A Laird for All Time

by Angeline Fortin

  “It is a man’s burden.”

  “Let’s not go there, Connor,” she teased. “Where I am from, women propose to men all the time.”

  He looked horrified. “Never say so!”

  “Okay, I won’t,” she ribbed him. “That is why you left? You didn’t want to be emotionally vulnerable to me?”

  “It is not in my nature to appear weak.”

  “No, I suppose not.” Emmy leaned into his arms and laid her head on his shoulder. “But I love you anyway.”

  His breath drew in deeply and exhaled in a rush. “I love ye, as well, so incredibly much.”

  “I am so incredibly glad,” she whispered into his neck before taking the flesh there between her teeth and nibbling and sucking lightly. Connor leaned away and lowered his head capturing those teasing lips with his own. Emmy clung to him as his hands cradled her shoulder and neck pulling her closer to him. Their bodies met at the chest and hip and Emmy could almost feel his heat radiating through the layers of her outerwear and his, but it was not enough.

  “How is your head?” she whispered.

  “Much better, thank ye.”

  “Maybe we could take this inside then?” she offered her eyes making heated promises.

  Though he should be used to her bold manner, Connor was still taken aback by her bold implication. Never, he swore, would he ever meet another like her. A woman who felt free to express her desires, a woman who admitted to them! He might as well assume from this point forward that everything he knew about women and ladies did not apply to his Emmy. She would keep him on his toes, to be sure. Connor laughed and pulled her to her feet. It would be a wonderful way to experience life. With the unexpected.

  They hurried back to the castle as quickly as Emmy’s long skirts would allow and in that moment she cursed their very existence. Through the courtyard and up the broad staircase. At the top, she squealed as he swung her into his arms and carried her laughing the remainder of the distance to his chamber.

  Connor kicked the door shut and caught her lips passionately once more as he lowered her to her feet. She swayed and clung to him as he swung her around. “Ahh, Em! My darling, my love,” he murmured against her lips.

  She broke away turning her back commanding breathlessly, “Help me with all of this.”

  Connor dealt with the long row of buttons with an efficiency that left Emmy dazed. He kissed and scraped his teeth against her shoulders as he lowered the bodice and set to work on the laces of the skirts. “I love that ye don’t wear the stays,” he whispered huskily. “I will never be able to look at ye again without knowing that ye’re nearly bare beneath yer clothing.” His hands slid up and caught her breasts through the thin chemise as her skirts and petticoats dropped to the ground.

  Turning, Emmy threw her arms around his neck and kissed him again while his fingers found the ties of her drawers, loosened and dropped those as well before his arms came around her. His breath was as ragged as hers as their mouths met again and again. His fists clenched against her back and a moment later, she felt the material of the chemise give way as he tore the garment from her. A moan of excitement escaped her. “Oh, Connor,” she sighed. ‘Eat your heart out Kevin Kline!’

  Emmy caught one thick wool stocking with the toes of the opposite foot and shoved the pair off one by one all the while massaging his chest and back while his hands returned to her breast. His fingers brushed her nipples, tantalizing the tender flesh and he bent his head capturing one between his lips. Emmy squealed and wrapped her arms around his head holding him to her as his tongue flicked across the tip send shocks of electricity down to her core.

  Connor lifted her in his arms and carried her to his bed. He deposited her there and stared down at her for a moment, chest heaving. An instant later he was shedding his clothing in haste and it wasn’t long before he was as naked as she. Emmy marveled over the heavy muscles of his chest and abdomen, the strength of his arms and legs as he lowered himself on top of her. She spread her legs to cradle his weight and savored the weight of him above her. He stared down at her tenderly. “I love ye.”

  “I love you, too,” she whispered and twitched her hips just enough to make his breath catch.

