Love Came Just in Time

“I guess not.”

  His blue eyes were full of merriment and love and dreams for the future. “A spinning wheel, though,” he said. “And a hearth large enough for us to warm ourselves by in the evenings.”

  “And to gather the children around to hear glorious stories of their father’s conquests in battle?” she asked, feeling her heart break a little at the thought.

  “Aye, that too,” he said gently, then he kissed her again. “That too, my Jane, if it pleases you.”

  She would have told him what pleased her, but he kissed her again and the sensation of having her toes curling in her boots was just too distracting to remember what it was she’d meant to tell him.

  Then he put his arm around her and led her back to the castle. He was already planning their future out loud and she suspected she wouldn’t get a word in edgewise until he was finished. But since his dreams included her, she wouldn’t begrudge him his plans. She was a weaver and he was a storyteller. She would weave her strands in and out of his dreams and he would tell everyone who would listen how it had been done.

  And somehow, she suspected they would live out their lives in bliss, quite likely by candlelight.

  When you had a fourteenth-century husband, things were much safer that way.

  Epilogue

  IAN MACLEOD SAT in a comfortable chair in front of a large hearth, toasting his toes against the warmth of the fire, and contemplated life’s mysteries. They were many, but the evening stretched out pleasantly before him, so he had the time to examine them at length.

  The first thing that caught his attention and qualified for an item of true irony was that he warmed his toes against a fire in a little stone hut when he had a perfectly good manor house up the way with all the modern amenities a goodly portion of his money could buy. His toes could also have been enjoying a fine Abyssinian carpet and his backside a well-worn leather club chair. Even more distressing was the thought of the stew simmering in the black kettle in front of him when there was a shiny red Aga stove sitting in the kitchen waiting for him to pit his skill against it.

  By the saints, he might as well have still been in the Middle Ages for all the advances he’d made in his living conditions.

  The sound of a spinning wheel distracted him and he found himself smiling in spite of his longing to test out a few new electrical gadgets. He looked to his left and saw the most wonderful of life’s great mysteries.

  There she sat, the woman of his dreams, the woman he had searched for all his life and never would have found had it not been for a twist of time. She was born and bred in an age far removed from his, yet she was at her most peaceful when they retreated to a place that could have found itself existing comfortably several centuries ago.

  Jane’s spinning was soothing with its rhythmic sounds and Ian found himself relaxing as he watched her be about her work. Firelight fell softly upon her sweet visage and caressed her long, slender fingers as she fashioned her strands of wool. They were tasks belonging to another age. There were times during he evenings they spent at the cottage when Ian would have to go to the door occasionally to assure himself that his shiny red Jaguar still sat in front of the door.

  Ian had discovered that he liked red.

  He had also discovered that he liked going very fast.

  He leaned his head against the back of the chair and looked at his wife, noting the changes. Her long skirt was a riot of colors. Her sweater was a rich, vibrant red that brought out the strands of flame in her hair and the fine porcelain of her skin. Whatever wildness had resided under her constrained hair and black clothes had found full freedom in the Highlands. Ian found himself smiling. How changed Miss Witherspoon would have found her.

  “You’re smirking.”

  Ian looked at Jane, startled by her voice. “How can you tell?” he asked, moving his feet closer to the fire.

  She didn’t look up, but instead continued with her work. “I can feel it.”

  “You’re guessing,” he countered.

  She looked at him then and smiled. The sight of it smote him straight in the heart. Aye, this was where she belonged and he praised every saint he could think of with his few poor wits that he’d had the good sense to wind up in Miss Witherspoon’s shop on Jane’s watch.

  “What were you thinking?” she asked with another smile.

  “I was just wondering what Miss Witherspoon would say at the changes in your appearance.”

  Jane laughed. “She’d have heart failure on the spot. I think color makes her nervous.”

  “We could go to New York and show your colors to other designers,” he said, for surely what had been the hundredth time in the past year. “The apple is a large place.”

  “That’s the Big Apple, Ian. And no,” she said, holding up her hand, “I’m not all that interested in going back right now.” She looked around the hut with satisfaction, then smiled happily at him. “I like it here.”

  Ian couldn’t blame her, for he felt the same way. It had taken them a year to see their two dwellings built and furnished to their satisfaction. Fall was already hard upon them and perhaps it wasn’t the best of times to travel. And what need had they to venture forth when so many things came to their door? Ian had come to look forward to the afternoons when he managed to snatch the mail away before Jane could retrieve it first and hide all the catalogs from him. Shopping by Her Majesty’s postal service was another of the Future’s great inventions that Ian had discovered he enjoyed very much.

  “I can sell enough of my work in the village to keep me happy for now,” she continued. “And you have a new batch of students coming in before January.”

  “Aye, there is that,” he agreed. His students were souls who came to him for lessons in swordplay. Through the connections of various kin and partly due to fool’s luck, he’d managed to meet a pair of men of the Hollywood ilk who needed a swordmaster for their filming in Scotland. Ian had taken on the task and found himself with a new and goodly work to do. Perhaps it wasn’t as exhilarating as battle, but ’twas a great deal less hazardous to his health.

