Choosing the Highlander (25 page)

If Leslie knew how happy she was, how much she loved this incredible man, she would forgive Connie for the choice.

If only Connie could somehow tell her twin that her wish had come true.

I’ve found love, Leslie, and it’s so much better than I ever thought it could be.
 

Unfortunately, the happiness she’d found didn’t cancel out her heartache. Last night, she’d put off the grief of leaving everything she knew and everyone she loved behind. Now, it was morning. As she stared up at the pewter sky, the weight of what she’d done pressed down on her, crushing the breath from her lungs.

After “relieving Wilhelm of his virtue”—twice—Connie had passed out in the crook of his arm. Judging by the crick in her neck, she hadn’t moved since. Her handfasted husband—or her fiancé, as she thought of him in modern-day terminology—snored quietly, face turned toward her. Unshaven since they’d left the monastery and with his hair mussed from last night’s activity, he looked every bit the rugged Highland warrior she knew him to be.

Under normal circumstances, she might enjoy cuddling beside him as they began a new day together, but this morning she needed time alone. Moving at a snail’s pace so she didn’t wake him, she disentangled her legs from his and began wriggling out of their warm cocoon.

His arm tightened around her. “Good, morn,’ my Constant Rose,” he said with a sleepy smile.

Her heart skipped a beat. Heavens, she loved this man.

“Good morning.” Feeling a little shy, she used her rumpled shift to cover her breasts. “Go back to sleep. I’m just going to freshen up.”

“Truth,” he said, smile fading, “but only by half.” The muscles in his abdomen bunched as he sat up. “Tell me the rest, love. Or have you nay learned by now that I am willing and able to share your burdens?” He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her forehead. “I see the sadness in your eyes. It slays me. Let me soothe it for you.” He kissed her lips softly, so softly.

His tenderness drew forth the heartbreak she’d hoped to hide. A sob ripped up and out of her. There was no stopping it under the onslaught of his concern.

In a flash, his arms went around her. “I’ve got you, lass,” he said over her ear. “I’ve got you.”

In the shelter of his embrace, the tears came. She hated crying in front of someone else. Always had. She wanted to push Wilhelm away and find a private place to mourn all she’d lost, but she couldn’t. First, his grip communicated he did not intend to let her go. Second, she needed him. She needed this.

To need another was a revelation.

“Are these for your sister?” he asked, rubbing his thumb through her tear tracks.

She nodded. She’d given up her entire life for this man. Hiding from him would defeat the purpose. Goodness, she hardly recognized the woman leaning into a man’s touch, letting him comfort her rather than calling on her own strength to overcome her troubles. Had giving in to love weakened her?

No. She couldn’t believe that. Being with Wilhelm made her feel strong and valued. The tears were because she’d had to choose between him and everything else. It didn’t mean she regretted the choice. It just meant she had to let the pain have its way with her.

“Tell me about her.” The way he bowed his head to meet her gaze made melted her heart.

“Her name is Leslie. She’s my twin, and I—I don’t think I’ll ever see her again.” Shuddering, she wept for Leslie and for herself, for the separation they would both feel like a lost limb. Wilhelm held her through it, moving her onto his lap and wrapping them both in his kilt. Where the cold air touched her skin, it pebbled, but where her body rested against Wilhelm’s she was warm. So warm.

“Would that our places could be reversed,” he said. “I could have come to your time and you could still have Leslie and your place in the world that ye ken so well.”

She sniffed. “I’d still be sad.” She wiped away the wetness on her face. “Because then you’d be missing your home and your family.” Lifting her chin, she added, “Besides, Scotland needs you a lot more than Chicago needs me. I’m convinced of that. If I weren’t, I wouldn’t have committed myself to you last night. It’s part of who you are, and part of why I’ve fallen so completely for you. Now—” She cleared her throat and slipped her arms into her shift. Wilhelm helped her pull it over her head. “Let’s get the horses ready. We’ve got to clear your name so you can bring me to my new home and marry me officially.”

She started to rise, but he held her fast. “You are remarkable, woman.”

