Taken by Angeline Fortin (great books of all time TXT) 📗

to college when I was done with the role.  University,” she clarified.  “I studied English Literature.  I’m not sure what I thought to do with it.  Teach, maybe?  Write?  Other than becoming a professional student, the options for a popular movie actor are surprisingly limited.”

“I kent that ye were well educated.”

“Did you go to school?”

“I was trained for a knighthood but since I do hae mine own property, I was well-tutored on how to manage it.”  Thoughtful silence fell as he stroked his thumb idly over her knuckles.  “Were yer parents supportive of such a change?”

“Not really.”  All through those years at school, her parents and Tyrone had been there, trying to guilt-trip her into living her life for them, making them more money.  The modeling.  The appearances.  It had been all been her parents and Tyrone.  Pressing her. Pushing her.  Each time she had given in until she couldn’t any longer. “But I was done with it before I ended up here,” she said to Laird.  “I had finally put my foot down.  No more cameras.  No more celebrity.  No more having people tell me where to go, how to dress or what to eat.  I wasn’t going to bow to their expectations anymore.”

“Did it work?”

“I don’t know.”

She had been whisked away from her time before she had a chance to find out.  On the other hand, there was no chance of continuing that life here, so in a way she had succeeded.  Scarlett almost laughed at the irony.  She should have been careful what she wished for.  She’d wanted freedom and she’d gotten this.  Somewhere the fates were mocking her. “Maybe I’ll never know. What about you?  You’re going to be in trouble with your father, no doubt.”

Laird’s lips pressed into a thin line.  “Mayhap.  My wishes align wi’ his no more than yers did wi’ yer parents.  Like ye, I dinnae live the life I ha’ wanted.”

He paused, as if surprised by the confession and the truth behind it.  It seemed he didn’t like the life he led any more than she did.  “I’ve always done my duty but I’ve spent years at loose ends.  Father wills me to be a soldier, a courtier but this disnae please me.”

Scarlett cocked her head.  “What would please you?”

Their dark tent was cloaked in silence as James contemplated the question he’d never been asked. “To see my holdings grow.”  Again it was a surprise but James felt the truth in those words.  “I’ve held my own land since birth yet I’ve no’ known the satisfaction of toiling wi’ my own hands, of making it my own.”

“How would you do that?”

“Expand Dunskirk.  Add to the existing pele tower and bailey until it is a force to be reckoned wi’ in the borderlands.”  His burr was soft but full of conviction. “It could be a grand, bonny castle.”

“I can imagine just how it should look.”

James raised a brow.  “Can ye now?”

An impish smile tilted the corner of her mouth as if she were privy to something he was not.  “Yes, I could draw you a picture of exactly how it should be.”

“I may hae ye do that and we shall see if yer vision matches my own.”

“I bet it will,” she said smugly.

Some of her words and terminology had been nothing but gibberish, though that was nothing new when speaking with Scarlett, but not for the first time, James got the impression that Scarlett was hiding something from him.  Something far more important than the state of his keep.

Everything about her was a mystery but he could get no answers from her – at least on matters of more import to their relationship than her life on stage.  Despite hours of conversation, he knew little more about her than he had before.  Oh, he had learned more about the person she was beneath the surface but not the hard facts that would help him make some sense of her and her presence in his life.

It was all nothing, but it meant something.

What a complicated lass she was, he thought, looking down into her golden eyes.  They were as direct as always, charged with vitality and fortitude.

Who was she really?  From whence had she come?  How could she know so much about some things, yet so little about others?

He couldn’t fathom how such a determined lass so assured of her own opinion and cleverness might ever be compelled by another to do something beyond her own will.

She was not an innocent when it came to matters of the flesh.  Was she married?  Widowed?  Was the Tyrone she had called to for aid at Dunskirk her husband?  A lover?

He might never know the answers when she refused to respond to his queries on the matter, but if he were honest with himself, James knew he was less and less interested in knowing.

34

 

The raw beauty of the area was as stunning to Scarlett as when she first arrived in this time.  Endless hills of green with a touch of burnt umber and bronze that hinted at the coming fall.  One after another they rolled as far as the eye could see with little to break the picturesque landscape.  A small village in the distance.  A church spire or two.

There was nothing around her that Scarlett recognized, nothing at all that reminded her of modern day England.  No landmarks, no roads.

Nothing.

From the fringes of the latest encampment, she’d been able to watch the cannon fire at measured intervals upon a castle about a mile or two to the east.  It was just four towers connected by curtain walls.  It had taken less than an hour before the portcullis was raised and the Scottish troops entered the keep.

It was not at all like she imagined when first hearing about the ‘invasion’ of England.  But for Norham and that excruciating five day siege, the castles of northern England were giving in to the Scottish forces without much of a fuss and it left Scarlett