Wishing For a Highlander (19 page)

As remarkable as the hot water was, something else in what Constance had said caught her ear. “Through the stones?”

“Standing stones.” Her hostess seated herself on the edge of the tub. “You know, like Stonehenge? The circle that brought me through is near Inverness. When I was vacationing with my mother and sister, it was called Druid’s Temple. It has no name today that I know of.” She waved away the enormity of time travel via ancient stone formation and raised her eyebrows at Melanie’s belly. “Your first?”

She nodded, her hands rubbing her baby bump beneath the steamy paradise. Despite the gentle flutters deep inside that usually made her ridiculously happy when she was still enough to feel them, a deep melancholy overcame her. She had a woman from close to her own time, who’d gone through a similar experience to her own, making herself graciously available, yet her thoughts kept turning back to the way her heart had ached when Constance had said,
“You plan to send her back through time,”
and only incriminating silence had followed.

“You’ve got it bad, darlin’.”

She looked up with a start and realized her hostess had been talking and she’d been spacing. “I’m sorry. What were you saying?”

Constance gave her a knowing smile. “I was saying I was terrified about giving birth here, but it wasn’t so bad. I managed it quite a few times. But I have a feeling giving birth isn’t the top totem on your pole right now.”

She felt herself blush and let her head rest back on the tub as she focused on the woman before her instead of the man across the castle. “How many is ‘quite a few?’ Boys? Girls?”

“Later. Let’s talk about that top totem. You thought you wanted to go back, but now you’re not so sure.”

The truth of the other woman’s words kicked her in the gut. She wanted to deny it. Wanted to say, “That’s absurd. Of course I want to go back.” But she couldn’t. She could only soak there and look guilty.

A soft laugh parted Constance’s lips. “Boy, have I been there, darlin’.”

“Did you look for a way back?”

“No,” she said softly. “At first it was all I could think about, but I didn’t have the opportunity. Within an hour of coming through the stones, I was imprisoned under suspicion of being an English spy.” They shared a sympathetic smile. “There was no trial. No opportunity for escape. The word
witch
was thrown around. Before I knew it, I was naked and tied to a stake with a pile of wood on fire at my feet.”

As she continued her story, Constance’s hazel eyes went back to that day. But for Darcy’s snatching her from Steafan’s clutches, she’d have died like this remarkable woman almost had. “Wilhelm had been riding through the clan-lands educating the lairds about alternatives to unnecessarily cruel punishments–my husband has always been a thinker out of place in time.” She beamed with pride and added with a conspiratorial wink, “It’s one of the reasons we get along so well.”

She rose and rifled through a cupboard while Melanie tried to reconcile the man with the compassionate agenda with the ruthless laird Darcy had told her about. “Well, as you can imagine,” Constance went on, “his ideas weren’t too popular. But being the oldest son of the laird of Dornoch, he was humored, though no one took him seriously. Until he rode through that crowd, sliced the head off my executioner, and pulled me from the flames like a warrior possessed by righteous justice.”

There it was, the missing piece. Wilhelm was ruthless in his compassion. The thought made her smile. She imagined Darcy would ride through flames, beheading executioners, to rescue her as well.

Constance turned from the cupboard with her arms full of pressed soaps, glass bottles, sponges, and loofas. “Dunk your head and I’ll wash your hair,” she said, uncorking a bottle.

She obeyed, her eyes drifting closed with pleasure as her hostess lathered her locks with the gentle fingers of a woman who had raised several children, the strong fingers of a modern woman who had made a life for herself five hundred years in the past. The sweet fragrance of honeysuckle drew her deeper into bliss.

“So, he saved you,” she said, her voice slurred with relaxation. “That’s so romantic. What happened then?”

Constance was quiet, so Melanie cracked an eye open. Her hostess smiled down at her, the mischief in the look hinting at sensual memories. “Well,” she said, “I found my rescuer
verra
handsome. And, as you can imagine, I was
verra
grateful.”

They sighed in unison, and she wondered if her hostess had ever been a reader of romance novels.

