Page 39 of A Time & Place for Every Laird (A Laird for All Time #2)

Day Eleven

As the black skies took on the darkest hue of blue, Claire dressed quickly and crept from the bedroom, leaving Hugh slumbering behind her. Danny was still awake, though he had abandoned his array of monitors in favor of the shabby leather sofa recliner that faced his monstrous television and worked the Xbox controller in his hands with nimble thumbs.

“We need to talk,”

Claire said, walking between her brother and the screen to get his attention but not lingering in his line of sight, knowing from years of doing so that it would only lead to a long and vocal fight. She sat on the sofa next to him. “Can you pause that, please?”

Danny sighed heavily but complied. “You’re up early.”

“I know. I guess that means it’s almost your bedtime,”

she retorted but couldn’t find the humor to support a smile. “Here’s another unprecedented moment for you to savor. You were right in what you said the other day. Yes, take it for what it is. I don’t plan on repeating it. I know I can’t go with Hugh to Scotland but I’ve also realized that I shouldn’t even be going with him to Canada.”

“Glad to hear you’ve come around,”

he said, throwing his arms to the side as if the movement would have some effect on the video game soldier he controlled. “So what’s the plan then?”

“You are going to do it for me.”

“I am?”

“You are,”

she said in an inflexible tone, holding out the envelope containing Hugh’s new passport and birth certificate … his new life. “You are going to take Hugh to Canada and make sure he gets on that plane. Promise me.”

Danny nodded with a shrug, one eye still on the frozen screen of his video game. “And what are you going to do?”

“I’m moving on to Option C.”

“Option C?”

“I doubt you’ll like it,”

Claire predicted, wringing her hands indecisively. It certainly wasn’t what she wanted to do, but one infuriating Special Agent Phil Jameson had removed her own personal desires from the equation. “Let’s just say that if you don’t hear from me by Friday, send all that stuff we found to every major news agency in the country.”

“Claire …”

She had his full attention now. Those blue eyes, so like hers, were wide with astonishment. “Shit, you’re going to do exactly what I told you not to, aren’t you?”

There was no use denying it. “Yes, I am.”

Danny cursed colorfully. “Does Hugh know what idiocy you’re up to?”

“No, he doesn’t.”

Reason and personal freedoms aside, sometimes a person had to accept that there were some things that just had to be done for their own good. “He’d never leave without me, Danny, and I can’t convince him otherwise. He proved that tonight, and if he won’t leave me, I need to leave him.”

“Without even saying good-bye?”

he asked with uncharacteristic sentimentality. “After what I’ve seen between you …”

“Don’t let him come after me, no matter what, okay?”

Claire cut off any reminder of the undeniable bond between her and Hugh, and handed her brother her burner cell phone. “And give this to him to take with him. He can call you when he’s back in Scotland if he needs any help or advice on getting his life started there.”

Scotland. It was so far away. Would he ask Danny about her from time to time? Would he miss her? Would he know how much she missed him? Claire banished the heartbreaking thoughts away, wishing the emotional squeeze of her chest could be shaken off as easily. “Your number is already in there.”

“If he leaves me alive after finding out you’re gone, that is.”

A chuckle escaped her but ended in a watery sob. Claire’s eyes burned with tears as hot as the fiery ache in her heart.

“Claire …”

Danny reached out hesitantly, wanting to comfort but unsure how to proceed.

Claire might have flung herself in his arms and sobbed pitifully on his shoulder but was afraid that giving in to the sorrow would only weaken her resolve in doing what she knew she had to do. Instead she prayed for strength. “Be a friend to him, Danny. He’ll need one.”

“And what am I supposed to tell him that will spare my life?”

Swallowing back the lump tightening her throat, she replied, “Tell him much can be excused if it’s done for the right reasons. His own words used against him. How can he argue against that?”

Grabbing up her small suitcase, Claire blindly fled the loft as the tears she had been fighting began to fall, casting a blur over her vision, ignoring her brother’s protests as she went. She would rather face Jameson a thousand times than ever again experience the pain of leaving behind the man she loved. Claire raced desperately down the hall. Knowing that even the time it would take to wait for the elevator to arrive might be all that was necessary for her to surrender to her pleading heart, she took the stairs, with each step denying herself what she wanted most.

Go back, her heart cried. Don’t leave him. I can’t, her footfall answered. I won’t. Being a warrior Scot, a Highlander, a duke, and not to mention a gentleman with more chivalry in his little finger than most men in her time possessed in their entire bodies, Hugh would insist on his own sacrifice before hers. He would want to slay the figurative dragon and save her, his damsel in distress. He would never appreciate that sometimes the damsel could be the one to save the knight in shining armor, and no doubt he would be angry with her for what she was about to do.

