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

“How else would single woman earn enough of a living to go to a university and buy her own camera?” he asked.  The jealousy was raging inside him now the question had been asked and he wanted, no! needed to hear the answer.  “How many, Heather?”

“You think I was a prostitute!” she repeated ending in a near screech.  “Is that why you wanted to have sex with me?  You think I’m that cheap?”

“Are ye saying yer a virgin still then?” he challenged insolently.

Emmy opened her mouth and shut it with a snap.  “No, I am not, Connor,” she took a step forward and poked him in the chest with a finger.  “I am not, but don’t you ever, ever again make the mistake of thinking I have ever taken money for sex!  Ever!” she hissed.

“How then?  How did ye support yerself then?”

“I earned my living the really old-fashioned way, Connor MacLean,” she poked him again.  “I worked for it.  Worked real jobs.  How dare you think otherwise?”

“So ye slept with men for fun then? How many?” he asked again torn apart waiting for the answer.

“That is so none of your business.”  She threw up a hand in dismissal and left the room anyway, slamming the door behind her.

Chapter 17

Emmy managed to avoid Connor for most of the next day.  In truth it wasn’t too difficult since it seemed he was avoiding her as well.  He kept to his study and Emmy found safety in numbers with the other ladies of the house.  She played the piano in the sitting room for nearly an hour while the other women talked over their embroidery.  Emmy had little interest in sewing or even learning how and even less interest in conversation.  Instead, she mulled morosely in her own thoughts as she played by rote for the six ladies who lived at Duart.  Dory, aunts Millie, Lizzie and Eleanor, and cousins Gladys and Nora.

But she couldn’t help but think of Connor.  She wondered where he was, what he was doing and thinking about.  Was he thinking about her?  About last night?

What a stubborn man! she thought darkly, throwing herself into the dark moody music of the Phantom.  Thick-headed man!  Did he really think there was no other way for a woman to earn a living?  How did single women earn a living in this time?  And what did he want from her anyway?  Just a piece of ass?  An admission?  She would bet he didn’t even know. She had been so incredibly angry with him for thinking that of her and yet, looking back on it, he had seemed almost desperate to know.  How many, he had asked over and over.  Why was it so important?  It made her wonder.

And then besides nearly having sex with a man she had only known for three days, she had blubbered on and on about how she felt about being here.  She was afraid she would never want to leave.  Leave him.  Damn right she was afraid!  On one hand she had a nearly perfect life on paper.  A doctor joining a medical practice that would bring her a great living.  She owned her own house and had an IRA that should allow her to retire early someday.  She had friends, well more fellow residents than friends, but they were people she enjoyed going to dinner with, games with or up to New York for an occasional weekend.

So she didn’t have a boyfriend.  So what?  She was only twenty-eight for crying out loud!  She was bound to meet someone in the next couple years and fall in love so she could have marriage and babies and all the good stuff that went with it.  A perfect life.

On the other hand, she was clearly stuck here in 1895 Scotland.  How could that compete?  No electricity, no movies, no baseball.  Dozens of things bounced randomly through her mind from the minor faults to the major.  Faucets that were either hot or cold but never just warm.  No Internet!  Uncomfortable clothes, uncomfortable shoes.  She could go on and on about all the negatives of being stuck here.  Why would she want to stay at all?  What was life without her old friends Ben and Jerry?  And it was boring!  She was the child of a multitasking generation.  She was used to doing three things at once, always moving, always on the go.  She had checked her cell phone that morning, just out of habit that morning.  No service.  Well, of course there wasn’t!

The music downshifted into a calming melody and her thoughts calmed as well.

But there was peace here, too.  A beauty of nature that held its own appeal.  There were brand-new (hundred year old) books in the library she had never read that could keep her busy for years.

And there was Connor.  She closed her eyes as she played on and pictured him in her mind as he had been the previous night.  So incredibly sexy.  Appealing.  Alluring.  Laid back on his bed, hair mussed, eyes heavy, a nice six-pack of abs rippling and flexing in the candlelight…candlelight!  Ugh, she thought, thrown back into the negative side of life.  Candlelight wasn’t for a romantic setting here!  It was so you could see where you were going!  Did she really want to cope with that for the rest of her life?

And the medical side of this time was appalling!  People could die just from appendicitis at any time.  From the flu! No antibiotics for infection.  Chicken pox could kill.  They still had smallpox, too.  No hope for cancer at all.  And what would childbirth be like here?

A morbid parade of disease with no treatment or cure danced through her mind as she lost herself in her personal horror show.  Death, misery and more until a startled cry drew her attention.

Glancing around the room, she saw the other ladies flocking to Dory’s side as she bent over in