Because he was completely ill-at-ease, that’s why.
The sound of pipes starting up almost had him jumping out of his skin. He scarce had time to fling the scabbard of his sword far enough away that he thought he might stand a fair chance of not tripping over it before the ruthless lord of Benmore was coming at him, looking as though he had every intention of killing him.
That was the last coherent thought he had for quite some time.
When Patrick allowed him to breathe approximately an hour later—in all honesty, he had no idea how much time had gone by, but it felt as if a small slice of eternity had passed—he managed to latch on to at least one thought and that was that he could safely say that Patrick MacLeod was the best swordsman he had ever encountered. Given the number of medieval clansmen he’d faced off against, he thought he might be a respectable judge of the same.
He rested his hands on his sword, which was point-down against the ground, dragged frigid air into his desperate lungs, then managed to look at the man who had provided them with such delightful music to try to kill each other by. His mouth fell open as the piper walked over to them.
“Ah,” Nathaniel said, wondering if he would look thoroughly weak if he simply sat down in the mud, “Robert.”
Robert MacLeod laughed a little. “Nathaniel, my friend. How do you fare?”
Nathaniel looked quickly at Patrick, but the man was only standing there with his sword against his shoulder, watching him with the slightest of smiles. Obviously, there was no point in trying to avoid anything any longer. He looked at a man he had known several hundred years in the past.
“You’re a ghost.”
Robert shrugged. “Patty needs a piper now and again and I’m happy to oblige him.”
“Nice to see all your fingers straight for a change.”
“The beauties of the afterlife, my friend.” He looked at Nathaniel. “Will your lady mind if I go visit with her?”
“I have absolutely no idea, but you can try.”
Robert smiled and walked away. Nathaniel glanced Emma’s way, but she was only watching him with a grave expression. She didn’t even flinch when Robert introduced himself to her, which Nathaniel supposed should have concerned him. Then again, perhaps a ghostly piper wasn’t the worst thing she’d seen in the past few days.
He took a deep breath, then looked at his host. He wondered if he had displayed enough skill with the sword to earn a few answers or if he was facing a man who would look at him as if he were daft if he asked any of the questions that burned in his mouth. More alarming still was the thought that perhaps he, as Emma continued to insist, had just imagined the past several years of his life.
“Are you ready to tell me anything interesting yet?” Patrick asked mildly.
Nathaniel dragged himself back from the edge of what felt like madness. “I’d rather ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”
“And you think I’ll answer them after that feeble showing?”
“I could have a nap, then try again.”
Patrick smiled, a quick little smile that Nathaniel imagined had earned him more than one wench willing to warm his bed.
He knew that because he had used that same smile more than once himself.
“I’ll show mercy and allow you to pose the odd question, then decide if they’re interesting enough to answer.” Patrick looked at Nathaniel with a faint bit of alarm. “I sound just like my brother.”
“Not a good thing?”
Patrick drew his sleeve across his eyes. “Nay, not at all,” he said. “I think a whisky might put me to rights, but ’tis early yet.” He nodded toward a section of stone wall. “Let’s take our ease there for a moment or two and see if I can’t recover on my own first.”
Nathaniel nodded and followed Patrick over to sit down on the wall. He tried not to groan as he did so, though he had to admit his first inclination was to weep with relief that he wasn’t trying to keep himself alive against the madman leaning casually against the rock and humming a cheerful battle tune.
“I don’t suppose,” Nathaniel said, when he thought he could voice a question without wheezing, “that you’ll tell me your birth year.”
“I don’t suppose you can cut it from me, can you?”
“Not at the moment. I could try later, when I can move again.”
Patrick smiled faintly. “Where’d you learn your swordplay?”
“On the job.”
“It was well done.” He seemed to consider his words for a moment or two. “I would suggest, however, that you have a care for that gel of yours. Those times are no place for a modern woman.”
Nathaniel thought he could agree with that readily enough. “I hesitate to ask how you know that. In fact, I’m not sure, now that we’ve come right to it, that I’m ready to admit to any of this.”
“Ye wee fool, you’ve been at this for five years,” Patrick said, shaking his head in disbelief. “When are you going to be ready to discuss it?”
Nathaniel felt his mouth fall open. “How do you know that?”
Patrick looked at him evenly.
He shut his mouth and groped for something to say, some sort of excuse or explanation or lie to get himself out of the land of crazy and back to the reality where he belonged. Unfortunately, nothing useful came to mind, so he conceded the battle.
“And here I thought I was being so discreet,” he managed.
“If it eases you any, ’twas my brother to poke his nose in your affairs and his purpose was to save you pain if he could.” He shrugged. “Once a laird of the clan MacLeod, always a laird of the same, I daresay.”
Nathaniel would have asked what Patrick meant by that, but he imagined he didn’t need to. He supposed he could pull up any genealogy of the lairds of that MacLeod castle up the way and find out just who was who. It wouldn’t take long. He looked at Patrick carefully.
“And you don’t worry about being discovered?”
