Highlander of Mine (30 page)

His throat and chest constricted. He couldn’t breathe. His eyes stung with the thought that his strong mother lingered to make sure...Suddenly, he remembered the last thing his ma had said:
Protect my son
.

Did Fleur ask to be here because of Helen’s dying wish? His heart broke all over again.

He felt so hollow then, looking down at Fleur. The wee thing stood protectively before him.

Clio had been talking for a while, and Duncan strained to understand what she said.

“...so, yeah, some of it I can cover for. Like when the English marched the captured Highlanders back to London, most of them disappeared. But some of the other history, I don’t know how to remedy.”

“Tell her what part, Clio,” Coyote said, his voice suddenly deep and serious.

Clio huffed. “Duncan is sold to an English lord in the Caribbean, where he’s worked to death a year from now.”

This moment, the bizarreness of it all and the overwhelming emotional information had been striking him, making him feel as if he was in a boxing competition with his hands tied behind his back. But the details of his imminent death almost had him double over. “I never see my brothers again?”

Suddenly Fleur turned, her arms around him in a flash.

“I’m sorry, Duncan,” Clio said. “No, you never see your brothers again. Not in the history I know.”

Fleur tightened her grip, whispering, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

A tear fell from his eye before he could censor it. Angrily, he wiped it away then glanced at Coyote standing behind Fleur.

“What she’s not telling you is that you can have a different history now,” the god said. “In fact, that’s why she’s here, to give you another history, to balance out time.”

Fleur turned around. Again, her body between his and the muses and Coyote. “Duncan can have a different history, as in a different future now? So we can stay here? Together?” She sounded giddy.

As much as it pained him, he couldn’t have Fleur because she felt obligated by his mother’s last wish. He wanted her here, aye, but he wanted her to want that for herself.

He stepped aside, craving to hold her in his arms once more, but he couldn’t be that selfish. “Nay, my Fleur—Fleur. Ye can’t stay here.”

Her bottom lip quivered for a moment when she looked at him.

Duncan couldn’t gaze into her dark beautiful eyes and tried to let go of her hand, which she still clung to.

“Ye’re free to go back to yer own time,” he choked. “Ye have no obligation to me.”

Everyone was quiet for a long time, and finally he looked back at Fleur. Her eyes glistened and slowly her brows knitted together, making that perfect wee line over her nose.

“I’m going to kill you.”

Well, he hadn’t expected her to say that.

“No obligation?” she yelled. “No obligation? Is that all I am to you? An obligation?”

He was confused and looked around as if the others could help.

But Fleur grabbed hold of his jaw. He almost winced at the pain as she forced him to gaze at her. “Look me in the eyes and tell me I’m just an obligation to you.”

“What?”

“You heard me, Duncan. I’ve given you my heart, and I’m just an obligation to you?”

Given her heart?
Duncan stared down at her, not sure if he’d heard what he had. “What?”

She threw her hands up to the still dark heavens. “I love you, and you want to push me aside? I’m an obligation to you?”

His heart stopped then started almost painfully so. He wanted to clutch at it, but he reached for her arms, holding her still, making sure she looked at him. “Ye love me?”

“Yes!” She ground her teeth and the pooled tears spilled over. “Or should I say, ‘Aye.’ What would make it so you understand that I—”

He kissed her. He couldn’t hold in his emotions and pummeled his lips against hers.

She pushed him away. Well, she tried, but he wouldn’t let her go.

“Stop it. Just stop it.” Another tear fell from her perfect wide orbs. “You’re killing me.”

He kissed her again. Hard and unrelenting, but he hoped it conveyed his passion for her. His love. Feeling wet against her cheeks, he cupped her visage as he deepened the kiss, wiping the tears while slowly pushing his tongue in her mouth, so warm and so inviting.

Until she bit him.

He flinched and looked down at her angry face.

