A Laird for All Time (4 page)

“Let’s not go there today, okay?” she sighed
. She was trying to keep Dory’s recommendation in mind, but she didn’t like being the object of Connor’s constant bitterness.  She wanted him to like her.  For what reasons, she chose not to examine too closely.  “Listen, can’t we just have a nice breakfast without an argument?”

Connor shrugged
, surprised by her request. He realized that he would like that with her. “Aye, I suppose.  What are we to talk about then?  What are yer plans?”

“My plans involved sightseeing, perhaps a boat ride around the sound, a bit of shopping and muc
h relaxation,” she told him.  “But, somehow, I don’t think I’m going to get any of those things now.  Certainly not relaxation.”

Her tone was sharp
, and filled with a scorn and sarcasm that Connor felt was odd coming from such a lovely face.  There were little crinkles in the corner of hers eyes and a slight natural tilt to her mouth that told him that she smiled and laughed often.  He had not seen her do so as yet… at least from actual good humor.  “Ye seem verra angry, Heather, and bitter.  Yet yer face tells a story of a happier life.” He touched the corner of her eye lightly tracing the tiny lines there.  “Did ye nae come here of yer own free will?  I dinnae understand at all why ye insist on pretending ye dinnae remember what once occurred here.”  He pointed to a detailed metal and glass door set in the right wing of the castle.  “The chapel where we wed,” he pointed out.

Emmy stared up at his handsome face filled with almost caring concern.  His brown eyes in that moment were tender and warm.  Yet, his face was not one that showed a life of laughter, she noted.  There were lines, yes.  A frown line between his brows.  A mouth that turned down just a bit at the corners as if he had not smiled in a long while.  He was an angry man, she realized, bitter from the embarrassment this Heather had once served him.  Had he loved her so much then that he had not been able to live happily without her?  She reached up and rubbed the hard line between his brows away with the pad of her thumb.  “I am sorry that you haven’t been able to move on with your own life, Connor.  It must have been pretty hard on you.”

His gaze hardened as
Connor frowned and pushed her hand away.  “Spare me yer pity! Ye know nothing, Heather, of my life,” he informed her in clipped tones as he turned away and headed for the castle door with angry strides.  He spun back suddenly, stopping Emmy in her tracks as she moved to follow.  “I looked for ye for years!” he shouted angrily with a slash of his hand.  “I went after ye!”

Emmy stared back into his angry eyes.  “Out of love
, Connor?  Or pride?” she asked softly.

Connor snapped his mouth shut and turned away
, disappearing into the castle without another word.

Taking a small plate of food from the breakfast buffet that was being laid out in the morning room as she passed, Emmy went straight up to her room, intent on avoiding the laird until his temper cooled. He ran hot and cold without warning, and she wasn’t in much of a mood to tiptoe around him. She shouldn’t have pushed him though with that last volley, she scolded herself.  She was used to getting the last word in and sometimes spoke without thinking.  As Dory had warned, he would probably be a perfect boar because of her thoughtlessness.

She hadn’t realized before but her room was actually a suite;
a bedroom and sitting room with the large dressing room and bathroom attached.  The door to the sitting room had been closed the previous evening but had been opened when the maids had straightened up this morning.  Where the bedroom was light and feminine with its light grays and lilac, the sitting room was more gender neutral, to use the modern phraseology.  The antiques were, of course, not actually antiques in this time but new.  Classically Victorian in styling but comfortable and upholstered in neutral grays, blues and whites that went well with the scrolled and flocked wallpaper that was typical of the era.  Several landscapes and portraits added interest to the walls.

Two
striped wingbacks faced a settee adjacent to a large fireplace with a mantel that was a work of art in its own right.  The intricate scrolling woodwork facing that swept all the way to the ceiling. A large carpet kept the wooden floors from chilling the rooms, which were heated by radiators that Emmy assumed led to a boiler somewhere.  The radiators heated the areas nearby nicely, but overall, did little more than cut the worst of the chill.  Thankfully, fires burned brightly both in this room and her bedroom. She ate her breakfast holding the plate in front of her while pacing in front of the fire. When she had finished she chose a chaise near one of the few windows in the room..  The castle had been built for defense, she recalled.  The windows to the outside were few and very small.  These in her sitting room faced the side of the keep she had visited this morning while her bedroom cornered the building to the same side and back of the castle overlooking the sound and its spectacular views

Emmy
tried to read one of the books she had picked up at the airport, but her mind kept wandering helplessly back to Connor again and again.  Should she apologize for deliberately goading him?  Should she just let it go?  Where was he?  What did he do to keep busy all day?  Emmy spent most of her morning in her room with her book, but could not refrain from venturing out from time to time to inquire about the laird’s whereabouts.  When asked, the butler, Chilton, told her the laird gone riding, gone into Craignure or anywhere elsewhere. 
Rather than stay here and face his issues,
Emmy thought. 

