My Laird's Castle
Authors: Bess McBride
“I trust ye are recovered, warm and dry?” Colin asked. A crinkle at the corner of his eye told me he was smiling, though I did not see a flash of his handsome smile.
“Yes, thank you. I’m so sorry I took off like that. More sorry that you had to chase me down and get wet yourself.” I noticed he had changed out of his kilt into a set of dark-blue trousers, a gray waistcoat and a different black jacket than he had worn earlier. White silk ruffles hung from his sleeves, and his neckcloth was freshly tied. He wore no tartan of any sort. I promised myself to ask him about tartans as well, depending on how long I was going to be stuck. Well, stuck didn’t exactly sound quite right, not when I looked into his dark gray-blue eyes.
I took a big gulp of the hot tea, kept a straight face as it burned my throat, set my cup down on a side table and asked the question.
“Tell me about this eighteenth century,” I said.
Colin tilted his head. This time his lips did curve. “Ye sound as if ye live in another century.”
This time I quirked an eyebrow. “Well, you know very well that I do. I live in the twenty-first century.”
Colin, in the act of sipping his tea, jerked and sputtered. Tea spilled down the front of his jacket. He set the cup down on the side table with a clatter and rose to stare at me.
“Mistress! Are ye daft?” He brushed the liquid from his clothing, with little concern for a stain.
Intimidated by his size as he loomed over me, I jumped up as well. At five foot nothing, the top of my head hardly met his armpits, but I backed up a few steps and stared him down.
“No, your lairdship! I am not daft. I think it is ye who must be daft!”
MY LAIRD’S CASTLE
Bess McBride
My Laird’s Castle
Copyright 2015 Bess McBride
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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Cover art by Tara West
Contact information:
[email protected]
Published in the United States of America
Dedication
To all my loyal readers who love the combination of time travel romance and the mystique of the Scottish Highlands! This one’s for you!
Table of Contents
Dear Reader,
Thank you for purchasing
My Laird’s Castle
, a Scottish historical time travel romance set a few months after the Battle of Culloden. The dialogue is laced with what I hope is enough Scottish dialect to give the reader enough of a historical feeling, but not quite as much as the poet, Robert Burns, might use such that readers have to reference their Scots-English dictionaries throughout. As I did. I hope you enjoy the story of Beth and Colin.
Elizabeth Pratt, a twenty-first-century librarian from Whitefish, Montana, finds herself accidentally transported back to eighteenth-century Scotland while on a bus tour of the Highlands. She finds Colin Anderson, laird of Gleannhaven Castle—or rather, he finds her, and unsure of what to do with the lost woman, he takes her back to his castle.
Only months after the Battle of Culloden, Colin struggles with the legacy of his father, who fought for the Crown against the Jacobites. Colin inherited his father’s land and castle, but at great personal cost.
Beth initially tries to find her way back home, but as she falls in love with the lonely Highland laird, she realizes that all she wants is to stay with him. That is until tragedy strikes, and Beth must return to her own time to save the man she loves.
Thank you for your support over the years, friends and readers. Because of your favorable comments, I continue to strive to write the best stories I can. More romances are on the way!
You know I always enjoy hearing from you, so please feel free to contact me at
[email protected]
, through my website at
http://www.bessmcbride.com
, or my blog
Will Travel for Romance
.
Many of you know I also write a series of short cozy mysteries under the pen name of Minnie Crockwell. Feel free to stop by my
website
and learn more about the series.
Thanks for reading!
Bess
Prologue
I hopped off the bus as quickly as possible, my legs aching from the inactivity of sitting for far too long. I stumbled, and David, the portly Scottish bus driver, caught my arm.
“Steady there, lassie,” he said. “Have a care.” His accent, thick with a burr, delighted me, but I had difficulty understanding him. He’d told us he was from Edinburgh.
“Thank you, David,” I said with a smile, quickly scooting away from the doorway to allow my fellow passengers to descend as well.
Crowds thronged about in what was basically a gravel pullout on the highway through the Highlands, and I sighed. So many tourists! Of course, I was a tourist too, but still...did there have to be so many? I was pretty sure I would struggle to find the ambience of the legendary remote Highlands of Scotland when I felt like I was in a shopping mall parking lot.
