Or maybe Archibald Poindexter MacLeod, Jr., could jump right in and offer an opinion.
She shifted so she could still see Gerald out of the corner of her eye and looked at the little collection of men who were leaning against the railing of Nathaniel’s porch. She spared a brief thought that if three of the four leaned any harder, the railing would simply give up, then took a moment or two to identify the players now involved in the current drama.
Patrick MacLeod was farthest to the left. He had shoved Gerald’s sword into the ground next to him and was currently standing there—not leaning—with his arms folded over his chest, smiling faintly. She supposed that was a smile of approval.
Nathaniel was next to him, wheezing. She didn’t expect anything else from him, but she thought he might be thinking kind thoughts about her.
She wasn’t so sure what Poindexter MacLeod and Franklin Baxter were thinking. They were both gaping at her as if they’d just witnessed a horror movie come to life. Emma retrieved the sheath of Nathaniel’s dagger, then walked over to hand it back to him. She shoved her own blade down the side of her boot, then looked at Nathaniel’s grandfather.
“Mr. MacLeod,” she said politely.
“Ahhh,” was all he managed.
She left him to his grappling with whatever he was thinking and turned to her father. “Dad.”
Her father’s mouth was working, but no sound was coming out.
She thought it might have been the most delicious moment of her life to date.
Dexter MacLeod looked at her father. “My grandson has wine inside. Perhaps we should go pour glasses all around.”
“Whisky instead,” Frank said. “Please.”
They felt their way into Nathaniel’s house. She watched them go, then looked at Nathaniel.
“They’ll drink your good stuff.”
“It’s locked.”
“Well, that’ll buy us ten minutes,” she said. She walked over to put her arms around him and tried not to think too hard about what he was covered in. She looked at Patrick. “Well?”
“A good job,” he said, nodding.
“He nicked me.”
“It happens,” Patrick said. He looked at Nathaniel, then shifted a bit farther away from him. “Sorry, lad, but you smell. I’ll take care of the refuse and leave you free to bathe. What shall I see to first?”
Nathaniel nodded gingerly toward where Gerald was now sitting up and looking around for his sword. “That.”
“Done.” Patrick walked over, hauled Gerald to his feet, then said something that had him very silent very quickly.
“Wonder what that was?” Nathaniel murmured. “I wish I’d known it several years ago.”
Emma watched Gerald walk over to them with Patrick at his side. She felt Nathaniel tense, which she couldn’t blame him for. If she pulled her knife free of her boot, well, who could blame her? She liked to be prepared.
“What shall we do with him?” Patrick asked politely.
“Do?” Gerald spat. “Who are y—” He squeaked and fell silent.
Emma supposed it might be impolite to look too closely at Patrick’s thumb on a pressure point in his new friend’s neck. Patrick pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it to Nathaniel.
“A text from my brother,” he said with a shrug. “It says, I’ve closed your cousin’s gate.” He looked at Nathaniel blandly. “I wonder what that means.”
“You sent it to yourself,” Gerald scoffed.
“No, I don’t think so,” Nathaniel said slowly. “The text is from James MacLeod.”
“Who?”
Nathaniel sighed. “If you don’t know, I’m not going to help you.” He leveled a look at his cousin. “You can do what you want to, of course, but don’t come to me for help when you’re trapped where you don’t want to be.”
“You’re bluffing,” Gerald snarled. “I can still get back there!”
“You might,” Nathaniel agreed, “but I’d be more worried if I were you about getting back here.” He took a ragged breath. “I have to go sit down. Do what you like, Gerald.”
“I’ll tell anyone who’ll listen what you’ve been doing!”
“No one will believe you,” Nathaniel said wearily.
“Then I’ll make a name for myself in antiquities. I’ve already sold one sword to a guy in Scotland for plenty of money.”
Emma suspected Gerald didn’t have the patience or the social skills for that sort of thing, but she didn’t bother to say as much. He had launched into a diatribe full of slurs first in English, then in Gaelic. She wondered how so much unhappiness could find itself in one person. She had the feeling no amount of money could possibly fix that for him.
She looked over Nathaniel’s shoulder to find his grandfather and her father coming outside, highball glasses in their hands. Poindexter offered Nathaniel what he was holding, but Nathaniel shook his head.
“Another time, Grandfather, thank you.”
Emma took what her father held out, tossed it back, then wished she hadn’t. She wasn’t about to show any weakness in that crowd, though, so she blinked rapidly and tried not to vomit her drink back up on Nathaniel, not that he would have noticed in his current state.
Poindexter looked at Gerald and his eyebrows went up so far, they almost touched his perfectly coiffed white pompadour.
“Gerald,” he said crisply, “what in the hell are you playing at?”
Gerald was silent. Emma suspected that was because Patrick seemed to have grown suddenly weary, which required him to lean on his thumb pressing against Gerald’s neck.
“Nathaniel, what is this madness here?”
Nathaniel looked at his grandfather. “A bit of reenactment business, Grandfather,” he managed. “Sharpens the senses for battle in other arenas. I suggested it to Gerald a year or two ago and he took to it like a duck to water.”
