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

“Never, never,” he replied honestly oblivious to her self-disdain.

“So when do you think he’ll be back?”

“I would think not more than a day or two from now.”

Chapter 30

Five days later, Emmy’s overactive imagination had developed dozens of scenarios for the cause for Connor’s continued absence.  The yacht had sunk in the middle of the sound with all hands lost, he had mugged and murdered, hit by a train…

She had been unable to find Donell or any trace of him.  She had even taken the carriage into Craignure to the inn to find him.  Jimmy, the innkeeper, admitted that he hadn’t seen the old man since the previous week.  It seemed the sometime busybody had fled Mull much as her laird had.  Finally, when visiting patients and reading books were no longer enough to distract her, she had begged Ian to find him and bring Connor home.

Dutifully, Ian had packed a bag and taken the ferry to Oban and boarded the train to Glasgow.  As requested, he sent regular updates via telegraph to keep Emmy informed to his progress, but two days later he hadn’t found Connor yet in any of his regular hotels or clubs.  Ian had found the estate manager and Mr. McAllen, however and conveyed the information that neither man had been aware of the laird’s presence in Glasgow.  Defeated, Ian relayed that he was returning to Duart.

“What the hell are you doing?” Ian stared down at his brother, his laird, in disgust.

Ian had left Glasgow unable to think of where his brother could possibly have gone.  Concerned, he had made his way back through Inverary to Oban searching for signs of his brother along the way.  He was beginning to consider the horrible possibilities Emmy had regaled him with might be true when he noticed his brother’s sailboat docked in Oban while he was waiting for the ferry.  A quick word with the crew had sent him to a place he hadn’t thought to frequent in more than a decade.

Though the brick building was discreet enough from the street, it housed the largest brothel in Oban.  Ian had never known his brother to come here and surely never expected to find him drunken and wallowing in filth with a pair…aye, a pair! of Sally Loaman’s best girls.

Ian reached down into the pile of sleeping bodies and pulled his brother roughly out of the tangle of female arms and legs shaking him forcefully.  “My God, you reek of alcohol and perfume, Connor!  What were you thinking?”

Connor’s head lolled to the side as a slur of unintelligible words emerged from him.  Ian snorted in repugnance draping his brother’s arm across his shoulders and half led, half carried him from the room.  “You are utterly foxed,” he muttered.  With some doing, he managed to get Connor into his waiting carriage and down to the docks where the crew helped him in dragging his brother below decks and dropping him on the bed.  Given Connor’s size and weight, it was an effort to do so, but not as much as being close to him.

“I feel as if I should be holding my breath,” one of the crew grumbled as they had hauled him below.

“He sure is a ripe one, to be sure,” another agreed.

“Never seen the laird in such a state,” yet another added and they all nodded agreeing to that.

The crew returned above and Ian dropped down in a chair and considered his brother’s state.  “Now what?” he wondered aloud.

Connor groaned loudly but Ian had no other input.  “Serve you right if I dumped you over,” Ian muttered rising to grab a bucket of water and a towel.  Taking them to the side of the bed, he stripped his brother to his smalls and proceeded to wash the worse of the stink from him.  Connor protested flinging his arms feebly before passing out once more.

Ian had never seen Connor in such a state of drunkenness before.  When Connor drank, he was always lucid, controlled and Ian had to wonder how much alcohol he had consumed to get to this state of excess.  What made him do it?  And to go to Sally’s!  Ian shook his head, knowing that something had happened yet from Emmy’s recounting it hadn’t seemed anything so extreme to prompt this crude behavior from his brother.  He wondered if Connor’s version would entail a completely different account.

“Where am I?” A gruff voice spoke from the bed more than two hours later and Ian looked up from his book to see Connor propped up on an elbow rubbing his face thoroughly with his free hand.

“We’re docked in Craignure,” he offered only.

Connor scratched his growth of beard.  “What time is it?”

“Should I be asking if you know what day it is even?” Ian asked sarcastically.

“It should be Tuesday, I believe, unless time has gotten away from me.”  Connor glared at Ian.  “Why are ye looking at me like that?”

Since it was Tuesday, Ian could only wonder how his brother had managed to know it.  He had been too foxed to mark the time.  “How long were you at Sally’s?” he asked curiously.

“Assuming it is Tuesday, I just went there last night.”  Ian’s brows shot up in surprise.

“Then where have you been the six days before that?  I know it wasn’t Glasgow, because I had already searched for you there.”

“Ye went looking for me?  Why?” Connor grumbled in irritation.

“You went without word for five days when you’d said you’d be gone but a day or two.” Ian pointed out.  “You’ve never done that before and everyone was beginning to worry.  Even Aunt Eleanor.”

“I am sure no one realized I was gone.”

“If you think that, then you are a fool!”  Ian stiffened against Connor’s harsh glare.  “Aye, you heard me, a fool!  Emmy has been out of her mind with worry, thinking you’ve drowned, or sold to band of gypsies or been gutted and turned on a spit for a band of