A Time & Place for Every Laird by Angeline Fortin (ebook reader TXT) 📕

Life was so unfair, she thought. It gave thehighest of highs only to follow them with the lowest of lows. Sheknew from personal experience how it could throw a knockout punch.She knew denial. She knew despair.

She had just never seen them on the face ofanother person before, had never seen that hollow, haunted lookanywhere other than in a mirror.

An insane urge to hug Hugh nearlyoverwhelmed Claire before she pushed the impulse away. He wouldonly rebuff her as she had rebuffed so many, once upon a time. Nowfinally she understood how helpless those on the other side felt,but she had to do something.

“Hugh?” she whispered and waited until hemet her gaze. “I know … Damn.” Pause. “How about a shower and wecan talk later?”

“Shower?” he repeated numbly.

“Come on,” she said, jerking her head towardthe staircase. “Let’s get you cleaned up. We can talk morelater.”

Claire showed Hugh the shower and towels andpromised to find him something clean to wear before leaving theScot alone. Returning to the living room, Claire dropped into anarmchair and took her turn rubbing her hands over her face. Whatwas she doing? She should find the guards who were probably evennow searching for this man. But somehow she couldn’t. They wouldonly lock him up again. God help her, but for some reason shecouldn’t let that happen.

He could make the water as hot as he wanted.With the turn of a handle he could make it so hot that he couldhardly stand it, and Hugh did, hoping to scald the misery right offhis skin. Raking his nails through his hair and beard, he let thewater pelt his face and scalp, the scorching water beating on himuntil he was almost numb.

And he wanted to be.

The water could not be fiery enough to matchthis hell. From the moment he’d arrived, he had been treated andcaged like an animal. His attempts to question his captors had beenignored. When Sorcha had met his eye that morning in the lab, ithad been the first time in a long while that Hugh felt he had beenseen as a human being.

Escaping the lab due to one guard’s laxnegligence had been miraculous. Squashing the feeble resistance ofthe guards he had encountered upon his flight had not proven muchof a challenge, but in all honesty he had savored those moments ofretribution for all that had been done to him. He had exited thebuilding to the blinding light of sunshine, savoring the feel ofits meager heat on his face and the fresh air that filled hislungs.

Then his eyes had adjusted to the brightlight and Hugh had stood frozen in his tracks at the sight thatawaited him. Hugh knew he would forever remember the shock anddread that had seized him in that moment. Fields and fields of whathe now knew were “cars” had spread before him. Alien shapes in avariety of colors and sizes. He had crept between them, searchingfor an avenue to his liberation, fascinated almost to distractionby the smooth, glossy shells. Of course he had recognized them asbizarre conveyances of some sort – the wheels told him that much –and had contemplated taking one, but their operation had beenpuzzling.

Then the lanterns on another car nearby hadflashed and a horn sounded, startling him. Hugh had watched withastonishment as a man had gotten into one of the cars and somehowsent it roaring to life. Then another person had come out andmerely pointed her hand at one of the cars to set off the flash oflights and the horn that accompanied them.

In his world, such trickery might have beenseen as witchcraft, though no one had been accused of such innearly a century. Nevertheless, it had startled the bloody hell outof him. And then he had seen them drive away with no identifiablepower source, and Hugh had admittedly been petrified. That was whenhe had seen his savior wading through the field of cars andfollowed her, determined to force her assistance in freeing himfrom this strange land.

Hugh had never dreamed she would voluntarilyhelp him when no one else had ever truly looked at him. He owed herhis life, a debt that honor demanded he repay, but what could heoffer a woman in this world? Whatever this world was.

It was a world with plain-faced buildingswith little ornamentation but extraordinarily large windows setapart from one another only by the large placards that named them.A world with streets of solid black stone to carry the cars thattraveled them. A world where women wore clothes like men, clothesthat seemed to deny their very gender.

A world where the push of a button was theequivalent of the wave of a wand.

A world where he owed his life to awoman.

Raising his face to the water’s spray, Hughpushed the questions crowding his mind aside. He could not thinkabout Sorcha’s question. He would not. Hugh slammed his fistagainst the smooth white tiles. The pain matched his frustrationand he did it again with growl deep in his throat. The minutesslipped by as he let the water wash over him, ridding his body ofthe blood of battle and the stink of imprisonment. He soaped hisbody and hair, chafing away bits of dried blood and grime untilthey disappeared down the drain along with his reason andsanity.

No hell could match this nightmare, heamended his earlier thought. For weeks, perhaps months, he had satin that windowless cell, floundering amid the mire of questions towhich there were no answers. Now he might find some, and Hughwasn’t sure he wanted them at all.

How long Hugh stood there in the shower,deliberating thinking of nothing, he had no idea. It wasn’t untilthe water grew cold that he turned the handle to stop the flow.Drying off with the toweling Sorcha had left him, he focused onlyon the soft cloth and the foggy steam of the bath chamber untilthere was nothing left for him but to open the door and face thestrange world that waited.

Hugh set a hand on the doorknob then pulledit