“As what?” Patrick asked blandly. “I’m a simple writer, enjoying my lovely home, my stunning wife, and my sweet bairns.” He looked at Nathaniel. “I have no idea what you’re getting at.”
Nathaniel nodded. “I deserve that.”
“Indeed you do, lad. A bit more work?” Patrick asked politely. “Do you want to see if your lady cares to go inside first? She looks cold.”
“I will go ask.” Nathaniel pushed himself back to his feet. He started to limp away, then stopped. He turned and looked at Patrick MacLeod. Any sensible soul would have labeled him a modern man with a passion for medieval things. If he’d had any sense himself, he would have left it at that and escaped inside with Emma to seek out a hot fire.
But he apparently didn’t have any sense.
“1300,” he guessed.
Patrick pursed his lips. “1285.”
“Impossible,” Nathaniel said, with one last, desperate grasp at denial.
Patrick smiled, then nodded toward Emma. “See to your lady. I’m not going anywhere.”
Nathaniel nodded, then walked away. He thought Emma looked less cold than gobsmacked, but then again, perhaps not after the things she’d already seen. Those were things she would never see again if he had anything to say about it. The sooner he convinced her to find a different place in Scotland to stay, the happier he would be.
He supposed it would take many, many times of repeating that before he believed it.
Chapter 19
Emma sat on a rock wall and watched Nathaniel MacLeod coming toward her from the far end of Patrick MacLeod’s garden. The garden was lovely. The man walking over it was . . . well, he was beautiful in a way that she wasn’t quite sure how to describe.
Very easy on the eyes.
Extremely hard on her heart.
She pulled the coat he’d bought her more closely around herself not so much to ward off the mis
t or to save herself against the breeze, but because he had given it to her. He had wrapped a blanket around her as well, which she appreciated. She closed her eyes briefly. She was cold and she suspected it had less to do with the weather than it did the things she had seen that morning.
Ghosts were certainly one of those things. She’d been a bit startled by conversing outside with a piper whose plaid seemed to swirl thanks to a wind she couldn’t feel, but she’d managed to deal with that fairly well. Finding another pipe-smoking, geriatric geezer in front of Patrick’s fire when she’d ducked inside earlier for a trip to the bathroom had been equally unusual. Having him instruct her to simply call him The Glum had certainly taken things to a new level of odd, but she’d been okay with it. She supposed that if things really got out of hand, she could simply pretend that she was losing her marbles again.
But seeing Nathaniel MacLeod with a sword in his hands, facing a swordsman of Patrick MacLeod’s obvious mettle? She wasn’t sure she was going to be able to consign that to anything but hard truth any time soon.
Nathaniel stopped and looked at her. She had a hard time reconciling the man she was looking at with the man who dressed in a plaid and used a sword, but it was hard to deny. Not now.
He shoved his sword into the ground with an unthinkingness that, to her surprise, was quite possibly the worst thing she’d seen to date. She had tried to ignore what she’d seen. She’d gone only once to see the clothes Nathaniel had apparently dumped in the compost heap behind her house. She’d come so close to chalking everything up to a massive bout of delusory dreaming.
That sword jammed into the ground ten feet away from her, though—that was too real to relegate to nightmares.
She pushed herself off the wall, then walked unsteadily over to where Nathaniel had stopped next to his sword. She reached for his hand and turned it over to look at the calluses there. She ran her finger over them on the off chance her eyes were deceiving her.
He shivered.
She looked up at him, but couldn’t bring herself to speak. She simply closed her eyes and stepped into his embrace.
“I’m so sorry,” he said quietly.
She held on to him and shook right along with him for a bit until his warmth became hers in spite of the air that was bordering on bitter. She turned her head and rested it against his shoulder, where she could look out over the garden, then jumped in spite of herself. That might have been because Robert the Piper, who had never quite left her side, had suddenly been joined by several other medieval-looking guys who had collected themselves in a loose group around him.
“Are you seeing this?” she whispered to Nathaniel.
“’Tis the Highlands, lass,” he said, sounding resigned. “I’ve seen more things than I want to admit to.”
She imagined he wasn’t talking about the scenery. She would have pursued that a bit, but his phone sitting on the wall was ringing with an insistence that made her want to go answer it.
“I’ll be back,” he said, stepping away and smiling faintly at her. “The lads will see to you, I’m sure.”
She was sure, too. She looked at the half dozen men who were in various states of sword-drawing and squeaked a little in spite of herself. The leader, a tall man who had a wicked scar down one cheek, looked at his companions.
“’Tis just the mobile, lads. Stand down.”
Discussion ensued but Emma didn’t understand a word of it because it was apparently being conducted in the Mother Tongue. She felt her way back to the wall and sat on it before she fell down. She didn’t protest when Robert leaned against the wall next to her. She hardly had to remind herself to ignore the fact that while her teeth were chattering, his were definitely not.
“They’re showing off,” he said dryly. “They know what a mobile is. They’re trying to impress you, I imagine.”
“I can’t imagine why,” she managed.
