Love in the Time of a Highland Laird (A Laird for All Time Book 3) by Angeline Fortin (bill gates books to read .TXT) 📕

not even a hint of science existing that said one might find the means to move through time.

Thump, thump, thump, thump.

Yet.

Flattening his hand on the table, he spread his fingers wide. Staring at them for a long while. He turned back to Al, aware that she had been watching him tensely the entire time. “I beg ye, for yer own sake, dinnae repeat that tae anyone else. There are some nae as accepting of such things.”

His captive turned a bit green and swallowed hard. “They still burn witches in this… time?” The last came out in a choked whisper that restored Keir’s sense of humor. Such a preposterous question, yet in that instant he became a true believer.

“Nay, nae for some time, but there are some who might be inclined to reinstitute the practice in the face of such a provocative question.”

Her eyes widened marginally, and feeling the atypical urge to provide comfort, he reached out and curled his fingers around hers. They were as cold as ice, such a contradiction to her fiery outbursts, and it occurred to him that she might be afraid, nay, terrified of her circumstances. Respect washed over him. To be alone in a strange place—and time, it seemed—with such composure took a level of courage he hadn’t yet considered.

Did they prepare for such things in the future? For the future it had to be for all he inclined to deny it.

Would Hugh be confronting his situation as well as she?

“’Tis the year of our Lord seven hundred and forty-six,” he told her at last. “April the twenty-first.”

She nodded again. He could almost see the wheels turning in her mind. Wondered what she was thinking, but overcoming the first tier of his own disbelief, another question occurred to him.

“Might I ask from whence ye came and tae where my cousin has gone?”

“He’s in the year 2013,” she told him. “February seventeenth was the day he got there.”

So far? The time seemed almost immeasurable. Nearly three hundred years? The innate urge to reject her claim infused him once more. It was almost harder to shake it off this time but he did.

“You’re taking this all very well. I’m surprised.”

No more than he. But naught else could explain what he’d seen with his own eyes. Keir was astonished by the calm acceptance he felt wash through him. Even for the fate of his cousin, though it was hard to imagine Hugh in a world surrounded by women like Allorah Maines. How would he fare against them?

“I’m sorry about your cousin,” she said as if she wandered the branching pathways of his thoughts with him. “I wish I could offer some hope that he’ll be all right.”

“Och, he’ll be fine,” he said with sudden certainty. “If I ken my cousin well enough—and I do—he’ll find a way to escape his circumstances and live a fine life. My hope is that ye’ll be able tae do the same.”

“I’m sure I’ll figure something out.”

Och, she was a courageous lass. Brave and strong. Educated, if he understood her references correctly. Beautiful. Alluring.

Desirable.

He withdrew his hand, clearing his throat at the thought. He bedded many a lass in his life without hardly having her name, but it seemed wrong to want this one so badly knowing there was a thousand things yet to be learned of her. But where to begin?

“How?” He choked the word out and cleared his throat again. “How did ye do it?”

“Now?” she asked, with a wisp of a smile that lit her misty gray eyes and exposed even, white teeth. “Now you ask? I would have thought that would be your first question. Or that you’d demand some sort of proof.”

“I saw the proof for myself, though I dinnae ken what it was at the time. I saw two men disappear before my verra eyes. Saw ye appear. A lesser man might hae killed ye on the spot believing ye the devil.”

“You did call me a witch,” she reminded him.

“Aye,” he admitted, meeting her steady gaze, seeing the amusement there. How could she manage it in such a situation? How was she not losing her mind to fear and panic? She might be a bonny thing, indeed, but in all his days he’d never encountered anyone so courageous. Never so instantly admired another more. “Ye astonish me, lass.”

*

Al froze when Keir leaned toward her and lifted his hand to cup her cheek. His roughened fingertips traced a path along her cheekbone. The pad of his thumb grazed her lower lip, leaving a peculiar tingle behind.

His eyes followed and settled there. Overcome by the urge, Al ran her tongue over her lip, following his path.

He exhaled slowly. Were his fingers trembling?

Or was that just her?

“How extraordinary ye are, lass.”

Look who was talking. She’d never experienced anyone like him outside the realm of fiction. Untamed and yes, a little barbaric on the one hand. Gentlemanly and seemingly cultured on the other. An enigma. A mystery she would desperately love to unwrap, beginning with that ruffled cravat.

She’d always had an overabundance of imagination. Yet the most spectacular experience of her life, real or imagined, might be finding a man like this.

He didn’t look at her and see the mousy nerd, lost in books and studying. Hiding out from a world that scared her. By his own words, he saw character. Bravery. Beauty.

She couldn’t remember the last time a guy had looked at her and seen any of those things. Perhaps none ever had. Certainly none of them had ever gazed at her with the blatant desire simmering in his eyes.

It tempted her beyond reason.

But for one lukewarm experience in college, she’d never been tempted to jump into bed with anyone, preferring the passion found between pages to that she’d found between sheets.

A man like Keir, a man far more magnificent than she’d ever let even her imagination dream, might be able to rewrite the entire book of her experience.

If she let him.

If she let herself.

So tempting.

The double