“Great visual. Thanks for that,” Connal said, climbing another foot.
“I’m serious. Go back down. Right now.”
“It’s safer to go down than up at this point, and I’m not going anywhere until we’ve had a chance to talk. If you don’t want me to fall, stand back and let me in.”
The thought of Connal falling . . . Panic squeezed Anna’s lungs. She stepped back, watching with her heart still beating a furious tattoo until he had grabbed the bottom jamb of the window and swung safely through. Unfolding himself, he dusted his hands against his jeans.
“Well, I haven’t done that in a while,” he said, breathing heavily. “It’s harder than I remembered. I must be out of shape.”
Anna crossed her arms to keep from pulling him close in sheer relief. “I take it there was a lot of second-story work in your misspent youth?”
“Nothing that exciting.” He looked down at her with a wicked grin. “The studios used to let me do some of my own stunts before the insurance got too high. I managed to learn a few tricks.”
“Did you miss learning about the invention of the telephone? I hear it’s useful for talking to people—and much safer than climbing the side of a house at midnight.”
“It’s only useful with people who don’t have a history of not picking up when they don’t want to talk to someone. And I figured if I waited until morning and came by, it would be unbearably awkward for Elspeth if you refused to see me.” Connal closed the window against the cold night air and rubbed his fingers together briskly before tucking them into his armpits to try to warm them.
Anna retreated to the desk and set down the lamp, adding some distance between them. Not that Connal was wrong.
“I didn’t set out with the intention of deceiving you, Anna. Please believe me.” Connal’s voice was so soft she had to strain to hear him. “And hurting you in any way was the very last thing I wanted. I’ve been going about this entire relationship backward, and I can’t tell you how much I wish I hadn’t made such a muddle of it.”
“Relationship?” Anna shivered and leaned back again the desk.
“What would you call it?” He shot her a look she couldn’t read, part sadness and part something else. “It’s more than casual. It has been since the moment I saw you, and I hoped a month would be enough to give us a good foundation for seeing where it could go.”
“You yelled at me the first time you saw me, remember?” Anna gripped the edge of the desk more tightly. “Maybe I should have stuck with first impressions. I’d be feeling like less of a fool right now.”
“I am sorry.”
“I told you about Henry. You told me you didn’t want to go back to acting.”
“Acting and writing are two different things. But you’re right: I’m not very good at trusting people. I’ve been betrayed too often—and so have you. Let me ask you something. If you hadn’t told me about Henry, if you hadn’t had the experience with Henry, would you have expected me to tell you that I was Graham three weeks into our relationship?”
“I didn’t think it was the kind of relationship that dealt in weeks,” Anna said.
“It isn’t, and right now, I’m afraid of losing you before we find out what we can be together. I can’t tell you what my life will look like a year from now, or three years from now, but I know that I want what we have to work. Can’t that be enough?” He took a step closer, then two, until they stood a foot apart. He raised his hand and brushed the back of his fingers against her cheek. “Please don’t throw it away because I made one mistake. A big mistake, but it was only one. I’ve been honest with you about everything else. Maybe I was afraid, and I think you’re afraid, too. I think that fear is keeping us both from moving forward.”
He turned his hand, cupping her cheek, and instinctively Anna pressed her face against his palm. How could she crave his touch so much? She couldn’t get close enough. Skin to skin, she wanted to melt into him.
Was he right? Was it easier to focus on his fear than it was to release her own? There was little she hated worse than a hypocrite. Also, she hadn’t forgotten what Elspeth had said about regrets and could-have-beens.
“You scare me because you have the power to hurt me even worse than I’ve been hurt before.”
“We have the power to hurt each other. Please don’t shut me out.” His voice trembled, and there was pain in his eyes.
Taking the last step, Anna raised her face to his, then stood on her toes to meet him as his lips came down to hers. The contact was bittersweet, too much and not enough, and yet a warm glow of happiness and relief started at her core and spread outwards until she thought it would burst through her skin. There didn’t seem to be enough space in her to hold it all.
