Page 43 of Every Day of My Life

And that, unfortunately, was where his glib tongue left him stranded. He looked at his 16th-century miss and wondered just what it was a modern man did to entertain a woman who most definitely shouldn’t have been lingering in a time not her own. Then again, he should likely have been cursing himselffor inviting her out on something that couldn’t possibly be considered yet another in a long series of first dates.

But if it were going to be a single first date, he would do his best to make it memorable.

He offered her his arm. “Let’s find somewhere comfortable to sit.”

She looked at his arm, then at him, then hesitantly tucked her fingers just under his elbow. He wasn’t entirely certain what passed for inappropriate fraternizing with the opposite sex in 16th-century Scotland, so he simply nodded toward the rock where he usually sat and hoped for the best.

He set his gear down and unsnapped the little tab holding the blanket together in its folded state. He watched Mairead take one end of it and study it as if she’d never seen anything so fine. She looked at him in astonishment.

“Did the angels fashion this?”

He smiled briefly. “I imagine just some industrious weaver here in Scotland. Let’s stretch it out and see if they did the sheep proud.”

She gaped at him when he started to put the blanket on the ground. “Are ye daft, ye wee fiend?” she asked in astonishment. “Next you’ll tell me you plan to sit on it!”

He suspected that if he spent any time with her at all, he would never look at anything the same way again. He smiled because he couldn’t help himself.

“That’s the purpose of it,” he said. “I imagine there are other blankets inside Moraig’s that are softer for wrapping around yourself, though your shawl is more lovely than anything we would find there.”

She shut her mouth, then slid him a look. “I’ve never heard you say so many words in one go.”

He smiled. “The day is lovely, you are lovely, and you’re going to help me take care of a few of these tasks my former friends leftme to do. Help me spread this out and we’ll have something to eat.”

She did so, then simply stood there, watching him with her arms wrapped around herself. He froze, then searched quickly back through his recent babblings to see where he might have drifted off into eejit territory, but couldn’t lay his finger on anything overly offensive.

“Did I say something?” he asked, deciding quickly that beginning to scratch his head so early in the day would set a bad precedent.

“What did you call me?”

He put his brain in reverse and quickly backed up to examine the road, then he realized exactly what he’d said.

Which he’d meant.

He pulled the satchel over his head and set it down, then gestured to a spot on the blanket that he thought looked comfortable enough.

“I called you lovely, which you are, and if you make me say anything else I’ll end up flustered and saying stupid things. Are you hungry?”

She sat down with a bit of a thump, looked at him, then nodded.

He imagined she was and he was obviously missing some sort of nutritional infusion to his own brain, but what else could he say? Outside of very fast cars and shiny things worth buckets of sterling, he didn’t like things that were so perfect as to seem fake. He had dated—one time each, of course—more than enough women who were so beautiful that they were hard to look at. Nothing against perfection, of course, but perhaps it was time to set his sights on a woman who was lovely and artless and had a smile that lit the room and a laugh that broke through the clouds like a lovely ray of sunlight.

He was painfully aware that his wishes in that area didn’t matter a single damned bit, especially when a woman he thought he might like to ask out on a second date was utterly beyond his reach even if she’d been amenable to a second date.

But at the moment, he couldn’t bring himself to care. He’d spent a lifetime doing what everyone expected, surviving, trying to live a half-decent life while not standing out and attracting the attention of those who were, as the saying went, gunning for him.

He had the feeling Mairead might understand that very well.

Maybe it wouldn’t destroy the fabric of time or send the world spinning in the wrong direction if he simply took an hour or two and did exactly what he wanted to do for a change.

He took off his sword, drew it, then laid it down on the edge of the blanket before he executed a bit of modest sitting that even Her Maj might have nodded in approval over. He fished out a bottle of water, took the cap off, then handed it to her.

“Drink. And it’s not poisoned.”

She pursed her lips. “I didn’t truly think you would poison me.”

“You thought I had a tail and horns.”

“Your future garb did nothing to allay my suspicions, though you were very handsome in it.” She shot him a look. “For a demon.”