  “Perhaps in the summer, then,” he said. “A journey to the States.”

  She shook her head. “You’ll be busy in the summer.”

  He frowned. “I’ve no students then.”

  “You’ll be helping take care of a baby.”

  “Elizabeth is with child?” Jamie would be pleased, but Ian suspected Elizabeth’s days of traveling would be over for the foreseeable future.

  Jane stopped her spinning and looked at him. “No, Elizabeth is not pregnant.”

  “But who . . . else . . .” He stopped and looked at his wife who had turned a bright shade of red. Ian liked red very much. Indeed, the color had begun to swim before his vision, along with a chamber full of stars.

  And then he found himself with his head suddenly between his knees.

  “Breathe,” Jane commanded, with her hand on his neck.

  Ian did as she bid until he thought he might manage to get to his feet and remain there successfully. He stood, gathered his lady wife into his arms, and looked down at her, feeling a great sense of awe.

  “You didn’t tell me,” he whispered.

  “I wanted to be certain before I did.”

  “A son,” he said reverently.

  “It could be a girl,” she pointed out.

  “A wee lass,” he said, petrified. By the saints, the young men he would have to slay to keep her safe from their clutches!

  And then another thought occurred to him. He looked at Jane sternly.

  “ ’Tis too cold here for you,” he said firmly.

  “In Scotland?” she asked incredulously.

  “In this cottage,” he clarified, feeling the thrill of electricity rush through him. Finally he would investigate the mysteries of man’s inventions to his heart’s content. “We’ll repair immediately to the house where it’s warm.”

  “I’m suspicious of your motives,” she said, but she smiled as she said it.

/>   “Be suspicious after you’ve warmed up. I’ll return later for supper and the spinning wheel.”

  He pulled the door firmly shut behind him and herded his wife efficiently toward the marvels of the Future that awaited him at home.

  IT WAS VERY much later that Ian lay in his exceedingly comfortable feather bed with his lady sleeping sweetly in his arms, and gave thought not to the ironies of life, but to the sweet mysteries. There were no angry clansmen who stood to break down his door any time in the foreseeable future. He wouldn’t find himself woken from a deep sleep with the necessity of being on his feet with his sword in his hand prepared to fight in any future he could envision. His greatest danger would likely come from machines that wouldn’t stop merely when he said “whoa” in a loud voice. That he could live with, especially when the reward for it was the finding of his love and—the saints aid him to be equal to the task of fatherhood! —a bairn.

  He surely had no desire to thank William Fergusson for the hospitality of his pit, but Ian couldn’t deny that it had certainly been a path to his future and he couldn’t help but be grateful for it.

  He closed his eyes, sighed, and fell asleep to the comforting click of the radiator.

  And he dreamed, for a change, of the Present.

  The Icing on the Cake

  Chapter One

  IT HAD BEEN the morning from hell.

  Samuel MacLeod carefully avoided the last chuckhole, turned the engine off, and unclenched his teeth. He carefully leaned his throbbing head against the steering wheel of his once clean and shiny Range Rover and let out a long, slow breath.

  “I am,” he said to no one in particular and with a distinct edge to his voice, “too old for this.”

  He should have known from the start that it would have been a day better spent in bed. He’d had a lousy night’s sleep and was suffering from an incredible case of writer’s block. He could have made a soufflé, put his feet up on the coffee table, and wallowed in eggs and spectator sports. Or he could have propped his feet up on the fat leather ottoman in front of the picture window, settled back into the matching leather chair, and stared out into the wilderness surrounding his rented cabin. The deep green forest could have held his attention, as could any number of critters that might have used the front yard as a hiking trail. Fall was his favorite time of year, and fall in Alaska was like nothing he’d ever before experienced.

  Yes, he could have been comfortable. He could have been warm. He could have been entertained by wild things.

  But instead of following his better instincts, he’d risen at five, determined to work out the kinks in his plotline. He’d planned to finish chapter twenty by ten o’clock, leaving him plenty of time to get to town and back.

  The way the lights had been flickering should have told him it wasn’t a day to be tempting the Fates.

  First had come the power spike at eight, wiping out three hours of irreplaceable prose. He’d gone outside to check the generator and heard the distinct, unwelcome sound of a locked door closing behind him. Breaking in through the window had left him with cuts on his hands and his sweats. He’d headed back outside, determined not to let his rented house get the best of him this time.

  Fixing the generator had gone rather well, though he didn’t have a clue as to what he’d done. Banging it a couple of times with a wrench and threatening it had seemed to do the trick.

  Unfortunately, that had been the only success of the morning.

  He’d tried to ignore the lack of hot water midway through his shower. He’d laughed off the small kitchen fire that had resulted from a misbehaving toaster. He’d even kept a smile on his face, insincere though it might have been, when he discovered he’d forgotten to turn on the dryer the night before and all his clothes were soaking wet. He’d simply put on dirty jeans and headed out to the garage to warm up the car—

  Only to encounter a creature of indeterminate origin who glared evilly at him before hiking its leg and relieving itself on Sam’s tire. Sam had made it into his four-wheel-drive sustaining no damage to himself. Of course, that had been rectified nicely after he’d had a flat on the way into town and been forced to change said tire.

