The Wedding Dress (14 page)

His face heated. What the hell was he doing talking about this? He’d never mentioned his experience deflecting student crushes to a soul. “Ms. McDaniel—”

“Emma. And don’t get your kilt in a knot. I just thought I’d give you a friendly warning in case you hadn’t noticed Veronica was on the prowl. You looked pretty much in a daze sitting over there in your chair.”

She’d been watching him, as well? The thought unsettled him.

“I notice plenty,” Jared insisted. “For example, I saw what you did.”

She peered up at him, bewildered. “What did I do? Eat dinner?
That
was plenty exciting.”

“You swept into that football game and took Davey under your wing.” And damned if it hadn’t touched Jared to the heart. “The lads were just trying to be the big men on site,” he explained. “They all like Davey well enough and don’t mean anything by their teasing. But Davey is so bright and so damned young…not in age, you know? But in spirit. He makes an easy target.”

Emma frowned. “They’re jealous, plain and simple. No matter how good-natured their intentions, it still hurts. As for me taking Davey under my wing, that’s ridiculous. He’s the only person I’ve met so far who hasn’t tried to bite my head off. I asked Davey to sit by me for completely selfish motives.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. That’s so.” Her chin bumped up as if daring him to contradict her.

Every instinct in Jared told him to just let the subject go. It would be safer for both of them. But somehow he couldn’t make himself be wise.

“For an actress, you’re a rotten liar,” he challenged. She sputtered a denial but Jared ignored it. “Why did you do it, Emma? I really want to know.”

“Why a self-absorbed actress didn’t trample over Davey on the way to her makeup call?” She shrugged, self-deprecating. “I did it because I’ve been right where Davey is in the pecking order. I wouldn’t expect you to understand what it’s like to be an outsider. Look at you. You’re a genius. And with shoulders the size of yours, a bully would have to be suicidal to start picking on you.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, that’s so. In fact, if I were judging candidates for getting the soccer ball slammed in their face on a scale of one to ten—ten being no way in hell—you’d be an eleven.” She hesitated, caught her bottom lip between her teeth for a moment. Her dark gaze probed his. “I confess it makes me wonder…”

“Wonder what?”

“Why
you
single Davey out. Besides the part about him being brilliant. And sweet.”

Jared rolled his eyes. “Don’t be calling the lad sweet to his face. You think the crack about teddy bears humiliated Davey? The last thing any man wants is to be known as sweet. Especially in the eyes of a beautiful woman.”

“I’ll try to remember that. And as long as we’re being honest about our Don Quixote impulses…”

Jared did a double take. Hadn’t he just been thinking in terms of the Cervantes hero? What the hell was the guy doing in Emma McDaniel’s head?

“You don’t give a damn about that script,” Emma said. “It was pretty obvious you were trying to rescue me from Veronica.”

“Partly,” Jared hedged, trying not to be completely unnerved that Emma’s thought processes seemed so in sync with his own. “But I really
do
want to see the script. Besides, I’ve been thinking—when Angelica Robards was here, she spent her downtime running lines. Memorizing the script is part of your job, too. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to work on that when I’m busy on the dig.”

She gave him a sharp look. “Whoa there, Doctor. Remember, you’re supposed to be the villain of this piece. Don’t be getting soft on me, Butler.”

No chance of that, Jared thought. Every time the woman came near him he got hard as a rock.

Cool shadows fell over them as they reached the part of the castle that was still intact, the crash of sea against shore beating a primal rhythm. Intoxicating salt air filled his head as the wind tousled Emma’s hair, one silken curl clinging to the corner of her mouth as it had earlier. But this time Jared surrendered to impulse. He raised his fingers to brush the strand away. Her cheek felt softer than roses, her mouth so velvety moist. He could almost taste her.

Jared’s throat went dry. He tried to think of something, anything to break the spell, resist the temptation of those full, red lips.

“Jared, may I ask you a question?” She peered up at him with those eyes a man could drown in.

“What do you want to know?” he asked hoarsely.

“What was that artifact you were studying so intensely? Before you started eavesdropping on my table, that is.”