Morning turned to afternoon
.  Margo, the maid Dory had assigned to her, offered to bring her a tray to her room for luncheon.  Accepting, Emmy felt as she, too, were hiding out rather than facing the mysterious nineteenth century outside the doors.  Gathering her courage, she finally asked Margo to give her a tour of the castle. 

Bedroom suites occupied half of the second floor
with more on the third floor and servants quarters and nurseries on the fourth. There was a small family parlor as well on each of these floors. The second floor also housed a large library. In all the rooms the outer windows were small, but in those rooms that faced the inner courtyard, they were larger, allowing more light into some of the main rooms. 

On the main floor
, Margo took her through the drawing rooms – large and small – the parlor, a stunningly restored chapel, billiards room, dining room, morning room and kitchens.  They passed a dark oak door Margo told her was the laird’s office, but Margo’s face expressed such shock when Emmy asked to see it, that she dropped the subject. The kitchens, Margo told her, had once been housed in a separate building but the restoration of the castle had seen them moved inside to the first floor.

Like the main hall, all the rooms were large and
luxurious, almost too formal in comparison to the medieval skin of the castle.  Rich carpets covered the tile and wood floors.  Inlaid patterns bordered the rooms.  The furnishings were all beautifully carved or gilded and upholstered in lush velvets.  The draperies were velvet as well, with ornate fringes along the edges.  They were thick so they could block the cold air from seeping through the windows in the colder months.  A logical idea, though Emmy had never seriously considered the practical applications of window treatments before.  With the energy efficient windows of her time, who needed to?

It was overall an amazing example of Victorian architecture and dé
cor.  None of the museums she’d ever been to had shown the level of richness and opulence this period was clearly capable of.  But for some reason, she just didn’t feel that it suited Connor well.  Of course she had only just met him, but still… it gave her something to think about.

Emmy thanked Margo for the tour and was grateful
for her offer to build up the fire when they returned to Emmy’s rooms.  The afternoon had turned chilly, and rain slapped once again on the windows.  An array of clothing had been laid out in her bedroom, from Dorcas, Emmy assumed.  Margo left her alone and Emmy resumed her place on the chaise near the window. She tried once again to focus on her book, but as the warmth of the room rose and the previous day’s travel set in, Emmy slipped into slumber.

It was with some surprise that Connor found Heather asleep on the chaise in the sitting room shared by the earl and countess’s rooms.  For some reason he had expected her to be hiding out in her bedroom as she had done the day they married, hesitant to face him after a long day in his company. Lowering himself onto a small ottoman near the chaise, Connor studied Heather as she slept.  She was reclined in the chaise, one bare foot tucked up under her other leg.  She wore spectacles today.  They were dark framed in tortoiseshell, he believed.  Narrow in height and wide across giving her a studious air even in sleep.  He wondered if she needed them all the time or only wore them for reading.

Reaching over, he gently removed the
glasses and rescued her fallen book, curiously noting the watercolor landscape printed in the front of the more intriguing paper cover.  They weren’t fascinating enough to hold his attention with their owner napping so soundly, so Connor placed them together on a nearby table.  There, a glass held melting ice which he assumed had previously been the odd libation of tea over ice she preferred.  He wondered again what the little pink packets had held.  Perhaps they were medication of some sort.  Perhaps powders for headaches or illness.  He knew almost nothing about her, he realized.  Despite their new attraction, she was as much a stranger to him today as she had been ten years before.

He brushed
the shorter strands of hair that framed her face back across her cheek and noticed that, though the rest of her hair was still bound in some sort of clasp at the back of her head, some longer locks had escaped. He followed the tress with his fingers. How long it was!  Laying it over her shoulder, he stroked the silky length then her cheek.  So soft, as was the texture of her skin.  He had heard that the Americas were a harsh place, where conditions outside the cities aged a person before his or her time.  Clearly, Heather had not suffered in her time away.  She had left with little money or possessions.  How had she supported herself?  Disturbing images flew through his mind as he wondered if she had sold herself for monies. 

No, surely not!  Yet she insisted that she had gone to university there, educated herself.  One did not do that without money.  And she had also said she owned a camera of her own.
  It hadn’t seemed an unusual thing to her so perhaps extravagance was a habit of hers.  Her long legs were still encased in those tight trousers that flaunted body and rear. Through her thin silk blouse, he could almost see the color of her skin. It was indecent yet alluring and, he had to wonder again, had she invented stories to cover years of degradation and humiliations? He wanted badly to know the answers but at the same time dreaded the response he might receive. Anger and a jealous rage tore through him and he wondered at that as well. 

