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

“What lass?”

“Hadn’t ye seen her?” the hotel keep asked.“Curious lass to begin wi’, requesting the Lady’s Chambers as shedid. Then out wi’ that painting. I swear I was fair startled, aswere half the bidders when they brought it out. The resemblance isremarkable, really. I had thought there was something familiarabout the lass when I first saw her last night. So curious. Why,she looks just like her.”

“Who does?” Ballantrae asked absently.

“Why, the American lass,” Smith said withsome exasperation.

“She looks like who?”

“The Marchioness of Ayr, lad. What do yethink I’ve been talkin’ aboot?” he asked, thinking of the paintingof the marchioness. A lovely blond-haired woman with almostturquoise eyes that matched her peacock blue evening gown. Thespitting image of his young guest.

“There’s a woman here who resembles themarchioness?” the earl asked, then shrugged dismissively. “So?”

Smith shook his head emphatically. “Notmerely resembles, lad. Looks just like her. It’s uncanny. Youshould have seen the heads turn when the portrait was broughtout.”

Ballantrae stilled. “Exactly?”

“Aye, exactly like her. Well, the Americanlass is a wee bit younger, perhaps. A bit fitter. Other than that,ye couldna tell the difference between them,” the innkeeperinsisted.

The already still earl became statuesque, andSmith felt as if he held Ballantrae’s full attention for the firsttime that night.

He was wrong.

Jason MacAuliffe’s—the Earl ofBallantrae’s—thoughts and focus were more than a hundred yearsaway. It could not be. It must be some kind of cruel joke.Something Smith had said nagged at the back of his mind. “You weresaying earlier that she had requested a certain room as well?”

“Aye, the Lady’s Chamber,” Smith said. “Lad,all this is just too incredible. Too coincidental, and I think yemight know something of it.”

Jace ignored the probing words, fighting theurge to take the man by the shoulders and shake the truth loose.“What else?”

“What do you mean?”

“Can you tell me more about her?”

Smith looked prepared to withhold anythingelse he knew in favor of pressing more answers from Jace, but thedesperation Jace felt must have shone in his eyes because the manrelented with a sigh. “Right curious lass, I told ye. Dinnae kenwhat to make of her. Bid ardently through most of the day, thensuddenly left when the portrait was brought out. I followed her tomake sure she was all right. It must ha’ been a shock to her aswell.”

“I’m sure,” Jace mumbled, but his mind wasspinning away. Could it be possible? Could Hero have come to thefuture? Just as he had gone to the past? It seemed unlikely, yetwasn’t his own experience equally so?

If it were true …

For the first time in months, Jace’s heartraced with excitement, with possibilities. Aware that Smithcontinued to eye him as curiously as a scientist might examine adisease through a microscope, Jace struggled to remain nonchalantin the face of his examination. It wouldn’t do for Smith or anyoneelse to see the madness lingering beneath the surface. “Anythingelse?”

“‘Twas odd enough how ye both bid on the samelots,” Smith continued. “And, as I said, I found her a curiouslass. Melancholy last night, and then when she left the auctiontoday, she went straight away to the cemetery, to the marchioness’stomb. I wager the portrait roused her curiosity …”

Reggie Smith was fairly bursting withcuriosity, but what could Jace say? That he’d fallen in love with awoman who’d been dead for almost 150 years? Jace scoffed. Hecouldn’t mention any of that, lest he wanted to experience the finetailoring of a well-fit straightjacket. But again he couldn’t stophimself from asking, “Do you know her name?”

Bloody hell but he felt ridiculous.

“Yes,” Smith replied as he reached into hiscoat pocket and pulled out a small stack of business cards.Shuffling through them, he said, “She left me her card. Seems she’sa curator or such for a museum in the States. Here it is. MikahBauer.”

Jace was not listening any longer as he heldthe card in his hand, staring but not seeing. His mind was alreadyon the days ahead. Never had he dreamed that in coming to Cuileanto regain some small piece of Hero, he might find her again.Pocketing the card, Jace looked up at his longtime neighbor, whowas waiting with more patience than a man in the throes of suchavid curiosity should be capable of displaying. “Thank you,Smith.”

“My lord, really! What is this all about?”Smith said insistently, denying the dismissal. “Ye ken something, Iknow it!”

“Let’s just say that I believe I might knowher,” Jace prevaricated, then smiled. “We share a love of Cuilean’shistory. If she is truly the woman I once knew, I will invite youto the wedding.”

“Her young man might have something to sayabout that,” Smith said with a frown.

“Her what?”

“She came here with a young man,” Smith toldhim. “They seemed quite close and … well, they did share aroom.”

Jace felt his welling hope slither away intodisappointment. Perhaps she wasn’t his Hero, then. If she was, shewould feel the same as he did and not be able to look at anotherromantically. Even his girlfriend of some years hadn’t been able topull Jace away from the love he still held in his heart for a womanlong dead, much to her dismay and his mother’s as well.

No. The Hero he had known in the past hadremained there and this Mikah Bauer’s resemblance was surelynothing but a coincidence. She had a life of her own, a lover whowould be unlikely to understand a man who pursued her only for herresemblance to another.

Who demanded answers to questions to whichshe couldn’t possibly know the answers.

He would not make such a fool of himself.

Chapter Forty-Two

Frederic Nietzsche once said, “There isalways some madness in love. But there is also always some reasonin madness.”

Jace certainly felt the madness, but thereason was somehow escaping him. Despite telling himself that hewould not seek out this mysterious doppelgänger of his long-goneHero Conagham, not only had he done so but he was skulking in theshadows like a mad stalker.

He might have escaped Cuilean unscathed if hehadn’t caught sight of her when he left the restaurant.