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

to stroke the horse’s nose again and this time it allowed the contact, even leaning into it a little bit. “He already has. More than once. I wish I could save him, too, but I’ve never really been the heroine type. I just want to try, even if it makes him angry. I want to help.” Al sighed and scratched the horse between the eyes.

It nuzzled her hand and she felt herself melt a little. She really did have a soft heart for animals, and for charmers who claimed they weren’t charmers. “Really, I just want to be with him. To love him… God, that sounds so stupid. So much for feminism—Oh! Whoa!”

The fickle horse, so happy under her touch one second, reared its head in the next. Knocking her under the chin and sending her stumbling back. Kicking over a pail, she careened to the side, taking down a pair of shovels and somehow managing to tip over a trough filled with oats.

Attempting to save it, she fell headlong over the top of it and into a pair of arms.

“Oh, my gosh! I’m so sorry!” she cried, steadying herself on the surprisingly stable arms of the ancient-looking man who’d come to her rescue.

He was not much bigger than her really. With graying hair and big ears showing from beneath his cap. He had a deeply wrinkled face, though his twinkling blue eyes were remarkably youthful.

He somehow looked familiar but she couldn’t place him. He set her back on her feet with ease. She had none. She could only imagine how much he’d heard if he’d been standing there for a while!

“I’m so sorry,” she repeated, flushing scarlet.

“Dinnae fash yerself, lass.” He chuckled, thrusting his fists into the deep pockets on his trousers. “Accidents happen, dinnae they? In fact, some of the best things hae come from a wee accident here and there.”

It sounded so similar to what Keir had said about accidents and how the greatest advances in science had come from them, Al could only gape at him.

He dragged off his cap and scratched his balding pate. “Truth be told, I’ve made a few of my own. Wee slips that dinnae come oot as expected. A door left open too long, for example. Sometimes things slip through ye might nae hae intended, ye ken?”

Tilting her head, she narrowed her eyes on the old man thoughtfully. Aye, she did ken, but why did she get the feeling they were talking about the same damned door. “I’m sorry…?”

“Donell, lass,” he supplied at the unspoken prompt. “Do ye think mayhap that sometimes whatever gets through might be better off on the other side? E’en if it were an accident that got them there? As if it were all fated somehow?”

Her lips parted, then closed. That was the most confounded question she’d ever been asked before. “Donell, have we met somewhere before?”

“Och, nay, lass. I’m sure I’d remember.” He turned away. “I should be going now… aboot my duties.”

Al watched him amble into the darkness, feeling a spark of panic. “Donell!”

He paused, glancing over his shoulder. “Aye, lass?”

“Sometimes accidents are exactly what need to happen to find real happiness.” It was awful and cryptic but she felt like it needed to be said. “I’m just saying, it’d be a shame to try to undo something that turned out all right in the end. Right?”

He nodded slowly. “Just so, lass. Just so. Ye’ll be ha’ing a care for yerself in the days ahead, then?”

“Yes, I will.”

With another nod, he carried on, disappearing into the darkness. Who was he? He did seem awfully familiar.

“You do have an odd way with people, Miss Maines,” Ceana said from behind her. “Everyone from Duke to stable hand.”

“Is that who he is?” Al asked. “Do you know him?”

“Old Donell’s been around Rosebraugh off and on since I was a child,” she said.

“He reminds me of…” Honestly, he looked a lot like the old janitor who’d worked at Mark-Davis when she’d first been hired there years before. She used to talk to him in the cafeteria when she worked late and the place was practically deserted. One of those long conversations had sparked the idea that led to the construct she’d developed for the wormhole stabilization.

She peered back to the shadows where the old man disappeared. In fact, he looked just like him… Wasn’t that strange?

“Reminds you of who?”

“My grandfather,” she lied. “He seems nice.”

Ceana shrugged. “He always had a particular fondness for Hugh. Heard him say to my mother once that he thought Hugh was meant for better things. What could be better than being a duke?”

Al hoped she wasn’t expected to answer that question. Instead, she changed the subject, but was determined to find the old man when they returned from Edinburgh.

“I wanted to thank you for lending me your dress the other night. It was very kind of you.”

She seemed surprised by the gratitude. “You know, I’m not sure what to make of you, Miss Maines.”

Well, that made them even. Clearly, there was more to Ceana than met the eye. What more, she wasn’t sure.

“At first, given what Maeve said about you, I was certain you’d had some sort of hand in Hugh’s death. Then I was certain you were angling after my cousin. Working to rise from whatever hole you climbed out of to a countess’s coronet. Clearly, you’re hiding something. Your behavior is just too… odd for you not to be.”

Look who was talking.

“But Mathilde has taken a real shine to you and she’s normally quite discerning and Keir… well, he does seem to care for you to some measure. I cannot really tell.”

Welcome to the club.

“And you care about him. For more than his wealth and position, I mean. But again, to what degree I cannot say.”

She waited, her eyes glittering in the light of the lantern, but Al wasn’t going to say either and she must have guessed it. With a sigh, her rigid shoulders slumped marginally. “I heard old Donell