Choosing the Highlander (11 page)

She laughed bitterly and finally looked at him. “It was an unforeseen complication, and it ruined my plans to have garden fresh tomatoes that summer. I cried for hours over those plants. All the work I’d put into them, all my excitement, and a bunch of rodents just took them away from me. Every last plant. Gone.”
 

Why was she telling him this?
 

“I’ve been here going on three days now. I might never get home. But I haven’t shed a single tear. Why?” She looked utterly at a loss.
 

Despite her earlier rejection, he still longed to hold her, but her manner gave him pause. She had a look about her like she’d found herself adrift at sea and was searching desperately for land.
 

What or whom had taken her from her home? Clearly, she had not left of her own accord. He would press her for answers once they began their journey.
 

“Why should I cry over tomato plants, but not over this, this—” She made a sweeping motion to indicate the countryside. “Just, all of this? I’m so far from home, from everything I’ve worked so hard for. I’m completely lost. Why aren’t I more upset?”
 

She seemed plenty upset as she turned pleading eyes his way.
 

Whatever burden she shouldered, he couldn’t let her bear it alone a moment longer. Whether she wanted his comfort or not, he pressed it upon her, touching her shoulders with both hands and drawing her into his embrace.
 

She came willingly and rested her cheek on his chest.
 

A feeling of completion and satisfaction puffed up his chest.
 

Slowly, tentatively, her arms encircled his waist. Aye. Whatever was between them was special. By coming to him, she showed him she felt it too.
 

“I doona pretend to understand all of what ye said, lass, but mayhap when the mice ate those plants, the loss was so poignant because you were left with naught in return. But being taken from your home, you have been given much in return.”
 

She lifted her chin to meet his gaze. Questions swam in her gaze.
 

“Your life,” he said. “You nearly lost it, but ’twas given back to you. A second chance at life is a grand gift indeed. And you’ve been given the opportunity to aid Aifric. She and her bairn fare well. I’ve no doubt you had a hand in that.”
 

She graced him with a wee, thoughtful smile. “Yes,” she said. “That could be.”
 

You have me, as well,
he wanted to say, but what came out instead was, “Dinnae fash. I vow to you, if I am free to do so, I will return you to your home once my name is cleared and I am free to do so.” He planned to be wed to her by then and take her to her home so he could meet her kin and she could bid them a proper farewell. Surely her home couldn’t be terribly far. Mayhap Holland or from across the Northern Sea.
 

He suspected now was not the time to trouble her with the details. He sought merely to comfort her and assure her that her concerns were important to him.
 

A pleat appeared between her eyebrows. Not the reaction he’d hoped for.
 

“Once your name is cleared,” she said, her voice flat. “You mean, you’re in trouble for rescuing me and Aifric? I thought this trip to Inverness was to bring justice down on Ruthven, but there’s more to it, isn’t there. You’re in trouble. You and Terran. Because of me.”
 

“
Whist.
I’ll no have you fashin’ about me and Terran. You’re safe, aye? That is what we must hold fast to.” He intended to keep her safe for all time. “Now that that’s settled, we have much to do. It is my hope we may ride out at midday. You feel well enough?” He wouldn’t insist on leaving so soon if she needed more time to heal.
 

“Today is fine.” She nodded, almost distractedly and pulled free from his embrace.
 

He let her go reluctantly. “Go inside and warm yourself by the fire in the kitchens. Then find Aifric. She’ll want a lady to attend her this morn.”
 

A genuine if weary smile brightened her countenance. “I hear there’s going to be a wedding.”
 

“Aye.” And another soon after, if he had his way.
 

Chapter 9
 

Connie’s thoughts were a jumble as she made her way through the monastery. They had been a jumble for hours. Ever since Wilhelm had bathed her, if she was honest. Unable to sleep a wink all night, she had risen with the bells calling the monks to their early-morning prayers and snuck outside. After being cooped up in her and Aifric’s windowless rooms for two days, the fresh, cold air had helped her think.