“Jamie’s forbid them going to Nat’s house of their own accord, so I think they’re trying to get around the laird’s edict by making enough of an impression that they’ll be invited. I suspect they’re trying to enlist your aid.” He shrugged with a smile. “Hard to say with ghosts, aye?”
She wasn’t sure how to begin to respond to that, so she smiled sickly and looked around for Nathaniel. His sword was still stabbed into the dirt nearby, reminding her of how proficient he was with it in a pair of centuries.
“Mistress Emma,” Robert said suddenly, “are you unwell?”
“Fine,” she said hoarsely. “Bad eggs. I think I might want to lie down—”
Half a dozen Highland ghosts rushed forward to spread their plaids out on the top of the rocks while their leader folded his quickly and plumped it into a pillow.
She didn’t have the heart to comment on the less-than-substantive nature of their clothing. It was bad enough to see them all standing there huddled in a little group, their long, cream-colored shirts not quite reaching their knees. She stretched out because she thought that might be better than falling off backward into what would no doubt turn out to be a patch of nettles.
She looked up at the sky until Nathaniel leaning over her blocked her view. She smiled gamely.
“Chivalry.”
“I’d say so. How would you feel about a quick trip to Manhattan?”
“Now?”
“As soon as you can pack.”
“I don’t think I can move,” she said, trying not to pop back up with enthusiasm. Nathaniel out of the country would mean she could do a little investigating in a safe place, maybe in a library that didn’t find itself anywhere near the forest. “You go on. I’ll be fine.”
He gave her his hand and pulled her up into a sitting position. “You’re coming with me.”
She watched a pair of Highlanders frown, retrieve their plaids, and hop over the rock wall to stand behind her. She looked over her shoulder and was faintly relieved to find they weren’t glaring at anyone but Nathaniel.
Thus empowered, she lifted her chin and looked at him.
“Don’t boss me.”
“I’m saving you.”
One of the Highlanders behind her leaned up. “Hate to say as much, but he has a point there.”
She looked up at that, er, ghost and felt a little faint. He was really rather handsome in a rugged sort of way, his less-than-corporeal nature aside. “He’s telling me what to do.”
“He’s a man, yer a gel.”
“Do you know what year this is?” She blinked, then looked at Nathaniel. “Okay, this is too far down the rabbit hole.”
“Which is why you need to come to New York with me,” he said firmly. “You can be my assistant.”
“Guard his back and all,” one of the Highlanders behind him agreed. “Handy with a dirk is she, Master Nathaniel?”
For once, Nathaniel looked as startled as she felt.
“Ah, I’m not sure,” he managed. “I think I’m afraid to ask.”
“We’ll train her whilst ye finish up with Lord Patrick,” a different ghost said. “Nae worries.”
Nathaniel considered, then pulled his sword free of the ground. He smiled at Emma. “I’ll be off then.”
“But,” she began, not quite sure how to call him a coward for ditching her.
“Ten minutes,” he called over his shoulder, “then we’ll go home to pack.”
Emma wondered if it would be rude to learn to use a dirk on him. She looked at Robert for support only to find him smiling in amusement.
“I think you lost that battle,” he offered.
“But not the war,” she said. “Who wants to help me learn to stab him?”
There was some argument over whether or not that would be a good idea, but the possibility of retribution from Nathaniel was apparently less dire than her inability to protect his back in a tight spot. A tangible knife was produced by a ghost who then
collapsed in exhaustion—she was going to have to ask someone about the details of that at some point—and she was given the basics in what she supposed passed for street fighting several centuries ago.
She thought it might properly be termed the longest half hour of her life.
• • •
By the time she was sitting in Nathaniel’s very expensive sports car, heading toward Inverness to switch it for something less ding-worthy, she had decided that maybe normal was just going to continue to be out of reach for a while.
“I think I have a blister,” she said at one point.
He smiled at her briefly. “I don’t doubt it.”
“That was really weird.”
“That’s one way to put it,” he agreed. “I still don’t think I believe in ghosts.”
“But you believe in other kinds of paranormal activity,” she said slowly. “Or am I wrong?”
He drove in silence for a moment or two, then looked at her.
“Are we having this conversation?” he asked.
“I was fully prepared not to,” she admitted.
“And then you saw ghosts.”
“I saw ghosts,” she agreed. She watched the scenery for another couple of miles, then looked at him. “How long has it been going on?” She supposed she didn’t need to clarify what she was talking about.
He sighed deeply. “Five years.”
She blinked. “You’ve been going back and forth for five years?”
“Aye.”
“What, once a week? Several times a month?”
“I haven’t kept track—” He trailed off, passed several cars without so much as a pucker marring his perfect brow, then pulled back into his lane. He glanced at her. “I suppose I could tell you exactly when and where I’ve been probably for every week of those past several years. Trying to balance two lives has been difficult.”
She imagined that was an understatement. She thought back over the course of her acquaintance with him. She had suspected there was something going on with him, obviously, having seen who she thought was either him or his twin popping in and out of the mist. But she never in a million years would have guessed this was what that something was.