Chapter 2
ALEXANDRIA
My phone rang.
“Hello?”
Jen’s voice, “Girlfriend, I want to come hear all about it.”
I glanced over at Torin. Now that I thought about it, this day was going to need to be more chill than breakfast out at the diner and a museum. That had been exuberant Lexi from last night. Morning Lexi had barely slept. I needed coffee before I could go get breakfast, but I was too hungry to wait.
I said, “You got eggs? I need eggs, I’m out.”
I heard her look in her fridge. “Ten, and a coffee cake I bought because I was hungry at the store.”
“If you bring it, I’ll tell you everything over breakfast.”
“Is your hot brother still there?”
“Nope, he’s gone.”
“Fine, I’m still on my way, but I won’t wear makeup.”
I hung up and looked over at Torin, he had stopped mid-toweling to watch me. “Who ye talkin’ tae?”
“On the phone, I’m talking to Jen, at her house.”
“Without raisin’ yer voice at all?”
I nodded.
“How far away dost she live?”
“A few miles.”
He put his belt around his kilt, quietly.
Thinking.
Then he said, “How dost the voice carry? I couldna hear it.”
I said, “Down wires. Here look.” I went to the window and pointed. “See there, it’s the telephone wires, and the electricity wires. That makes it so we have these lights.”
He nodded. “Aye, it makes more sense now.”
He pulled me into a hug and kissed me deeply.
“Are you alright that we’re not going to the diner, we’re going to eat here?”
“Aye, I am goin’ tae go out and see tae the guard. I hae spent too much time wanderin’ in yer gardens. I fear I was lost, I need tae understand yer protection and the lay of the land. Twill be good tae stay here.”
“We can go to the diner another day. Today I’ll make my new husband breakfast.” I kissed him and stepped away. “I need to finish dressing, I’ll bring out some coffee once I’ve got a pot made.”
“Dost ye hae tae dress? Ye could wait here in bed and I will come back as soon as I speak tae the guard and then I can…?”
“Torin, we need food!”
“Aye, but wife, ye are enticin’ me, I am questionin’ whether I ought tae go downstairs at all.”
“Well go on downstairs so I can stop enticing you, I’m famished. This has been too much sex, Torin, you’ll have to pace yourself. You can’t have all the sex on the first night, we’ll grow tired of it!”
“Och nae, yer mood has turned again, ye promise me that we will come back here and ye will let me visit yer gardens again and ye will be back tae the sweet mood that loves yer Torin and wants him on ye?”
I looked at him, being serious. “I absolutely promise, Torin, if I am fed, I will meet you back here, and I will invite you with sweetness and desire back to my gardens.”
“Good, tis the only way I can walk away from ye.”
He kissed me again and left for the stairs.
A few minutes later I was putting on a bit of makeup when I heard Jen’s voice, “Girlfriend! What are you doing?”
I closed the tube of mascara and went out to the stairs.
She was standing in my foyer, carrying grocery bags and gestured out the door. “Torin is on the porch like he owns the place, he said, ‘Alexandria is inside,’ what did you do?”
I sank onto the middle stair.
“We did all the things, my knees are weak, I can barely walk.”
Her eyes went wide.
“This is… you had sex with the hot Scotsman? On your birthday?”
I nodded.
“Damn this is an even better story than I thought, you took a lover since I saw you last.”
“I took a husband since you saw me last.”
She said, “I am going to drop these eggs! Don’t be ridiculous, Lexi, get up, come with me to the kitchen.” She turned on her heel and went into the kitchen and I followed, sheepishly.
She put the bags on the counter and barked orders. “Make the coffee.”
Dude was sitting regally on the counter beside the coffeemaker, his tail curled around his feet. “You are not supposed to be up here, you know this.”
Dude blinked once, unimpressed.
I pulled the coffeemaker to the side instead of arguing with the cat where he could sit. “I am such a pushover, it’s total anarchy around here.” I cleared our empty beer bottles off the table while she stacked the food on the counter and turned the heat on the griddle.
“Bacon?”
I said, “Yes, and sausages. Let’s add beans and toast, so it’ll be like a British breakfast, that seems like he’ll like it.”
She nodded, picking out a can of beans and pulling meat from the drawer in the refrigerator. I got out a loaf of bread and the strawberry jam.
She asked, “Are you cooking or am I? Because I’m kinda shocked, it’s hard to focus.”
“I’m cooking, I’m famished, so much sex last night.”