He would never admit that he had far more to lose than she did and how that was completely unacceptable to her … because he didn’t know how much she loved him.

And now there would never be another chance to tell him.

There would never be another chance to hold his hand, to curl up at his side in front of a roaring fire, to tease him about his sweet tooth, or to watch in awe as he assembled a jigsaw puzzle as if he had an instruction manual. She would never see him again and she hated passionately the reason for it.

Twice love had been taken from her by the actions of her own government. The first time had nearly destroyed her. The second had the potential to do the same.

It was enough to make Claire consider becoming a Canadian.

Claire was shifting the Tahoe into park in the hold of the ferry at the Seattle terminus when she realized that she couldn’t recall how she had even gotten there. Hers was one of the few vehicles traveling from Seattle to Bainbridge Island in the early morning rush, when most were on their way into the city, and there were no NSA agents aboard searching cars or passengers. Obviously Jameson had never dreamed that she would come to him.

Wearily, Claire climbed the iron stairs to the passenger cabin and dropped into a rear-facing seat, watching as the grind of the engines propelled the vessel away from the city. Through the rain-spattered glass, she could picture Hugh standing at the rail, glorying in the chilly nip of the wind while other travelers were bundled in their fleece, his skin warmed by the meager sun, his dark hair tossed and ruffled this way and that as he watched Seattle shrink in the distance.

She would stand sheltered in the circle of his embrace, warmed to her toes.

Claire stared up at the buildings that had awed him so, their faces dark with the rising sun at their backs and cast in gloom, much like her shadowed soul. Lost in thought, she let the trip slip by in silence until the blast of a horn announced their impending arrival. Struggling to her feet, Claire glanced one last time at their wake. “Good-bye, Hugh,”

she whispered into the air. “I wish I could kiss you good-bye one last time. I wish I could see your amazement the next time you try something new. I wish I could be there to love you forever.”

Returning to the Tahoe, she disembarked, noting the agents who were searching the long lines of vehicles waiting to board but paying no mind to those arriving. Able to swing around and park the SUV without incident, she buttoned her coat, grabbed her purse, and walked purposefully back toward the terminal, where more agents were patrolling the mass of pedestrians waiting to walk onto the ferry for its next departure.

Ahead a dark suit and hardly discreet earpiece labeled one of the agents as he stood scanning the crowd. Approaching from behind, Claire tapped on his shoulder to gain his attention. He looked over his shoulder with some annoyance and nearly turned away before his eyes widened in surprise.

“Take me to your leader.”

“Wake up, Danny,”

Hugh grumbled, kicking at the young man’s foot, which was dangling over the edge of the sofa he was sprawled out on, an arm flung over his eyes to block out the morning light streaming through the bank of windows.

“Go away,”

Danny muttered irritably, rolling onto his side away from Hugh.

“Danny!”

he barked more forcefully. “Wake up, lad! Where is Sorcha? Where is yer sister?”

“God, stop yelling, would you?”

Hugh paused at the barely intelligible words. There was “music”

playing loud enough in the room to make it nearly impossible to think, much less sleep, and Danny thought he was loud? Reaching down to grab Danny by the arms, Hugh dragged him under protest to a vertical position. “Where is she?”

“That will probably bruise, you know,”

Sorcha’s brother groused, loosing himself from Hugh’s grip and bending to retrieve a can of soda from the floor next to the sofa. He swirled the contents of the half-empty container with a grunt before tipping it to his lips with a grimace. “She’s gone, man.”

“Gone where?”

“Where do you think?”

The explanation told Hugh nothing and everything, and he sat heavily on the sagging sofa, dropping his elbows onto his knees and running both hands through his hair, fighting the temptation to pull it out by the roots while the heavy beat of the music thrummed through his brain. He didn’t know which made him more insane. The music or Sorcha.

All their arguing to separate hadn’t turned the tables in her favor, so Sorcha had let him believe that the matter was settled and then bolted like a deer in his sights as soon as he slept. Anger, fury … and something akin to pride for her resolve and determination swept through him. His fair lass did not like to lose.

But neither did he.

Hugh lifted his head and pierced her brother with a menacing glare. “Ye will take me tae her,”

he directed with all his ducal command, but as he was quickly learning, the Americans of this bloody time had little respect for noble authority … and not much sense for self-preservation.

