Time Travel Romances Boxed Set (15 page)

The expression was gone so quickly that
Marissa immediately doubted what she had seen.

“
Thank you very much for
your generosity.” Aurelia smiled. “I hope that you have not done
yourself a disservice.”

“
Oh no, darling, don’t
fret!” Marissa, her optimism restored, gave her trademark trill of
laughter. “I’m sure I’ll find some little rag to wear!”

“
No doubt you will,”
Aurelia said sweetly. She firmly closed the door before Marissa
could wonder what was being implied.

Marissa stood there for a moment, then shook
her head. Diverting Baird’s attention from Aurelia’s charms would
take virtually no effort at all. Marissa was certain that Aurelia
could manage the job just fine, now that she had had a little bit
of assistance.

*

Aurelia tossed the armload of clothes across
the room, outraged that Baird’s whore would try to cast her in the
same role. The garb of a harlot was what she had shared, that much
was clear, for no woman of honor could afford such fine fabric.

’
Twas the mark of a whore
to be indulged with silk. Aurelia supposed she should have expected
no less.

But wait - who had chosen the garb?
Certainly, the whore was adverse to any competition for Bard’s eye
and would have shared millet sacks, given her choice.

Not garb wrought so fine as this.

Which could only mean that Bard must have
dictated what would be brought.

But why? Aurelia thought furiously. Had the
priest been successful in coaxing Bard closer to his own view?

Why else would his kiss have changed so
seductively?

Aurelia examined the sheerness of the silken
chemise once more. It was thin enough that any man would see the
flesh beneath. Even a whore would have to be bold - or well claimed
- to wear such attire into the evening revelry of the hall.

Especially in a holding so apparently devoid
of womenfolk.

Aurelia’s mouth went dry at the import of
this garb. Wearing this to the board would make Aurelia a temptress
- and any results the fault of no one but herself.

Clearly, Bard meant to add her to the ranks
of his whores! Why else would he insist Marissa share this
garb?

Why, he might even have planned to bend his
considerable charm upon Aurelia this very night! Perhaps she would
be fed tender morsels to fuel her libido, or plied with mead until
she was too drunk to fend off Bard’s advances.

And once her maidenhead was gone, Aurelia
would be compelled to wed the cur or shame her family. It was
reprehensible - yet curiously evocative of how Thord had been
coaxed to his death.

Aurelia paced her chamber at breakneck speed
as she worked through the repercussions of this deed. She would not
drink a single sip of mead at the board this night. And she would
not eat of any ‘special dish’ prepared for her alone. She would eat
and drink only whatever Bard ate or drank first. Her chastity was
not to be begged or bartered at any man’s command!

Especially the murderer of her only brother.
Aurelia would rather starve than go to the hall and make such a
spectacle of herself!

On the other hand, she was very hungry. She
drummed her fingers and considered the problem of how she might
foil Bard’s plans, at least long enough to fill her belly.

Suddenly, Aurelia glimpsed the linens
adorning the bed. She hastily peeled back the coverlet and was
astonished at the lush beauty of the smooth cloth revealed. Somehow
a pattern had been made upon the fabric, though it was not woven
there, its hues echoing the shades of the room.

Aurelia recalled the sewing needles in the
little basket in the small chamber. There was another option! Oh,
she would show Bard that she would not readily become his
whore!

But she must hasten, lest she be too late to
the board. Who knew when this “six o’clock” might be? The sky was
already darkening outside the room and Aurelia was certainly
hungry.

She might already be late!

*

The rain had stopped and the dark clouds had
parted in the west to frame a magnificent orange sunset when Bard
came downstairs. The dramatic light streamed through the tall
gothic windows along the west side of the old bishop’s palace and
painted the unfinished room in shades of gold.

Baird refused to look at the cut thorns
marking the place he had met Aurelia.

Instead, he stared at the sunset, certain he
had never seen another so beautiful. Baird’s senses seemed to have
awakened after a long sleep when he had taken up residence here.
Not only was every hue more intense, but the simplest food seemed
more flavorful, and he felt as though he could hear a thousand
voices in the wind.

