Chapter 7 #2
Madelyn frowned, then shrugged. It was becoming increasingly difficult to try to unravel what Moraig was saying.
Either her accent was growing thicker, the air in the cottage was growing thicker, or the mysterious ingredient in the tea was kicking in in a big way.
Madelyn rubbed her eyes. Then again, maybe jetlag was just finally and thoroughly catching up with her.
It was all she could do to keep her eyes open.
“Today?” she repeated sleepily. “What does that mean?”
“It wasn’t so in ages past.”
“What wasn’t so?” Madelyn asked, hardly caring about the answer. Would Moraig be offended if she crawled over and made herself at home in that comfortable-looking bed? How about the couch? It would certainly do.
“Different sorts of ways to pass the time,” Moraig said with a meaningful wiggle of her eyebrows.
Madelyn yawned. “What does that have to do with Patrick?”
“And his brother, Jamie.”
“And his brother, Jamie,” she repeated dutifully.
Moraig leaned forward and smiled a conspiratorial smile quite devoid of several critical teeth.
Madelyn leaned forward as well, suspecting that it was the polite thing to do.
Then realized she was leaning too far. She caught herself with her hand on the floor before she fell flat on her face.
She pushed herself back into a sitting position and peered blearily at Moraig. “Yes?”
Moraig paused dramatically. “It has,” she said, pausing again for maximum effect, “everything to do with them.”
“Hrumph,” Madelyn said wisely. It was hard to make herself sound wise when all she wanted to do was take a nap, but Moraig seemed to expect it. “Everything?”
“Aye, everything.”
Madelyn frowned. “I’m confused.”
“Their upbringing, girl.’Tis what made them the men they are.”
Madelyn looked at her hostess and began to have serious doubts about her grip on reality. Too many fumes from all the herbs cluttering up her cottage. “That’s the case usually, isn’t it?”
“Nay, lass,” Moraig said impatiently. “Not with them.”
“They’re special then, is that it?”
“Nay,” Moraig said, waving away Madelyn’s words.“’Tis their upbringing in a time far distant from ours that makes them the men they are.”
“Patrick doesn’t look that old,” Madelyn said.
“He doesn’t look half his age,” Moraig said with another meaningful nod.
“And how old would that half be?” Madelyn asked, wondering if Moraig had any Novocain in amongst her pots and sundries and if she could be prevailed upon to cough some of it up for a girl in need.
“Several centuries.”
“Yes, well, men never age,” Madelyn said, looking around for a likely repository for the serious stuff. Her tailbone was really starting to hurt. Then she looked at Moraig. “What did you say?”
“Several—”
“Things that are really beyond belief,” a deep voice from behind her said.
Madelyn jumped up in surprise, staggered, and would have landed in Moraig’s cooking fire if Patrick hadn’t stopped her fall.
She clutched his arms and stared up at him.
Moraig had a point. His eyes were magnificently green.
And his arms were spectacularly muscular.
She was definitely on the verge of a serious swoon.
So she clutched and reminded herself to breathe.
Then again, if she swooned, maybe he would pick her up again—
“How do you fare?” he asked.
“I’ve had better mornings,” she wheezed.
“No doubt you have,” he said. He looked over Madelyn’s head. “Thank you, Mother. I’ll see her to Roddy’s.”
“Come back, lass, when you’ve a ready ear for a fine tale,” Moraig said meaningfully.
“I think she’s heard quite enough for a day,” Patrick said dryly.
“She’s hardly heard enough,” Moraig countered, “but’tis your tale to tell. I’d be about telling it, if I were you.”
Patrick grunted at her. “I’ll give it no thought at all, if it’s all the same to you. Now, can I return briefly this afternoon and offer some kind of aid?”
“If you like,” Moraig said. “I can think of several things—”
Madelyn listened to them then talk over and around her and came to a conclusion or two.
First, Moraig didn’t actually sound as if she was delusional.
She chatted quite freely and happily with Patrick.
And while she might have been fanciful, she wasn’t a liar.
Madelyn had worked with enough liars to spot one a New York city block away.
Whatever nonsense she was spouting, it was nonsense she fully believed.
But men from a different century?
Preposterous.
Maybe it was just a euphemism for growing up in the Highlands. It was, after all, a rather rural place. Beautiful, but not exactly bustling.
Second, Patrick MacLeod, his driving flaws aside, was a complete stud muffin. He was tall, he was gorgeous, and he smelled good. Not a doused-in-cologne good. A woodsy, sunshiny kind of good.