Emma supposed that was as good a cover story as any. If Nathaniel shot his granddaddy a look that said Gerald had taken to it a bit too well, she wasn’t about to correct the record.
“So, Nathaniel, you’re dating your assistants now?” Poindexter asked tartly.
Emma didn’t have a chance to even take in a breath before her father had leaped into the fray.
“She is not his assistant,” Frank said, his voice dripping with newer old money, “she’s a successful businesswoman in the middle of launching a fine jewelry business. All her own creations, of course. Her client list already is extremely exclusive.”
Emma looked at Nathaniel and shrugged. That much was true. Her client list consisted of her mother’s bridge partners, and they were indeed filthy rich and very exclusive.
Her father looked down his nose at Nathaniel. “What I want to know is what you intend to do with that thing there who assaulted my daughter.”
“Why don’t I offer my refuse removal services?” Patrick put in pleasantly. “I’ll see to him, these two can clean up from their recent adventures, and we’ll all meet up later at my brother’s. He’s the chief of the clan MacLeod, though perhaps Lord Poindexter is already familiar with that?”
Emma leaned back gingerly against the railing with Nathaniel. “If he attaches a title to my father’s name,” she murmured, “I’ll know we will have definitely come back to an alternate reality.”
“If that reality has a shower and a bed, I don’t care how alternate it is,” he said.
She drew his arm carefully over her shoulders and helped him up the step to the porch and into his house. “Want me to get Patrick to come back? I think he knows some medieval sorts of herbal remedies.”
“Aye, if you would.”
“Do you need help with anything else?” she asked. He didn’t look at all good, which made her wonder why the hell she hadn’t stopped the madness outside a bit sooner.
“You just cannae keep y
er hands off me, lass, can ye?” He smoothed his hand down the front of his disgusting plaid. “I can understand why.”
“Do you ever stop talking?”
“When I’m dead, darling, and even then I imagine I’ll have aught to say. I think I can manage a shower on my own, though I’m not opposed to company.”
She pointed toward his bathroom. “Go.”
“If you hear a crashing noise, that would be yours truly, taking a header out of the tub. Come rescue me and don’t linger over the view.”
She laughed, and hoped it didn’t sound as forced as it felt. She was accustomed to Nathaniel being larger than life. He looked presently as if most of the life had been sucked from him. She helped him over to the bathroom, then turned him loose.
“Be a love and text Patrick, would you?” he said. “I have to admit—and deny it loudly later—that I feel particularly awful at the moment. I would prefer not to alert the rest of the rabble to my condition.” He clutched the doorframe of the bathroom and looked at her blearily. “I may go right to bed after I wash up, which doesn’t do anything for you. My apologies. Can you find my mobile?”
“Since I’m the one who used the password you gave me to get into it last, probably,” she said cheerfully. She watched him shut himself into the bathroom, waited to listen for the shower to start without any loud crashes, then went to go find his phone.
She texted Patrick for help, then set Nathaniel’s phone down with hands that weren’t at all steady. She sat down on a kitchen stool, cold and tired and hungry, but relieved.
If she patted Nathaniel’s dagger that was sitting on the table, no doubt waiting for a certain collector to come back from Florida to claim it, well, who could blame her?
She sincerely hoped she would never have to see it again outside its Plexiglas case.
Chapter 32
Nathaniel woke, froze, then realized several things in no particular order.
He could stretch out his legs, which was less comfortable than he would have expected it to be. He could feel his hands, which was also less comfortable than he would have expected it to be. He wasn’t, however, sitting in slime any longer, he didn’t smell any longer, and there was someone in his kitchen humming a medieval drinking song.
Ah, the future. What a place.
He looked up at the ceiling and wondered how long he’d slept. There was sunlight leaking in through the curtains, so he supposed it was daytime. Whether one day or many days had passed since he’d stumbled out of the shower and into bed, he couldn’t say. He remembered with uncomfortable clarity the things that Patrick MacLeod had forced him to drink. He also remembered quite well all the things he’d called the young Himself, which he supposed Patrick was used to.
He sat up, clutched his head for a moment or two until the world stopped spinning so wildly, then swung his feet to the floor. The stone was bloody chilly, but at least it was a chill he knew he could mitigate with a pair of slippers. He looked for clothes, managed to cover the bottom half of himself without falling over, then stumbled over into his kitchen to examine the lay of the land, as it were.
The good lord of Benmore was sitting with his feet toasting quite well against his Aga. Patrick looked over at him.
“Breakfast?”
“Please—” Nathaniel cleared his throat. “Please. Where’s Emma?”
“She went to Mrs. McCreedy’s for more eggs. She promised to return.”
“And why not?” Nathaniel croaked. “When she has this to come back to?”
Patrick smiled dryly. “She said almost the same thing. I think you two have a glorious future ahead of you.”
“Congratulations on seeing the truth as well.” He sat down next to his, er, cousin, and looked at him. “Thank you—and I apologize for all the names I called you over the last several hours.”
“Days, rather,” Patrick noted mildly. “You’re welcome, and don’t fash yourself. Trust me, I’ve heard much worse, and that from both my wife and sister-in-law.” He handed Nathaniel a mug of something steaming. “Lovely of your lady to rescue your sorry arse.”
