A Laird for All Time by Angeline Fortin (room on the broom read aloud txt) 📗

stretching out muscles left tight from sleeping on the soft mattress.  Bright sunshine poured through the tiny windows of the outer embattlements facing the east.  Years of residency had trained her to get her sleep when she could and to function on very little of it.  By habit and training, she was a light sleeper and early riser.  She lie for a moment in the cocoon of the feather bed warm and cozy while the nip on her cheeks suggested the air in the room was much colder.

Emmy rose and quickly dressed in her clothes from the previous day.  Making quick use of the bathroom, brushing her teeth and twisting her hair up in a claw clip, she was soon slipping out the door. None of the others had yet to awaken or perhaps it all been a dream, she thought as she crept down the hall from her room without seeing another soul.  Maybe the vision of Connor on horseback had been a hallucination from which she was only just now recovering and the rest merely a bizarre, stress-induced dream.  It could now be 2010 as it should be and she was here at Duart on vacation…

A maid in a long gray, Victorian dress, white apron and cap on her Grecian knot crossed the hall carrying an armload of linens and Emmy knew the dream was indeed reality.

What to do?  The never-ending question again pounded in her mind like the beating of a drum.  Duart, she thought.  1895.  She still had no real idea how it had happened beyond a government experiment gone wrong.  Coping with her circumstances was top priority.

Logically she knew she should pretend to be this Heather MacLean as long as she could get away with it.  She was lost in time.  If she fought the battle and the laird accepted that she wasn’t his wife, she would be left without a place to stay or food to eat.  That was something she could not afford to happen with the cold weather of the season.  Of course, she also had no money to support herself in this time. The pounds and pence she had in her purse would only draw suspicion that Emmy wasn’t prepared to defend against.

She needed to figure out how to get back but wasn’t sure where to start.  In the meantime she would do what she had to even if it meant deceiving the entire castle.  Better that than the nightmare of burning at the stake.

Emmy started to tiptoe toward the stairs before she shook her head for being such a ninny.  Was she truly trying to sneak around this castle?  It was so big her chances of meeting another person were pretty slim.  Straightening, Emmy strode more confidently taking in the décor of the castle as she went.

The halls were paneled in intricately carved rosewood with lovely, fragile sconces lighting the hall at intervals.  Plush carpet runners padded the wood floor and artwork dotted the walls.  The staircase was another example of fine woodworking with its hand-carved spindles and elaborate newel posts. The hall below was lit by an enormous chandelier that bounced light off the polished marble floors.

It was all very extraordinary and indicated a wealth that boggled Emmy’s mind.  And, oddly, it all looked brand new as if it had just been completed.  Emmy knew the MacLean’s had only returned to Duart in the past twenty years from this historic date having recovered the castle after centuries.  Duart had been a near ruin on its recovery by the clan, she knew from her guidebook, but now she wondered to what extent it had been rebuilt.  Perhaps she would find the courage to ask Connor.

Emmy opened the big front door slipping silently into the dim Scots morning.  The rising sun from the coast side of the castle cast the courtyard and outer walls in its long shadow lighting on patches of fog around the sides of the building. The castle itself was a thick U shape.  The central section she exited from reached out with two deep wings on either side.  On one side the building was five stories high.  The rear and opposite side only three and the top end of the U the wings created was closed by a tall defensible wall with only an ornamental iron gate leading to the entrance she’d arrived at the day before.

This enclosed courtyard was new to her having missed it the previous day when she had fainted outside the front gates.  That open area might have been used in the past for the castle soldiers to train or for work to be done.  Today it consisted of a tidy network of pathways and low shrubbery with an impressive stone fountain at its center.  Not complicated, but rather sparse overall.  Compared with the lush gardens she had seen over the course of her vacation, Emmy appreciated its simple elegance.

Emmy clutched her blazer around her crossing her arms against the morning chill.  The ground of the keep was damp following the storms of the previous evening.  It squished beneath her feet as she walked across the paths and through the heavy gate.  It was only exit from the entire castle she had yet to find.  Down a series of stone steps she went to the drive where the bus had dropped her off the previous afternoon.  She paused and turned to look up at the castle, the walls dark in the shadows of the early morning.  It looked nothing like it had when she arrived yesterday!  Pacing back and forth, she wondered if being in the right spot would whisk her away 115 years into the future.  She glanced toward the gates and back up at the keep still shadowed by the castle.

Nothing.

She found another spot and looked around again.

Nothing.

“Well, hell,” she muttered at her failure to be whisked away to the future staring blankly out over the rugged countryside.  Obviously it wasn’t going to be that easy.  Maybe she needed to