Chapter 18 #2
Patrick glared at him for a moment, then he must have caught sight of Cameron’s blackening eye because he laughed.
“I was going to ask you what in the hell you were doing with my sister at this unearthly hour, but I can see the time has been well used—” He shut his mouth abruptly and turned a fierce frown on Sunny. “Did you punch him?”
“I dropped a book on him.”
“Dropped a book?” he echoed. “Don’t you mean ‘threw a book’?”
Sunny sighed gustily. “Semantics, Pat. I wasn’t defending my virtue. He was a perfect gentleman. It was just that when we were going to bed and I leaned over him—”
“You what!”
Cameron watched as Sunshine had the gall to laugh, then duck under Patrick’s arm and escape into the safety of the hall. He wouldn’t have been at all surprised if Patrick had challenged him to a duel with swords—if that was how he settled things, which Cameron suspected just might be the case.
“Would you care to offer an explanation?” Patrick asked frostily.
Cameron kept his hands in plain sight. “I slept on her floor, not her bed, but—”
“But, my arse,” Patrick snarled. “What do you think you’re doing with her, you bloody fool? And if you tell me again you’re not sure, you’ll regret it.”
Cameron would have likely drawn his sword in response to Patrick’s tone if he’d been in his youth, but he was less hotheaded than he had been then—that, and Patrick MacLeod was well within his rights to demand answers. He supposed the least he could do was offer the most honest ones he could.
“I drank myself into a stupor over her the night before last, then came home yesterday afternoon to see if she would make me a tea to undo it. There is your answer.”
“You’re engaged!”
“Trust me,” he said grimly. “I’m unpleasantly aware of that fact.”
Patrick folded his arms over his chest. “Let me see if I can pit my poor wits against this tangle of yours. You’re engaged to one woman, yet you feel comfortable coming back home and bleating after another?
Another who happens to be my sister? Are you completely without honor, or just completely without sense? ”
Cameron dragged his hand through his hair. “A little of both, perhaps.”
“You’re not on Cameron soil here, laddie,” Patrick continued in a low, dangerous tone of voice, “no matter how nicely we played together the other night. If you hurt Sunny, I will slice you open from heart to belly, pull your entrails out and strangle you with them, then make it all look like a terrible accident. And if you think I can’t—or won’t—you’d best think again. ”
Cameron hadn’t truly expected anything else and he had no doubts Patrick would make good on the threat if pushed. “Warning noted.” He paused. “It might ease you to know that she doesn’t like me.”
Patrick looked again at his black eye, snorted, then stepped back into the hall. “She still has sense, then. Come and eat.”
Cameron did while the offer was still good.
And as he sat at the table and soon tucked happily into things he hadn’t seen in Sunshine’s icebox, he thought about Patrick MacLeod.
He thought about those tales that went round the pub about James MacLeod.
He thought about rumors from his youth, rumors about James, the laird of the clan MacLeod who had cheated death and taken his wife to Paradise.
That laird’s cousin, Ian, had disappeared several years later under equally mysterious circumstances.
And his brother Patrick had gone missing years earlier than either of them.
Perhaps the tales of magic on MacLeod soil weren’t so far off after all.
He turned his mind back to his meal, partly because Patrick MacLeod was an excellent chef and partly because he didn’t want to think any more about things that made him uncomfortable. He finally sat back with a cup of coffee and sighed in pleasure.
“Thank you,” he said, with feeling.
“Haven’t you eaten well lately?” Patrick asked.
“I’ve been in London, so draw your own conclusions. I will admit, though, that I’m hungrier than usual, given that I spent most of the night in your sister’s loo.”
Patrick raised his eyebrows at Sunny. “In truth?”
“He had a hangover from too much whisky and brunch,” Sunshine said. “I couldn’t not offer my assistance with a little lobelia tea. You would think that the laird of clan Cameron would know a little more about the taste of herbs than that, but apparently not.”
“I knew exactly what I was drinking, which you well know,” Cameron said mildly. “I was being polite by not complaining. I was also very under the weather.”
Sunny studied him for a moment, then turned to Patrick. “He doesn’t have anything to do today.”
“What do you want me to do about that?” Patrick asked with a snort. “Babysit him for you?”
“Perhaps he’d like a tour of Ian’s,” Sunshine suggested. “You know, now that he’s feeling so chipper.”
Patrick shot her a look that was gone too quickly for Cameron to identify. Before he could begin to speculate, Patrick had turned to him.
“Feel up to a little swordplay, Cameron?”