Had she felt half of this for Henry? No wonder she was scared to death. Connal’s touch plunged her into a tumble of emotions that went so far beyond those fledgling feelings of childhood memories, hope, and heartbreak that it was like a forest fire burning through everything in its path. She kissed him back, her hands threading themselves into his hair, pulling him closer until he groaned against her lips and drew away.
“I’d better not stay any longer,” he said against her hair. “We’re not teenagers, even if that’s how you make me feel, and I don’t think I could survive the mortification of being caught by Elspeth in the middle of the night. Come to lunch with me tomorrow? We can talk some more?”
Anna nodded into his shoulder, but neither of them let go. It felt too much like Connal would vanish if she let go of him, as if she had conjured him in her sleep, and when he stepped back, she felt cold all the way to her bones.
She made him tiptoe with her down the stairs to leave by the front door. Then too keyed up to sleep after he’d gone, she fixed herself a cup of tea and sat in the front parlor in the dark, looking out at the cloud-chased moonlight rippling on the loch. How was she to make sense of what she was doing, of what he’d said, of where the two of them were going? In one respect, he was right, though. At the very least, they needed to know what they had together before it was time for her to leave.
It struck her that every relationship had turning points, the way turning points set the framework of any story. With Connal, she’d passed the point where she’d accepted the call to adventure, the midpoint when she was no longer the same person she had been before. Where did her story with him end? She didn’t know, but she couldn’t turn back; she knew that much. He had drawn her all the way out of the safe, familiar walls she had built around her heart, and whatever happened between them from here on out, she was going to feel every bruise and bump and bit of joy.
Killing Swine
Where hast thou been, sister?
Killing swine.
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
In the good news department, the festival poster at the A84 junction survived the night, and there was no suspicious activity recorded on the camera trap. Brando stopped by at eleven the next morning to deliver the message along with the new posters he’d picked up from the printer.
“Maybe Connal’s warning put JoAnne off, presuming it was her. She has to love Moira more than she hates the festival,” Anna said, standing on the stoop holding the front door open while the wind blustering off the loch threatened to rip it from her hand. “Do you want to come in?”
“Afraid I can’t. Julian Ashford’s turning out to be a bit of a diva. He told me last night he was exhausted after the rehearsal and there wasn’t enough whiskey in the world to make up for it, so he planned to sleep until noon. Also would I please do him a brunch for one o’clock. If we weren’t desperate to have him for the play, I’d give him sausage and eggs and be done with it.”
“We are desperate, though, so sweeten him up with something delicious.”
“All right, since you ask so nicely.” Brando gave her a wide, boyish grin. “Why don’t you come around for lunch yourself, you and Elspeth. Bring Connal, too, if you like. In fact, I’ll phone him and demand he com
es. You can all keep me from strangling Julian before tonight’s rehearsal.”
“Was it that bad?”
“He was brilliant. Apart from that, Rhona threw herself at him, Sorcha and Fenella fought like cats, and Erica still looks like she smells something foul every time Lysander professes his love to Helena. But we shall persevere. Worst case, we’ll have to give out free whiskey in the tent before opening night and hope the audience is too drunk to notice the bad performances.”
With a wave of his hand and a scratch of gravel beneath his boot heel, Brando swung himself down the steps and hopped back in the Land Rover to drive away. Shivering in her thin sweater, Anna slammed the door on the cold wind and retreated into the house.
Making her way to Elspeth’s study, she had barely crossed the threshold before Elspeth held a finger in the air. “Hold on just a minute, love. I’m trying to snipe a box of museum junk on this auction site,” Elspeth said, her hand hovering over the keyboard. She stared at the screen, then suddenly slapped the enter key and watched the screen some more. “Ha.” She looked up with a delighted smile. “Who says the early bird gets the worm? I’m the eagle who swoops in and snatches it out of the early bird’s mouth.”
