The Wedding Dress

by Kimberly Cates

  “Money wouldn’t matter a damn to that old bastard. He hates me, in case you haven’t noticed. Never forgave me for the traffic mucking up his own private kingdom.”

  “Traffic? This is in the middle of nowhere.”

  “School buses clogging up the roads, college students taking over his neighborhood pub. When word got out hereabouts that I’d lost my funding, the old miser got so excited he bought rounds of whiskey for half the village and danced on the bar at the pub.”

  Emma tried to imagine the crusty old man dancing anywhere at all. “He’ll have to retire sometime, won’t he?” she inquired hopefully. “He looks like he’s a jillion years old!”

  “Five jillion, at least.” Jared grimaced, plying his softest brush to clear the metal of the last few crumbs of dirt. “But I figure Snib is going to live forever just to spite me. There.” He frowned at the find in satisfaction. “I think we’re ready to stick this under the magnifier.”

  He scooped up the tool, held the piece of gauntlet under a glaring bright light. “It seems to be from the right time period. From what I can tell.”

  “Right time period for what? Tell me! Is it linked to Lady Aislinn somehow?” Emma prodded, unable to wait another second. “Did it belong to her husband?”

  “Impossible,” Jared muttered, examining it again. “This makes no sense.”

  “What? Tell me!”

  He thrust it practically under her nose. “Read the engraving.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” Emma skimmed the etched letters. “It’s Latin, isn’t it?”

  “Right.” Jared flashed her a bemused glance. “I forgot you can’t read it. You fit so perfectly here. It seems as if you should be able to…”

  Emma jabbed him with her elbow. “Just translate, boy genius! Before I lose what little patience I have left!”

  He turned toward her, his rugged features clouded with confusion. “It’s the knight’s family motto. I conquer all.”

  “But that’s not Craigmorrigan’s motto. It was something long and flowery, wasn’t it? All full of death-before-dishonor garbage. Took up half of the family crest. So if it’s not Lady Aislinn’s husband’s, then whose motto is it? Was some other chick off leaving love tokens in Lady Aislinn’s secret place?”

  “The stone circle wasn’t secret, remember. The legend had to be known all over this area. And yet a knight’s armor was valuable. Meant survival in the medieval world. They’d hardly have scattered pieces of it about.”

  “You mean sir what’s-his-name couldn’t pick another gauntlet up at the medieval version of a convenience store?”

  “That’s right.” His grin flashed white. “We’ll have to date the metal properly to be certain. Do some more tests.”

  “Don’t go all scientific on me! I can tell you know more than you’re saying! If the gauntlet isn’t from Craigmorrigan, then who did it belong to?”

  Jared ran the pad of his thumb wonderingly along the edge of the artifact. He looked up at Emma, the thrill of discovery still burning in his eyes. “If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say this gauntlet belonged to Sir Brannoc.”

  “That creep’s stuff in Lady Aislinn’s magic place?” Emma sputtered, outraged. “No way! His motto said something like…Sir dirty bird the ruthless.”

  “That’s right.” Respect flared in Jared’s eyes. “Nice job on the research.” Emma felt a warm glow of pride in her chest.

  “After Lady Aislinn and the fairy flag vanished, Sir Brannoc was so hated that people all across Scotland added a postscript of their own.” Jared’s gaze caught Emma’s, held.

  The nape of her neck prickled as if touched by a ghostly hand from another age. “What was it?” she breathed.

  “I conquer all…without mercy.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  JARED LOOKED UP from his site notes as his office door swung open, the whole trailer jiggling as Beth Murphy and Davey Harrison jostled their way inside, all but dropping the mounds of packages weighing down their arms.

  “Post just came,” Davey said, jamming his chin down on his topmost parcel to keep it from falling. “The man apologized all over the place. That big storm that came in from the east the other day held things up over the Atlantic.”

  “A storm?” Jared shook his head, trying to clear it of all too vivid images of Emma laughing as she wrestled him down in one of her grandfather’s famous self-defense holds the night before. “What are you talking about?”

  “Whoa, chief. You’ve been out of it all week, ever since you and Emma found the gauntlet. The phones have been out for two days.” The kid was talking to him as if Jared’s brain had gone missing. Maybe it had.