I had already sworn that I’d never take another group tour in late August again. I’d been on one similar bus trip before to the United Kingdom, which had only ventured into Scotland as far as Edinburgh, but that trip had been in September, and the crowds seemed much lighter.
This time, though, I had booked a tour of Scotland exclusively because I wanted to make it further north and see some of the fabled Highlands. In what was to be a quick one-week jaunt, we had started in Glasgow and would finish up in the lovely city of Edinburgh.
Now, I searched for an opening through the tourists, who were at present enjoying the music of a roadside bagpiper, so I could admire the mountains before me—the high lands of Scotland.
They were magnificent, soft where lush emerald grass coated the valleys and bases, and hard where the vegetation thinned beneath craggy granite peaks that pierced the bright-blue sky.
Though the presence of the bagpiper, his case open for tips, was as artificial and corny as could be, the evocative music fit the scenery, and I reached into my jeans pockets and dug out what few pounds I had in change to tip him. A wink from one smiling eye thanked me, and I grinned. Dressed in a bright-red kilt, black jacket with gold epaulettes and a pseudo black bearskin hat, the forty-something thick mustached man was indeed a sight to behold.
I gave him a nod and returned my attention to the vista before me. A few hardy tourists, or perhaps hikers, dotted the valley floor, and a light stream of people followed a dirt trail downward. I checked my watch, unsure of how much time I had. The tour guide, a lanky, elderly English gentleman named John, hadn’t really said when we should reboard the bus, as he normally did. But then again, he probably supposed no one would wander away and disappear on a roadside pullout.
I couldn’t help myself. An enticing little brook meandered through the valley, and it looked to be only a five-minute trip down the trail. I hurried toward the path and descended carefully, admiring the beautiful purple heather growing along the hillside.
I reached the stream and turned to look back up the hill. The bus remained in place, and I saw John and David chatting by the door, so I knew I was fine. A path paralleled the stream, and I nodded as several backpacking hikers passed me.
As all people must do when encountering a delightful little bit of moving water in the Highlands, I knelt down to thrust my hand into the stream to test its temperature. Startled by the icy coldness of the water, I withdrew my hands and patted my warm cheeks. A sense of dizziness hit me, and I blinked and shook my head.
The dizziness continued, and I dropped my head to my chest.
“Are you all right, dear?” a female voice asked in a subtle Scottish burr.
I looked over my shoulder toward a silver-haired woman with a pack on her back. Her companion, a tall, slender senior gentleman also sporting a backpack, eyed me with concern.
I nodded, but the motion added to my dizziness.
“Yes, thank you. I’m just a little warm.”
“Yes, it is a bit hot out here today, surprising for the Highlands,” the man said. “Are you hiking or...” He looked up toward the bus and cars parked in the pullout.
“No, I’m on a bus tour. That’s us up there.” I pointed toward the bus, still parked, John and David relaxing by the door.
“Oh, I see. They’re quite close. That’s all right then,” the woman said. “Be sure and drink some water when you return to the bus.”
“Yes, I will,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Good day,” the man said as they moved away.
I raised a hand in farewell and turned back toward the stream, reaching in to cup just a bit more of the cold water to pat my face. My cheeks tingled, and another onslaught of dizziness hit me. The stream disappeared, the mountains vanished, and blackness descended.
Chapter One
“Lass! Lass! Can ye wake?”
I heard the baritone voice as if from within a dream.
“Lass! Are ye injured? Taken ill? Is there aught wrong wi ye?”
Arms slipped under my back, lifting me, and my head lolled against something both soft and scratchy, cloth of some kind. The chest underneath was hard, and I opened my eyes.
A man peered down at me. At least, I thought it was a man. Long, curly black hair hung down on both sides of his cheeks. Yes, a man. A matching dark beard masked the lower half of his face. Eyes the color of slate studied me.
A flash of white teeth suggested he smiled.
“Well then?” he asked. “Are ye injured?”
With a gasp, I jerked upright and twisted out of his arms. I tried to jump to my feet but was disoriented, still dizzy. I fell back to my knees. A quick glance out of the corner of my eye told me I was still by the stream. The mountains loomed overhead. The sky was darker than it had been, gray with blue-black clouds, as if a storm was moving in. How long had I been unconscious?