Best Laid Plaids (Kilty Pleasures)

by Ella Stainton

  Hmm. Not convincing at all. Christ on a...bugger.

  “You need one more to be completely convinced, correct?” His brain whirred more than usual.

  Joachim gave a single, glum nod.

  “Well, let’s be done with it then, hmm?” A sudden lightness overtook Ainsley as he figured out what he needed to do.

  “Yes.” Joachim’s voice was faint.

  Slamming his car door with a bit too much enthusiasm, Ainsley gave his mother one last reminder to leave them alone until Rosethorne.

  His companion didn’t have much to say until they crossed the Firth of Forth and drove past Queensferry.

  “Where are we going again?” he finally asked.

  “Um... Culross,” Ainsley said, as it was the first town he could name that had a decent pub. And quite delicious roast beef.

  Joachim chewed the inside of his cheek and flipped through a small notebook he pulled from his shirt pocket. “I thought we were headed to Dunfermline?”

  Heavens, no. There was a ghost at Dunfermline Abbey that gave even the most vehement non-believers gooseflesh. He squeezed Joachim’s knee, tickled with merely being alive, suddenly. God rot it—he was a very clever man. The rest of the idiocy notwithstanding.

  “Er, no. I thought we’d go to Culross. Quaint little place. Very historic.” With a lovely walk along the water.

  “And there’s a ghost there?” Joachim’s guileless face was so unsuspecting.

  “Um, some people say so.” Ainsley bit his lips to keep from grinning.

  Just not people who truly see ghosts.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Joachim

  He’d admit it was slightly wounding that Ainsley sounded so pleased that his departure was imminent. But he wasn’t going to leave the younger man with the memory of his being nothing but a wet rag, so he roused himself to sing Ainsley’s favorite song and was rewarded with a clasped hand over his.

  “Do you not like to drive, or is the price of a motorcar too dear?” Ainsley had enough tact to at least wince after asking that. “You riding the bus up here, I mean.”

  Joachim really must have looked more threadbare than he’d realized. Purchasing an Austin was out of the question, but the same could be said by nearly everyone.

  “I’ve a tidy amount tucked away, and I share a house with my sister and her daughters until I finish this degree and go back to work full-time.” He was bristly, but he couldn’t help it.

  “Heavens—living with your sister? That must make it difficult to...” Ainsley didn’t need to finish the thought as they both understood very well what he meant.

  And he was right. Joachim wouldn’t dream of bringing a man home to what he thought as Elin’s house even if he paid most of the bills. “No, it’s not something I do. But you live with your sister too, don’t you?”

  “She lives with me. I inherited Rosethorne from my mother, but Trix needed a place to go when our father disowned her. We rub along nicely and she never raises her eyebrows no matter who I bring home as long as we don’t make enough noise to startle Freddy.”

  Imagining a steady stream of lovers marching up to Ainsley’s bedroom was unsettling.

  Perhaps for once, Ainsley had the wit to realize that too because he changed the subject abruptly. “You could learn to drive with your left foot, though, couldn’t you? I mean, if you wished to.”

  Hmm. “I don’t need one to get around—we live close enough to the university that I can walk or take a bus if need be. But it would be something to think about.” If he had a vehicle to learn on, which he didn’t.

  “And what are your plans once you finish school?” Ainsley’s thumb traced over Joachim’s knuckles and made the hairs stand up on the older man’s arm.

  A few drops of rain on the windscreen turned to a deluge in under a minute and the steady beat of the wipers near hypnotized him. His companion was the one to clear his throat this time with a loud “Ahem.”

  Joachim started. “I’ve been all but offered a job lecturing in Durham.”

  “And that’s what you wish to do?”

  “Unequivocally.” Though his voice held a hint of doubt that he didn’t wish to examine.

  “But you could be hired to lecture without your PhD.”

