Chapter 39
Madelyn
dragged her sleeve across her forehead. How was it possible to sweat when it had to be forty degrees outside?
All right, so it wasn’t really that cold.
But Dewey’s house was a block from Puget Sound, a Victorian amongst other Victorians in a little port town, huddled together as if they thought company would keep them warm, and even a block away from the sea meant a chill during winter.
It was a great house. Madelyn knelt in the upstairs room, a large room that ran almost the length of the house, and looked around.
Dewey’s was a house of many gables, a house with nooks and crannies, the house where she’d spent the summers her parents had passed in countries not child-friendly enough to suit them.
She had loved those summers, truth be told.
She shut the trunk in front of her and gave its lid a little dusting with a very, very dusty dust cloth.
She looked around her at the treasure trove of furniture Uncle Fred and her cousins hadn’t been able to get at.
Maybe they’d assumed there was nothing on the second floor.
Maybe they’d been too dazzled by the goodies on the main floor.
Maybe they’d had some sort of spell cast over them that prevented them from seeing the staircase that led upstairs to where the really good stuff was.
Maybe they hadn’t had a key to the industrial-sized padlock that had kept this long room locked.
Whatever the case, even though the first floor had been plundered, the upstairs still contained enough things to keep her busy for weeks.
Two weeks, so far.
Making it four weeks since she’d last seen Patrick.
She tried not to think about that very much.
She rose and crossed over to a chair under a window, pulled the dust sheet off it, and sat down with a sigh. She stared out over the fog-shrouded landscape in front of her and let her thoughts wander as she hadn’t dared let them in weeks.
What was Patrick doing? Had Gilbert killed him yet, or had Patrick killed Gilbert and was now languishing in Hamish Fergusson’s jail cell?
Had he rebuilt his garage? Was Robert the piper still serenading him, or had he given up in disgust and ditched him?
She certainly hadn’t heard the familiar sound of bagpipes lately, so she supposed Robert was still on Patrick’s hill.
She had started to wonder, occasionally, if she’d dreamed the entire thing.
Maybe there was something to Roddy’s claim of Highland magic. It was as if the minute she’d set foot on MacLeod soil, she’d been transported into a world where everything felt like a waking dream. Ghosts, pipers, medieval clansmen—all walking around in broad daylight as if they belonged there.
Unreal.
She might have suspected she’d merely dreamed the whole thing if it hadn’t been for her finger that ached when it rained and the little piece of Patrick’s plaid he’d wrapped that finger in, a plaid that she had tucked in the top drawer of the dresser she was using in her great-grandmother’s room.
She stared out over the garden and rubbed her finger absently. A waking dream.
A pity she’d woken up.
She sighed and got out of the chair. Lots to do and not much time to do it in.
She was going to have to get serious about a job search very soon.
The modest monetary inheritance Dewey had left her was keeping the student loan folks at bay and a few things in her fridge, but that would only last a couple more months.
By then, she’d better have a good employment under her belt or she really would be doing the unthinkable and accepting one of the offers to sell.
The will had stipulated that she, Madelyn, receive not only the house but a small chunk of change for the service she would render in going through the contents of the house.
Though Uncle Fred had done a pretty thorough job of reducing the downstairs inventory—against his grandmother’s express wishes—Madelyn suspected that Dewey had left her in charge of sorting through her private things simply because she’d known Madelyn would send things where they needed to go. She had piles all over the parlor.
Even a pile or two for Uncle Fred.
She put her hands on her lower back and stretched. She still wasn’t fully recovered from her ordeal at the Fergusson keep, but she was getting better. There was a good chiropractor in town. A single, handsome chiropractor.
She’d been singularly uninterested.
He didn’t carry a sword, after all.
She clapped her hand to her head, sending up a substantial cloud of dust, and coughed her way down the stairs to the kitchen.
The floorboards creaked in a very comforting way.
She stood at the sink and looked out over the garden.
Her viewing angle was a bit different than it had been during her youth, but she felt as if she’d stepped back in time a dozen years.
She could hear her great-grandmother talking about the properties of this plant or that, the growing season of this flower or that, the endless tasks of gardening that kept her moving easily from year to year, allowing her life to follow the cycles of the earth.