  “Right,” he said. “The phones.”

  “What Davey’s trying to tell you is that these were supposed to be delivered yesterday,” Beth explained.

  “It’s hardly a crisis,” Jared said, in a downright sunny mood. “I don’t even remember ordering anything.”

  “These aren’t for you.” Beth slid her load onto his desk. “They’re for Emma.”

  “Emma?” Jared echoed, brow furrowing. “Don’t tell me Robards has revised the script again? Or God knows what this time.”

  Instead of relaxing as Jared had hoped, the director had become more difficult than ever since Jared had begun to praise Emma. Robards kept firing off terse questions about Emma’s abilities, something about the man’s attitude making him edgy.

  “No, it’s not from the studio,” Davey said. Strange, Jared thought. Then what could it be? Had Emma conned Davey into helping her order more research materials from some obscure book site on the Internet? She’d been more obsessed than Jared since they’d found the section of gauntlet two weeks ago.

  The woman had been reading everything she could get her hands on, including copies of actual medieval texts written in Middle English. Not exactly fare for an intellectual lightweight. Another assumption he’d made about Emma that she’d proved dead wrong.

  Beth helped Davey shift his batch of packages onto the desk. The girl touched his hand a little too long, setting Jared’s nerves on edge.

  “We figured Emma would be in here with you,” she explained when she finally drew away. “You two have been joined at the hip the past two weeks. If we kids in the dorm tents didn’t know better, we’d think something was up.”

  Beth laughed breezily, but a slow flush burned its way up Davey’s throat. No matter what the rest of the students knew or didn’t know, the lad was far too intuitive to miss changes all too visible between his two favorite people on site—next to Beth Murphy, that was.

  Emma had even urged Jared to give Davey a few tips to help the lad make his move on the girl. After all, Emma insisted, summer wouldn’t last forever and Davey would spend the dreary schoolyear kicking himself for missing his chance to kiss Beth.

  Jared had all but snapped Emma’s head off, fearing the fragility in the boy, what rejection might do to him. But Emma hadn’t backed down an inch. She’d just pinched Jared’s thigh and asked how he would be feeling right now if he’d stayed all by his lonesome on the other side of Lady Aislinn’s tower room.

  That would be easy enough to answer, Jared thought wryly. I’d be so frustrated every student on site would probably be diving for cover any time I walked by.

  Unfortunately, realizing that didn’t change his opinion. Jared was a grown man. He could take it when the breakup came. Hell, he expected it. He’d just bury the inevitable pain in his work and get on with his life. He wasn’t looking for some fairy-tale ending, didn’t believe such a thing even existed in real life.

  But Davey Harrison brimmed with such desperate hope, such dangerous innocence that every time Jared saw it, it struck him through with a cold, biting terror, a foreboding he just couldn’t shake.

  Jared lifted the topmost bundle and squeezed it: small, soft, definitely not the familiar heavy weight or shape of a book. “Why don’t you two see if you can wrestle Emma away from her research. Tell her these just came fr
om…” He scanned the address label, felt like he’d taken a punch to the solar plexus.

  To: Ms. Emma McDaniel…From: Andrew Lawson…Whitewater, Illinois, USA.

  “Hey, Dr. Butler?” Davey’s voice sounded a long way off. “You okay?”

  “What the hell is her jerk of an ex-husband doing sending her…” Jared bit off the rest of the sentence, not wanting to betray Emma’s vulnerability. But his outrage rushed on. What was in the package, anyway? Some baby picture Drew the asshole hadn’t had the chance to rub Emma’s nose in yet?

  Hell, if it were up to Jared, he’d burn the thing. He nosed through the rest of the pile. The bottom package, wrapped with enough duct tape to reach from the castle to Edinburgh, was upside down. He flipped it over and its sparkly surface all but blinded him. Scrawled all over the brown wrapping paper with some kind of glittery marker were childish block letters that read: HAPPY BIRTHDAY. DO NOT OPEN TIL…

  “Son of a bitch,” Jared growled.

  “Dr. Butler?” Beth took a step backward, as if he were one of Snib’s collies ready to bite.

