, this woman aroused feelings in him that he had never felt before. Tender, protective, possessive. He wanted her for himself whatever that implied, short-term or long-term he did not know, but he needed time to figure it out. As she said, it was worth exploring. “No, my love, I do not want ye to go.”

  “Yet?”

  “No not yet.” The corner of his mouth lifted in a half smile and he leaned over to meet her lips in a tender kiss. “Ye’re the most curious woman I have ever met.”

  “Thanks, I think, and you’re…”

  Chapter 27

  A quick tap sounded at the door and Margo burst in. “M’lady!” she called and drew up short at the sight of Emmy kneeling between Connor legs and their mutual state of undress. “Oh! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean…”

  Emmy stood securing the dressing gown tighter trying to suppress a blush over what Margo probably thought was happening. “It's okay, Margo. What’s up?”

  “Oh, m’lady,” she cried. “I need your help. My mum is having an awful time.”

  “What is it?” Emmy asked in concern. “You said she was feeling unwell?”

  “It’s the baby!” Margo exclaimed with tears starting to build in her eyes.

  “What baby?” Emmy and Connor asked in unison.

  “Mum’s having another baby, but she’s having a terrible time of it this time.” Margo wrung her hands in worry. “Will you come?”

  “Of course I will,” Emmy assured her already shifting into doctor mode. “Hurry, help me dress!”

  “I will get a carriage ready,” Connor offered and snatched up his shirt before leaving the room.

  “Why didn’t you tell me earlier that your mom was in labor, Margo?” she chided as she pulled on a shift and shirt since her own underwear was currently soaked.

  “It’s her tenth babe, m’lady,” she protested. “I didn’t think she’d need any help with it this time. Why, the last one came so quick she barely had time to get to the house before it came.” She drew up the petticoats and skirts around Emmy hips and tied them on.

  “Guess she figured she’d seen it all by this point, huh?” Emmy slipped her feet into her boots and grabbed the medical bag Connor had sent up. Margo swept up a cloak for her and they hurried down the stairs.

  The carriage made the trip to Lochdon about a mile and a half southwest of Duart at a much faster clip than their earlier driv
e into Craignure despite the continued rain and wind. It seemed most of the MacLean clan had populated Lochdon for centuries and it was from here that the laird employed his household staff as well as those who maintained his livestock and worked at the home farm. Margo’s mother had worked in the castle’s kitchens for many years before devoting herself to her home and children. Her father, Aengus McAllen, was a second in command to Connor’s steward overseeing the estate’s business. Margo, the oldest of their children, had been working at the castle for three years first as a chambermaid and now lady’s maid. Because of the higher status of that position she also resided at the castle with her footman husband.

  Emmy and Connor followed Margo into her parent’s small house about ten minutes later. Though the house seemed poor to Emmy’s mind Connor assured the family was one of the village’s more prestigious because of the positions Margo and her father held at Duart. Connor hung back as Emmy forged onward up the stairs in Margo’s wake. He was welcomed hesitantly by the six of Margo’s younger siblings who were gathered in the main parlor of the house. They ranged in age from two to fifteen. On a whole they were silent and withdrawn, because of his presence or their mother’s trails, he did not know.

  The oldest present was a girl, Mairi, who offered him whiskey which he accepted wondering whether he should leave but knowing he would not until Heather was ready to return to Duart. Remembering he had sent McAllen to Glasgow earlier that week, he tried to take interest in the children remembering small things their father had said of them.

  Footsteps sounded above and he wondered if Heather were truly as capable as her confidence indicated. He hoped so.

  Emmy took little time introducing herself to Margo’s mother, Cora, asking a series of questions to acquaint herself to the woman’s history as she went through the motions of washing her hands and beginning her initial examination. “How old are you, Cora?”

  “Forty and one, m’lady,” she panted.

  “This is your tenth pregnancy?”

  “Twelfth, m’lady,” was her response.

  “God, that’s just nuts,” Emmy murmured to herself under her breath. Once she had delivered the sixth child in a family but many considered having too many kids irresponsible unless you could afford to raise them all way through college. People with too many kids were novelty and ended up on TV reality shows or were taunted by the press. Absently Emmy wondered what a show about the McAllen’s and their broad would be called.

  And all by forty-one! If she had had to take a guess she would have thought the woman closer to fifty than forty. Of course, she wasn’t at her best at that particular moment, she allowed. “Were the other two to term or miscarried?”

  “Both suffered illness after birth, m’lady,” Margo informed her as she laid a cool cloth over her mother’s brow. “Please, m’lady, can you help her?”

  “I’ll do my best, Margo,” she shot the girl a smile of assurance as she made her examination. “Have you ever had any difficulties in delivery before?”

  “None, m’lady.”

  Emmy’s examination discovered the problem in quick time. “The baby is breech, Cora. We’re going to have to turn it but I need you to stay very still while I do it. Is there anyone else here who can help you hold your mother, Margo?”

  “Just the little ones, m’lady, and my sisters.”

  “Are they old enough to be of real service?” she asked.

  Margo and Cora looked at each other and shook their heads in unison. “No brothers? Your husband?”

  “Cam accompanied my father to Glasgow this week,” Margo explained referring to the oldest of her brothers.

  “If its okay with you then, Cora, I’d like to have Connor...the laird come up and help us out,” Emmy told her.

  “Okay?” Cora panted.