“With Torin — you had so much sex with Torin?”
“Why do you seem so confused about it? He’s hot and handsome, and I love him, yes, we had a ton of sex last night—”
“I know he’s way hot, it’s just, wild, he’s like a whole ‘nother level of hot. Like if you were saying ‘I just had sex with Brad Pitt last night,’ I would be equally shocked. He was sitting out there and there was something in his face, like he is whipped, girlfriend.”
“He is, he is so whipped.” My eyes went far away. I sighed.
She said, “One of us has to cook.”
I shook my head, dislodging the memory of his hands on me, his body pressing on me, the power and force of him. “I’m cooking, I’ll concentrate.”
I began peeling bacon from the package.
She asked, “And you never had sex with him before?”
“Never, I told you this a million times.”
“I know, just checking.” She leaned on the counter. “Was it, you know, good?”
“It was so good, oh my god, Jen, it was amazing.” I added, “I love him so much, I think my heart is just completely his. I know it. I love him—”
“Wow, that is awesome, sweetie, it’s complicated, he’s you know, not from here, and doesn’t understand really anything about the world and—”
“It doesn’t matter, I don’t care about any of it. I feel like I’ve known him forever, he is somehow mine, and I’m his. It’s been slowly becoming, but last night it hit me, like it was only him, ever, always.”
“You sound like you got hit by a freight train of passion.”
“Yep.”
The bacon and sausages were sizzling. I said, “Are you going to just ignore that I called him my husband?”
“Yeah, I cannot figure out what that even means, so what, you got engaged?”
“It was our wedding night.”
She narrowed her eyes, “If I know anything, it’s that that isn’t how a wedding works. Did he tell you that to get you to sleep with him?”
I grinned. “I told him that to get him to sleep with me.”
“Ha ha, very funny, you didn’t have a wedding, sweetie, it doesn’t count.”
“It does, we wanted to marry, he asked me and I said yes, then I realized we can’t, not really, because he doesn’t have any paperwork.”
“Right, he doesn’t have any paperwork, weird.”
“And so he told me about handfasting, it’s a ceremony in Scotland, you tie your wrists together and say an oath, and it’s a wedding ceremony. If you mean it, it’s as binding as a church wedding. So we did.”
I picked up the piece of yarn off the floor.
“See, this was the tie. Then we consummated it. I married him last night. He calls me his wife, I call him my husband.”
She huffed. “Do you know how crazy this sounds?”
“I suspect it sounds pretty loopy.”
“My friend was in a committed relationship with my other friend, middle class, normal, kind of meh, but stable, then some time-traveling guy shows up, he sword fights all over the yard, she is told she’s a princess, that she was adopted, then she’s kidnapped.
When she comes back she breaks up with her boyfriend—”
I interrupted, “That was already happening, you know this.”
“Yeah, but I’m on a roll... she pines over the time traveler and then he returns, and a few hours later, she’s marrying him and sexing him up. This sounds like a cult, somehow. I can’t explain it, but it does.”
I shrugged. “It does sound crazy. It is also true. Your friend was living a normal life, but come to find out it was all a lie, Jen — she is a princess, her brother is a prince, her royal parents have been usurped, they might be dead, her kingdom has been stolen and a man named Torin has made an oath, he will keep her always, forever and ever. And then he married her and told her he loves her and somehow, even though it’s new, it feels ancient, like I’ve always loved him, like it’s special and… ”
I realized Torin was standing in the doorway.
He said, “Aye, mo leannan, I feel it as well.”
“Like you’ve always been my husband.”
“Aye, and ye hae always been m’wife.”
Jen looked back and forth from our faces. “Wow.”
“I know, and so you see, if I say it that way, it sounds not quite so crazy. I mean, you have to suspend disbelief about time travel and kingdoms, but I tell you, Jen, I love him. I married him out of love.” I asked Torin, “Ready for coffee?”
“I still daena ken how tae drink it.”
Jen said, “Well, Torin, let me try some different stuff with you. Do you like sweet, or milky or… spice?”
“I like all of it.”
“Let me make you a spice concoction, with some cream and see if that’s your favorite.”
She started working on it, asking, “Sorry to bring this up in front of Torin, but how are you going to tell Cooper?”
I glanced at Torin, watching me intently. “I’m going to tell him this afternoon.”
She nodded. “He’s going to be bummed.”
“Yeah, I’m not looking forward to it.”