Madelyn paused and held her breath.
Good grief, if she wasn’t careful, she was going to start sounding like Sunny soon.
She’d obviously had one too many cups of tea at that kitchen table.
She reached for a slicker and walked out into the back garden. It was enormous, for the area, and full of plants that Dewey had spent years tending. Had the green thumb ended with Dewey?
Madelyn looked down at her own as-yet-untried green thumbs.
They were dirty, but it wasn’t from a ballpoint pen. Somehow, when the choice was between slaving for the Barracuda and tending a Victorian garden, there was no choice.
She had the luxury, at least for the next few days, of pretending she could do something different.
She stood in the rain, looked around her, and wished she could do something different forever.
She didn’t want to sell this house, but she didn’t see how she could afford not to.
Even if she found a job down the street at the local law firm, it wouldn’t be enough to pay off her loans and keep herself eating.
The work hours alone would make it so the garden would never have anyone tending it.
And she couldn’t bear the thought of the garden going to weed.
She closed her eyes and prayed for a miracle.
She wanted to grow things.
She wanted, heaven help her, to plant children and see them grow.
She wanted, she decided as the rain fell softly on her face, a man she would never have.
She’d almost come to terms with what he’d done. He’d been trying to keep her safe. In his own hard, unyielding, take-no-prisoners medieval kind of way, he’d been trying to keep her safe. That didn’t make it any easier to accept, but at least she understood it.
She took a deep breath, and opened her eyes, letting the tears slip down her cheeks. It didn’t matter. It was raining out. A little more moisture wouldn’t make any difference.
Then she froze.
There, under the little arched trellis that supported climbing roses that had woven their way around the wood for two decades, stood a man.
Dressed in black.
As usual.
She was so surprised to see him, she could only stare at him in complete astonishment.
“Wha—” She swallowed and tried again. “What are you doing here?”
He didn’t move. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought he looked the slightest bit unsure of himself.
“You promised me a tour of Seattle,” he said.
More tears joined the ones that were already running down her cheeks. She managed to nod. “So I did.”
He seemed to be considering his words. Madelyn wasn’t about to put any in his mouth for him. She was still recovering from the initial volley.
“And I think,” he said, putting his hand to his forehead, “that I might be getting a cold. It may require tending. You promised me that, as well.”
She smiled. It felt as if the sun had just come out. She hugged herself and tried not to do anything too exuberant, like half a dozen backflips.
“You need yuckenacea,” she said solemnly.
“That’s echinacea.”
“Have you tasted that junk?” she asked. “It’s disgusting.”
He smiled and took a step out of the arbor. “I can handle it.” He took another step toward her. “I take it this is yours?”
“Can you believe it? I can’t afford to keep it, but I’m pretending right now. Want the tour?”
He shook his head.
She shook her head as well. “You don’t want the tour?”
He crossed the distance between them with even, measured steps. He stopped a foot away from her.
She looked up at him. The look on his face made her mouth go dry. “What do you want?” she asked.
“You,” he said simply. “If you’ll have me.”
Well, there was nothing quite like a man who cut to the chase. She swallowed with difficulty. “Maybe we should go inside.”
He swooped her up into his arms. She threw her arms around his neck and held on as he carried her inside.
“Patrick,” she began breathlessly.
He set her down inside and stood as close to her as he could without touching her. “We have things to decide.”
“Do we,” she managed.
“You wed me, if you remember.”
“You sent me home, if you remember.”
He looked at her without smiling. “I was a fool.”
“Well—”
“I cannot promise you a safe life,” he continued. “Gilbert hunts me. The saints only know what he’ll try next. If you agree to be mine, you agree to that danger.”
That was sobering. She looked up at him and found it in her to nod slowly.
“But I vow that my sword will always be raised in your defense. In the defense of our children. I will,” he said, each word clear and crisp, “keep you safe.”
“Will you leave again?”
“Never.”
She looked down. The zipper on his jacket became quite fascinating to her all of a sudden. “Where will we live?”
“Together.”
She looked up quickly and found that he was smiling faintly. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the best one I can give.” He took her hands in his. “I love Scotland.”