Relieved at the distraction, Jared rummaged in the roomy cargo pocket on the leg of his pants. He drew out the Ziploc bag. “Beth uncovered this find when I was picking you up at the airport. I think it may be a fragment of a coronet a woman would have worn to hold her veil on her head.”

Jared snagged the palm-sized flashlight hooked to his belt and flicked it on. He shone the beam on the find. Red enamel reflected the light.

Emma’s breath caught. She stared, mesmerized. “The color—it’s so vibrant. I thought it must be a gemstone or something.”

“Smiths crafted circlets of enameled flowers to help brighten up the long gray Scottish winters. This fragment still has three leaves attached. See?”

Clamping the end of his flashlight lightly between his teeth for a moment, he retrieved his magnifier, handing it to Emma so she could get a closer look.

Jared carefully slid the metal piece out of its container, pillowing it on the layer of plastic he now cupped in his hand.

Emma’s eyes widened with feverish interest as she peered through the magnifier. “They look like…Are the leaves made out of gold?”

Jared’s enthusiasm dimmed. He slid the flashlight back into his hand. What was his problem? This dragging sense of disappointment he felt was ridiculous. It should come as no surprise that a woman with Emma McDaniel’s wealth would be fascinated with riches from another time.

Jared had seen plenty of archaeology students catch cases of gold fever in his years working on different digs. He always told them that since Schliemann had already discovered Troy most of the things they’d find would be pottery, weapons and hand-crafted tools. People couldn’t eat gold. But Emma seemed oblivious to his subtle withdrawal.

“Gold in a circlet would have been rare, wouldn’t it?” Emma enthused. “Something only the most important people would wear?”

“Aye.” Jared tried not to mind knowing what her next question would be.
How much money is it worth?
Wasn’t that how most of the world measured the value of things?

“Do you realize what you have there?” Emma asked.

“I’ll know better once we run some tests and get it dated.” Why bother trying to explain technical matters, Jared thought with a sinking sensation in his middle. The woman wasn’t even listening. She stared down at the tangled bit of metal, mesmerized.

“Lady Aislinn might have worn that circlet in her hair,” she breathed.

Jared’s stock caution about history being valued beyond mere currency died on the tip of his tongue. “She may well have.”

Emma reached out a fingertip, then suddenly caught herself, curling her fingers tight into her palm, like a kid who didn’t trust herself to resist. “I’m sorry,” she said. “There are probably oils and stuff on my hand that could damage it. Like the antique wedding dress my aunt Finn and I found in the attic at March Winds. The conservators Aunt Finn talked to at the museum said we should never touch it without white gloves on our hands.”

An antique wedding dress? Jared couldn’t help but wonder what Yanks considered old. The country was in its infancy by European standards. When you’d lived your whole life in a land with walls built by Romans and Neolithic stone circles, the word
antique
definitely became relative.

“This wedding dress,” Jared asked, “did experts date it?”

“It was from the American Civil War. In the 1860s. You must have heard of it.”

Jared raised one brow, amused. “I think I read a bit about that in some history class I took. Quite rude of you Yanks to fight amongst yourselves, if you ask the English of that time. Played havoc with the cotton mills on this side of the ocean.”

Emma tsked. “Thinking of the empire’s commerce when higher issues are involved—isn’t that just like you English.”

Jared scowled. “I’m a Scot. You want to get yourself thrown out of a pub hereabouts, call the locals ‘English.’”

Emma laughed and for an instant, Jared forgot to breathe. “I couldn’t resist pulling your chain. After reading about the Lady Aislinn legend, I got the picture. The English weren’t exactly invited guests in Scotland either.”

She tossed that mane of dark hair. The scent of it filled Jared’s head, tempting him to grab a wayward curl, press it to his lips.
Bloody hell, was he losing his mind?

“My family’s Irish,” Emma continued. “They were forced to emigrate during the Easter Uprising. We consider blaming the English for our troubles an Olympic sport.”

Jared studied her face. “You’re Irish? It surprises me. I would have guessed some Spanish blood or something exotic—”

Her gaze flitted away from his. She shrugged, taking a step nearer the cliff.

“My mom’s family is Irish,” Emma said. “I should have made that clearer.”

“And your father?”

He wished the words back the instant he spoke them, could almost hear doors slamming shut inside her. What the hell was he doing asking her personal questions anyway? There were plenty about his own life he didn’t want to answer.