“Indeed it was.” He had a drink, then came damned near choking. “If that’s coffee, I would hate to taste what you use in your driveway.”
“Gravel, which that is not,” Patrick said. He helped himself to a hearty sip of his own brew, then cradled his mug in his hands. “Emma said you found your mother, but left the details for you to relate. Was she one of the Fergussons’ gels?”
“Actually, she’s one of Malcolm MacLeod’s bastards.”
Patrick choked. Nathaniel would have taken a bit of pleasure in that, but he found he couldn’t. He waited whilst his guest got hold of himself, then looked at him seriously.
“You didn’t know?”
“Hadn’t a bloody clue,” Patrick said, looking at him with wide eyes. “I thought she was a Fergusson.”
“So did we.”
Patrick shook his head slowly. “Genealogy is a dodgy business.” He leaned back in his chair. “Feel up to giving me the entire tale?”
Nathaniel supposed there was no reason not to. He had another sip of truly awful coffee, then told Patrick in as few words as possible about his initial journey to the past, the impossibility of convincing his uncle to come forward with him, and the absolute improbability of finding that his mother had been helping Emma get him away from the Fergusson keep.
“It was Emma to realize who my mother was, of course, thanks to her own brilliance and a quick look at some notes Alexander Smith sent me.”
Patrick lifted his eyebrows briefly. “Alex does love a good mystery.”
“I won’t ask for a list of things he’s already solved,” Nathaniel said. “But a mystery it definitely was. We encountered my uncle—my father’s brother—in the forest, he offered to take my mother back to the MacLeod keep, and I’m supposing the tale ended well since I’m still breathing.”
“Balance is restored, I suppose.”
“I think my uncle said exactly that.”
“A wise man, your uncle.” Patrick shrugged. “He eventually sends her forward, he stays in the past, there are no stray threads in the plaid of time.”
“Save that my mother bore three children where she wouldn’t have if she’d stayed in medieval Scotland.”
“Well,” Patrick said with a small smile, “I didn’t say ’twas a perfect system now, did I? Just don’t tell Jamie.”
Nathaniel snorted. “There isn’t a damned thing I can do about it now, is there? And before I forget to ask, was I having a nightmare, or did I see my grandfather here yesterday?”
“Day before yesterday, and aye, that’s who you saw.”
“And Emma’s father?”
“Can’t vouch for the spot he takes up in your dreams,” Patrick said with a smirk, “but aye to that as well.”
“Where are they now?”
“Jamie’s.”
“Good lord.”
Patrick laughed. “With Elizabeth still on holiday in London, you should be offering a few more substantial prayers than that. I nipped over earlier to see what they’d done with your cousin, but trotted right off before I could be forced to stay.”
“In the hall?”
“In the lists. My brother was overseeing a bit of swordplay with his guests.”
Nathaniel put his face in his hands, then laughed. “Tell me that’s the only thing that’s gone on whilst I’ve been asleep.”
“Your cousin Gerald has been seasoning down in one of Hamish Fergusson’s cells until you decide what to do with him.”
“Poetic justice, that,” Nathaniel noted.
“It is,” Patrick agreed. “I suggested that perhaps the matter should be settled on the field. If Gerald can best Jamie with the sword, he earns himself another chance with Lord Poindexter.”
“Tell me they haven’t s
tarted yet.”
“I made them promise to wait for you.”
Nathaniel studied him. “How long do you think Gerald will last against your brother?”
“Your lady destroyed him with a pair of daggers,” Patrick said, his eyes twinkling. “How long do you think he’ll last? A better question is, how long do you want it to last? Your cousin is the reason you found yourself in that dungeon for almost a fortnight.”
Nathaniel considered, then looked at him. “Is that gate closed?”
Patrick nodded.
Nathaniel shifted, trying not to wince. “So my choice is to either kill my cousin and end all possibility that he would ever come after me, or let him live and look over my shoulder for the rest of my life.”
“You could push him through the nettle patch in my garden,” Patrick said with a shrug. “I did that with an enemy once.”
“A modern-day enemy?”
Patrick looked at him. “A medieval enemy who had found his way to the modern day. ’Tis a bit complicated and perhaps something to be saved for an evening when we’re both well into our cups and our ladies have given us up for lost and gone to look for more interesting conversation.”
Nathaniel supposed he shouldn’t have felt pleased at the thought of being so included, but he couldn’t help but admit he was.
“Bastard relative that you are,” Patrick added.
Nathaniel leveled a look at him. “Careful,” he warned. “That’s my ma you’re talking about.”
Patrick only laughed. “I meant to insult you, not her, which I’m sure you knew. As for the nettle patch, ’tis your choice. Send him off to wreak havoc elsewhere or show him mercy and see if it changes him.”
“The thought of James MacLeod keeping an eye on him for the rest of his life might inspire Gerald to make some changes.”
“It did me,” Patrick admitted with a smile. “My brother can be impossible, but he is intimidating. I would never admit to having said that, though, so don’t bother quoting me.”
“Wouldn’t think of it.”
Nathaniel heard a car pull up outside and started to get up, but Patrick stopped him.