“That’s a terrible metaphor,” Anna said, “and don’t you have enough junk in the museum already? The room’s full to overflowing, which I know for a fact since I helped you move it all.”
“This is for the gift shop.”
Anna blinked. “What gift shop?” In all the time since she’d arrived, there’d been a total of four people who had stopped by the museum, and she’d never seen any sign of anything for sale other than a carousel of dusty postcards in a corner. “I assumed that was just on the sign to bring people in? I thought you probably told people the sign was outdated or something.”
“Of course, there’s a gift shop. It’s those last two cases nearest the door. I tell people they can buy anything they want from there—for the right price, of course.” Elspeth typed a few keystrokes into the computer then shifted back in her chair.
“Hold on.” Anna gaped at her. “You can’t do that when you’re making up stories about where things came from. That’s misrepresentation—”
“It’s not as though I’m saying something is three-hundred years old when it isn’t. I’m only making up a story about who it belonged to—”
“—and if you tell them something belonged to Reverend Kirk or Bonnie Prince Charlie or Rob Roy MacGregor, then you’re adding to the value of the thing. That’s fraud.”
“Fraud-schmaud. I explain that who it belonged to can’t be proven. Look at the placards carefully next time you’re in the ballroom. They all say ‘believed to have belonged to’ or ‘believed to have been used by.’ Which is true. By the time I’m finished telling a story, I believe it myself. Things could have happened exactly the way I say they did, and there’s no proving they didn’t.”
“Aunt Elspeth—”
“Och, love,” Elspeth laughed at her. “Let an old woman have her fun, won’t you? Wait a wee bit and let me pay this. Then you can tell me whatever you came in to tell me.” She turned her attention back to the screen, and Anna, shaking her head, picked up the file of never-ending tasks from the desk and took them back to her laptop in the kitchen where she worked until Connal came by to pick them up for brunch.
Julian Ashford appeared older than he did on screen when they met him at the hotel. He was also a little blurred around the edges, as if too much drink and life had seeped in beneath his skin. But he wielded charm in an opulent, slightly over-the-top way that was both mildly irritating and irresistible.
“So you’re the girl who managed to coax Connal out of his hermit’s den?” he said, pulling out Anna’s chair for her with a flourish as the four of them sat down at a round table that Brando had set up in the living room of Julian’s suite.
“Not quite out,” Anna said, tucking the napkin on her lap, “and mainly that was Brando—and I suppose we have Rhona to credit, too, since she was the one who suggested having Connal direct.”
“Her.” Julian raised a dark eyebrow and rolled his eyes. “If someone doesn’t murder her in the next few days, I’ll be tempted to do her in myself.”
Anna sent Connal a wary glance. “I take it the rehearsal was not a huge success last night.”
Connal’s lips twitched at the corners, and he leaned back to let the server deposit a salad of purple, green, and red lettuces peppered with nasturtium blossoms in front of him. “Rhona’s only meant to be there to deliver Vanessa’s lines while everyone else rehearses, but she had us stop two dozen times so she could repeat a line because she thought she could do it better. Especially when it gave her an excuse to get close to Julian and look soulfully into his eyes.”
Julian nodded, looking both annoyed and amused, the hazel eyes that laughed out at the world a stark contrast against the dark skin that came courtesy of his Nigerian mother. If Rhona couldn’t have Connal, she could do worse than Julian.
“Be patient with her, all of you,” Anna said. “She’s self-absorbed, but basically harmless. We’re better off humoring her.”
“I reserve judgment on that score.” Julian picked a roll out of the basket that the server offered him. “Meanwhile her acting skills render the lines unrecognizable, worse than the brilliant buffoonery that Graham Connor has perpetuated on the script. I suppose the worst of it is that when it comes down to it, I’m no longer the womanizer I like to think myself. I prefer my women to have a little mystery.”
“You prefer to have them mysteriously throwing themselves at you,” Connal countered, taking a sip of water.