“My father’s not important,” she said flatly.

She was avoiding something. Her voice shifted, airy once again. He might have been fooled if he hadn’t trained a lifetime to unearth things other people wouldn’t even notice.

“Anyway,” she continued, “there’s this Welshman down at the American Legion where my grandfather takes the family sometimes for the catfish fry on Saturday nights.”

Jared tried to imagine Emma eating fried catfish anywhere at all. “The American Legion?” he prodded, just grateful they’d managed to navigate past whatever dangerous waters had made her edgy moments before.

“It’s a special pub where military veterans go.”

“Right.”

“This Rhys Llewellyn was always griping about the English, saying how the Welsh mounted a noble resistance and such. So one night the Captain’s finally had enough. He shouts across the room,
You Welsh have got no credibility with me at all.
” She mimicked a booming voice.
“They don’t call Charles the Prince of Dublin.”

Jared laughed. “The Captain? Isn’t that what you named your dog?”

Emma’s mouth curved in a tender smile. “The Captain is my grandfather. I’ve called him that for as long as I remember.”

“Was he looking to start a fight?”

“He always is. But what could Llewellyn say? At least we Irish kept on trying.”

She quieted, peering wistfully toward the sea, and suddenly Jared could see all that was Irish in her, an otherworldliness far deeper than her dark eyes. The rising moon painted her features in mystery, as if she were a fairy lost on the heath.

The flashlight’s glare suddenly seemed too harsh, revealing a vulnerability in her that made Jared’s heart feel too small. He flicked the torch off and returned it to its leather pouch. He started to put away the fragment of coronet, then stopped and glanced at Emma’s woebegone face.

“Emma?” he queried softly, feeling as if he were calling her back from a world only she could see.

She swallowed hard and he wondered what memory had made her so sad. She turned toward him, her smile wobbling. “Don’t mind me,” she said. “I’m just a little homesick. Silly, isn’t it? A simple plane ride and I could be back in Whitewater by morning. When Lady Aislinn came to this place she was so far from her home, she must have guessed she’d never see it again. Especially since her father had just died. Last night as I was staring out at the sea, I could feel her, you know? How alone she must have been. That must sound silly to you.”

“No.” Moved by instinct, Jared took her hand in his. She stilled at his touch, the pulse in her wrist beating wildly beneath his fingers. Her skin felt so silky, so warm a frisson of awareness went through him.

He forced himself to focus on the task he’d intended, turning her hand in his until her fingers formed a cup. Carefully he slipped the fragment of coronet into her palm. Emma peered down at the enameled flower as if it were a magical talisman that could whisk her away to a world of fairies and moon and mist.

Who knew? Jared thought. Emma seemed like the land of America itself, too new to understand such ancient magic, too willful to recognize echoes that had sounded long before it had been born.

Emma ran her fingertip over the enamel with such delicacy the blood in Jared’s veins raced. He could feel her touch as intimately as if it were on his skin. She moistened her lips, her voice unsteady. “It’s almost as if it’s alive.”

Jared’s throat tightened. Wasn’t that what he felt? Whenever he retrieved some long-forgotten treasure from the earth? A pulse of people long dead. A whisper of voices silenced. A reminder that life was fleeting and he, too, would someday fade away into time.

For a moment he wished that Emma
could
bring Lady Aislinn to life. He’d never seen this glow in Angelica Robards’ eyes when she’d spoken of Lady Aislinn, Jared recalled with regret. He’d never felt this unexpected bond with the woman he considered talented enough to play his lady. No. Not his. The castle’s lady. The legend’s lady. The mystery-shrouded ghost whose secrets had consumed him for so many years.

The brush of Emma’s fingers jarred Jared from his thoughts, his hand beneath her fingertips feeling
alive
in a way he’d almost forgotten. Warmth surged through him, as if he were a relic she’d found and held for the first time in centuries to the sunlight.

Emma tipped the enameled flower back into his hand. “Thank you,” she breathed, “for letting me touch something so—so precious.”

Something cold where she was hot, something lifeless where she was so damned full of passion. Passion for this place, for this legend, for a woman she’d never met and a story he’d always loved. As if she understood….