  This was true, of course. He’d held this argument with Stuart on more than one occasion. “Yes, but I—well, this is perhaps a silly reason—but I want the reputation and stability that goes along with the title ‘doctor.’ For the sake of research. So people believe what I say.”

  “Being a doctor doesn’t preclude people thinking you’re an imbecile, I assure you. And I’m not convinced that you ought to scream to the world that you speak to ghosts, in any case. It won’t do any favors for your career prospects.” The younger man’s tone was upbeat, but Joachim didn’t miss the flared nostrils or hard set of his jaw.

  Fucking hell, how was he going to manage this? He’d have to face what to do with that paper once he got home and had time to think, because Ainsley was correct—admitting that he’d seen the spirits would put an end to his dreams before he even got a chance to live them. Not only would the dissertation committee laugh him out of the room, but his colleagues at the asylum... Damn. It hurt to even think about.

  The automobile twisted its way through winding roads and hills unlike the flatter terrain of his own home in Durham where he’d grown up. Luckily, he didn’t get carsick. Ainsley raced through a sharp turn between ancient buildings that barely had room to fit one car and he held his breath that no one was headed in the opposite direction. Graham ground the brakes to a halt on a narrow side street and threw the car into park.

  “Will we have lunch first or find a ghost?” Ainsley leaned close enough that if they weren’t on a public road, he’d have kissed him.

  But they were, and the last thing Joachim needed was to be arrested for gross indecency on top of career suicide. He pulled back. “Ghost.”

  Might as well not drag out the inevitable. He’d go home and this adventure would quickly fade into a memory as he busied himself with his real life. And riddling out how to maneuver through the potential minefield of his newfound psychic abilities.

  Ainsley winked and hopped out of the car as though he couldn’t wait. Joachim grabbed his stick and groaned at the cobble street they’d walk down. The unevenness made his ankle and shin ache. In the middle of the street was a slightly raised centerline of flat stones, so he chose that path.

  “You know, if you were a commoner when this street was first laid, and you walked there, someone might nail you to the Tron by your ears.” Ainsley stepped next to him, their shoulders touching every few steps when the mismatched stones threw them off their gait. He pointed to a large post in the middle of a square. “That’s the Tron. You’d have to rip them to get free.” He made a gagging noise and their elbows knocked each other’s as they reached to touch their own ears at the same time, laughing.

  “I remember learning that sort of thing at school,” Joachim mused, flashes of years copying down facts that never felt connected to actual people or places.

  “People in the past were so brutal to each other, weren’t they?” Ainsley paused at the foot of the post, examining like there might be scraps of ear left behind, hundreds of years later.

  Joachim scowled. “I’d say the war taught me that nothing much has changed aside from the sorts of weapons they can use to be brutal to more people at once.”

  His companion’s body stiffened. “I would have gone, had it been on still when I was old enough. No one was around to have stopped me.” He shot a glance under his lashes at Joachim, almost embarrassed. “It’s a difficult thing, you know. Forever falling short without having had the opportunity to prove that you’re made of the same mettle.”

  Trying to synthesize his feelings about that, Joachim held his tongue. They walked past the large or
ange sprawl of a building. Culross Palace, Ainsley said as he chattered about some long-ago king who’d spent the night once.

  In the garden, some sort of theater performance was going on. A woman in a heavy, old-fashioned dress with a large hat carried a basket over her arm full of herb cuttings. She smiled at Joachim and he doffed his hat. Ainsley gave him a peculiar look and he hitched his head toward the woman. An odd shadow crossed Graham’s face as he raised his hat too before clapping it back on his head.

  After another five minutes lost in thought, Joachim broke the companionable silence. “I cried like a baby when I thought I was going to die on that damned patch of mud with my leg so torn up.” He took a ragged breath and stopped walking. His ankle hurt and the drizzle wasn’t helping his mood. “No need to look at me as though I’m any sort of hero. I was lucky enough to make it home in one piece.”