  And, heaven help him, it was only noon.

  He clambered out of the Range Rover, casting an eye heavenward to check for falling satellite parts, and stepped knee-deep into one of the chuckholes he had so carefully tried to avoid. He saw stars. He indulged in a few choice swearwords before he uttered what summed up his feelings about the past three months of his life.

  “I hate Alaska.”

  Of course, the blame for that—though he was loath to admit it—was something he could lay only at his own feet. He could have been back in New York, hobnobbing with the well-heeled and dabbling in his artistic pursuits. He could have been worrying about a date for the opera, struggling to decide who to take to a gallery opening, wracking his brains for a suitable miss to gaze adoringly at him while he listened to an obscure poet read even more obscure poetry.

  He also could have been listening to his family ridicule his two passions : writing and food. They couldn’t fathom why a man with a perfectly good eight-figure trust fund seemed to find it necessary to ruin his manicure with manual labor.

  He’d pointed out to them that somewhere back in their family tree there had been a MacLeod or two doing plenty of manual labor on Scottish soil—likely in the form of cattle raiding and sword wielding. His father had hastened to inform him that they were kin to a long, illustrious line of Scottish lairds, and that stealing beef and waving swords around didn’t count as manual labor.

  Sam had tried to explain his driving need to put words on paper by reminding his kin that the first American transplant from their ancestral clan had made his living as a newspaperman. His older sister had ruined that excuse by pointing out that said newspaperman had actually been an “editor in chief and very wealthy newspaper owner.”

  Sam had given up trying to probe any further back into his well-documented genealogy for examples to back up his arguments. He’d settled for informing his family that not only had he been writing, he’d also been studying with one of New York’s most famous chefs. His mother’s week-long attack of the vapors upon hearing that news was what had finally driven him to seek sanctuary as far away from New York as he could get and still remain on the same landmass.

  Sans his trust fund—and that by his own choice, no less.

  “Alaska,” he grunted.

  He was an idiot.

  He sighed and reminded himself why he was there. Alaska was the last vestige of untamed wilderness and he was a MacLeod. Sword wielding wasn’t all that legal anymore, but he could do mighty things with a pen and the occasional spatula. He could do those things on his own terms and by the sweat of his own brow.

  But there were times when he wondered if Southern California wouldn’t have been wilderness enough. He suspected a ramshackle house on the beach would have been a great deal easier to manage than his rented cabin with its accompaniment of deer, bears, and other sundry and perilous wildlife.

  He sighed deeply, then tromped across the mud and up the worn steps to the general store. Smith’s Dry Goods and Sundries seemed to be the precise center of whatever hubbub was going on in Flaherty, Alaska, population three hundred. The store was the gathering place for anyone who was anyone to discuss everyone else. Sam suspected he’d had his share of space on the gossip docket. He opened the door and stepped inside, avoiding the rotting floorboard near the door. No, sir, he wasn’t going to put his foot through that twice in a lifetime. He wasn’t a greenhorn anymore.

  He ambled over to the counter and nodded to the usual locals holding court next to the woodstove, chewing the fat and their tobacco. Sam pulled out his neatly made supply list and handed it to Mr. Smith, the proprietor. It was a lean list, of course, because he was still living on the proceeds from a couple of articles he’d sold to a cooking magazine. He was beginning to wonder now if he would have been better off to have tra
ded out for six months of groceries.

  A throat near the stove cleared itself, coughed, then hacked into the brass spittoon. “Yer the writer fella?”

  Sam identified the speaker as an old-timer he’d never met before, a grizzled man who probably hadn’t had a haircut since World War II.

  Sam nodded, smiling slightly. “That’s right.”

  There was a bit of low grumbling. There was always low grumbling after he admitted to his vocation. Since he didn’t like to hunt, fish, or chew, he had left the Clan very unimpressed. Sam would have liked to point out to them that his great-great-great-grandfather had come across the sea and cut a swath through Colonial America that even the Clan would have been impressed by, but then he might have been questioned about his own deeds and he didn’t dare admit the kind of soft life he’d left behind in New York. He suspected that in Alaska lynching was still an acceptable means of population control.

  “Heard yer up at the Kincaid place,” another bearded octogenarian demanded. “That right?”

  “That’s right,” Sam agreed.

  The grumbling rose in volume until it reached outraged proportions. The spokesman rose and stomped to the door.

  “Just ain’t right,” he growled. “It just ain’t right.”

  The rest of the group departed after giving Sam disapproving looks. Sam looked at Mr. Smith, an older man with a merely rudimentary sense of humor.

  “What did I say?

  Mr. Smith shrugged. “Reckon you’ll find out soon enough.”

  Sam wondered if that could possibly be anything he would want to investigate further. Then again, forewarned was forearmed. He took a deep breath.

  “Care to translate?” he asked.

  Mr. Smith shook his head. “Better to let you find out for yourself.”

  Sam leaned against the counter and tried not to let the ambiguity of that statement unnerve him. With the way things were going, finding out for himself could be downright dangerous.

  The door behind him opened and shut with a bang.