Every time with a highla.., p.28
Every Time with a Highlander, page 28
“How did you get out?” Michael said.
“Och, easy. I told them I was going to puke—and I did. Just stuck my finger down my throat. I saw my uncle do it once when he’d had too much to drink. Everyone wanted out of the carriage then. Then I heard you making a stramash with that stinking arsehole Bridgewater—”
“Ladies present,” Duncan said.
“It’s nae bother,” Abby said. “Nab’s been offered the position of scout under the general, which, if he knows what’s good for him, he won’t be taking.”
“Och, no,” Nab said. “I think I’d like to stay near Kerr Castle.”
“Your loyalty to the Kerr cause will be rewarded, I’m sure,” Michael said.
“In this case, I think loyalty may be overshadowed by a slightly different emotion,” Abby said. “Grace is going to be my new lady’s maid.”
“Oh,” Undine said.
“Ohhh,” Michael said.
Nab turned seven shades of red.
“It’s a verra fulfilling quest, by the way,” Duncan said, pouring four very generous glasses of whiskey and one smaller one. “May you enjoy it.”
“Though I would plan on taking a good long time,” Michael said. “There’s a wealth of pleasure to be had in the journey.”
Duncan distributed the drinks and lifted his glass. “To the journey.”
“To the journey!”
“Speaking of that,” Duncan said, “how did you manage your return?”
“That’s an interesting story. Once Undine decided she wanted to return, we were a bit at a loss as to how to do it without her herbs. Then I remembered a fellow who knew the secret recipe, as it were. Hang on, would you?”
Michael slipped out of the room and returned a moment later with the man who’d not only showed them the patch of the magical twinflowers, but had also insisted on returning with them.
“Grandda!” Duncan’s face broke into a huge smile, and he took his grandfather in a tight embrace.
“I told him you’d managed to win the hand of the smartest and most beautiful clan chief in Scotland,” Michael said. “He said, ‘My Duncan? I’ll have to see it to believe it.’”
Duncan’s grandfather said, “Oh, lad, how I’ve missed ye.” Then he took Abby’s hands and squeezed them. “Michael was right, though. You are a bonny lass.”
Serafina and Gerard, also in their best clothes, appeared in the doorway.
“What’s all th—?” She spotted Undine and Michael, and her lip started to quiver. “You’re alive!”
“There’s the reaction I was expecting.” Undine held out her arms, and Serafina flew into them.
Gerard thumped Michael on the back. “She just couldn’t shake you, could she?”
After a long moment, Undine released Serafina and saw the shock on Duncan’s grandfather’s face.
“You’re the…the dead spit of her,” he said.
The “her” Duncan’s grandfather referred to was the red-haired woman with whom he had fallen in love a score of years earlier when he had traveled into Scotland’s past. Their relationship had produced Serafina, though, as Undine knew, Duncan’s grandfather had returned to the twenty-first century before the pregnancy had been discovered. When Duncan had uncovered this surprising relationship, he’d told Serafina, but Duncan’s grandfather hadn’t known the truth—until now.
Duncan cleared his throat. “Grandda, I’d like you to meet Serafina Fallon Innes. Serafina, this is your father.”
The three gingers took turns hugging and crying, while Grendel ran happily in circles around their feet and Gerard, Michael, and Nab laughed.
Undine found herself grinning like a fool. Abby elbowed her. “I haven’t had this much excitement in my bedchamber since Duncan’s first days here.”
“We picked well, my friend.”
They clinked glasses.
“Why did you come back?” Abby asked. “I was certain you’d find each other in the future.”
Undine knew the one person with whom she’d shared the story of her childhood travails would not forget. “I could hardly leave you alone,” Undine murmured, “not when you’re with child. Does Duncan know?”
Abby nodded. “He’s verra pleased.”
“I’m with child too,” she said, trying without success to rein in her joy.
“Pardon? What?” Michael said. “Who’s with child?”
“I am no director,” Abby said, “but I know a cue when I hear one.” She gave Undine a kiss on the cheek and slipped away.
“Did I just hear what I thought I heard?”