  “All of you were. Every last one. Poor bastards.” A cloud crossed Ainsley’s eyes. “I don’t know much about how Charlie died; I just know he didn’t come back.” He paused as though ready to say more, but turned on his heel back to town. His voice was forced but light. “I think I’m ready to eat something. My head aches a bit. Do you mind if we do this another day?”

  Reprieve.

  Joachim nodded. “I don’t say I do. Nasty weather to be tromping around outside without boots.”

  Ainsley tossed him a grateful look over his shoulder. He inhaled deep enough that he could have blown the clouds from the sky on his exhale. “Sunday, then? You planned on being here past Sunday originally, so we can make a day of it? Or Monday if it’s raining? You didn’t appear until Wednesday, so that gives the weather some time to sort itself.”

  Relief dripped down Joachim’s whole body along with the rain, and he nodded at the back of the slender man hurrying toward the tavern, his setter keeping pace. Ainsley abruptly turned and looked at Joachim’s walking stick. He walked back. “I didn’t mean to be rude and race ahead.”

  “I know.” Joachim had watched enough people try to outrun their feelings to not be bothered. He poked his free hand into Ainsley’s rib cage, hoping to lighten the mood. “Tell me, what will I be eating for lunch, Dr. Graham?”

  Graham tilted his lips into a full-bodied grin. “I’ll be having roast beef, but you’re free to eat whatever you choose.”

  He leaned in to tickle Ainsley’s ear with his voice and his beard. “Oh, I don’t know. I rather like it when you order for me.”

  Ainsley held the door for him and Violet. He pinched Joachim on his arse as it swung closed behind. “It’s only fair. I like when you order me, as well.”

  The younger man scooted past Joachim and dug his hands into his pockets, so the fabric of his trousers was tight across his bum. He tossed a wink over his shoulder.

  Joachim sat while Graham fetched drinks and told the barkeep what they’d eat.

  This was the sort of life that would be too easy to fall into. Nothing like his real one where he had weeks without four hours in a stretch that weren’t for sleeping. And even though he had friends—always had friends, he did—none of them were people who knew all the secret parts about him that Ainsley figured out so quickly. With everyone else, his life was segregated into quarters.

  “What do you do besides...this?” he asked when Graham sat down with two pints and a bowl of nuts.

  Fluttering his eyelashes in his way, Ainsley shrugged. “Drink beer in the afternoon? I assure you, this isn’t a habit.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” His ginger did make him laugh. Er... Ainsley. “Now that you aren’t teaching, I mean. What do you do to fill your time?” Which was the most politic way to say it, after all.

  But Graham’s eyes dropped to the table and he dug around until he found a walnut, which he cracked against the edge of the table before answering. “Um...not much, honestly.”

  He had no intention to interrogate the man, but now his curiosity was piqued. “Are you writing? I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed your book on ancient naming practices and the landscapes of Scotland.” Joachim gave his broadest smile to coax one out of his companion, whose eyebrows drew nearer and nearer as he spoke.

  “I doubt there’s a hillock not named after some old legend.” Ainsley smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. He ran his finger down the condensation of his glass and flicked his fingers at the ground. “But you read that? I’m surprised. I don’t think they printed five hundred copies.”

  “One of them is next to my bed at home. I’ve read all your books, in fact. And I wonder are you writing another?”

  Ainsley grinned, his eyes sparkling from the reflection of the ceiling lights. Or perhaps because he was marvelous to look at. “Fancy you reading my books in your bed before I even knew you existed. It’s an intriguing thought.”

  Joachim pressed his knee to Ainsley’s under the table. “Not terribly intriguing—I assumed you were a charming nutter.” He enjoyed the flash of outrage that Graham sparked. “Now I know better. But, as a fan—what will you work on next?”

  Heaping plates of roast beef and potatoes were set in front of them and Ainsley waited until the barkeep pottered off before answering. “I’ve lost the heart for it, if that makes any sense? I...well...to be honest, I had a bit too much faith in myself and my reputation, and I thought that it would be enough to make people believe that I wasn’t a liar. Or a nutter, as you so eloquently put it.”