Dunhelm had enchanted him.

Was that why Aurelia affected him so
strongly?

Baird dismissed his whimsical thoughts and
surveyed the construction critically. This was currently the
tidiest public room in the renovation, though folding tables were
the extent of the furnishings.

It was a far cry from his plans, though
Baird could see hints of what the space would become. Although the
main restaurant would be on the east side, stretching down the
slope towards the beach and a stunning view, this would ultimately
be a smaller restaurant. It would boast a comparatively small
kitchen, and be a good place to have drinks or perhaps a casual
lunch.

Right now, it was a less daunting unfinished
space than the cavernous main restaurant.

The old stone walls of the 13th century
palace exuded a cozy intimacy here, as would the great stone
fireplace, once it was refurbished. Yet, the high ceiling would
absorb the murmur of several dozen conversations easily.

And the view was magnificent, whatever the
weather. The large windows granted a sweeping view of Dunhelm’s
natural site. The sea stretched out to the west, shimmering in the
evening light like an endless blanket of jewels, and waves crashed
on the ragged coastline.

Currently though, the space in the east
restaurant destined to be filled with gleaming stainless steel was
still a gaping hole filled with wires and sawdust. Baird tapped his
toe and wondered how long it would take for the food he had ordered
to be delivered from the village.

Or how cold it would be when it got
here.

Baird spotted a package wrapped in brown
paper on one of the folding tables. He picked it up and noted that
it was addressed to him in Talorc’s spidery handwriting. Baird
smiled with satisfaction.

The mystery of Hekod was close to being
solved. He could call the man tonight, maybe head to his place with
Aurelia after dinner and get the whole tangle sorted out.

Whatever story Aurelia had concocted or
family complications had brought her ultimately to Dunhelm, it
would all be shortly laid to rest. Then, Baird could focus on
solving the question of how he recognized her - and from where.

Baird tore the paper away with purpose, but
paused to frown at the package’s contents. Instead of the telephone
book he was expecting, he held a beaten-up copy of a book called
Sorensson’s History of the Orkney Islands
.

A history book?

A slip of paper was tucked into the middle
of the book and Baird opened the volume to that page. There was
more of the shaky writing on the slip.

“
Here you will find the
only Hekod that I know, he would be the famous one I told you about
this afternoon, to be sure.”

The page marked was entitled “The Dark Ages
in the Orkney Islands”.

Obviously, Talorc had mistaken Baird’s
meaning, but a little history about the area wouldn’t be unwelcome.
He had a few moments to wait for the others, anyway.

So Baird settled into a chair and read.

The Arrival of the Vikings

The Vikings first landed on the shores of the
Orkney Islands sometime shortly after their raid on Lindisfarne,
the famed monastery on the east coast of England, which occurred in
793 AD. Some scholars maintain that the attack on Lindisfarne was
launched by a fledgling Norse colony in Orkney, but whatever the
chronology, within a century, Orkney, Shetland and Faeroe Islands
were all major Norse settlements. The Orkney Islands remained a
holding of the Norwegian crown until 1468.

One of the first established Viking kings in
the Orkney Islands was Hekod the Fifth, King of Dunhelm and Lord of
Fyordskar.

Hekod the Fifth, King of Dunhelm?

*

Baird slammed the book closed. The hairs on
the back of his neck were standing on end. Aurelia had claimed her
father, Hekod, was King of Dunhelm and lord of somewhere else.
Surely her father couldn’t be this 8th century Viking
conqueror?

No, no, that was nuts! She hadn’t said
Fyordskar. She couldn’t have. How could her father be twelve
hundred years old, give or take a few decades?

Baird was connecting dots that didn’t
deserve the link.

Obviously.

Okay, he’d never heard the name Hekod
before, but it might be popular here, regardless of what Talorc
said.

