A Laird to Hold by Angeline Fortin (free children's ebooks online .TXT) 📕

Donell shrugged. “No’ directly, but he has made the connection between ye and ye’re all in danger.”

“Tell us what we need to do.” Laird faced Donell. “How do I keep my family safe? This agent is the threat we faced last evening, aye?”

“Aye.” Donell’s face wrinkled up even more. “I’m afraid I dinnae see it coming.”

“Because you’re neither god nor magician.” Emmy quieted under Laird’s quelling look. “I’m just saying, it’s a question I’d dearly love an answer to.”

She couldn’t understand how knowing more about Donell wasn’t a priority in everyone’s mind. But then, fifty percent of the room was satisfied with labeling it all magic. Something Emmy had never been comfortable with despite all she’d witnessed to the contrary.

Donell shook his head mournfully. “’Tis sad I am to ken I brought ye to this. Such a thorn in my side these many years is Jameson.”

“Many years?” Emmy was the first to pounce on that.

“I believe there is much that needs to be explained since Jameson has put in an appearance,” Donell affirmed, much to her surprise. The old fart never readily volunteered anything.

“Do you plan on sticking around long enough to do it?” Emmy demanded. “Not feeling the need to bolt again?”

“Sometimes I think ye forget all I’ve given ye, lass.”

The admonishment was softly spoken but hit Emmy like a smack in the face. “I’ve forgotten nothing,” she conceded.

She slipped her hand into Connor’s. As it always did, the sense of being complete washed over her just by touching him. For all that she’d railed against Donell, against his plan for her…against the world often enough over the years for taking her mother from her, something about the merest contact with Connor settled Emmy’s heart and mind.

If life was Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train over a loud speaker in a chaotic emergency room, Connor was Styx’s First Time whispering to her on a Caribbean beach. He banished the pain in her heart, filled the blank spaces of her soul.

For all her distrust of the old man, she owed Donell all she had. It would gall her to admit all her audacity when it came to the old man was nothing more than fear. A hard lesson had been learned because of him. What had been given could just as easily be taken away. She wasn’t about to forget it. Or trust him with her future again.

“I just hate mysteries,” she hedged instead. “And you’re a big one. I think we’d all feel a little better if you solved it for us.”

“And gi’ up all my secrets?”

That would be nice, but somehow Emmy didn’t think a confession was going to happen. Not now. Maybe not ever.

“What ye need to ken, all of ye, is that Jameson is working to undo all I’ve done,” Donell told them. “He began wi’ ye Hugh, once he heard a time machine was being built wi’ some success. He kent nae scientist had cracked the secret to making a successful device and guessed correctly I’d had a hand in it.”

“To bring me to Sorcha,” Hugh confirmed. “But ye never did say why ye couldnae carry me to this time as ye did the others.”

Donell’s lips compressed into a thin line that told Emmy he was considering a way to not respond, but the answer came to her without his input.

God knew he’d said it often enough.

“Because he can’t move things about, only through time.”

Donell inclined his head. “Aye, ‘tis the one secret I’ve still to decipher. I maun move others only through time, no’ space.”

“But not yourself?” she added, grasping the nuance of what he’d implied.

“From a particular starting point, I can move myself. As I came here this time.”

“From…?”

“’Tis unimportant in the greater scheme of things,” he brushed her off. “Ye maun focus on the problem at hand. Jameson.”

“Is he like you?” Scarlett jumped in. “Can he move through time? Will he follow us home?”

“Nay, such power has been taken from him.” Donell waved his hand airily and moved on before any of them could press for a more refined explanation. “Though there are others oot there who would also try to undo what I’ve done here. Where I can, I cloud the details of yer pasts to sweep the trail clean so no one else can follow ye. This is why Hugh can find no record of his former home or family, lest Jameson, if he were to find a way to regain his ability, discover a way to kill his parents ‘ere he was e’en born. Laird, there is nae record of who yer mother was, leaving yer parentage safe enough as ye father was always well protected. Connor, I dinnae believe the connection has been made as yet.”

Connor looked as confused as Emmy felt. “I hae nae connection for him to find, auld mon. None but to ye.”

Donell rocked his head from side to side as he tended to when dithering. “Aye, well, in any case, Jameson’s been trying to rid the world of Hugh these past months. I suspect wi’ e’en the most tenuous connection, he will attempt to erase all of ye from time if he can.”

Now it was Hugh’s turn for befuddlement. “Rid the world of me? There hae been nae attempts on my life.”

“None as bold as his attempt to kill Laird, nay,” the old man allowed. “His days of subtlety are at an end, I fear.”

Emmy had come to know Hugh as one of the smartest men she’d ever met, and he proved it by making the connection while all of them were still staring blankly at Donell.

He turned to his wife with a wry smile. “Ah, ‘twould appear I’m no’ at all the most unlucky driver ever, Sorcha, my lass.”

“What? Why?” she blinked up at him bewildered.

Hugh