Love Came Just In Time Part 25

"Lads, lads," Ambrose said, shaking his head. "A well-earned rest is nothing to take lightly."

"A holiday?" Hugh's ears perked up.

Fulbert tossed his mug aside. "I'm for France." And he vanished.

"The Colonies," Hugh announced, standing and tilting his cap at a jaunty angle. "I'm feeling quite the

risk-taker at the moment." He made Ambrose a quick bow and disappeared.

"And I'm for the Highlands," Ambrose said, feeling his pulse quicken at the very thought.

Home.

And, of course, the precise area Megan and Gideon had chosen for their getaway.

After all, a grandfather's work was never done.

Ambrose smiled, set his mug on the table and made his way from the kitchen, turning out the lights

behind him.

And the Groom Wore Tulle

Prologue.

Scotland, 1313 Ian MacLeod lay in the Fergusson's dungeon and, not having much else to do, contemplated life's many mysteries.

How was it that the Fergusson could be so hopelessly inept at growing grain or raising aught but stringy cattle, yet have the knack of producing such a fine, healthy crop of rats? Ian would have been annoyed by this if he'd had the energy-especially given the fact that one of the rats was currently making a nest in his hair while the rodent's fellows sat in a half-circle around Ian, apparently waiting for the nest maker to finish and invite them to have a closer look at his building skills-but Ian didn't have the energy to even shake off the offender, much less muster up a good frothy head of irritation.

Secondly, he gave thought to the location of his sorry self. It wasn't often that a MacLeod found himself in a Fergusson hall, much less in his pit.

It wasn't as though his kinsmen hadn't made attempts to liberate him from their bitterest enemy's dungeon. They had and he had appreciated their efforts, even though they'd been to no avail. He would have liked to have forgotten about the entire affair, and the accompanying indignity of it, but he was, after all, the one sitting amongst the vermin, so thinking on it was almost unavoidable.

And then lastly, and by no means the least of any of the things clamoring for his attention, he thought he just might be dying.

That, however, was the only good thing to come of the past two months.

Ian settled back against the wall-or pretended to, as there wasn't much movement in his once finely fashioned form anymore-and gave thought to the whole business of dying. It was actually the only thought that had cheered him in days. His time in 1313 was obviously over and no one would miss him if he perhaps managed to elude death's sharp sickle and sneak off to the forest near the MacLeod keep. And if by some miracle he reached that forest and happened to find the exact spot that would carry a man hundreds of years into the Future, well, who would begrudge him that? What would one fine, manly addition to the Future hurt? It was either escape to there or toast his backside against the fires of h.e.l.l.

Unfortunately, Ian had no illusions about his sins. He'd spent too much time at the ale kegs, wenched more than any man should have without acquiring scores of b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, killed with too much heat in his blood, and-surely the most grievous of all-wooed Roberta Fergusson to his bed and cheerfully robbed her of her virginity.

It was the last, of course, which had earned him a place in Roberta's father's dungeon.

It wouldn't have mattered so much had Roberta possessed any redeeming qualities besides her virginity. More was the pity for Ian that she sported a visage uglier than a pig's a.r.s.e and the temper of an angry sow. Her guaranteed virtue had been her only desirable trait and she possessed that no longer.

Ian suspected that her new unmaidenly condition didn't trouble her overmuch. After all, he had taken great care with her and spared no effort to make the night memorable for her. 'Twas rumored, however, that her father had been less than enthusiastic upon learning of the evening's events. Ian had known there would be retribution. He also knew that 'twas almost a certainty that the Fergusson was in league with the Devil, which left him wondering what conversations the two had already had about him.

Best not to think on that overmuch.

He turned his mind quickly from the contemplation of h.e.l.l and settled back instead for speculation about where he would have gone had he had the choice.

The Future. Even the very word caused his pulse to quicken. He knew as much about the distant future as a man in Robert the Bruce's day should-likely more. He'd had a young kinsman travel to the Future and return briefly to tell of its wonders. And then another miracle had occurred and a traveler from the Future had arrived at the MacLeod keep. She had married the laird Jamie and carried him home to 1996 with her. Ian had grieved for Jamie's loss, for he was Ian's closest friend and most trusted ally, but he'd been afire with the idea that one day he too might travel to a time when men flew through the skies like birds and traveled great distances in carts without horses. At the time Jamie had forbidden him to come along with him to that unfathomable point so far ahead, telling Ian that his time in the fourteenth century would not be over unless he escaped certain death.

Ian was certainly facing death now.

Ach, but if that wasn't enough to make Ian ache for the chance to walk in the MacLeod forest, he didn't know what was. Ian dreamed of how it might have been had he managed to gain the Future. He would have been dressed in his finest plaid, with his freshly sharpened sword at his side and a cap tilted jauntily atop his head. Future women would have swooned at the very sight of him and Future men would have envied him his fine form and ability to ingest vast quant.i.ties of ale yet still outsmart his shrewdest enemies-and all this, mind you, before even breaking his fast in the morn.

He would have searched for his kin soon after his arrival. Jamie would have been pleased to see him, and Ian would have been pleased to see Jamie. First he would have hugged Jamie fiercely, then planted his fist in Jamie's nose-repeatedly.

Jamie being, of course, the reason Ian found himself wallowing in the slime.

Ian found the energy to scowl. If he and Jamie just hadn't been in that one tiny skirmish together, Ian might have avoided having a rat fashioning a home upon his head. Jamie had caught William Fergusson's son scampering off to safety, boxed the lad's ears in annoyance, then filled them full of a message for the boy to take to his father. Of course, Jamie had informed the lad in the most impressive of details just how thoroughly Ian had bedded Roberta, then wished the family good fortune in finding a mate for her.

