Choosing the Highlander (18 page)

The fire had faded to glowing embers, and the small room grew colder by the minute.

A pair of strong arms encircled her waist. Wilhelm rested his chin on her shoulder. Rasped the stubble of his day-old beard along her cheek.

Biting her lip, she shrugged him off.

“I have upset you.”

She wheeled on him, annoyed when he stood his ground rather than take a step back as most men would have. She had to look up at him. “Of course you upset me. You just implied that I should go with you to Dornoch and forget all about my sister, my parents, my job, my
life
. You suggest marriage, but you don’t even care that I’m lost and alone and I might never find my way home.” Her voice broke.

Those tears she’d been fighting returned with a vengeance. This time, they wouldn’t be held back.

She swatted at them and gave Wilhelm her back again. “Just leave me alone. I want to go to bed.”

“Very well.” He sighed close behind her but didn’t touch her again. “Take the bed. I’ll use the floor, but first, I’ll check on the horses.”

His shoes scuffed in the dirt as he went to the door. The whine of hinges in need of oil cut through the quiet.

Disappointment steamrolled her. Which was ridiculous. She should be glad he was taking the hint and backing off. She wouldn’t have to fight her attraction to him anymore. This was a good thing.

Too bad it didn’t feel like a good thing. As she waited for the sound of the door closing, her heart sank into her stomach. She wrapped her arms around her middle to ease the overwhelming sense of loss.

Why wasn’t the door closing?

“You have my apology, lass.” Wilhelm’s voice was quiet. Cold air from outside chilled her ankles. “You also have my ire.”

She turned, confused.
His
ire?

“You heard me,” he said, as if he’d understood her unspoken question. A muscle ticked in his jaw. His eyes absorbed the meager firelight and reflected it back until they glowed silvery-white, like twin moons. How dare he look so stunning when she was trying to be mad at him?

She squared her shoulders. “What do you have to be angry about?”

“Plenty. You tell me naught of your home, of your sister, your parents, your…job, whatever that might be. I ken naught of a
Shick-ah-go.
I canna so much as picture where you hail from because ye give me nothing. Nothing. Yet you expect me to understand your desire to return?”

Her mouth fell open. She shook her head, ready to argue, but he made that same cutting motion Terran had made earlier.

“
Whist.
I am not finished. What I do ken—and I ken it well—is that we have somat strong and true between us. I lust to taste you, explore you, to make you mine.
That
is what I ken.
Shick-ah-go
means naught to me. But you.” That muscle in his jaw relaxed. “You mean everything to me.”

His words took her breath away. But he couldn’t possibly mean them.

“No,” she made herself say. “I can’t mean everything to you. Your clan is important to you. Scotland is important to you. As they should be. You are a man with many responsibilities. You’d be a fool to let a woman mean everything to you.” She’d been a fool to let him mean so much to her.

“Nay, lass. A fool is one who imposes limits on somat as limitless as love.” He shut the door, leaving her alone inside the cabin.

She hugged herself until the fire went out. Then she climbed into bed, wondering why she missed Wilhelm so much when he’d just called her a fool.

Chapter 15

Connie’s bottom hurt.  She might not be a stranger to riding horseback, but it had been years, and her body wasn’t accustomed to sitting on a hard saddle for hours on end. She could handle the ache in her inner thighs, which was no worse than her discomfort after a good aerobics session. But her pelvic bones throbbed with the abuse they’d taken as her unpracticed body found its seat again.

The scenery made up for her bodily woes. Though the sunlight came in dribs and drabs through the white-gray cloud cover, the Highland landscape offered layer upon layer of beauty. Currently, they rode over a marshy plain of brilliant yellow-green. The black waters of a creek cut a lively path alongside their trail. Beyond the creek leafless trees with bark the color of pomegranates fanned upward like artfully arranged reeds in a flower arrangement. Further in the distance, blue hills rose into snow-dusted mountains.

Wilhelm lived in a remarkable place. If it was this colorful on an overcast day in winter, what might it look like beneath a clear June sky?

