He shot her a wild grin. “Being a major in the British Army has its advantages. The Falisa keep their activities secret from the Lewises, but they dinnae bother to keep them a secret from the army. They cannae, do ye see? They need the army to fight the Lewises, or at least to turn a blind eye while the Gunns do it. They sent a message to Major Rickards in charge of another garrison to the effect that one of their senior members planned to come down to Aberdeen. They informed Rickards they planned to track down two members of the Lewis band of pirates, wanting him to support the agent and step up his street safety patrols while their man was in town, in case the situation deteriorated.”
Ellen narrowed her eyes. “Let me guess. Obasi wanted Rickards to cover you while they shook up the whole garrison, eliminating the major in charge.”
He turned away. “Ye catch on quick. I didnae ken they were after Malcolm too, but if ye’re right about Obasi writing that letter, it may be too late. Someone else will find out about it and come after Malcolm. He’ll never work for the Gunns again. He’ll become a fugitive like the rest of us.”
“That can’t be right,” she countered. “He’s been working for them for three hundred years. He’s still in charge of them in 2018. He only just found the letter, so no one ever found him out. He never got caught. Obasi must have hidden the letter, or else it got lost.”
“It doesnae matter overmuch,” he replied. “We’re still here, and we still need to find a way out of this mess.”
“How are we going to do that without going out in the open?”
At that moment, he tugged her hand. “Now!”
He launched himself out of the undergrowth, into the street. Before she could stop him, he towed her toward the tavern door. In a heartbeat, he shoved her into the coach, dropped a handful of coins into the footman’s hand, and climbed aboard.
Ellen shrank into a corner while Louis wedged himself in tight against her. She would have liked to withdraw even farther to avoid him smashing his body on top of her, but there was nowhere else to go. Passengers packed the coach to bursting.
The better-dressed travelers turned up their noses at Louis in his kilt. Anger erased her embarrassment. How dare they discriminate against a man in Highland dress? She liked him better in a kilt than in his twenty-first-century business clothes. It gave him an unmistakable masculinity no suit could match.
The whip cracked outside, and the horses sprang forward. The coach lurched and then clattered over the cobblestones on the way out of Aberdeen. Houses, shops, and buildings fell away out of sight and gave way to rolling countryside.
Ellen watched the scenery rushing past the window. There was nothing else to do, but she didn’t want to do anything else anyway. Too many thoughts demanded her attention. She’d been in Aberdeen a half an hour at most and was now on the run to escape being charged with murder.
Louis’s big body smashed her against the seat, but the incessant jiggling numbed the awkwardness after a while. The coach swayed and jolted in every direction at once. If he hadn’t been squashing her, someone else would have been instead. When she bothered to think about it, she didn’t really mind. He’d intimated that they got serious in Scotland, so what was she shrinking from, anyway? What was a man’s body here or there?
The hours of travel gave her plenty of time to reflect on that possibility. When was the last time she’d indulged in a guy as handsome as Louis? How about never? He electrified any room he entered. She still struggled to accept the fact that he was immortal. Ned and Malcolm were too, but here she was, sitting next to him in 1740. He was as strong and stout and hearty as he was in 2018. He never aged.
He smelled like any ordinary man. The pores around the whiskers on his cheek indented the skin, just like any normal man. He fell asleep during the trip, and his hair got messed up. For all she could tell, he was exactly the same as any mortal man. He wasn’t a god. That was for certain. He’d told her himself he could be killed.
Ree must have known all along. These immortal men wanted to create an elixir of immortality, to change a bunch of human women into immortals so they could reproduce. Ree was helping them because she was in a serious relationship with Ned. That much was obvious, so she must expect to take this elixir herself—if she survived long enough to see it created. She used her chemical knowledge to make the formula, and now she had gotten Primary Industries working on it too.
Would she have done anything differently if she’d known then what she knew now? Would she have chosen not to come if she had a chance to think the matter over in a quiet place first? Maybe she would. Then again, maybe she wouldn’t.