  “Yesterday was the blasted woman’s birthday!” he snapped, stung.

  “You’re kidding!” Davey exclaimed, Beth gasping in unison.

  “Why the devil didn’t she say anything?” Jared demanded as if the two stunned kids actually knew the answer.

  “She seemed a little, well…pensive yesterday,” Davey said. “When she thought no one was watching.” Jared winced. Trust Davey to use an adjective that shouldn’t roll easily off a teenager’s tongue. A word that described exactly how Emma had behaved the day before.

  But then, Jared hadn’t been feeling so terrific himself yesterday morning. Veronica had been flashing some glossy fan magazine around the breakfast tables picturing Emma, a veritable goddess on some red carpet three years ago. Veronica jabbering on to the other girls about how shallow a life was when defined by designer dresses and caviar.

  Not that Jared had heard much of the conversation. He’d been trying too hard to get the magazine image out of his head. Emma, swathed in scarlet satin, her curls smoothed into sleek waves, rubies flashing at her throat, her ex-husband smiling beside her, as smooth and polished as a pair of million-dollar shoes.

  Jared had wanted to tear the page in half, ball up ol’ Drew the asshole and toss him in the nearest wastepaper bin. And then what? a voice in Jared’s head jeered. Paste your own picture there beside her? That would be a hell of a sight. You and Emma McDaniel on the red carpet. Your hands dusty from digging, your ratty cargo pants bulging at the pockets with tools, your attitude surly as Snib on a rampage?

  What was it Jenny’s father had said when he’d drunk a little too much champagne at their wedding? It’s a good thing Jared spends all his time with people who’ve been dead for centuries. They’re a whole lot harder to insult than the living.

  Veronica had finished off her little recipe for indigestion by firing off a stream of biting questions about some charity event Emma had coming up. Jared’s gut clenched with something akin to panic at the idea of Emma’s real life intruding into their already too brief time. Had it been his own sense of loss that kept him from paying more attention to Emma’s wistfulness?

  Later that night he’d caught her peering down at that picture of her family, looking a little forlorn. But he’d figured she just missed them. He’d grabbed her from behind, growling into her neck in an effort to distract her—distract them both from the specter of her leaving Craigmorrigan. Damn if the woman didn’t flip him onto his back, straddling him.

  Gotcha…she’d teased, the shadows fleeing from her eyes. The only question is, what do I do with you, now that I’ve got you at my mercy?

  He’d been happy to bring her back to the present moment with his mouth, with his hands, making them both forget anything but sensation.

  “Find the woman and send her in here. Right away,” Jared ordered. Davey and Beth rushed to do his bidding. Jared levered himself up from the chair, pacing. What kind of woman ignored her own birthday? Hell, if Jenny’s celebration hadn’t gone on for a week, the woman had acted as if she’d been cheated. Truth was, he’d come to dread her birthday, knowing he’d screw up somehow.

  Of course red roses are just as pretty as yellow ones…why, I’d much rather have chocolate cake than white…it’s wonderful you made dinner yourself instead of spending all that money taking me to the restaurant we went to last year….

  Emma had stomped square on one of his personal buttons without knowing it.

  The door swung open and Emma breezed in, her curls in bad need of a brushing, her face clean of makeup, her eyes sparkling with excitement. She didn’t even notice the packages, every fiber of her being was so centered on him.

  “Davey and Beth said you wanted to see me.” She smiled. “Did you find something new about Sir Brannoc’s gauntlet?”

  “No. I found out something about you.” Jared blocked her view of his desk, hands planted on his hips. “Yesterday was your birthday,” he accused.

  “Oh. Yeah, well…” She looked a little crestfallen. Walked over to the tiny window to try to hide the fact that it hurt her to think no one in her family had remembered. “It’s no big deal,” she said, more to herself than to him.

  “Then why didn’t you tell me?”

  Emma shrugged her elegant shoulders. “Mostly I try to ignore them. If you have too many birthdays in Hollywood it’s the kiss of death. Besides, we’ve got lots more important things to worry about right now. Like getting the rights to dig on Snib MacMurray’s land. God only knows what else might be buried in that stone circle. Davey says Snib has this favorite fishing spot.”