Her eyes returned to her traveling companion as he rode ahead of her. From his helm to his armor-covered shoes to the way he sat his warhorse like he’d been born in the saddle, his visage inspired her even more than the scenery. Except every time she looked his way, she remembered his words from last night with a jolt.

You mean everything to me.
Closely followed by his accusation that she was a fool for placing limits on love.

At first, she’d resented his censure. She was
smart
to place limits on love, darn it. She refused to place more importance on an emotion than on something more tangible, like success. She refused to offer her heart up on a platter to any man who showed an interest, like Leslie did routinely.

But as sleepless minutes had turned to an hour and then some, she’d wondered if there might be some wisdom in what he’d said. She’d also wondered what he would do if she invited him up on the pillow-thin, straw-stuffed mattress. It didn’t seem right that her rescuer and now her guide should sleep on the cold dirt floor while she enjoyed the relative comfort of a primitive bed. But she hadn’t worked up the courage before sleep finally claimed her.

Maybe she would tonight. Because Wilhelm meant a lot to her, as well. Maybe not everything. She could never let any man mean that much, let alone a man she couldn’t have a future with. But he meant
something
. Maybe they could enjoy some closeness without losing their heads to desire.

As the day wore on, the throbbing in her bottom bloomed into numbness. It was like her body had accepted the discomfort and figured,
To hell with it. It’s part of me now.

There was a freedom in the acceptance. Her muscles released tension and her mind relaxed. All the familiar sensations of moving in concert with a horse played through her bones and ligaments like a symphony.

There was beauty in this kind of pain. Her body was becoming stronger for it. By the time they reached Inverness, her seat bones would no longer hurt. Her muscles would gain conditioning. The human body was an amazing thing. Sitting behind a desk in the city had made her forget. When she returned, she would join a gym or maybe even take riding lessons again.

Her spirits had lifted significantly by the time Wilhelm called back to her, “Time to rest the horses.” He stopped Justice on a gentle downward slope. In the distance, the tree line opened up to a wide river or maybe a loch. They could water the horses and fill their water skins. Maybe she could even wash herself.

Wilhelm dismounted with grace, his feet barely making a sound upon hitting the ground. He was like a bird landing from a flight. Riding was as natural for him as her driving a car. Would riding become second nature if she remained here? She might find out if she couldn’t locate that Frenchman in Inverness.

“How do you fare, lass?” Wilhelm asked as he ground tied his horse and came her way.

“Fine, thank you.” Every ounce of her defensiveness from last night had crumbled away as she’d relived Wilhelm’s round-about proposal during their ride. That’s what it had been, after all. He’d essentially declared his intention to marry her with the peat fire warming their skin and spiced wine heating their bellies.

And she’d rebuffed him without any finesse whatsoever.

Her predicament wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t possibly understand why they couldn’t have a future together. Yet she’d hauled off and given him a verbal lashing for failing to consider all the things she’d neglected to tell him.

When she put her longing for home aside, Wilhelm’s attention flattered her. He was right about there being something special between them. To feel for someone and have them return those feelings—that was rare enough in itself to be special. But for those feelings to lodge in her heart with such strength and for her to have crossed not just an ocean but half a century of time to experience them? If she’d ever had opportunity to apply the word
miraculous
to anything in her life, it was this.

Maybe there’s meaning in it,
said a tiny voice in her head that sounded an awfully lot like Leslie.
Maybe this journey is teaching you something.
 

If that was the case, she wanted to be receptive. Maybe by accepting the learning, like her body accepted the retraining of its muscles, she would grow stronger. Maybe if she accepted what was happening to her, it would hasten her return home, like Ebenezer Scrooge in
A Christmas Carol.
She would only wake up from this craziness once she internalized the lesson fate was trying to teach her. And she
did
want to wake up, no matter how hard it would be to shake off this beautiful dream.

When Wilhelm presented an upturned palm—an invitation to help her down—she accepted, turning to dismount with her back to the horse as opposed to holding onto the saddle, which was the traditional way to dismount. This put her facing Wilhelm and his intense eyes as she slid down, down, down off Honesty into his waiting arms.