It was illogical for Aurelia’s father to be
twelve hundred years old, plain and simple. He must have been named
after this Hekod, and when Aurelia lost him, however that had
happened, she was so upset that she confused the past with the
present.

Baird was no psych. major but that made
sense. Aurelia could spend her whole life looking for this historic
Hekod and never find him - just as she would never find her father
if he had abandoned her.

It was a familiar enough story to Baird
Beauforte. Baird had to admire the way the human mind rationalized
things to save its own sanity. His compassion for Aurelia grew with
the certainty that they had both been dealt the same lousy
hand.

But unlike Baird, Aurelia remembered her
father, she had known him and obviously cared for him. Baird’s lips
thinned. There was no way Hekod should be allowed to get away with
that.

No one should have to go through what Baird
had. He would make sure Hekod gave his daughter a straight answer,
if nothing else.

Baird deliberately shook off any intuitive
feelings that argued with his conclusion - intuition, after all,
was illogical - and opened the book again.

Comparatively little is known of Hekod, other
than the fact that he married a Pictish woman. There is some
scholarship indicating that Hekod’s queen was linked to the Pictish
List of Kings, the only Pictish document that survives. This could
imply that his marriage was strategic move designed to assure his
suzerainty in his new home. Appearances would support this, for
unlike many conquerors whose reigns were short, Hekod sat upon his
throne for at least twenty-five years.

A Pictish woman? Aurelia had mentioned the
same thing.

But what was Pictish? Baird fanned back to
the table of contents and discovered that a good third of the book
concerned the Picts.

Little is known decisively about the Picts,
and there is wide dissent in academic circles about even their
origins. A prevailing opinion is that the Picts were a remnant of
the Celtic society that once spread across all of Europe. When the
Romans began to defeat the Celts, they moved to the margins of
Europe, the Picts being those Celts ousted to the northern fringes
of what is now Scotland. Other scholars maintain that the Picts
were simply the descendants of Iron Age peoples in the area.

At any rate, even the word Pict is not
their own - it is derived from the Roman
Picti
or “Painted
Ones”. The Romans were continually harassed by the Picts,
eventually resorting to the construction of Hadrian’s Wall and the
Antonine Wall, further north, designed to keep these “barbarians”
out of Roman Britain.

The moniker Painted Ones derives from the
Picts’ purported fascination with body tattoos as ornamentation.
These they created by piercing the skin with needles in intricate
patterns, then rubbing the juice of an herb - woad, used as a blue
dye in the area until the importation of indigo much later - into
the punctures to make a fairly permanent stain.

If, like other Celts, they waged war in the
nude, the Pictish warrior would have been an imposing sight.

No doubt.

Baird ran a fingertip across the swirling
tattoo designs illustrated in the margin and considered to be
characteristically Pictish. Intrigued as much by the story as the
fact that Aurelia had chosen to use it, he turned the page.

But Baird wasn’t going to have the chance to
read any more.

“
Delivery from McNally’s
Fish & Chip Shop! Someone order pizzas?”

The shadow of a gangly boy could be spotted
in the corridor that stretched back to the entryway. He juggled a
trio of boxes and peered into the sun.

“
In here!” Baird called and
jumped to his feet. He put the book aside reluctantly and rummaged
for his wallet. “One’s vegetarian?”

“
This one, sir.” The kid
looked about himself with wide eyes and gave a low whistle. “This
here is looking to be some kind of place, sir.”

Baird smiled with proprietary pride. “It
certainly will be.”

“
It has changed and then
some, sir. We used to play hide and seek out here, sir, when I was
a wee lad.”

“
Did you?” Baird peered at
the unfamiliar banknotes, trying to make sense of them quickly.
“Must have been a bit dangerous. There were a lot of holes where
floors had fallen in.”

“
Don’t I know it! Part of
the game, sir.” The boy’s eyes glinted with mischief. “But don’t
you be telling my mam we done it, will you?”

Baird smiled. “Not me.” He handed a couple
of bills to the boy and waved away the offer of change. “It’s a
long drive from town. Keep that for yourself and your car.”