“All right, I don’t mind having choices, but I wouldn’t choose that woman if you paid me. And those daughters of hers. The one takes every opportunity to upstage her sister, and the other one is so busy trying to dodge around her that she looks like Charles Condomine at the end of Blythe Spirit, looking for whichever piece of the furnishings is going to get thrown at her next.”
“You just did that play at the Gielgud last year, didn’t you?” Connal commented with an innocent look. “I heard the critics raved.”
“Don’t change the subject, Connal. Even my favorite subject—me—won’t get you off the hook for saddling me with those three, and that Erica woman is no better. She’s stirring up trouble, running between the girls and their mother like a carrier pigeon every ten minutes with a new piece of gossip.” He waggled his fork at Connal. “All I can say is that I hope you’ve warned Vanessa, old man, because you’ve met Vanessa’s temper, and so have I. I’ve no desire to meet it again anytime soon. The only thing you have going for you is this fabulous food, and I must say, I’d put up with quite a bit to eat like this every day.”
Anna couldn’t disagree. Every course the servers brought out was better than the last, and by the time Brando himself arrived with a delicate rhubarb crumble with whiskey-flavored cream, Julian was in a better mood. Anna was in awe.
“You made all this?” she asked. “It’s incredible.”
“Well, I do have a little help,” Brando said, laughing at her.
“You know what I mean.”
“All I can tell you is that I’ve had worse food at Michelin 3-star restaurants,” Julian said, “and if you keep feeding me like this, I’ll sing your praises from the rooftops to everyone I know.” He raised his glass to Brando in a toast.
A faint wash of red colored Brando’s cheeks, and he brushed a few stray crumbs from the white cloth at Elspeth’s elbow. “I’m glad to hear it, and of course I’d be grateful.”
Although he still wore a kilt, he had changed into black shoes shined to a gleaming finish and a crisp white chef’s jacket with a double row of buttons. Not used to seeing him in professional mode, Anna felt another twinge of guilt for having been taken in by his easygoing nature. Each detail of the meal and the hotel was both perfect and surprising, with elegant modern touches and dramatic accents that emphasized instead of taking away from the traditional
roots. Like Brando himself, the effect was warm and effortlessly inviting.
“Weddings,” she said to him on the way out the door later. “You need to do wedding and honeymoon packages and anniversaries. Events. Lots and lots of events.”
“Are you volunteering to organize?” he asked. “Because you’re hired.”
Anna glanced at Connal, who had stopped ahead at the door to wait for her, but they hadn’t discussed her staying. Only that they would see what happened. “If I can’t volunteer, then Elspeth should,” she said. “Or someone. This place should be full every night of the year.”
She couldn’t keep from thinking about the hotel, and the glen in general—and how quickly the future was looming—while she and Elspeth worked that afternoon, but she pushed the thoughts aside. As the day wore on, she had no time to worry about anything other than the fresh wave of chaos that descended.
Angus Greer and Rory MacLaren had a fistfight at the edge of the loch and had to be pulled off each other by Flora Macara, who waded into the water and dragged them apart as they were thrashing around the shallows. Then the awards Anna had ordered arrived with Piobaireachd misspelled on the piping trophy and the separate medals for the Shean Trubhais and Reel of Tulloch twelve-and-under dance categories blended into a single medal labeled Shean Tulloch. She double-checked the printout to be sure the error wasn’t hers and released a sigh of relief when she found she had typed them all into the form correctly. Still, it meant doing the dinner dishes with the phone wedged between her ear and shoulder while she argued with the manager and talked him into an expedited re-order.
That night’s rehearsal went no better. Anna stood out of the way at the back of the great hall where the tables had been pushed aside and tape laid out on the floor to mark the boundaries of the stage. Connal had even marked precisely where Sorcha was supposed to stand, with numbers written on each spot so she couldn’t claim confusion. But the moment she was onstage, whenever Fenella spoke, Sorcha still edged around so that she was the one in the audience’s line of sight.
Lake of Destiny Page 15