Cameron felt his mouth fall open. “Swordplay?”
“I know how much time you spend at Bagley’s,” Patrick said. “Surely you could manage a few minutes crossing blades with me. I’m certain I’m nowhere near your equal.”
He said the last with a smirk, which led Cameron to believe that Patrick MacLeod had no illusions about his own skill.
Cameron looked at Sunshine. She was watching him carefully, as if she simply waited for him to come to some sort of decision. So that’s what she’d been about, but why? Why would she suggest a morning at Ian MacLeod’s? Why would she care if he said aye or not?
Something slithered down his spine. He wouldn’t have called it unease, but perhaps it couldn’t be termed anything else.
It wasn’t possible that she knew anything about his past, was it?
The thought that he might have been born in a century far removed from hers was so laughable that he hardly entertained the thought anymore himself.
His life had begun eight years ago. Anything else was business he’d happily left in the past.
Including swordplay with anything but rapiers.
“Go fetch different clothes,” Patrick said abruptly.
Cameron pulled himself back to the present. “I wish I could,” he said with feigned regret, “but I didn’t bring my car. It would take me so long to ride home and back that it wouldn’t be worth it for you to wait.”
Patrick pulled keys out of his pocket and slid them across the table. “Take mine and hurry.”
Cameron looked at Sunny. She was still watching him with that look that said she was just waiting for him to show what he was made of. Heaven help them both if she ever found out.
“You aren’t afraid, are you?” she asked.
He tried to loosen his jaw, but it seemed to be set quite firmly. “Are you baiting me?” he asked carefully.
She only smiled and reached for his plate. “I don’t think you really want to know. Best hurry and get your stuff before Patrick thinks you’re chickening out.”
He looked at Patrick, but the man was only waiting, watching him dispassionately. Cameron reached out slowly and took Patrick’s keys.
“It would take me an hour home and an hour back even with a car,” he said slowly. “I have shoes at John’s, but no clothes.”
“I’ll loan you clothes,” Patrick said with a hint of a smile. “Make haste, lad. We’ll be waiting.”
That’s what he was afraid of. He looked at Sunny, but she was very busy with breakfast dishes and he supposed forcing a good-bye out of her wouldn’t endear him to Patrick MacLeod. He thanked the lord of Benmore for breakfast, then left before anything else unsettling happened to him.
He drove Patrick’s car to the village, managed to get his shoes out of John’s storage room without answering any questions, then returned back the way he had come.
He parked Patrick’s car where he’d found it, then noticed Patrick and Sunny standing on the front stoop, waiting for him. Patrick had a sword resting against his shoulder like an old-fashioned Colonial rifle.
A six-foot bloody Claymore, if anyone was curious.
Sunny didn’t look as if she thought it out of the ordinary. Then again, she consorted with MacLeods on a regular basis, so perhaps it didn’t seem strange to her. Cameron walked over and tossed Patrick his keys.
“Thanks for the loan.”
“There are clothes in the loo,” Patrick said. “Hurry.”
Cameron changed, then returned outside to find only Patrick waiting for him. Sunny was already well on her way down the path leading toward the woods to the east. Cameron cleared his throat.
“Where’s your wife?”
“Practicing her fiddle.”
Cameron blinked in surprise. “I thought that was a recording I heard inside. She’s very good.”
“She is,” Patrick agreed. “I think she should make a career out of it, but she’s content enough to mother our wee one and spend the occasional afternoon with Angus McKinnon down at the pub, wowing the lads.”
“I’ve never heard her there and I think I regret it.” He considered. “As for the other, I can’t say I blame her. There are many who would give much to be home.”
Patrick shot him a sharp look, but said nothing.
“What of you?” Cameron continued, looking for something to concentrate on besides the sight of a woman he couldn’t have walking fifty paces in front of him. “How do you feed your family?”
“I teach wilderness survival as part of Ian’s school. And swordplay, when it suits me. I dug up a chest of doubloons in my garden last year and sell those when the mood strikes.” He shot Cameron a look. “I’m also writing a book on medieval Scottish warfare.”
Cameron stumbled before he could stop himself. “Are you,” he managed. “Have a publisher yet?”
“Aye, if you can believe it. Between that and spending as much of my time as possible simply looking at my wife and contemplating how fortunate I am to have her, I’m fairly busy.”
Cameron watched Sunshine walking in front of him. “I can understand that.”
“Sunny’s beautiful as well, though, isn’t she?”
“Stunning,” Cameron agreed.