He’d been so scared to say it:
I love you.
Terrified that if he did, then she’d vanish. Only, now he knew she felt it too. So why was he still so afraid?

The answer was a whisper of a memory of loving his mother so much, telling her so, then Albert pushing him far from her. He remembered feeling that somehow the words were a curse and had made his mother feel too burdened, too overwhelmed. And because of that, she’d disappeared and become a shell of the woman he’d known as a bairn. He’d thought it had been his fault, even though he’d been so angry at Albert. But under all the pain and resentment, he’d always blamed himself.

Somewhere in him, a little lad had loved his mother so fierce, and she’d tried so hard to do the right thing, but he’d wound up alone anyway. As much as he knew he loved Fleur, he was so scared of admitting it, finalizing the curse.

But a petal-soft breeze murmured to him to stop believing he was the cause for so much suffering. Magic existed, the magic of love.

He didn’t kiss Fleur. Instead, he broke his self-imposed curse. “I love ye, Fleur. I love ye so much.”

Another tear of hers escaped and he gently wiped it away, angry though because his rough calloused finger caught against her soft cheek. Still, she grabbed his hand and cuddled it against her visage.

“Tell me again.”

“I love ye, Fleur Anpoa. Ye are my heart, my whole heart.”

“One more time.”

He chuckled. “I love ye.”

“I love you...so much.” This time she reached up on her toes and kissed him so hard and powerfully, it nearly knocked him over. But he held fast, wrapping his arms around her thin waist.

The sound of sniffing finally filtered through his senses, and he pulled away from the kiss, glancing at his audience. The muses were both crying, and even Coyote kept clearing his throat and blinking.

Erato beamed at him. “Good. That’s decided then.”

“I don’t think the man’s decided one thing,” Coyote said.

Clio took a step forward. “It’s a decision for both of them.” She smiled and seemed almost shy. “Fleur, Duncan, your future is your own, your choice. You may stay here—”

“Where history is prone to remedy itself and force Duncan into a slave camp in the Fever Islands.” Coyote folded his arms across his chest, giving Clio a dark look. “That’s what you’re forgetting to tell them.”

Clio rolled her eyes. “I’m not completely cruel. I would have given them some hints.”

Coyote rolled his own eyes. “And they call
me
the trickster.”

Erato stood by her sister. “My sister and I are governed by our laws, buddy.”

Clio nodded and smiled at her sister. They winked at each other.

Then Erato glanced back at Duncan. “I have to tell you, if you choose to go back to Fleur’s time, I insist you help give your brothers
glimpses
too.”

Fleur squeezed his hand. Looking up at him, she smiled, but then tilted her head at the muses. “So if he comes to my time, he’ll be able to see his brothers again?”

Clio bit her lip, while Erato nodded.

“And he’ll live longer than the one year he’s supposed to live in the Caribbean?”

This time both muses looked to the heathered ground.

“The one rule we have is we’re not supposed to tell mortals about their deaths,” Coyote answered seriously. “Obviously, we’ve broken that several times over.” Then he leaned close to Fleur’s ear. “He’ll have several grandchildren before he goes, and it will be with you, all wrinkled at his side, when he does.”

Duncan thought the news wasn’t just for Fleur’s ears, because he’d heard the whisper clear as day. It filled him with something so beautiful and warm, he didn’t know what to do, except to grip at Fleur all the more. That was the only thing keeping him from falling apart and crumbling into a pile of sentiment, her hold on him. Oh, Jesus, who was he fooling? He was already a pile of passion, poetry, and love.

“Coyote!” Clio barked reproachfully.

The man just shrugged, then slowly slanted his face with a crooked smile. Clio couldn’t seem to help herself but smiled back at him. Then Erato too. Lord, the man had some way with women, er, whatever they were.

Fleur looked up at Duncan, gently touching his face, careful around what was torn and tender. “What do you think?”

He laughed, but her face grew serious.