At sunset, the coach halted at an inn far out on the bleak Highlands. A mournful wind howled over rolling moors and fields and sobbed around the eaves of the tumbled-down building. The thatched roof sagged around moss-encrusted stone walls.
The people milling about outside reminded Ellen of the building. Hard weather and hard living had battered them. None of them wore clothes as nice as the ones she saw in Aberdeen. Their dirty tartans, stained shirts, and mud-spattered shoes blended into the landscape. These rough people sprang from the land itself. They took their nourishment from the Earth. It ran in their veins and spoke its haunting language through their mouths.
The grizzled old landlord stooped under the skewed lintel to help the passengers inside. When he spoke to the driver and Louis, Ellen couldn’t understand a word they said in their harsh accents. They exchanged a few spats of banter, then everyone exploded in laughter.
Ellen cringed. Were they laughing at her? They couldn’t be. Could they? She never got a chance to figure it out before Louis waved her into a room alight with the flames from the fireplace. Her head almost touched the low ceiling beams.
She went straight to the hearth to warm herself, as did the other passengers. Louis disappeared with the landlord. Ellen stole sidelong glances at her fellow passengers, but she dared not speak to them. She didn’t want to explain anything and definitely didn’t want to make up a lie about her circumstances.
Fortunately for her, no one asked. Her disguise must have done its job. A tall man with an upper-class English accent complained about the weather. “It’s supposed to be spring, and look at it. It’s blowing a freezing gale outside. I suppose this is what passes for spring in this unaccountable country. I’ll wager the next thing we’ll get is snow. I could well believe it. Everything works backward around here—the people not the least.”
The other passengers tittered nervously and cast furtive glimpses into the corners to check who was listening. The English didn’t hold much stock in Scotland or the Scottish. Ellen’s thin knowledge of the time told her that. Still, such blatant discrimination shocked her. Modern America taught her a different way of dealing with people who were different.
Louis returned, and for the first time, she saw him through the eyes of her fellow passengers. The Englishman tried to turn up his nose, but she sensed the tension running through them at the approach of a Highlander. He towered inches over their heads, and his chiseled shoulders and kilt swishing around his knees gave him a decidedly dominating presence. He scared them, and they shrank from him.
Louis’s long black hair had come loose from the pigtail tied behind his neck and streamed around his sharp cheekbones. The indentation in his chest where his muscles met his sternum showed between the lapels of his white shirt. His sporran kicked back and forth between his thighs when he walked.
Ellen’s eyes traced every inch of him as his traced every face aimed back at him. He saw it all in a single glance. He strode up to Ellen. “I’ve got yer room paid for upstairs. Come along. There’s a fire there ye can warm yerself on, and supper’ll be brought up to ye in short order.”
Before she could respond, the Englishman interjected, “Perhaps the lady would prefer to take her meals down here with us. After all, she may find the company better down here than dining upstairs alone.”
Louis’s eyes flashed on the man. “Did ye hear me ask yer o
pinion on the lady’s accommodation? I’ll thank ye to keep to yer own business, sir, as this conversation doesnae concern ye.” He put out his hand to escort Ellen away.
Ellen touched his arm. “Please. Just let it go. It’s not worth fighting about.”
“It most certainly isn’t,” the Englishman replied. “Just remember, madam, if you wish for some pleasant company tonight, you need not remain confined to your room, no matter what this heathen says about it.”
Louis sneered back. “Perhaps ye’ve heard the old adage that it’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open yer mouth and remove all doubt.”
Ellen darted between the two men and held up her hands to both. “Please. Don’t turn this into—”
“If you think you can confine a lady to her room against her will,” the Englishman offered, “perhaps you’d rather take a lesson from the constable. His Majesty’s law still holds in this barbaric hellhole.”
A woman at his right nodded her approval of that suggestion.
Ellen’s heart sank, even as her pulse thumped at the prospect of these men getting into a fight over her on her first night in Scotland.