Pouring a pitcher of warm water over her head, Constance said, “Wilhelm’s father married us the next week, and I never did get around to looking for a way back to the corporate grind.”

Melanie availed herself of the soaps and loofas while her hostess told her about her six sons, the oldest three now married and with children of their own.

She let herself imagine Constance thirty years ago. The woman had a stately beauty about her now; she must have been absolutely ravishing back then. And Wilhelm, who still looked as though he could more than hold his own in a battle, must have been quite the warrior back in the day. What color had his hair been then? With his silvery-blue eyes, probably blond.

“And you never looked back?” she asked at last.

“Never.” She put away the bath things, and Melanie stood and toweled herself dry. “That’s not to say it wasn’t difficult at times. I grieved for the people I loved whom I knew I would never see again. I hated myself sometimes for not at least trying to find my way back to them.” She regarded her with serious eyes. “But whenever I thought about what it would do to Wilhelm if I left–” She shook her regal head as if the thought was too terrible to voice.

Her face softened. “And then we had our first son. Seeing Wilhelm as a father changed me. Made me realize that nothing mattered but us. Our family. Those who would have missed me would have forgiven me for taking this happiness for myself. I stopped beating myself up about it and just…lived.”

Constance’s story sat like a stone in her gut. It both anchored her and made her feel ill. “Didn’t you ever worry about how your life would likely be shorter here, without modern medicine? Didn’t you think about all the conveniences you would miss?” Even to her own ears, those concerns sounded trivial in contrast to the love Constance had found.

The older woman cocked an eyebrow in response, showing she felt the same way.

“Let’s keep the hot water just between us girls.” Her hostess showed her back to the bedroom then left her to contemplate all they’d talked about.

Darcy wasn’t back yet, so she sat before the dressing table and combed her damp hair. She didn’t know if she could stop looking for a way home. She had feelings for Darcy, sure, and her leaving would hurt them both, but in the end, her leaving would actually help him. He’d be able to go back to Ackergill if she wasn’t with him. The whole agreement he was working out with Wilhelm assumed he would eventually be allowed back. In time, he would be glad to have her gone so he could have his life back, and she would be glad to get back to Charleston and the museum and to the people she loved and who would be so worried about her.

But the way back home, if there was one, waited for her in Inverness. For now, she was in romantic Skibo Castle in picturesque Dornoch. And she had a husband to bend to her seductive will. Darcy had vowed to help her return home. Rising from the dressing table, she vowed she wouldn’t go without having given him as much affection and pleasure as he deserved.

With her hair all combed out and drying in chunky waves, she stretched out on the bed in her shift, lying on her side to face the door with her legs bent to alluring effect and one arm framing her breasts.

“Come and get me, you sexy Highlander.”

* * * *

After discussing a contract with Wilhelm for over an hour, Darcy made his way back to the room he and Malina had been given. They’d finally agreed the Murray would provide them protection in Dornoch for up to two years, and in exchange, Darcy would serve the Murray with his sword for those two years and for the following five years, answering as many as four calls per year so long as the skirmish was not against the Keith or an ally of the Keith. When he eventually returned to Ackergill, he would send Wilhelm a quarter share of his take at the mill until the end of the seven-year contract. It was a larger percentage than Darcy was comfortable with. After Steafan’s take of thirty percent he would be left with just over forty percent for running the mill and to live off of, but he’d agreed to the sum thinking that it didn’t cost much for a man to live alone.

Mayhap it was optimistic to believe Steafan would abide his return, but he had value to his clan as a fighter, and being near kin to the laird may serve him well. So long as Malina wasn’t with him, he stood a chance, however small, though he wouldn’t be surprised to spend some time in Steafan’s stocks or to suffer a scourging for his rebellion. ’Twas only fair. He had defied his laird. But he didn’t fash overmuch about it. A little pain would be nothing compared to the ache of losing Malina. Any wounds his uncle saw fit to carve into his flesh would heal. Malina’s absence would be a never-healing agony.

