Emma nodded, then found herself standing alone in the great room of a house belonging to people she didn’t know, in a country she didn’t belong to, without really a place to stay that felt secure.
Just what in the hell had she gotten herself into?
Patrick peeked around a corner suddenly. “Dinner?”
She’d had an early dinner at the pub, but she thought she could manage something else. It would give her something to do besides wring her hands. “Wonderful,” she croaked. “How can I help?”
“Come chop veg, if you like.”
It seemed like the least she could do.
• • •
A couple of hours later, she found herself sitting at the table enjoying coffee and dessert. Madelyn and Sunny both had gone to see to more family bedtime routines and she was left with the good lord of Benmore. She had already been assured of a place to stay for as long as she wanted it, though she honestly wasn’t sure she could accept it.
“So, a spot of trouble?” Patrick asked mildly. He looked at her. “Madelyn didn’t gossip; she just thought I should know a few details so I didn’t make a hash of supper conversation.”
Emma managed a nod. “Ex-boyfriend,” she said.
“Madelyn says she knows him. One of those vile lawyer types, I understand.”
“Isn’t your wife a lawyer?”
He smiled. “Indeed she is, and a very good one. But this lad of yours, does he not want to be your former boyfriend?”
She put her fork down because that seemed to remove the possibility that she might drop it at an untoward moment. “He didn’t like getting dumped,” she agreed, “but it’s less about wanting me back than it is about wanting me destroyed.” That was understating it, she supposed, but maybe that was all Patrick needed to hear.
“Some people have a very hard time letting go of things,” Patrick said philosophically, “especially when their pride has been wounded.” He leaned back in his chair. “Did your former boyfriend know you were coming overseas?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t think it was any of his business any longer where I went or what I did.” She didn’t add that she had left the States in part to get away from him, though she supposed Patrick would figure that out on his own.
He frowned thoughtfully. “So you discovered late this afternoon that your Sheldon had called,” he said.
“My former Sheldon.”
Patrick smiled. “Of course. What did Adara say he’d wanted? I’m assuming she was manning the front desk.”
She felt a little queasy. “The village is that small?”
“It is,” he agreed, “and yet still there are places where a body might have, shall we say, a bit of anonymity.”
She could only hope. “She said that someone had called, wanting to know when I’d checked in and how long I was staying. Apparently she’d tried to stall him, but he was very aggressive. He told her he was my fiancé and I’d forgotten to give him money for our wedding before I’d left, so he needed to get in touch with me right away.”
“Clever,” Patrick said with a sigh. “And, again, you hadn’t told him anything about your plans.”
“I haven’t talked to him in months. I can’t imagine how he knows I’m even in Scotland, never mind that I was there at the inn.” She sipped her coffee to give herself time to think for a moment or two. “The only people who know are my parents, but I made them promise to keep their mouths shut.”
“Did they fancy him?”
“You could say that.”
He smiled. “Family can be . . . opinionated.”
“I’m suspecting you would know.”
“My older brother has a hard time believing I can drag myself from one end of the day to the other without his aid,” Patrick said dryly. “My fists have no trouble telling him when I’ve had enough, but I don’t imagine you can sort things that way.”
“That and poisoning Sheldon’s bourbon aren’t options,” she agreed. “So here I am, left with the only option being to run.”
“It has its place,” he said, “and I’ve done it often enough myself in the past.” He considered. “I think if you’ve a mind to allow the trail to stop at the inn, I can help you. Your hire car could be returned and you can stay at the cottage. We have a little runabout you can also use as long as you like.”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” she said without hesitation. “Renting your cottage—”
“Rent?” he echoed with a smile. “Nay, lass, you’re working there for the winter, didn’t you know? Caretaking and all that. You’ll surely need a car. I’m doing this strictly for my benefit, of course. I don’t want to find my lane cluttered up with your rubbish ex-boyfriends.”
She couldn’t even bring herself to smile. “Lord Patrick—”
“Patrick,” he corrected, “and you should know I’m accustomed to always getting my way. I can’t get to Inverness for another pair of days—I’m assuming that’s where you hired your wee runabout—but we’ll go then, if that suits. I’ll see you out to the cottage now, then I’ll go have a word with Adara and throw the Southertons off the scent. I can slander a Yank barrister as well as the next lad.”
“Hey, careful,” Madelyn said, walking back into the kitchen. “Mind your manners.”
“National pride,” Patrick said archly.
“Oh, I know all about your national pride,” Madelyn said sweetly. “It’s why I never want to go see sights with you, remember?”
Emma watched them as they discussed briefly the difficulties of an American trying to see English sights with a Scottish husband and had to admit that she envied them their obvious happiness. She had no idea how long they’d been married, but it looked as if it had been a blissful union for decades.
Time was a funny thing.