By the light of the coming dawn, she’d walked the rows of the garden, one after the other. With every step over the hard-packed soil, the reality of her situation sank in. She might never get home. She might never see Leslie again.

What was Leslie doing right now? Did it even make sense that there might be another “right now”? How could Connie be present in 1487 when the year of her birth wouldn’t happen for roughly five hundred years?

The concept would boggle the mind quite enough if she had been a typical single birth, but she and Leslie had come into the world just minutes apart. Being a twin made this whole time-travel thing even more disturbing.

She’d never given much thought to the nature of time, but its linearity had always been assumed in her plans for her life. She had taken for granted the fact that it would march on as always, ever forward, never backward. Certainly time would never jump around at random. Such a notion would have struck her as not only impossible but ridiculous.

Her presupposition had not mattered one wit. Magic had made a mockery of her logical approach to life by shoving her into a scenario she never could have prepared herself for.

She should be beyond distraught. She should seek a way home with single-minded purpose.

She should
not
be giddy over a wedding between two individuals whom she had just met. She should
definitely
not be craving the companionship of a man who would be long dead by the time her present happened.

Entering the kitchen, she snatched up a bread roll and nibbled it while making her way to Aifric’s door. She was spared the need to knock since the door was wide open. Inside, Terran and Aifric were conversing and laughing together while Anice napped beside her mommy on the bed. The dark shadows under Aifric’s eyes were fading, and the light in her eyes gave her a fresh glow of health. She was still pitifully underweight, but she would recover. Terran would make sure of it, Connie knew.

Connie hadn’t a clue what they were saying in their rapid Scot’s dialect, but it didn’t matter. Their being together this morning was a crime against matrimony.

“What are you doing in here,” she asked Terran in her faux-British accent.

He eyed her coolly. “
I
am having a lovely morning with my soon-to-be bride.” He slouched back in his chair, arms folded over his chest.

“Out.” She folded her arms to match his posture. “It’s bad luck to see your bride before the wedding. Besides, I need time to get her ready.” There weren’t many beauty supplies at her disposal, but someone—probably Anselm—had left a hair brush and a folded garment on the chest at the foot of the bed.

“I donna put stock in luck, good or bad.” He propped an ankle on his knee, the picture of immovable man.

It was remarkable how much Terran resembled Wilhelm, both in appearance and stubbornness. She’d learned they were a year apart in age and related through their fathers, who were brothers. If she hadn’t been told otherwise, she might have assumed them to be twins—fraternal, because of the small differences, like the color of their hair and the shapes of their noses. Wilhelm’s nose was more refined and his hair a fairer shade of blond. Further differentiating the two men, Wilhelm kept his hair cropped closely to his head in that Roman style that looked so handsome around a face that might have been sculpted by a master. Terran’s face was much the same, but his posture was often sullen in comparison to the disciplined set of Wilhelm’s shoulders and the aristocratic angle of his chin.

Wilhelm’s air of authority threw her for a loop, because she’d never met another man whose self-assurance she found enticing rather than repulsive. Stubbornness, though, she could handle.

She strode to the bed with a smile for Aifric. “Fine,” she said with a glance Terran’s way. “Aifric, lift up the blankets, darling, so I can change your bloody rags and check on your healing. How is the bleeding, by the way? Slowing at all?”

Terran planted both feet on the floor. “I’ll go and see if Anselm needs help in the kitchen.” He raced for the door as Connie threw off Aifric’s blankets.

As his footsteps faded down the hall, Connie shared a conspiratorial grin with the new mother.

“He hates the sight of blood,” Aifric said.

“I suspect it’s only the sight of your blood,” Connie replied. Terran was a warrior like Wilhelm. Blood would not be off-putting to him if it belonged to a foe. But judging from his quick departure after Anice’s birth, when Connie had begun muddling her way through birth-canal damage control, she’d guessed he wouldn’t want to stick around to see bloody bedding changed.

Connie helped Aifric with her necessities and washing. While the young mother was out of bed, Connie replaced the folded up blankets where Aifric typically sat with the fresh ones Anselm had brought.