Undine gazed at him imperiously. “When you are present for the laying of the groundwork, the appearance of the house shouldn’t come as a surprise.”
“Oh, really? Is that an old naiad saying? And if it is, shouldn’t it be ‘dam’ or something?”
“It’s so small,” she said more quietly. “But the magic is quite powerful. I have no doubts.”
He put his arms around her waist and kissed her. “I can’t think of anything more wonderful.”
Abby, who had been laughing with her guests, suddenly whooped.
“Undine,” she cried, “I just realized you’re a countess! On your own! And your son—Is the child a son?”
“So much for secrets,” Undine said under her breath to Michael. “Aye, I believe it is.”
“Your son will be Lord Bridgewater!” Abby clapped.
The guests in the room blinked for an instant. The realization that her and Michael’s child would technically be considered the child of John Bridgewater was rather startling. But when Michael smiled, they cheered.
“It seems Michael’s training as Orlando Brashnettle, senior wizard, paid off,” Gerard said. “He’s pulled a lordship for his son out of his hat.”
Undine wheeled. “I knew you were a wizard!”
“Only in my dreams,” Michael said, head spinning. “I’m hoping you can teach me a thing or two.”
“I have no doubt,” Abby said.
When the excitement settled, Undine pulled Michael aside.
“Is that something you could bear?” she asked under her breath. “To raise our son as John Bridgewater’s? If it’s not, then I shall take you to a place where none of this will matter. If it is, we must live as secret lovers for at least a year until we can marry. But I can tell you that wielding the power of one of England’s oldest families will allow me to do even more to help the rebels.”
“What about the warrant?”
“I have a suspicion the duke would be willing to throw that out if I offer him the chance to harness a bit of my power.”
Michael’s brows went up. “You’d help an English general?”
“So long as he worked for peace. So what do you say? My only priority is to be with you, so the choice has to be yours.”
Michael pursed his lips. “Would we live in Bridgewater’s castle?”
“Aye. Or his townhome in London or the hunting lodge in Derbyshire or the horse farm in Galway. They have money and lots of it.”
“Then I believe I could bear it quite nicely. Tell me, what sort of activities would be entailed in being ‘secret lovers’? Might it include stolen hours in the open fields of the borderlands? Hand-to-hand encounters in linen closets? Or perhaps something even more salacious?”
“There are certain things a noblewoman doesn’t stoop to.”
He pulled her into his arms. “But there are other things the secret lover of an unemployed director does.”
“Och,” Nab said. “They’re kissing again.”
“Come, come,” Abby said. “I should not like to be late for my own wedding. Undine, I am eager to hear what the future holds. Tell me things that will make me long to see it.”
Undine slipped her arm around Michael’s waist and squeezed. “Two words, my friend. Yoga pants.”
Like Outlander and Elizabeth Hoyt?
Then you’ll love Just in Time for a Highlander by Gwyn Cready!
For more info and updates about the series go to:
http://cready.com/
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Then you’ll love To Wed a Wicked Highlander by Victoria Roberts!
For more info and updates about the series go to:
http://www.victoriarobertsauthor.com/
Like Monica McCarthy and Suzanne Enoch?
Then you’ll love The Highlander’s Bride by Amanda Forester!
For more info and updates about the series go to:
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Then you’ll love A Howl for a Highlander by Terry Spear!
For more info and updates about the series go to:
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Acknowledgments
I want to thank my colleagues at Mindful Writers, especially Madhu Bazaz Wangu. Your hard work and focus provide me much-needed inspiration. Thank you as well to Meredith Mileti, Teri Coyne, Todd DePastino, Vince Raus, and Mitchell Kaplan. It’s such a gift to be able to share triumphs and travails with people who understand. I owe special debts of gratitude to Trevor Swan at the Coldstream Historical Society, who supplied me with a wealth of enormously helpful information about the state of things in eighteenth-century Coldstream, and Mike Egan, stage manager extraordinaire, who provided invaluable insights into the workings of a professional theater company. Any errors in the book regarding these subjects are mine. Gene Mollica, your covers are to die for. Thank you to everyone at Sourcebooks, especially Deb Werksman. You make me look good and that ain’t always easy. Claudia Cross, I am in awe of your amazing superpowers. I think you’ve had an opportunity to use every single one of them on my behalf in the last year. Lester, Cameron, Wyatt, and Jean, you are my great reward.
