“What does it do?” he rasped leaning away from it.
“It is a telephone. You talk into it,” she pointed to the tiny hole of the microphone, “and can have a conversation with anyone in the world. It also plays music. Well it does a lot of other things too, but let’s start with the music.” Emmy leaned forward leaning her elbows on the table. “Go ahead, touch it.”
“That’s quite all right, I believe ye.”
“No, you don’t,” she whispered, her voice raw.
He looked so terrified that Emmy almost had to laugh. She might have done so anyway if she hadn’t thought he would take it as a personal offense. Men could be so touchy when their manhood and courage were brought into question! Instead, she reached across and touched the screen with one fingertip.
Connor jerked back as the screen lit up. A colorful picture appeared in the black field, it was a square with profile picture of a young blond woman. Carrie Underwood it said and Home Sweet Home below that. Emmy tapped once more on the picture and piano music emitted from the object.
“Sweet Mary, Mother of God,” he whispered in horror as a woman’s voice joined the piano.
Emmy noted a that his skin had paled dramatically and, taking pity on him, reached across, stopped the music and pulled it away from him. For a moment, he looked like he might be ill. Giving him a moment to collect his wits, Emmy toyed with the player. “It plays music and much more.” Moving to a different menu, she quickly shuffled through the pictures she had loaded on it, she found one she liked and turned it around to show it to Connor. “A picture of my mother.”
Connor saw the color image of a lovely woman with flowing blond hair that appeared to be rippling in a breeze. She looked a lot like Emmy as she had been yesterday, seated by the sound with the wind tossing her hair. The image was crisp and eerily lifelike and the woman in it was smiling merrily as it just caught in a moment rather than posing for twenty seconds while an exposure was taken. He reached a curious finger to touch the screen but the image slid away and another took its place. This one was of Emmy though she was much younger in this image. She was in a cheek to cheek embrace with her mother and both were wearing wide grins as they stared out at him. He touched it again and another slid into place. From a distance this time, the women stood in front of a building with Emmy wearing a gold gown and hat with a flat square on the top.
“My high school graduation,” she said softly. “Mom died not too long afterward.”
“She was a bonny lady,” he offered still trying to digest and understand what he was seeing.
“She was.”
“Where did ye get this…thing?” he asked finally.
“At a store,” she answered keeping her voice low and soothing. “It is not unique by any means; millions of people own one or something similar to it. On this, I have over 2000 songs, hundreds of photos, games, some movies and some audio books. Books read out loud and recorded so you can listen to them when you cannot just sit and read.”
“Thousands of songs?” he repeated in amazement turning it over in his hand. But it was so small! Surely this was impossible. He had never dreamed of such a thing! He had seen a cylindrical phonograph presented in Paris nine years before. It had been large and capable of playing but a single tune. The sound it had emitted had also been rough and uneven…nothing that could be compared to this. Was it possible that Emmy was saying the truth? That she had somehow traveled through time to him? It was fantastic and absurd, yet she was here.
He shook his head. But…
Everyone living in his castle had commented that they had never met another like her. All had assumed it was because she had been in America for too long, but what if it was because she had been raised a century ahead of them all?
Their conversation in Oban could be taken in a different light now. She had been trying to feel him out regarding her origins, testing his mind’s acceptance of her truth. Again, he shook his head. It could not be!
“If I had an app to make this easier for you, I would use it.” Her voice was teasing but the joke was obviously beyond him. Connor remained silent, staring at the machine. “Would you like me to leave you alone?” Emmy asked hesitantly. Perhaps she had pushed him too far for now. It might be best to give him time to digest her news, to come to terms with it. Emmy was encouraged however. Aside from his astonishment and awe, he seemed between his bouts of head shaking denial to be curious. Curiosity was good and often lent itself to positive conclusions. At least Connor was not staring at her with fear and disgust…yet.
Emmy pushed back from the table and started to stand but Connor caught her hand and she sat back down. “‘Tis extraordinary this device,” he admitted. “A part of me wants to know more about it. CD’s? Movies? I don’t know what those things are and I’m interested in knowing. However, connecting this fascination with immediately accepting yer claim…” he shook his head once again, “it defies logical and is, therefore, difficult to accept.”
“It’s alright,” Emmy assured him. “While in a perfect world you would have just accepted my word on the whole thing, I think you are taking it all pretty well so far. I was half-afraid you might completely freak out, so all and all I’m proud of you.”
“I don’t believe I have ever freaked out, as ye so elegantly phrase it,” he replied squaring his shoulders.
“I am curious though.”
“Curiosity is good.”
“Not for the cat and I fear I might take its place with this current state of affairs,” Connor admitted letting loose a long shaky sigh. “And while I am not yet admitting that I accept yer entire story, I must know, how does it work?” He pulled the iPhone back and laid it flat on the table in front of him.