  Joachim set down his fork. He’d not expected such a frank response from a butterfly like Ainsley Graham.

  “I do beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to mock.”

  Ainsley gestured for him to continue eating and stuck a half of a roasted new potato in his own mouth, chewing and speaking at once and somehow not looking like a pig. “It’s actually a relief to speak to someone who knows the work I went through to get where I was. You understand what I’ve lost more than the rest of my friends.”

  He searched Joachim’s eyes and gave a rueful smile. “If I could take it back—I would. In a heartbeat. It’s enough that I know what I said was true; the rest of the world didn’t have to believe me, too. That was pure arrogance.”

  Though the beef was tender, Joachim struggled to chew. He understood all too well what Ainsley had given up, and he wished that there was a way to turn back time and warn Graham not to be so convinced of infallibility. Even if it was one of the things he found most alluring about the younger man.

  He swallowed his food with a large sip of beer.

  “It seems to me, you have two choices. Either you redirect your scholarly ambitions back to your folklore and history and pretend what happened didn’t.”

  Ainsley bit his lip and scowled down at his plate. “What’s the alternative?”

  “You could continue as you’ve begun and write your ghost stories with as much proof as you can muster and say sod all what anyone else thinks of you.”

  The beautiful young man who’d begun to burrow into Joachim’s heart gave him a soul-searching look that gave the older man much too much credit. “Which would you choose, if it were you?”

  Cockburn sighed. He’d been turning the dilemma over in his mind since he’d seen the bloody thing in the hedge and realized any paper he planned to write would be a lie.

  “Bugger if I know, Dr. Graham. Bugger if I know.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Ainsley

  Was it possible to outgrow your skin? Because Ainsley twitched as though he had, and it was bloody itchy and wretched and tight. Made him need to take a long walk or run or just lose himself. Figure out what it was that he wished to do, now that he finally asked the question out loud, instead of allowing it to roll around in his mind at all hours of the day and night.

  For two years, he’d been in a sort of slump that was difficult to drag himself out of the house without prodding from Trixie or Barley.

  He cut his eyes to Cockburn, who bro
oded out the window. No, that was unfair. He was transfixed the way Ainsley was himself half the time. Like he knew the younger man was thinking about him, Joachim touched his cheek with the rough side of his thumb and dragged down.

  There was a tenderness to it that made him angry and thrilled and confused all mashed together. And God dammit, so itchy inside.

  “Penny for your thoughts?” Cockburn asked.

  Ainsley did his best to keep from rolling his eyes at the question that his mother had used all too often during his childhood, but the flash of a smile from Joachim made his heart pound. “Probably not worth the coin.”

  Please let there be none of that dreck that Ainsley hated—the sort of emotional clawing, like he was adrift and being dragged down into the pitch-black places Mama used to tell him about as a child when she told bedtime stories. Selkies and water horses and all the frightening things that lived under the surface, where you didn’t know they were until it was too late and they’d got you by the neck to steal your skin or your soul.

  But Joachim merely smiled. Steady. Dry land, under the sun. Warm.

  There was a safety to Cockburn that he felt when he spent any time with Stuart. A visit or two with his family each year was all Stuart managed. A rather cursory question and answer on how things were going, which meant finances and new roofs and why did he buy such a flash motorcar? They forgot the other existed the other ninety percent of the time. But Ainsley knew that Stuart would never hesitate to help if he were called on.

  And that was the essence of what he felt Joachim was like when he wasn’t being bossy and ordering him about naked. Not troubling. Or judging or hard to be with. Just—reliable. And who’d have ever thought that would be a turn-on?

  Cockburn waved his hand, once. It was enough. “Has inflation raised the cost of your mind’s offerings, Dr. Graham?”

  Violet raised her furry head as if waiting to hear what he’d been running from for two years, as well.