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

could not bring himself for that moment to try to make love to her.  He was overwhelmed by what he had learned from her that night.  Suddenly she was not longer earthy but rather other-worldly. As he had thought before, she was beyond his time.  Emmy knew more, had experienced more than he could ever hope to.  She had seen things that awed him, thought commonplace that which intimidated and overwhelmed him.

Connor could not compare to that, could not fight against that and felt insignificant against the scope of her experience.  Perhaps even lovemaking had become more advanced in her time and his ways were old-fashioned and outdated.

It was a belittling thought.

Again he heard her words.  She gave up so much more than he to consider staying here.

He now knew it was the truth.

What would she choose?  And could he fault her when she chose her own time?  He thought about the conversation they’d had the previous week after Emmy had discovered Dory’s twins.  Where she came from, they knew.  Here there was nothing but hope.

He might hope that she chose him.

He might not blame her if she did not.

Connor heaved a heavy sighed and Emmy turned in the bed to look at him with a frown.  “Alright, spill it,” she told him.

“What?”

“Something’s eating at you,” Emmy had been listening to his deep sighs for the past ten minutes and he hadn’t laid more than a finger on her.  Something was definitely working in that mind of his.

Connor smoothed her hair back from her face and looked down into her eyes trying imagine the moment she realized that she didn’t belong here with him.  A day or year, how could the time come when she didn’t regret her time here with him?  It tore at his heart knowing that it would happen eventually.  “Let me just say that yer reluctance to show faith that ye belong in my time is understandable.”

“Meaning?”

“The advantages of yer time clearly overshadow those to be found here,” he shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant while his heart pounded painfully inside his chest.  “I cannot see how there would be any competition.  Ye would…will return if ye have the opportunity simply because yer world is a better place.  I can see that now.”

“The twenty-first century isn’t all sunshine and roses, Connor,” Emmy told him softly.  “There are real problems in my time, economic, environmental, the world suffers from war, prejudice, poverty, you name it. So many people are jaded, violent.  Our priorities are way out of whack, I mean, we put a man on the moon before we figured out putting wheels on our luggage. Sometimes it is just a dreadful place to be.”  She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed herself against the warmth of his chest.  “Please, please, please,” she begged painfully, “do not underestimate your appeal, Connor.  You offer me something that my own time never has.  I am twenty-eight years old and you are the first person apart from my mother that I have ever said ‘I love you’ to and the first person I have heard it from since she died.”

“I do love ye,” he whispered in her ear and ran his hands up her bare back.

“And I love you, Connor,” she returned arching against him and running her hands over his tight buttocks. “That alone is enough to hold me.  I will put my faith in that.  Don’t give up on me. ”

“I don’t want to give up on us.  I had thought I might be too provincial for ye,” Connor confessed nipping at her neck.  “I do not know so much as ye.”

“You know about things I could never dream of,” she sighed.  “You can really be such an idiot sometimes, you know?”

“Ye’ve informed me of as much,” he chuckled in a low voice and ran his tongue behind her ear earning a little shiver from her.  “I must confess that I fear lovemaking had advanced as well to a point where I might seem gauche and old-fashioned.”

Emmy shuddered but managed a breathy laugh.  “Oh, Connor, believe me you have nothing to worry about.  I’m afraid in my time you would be so mobbed by women you would never choose me from the crowd, especially if your particular skills were known.”

He laughed in turn, his relief evident.  “Is that so?  Be assured, my love, I would always find ye.”

“I’m glad,” she ran her hand down his muscled arm.  “Then why don’t you stop lying here wondering and worrying and apply some of those specials skills?”

“As you wish, my love.”

Chapter 37

“Tell me why I have to learn this again?” Emmy whined knowing she sounded pitiful as Connor led a saddled horse from the stables adjacent to the castle.  Emmy eyed the animal in trepidation.  It seemed incredibly large and very, very tall…and was that an evil gleam in its eye?

Connor tugged his oldest and most placid mare along behind him, stifling a hoot of laughter at the look on Emmy face.  Perhaps there were some things that she was not so advanced in after all.  The realization felt surprisingly good.  “Daisy is verra gentle, my love.  If ye plan to continue as the local midwife,” he shot her a wink as she scowled, “then horseback is a more efficient means of travel.  Indeed it is the best way to get to some of the more remote areas of the island.”

Emmy wrinkled her nose as the horse plodded in her direction.  “You know, Connor, I just think I wasn’t cut out for transportation á la animal.  I’m definitely more of a bus or train kind of girl.”

“Ah, but those things are not available to ye, so we must make do with what we have,” he chuckled once again as she eyed old Daisy up and down.

“Connor,” she whimpered in a high keening voice and stamped her foot.  “It’s big…and it stinks.  Can’t you just buy a car?”

“Pouting won’t serve,” Connor responded with mock severity.  “Come now, up