Just then, the Englishman tried to take hold of Ellen’s elbow and draw her back. “You don’t have to go with him, you know. If he’s holding you under some constraint—”
Louis straightened his back to swell out his big chest in the Englishman’s face and blocked Ellen with his arm. “Take yer filthy stinking hands off her before ye wind up in a situation ye’d likely regret.” His hand flew to his sword hilt.
Ellen dove between the two men and whirled around to face Louis. They were supposed to be keeping a low profile. The constable was the last thing they needed right now, and if Louis got in a fight, that’s exactly what they’d get. She planted her hands on his chest and gave him a hard push. “Go. Just go. I’m coming. Leave him alone and go.” She shoved him back a step.
He didn’t take his eyes off the Englishman while she backed him toward the door. One treacherous inch at a time, he let her force him out of the room.
“That foulmouthed, toffy-nosed, flea-bitten…” Louis growled.
“Just go,” Ellen ordered. “Get out of here before you blow our cover altogether.”
“For a ha’-penny I swear I’d…”
Ellen grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. “Will you listen to yourself? He’s not worth your time or attention. He’s a stuffed peacock. He probably took a trip up to Scotland so he could insult the locals and pick a fight with them and hopefully get one of them thrown in jail or maybe hanged. Who knows? Just ignore him. I thought you’d keep your head better than that. Haven’t you learned anything about blending in over the last several thousand years?”
He jerked alert in the front hall, and his burning gaze snapped to her face. For a fraction of an instant, he turned his rage on her. The next instant, it evaporated and he looked away. “Ye’re right. It was stupid. It’ll no’ happen again. I promise ye that.”
She scrutinized him at close range, struggling to keep a smile from betraying her. He’d protected her, and in this time, stranger that she was to him, with no expectations or agendas. “What’s wrong with you? Are you worried someone followed us out of Aberdeen? Is that why you’re on such a short fuse?”
He shrugged. “I doubt it.”
“Then why are you so rattled?” she asked. “Don’t tell me you’re taking this Highlander character to the extreme.”
“It’s no’ that.” He kept casting fleeting glimpses at her face before looking sideways at the wall.
“What is it, then? We can’t travel this way if you’re gonna keep jumping at shadows.”
He opened his mouth and closed it again. “I dinnae ken. I mean, it’s just… Well, I’ve never traveled with…”
“With what?” Her mind raced trying to figure out what he was talking about. All at once, it hit her. “With a woman? You’ve never traveled with a woman before?”
“It’s no’ that,” he cried. “Och, wheesht! I cannae explain it.”
“Try me,” she fired back. “If it’s not that, what is it?”
“I didnae ever try to travel with… Och, what’s the use?” He threw up his hands and spun away to walk out of the hall, toward the stairs, but stopped at the last moment with his foot on the first step. “It’s ye. Ye’re… Och! I dinnae ken what I’m saying.”
Ellen stared at his back, her jaw hanging slack. Did he just say that? Could he possibly feel something for her just since they met in Aberdeen? He was telling her the truth in Ree’s bedroom back in San Francisco. She had the same effect on him that he’d had on her. She couldn’t leave because of him, and now he found himself in this thing way over his head too.
He cast one quick peek over his shoulder. When he saw her gaping at him in shock, he whipped around fast. “Never ye mind. It’s naught. Ye’re room’s at the top of the stairs with a picture of a cat on it. I’ll see ye in the morning. If ye need aught in the night, ye can ask the maid or the landlady, I’m sure.”
He leaped up the stairs, and in half a second, disappeared from sight.
Chapter 10
Louis marched straight to his room, bolted the door, and sank down cross-legged on the floor in front of the fireplace. The flames blasted delicious warmth and relaxation into his stiff joints. He curled up in a ball, pillowing his head on one elbow, closed his eyes, and drifted off.
He refused to think about Ellen in that green gown with the slender corseted waist and bloodstained lace hem. God in Heaven, what had he gotten himself saddled with? Everything about her sent him spinning back to memories and images and impressions he’d rather forget.