Or he could have just had a brush with Moraig’s herbs. Who could tell for sure?
Third, if she didn’t get herself somewhere flat soon, she was going to cry.
“Put your arms around my neck.”
She looked up and felt a little light-headed. “Huh?”
“Hold on to me. I’ll carry you to the car.”
“Oh,” she said weakly. Then her ears perked up. “Car?”
“You didn’t think I was going to make you ride back to Roddy’s, did you?”
“I wasn’t sure what you were going to make me do.”
“Put your arms around my neck,” he said easily.
“Well, I suppose if I have to.”
He made a sound that might have been a half laugh, then very carefully lifted her into his arms—and that without so much of a grunt of exertion.
“You’re rather strong,” she managed as he ducked out of Moraig’s doorway.
“Swordplay,” Moraig offered from behind her.
“Bench-pressing each day several old women who talk too much,” Patrick threw over his shoulder. But he said it affectionately.
Moraig only laughed happily.
Madelyn found herself wishing quite suddenly that he would speak that way to her.
Obviously she’d been breathing too many uncontrolled substances.
Not good for her common sense. She had places to go, sights to see, items to be able to place in the accomplished column.
She didn’t have the time or the energy to be sidetracked by some muscle-bound, devastatingly handsome Scottish lord who didn’t huff and puff when he carried her in his arms.
She blinked.
What was she, nuts?
Contemplating the condition of her sanity was something she’d have to put on hold, because at the moment it was all she could do to bite her lip and hold on so she didn’t make a fool of herself by whimpering.
Patrick was careful, but still every step jarred.
She sighed in relief once she was sitting in the front seat of the SUV that had almost plowed her over the day before.
Patrick started to buckle her up. His very nearness was almost enough to do her in.
She looked at his face so close to hers and felt distinctly weak in the knees.
“You don’t have to do that,” she managed.
He looked her in the eye. “Aye, I do.”
“I can—”
“So can I. Stubborn wench,” he added, but he said it with the same tone of voice he’d used on Moraig.
Madelyn almost passed out.
This was definitely not on her list.
He buckled the seat belt, then straightened partway. “The ride back won’t be comfortable.”
“It beats walking,” she managed.
“We’ll see.”
“But Whoa Bullet,” she said with a sudden feeling of guilt. “Oh, no. I left that stupid horse wandering around in the meadow.”
“He’ll find his way home. He always does.”
“Has he lost many riders?”
Patrick actually smiled.
She wondered if he would notice if she began to hyperventilate.
“He loses at least half a dozen tourists a season.”
She blinked in surprise. “But Roddy said he was pokey!”
“He says that to everyone. He lies.” He straightened and shut her door.
She wondered briefly if Patrick knew Roddy well enough to know that, then shrugged it aside.
If Patrick thought Whoa Bullet would get home, who was she to argue?
Especially when all her energies were being concentrated on keeping herself from swearing as Patrick eased his car out of the forest. She closed her eyes and held on.
“Well,” Patrick said suddenly, “he’s still there.”
Madelyn opened her eyes. She could hardly believe what she was seeing. “Don’t stop,” she begged.
“We should.”
“We shouldn’t.”
“He’s your fiancé.”
“Ex-fiancé.”
“Not to hear it from him.”
“Keep driving.”
“It wouldn’t be polite.”
“Polite be damned.”
Apparently it wasn’t to be damned enough because Patrick stopped a safe distance away from none other than Bentley Douglas Taylor III with his car bogged down in a ditch.
Madelyn closed her eyes and pretended to be unconscious.
That grew increasingly difficult after Bentley opened her door and began to chide her for being foolish and precipitous.
It grew almost impossible to keep her eyes closed as he instructed Patrick to hurry up and get going.
Madelyn looked at her erstwhile fiancé. “He’s doing you a favor. Use your fawning defense attorney voice on him.”
Bentley frowned. “He’s an uneducated backwoods Scotsman. He’ll respond best to an authoritative tone.”
“Geez, Bentley,” she said, “can you possibly be that dumb?”
“Ask him what his degree is in.” He turned toward Patrick. “What’s your degree in?” he bellowed.
Patrick looked up from where he knelt in the mud. “I was . . . homeschooled,” he volunteered.
“Did they teach you to hurry?”
Patrick stood. Madelyn hoped he planned to punch Bentley in his aristocratic nose.