“Chicago is a large city near the center of the North American continent,” she said. She had to give him something to make up for last night. “It’s across the Atlantic Ocean, and the journey takes weeks if not months by ship.” At least it would in this time. She wouldn’t mention she had made the trip in less than one day.

His gaze shifted between her eyes then lowered to her mouth. The corner of his mouth lifted, and he pressed his lips to hers in a gentle kiss.

“My thanks, dear lady. You have given me a kernel of truth.” He brushed her cheek with his thumb, making her bite back a sigh. “I ken ’twas not easy for you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“’Tis Vinland you speak of?”

She stared at him, drawing a blank.

“Across the sea? This land of yours. Vinland, aye?”

“Ah.” She remembered her history lessons now. Leif Ericson had dubbed the Canadian coast such upon landing there in1000 AD. “Yes. I do think it’s called that by some,” she hedged. She wouldn’t give him any clues that she was from another time by telling him that Europeans would come to call it “The New World” within the next fifty years. Goodness. Christopher Columbus hadn’t even set sail yet on his famous voyage of 1492.

This time and place felt so real she kept forgetting she didn’t belong here. Wilhelm felt so real she kept forgetting he wasn’t hers.

His eyes warmed. “’Tis a good start,” he said, and he moved away to tend his horse.

She barked a laugh, unable to help herself. “Quite confident, aren’t you?”

“Aye,” was all he said as he lifted a hoof to scrape the dirt from it with a rock. The gleam in his eye as he glanced her way, made her laugh again.

Damn the man for his charm when they couldn’t be intimate. Shaking her head, she said, “I’m taking Honesty to the water. Please give me a few minutes before you come down so I can wash.”

She led her horse to the water’s edge then along the bank until trees blocked her view of Wilhelm and Justice. About a quarter mile wide and as still as a mirror, the body of water had to be a loch. Beyond stood more of those reddish trees she’d noticed before and more black-blue mountains with snow on top like confectioner’s sugar.

Honesty stepped into the water up to his knees and dunked his muzzle in for a long drink, which forced Connie to let go of the reins or risk getting her boots wet. They were made of thick wool that would soak in the water like a sponge and never dry in this weather. She should have anticipated his eagerness to drink and used her shoulder to keep him from going in too far.

For a minute, she watched the horse nervously and cooed to him. The last thing she needed was Honesty running off and losing travel time to chase him. It seemed she was worried for nothing. When Honesty finished drinking, he sploshed out of the water and stood patiently on the shore, neck low and ears splayed. Resting.

“Good boy,” she told him. Content he wasn’t making plans to abandon her, she rucked up her skirts and slipped out of her underclothes, which were drawers of un-dyed linen cinched with frayed ribbon at her waist and below her knees. If she had a mind to, she could probably carry around a week’s worth of supplies inside given the amount of fabric. When she’d first put them on at the monastery, she’d felt like she was wearing a deflated parachute around each of her thighs. Now she was starting to get used to them. In fact, being exposed to the elements like this, she downright appreciated them. They kept her remarkably warm.

With her underclothes fanned out on the dry, rocky shore and her boots set neatly beside, she gathered up her skirts and ventured into the water up to her shins.

“Christ on a crutch, that’s cold!” Every part of her body set to shaking uncontrollably, but if she wanted to freshen up, she would have to tolerate the discomfort for a minute. Making quick work of it, she brought cupped water up between her legs and cleaned away the stickiness remaining from her interlude with Wilhelm in the cabin last night. She’d been so ready for him, so needy. But her desires, it seemed, were to go unmet. His too.

“Probably for the best,” she said partly to Honesty, partly to herself. She turned to climb out of the water and found Honesty standing stiffly with his ears snapped forward. Sometimes this posture meant excitement, but she recognized fear in the whites of his eyes.

She froze with her feet still in the water and followed his line of sight. Two gray wolves stood motionless at the tree line about thirty feet away. Their yellow eyes bored into her and Honesty.

Fear made a fist in her stomach, but she stepped slowly toward Honesty. “Easy, buddy. They’re just curious.” She hoped. “Ignore them, and they’ll go away.”