He walked the grand halls of Skibo and pictured his wife’s bonny face and her sweet mouth. Would she mayhap kiss him again before he took his place on the floor tonight? Her kisses, her touch, the soft look in her emerald eyes that made him unashamed to stand to his full height, those would be the things he would live for until he had to say goodbye. He would spend however long they had together flooding his mind with memories he could cling to on the cold nights that awaited him after she returned home.

He came to the door and opened it quietly, not wanting to wake her if she was already asleep. But the faint glow of a shuttered lantern met him, along with an enticing honeysuckle scent. He stepped inside and his lungs forgot how to breathe.

Malina was lying on the bed in her shift lazily stroking a finger over the velvety bedcovers. Her hair surrounded her shoulders like silky ropes of silver and gold. And, sweet saints, her breasts plumped against her low neckline like cream about to overflow a pitcher. While he stood stunned in the open doorway, one of her delicate hands curled in her shift and tugged up her hem to reveal the pale, smooth lines of her shins. The gentle curves of her knees. Christ, higher.

“Shut the door, Darcy, and come to bed.”

He shut the door all right, sealing himself outside the bedchamber, eradicating the vision that had made his cock spring instantly to attention. ’Twas more than kissing his wee temptress of a wife had in mind. She would kill him with the wanting of her.

He turned on his heel and fled at the fastest pace that could yet be called a walk. Where he might go, he had no idea. It didn’t matter. So long as he got himself away from the temptation that was his beautiful Malina.

“Darcy! Where are you going?”

She was coming after him. His muscles coiled to run from her. But the Keith didn’t run. They faced what terrified them with bravery and honor.

He stopped and turned, facing the most terrifying and wonderful thing he’d ever laid eyes on.

Her silvery eyebrows slanted with concern. “Darcy?”

“Malina–” He didn’t ken what to say to her, so he said nothing.

She closed the distance between them and took his hand. He was too startled by the contact to yank it back.

“Come on, husband of mine.” Her smile did a poor job of masking her hurt. “I’d rather behave myself and have you stay with me tonight than try to seduce you and chase you away. Tell me about the contract with Wilhelm,” she said, leading him back to the room.

* * * *

Shee-yikes, could that have gone any worse? Doing her best not to take Darcy’s rejection personally, Melanie pulled a blanket around herself and curled into as unsexy a ball as she could manage against the bed’s many pillows. She listened as he paced the room and told her of his contract with Wilhelm. It pleased her that the meeting had gone so well and that he seemed to look forward to his eventual return to Ackergill.

“What did you talk about with Lady Constance?” he asked, hands on his hips, back to the brocade curtains pulled across the window. He offered her a smile that seemed to acknowledge the awkwardness of what had happened earlier.

Hoping her embarrassment wasn’t too obvious, she briefly told him about how Constance had come through standing stones from close to her time and about her and Wilhelm’s fast and fiery courtship. She skipped over the part where Constance had said that once she’d chosen Wilhelm she’d never looked back.

Darcy took the Murray kilt and spread it on the hard floor, then blew out the lantern. In the dark, his boots thunked to the floorboards, one after the other, then the clinking of a belt buckle cut into the silence. The sound of rustling fabric told her he was unfurling his kilt and wrapping himself in it. She’d never been jealous of a piece of fabric before, but she would’ve given up a whole shelf of romance novels for the chance to be wrapped around Darcy in his kilt’s place.

“Tomorrow, Wilhelm will show me around Dornoch,” he said as he lowered himself to the floor. His voice came from close to where she lay in the bed, so she knew he was sitting up. She could reach out and brush her fingers through his hair, but she kept her hands to herself, remembering her promise to behave. “He’ll show me where I might best serve him while we are here. I imagine ye can spend more time with Lady Constance. We should get our rest.” After a pause, he said, “Thank ye, Malina. I am content with the arrangement we have with the Murray. And I wouldna have thought of such a thing on my own. Ye have a fine mind on ye, lass.” He sighed and lay down.