He had not loved Heather when they had wed.  It had been his father’s arrangement for him to wed the daughter of
a friend he had served with during the Crimean War.  Connor had not even met her until she and her father arrived at Duart in the days before the wedding.  She had been pretty then, nothing compared to the more mature beauty before him now.  But here she was now, forthright and outgoing and, despite the harsh welcome she had received from him, rather pleasant and even humorous, if somewhat sarcastic.

She angered him.  She intrigued him. 
In just a single day, she had enflamed him with both anger and lust until he did not know what to do with her. The physical attraction between them was powerful and explosive… he knew
what
he wanted to do with her, but could he take such a chance?

Connor traced her full lower lip with his thumb
, relishing the tingling warmth that spread through him with that simple contact.  She made a low moan in the back of her throat and raised a hand to brush away what disturbed her sleep.  Unable to help himself, Connor leaned forward, lightly brushing his lips across hers and wondered at his boldness.  Even so subtle a touch was as stimulating as their first contact earlier in the day.  He pulled back as she opened her eyes.  She rubbed her lips and stared up at him in surprise.  “What?  Connor? What are you doing in here?”

“This room is shared between
yer bedchamber and mine.” He indicated the doors to the right and left, hers standing open, and his closed.  “It is part of our shared apartments.”

Her mouth
formed a silent ‘Oh’ that sent his thoughts again toward kissing her but he shook them off and headed briskly toward his room, offering shortly as he went, “It is nearly time to dress for dinner.  Yer maid should be attending ye shortly.”

Emmy stared at his bedroom door in confusion as it slammed behind him.  He was running hot and cold without warning.  It was hard to keep up with his mood swings.  When she had awoken to find him so close after avoiding her the length of the day, the look on his face had been almost… tender?  His voice soft.  It had set off a trembling response in her chest.  Then it seemed as if he had been angered by it, or by her?  She was not sure.  What she did know was that he was as physically attracted to her as she was to him and he wasn’t happy about it.

Of course, Emmy wasn’t pleased by their attraction either.  She was lost from her own time and place, trapped in the past.  She should be concentrating on finding a way out of this
, regardless of the fact that she had no idea what to do about it.  Her focus should be on home.  The last thing that should be occupying her mind was a man.  Even if he was the most incredible man she had ever met.  She longed to touch him, feel him.  Her own response should have angered her.  But it did not.

Emmy shook her head.  They just
didn’t build them like that in her time.  Connor was… amazing.  Physically he was beyond compare; way beyond the clichéd tall, dark and handsome.  His broad muscular build belonged in a Calvin Klein underwear ad.  Connor’s ruggedly gorgeous face was dark and weathered from the sun and elements, not from a beach or, worse, tanning bed.  All of it suggested hard labor showing a dedication to his work. Although she wasn’t sure what that was, specifically, Emmy admired commitment in people.  Beneath all that angst there obviously lurked a dependable man.

A rarity.

Very intriguing.

Dorcas arrived
then with Margo, drawing Emmy from her thoughts with a blush.  When Dory inquired whether the dresses she had sent earlier had fitted, Emmy apologized and admitted that she had not yet tried them on. She followed the pair back to her bedchamber, firmly closing the door of the sitting room behind her. Laid out on the bed were the four dresses Margo had brought earlier.  She hadn’t thought to look at them at all!

Her jaw dropped as one after another
was held up and presented to her.  Each one was a stunning piece of art.  “It’s gorgeous,” she whispered as she held one gown of heavily embroidered ivory satin against her, swinging it side to side as she looked in the full-length mirror.  “I feel like it’s speaking to me,” she laughed to Dorcas.  She bent her cheek toward the dress and whispered in singsong, “Put me on, put me on, we’ll be gorgeous together.”  A giggle escaped her.

Even as dour as
Dorcas had appeared, she couldn’t help but smile in the face of Emmy’s childlike enthusiasm over the gowns while the servant laughed merrily.  “Come, we’ll help you put it on then.”

“I can dress myself,” Emmy
objected. 

“
Nonsense, and I do mean nonsense,” Dorcas injected sternly.  “No woman can get in one of these by herself.”

“Alr
ight then.”  Shrugging, Emmy peeled off her jacket.  Jeans went next with a little work.  The maid looked intrigued as she picked them up off the floor, but as Emmy’s blouse fell open, both the maid and Dorcas gasped.  “What?” Emmy asked, puzzled.

Dorcas
recovered first, shaking her head.  “I apologize.  I had assumed ye would be wearing the proper undergarments.  We were not expecting you to be bare.”