His praise helped her muster up a smile. “Yes, well, there’s no sense in putting off Inverness.” Determined to use the ride today to strategize, she got up and dressed. She was engaged to be married now, and she refused to sit on the sidelines while her future husband faced his day of judgment.

#

Wilhelm grinned to himself as his bonny new handfasted bride shifted once more in the saddle. He held her in his arms as she sat before him. At his insistence, they’d loaded Honesty with all their cargo so they could ride together. Justice wouldn’t mind carrying two riders, however Wilhelm would mind greatly not having his Constant Rose in his arms today.

“Riding a horse after a night of ‘wedding by bedding’ should be considered cruel and unusual punishment,” she grumbled.

“Do you regret what we’ve done, love?” he asked with a kiss of her shoulder. He had them both wrapped in his plaid, and Constance wore her cloak hood up. Despite the drizzle, they remained warm and dry as they rode.

“No,” she said quietly. A single-word response that carried a world of meaning.

Neither did he have regrets.

A man gave away his virginity but once. ’Twas right he should give his to Constance. She would be the only woman he would bed for his entire life. No other had ever called to him the way she did. No other ever would.

The need to protect this treasure redoubled his determination to clear him and Terran of Ruthven’s exaggerated charges. Once this task was behind him, he would devote himself to compensating Constance for all she had lost in order to become his.

Squeezing her tight to him, he said, “Tell me about your family. Your Vinland. Tell me what you ken of Scotia. What is the world like in your time?”

“Is that all you want to know?”

They laughed together.

“I’m not sure where to begin,” she said, her fingers entwined with his. “Some things are the same. The world’s continents are largely the same, though map-making has improved by leaps and bounds. Many of the countries you’re familiar with still exist, but some are known by different names.

“Scotland is still Scotland. It’s known for being an important place for commerce and industrialization in Europe. But its history has not been easy…or bloodless.

“I’m not sure how much I should tell you. What if your knowing things affects the future? A man like you—you’re well positioned to be a force for change in Scotland. What if things I tell you—or even just my being here, alters events and changes the world I know—or knew?”

Saints above, she could be right. “Mayhap, if events are altered, they will be altered for the better.”

Connie hummed thoughtfully. “Possibly. Conversely, though, events could be altered for the worse. Or people who should exist might not come to be. I mean, what if my parents never meet or don’t get married and Leslie and I are never born? Would I simply disappear? Cease to exist? I’d could be here with you one minute and then just—poof—gone the next.”

Fear slithered low in his viscera. He tightened his arms around her. “
Och,
lass, ’tis too terrible to contemplate.”

At her mention of Scotia featuring prominently in commerce and somat she called
in-dust-reel-zay-shun
he’d felt proud. But she’d also suggested the future for his countrymen would be bloody and difficult. This worried him. Hadn’t this land already seen enough warfare? To him, it seemed long past time for peace.

He wanted to learn all she kent of his Scotia, but what if she was right? What if the mere fact of his knowing such things changed the world so she never came into it? He couldn’t risk losing her.

“Tell me naught of Scotia. Much as I long to ken what the future holds, I willna risk you.”

She lifted one of his hands to her lips and kissed his knuckles. Her lips were soft, her breath a warm caress. “Maybe that’s for the best. I never want to leave your side.”

He heard the truth in her words and felt steadier for it. He only hoped they were not forced apart by events in the more immediate future. Talking with her helped him not to fash over Inverness, but they would arrive there in two days, and uncertainty lurked despite his best efforts not to indulge it.

“I’ll tell you about my country, instead” she said. “The United States of America. It shouldn’t do much harm since it doesn’t even exist yet, but still, we should probably keep this information just between ourselves.”

“You have my word I willna breathe a word to anyone.” He huffed a mirthless laugh. “They wouldna believe me if I did.”

He listened with rapt attention as she described a government with three branches. In this, her land was like his, except the branches of her government were executive, legislative, and judicial rather than the crown, privy council, and parliament. She told him of wars her country had fought, some with European allies, some pitting countryman against countryman for the prize of human rights.