About the Author
Gwyn Cready is the author of nine romance novels. She’s been called “the master of time travel romance” and is the winner of a RITA Award, the most prestigious award given in romance writing. She has two grown children and lives with her husband in Pittsburgh.
Just in Time for a Highlander
by Gwyn Cready
For Duncan MacHarg, things just got real
Battle reenactor and financier Duncan MacHarg thinks he has it made—until he lands in the middle of a real Clan Kerr battle and comes face-to-face with their beautiful, spirited leader. Out of time and out of place, Duncan must use every skill he can muster to earn his position among the clansmen and in the heart of the devastatingly intriguing woman to whom he must pledge his oath.
Abby needs a hero, and she needs him now
When Abigail Ailich Kerr sees a handsome, mysterious stranger materialize in the midst of her clan’s skirmish with the English, she’s stunned to discover he’s the strong arm she’s been praying for. Instead of a tested fighter, the fierce young chieftess has been given a man with no measurable battle skills and a damnably distracting smile. And the only way to get rid of him is to turn him into a Scots warrior herself—one demanding and intimate lesson at a time.
“Cready’s highly satisfying creation is filled with humor, witty dialogue, double entendres, and clever schemes, and a wonderful cast of imaginative characters keeps this twisty story lively to the end.” —Publishers Weekly Starred Review
For more Gwyn Cready, visit:
www.sourcebooks.com
First Time with a Highlander
by Gwyn Cready
She needs a man—but only for one night
What do you get when you imbibe centuries-old whiskey—besides a hangover the size of the Highlands? If you’re twenty-first-century ad exec Gerard Innes, you get swept back to eighteenth-century Edinburgh and into the bed of a gorgeous, fiery redhead. Gerard has only a foggy idea what he and the lady have been up to…but what he does remember draws him into the most dangerous and exhilarating campaign of his life.
Be careful what you wish for…
Serafina Seonag Fallon’s scoundrel of a fiancé has left her with nothing, and she’s determined to turn the tables. If she can come up with a ringer, she can claim the cargo he stole from her. But the dashing man she summons from the future demands more than one night, and Serafina finds it easier to command the seas under her feet than the crashing waves he unleashes in her heart.
Praise for Gwyn Cready:
“Gwyn Cready does a marvelous job of creating strong and sexy characters that stand out.” —Fresh Fiction
For more Gwyn Cready, visit:
www.sourcebooks.com
Flirting with Forever
by Gwyn Cready
Campbell Stratford hopes her biography of court painter Anthony van Dyck will give her the credibility she needs to land her dream job as a museum curator. One day, while doing research on Van Dyck and his successor, Peter Lely, Cam is abruptly transported to Lely’s studio in 1673.
Peter is intrigued by the mysterious newcomer who is definitely more than she makes out to be—but then again, Peter has strange secrets of his own. The uneasy friends become star-crossed lovers when the centuries part them once more, forcing them to choose which they believe in: fate or true love.
“Entertaining and lively…will leave readers breathless.” —Publishers Weekly Starred Review
For more Gwyn Cready, visit:
www.sourcebooks.com
Timeless Desire
by Gwyn Cready
Two years after losing her husband, librarian Panna Kennedy is reluctantly reentering the terrifying world of dating—but she accidentally enters a portal through time instead.
Flung back in time to 1705 Scotland, she finds herself in the massive library of her hero, Colonel John Bridgewater, and meets his brother Jamie, currently accused of being a Scots spy. Torn between loyalty to her hero from history, her feelings for her late husband, and her blossoming love for Jamie, Panna faces a choice that may alter the course of time forever.
“Romantic and wickedly witty.” —Rachel Gibson, New York Times bestselling author
For more Gwyn Cready, visit:
www.sourcebooks.com
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Gwyn Cready, Every Time with a Highlander