“Emma, you must still be exhausted,” Madelyn said, putting her hands on Patrick’s shoulders. “I imagine Patrick can let you follow him there, then show you how to start the fire. Just call me in the morning if you have trouble. Those old stoves can be tricky.” She smiled. “It took me a bit not to feel like I was about to burn the house down, but I’m sure you won’t have that problem.”
Emma could only hope. She couldn’t believe she was accepting help from almost perfect strangers, but at least for the night, she couldn’t see any other alternative.
She thanked Sunny and Madelyn for a lovely evening, then followed Patrick outside to her waiting car. She didn’t remember as much of the drive to the cottage as she should have, and she definitely struggled to memorize directions for starting the stove up the next morning, but she didn’t think anyone would blame her.
An hour later, she was snug and warm in a cottage that she was certain no one would simply discover on a whim. Sheldon would have no idea where she was, neither would her parents. For all she knew, not even that privacy-lover Nathaniel MacLeod would run into her unless she put herself in his path.
She considered the small bedroom, then settled for a couch that found itself fairly close to the stove. She pulled the blanket up to her ears, snuggled down, and felt safe for the first time in longer than she wanted to think about.
No wonder that reclusive Nathaniel MacLeod hid in the woods.
She thought she might understand.
Chapter 6
Nathaniel decided that if he didn’t get hold of himself soon, he was going to be missing critical parts of himself because some fourteenth-century clansman was going to cut him to ribbons before he realized there was a sword coming his way. He was so befuddled that he was starting to run into things in both the past and the future without paying them any heed.
His present situation was proof enough of that. It should have been so innocent, the current morning where he found himself in his proper century with nary a medieval clansman in sight. A little run along a path he’d been down countless times, a bit of peac
e for thinking, and an ear cocked for the sound of rental cars carrying women on the hunt for the recluse up the hill. His light exercise should have been accomplished with no trouble and no fanfare.
Instead, he’d practically run into trouble before he’d seen it coming. In his defense, he’d never before seen anyone inhabiting that little cottage James MacLeod apparently owned. He had no idea who had owned it before—he thought it might have been Ryan Fergusson—but the point was, he’d never had to look out for any lodgers on his morning exercise.
This was also the first time he’d ever paused to watch smoke coming out the front door. He stood there and watched the doorway belch out a coughing woman as well. He noted, with an emotion he couldn’t quite identify right off, that it was his Yank.
A more romantic lad than he might have suspected there was something akin to Fate at work.
He realized once he was on her front stoop and pulling her away from the smoke that she was staring at him as if she’d seen a ghost. He didn’t suppose he was all that much to look at, though the lassies who came hunting him seemed to feel differently. At least he’d left his sword at home, a happy decision he generally made differently. One never knew when one was going to be called on to investigate some happening or other in the past.
He suppressed the urge to sigh. His neighbor obviously recognized him from his ill-advised dash across Southerton’s garden. Best to help her concentrate on something else as quickly as possible.
“The Aga?” he asked.
She nodded, wide-eyed.
“Trying to burn the house down, are you?”
“That hadn’t been my plan,” she said, “but I’m afraid I’m about to.”
He moved past her and peered inside the kitchen. It looked to be less an out-of-control fire than a fire that had been fed damp wood. He had experience enough with that. “I’ll see to it. Just wait here.”
“Thank you.”
He walked into the house and grabbed the first thing he laid his hands on to hold over his mouth and nose—it was unfortunately something of hers that smelled lovely enough that he paused to appreciate it before he thought better of it—then set to saving James MacLeod the trouble of building himself a new guest cottage.
He threw open a few windows, brought the night’s fire back to life properly, and set the kettle on for tea. He brought in a goodly stack of wood to dry out thoroughly, then supposed that was the best he could do short of taking up residence on her sofa and tending the stove constantly. It took less than half an hour, long enough to decide that perhaps he should invite himself to breakfast.
He turned, leaned back against the sink, and looked at his new neighbor, who was standing just inside the door, watching him. He returned the favor, now that he was at his leisure to give her a proper examination.
It was as he’d decided the night before. She wasn’t beautiful in the fashion magazine way that most of the gels who came hunting him seemed to be, but lovely in a quiet sort of way that left him wanting to sit down and study her a bit longer. She was fair skinned, pale eyed, and possessing a waterfall of dark, straight hair flowing down her back. He wondered why she was in Scotland, though perhaps the question of why she was half a mile from his house was more pressing.
He answered the latter easily enough. Madelyn and Patrick had obviously offered her refuge in James MacLeod’s cottage. It also occurred to him that he’d heard her say something about someone having tracked her down in Scotland. He could understand how she might not like that, given his own experiences with the same.
“Breakfast?” he asked, reaching for a reasonable distraction from his unhelpful thoughts.
She pushed away from the doorway. “Of course. I’ll see what I can put together.”
“Nay,” he said, “I mean, would you like breakfast?”
She stopped and looked at him in surprise. “You want to buy me breakfast?”