Emmy demonstrated the menu to Connor showing him how to navigate the programs and get from one application to the next. When he questioned the music, she chose some examples of different genres of music for him. As she might have predicted, he leaned toward show tunes or ballads finding the rhythms to be similar to those he was used to. He did not seem to care for most of it though Emmy could only assume the sounds were so foreign to him that he could not enjoy it. She assured him that if he grew up with it he would enjoy it. Connor looked so doubtful that Emmy had to laugh.
“Here then, if you’re going to appreciate rock and roll, maybe we should start at the beginning.” Emmy flipped through playlists until she found what she was looking for. “This is Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll. He was there at the beginning of the whole shebang.” Tapping the screen, the open bars of “Don’t Be Cruel” thrummed out.
Emmy waited expectantly for him to catch on and start tapping his toe to the beat but after a long moment, Connor only looked skeptical. “Surely not?”
“Are you kidding me?” she gaped at him in denial. “This is Elvis for crying out loud! Everyone loves Elvis. Millions of women worldwide screamed and wailed for him! He would get up on stage and do his gyrations,” she stood and demonstrated. “It drove the women crazy!” Connor looked shocked and finally laughed out loud.
“Now I truly doubt yer sanity,” he chuckled. “Such music sung and danced to in such a fashion will never become popular or socially acceptable.”
“Oh, it will,” she assured him. “It already has. Elvis is the king and I wish someday I could prove it to you and tell you ‘I told you so’.” Still Emmy frowned at him. “You didn’t like my music?”
“There were some pieces that are nicely done, but...” he shrugged helplessly.
“I think I might have to hate you now,” she muttered taking the iPhone back and flipping through the menu idly.
“Perhaps with continued exposure, as ye suggested, I might come to appreciate it more,” he offered in consolidation.
“Don’t do me any favors,” she pouted.
“Tell me more about this ‘movies’ ye spoke of. I’ve never heard that word before,” he tried to pull the device back to her but Emmy hung on tightly with a muttered, “I’ll do it.”
Inspiration struck and Emmy started one, forwarded over the credits and hesitating only briefly before turning it toward him. Connor leaned forward in amazement as the actors spoke and the scenery moved by. “Incredible,” he whispered. “Marvelous.” After watching for several minutes, he turned to her with a surprised look. “I know this story!”
“I thought you might,” she beamed, pleased at his excitement and enthusiasm.
“It is Sense and Sensibility, the Jane Austen work.” He watched with excitement for a while longer. “It is not precisely right, however.”
“No, it’s not,” she told him. “While books and plays are often adapted for a movie, books usually have too much detail to translate in their entirety on to the big screen. Gone with the Wind for example, I’ve heard would have been a movie seven days long if they had filmed every word and action as it was written in the book.”
“Gone with the Wind?” he questioned.
“It’s another book, a long one. You’ll read it one day,” she shrugged and teased. “You might even like it. It’s about the Civil War.”
“So they take books and make these movies from them.”
“Not just from books, though stories like the Time Machine have been made over again and again. Some stories are written just for movies about everything from historic events to day to day life and science fiction.” Emmy wondered if it would be possible to sum up the whole of what movies encompassed. “You name it, it’s been done. They are movies about wars, the old west, the future, the past and things that have never, could never happen. There are no limitations.” Especially with the new CGI technologies which allowed for characters and worlds almost beyond imagination but that was an explanation for another day.
“What of Scotland? Have they made these movies about my nation?” Connor asked curiously.
“Dozens, at least,” she told him. “Braveheart was about William Wallace, there was Rob Roy…hmm, let me think. Brigadoon. Was that Irish or Scottish? Hmm…I think Mary, Queen of Scots was in…oh! I know! Highlander! Now there’s a classic. You might like that one. And there are a lot of Scottish actors, too. Sean Connery is a Scot and probably one of the biggest names ever,” she added shooting him a seductive look from beneath her lashes. “You talk just like him. It’s so sexy.”
Connor took her drawled statement and cheeky grin with smile, but returned his attention to the tiny images again as the Austen story unfolded. How wondrous, he thought. Stories that one could watch, already he could see the appeal and scope of such entertainment. He would have paid any sum in that moment to see one in person at a theater. He felt he could not exclaim his awe and wonder enough to truly express what he felt about this device that allowed him to see what would be.
“Will such an event be available in my lifetime?” he hesitantly asked in a low voice. “Will I have the opportunity to watch one in person?”
“Of course,” she assured him. “They are really not that far away. In fact, I think that maybe the beginnings are already in the works. But, a little FYI, the first ones will have no sound and be in black and white like your photographs are still, but they will get better as the science grows just like anything else.”