Before long, Anice woke. While Aifric nursed her, Connie brushed Aifric’s hair. She had never been overly interested in hair styles, but she did know a few tricks thanks to Leslie’s obsession with fashion. While she worked on a series of symmetrical buns along Aifric’s nape, they talked. At first, they discussed Anice and what a good baby she was, but the topic soon turned to more serious things.

“We almost died together, you and I,” Aifric said. “Mayhap that is why I feel so connected to you.”

Between her soft voice, the nursing baby, and the task of styling the younger woman’s hair, Connie took note of a previously untapped longing for this type of charming domesticity. There was a peace in this moment she hadn’t felt since she and Leslie were young. Their childhood had ended so quickly. Before Connie knew it, she was enrolled in college and Leslie had become addicted to globetrotting.

Why hadn’t she insisted on spending more time with her sister? Connie’s laser beam focus on her career had left little room for building memories. She had met many goals and received many accolades. She had found success and was on a track to find even more. Faced now with the possibility of never seeing her twin again, all her professional accomplishments felt less significant than the dust under her feet.

“When Sir Ruthven called for my execution, I knew ’twas the end for me,” Aifric went on.

Connie focused on the young woman. She would have plenty of time to go over the what-might-have-been’s later. Today was about Aifric.

“I thought so, too,” Connie admitted, holding to the British accent. “It was terrifying.”

“But you didn’t just stand there and accept it. You fought the guards. You proclaimed your innocence. I was not so brave.”

“Pfft. You were in no condition to fight. I’d only recently been captured, and I hadn’t been hurt badly. I wouldn’t call it bravery. Mostly, it felt like panic.”

“Looked like bravery to me.” Aifric reached up to pat Connie’s hands, stilling her work for a moment.

A lump stuck in her throat.

Aifric saved her from having to reply. “I thought I would never meet her.” She bent her neck to kiss Anice’s forehead while she shifted the baby to her other breast.

The movement caused Connie to drop a lock of hair, but she didn’t mind. She was working slowly on purpose. Life was too short to squander these simple moments. Seeing Anice come into the world was one of the most beautiful things Connie had ever witnessed. That and Terran’s sudden fierce devotion to both mother and child.

Had Aifric been a modern-day woman pregnant without a husband, the likelihood of a near stranger insisting upon marrying her immediately would have been laughable. Maybe young men so willing to take on the responsibility of an instant family existed, but if so, Connie had yet to hear of one.

Of course, the couple’s newfound infatuation with each other would fade and they would settle into more of a partnership than a romantic affair, but that was the way of marriages. At least that was what Connie had observed with her friends and family, especially her parents.

The point was that even once the romance ended, Aifric and Anice would be safe with Terran. He was strong, and it seemed he—or at least Wilhelm—was well-to-do. Terran would provide for his wife and daughter their whole lives, and Aifric would no doubt contribute in the way of women in this time. They would be family, stronger for their togetherness, like a tightly-twisted rope.

“Well, you did get to meet her,” Connie said. “And what a precious little thing she is.”

“Aye. I feel as though I’ve been given a second chance. Instead of losing everything, I have gained a daughter and a husband. And a friend.” She said the last tentatively, almost as a question.

Well, gosh, that was sweet. Connie might not be sentimental, but she wasn’t made of stone. “Of course you’ve gained a friend.”

“And mayhap a sister.” Her voice brightened. “I see the way Wilhelm looks at you. I ken they’re but cousins, but Terran says they’ve always been more like brothers. I doona believe Terran is the only one with marriage on his mind.”

She might as well have slapped Connie for the shock her statement delivered. “I beg your pardon?” She’d almost gaped and uttered a very American “What!” but she’d recovered herself in time to keep up her role.

“Surely, you’ve noticed. Has Wilhelm nay spoken to you about his intentions?”

“Intentions? His only intention is that we travel to Inverness to clear his name after the—er—unpleasantness in Perth.”