At his request, she explained industrialization. Her descriptions of steel production, manufacturing, and the construction of towers tall enough to scrape the sky fascinated him. He was even more intrigued when she confessed her part in this process. She designed “systems” that brought clean water to these buildings and shunted the dirtied water away.

“Like the Roman aqueducts,” he said, as they rode along the River Spey.

“Yes,” she agreed. “Only on a much larger scale.”

He felt his eyebrows rise in disbelief. “Have ye heard of the aqueducts, lass?” ’Twas difficult for him to imagine structures larger than those in the south, some of which had existed for ages. “Some of the passageways match the sizes of castles. Some run for leagues under the ground.”

“Don’t become distracted by the word ‘larger,’” she said, sounding much like an instructor at university. “Think in terms of units of water moved. The aqueducts are made mostly made of stone, which is heavy, brittle and prone to erosion. What if you could use a stronger, lighter material that resists erosion? You could move more water at a faster rate with less wear and tear on the system, and the channels could be much smaller. You could even hide them completely underground or in the walls of buildings, because the likelihood of needing to repair them would be greatly reduced compared to stone water ways.

“Now, think about not just a city using a system like this, but an entire continent. In my time, most families, even very poor families, enjoy indoor plumbing. In fact, most people take it for granted. They never see the results of what I do, and that’s part of the goal, to provide the client hot and cold water in such a way that they rarely have to think about it.”

His mind spun with the marvel of clean water being available to so many. People in her United States of America didn’t draw from wells or toss the contents of chamber pots into the gutters. Their water and waste came and went through narrow canals she called “pipes.”

Questions spun in his mind as he longed to understand this marvel, but one question came to the fore. “
Och,
lass, did you say
hot
water?”

“Yes. Water is heated in a boiler on the premises. When a handle is turned, the hot water flows from the boiler. It can be used by itself or mixed with the ground-temperature water to become any temperature the user desires.” She sighed. “I took a hot bath at the bed and breakfast in Inverness after getting off the plane to meet Leslie. If I’d known it would be my last, I would have taken my time instead of rushing through it.” She turned to grace him with a smile, but he saw the sadness in her eyes.

He couldn’t give her back her sister, but he vowed in his heart to give her as many hot baths as he could manage.

Chapter 22

Dark fell, and with it, the misty rain turned to needles of ice. Connie turned her face up to it now and then to catch some moisture on her tongue, but she was glad to have her cloak and Wilhelm’s kilt providing cover.

“Is there any chance of finding a dry place to camp tonight?” she asked. The prospect of being wrapped up tight with Wilhelm again excited her, but after shielding them from the rain all day, his kilt was soaked. It would be like lying down in a sodden sleeping bag. She supposed there was no help for it. It wasn’t like they would happen across a Ritz Carlton here in the fifteenth-century Highlands.

“I believe I can find us a wee bit of shelter.”

“A share lodge?” She tried not to sound too hopeful, but Wilhelm’s chuckle meant he’d caught her fantasizing about lying down on a bed tonight.

“Nay, lass. We ought to arrive at our destination within the hour. Have ye grown weary of telling me stories? I should like to hear of the medicines you mentioned. Have you required any for an illness? How effective are they?”

They’d been talking throughout the day’s ride. Well, mostly, she’d been talking, and Wilhelm had listened and asked questions. He seemed to find her modern world fascinating, especially anything having to do with infrastructure and manufacturing. Certain inventions excited him as well. They’d talked for over an hour about the telephone, switchboards, and operators. He’d marveled at the fact she’d spoken with Leslie on the phone only last week, when they’d been separated by half a world. He’d uttered his preferred exclamation, “Saints above,” when she’d told him how she’d gotten on an airplane and flown across the ocean in the course of a night to join her sister on vacation.

Her throat was becoming raw from talking so much, but worse, he more she described the world she knew, the deeper it sank in that she wasn’t going back. Her family, her career, her condo, her American freedoms…all gone.

While grief ravaged her soul, she told Wilhelm about antibiotics and life-saving surgeries, cancer treatments and artificial limbs for wounded soldiers, all things she’d read about in Time magazine or heard about on the news. At the other end of the health-care spectrum were things she considered simple, like vitamins, cold medicines, and aspirin.