  “It’s my da’s fishing spot,” Jared corrected, irritated beyond belief. “He’s the one who found it.”

  “All-righty then,” Emma said, obviously getting the message loud and clear. “What matters is that Snib is probably in a good mood when he’s there snagging trout. I thought if I could just catch the old curmudgeon at the right moment, I could convince him to—”

  “What part of ‘trespass on my land again and I’ll shoot you in the arse’ don’t you understand?”

  “He won’t really pull the trigger!” Emma scoffed. “Well, maybe he’d shoot my dog, but me? Come on!”

  “I absolutely forbid you to—”

  Emma’s eyes all but popped from her head.

  Damn, he cursed himself. Bad move, Jared. Very bad move. See what a mess you make when you lose your temper?

  “Emma, I…care about you. I’m not willing to take the chance that Snib might try to get back at me by—”

  “Shooting me in cold blood?” Emma arched her brows in disbelief. “I’ll admit you can be annoying, Butler, but you’re hardly worth going to prison over.”

  “The man hates me,” he attempted to explain. “Not only did I bring all this traffic to his private kingdom, but the whole village knows my grandfather was ten times the farmer Snib is. And Da…everyone loved him. Everyone but my mum.” How the hell had that slipped out?

  Emma’s attitude ebbed. She crossed to him, touched Jared’s arm. “I doubt Snib would win any Mister Congeniality trophies, even if the rest of the contestants were crocodiles with toothaches.”

  Gratitude welled up in Jared. He smiled, pushing back the old pain. “Speaking of toothaches, there’s one more bit of the story I’ve neglected to tell you. Before I left for university I was sharing a pint with my da when…well, Snib got in his face and…Damn, it was making me crazy, the things that bastard was saying to Da, trying to needle him into a fight. Da said I should feel sorry for the man, so sour and alone, but I…”

  “You what?”

  “I kind of knocked Snib’s front teeth out.”

  Emma choked on a stunned gasp, laughing. “Oh, Butler! You didn’t!”

  “How was I to know I’d want to excavate the bloody fool’s land someday?” he crabbed. “Anyway, save your breath arguing with the man. He’d suffer the tortures of the damned before he’d give
me permission to dig there.”

  “When I first arrived at Craigmorrigan you thought I’d turn out to be the tortures of the damned, remember? And now I’ve got you wrapped around my little finger. And, er, other far more interesting parts of my anatomy.”

  Looking far too full of herself, she edged past him and boosted herself up on the corner of his desk, causing a major avalanche. She squealed, flinging herself on the jumble of packages in an effort to stop them from falling.

  “What on earth?” she cried.

  Lawson’s package was the only one to hit the floor. Jared resisted the urge to kick it under his desk before Emma saw it. “They’re for you,” Jared said. He gritted his teeth and fished the runaway parcel back out, banging his head in the process. “They were supposed to be delivered yesterday, but there was a storm.”

  Why was he bothering to explain? The woman hadn’t heard a thing he’d said. She shrieked with delight, falling on the presents like a barbarian bent on pillage. “I thought they forgot!” she cried, tears of joy spilling down her cheeks. He wished to hell he’d been the one to put them there.

  Wrapping paper flew as she wrested out her treasures, none of them the sort of fancy things he would have expected when he’d first met her. A homemade CD with something scrawled in magic marker was clasped to her breast. “It’s Mom! Jake promised he’d have her cut a new CD for me!”

  Some kind of candy in orange wrappers rained around her. “Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups!” She ripped one package open and shoved the palm-sized circle of chocolate into her mouth. “Oh, Lord! Take me now!” she moaned around the chocolate, sounding orgasmic in her delight.

  “React like that over a piece of candy and you’ll give me an inferiority complex,” Jared protested.

  She laughed out loud and offered him the second piece. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

  Thrusting Lawson’s package on a shelf behind him, he took the candy with his other hand and eyed it suspiciously. “I can tell you this for nothing, woman. This won’t taste half as good as you.” He took an experimental nibble. “Everybody knows Americans can’t make chocolate. Of course, if I smeared this all over your body and licked it off…”