As the science grows. As time goes on.
He sighed. He could not refute the truth of her claim. A logical man weighed evidence and made conclusions based on those facts. As much as his emotions wanted to deny it, Connor knew logically if not yet in his heart that Emmy spoke true.
He needed to find old Donell. To determine his part in this whole thing. The man had been prying to everyone’s business for more years than Connor could remember. Some remarkable things had occurred over the years that had been contributed to him but nothing of this magnitude. He needed to be found, but the question remained. “How could Donell have performed such sorcery? It is beyond understanding.”
Emmy sighed in relief and slumped back in the chair. Connor had been staring blankly at the screen for so long that she had begun to fear where his ruminations had meandered to. He was starting to allow the truth of her claim if he was questioning the hows of the whole thing. From there it was a small step to total acceptance. She didn’t realize how tense she had become until her muscles were free to relax and the blood freed to flow back into her fingers from where they had been clenched so tightly together.
Still, Emmy didn’t have a real explanation to offer. “I don’t know how it happened or how he did it, Connor. If he did indeed do it and isn’t just some crazy old man spouting nonsense when I saw him at the inn. But he was there with me now he is here and so am I. He is the constant.” She shrugged, a pitiful response she was aware. “He said at the inn that it was about second chances and something about a simple life but other than that I’ve got nothing. I just don’t know.”
He raised his head and met her gaze for the first time since her revelation. “Ye said that before. Second chances?”
“He said there had been tragedy in your family and that everyone deserved a second chance.” Emmy thought again of the conclusion she had drawn. “I think he meant Dory. I think in my future that she might not have made it through her delivery. I looked at my guidebook after that and it said your title had passed to a cousin after your death. Not Ian and not a nephew. That either means that Ian and Dory had only girls or Ian….” She faltered.
“Died before me childless.” Connor’s voice was low and distraught.
“Yes.”
“And I had no heirs.”
“Yes,” she repeated softly.
Still he could not help but shake his head. He felt as if his mind were about to explode from the excess of information rolling through him this past hour. His future lay out before him. Unchangeable? Connor thought again about her passport and the birth date it had shown. Emmy wasn’t even of his lifetime. This device, this iPhone, was beyond his lifetime. He would never live so long to see its invention. He would be dead long before she was ever born.
He tapped the edge of the music player and stared unfocused at it, beyond it. A larger issue raised its head. If Emmy were of the future, was it against God’s plan that he love her? She could not have been meant for him to be born beyond his years. Connor pondered the natural order of God’s will but could not decide whether her arrival was a gift from God to complete his life or a bit of sorcery that could just as easily be taken away. One thought prompted another question.
“Ye said ye’re ignorant of the force that brought ye to this time? Ye were unaware?” There was an intensity to his expression that was not typically present. His dark eyes were turbulent, troubled. He looked…worried?
“What are you thinking?” she whispered.
“Ye were brought here without yer knowledge, aye?” She nodded with a sinking sense of dread when the words began to emerge cautiously. “What is to stop ye from being taken back in equal fashion?”
Emmy met his eyes and for a moment her personal fears, hopes and anxieties flared in them. He read them easily and felt a painful tightening of his gut.
“Nothing,” they said together.
Chapter 35
Connor disappeared into his bathroom using her suggestion to take some time alone and shut the door firmly. Running some cold water in the sink, he splashed his face and stared at his reflection in the mirror above.
For a moment his mind was a complete blank as he stared into the dark shock of his own eyes, rounded and weary.
He needed to examine the facts at his leisure and ponder the possibilities and implications of her presence. However, beyond the truth of her origin and her incredible story, it was the other issue that flooded his mind and sent him reeling. At any moment, she could be gone.
Just like that.
Was God so pitiless to dangle happiness before him and snap it away like a cat with its toy? They needed to find Donell, which was a certainty. If Emmy was right and it was his magic that had done this, then the old man was the key to keeping Emmy here with him. Emmy said Donell had mentioned everyone deserving a second chance. Emmy assumed that just Dory needed a second chance, but when she had also told him that he would die without an heir, it had occurred to Connor that perhaps she was his second chance as well. His life had already changed dramatically with her presence. If she were to stay, to become his countess, it would be his second chance to live the life he had imagined years ago. Life as a husband and father not just laird of his clan.
He just needed to have some faith that Emmy was his destiny. The chain of events that delivered her into his time was part of God’s greater plan. His destiny was to be hers and hers to be his. He felt certain that was it. That she was his second chance if he was to have one in this life. He needed to have faith.
Faith said that for everything there was a reason. Corinthians.
While bathing and dressing, Connor had become convinced of his deduction. He found Emmy in her room, dressed and reading a book while she waited for him to ponder their circumstances.
A Laird for All Time Page 22