“Nay, verily, I will nae,”

Danny drawled, scratching his backside as ambled to the refrigerator and removed a bottle of water. Uncapping it, he tipped his head back, gulping down the contents and eyeing Hugh cautiously over the top as if he were expecting some physical application of force.

At least the lad had the good sense to be wary of him, Hugh thought with a grunt as he stood clenching his fists. He was nigh prepared to rip Danny limb from limb and most certainly it showed.

“I was already handed down my diktat this morning,”

Danny added, “and that was specifically not to take you to her. Sorry, dude.”

“I could force ye.”

“I know you could,”

Danny agreed readily, setting the bottle aside and pulling a carton of milk from the refrigerator. “Told her you probably would, too. My sister has no respect for my life.”

He gathered a bowl and spoon from the dishwasher and set them on the counter before shaking the contents of several boxes displayed on the counter. He chose one, poured the contents into the bowl, and covered the whole of it with the milk while Hugh waited impatiently with his arms crossed ominously over his broad chest. Danny shoved a spoonful of the stuff into his mouthed and chewed loudly, saying around it, “Make it quick, okay? I’m not much into pain.”

The lad had unknowingly offered the perfect defense in not defending himself at all. It went against the grain for Hugh to attack those weaker than he. Bullying Danny into capitulation would be akin to forcing his page into the front lines of battle. Hugh grunted with vexation. “Verra well. Gi’ me yer keys and I’ll go myself.”

“Dude, you know I don’t own a car,”

Danny said around another mouthful. “We’d have to wait for one of the minions, and by then it would be too late anyway.”

Hugh gnashed his teeth with tenuously leashed vexation as he paced the room. Of course, Sorcha had known she was essentially marooning him here when she left. Indeed, she would have counted on it. Bugger it, she was a crafty lass, but what did she expect him to do? Sit on his hands while her life was torn in two? “Bluidy hell, what was she thinking?”

he muttered aloud, more to himself than to Danny.

“I suppose she was thinking to make some kind of noble sacrifice or something,”

Danny answered anyway. “She wanted to clear the path for you to go to Scotland, to do what she promised. I’m supposed to take you to Canada and get the rest of it done as planned while she distracts the Feds.”

“And I am tae just leave her tae the wolves and walk away wi’out a second thought for her and the consequences of this rash folly she’s undertaking?”

Hugh snapped back, longing for a neck to throttle.

Danny lifted his brows and shrugged in a way that told Hugh he agreed with him, but verbally Sorcha’s brother remained her loyal compatriot. “That’s about the sum of it. She also said to tell you … let me see if I got it right. Much can be excused if it’s done for the right reasons. Sound familiar?”

Hugh loosed an aggrieved grunt, knotting his fingers in his hair to stifle the urge to put his fist through a wall. Blast the woman! Had she completely lost her senses? Sorcha was by far the most infuriating woman he had ever met. Never had there been another who would defy him so. Who would chance his wrath. He couldn’t believe that she would make such an ill-considered, perilous play. That she would risk everything for …

Bracing an arm against the window frame, Hugh looked up in astonishment at the fields of towering buildings that shrouded them more fully than any towering pine might dare.

She had done it for him. Sorcha had wagered her future against inconceivable odds … for him. And she had done it from the beginning when she had opened the door to her car and to her life for him back in Spokane. Not for the pity she had claimed she had for him. Not because it was the right thing to do.

She had done it for the one reason she had yet to voice.

Because she loved him.

Her sacrifice was born from love. The same love that burned within him and demanded that he sacrifice the same for her. That he give up all for the promise of her future. It was what had driven Hugh all this time. He loved her. Hugh rubbed at the poignant ache spreading across his chest. “Nae, I cannae go wi’out her.”

Danny groaned loudly. “God, I never thought I’d ever meet anyone more stubborn than my sister. I cannot imagine how you two managed to get along at all.”

For some reason, that summoned a ghost of a smile to Hugh’s lips. Aye, it was what made things interesting, that constant battle between the swagger and chest beating of the past and the self-reliance and independence of the future. Still … “Would ye hae her ruin her life, Danny? For me?”

“Would you stop her from saving what life she has left?”

Danny countered. “I’m not saying this is the smartest move on her part, but if this is the only possible way to stop them from hounding Claire for the rest of her life, would you take it away from her?”

Hugh’s heart clenched at the lad’s reasoning, turning what Hugh knew with certainty was an act of love into a selfish one, implying that Sorcha had acted in her own self-interest. That she had done it to save only herself.