  “Minx,” he chided and lowered his mouth again to her breast. He suckled there as she moaned and tossed her head. He skimmed a hand down her belly and hip before returning up the back of her thigh to squeeze her bottom. Her hands on his own nearly distracted him from his purpose but he recovered to continue his intentioned course. His finger slid into the valley between her legs using her moist heat to ease his way around and over her sensitive nub as she gasped and arched against him. A second finger joined the first. Around and around he went as her body quivered multiplying the pleasure he felt from the searching caress of her hands and her lips and tongue on his chest and neck.

  Again and again his fingers circled and cajoled until Emmy thought she would faint. She was light-headed, panting and burning and painfully near a climax already. Her lips tingled with arousal. Her thighs clenched about the turn of his hand encouraging him on, urging him to stop. Then he plunging those talented digits deep inside her and Emmy cried out arching her back. He gave no quarter as he thrust his fingers again and again curling them upward wringing sensations from Emmy that she had never known a body was capable of feeling. “Connor! Connor!” she gasped, begging for release.

  Obliging, Connor reared back and drove himself to the hilt in the slick heat that awaited him and nearly cried out in ecstasy himself. He pumped again and paused as she begged him to continue. He rolled suddenly to his back pulling her along until she was seated above him. Emmy stared down at him, bracing her hands against his chest to push herself up. Felt the length of him withdraw as she rose and dropped back down. They both moaned and his hands tightened on her hips urging her up again and pull her back down forcefully again.

  Connor looked up at Emmy, her eyes closed, lips moist and parted, long hair in tangled disarray around her face and shoulders. Gorgeous, sensual. The muscles of her stomach flexed and she rocked her hips again grinding against him. Never again, never again would he leave her. She was his heart, soul and body. Nothing could ever compare to this feeling. He raised his hips to meet hers as she dropped again and they found a quick rhythm pushing and thrusting.

  The tightening of the orgasm did not scare Emmy this time. She pursued it, savored it as it built, the fingers of tension reaching out from her core. Building, tensing, her head swam and then her body ruptured and spasmed around his length and drawing him deeper. He gripped her hips thrusting himself upward again and again as she pulsed around him. Emmy cried out her release until he joined her at last, his shout of ecstasy joining hers. His heat flooded inside her as Emmy collapsed onto his sweaty chest, their breathing harsh and uneven in the quiet room.

  Connor’s arms came around her and held her close as she buried her face in his neck. They lay together like that for several minutes recovering until Emmy shifted allowing him to slide out of her as she rolled to his side and curled up next to him. “Wow,” she sighed at length.

  “Indeed,” Connor agreed with a chuckle. He tightened his arms around her keeping her close. “That was even more incredible than the first time.”

  Emmy knew why. It was more than a meeting of bodies this time; it was a meeting of souls. It was making love in the truest sense of the term. She had never realized there was a difference before between sex and lovemaking. It made her wish she could go back and erase her past so only he and this remained, but for all her wishing, she realized that her past provided her an even greater appreciation of what she felt now. The comparison allowed her to realize that this experience with Connor was unique and unparalleled.

  “Shall we test a theory?” he asked. “That it will improve as exponentially with experience?”

  “I’m ready for round two if you are,” she agreed readily as he rolled over on top of her.

  Chapter 33

  Clad in a dressing gown, Emmy
sat on the edge of the bed the next afternoon staring down at Connor. The previous afternoon had blended into evening as they had explored each other into the night. Round two? She laughed inwardly. After bouts of sex, eating from the tray Margo left at the door last evening and again this morning and napping, they had ended at dawn with round five. They’d been so exhausted they had both passed out into a deep sleep that she had only just roused from. She now knew the feel and taste of every part of his body as he knew hers. It was a night beyond imagination and, she hoped, just one of many.

  But the complete truth had not yet been told and Emmy knew that she could not continue as she had been. This one last issue needed to be resolved if she were to continue in this relationship with Connor. Beyond gaining his belief in her unusual truth, Emmy feared his reaction to the fact once she gained his certainty in the information. Would he look at her as a freak of nature? As an abomination? Would she become an unspeakable thing that he would view with distrust or worse…revulsion?

