My Heart's in the Highlands by Angeline Fortin (best english novels for beginners .TXT) 📗

Trying to fight it only made her head hurtmore, so deciding that things would get easier only if she embracedthis weird dream, Mikah let this Hero inside of her take thestarring role. Once Mikah committed herself to the character, so tospeak, everything was more fluid. What was elusive when shestruggled now hovered at the forefront of her mind. The linesrolled off her tongue. Hero knew them all. She knew the rules ofthis time and place. She knew how to dress. She knew what to sayand how to act.

Embracing Hero Conagham fully immersed Mikahin her delusional role. Mikah knew where she was, when she was, andwho she was supposed to be. All of Hero’s memories were suddenlythere, as vivid and real to Mikah as were her own … and they feltlike her own. Every emotion, every moment of heartbreak or joy, washers.

She remembered Hero’s wedding to RobertConagham nine years before when Hero had been just nineteen to hisforty-three. The marquisate of Ayr had been just an earldom untilRobert Conagham’s father had gained a higher ranking for serviceunder William IV. As a duke’s daughter, Hero had been trained wellfor her new responsibilities, though her marriage to Conagham hadbeen one more of friendship than anything else. Their marriage hadbeen comfortable, companionable.

Mikah also remembered Robert Conagham’sdeath—her husband’s death—just nine months before. The wait atCuilean to see if she would bear the next marquis. Her retreat fromher home of almost a decade when it was determined that she wouldnot.

Still, Mikah’s own life and memories werejust as clear. Her life and family, growing up near Oshkosh, goingto car shows in Stevens Point with her dad. Getting hassled by herbrothers all the time and going to the prom with Billy Pierson.Graduating from Northwestern and getting her job at the MilwaukeeArt Museum.

On the other hand, Mikah vividly recalled thegut-wrenching agony of having several miscarriages and the death ofHero’s infant daughter as if it were her own. The barren life ofchildlessness. Mikah felt the anguish of that loss acutely, feltHero’s agonizing pain. As singular friends of Victoria and Albert,Robert and Hero had enjoyed the Queen’s favor. Queen Victoria, whoalready had eight children, frowned upon the lack of children tothe marquisate but had been compassionate to Hero’s struggle. Herohad compensated for her losses by showering attention on the littleprinces and princesses. She had frequented Windsor and been a guestat Balmoral. Mikah could describe with some accuracy the inside ofthat castle, just as she knew the history of the one she was fastapproaching.

Dùn Cuilean.

Mikah leaned to the side so she could see outthe carriage window more fully, hoping to catch the first glimpseof the castle. “See there, Papa? You can catch a glimpse of thecastle through those trees.”

Hero’s father leaned forward eagerly. “Do youthink they have pudding in Scotland?”

“Of course, Papa,” she said as she patted thehand of the older gentleman by her side. Hero’s father. Her father.“Scotland is not so different from England, and Cuilean’s cook isan excellent one.”

“Perhaps a nice treacle then, as well?” headded hopefully.

Mikah smiled affectionately. Hero’s fatherwas the Duke of Beaumont. He was a tall, thick man of about sixtyyears with a deep, booming voice that suited him perfectly. Hisface was deeply lined, creased from years of responsibility andsolemnity, but his hair was still dark, with less gray than evenIan possessed, though the duke’s hair stood out riotously from hishead whereas Ian’s dark hair was shorter and combed back from himface.

Hero had been raised within the bosom ofEngland’s highest nobility. Mikah remembered the house she hadgrown up in, her family. Besides her father, she remembered hermother, sisters, and brother.

With every remembrance Mikah embraced, thehaziness of the previous day faded and Hero’s memoriescrystallized. The only conclusion Mikah had reached from the hoursof self-analysis she’d had was that either the accident had lefther in an unconscious dream state gone wrong or she truly wastrapped in some sort of delusional hallucination.

Mikah preferred to think of it all as adream.

Since she’d always heard about how dreamswere some representation of a person’s subconscious desires, it wasan easy enough fantasy to believe. A man like Ian Conagham couldonly come from a dream, and she’d seen his face in her dreamshundreds of nights in her life, always hazy and distant. She’dnever before gotten to interact with him, never heard his voice butfor that one moment two nights before.

Seeing him in the flesh, so to speak, wasliterally a dream come true.

Mikah studied him from beneath her lashes asthe carriage rocked beneath the archway of an ancient viaduct thatmarked Dùn Cuilean’s boundaries and her heart raced once again. Thenew marquis’s attention hadn’t strayed far from her over the courseof the last several hours’ journey. He watched her as she watchedhim. It was comforting to know that he found her intriguing aswell. Her girlish fascination with him might have been unbearablyembarrassing otherwise.

Neither Mikah nor Hero had ever met a man, oreven imagined a man, so compelling. He was a man who sentexcitement shivering down her spine with every glance. They sharedthat, at least.

“Why have we never met before?” she asked,realizing in that moment that her voice was softly cultured andbore a distinct English accent.

“I suppose there was never an opportunity,”he answered. His voice, on the other hand, was a melodic Scottishbrogue that was like the finest whiskey. Smooth with no bite whereRobert Conagham’s voice had been much more gruff. The Scottishbrogue was familiar and comfortable to Hero, but to Mikah, as tomany American women, that beguiling tone could stand alone as atool for seduction. She felt she could listen to him forever.

“I had, in fact,” he continued, “met mycousin only a few times in Edinburgh as a youth while attending St.Andrew’s University. I joined the army after that, serving inEngland and abroad, and most recently I was in Crimea to repel theRussian problem there. That is where I was when I heard of hisdeath. I certainly never anticipated I would actually be his heir.Might I add how sorry I am for your loss?” he added as anafterthought, as if just remembering