“No, Duncan, you do have a choice here. I’ll go anywhere you want to go. If you want to stay here, I’ll stay. I’ll go wherever you go.”

“Why on earth would I want to stay here?” He chuckled. “Granted, I’ve grown to love Durness now. But I have a future with ye. I have a future where I can learn more about yer science. I have a future where I can see my brothers again. But more than any of that, did I mention I have a long future with ye?” Suddenly, he sucked in his mirth and glanced at Erato. “Rory. Rory MacKay needs to pay for what he’s—”

“As you’ll soon learn,” Clio said, “Rory will be hunted by his brother. He goes to England for sanctuary but is an outcast there too. He tries to go to his mother in France, but lands himself on the wrong boat where he winds up in the Floridas, indentured to a Spanish lord for the rest of his very short life of only three months after that. He dies from typhoid.”

Duncan sighed, but then cracked a wide grin at Clio. “Rule breaker.”

She looked up at the still twinkling early morning stars. “Well, that’s
his
death, not yours. It’s very complicated, the rules. You mortals wouldn’t understand.” Waving him off, she shook her head with a chuckle. “Okay, so I break the rules from time to time.”

“Yeah, she does.” Coyote’s voice was dark and sultry.

Clio rolled her eyes yet again. “Anyway, what’s it going to be, big guy?”

Duncan smiled down at Fleur. Opening his mouth, he was suddenly cut off by a rough voice.

“I think before he makes up his mind . . .” Greggor suddenly started to move and roll his shoulders, then shake his head, as if he were tired of being frozen for so long. And his accent shifted slightly to something more...Scandinavian. “We have some talking to do, girls.”

Clio’s dark red brows knit together. Erato’s mouth hung ajar.

Greggor loosened his muscles more and stood close to Coyote who studied him with furrowed dark brows.

“Hey, how’s it going?” Greggor asked Coyote. Then in a heartbeat Greggor suddenly transformed into Coyote. He looked exactly like the other man, except Greggor still had his icy blue eyes.

Coyote’s own eyes narrowed. “Oden, I should have smelled it was you.”

The other Coyote laughed. “Insults? After all I did to ensure Fleur stayed safe while she was abducted?”

Coyote narrowed his brown eyes and shifted into a blond longhaired man with black leather brais and a long black tunic cinched in with a belt. Complete with fur-trimmed boots, the man looked like an ominous Viking of yore.

“Nice,” the blue-eyed Coyote nodded. “Now you’re looking better.”

“Stop it! Just stop it!” Erato yelled, pleading with her arms stretched out. “Not in front of the humans.”

Both men looked at Fleur and Duncan. It was then Duncan noticed he’d taken most if not all of Fleur’s weight in his arms. She stood with her eyes wide and glassy and then looked up at him.

“Did you just see what I saw?”

He nodded.

Then the bickering men shifted again, the blue-eyed Coyote shifted into the blond man’s form and Coyote transformed back into his own. Fleur gasped, and Duncan held her closer.

“Anyhoo,” the blue-eyed man, supposedly Oden, said. “Before you go about turning Duncan’s brothers’ lives for the better with your
glimpses
, it’s time you addressed another issue.”

“The World War I flyboy you dropped in Rome?” Clio asked with an arched brow.

Oden winced, but then straightened and narrowed his eyes at the muses. “I’m not the only one dropping people in different times. You have to figure out what you’re going to do with Dr. Meredith Peabody before you fix Duncan’s brothers.”

Erato bit her bottom lip. “We didn’t mean to keep her there so long.”

“It was just a joke,” Clio said.

Greggor, er, Oden shook his head. “Some joke. She’s nearly insane, you know that? Not very nice, girls, to drop the woman off in the Montana Territory during the wild West era, which she knew very little about.”

Clio scoffed. “What about you? Your doughboy’s been in Rome for years.”

Oden shrugged. “He asked for it.”

“Because you got him drunk, and he didn’t know what he was asking for,” Coyote added.