  She trembled, terrified that he might simply turn his back on her and order her from his house. That he might look at her with disgust? What would she do if he did?

  But to never tell him…? Could she stay here for however long was allowed to her and keep such a desperate secret from him? No, she could tell he was already aware that she was withholding something from him. Despite her words, Connor was not an fool. He was intelligent, perhaps intelligent enough to work through the facts and realize that she was still the same person who he loved and whom he was loved by in return.

  She squeezed her hands around the iPhone in her hands. Evidence, as it were. While verbal claims and words could prove nothing, while a passport could be considered a forgery, this advanced technology had a foundation in truth. Physical evidence that would be hard for him to deny.

  Emmy prayed for his understanding and acceptance.

  A while later just when she thought her nerves were about to break, Connor opened his eyes sleepily and smiled up at her. “Good morning my love,” he murmured reaching up to caress her cheek before dropping back to stretch his long body.

  “Good afternoon,” she answered though the playfulness she intended did not make it into her words and he looked at her curiously.

  “What troubles ye?”

  “Do you remember yesterday I said there were several reasons I had not left Duart?” she asked quickly before she had a chance to change her mind and waited for him to nod. “Dory and you? Well, there is another.”

  ‘Ahh, here it was,’ Connor thought. He had known for some time there was something else she was not telling him. He was perceptive enough to know that while not a deception, as such, it was at least an omission. He studied her subdued face and knew it was an omission grave in nature. In that instant, a portion of him wanted to deny her confession, halt her from revealing whatever it was. Foreboding enveloped him.

  She hesitated nervously chewing her lips and staring down at her cupped hands where she kept some item concealed from him. “The other reason I haven’t left,” she cleared her throat, “is because I can’t, or rather, I don’t know how. I came to Duart for a vacation, but how I got here is something else entirely.”

  “Here?” he parroted. “I don’t know what ye mean.”

  “I’m going to need you to put on your Educated Man hat here, Connor,” she told him, “because there are not many ways for me to cushion the truth.”

  “I am yer student,” he replied drily pushing himself up to a sitting position in the bed.

  “Maybe I should let you get dressed and eat first,” Emmy suggested starting to rise but he caught her arm and pulled her back down.

  “Please continue,” he prompted. “What do you mean when ye say ‘here’ like that?”

  “Here, as in this time,” she said at length. When he continued to watch her expectantly, she sighed and continued. “I don’t mean ‘this time’ as in this moment. I mean in this time. Connor, the birth date on the passport I showed you wasn’t a mistake. That is my true birthday.”

  “But it said 1980-something or another,” he shook his head not understanding.

  “1982. I know,” Emmy insisted. “It wasn’t wrong. I was born on March 10, 1982. The day I came here, it was October 18, 2010.”

  A part of Connor wanted to throw back his head and laugh in amusement at her farce and await her to join him admitting that her words were in jest. As he stared at her solemn eyes, however, he knew she was serious. My God, she was mad, he thought, and rubbed his hands over his face in disbelief.

  “I’m not crazy,” her words denied his thought. “I am perfectly sane. Contrary to what I said before when we were at lunch in Oban, there is no frequent time traveling in the future, at least that I know about. I’m not certain how it all happened but when I came here to visit the castle, it was Donell who brought me.”

  “Old Donell?”

  “Yes, the man from the inn. He drove me here in 2010 and somehow sent me back to this time. To you. I don’t know why, he mentioned something about second chances but I haven’t been able to find him again. You said he was a wizard or something?”

  “Emmy,” he shook his head in denial, “those are just absurd rumors…”

  Emmy cut him off. “All I know is that I got off the shuttle with a ticket to see this castle and the next I knew, I was here in 1895. There you were riding up on your horse. Just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “And Donell is the one who did. He admitted it to me.”

  “Emmy,” he started shaking his head.