“Not anywhere in the village at this hour that you would want to try,” he said wryly. “I’ll dig around in your fridge and see what’s available.”
She gestured toward a basket on the counter. “I don’t have anything in the fridge, but Patrick left me that.” She paused. “You know, Patrick MacLeod. He’s the lord of Benmore Castle.”
“Aye,” Nathaniel managed, “so I’ve heard.”
“I haven’t put anything away yet.”
“Too busy trying to burn the house down?”
She wrapped her arms around herself. “Apparently so. This isn’t exactly how I wanted to repay them for their kindness.”
“I’m vexing you for sport,” he said. “Don’t give it another thought. A bit of air and the place’ll be good as new. In the meantime, we’ll put our feet up and stay warm whilst we’re eating the five-star meal I’m about to prepare. Any ideas what the young Himself sent along?”
“None,” she said. “I was too tired to look last night.”
“Then have a seat, lass, and I’ll see what his tastes run to.”
She sat and watched him. He was far too old and jaded to find himself made nervous by a woman, but it had been a very long fortnight. That was surely the only reason his hands were less steady than he would have liked them to have been.
Patrick MacLeod had gifted her enough food to last a week, which spoke well of his generosity. It was odd to be the unwitting beneficiary of that, but there was nothing to be done about it. It was also odd to be preparing to sit down to breakfast with someone he didn’t know whilst that someone was wearing nightclothes and wrapped in a shawl, but perhaps she didn’t realize what she was wearing. Perhaps she didn’t care.
Perhaps he was just a comfortable sort of lad who put all around him at ease with his delightful self.
He eventually set down two plates of eggs, sausage, and fried tomatoes in as much of a nod to traditional English fare as he could make, then sat down across from her with the intention of making polite conversation.
“You’re wearing pajamas,” was what came out instead.
Truly, he needed to make a change in his life. Too much time in medieval Scotland had obviously done his table manners a disservice.
“I thought you might make off with my cheese if I left you in here unsupervised long enough to change.”
He almost smiled. “I cooked you breakfast,” he pointed out.
“And eyed that cheese with undisguised admiration.” She looked at him knowingly. “You can’t deny it.”
He wondered if it were possible to fall in love at first sight. “Caught,” he said, then he smiled and applied himself to a decently fashioned breakfast made from ingredients provided by a man he hoped he would never encounter at the local greengrocer.
His life was complicated.
But what he’d had to work with had led to a decent meal, even if he did say so himself, and he was pleased to see that his companion wasn’t above tucking in with a decent amount of gusto. He wasn’t above it, either, which led to more eating and not a great amount of conversation.
“You are a very good cook,” she said finally. She sat back and sipped her tea. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” It was on the tip of his tongue to say that he imagined anything would have been better than what that poor Southerton woman could produce whilst having to live under the same roof with her husband, but he stopped himself just in time. He shouldn’t have known anything about where his breakfast companion had been staying, because he shouldn’t have been loitering in the garden of her inn.
Never mind anywhere else she’d apparently recently been.
He looked at his hostess and supposed there was no time like the present to trot out decent manners.
“I suppose introductions are in order,” he said. He held out his hand. “Nathaniel MacLeod.”
“Emmaline Baxter,” she said, shaking his hand briefly, “but don’t call me that. There are lots
of you MacLeods in the area, aren’t there?”
“It would seem so,” he agreed. “Either happy marriages or not enough to do during long winters; I never can decide which it is.” He helped himself to his own tea. “Here for vacation?”
“In this cottage or in Scotland?”
“Take your pick.”
She pulled her shawl more closely around herself. “I’m running away,” she said. “Well, maybe less running away from something than running to something better. Scotland seemed like a good destination.”
He could understand that well enough, given how much running he’d done over the course of his life.
“What about you?” she asked.
“Ah,” he said, grasping for something undemanding and mostly honest to say, “I was born here.” It was a bit more complicated than that, but he wasn’t sure how much detail she would care for.
He’d been born in Inverness, in hospital, though his ma hadn’t been at all keen on the idea. She put her foot down with his younger sister and had her in a medieval crofter’s hut, to his father’s dismay. His older brother had been born in the States, something he still complained about.
As he said: complicated.
“I’ve been a bit of a gypsy,” he said, settling for fewer details than more, “but I’ve been here in the Highlands for the past few years. Needed somewhere to land, and this seemed as good a place as any.”
“Not to criticize or anything,” she said slowly, “but it’s pretty remote up here.”
“Privacy is vastly underrated.” He shrugged. “A good satellite connection and nowhere’s too remote, is it?”
“No, not anymore,” she agreed. She studied him for a few minutes in silence, then smiled faintly. “You know what they say about you in the village, don’t you?”
He could only imagine. “I’m the recluse up the hill?” he asked politely.
“The filthy rich, eminently desirable, and irresistibly attractive recluse up the hill,” she corrected. “And that was just what I heard in the checkout line at McCreedy’s.”