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

“So, in a perfect world, I’d like us at my hospital directly after I left,” Emmy negotiated. “It’ll give us the best chance at immediate service and I’ll be able to stay with her without question.”

“Unfortunately ‘tis no’ a perfect world,” Donell replied. “I cannae take ye back to yer time, only to hers.”

Emmy huffed as if exasperated. “It’s the same thing.”

“Nay, we cannae go back any earlier than when the lass left Dunskirk. I cannae risk changing anyone’s fate.”

“Now you’re just talking nonsense. All you’ve done is change our fate.”

“For good reason.”

“Which is?” Scarlett queried again, easing around to Laird’s side.

Donell ignored her question, reverting to the matter at hand. “If we go back to Emmy’s time, we risk changing yer future,” he explained and turned back to Emmy. “She maun be at Dunskirk as she was before. Taking her back before that moment could alter her movements beyond then and prevent her travel here.”

“And I don’t want that,” Scarlett quickly added. She wrapped her arms around her husband’s bicep and clung to him. “I must get to Laird.”

“Aye, ye maun,” her husband agreed gruffly, kissing the top of her head. He held her tight against his side as if Donell might smite her right there. “What are yer other options?”

The frustration on Emmy’s face was nearing toxicity. “I can’t be of any help where I’m not medically licensed.”

Scarlett adamantly shook her head. “I will not risk my future here with Laird.”

“Then I can be of no help at all.”

“Yes, you can,” Scarlett assured her newfound ally. “We can call you my private physician, right? You can be there with me to make sure they do the proper thing. Without any medical records, they’ll waste time with questions I can’t answer. I need someone who knows what’s really going on. A friendly face.”

“Fine, if we can’t go to my time then we go to hers,” Emmy told Donell flatly. “We get a private hospital someplace where they might bend the rules a little. Like Switzerland or something.”

“That isnae how it works, ye barmy mare!” Donell threw his hands in the air, his annoyance as evident as the doctor’s as she launched her own salvo.

“You know, I’m getting damn tired of hearing you say that.” Emmy stood nose-to-nose with the old man, glaring down at him from her superior height. For all her feminine Victorian clothing and elaborate hairdo, she was a menacing sight. “How does it work exactly?”

“I’m no’ a bluidy god, lass,” he shot back.

“You’ve sure been acting like one, haven’t you?” Emmy snapped. “Otherwise, I don’t think we ever clarified exactly what you are.”

“Emmy—”

“No!” She shook off Connor’s hand and jabbed a finger at Donell. “Mr. Wizard here has been playing with us, all of us, all this time, without ever once providing answers to our questions in return. And I damn well want some.”

“Lass, we dinnae have time for this,” Donell repeated.

“Yes, and I’m sure when we do, you won’t be around.”

There was a peculiar desperation in Emmy’s voice that shook Scarlett to the core. She understood where such anxiety came from, though. None of them knew Donell’s ultimate agenda. If there even was one. What he might do to them. Take away from them. The uncertainty of it all was enough to rattle even the strongest personality.

And Emmy’s was pretty damn strong.

For the hundredth time, Scarlett wondered who or what Donell really was. When she’d first met him at Dunskirk Castle in 2013, she’d thought him nothing more than a jolly, elfish old man with weathered features offset by a merry smile and twinkling eyes. When she’d met him again in 1513 wearing an ancient tartan and tam, he’d given the impression of a clichéd Scotsman. Never aging. Never changing. If he wasn’t a god, or the wizard some whispered of, what was he? What did he want from them?

“Emmy.” Connor’s tone was more gentle this time. She snuggled into his arms as if taking a moment’s comfort before turning back to argue the logistics of the matter with Donell some more.

“Where then?”

“This location. In her time,” Donell proposed flatly.

“That’s the best you can do? Not even closer to a hospital?”

For a moment, Scarlett wished Emmy would push Donell even harder. Then she sighed. “Please don’t fight, Emmy. I’ve managed quite well without being bickered over these past years. I have no desire to start again.”

Emmy was more cynical. “You think he can drop you back where you left off looking like that”—she gestured to encompass Scarlett’s condition—“and no one is going to question the changes? You know how the paparazzi can be. You’ll have the fight of your life the moment you step foot back there and you know it.”

Scarlett winced. Damn, she knew everything Emmy said was true. She’d be trending on every form of social media in less than five minutes of setting foot back in her own time. “I don’t care. Let them fight among themselves trying to figure me out.”

Laird tensed beside her. Her protective knight. “I willnae let ye go into a fight wi’out protection.”

“It won’t be that kind of fight,” she assured him, but the very thought of facing cameras and crowds again exhausted her. She sagged against Laird. Without a word, he swept her into his arms and strode toward the stairs to their bedchamber.

Connor whispered something in Emmy’s ear and followed them. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Many thanks, but nae.” Laird glanced back over his shoulder at the other man. “Yer Emmy can be a bit headstrong. How do ye put up wi’ a lass like that?”

“I like a lass who pushes back.” Connor’s grin was filled with satisfaction.

Scarlett rolled her eyes. Laird often maintained he liked her for the same reason