  She cut him off, eyes pleading for understanding. “I know it sounds nuts, I do! I have thought and thought trying to figure out the whys and hows of this whole thing and I truthfully don’t have one logical sounding reason or explanation to give you. He did it. Donell did it. Magic or whatever. I tried to send for him, to talk to him, but he’s just disappeared. No one can find him.” Emmy rubbed her own face in frustration and gazed back at him expectantly, but he remained silent. Hopefully, she thought, he was considering her words so she gave him a moment to think on her confession.

  Instead he pulled away from her and climbed out of the bed searching for a pair of trousers and slipping them on.

  “There’s coffee on the table,” she told him wearily. “It should still be warm if not hot.” Defeated, she toyed with the phone. She had wanted, hoped that he would simply believe her. He loved her after all and love required a measure of faith. But Emmy felt she should have known the concept was too fantastical to be taken without a measure of doubt. She could not fault him for reacting this way. A little self-analysis told her she would doubt such a revelation as well and probably more vocally than he.

  Time and evidence.

  She stood and moved to join him at the little table where he was adding sugar to his coffee. Emmy sat across from him as he sipped. His dark eyes were critical and grave. “What ye’re saying is insane,” he commented at length.

  “It is.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  “Absolutely,” she nodded wanting to reach across the table and hold his hands in hers. He must have realized her purpose since he wrapped both hands around the cup propping his elbows on the table. Withdrawal. “Yes, it is that and more, but, Connor, it is also the truth. I am not a nutcase from Bedlam. Without Donell I can give you no rationalization on how it happened, but I only ask that you consider that you have thought me an intelligent woman. Consider that I know you are an intelligent man and how such a claim, if it were not true, would demean both our intelligence. I don’t believe in magic and witchcraft but I know that once you have time to consider all the facts, you will know that I would never lie about something like this.”

  Connor watched the woman he loved in astonishment. She thought to rely on his intelligence to accept her claims as truth? His very intellect challenged her allegation! Time travel? Witchcraft? He snorted dismissively. It was impossible. Inconceivable! In truth the Scots were a superstitious lot. Tales of witchcraft and wizardry wen
t back a thousand years. But even if magic did exist, one could not walk through the fabric of time regardless of what Wells and Verne had written about it and that fictitious 5th dimension. Time was absolute. Their works were but narrative. The idea that sorcery might have been the key was even more unbelievable. Sorcery was mostly myth and partially parlor tricks. Nothing like this! If Emmy thought that his logic and reason would bend to allow her point… and he could see that she did believe it…then perhaps she was a Bedlamite escapee.

  He was just opening his mouth to convey his conviction when her hand slid across the table toward him, flattened but covering something. She sat with her arm extended for a moment, her eyes searching his. Pleading. Uncertainly, she sighed and withdrew her arm leaving what had been under it on the table in front of him.

  It was the item that Margo had given her the previous week.

  The object they had prompted their argument almost eight days ago. He leaned in and squinted at it before reluctantly picking it up. It was small and flat, one side shiny silver with the silhouette of an apple with a bite taken from it and IPHONE in white letters. The other side, black glass, was almost mirror-like in its reflectivity. From one end a white covered wire extended, split and ended in a flattened ball of some sort on each part. He shivered in trepidation.

  He had absolutely no idea what it was.

  Chapter 34

  Emmy spoke softly as Connor studied the object. “I think I told you my mom had me learn to play the piano and guitar when I was growing up because studies had shown that music aided in learning of math. What my mom never realized was that I did it because I just really like music. When I was in high school, I’d go to see ever concert that came to town just so I could hear it live. In my time, you don’t have to wait for a concert, hope someone can play the piano or play it yourself because we have radio, TV, CD’s and these.” She gestured to the player. “This object is a telephone, much as I described to you in Oban. My own personal one, small enough to fit in my hand. It’s not only a phone but also what we call an mp3 player. There are many different kinds but this one in particular is called an iPhone.” She took it from him for a moment and removed the ear buds. She held them up, “There are for just one person to use it for music, so ignore them for now.” She laid it back on the table, black side up.