No, Sorcha had taken on a role that few women he had ever known would have considered in endeavoring to be the heroine of their particular story, and—though it wounded his male vanity not to act, though his inherent masculinity demanded that he hasten to her rescue—Hugh was unexpectedly proud of her bravado. “Nae, Danny. I’m nae so petty as tae ruin her life for the sake of my pride.”

“Then respect her decision. Don’t make it a worthless effort.”

Which Hugh knew translated to “let her go”

and never see her again.

His heart slowed, thudding hard against his ribs as his blood roared in his ears, and a little of him died inside at the thought of yet another never to bear … this never considerably more heartrending than the other.

The city outside the windows was a looming monstrosity of glass and metal draped in a dark haze that seemed to diffuse the rays of the sun. The whole of it was bleak and cold. Unwelcoming.

Was this what Edinburgh had become as well? Glasgow? Even Inverness? A metallic nightmare hung with a gray miasma of misery? Hugh had been anticipating a return to his homeland, picturing the lonely moors and deserted beaches. Would he not even have that to comfort him in the years to come? The very thought brought the bitter tang of bile to the back of his throat, and Hugh swallowed it back. It served no purpose to wish and hope and long for things to be different; that sour lesson had been grudgingly absorbed these past weeks and months. He might beat his chest and howl at the moon, cursing Fate and God, without expectation for this future to change once more. Regrets were naught but wasted time, but they stirred in him anyway, compounding the painful ache that lingered in his heart.

And then there was Sorcha. A balm to his soul, Hugh had called her and thanked God again for providing that one consolation to banish the gloom. When he had thought he would have her by his side in the days ahead, he had not dreaded the future so. Where Sorcha was, there would always be light, but he would dwell in darkness forever for one last kiss.

“I cannae do that.”

“’Course you can,”

Danny said. “What is it the Brits always say? Keep calm and carry on?”

“Nae, Danny, I cannae leave her. Sacrifice or nae, I cannae,”

Hugh said, for there suddenly seemed no sacrifice greater than leaving her behind. “Ye will take me tae her.”

But Danny was already shaking his head. “No way. Claire would kill me if I did.”

“And I might if ye dinnae.”

“Sorry, man, I’m more afraid of her than I am of you.”

The response prompted an inward smile, but Hugh still glowered darkly at Danny. “Do ye think that’s wise?”

“If you have to ask that, you must not have sisters,”

the lad said in a dire tone that did provoke a silent chuckle from Hugh. Aye, he did have sisters, more than enough of them—all older than he—to appreciate Danny’s reluctance. “Death would be cleaner than getting on her bad side. Like when Matt came to pick her up for prom dressed in a tux—I mean, it was like their second date—and I kept asking if he was going to marry my sister. I ran for my life, man.”

Hugh couldn’t stifle a smile then. “Yet ye continually provoke her.”

Danny shrugged. “I have to. She’s my big sister. What a paradox, huh?”

“Aye, and another paradox would be my refusal tae do the one thing I know I hae tae,”

Hugh rejoined. “I willnae leave until I hae assured myself that she is safe.”

“Crazy, stupid, stubborn people,”

Danny muttered under his breath as he carried his cereal bowl over to his workstation. “This is exactly why I like computers better than humans. You’re being completely irrational.”

“Then I believe that is what it must mean tae be in love,”

Hugh said softly, his brogue so thick with emotion that he wouldn’t have been surprised if Danny didn’t understand him at all.

But the lad must have, because he swore under his breath with great detail before falling silent, his brow furrowed. “How about a compromise, then?”

Never in all his years as Duke of Ross had Hugh ever forsaken his own will for that of another as often as he had so recently. There might have been a lesson there that nobility did not necessarily beget governance, and as much as Hugh loathed the insult of bowing to another’s dictate, he was discovering that the legacy of manly dominion passed to him by his ancestors was better suited to another place and time. He considered Danny’s serious countenance, the wickedly intelligent gleam in his eye, for a moment before answering. “I assume this involves more than ye lowering the volume of that wretched noise.”

“Most assuredly,”

Danny nodded. “If you’re going to try to go in there yourself, we’re going to have to make it hurt them a little.”

Hugh smiled at that. He might have considered himself a man of enlightenment and reason but he was also a Scotsman to his core. A man who ruled, who dominated, and who fought for what he thought was right in a sometimes brutal and savage manner if necessary. He could be everything they had accused him of.

It was past time the peoples of this century discovered what a true Highlander was capable of.