  “She means if it’s acceptable, mum,” Margo translated having gotten used to Emmy’s phrasing over the past several days.

  The woman hesitated then nodded miserably. Emmy sent Margo to fetch Connor as she prepared the tools she would need on a nearby table and gathered towels to sit nearby.

  Margo returned quickly to her mother’s side. “Where is the laird?” Margo nodded to the doorway and Emmy turned to find Connor hesitating on the threshold. “Well, get in here, laird,” she urged. “This is what you get for sending a man away on business when his wife is near her time. You get to do his duty.”

  “I don’t think…” he started but stopped at her level stare. A jerk of her head propelled his feet forward of their own will. Connor was horrified. He had never attended a birthing before, had never had any reason to. And didn’t necessarily want to. He was the laird not a midwife. Yet Emmy’s gaze was calm and commanding and he found himself wanting not only to please her but to see what she was capable of first hand. “What do ye want me to do?”

  “The baby is breech and I need to turn it,” she explained. “I need you to keep her still for me, can you do that?”

  Connor squared his shoulders at the deprecating question. “Of course.”

  “Let’s get to it then.” She waved him forward and he took his place as Emmy went to work. In truth, she had never actually done this before in practice. She was working entirely on theory and hoped her nervousness didn’t show on her face. Cora moaned painfully and was panting erratically on the verge of hyperventilating. “Get her to breathe evenly, Connor. Talk to her.”

  The laird murmured encouraging words to the woman to breathe with him slowly and asked her if she remembered bring him sweets from the kitchen when his father had banished him to his room for a week for striking Ian. He couldn’t remember why he had done it. “He rode your favorite pony and brought it up lame with a stone in its hoof,” Cora laughed shakily. “You wouldn’t have been able to ride it for a week anyway, but got whipped by your father and sent to your rooms for the week instead.”

  Connor laughed and nodded at the memory. “Aye, that’s right I had forgotten! And ye slipped me my favorite sweets. Ye weren’t much more than a young lass yourself when ye did that.”

  “Still in the scullery, I was,” she gasped and stifled a scream.

  Emmy looked up. “Okay, Cora, push now! Come on!”

  The woman bore down with another scream and Emmy viewed the results. “Alright, one more!”

  “Aye, now,” Connor’s encouragement joined hers and he took Cora’s hand.

  “Push, mum,” Margo joined in.

  Cora cried out and a moment later the baby’s cry joined hers.

  “Your color is looking better, I think.”

  “I’ve never seen a baby born before,” Connor told her as the carriage rocked slowly back and forth when they finally set out to return to Duart several hours later. For a nearly an hour after the birth, he had taken his whiskey out into the chilly night to combat the nausea and sweats that had overcome him as the child, a boy, had been born. It had been horrific. Cows and horses were one thing, but….

  “Supposedly it’s different when it is your own baby,” she assured him. “You’ll be fine.” She gave his arm a comforting squeeze.

  “She nearly broke my hand, her grip was so strong,” he told her lightly but thought he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to witness such an ordeal again even if it was his own child. He eyed Heather - or Emmy or whoever she was - thoughtfully and pictured her heavy with his child, his first, his heir. Aye, he would love to see her in such a state, glowing with happiness as Dory had been the previous night. He would place his hands on her belly and marvel with her over the life inside. A life they had created together. In that moment, he wanted that fantasy more than anything.

  Oblivious to the vein of Connor’s thinking, Emmy yawned hugely and stretched. “Man, I am beat.” Emmy laughed softly and laid her head on his shoulder in fatigue. Thankfully the coachman was taking the journey slowly in deference to her motion sickness on their previous trips. It would take much longer but at least the motion was tolerable. “You were wonderful, Connor,” she told him. “You were exactly
what she needed. Calm and distracting and not a hint of worry.”

  “I was scared to death.”

  “So was I,” she admitted.

  Connor looked down at her in amazement. “Truly? I never would have thought so. Ye were so incredibly competent. I was impressed.” He was, too. She had praised the mother and congratulated her on the birth, handing Cora the baby boy and handling the rest with efficiency and an aura of good cheer that had immediately translated itself to Cora, Margo and himself.

  “I couldn’t have done it without you,” she hugged his arm and snuggled closer against the chill of the night. “Thank you for helping.”

  “She is one of my clan,” he shrugged off her praise knowing that it was her efforts that had saved Cora and her son. McAllen would come back to Duart and know the laird’s lady had saved his wife’s life.

  “You care for these people so very much,” she murmured tiredly. She had never known anyone to accept and want the responsibility for the lives of so many people yet he seemed to thrive on. She had never met anyone like that, like him and was fairly sure that she would never meet another who impressed her so much. She yawned and murmured sleepily, “I’m not sure what I want more, food or sleep.”

  Chapter 28

  The rumbling of her stomach woke Emmy the next morning. Rubbing her hands over her face, she rolled over with a groan. She vaguely remembered Connor carrying her to bed the previous night. Now in a state of consciousness, she marveled at his strength. She was slight of build but tall and muscular and therefore weighed more than she looked. With a grin, Emmy wondered if Connor had hurt his back in the process.

  Still, it had been considerate, even chivalrous, for him to carry her up. His participation in the birth had also shown his caring for his people…and for her? His later praise over her performance had made her feel more flattered than the appreciation given by Margo and her mother. What did that mean? That his opinion mattered more than anyone else’s?