No such luck. He merely got back in the Range Rover, reached over Madelyn with an “excuse me,” and pulled her door shut. With not even a flicker of concern, he backed up and pulled the Jag out of the ditch. Then he took his Range Rover out of gear, turned, and looked at her seriously.
“Do you want me to put you in his car?”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“I take it he was an aberration?”
“You can take that wherever you want it; just take me out of here.”
He got out of the car and unhooked his rope from Bentley’s Jag. Bentley spun his tires, causing a great deal of mud to coat Patrick’s front.
Madelyn held her breath for the eruption.
Patrick merely turned and walked back to his car. He stowed his gear, then wiped his hands on his jeans and got back inside, mud and all. He smiled at her briefly.
“Ready?”
She could hardly believe her eyes or ears. “You have amazing control over your temper.”
Patrick shrugged. “Didn’t want him littering up my land. Best not to leave him in pieces on it then, aye?”
“He’s a jackass.”
“So I noticed.”
She would have said more, but they were moving and all her attention became focused on retaining her dignity by not howling.
“This is your land?” she asked as he slowed and eased them over a particularly nasty rut. Maybe there was something to the lord thing. He certainly drove in what she assumed was a lordly manner—as if the road belonged to him and only him.
“Aye,” he said. “Part mine, part my cousin’s, the rest my brother’s.”
“Has it been in the family long?”
“You could say that.” He looked in his rearview mirror. “Your friend is following us, but he doesn’t look particularly pleased. We’ll reach a proper road soon. He’ll find that more to his taste, no doubt.”
“You should have left him in the ditch.”
He shrugged. “I’m helpful.”
“That’s dangerous.”
He turned vibrant green eyes on her. “I offered you aid.”
“I imagine it was spurred on by feelings of guilt. You’ve almost run over me twice.”
He laughed, only briefly, but the sound was breathtaking. Madelyn wondered if he would do it again if she asked.
“Aye, I suppose that’s true. Or perhaps’twas merely the sight of you screaming your way across my meadow that prodded me to action.”
“You would have screamed, too. That stupid horse was about to take flight.”
“When you can sit again, I’ll show you how to stop him.”
She looked at him in surprise. “You will?”
The hesitancy was brief, but she was a good lawyer and quite adept at reading body language.
“Unfortunately, I’ve got a long list of sights,” she said lightly. After all, he wasn’t obligated to her. Besides, she did have plans. “I’ll be busy seeing those sights.”
He nodded briefly. “Of course.”
Madelyn was momentarily tempted to try to unravel the mystery of his reactions, then thought better of it.
She only had twelve days left. Not really enough time to plumb the depths of Patrick MacLeod’s black soul.
Maybe she was the only one who felt anything crackling like lightning between them.
Maybe she was romanticizing him in a way he had no desire to be romanticized.
Maybe she should take that block of ice she wanted at Roddy’s and put it on her head instead of her butt.
They soon reached the inn. She was unbuckled and halfway out the door before she realized she still couldn’t move. She clutched the door frame and let the tears roll down her cheeks unimpeded.
Large, open hands soon appeared in front of her, hands that were callused and work-roughened. Not the hands of a man who fondled expensive pens for a living.
Madelyn was about to be briefly grateful for those hands when their owner was hip-checked aside.
“I’ll see to her.”
Madelyn opened her mouth to protest. And damn Patrick MacLeod if he didn’t acquiesce with a little bow. She watched as he retrieved a hubcap from the back of his car and headed toward hers. She continued to watch as he knelt and attached it quickly to one of her wheels.
She would have said thank you, but she was soon wheezing courtesy of a cloud of Eternal Riches. She was manhandled—accompanied by much grunting and complaining—to her room.
“None of this would have happened,” Bentley panted as he dumped her on her bed and leaned over her, “if you had just been reasonable—”
“Go to hell,” she said. “But close the door behind you first.”
He straightened, looking supremely dissatisfied. “You’ll see things my way,” he stated as he left her room.
Madelyn rolled her eyes. Where was her knight in shining armor when she needed him? Probably awaiting a court date because Bentley had filed a lawsuit against him.
One place she knew he wasn’t was up in those mountains behind Roddy’s inn, roaming around in his Range Rover and rescuing maidens in distress.
Without so much as a grunt of exertion.
“Don’t eat while you’re laid up,” Bentley said, poking his head back inside the door. “It won’t do your thighs any good.”
The door closed with a bang.
Madelyn closed her eyes and sighed.