He couldn’t stand the sight of another man laying his hand on her, not even a scarecrow like that popinjay downstairs. He had to get his head together. Even she had noticed him overreacting.
He floated into a misty dream where tall marble towers flanked a brick street. Flowered gardens decorated every corner, and happy children ran in and out of the doors. Into this sun-washed scene, a tall, willowy woman stepped out of a nearby villa. Her long dark hair fluttered in the breeze. Her gauzy gown belied the muscle-tight body underneath. She smiled at him.
For one beat of his heart, intoxicating joy flooded his being and he wanted to die. He ached for her so bad he couldn’t stand it. She glided over the ground on her thin leather shoes and put her arms around him, and then her lilac lips sailed through space toward him.
He slammed down an iron wall to cut himself off from her. He destroyed that memory with fists and clubs until he’d pulverized it to dust. It sifted through the floorboards and vanished to nothing. He triple- and quadruple-locked the dead bolts between himself and all the glorious ecstasy of those magnificent days.
He bolted out of a sound sleep, into total darkness. His joints throbbed from lying on the hardwood floor, and he groaned while sitting up. Dead embers in the hearth no longer warmed the room. No faint glimmer of starlight came through the darkened window. The room and the inn echoed silence all around him. He eased himself onto his knees. Cold and hunger sapped his strength, but he forced himself to rise. Once he got on his feet, he spun his arms around his head to stretch his shoulders. He jumped up and down a few times.
Whatever else he did, he couldn’t allow himself to fall back into the past. The past no longer existed. He would do anything to shut it out for good. This wasn’t the past. Ellen wasn’t the past. He wouldn’t accomplish anything by treating her as such.
He took a mental inventory of the room, orienting himself, and then walked straight to the door. He cracked it open, but no sound disturbed the building. He slipped into the passage and down the back stairs. His instincts told him which creaking boards to avoid, and he let himself out into the foggy yard. Mist obscured the landscape and blacked out the sky, but his senses guided him. He closed his eyes and took off running over the damp moors. His blood surged through him, dispelling the chill. Life flooded back into his limbs and hea
rt. His mind cleared at last.
He would have run all night. That would be the best way to disappear and leave behind any pursuit dogging his footsteps from Aberdeen, but he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t ignore the message from the future.
He climbed a steep hill, breaking through the mist under a starlit sky. He gazed down on the countryside shrouded in cloud but couldn’t see the inn. The velvet heavens alight with jewels sang him a song of harmony and peace. If only he could believe that, maybe he could get a taste of that tranquility and carry it with him.
He wouldn’t find it up here, though. Staring it in the face only made him mad. Other people led happy lives with their families and children, but he never would. He would never find anything up here but loneliness and pain.
Louis charged down the hill and let the darkness swallow him and all his memories and thoughts. He vanished, becoming a streak of wind cutting through the murk. He slowed to a walk before returning to the inn. He steadied his breathing to enter the house as silently as he’d left it, then eased the latch down and lifted the door so it wouldn’t scrape the floor. He tiptoed to the stairs and glided up to his room.
He got halfway down the passage when a ghostly apparition drifted out of the gloom. A flowing, curvy body undulated through the dark toward him. A white gauzy film swayed around shapely limbs, and long black hair tumbled over alabaster shoulders. Deep dark eyes blinked at him out of a pure white face.
For a fraction of a second, he launched back into the memory from his dream. It must be her, come to soothe away all his lonely fevers and tormented longing. His heart cracked open in sheer relief. She was finally here. She’d come back to cure him of his madness. He could release himself in her and find the peace he’d lost so long ago.
He let out a ragged gasp and reached for her. Before he got anywhere near her, his blood burned a fiery path to his crotch, he needed her so bad.
The next instant, she took a step closer and he realized his mistake. It wasn’t her at all. It was Ellen. She resembled that woman from the past in every particular—and not just her outward appearance, either. She moved like her. She spoke like her. She even thought like her. Only her accent sounded different.
Spellbound by the Angui (Cipher's Kiss Book 2): A Scottish Highlander Time Travel Romance Page 7