Ian's fate had been sealed.

Ian tried to shake the rat off the top of his head, but found that all he could do was sit in the muck and give a grim thought or two as to whether or not he should be repenting while he still could. Perhaps Saint Peter would have pity on him and let him squeak through the gates. Ian spared a thought as to whether those heavenly gates swung inward or outward, and the means of defending them if it were the latter, then he found that even that was too taxing a thought to ponder.

Death was very near.

Ian mustered up the energy to give one last fleeting thought to the Future. Perhaps if he vowed to leave off his wenching ways and settle down with one woman. Aye, that he could surely do to earn himself a place in heaven...

Suddenly a piercing light descended and blinded him. He closed his eyes against it, fearing the worst. Apparently not even his last-minute bargain was enough to save him. From behind his eyelids he could see that the light flickered wildly.

d.a.m.n. h.e.l.lfire, obviously.

Ian sighed in resignation and took one last deep breath.

And then he knew no more.

"Did ye get him?" "Aye."

"Sword too?" the first asked.

"Aye," the second said, hefting his burden over his shoulder with one hand and holding onto the blade with the other. "Ye can see I've both."

"Is he dead, do ye think?"

"Dunno." The second would have taken a closer look, but his burden was heavier than he should have been after all that time in the pit. "Looks dead to me."

"Well, then," the first said, apparently satisfied, "take him and heave him onto MacLeod soil. Sword too. The laird wants it so."

The second didn't need to hear that more than once. Best to do what the laird asked. He had no desire to see the bottom of the Fergusson's pit up close. The riding would take all night, but 'twas best seen to quickly. He would return home just as quickly, for he had no desire to be nearby when the clan MacLeod discovered their dead kinsman.

"Was that a moan?" the first asked suspiciously.

"Didn't hear it," the second said, walking away. Dead, alive, he couldn't have cared less in what condition his burden found himself. He'd do the heaving of the man, then be on his way. If the MacLeod fool wasn't dead now, he would be in a matter of hours.

"Leave the sword near the body!" the first called.

"Aye," the second grumbled, tempted to filch it. But it was a MacLeod blade and he was a superst.i.tious soul, so he turned away from thoughts of robbery and concentrated on the task before him. He'd return for his payment, then find a dry place to lay his head, hopefully with his belly full of decent fare and his arms wrapped around a fine wench. He'd do it in honor of the almost-dead man he prepared to strap to the back of his horse. The man might have been a MacLeod, but he was a Highlander after all, and deserved some kind of proper farewell.

The second man set off, his mind already on his supper.

Chapter One.

New York, 1999 Jane Fergusson sat with her chin on her fists, stared at the surroundings of her minuscule cubby at Miss Petronia Witherspoon's Elegant Eighteenth Century Wedding Fashions, and contemplated the ironies of life. There were a lot of them and her contemplating was taking up a lot of time. But that wasn't much of a problem, mainly because she had a long weekend stretching out in front of her and no beach house to retreat to. No, what she had was herself trapped in Miss Witherspoon's shop with only her imagination to keep her company.

What a waste that was. There she was in New York, city of designers, and she had the talent and ambition to design ultra funky clothes in a rainbow of colors. She had her health. She had panty hose in her drawer without any nail polish stemming the tide of runaway runs. She even had an apartment she could afford. Surely with all those things in her favor, she should have been working at a fashionable house designing incredible things for only the long-legged and impossibly thin to wear.

But where did she find herself?

Trying to keep her head above the water line while drowning in vats of faux pearls and more lace than a Brussels seamstress could shake a seam ripper at-all for use in the design and construction of wedding gowns.

The problem was, Jane didn't particularly like bridal gowns.

In fact, Jane wasn't even sure she liked brides.

She sighed, closed her eyes, and let her mind drift back to how it had been in the beginning. She had come to New York with her head full of bold, energetic designs and her suitcase full of funky, short things in black. She'd heard that the truly chic of New York dressed all in black and she had cheerfully pitched every colored item she owned on the off chance that the rumor was true.

She had hoped for a place with someone big, really big; someone who was so ultrahip that even her stuff would look a little frumpy by comparison.

It was then that her course had taken a marked quirk to the left.

She'd been pawing through an upscale antique store's selection of vintage fashions, on the lookout for the elusive and the unusual and muttering to herself about how she would have designed the gowns differently, when she'd felt the imperious tap of a bony finger on her shoulder.

"Are you a seamstress, dear?"

The term alone should have sent up a red flag, but Jane had been so thrilled that someone might think her something akin to a designer that she'd bobbed her head obediently and waited breathlessly for some other gem of recognition. And when she'd been offered a place at Miss Witherspoon's salon, she'd leaped at the chance.

Little had she known that she would wind up designing wedding gowns for a woman who made Oliver Twist's f.a.gan look like a philanthropist. And not only was she designing all those eighteenth-century wedding gowns, she was watching Miss Witherspoon's niece take credit for it. It was pitiful.

Jane planned to leave. She'd been planning to leave for almost three years, but what with one thing and another-mostly rent and food-she found herself staying. After all, she was actually doing a great deal of designing, and that wasn't something she could turn her back on lightly.

So she invested a lot of time trying to ignore the fact that she was basically an indentured servant. That invariably led to questions about where her Prince Charming was hiding his white horse. Surely there was someone out there who would rescue her from the acres of tulle she'd gotten herself lost in.

She sighed and turned her mind away from the rainbow of colors she could be working with to more productive thoughts-such as if hari-kari were possible with dressmaker's pins. Before she could do any experimenting, the phone rang, making her jump. She was, of course, the only one left at the shop, having been a.s.signed the task of closing up for the three-day weekend. She picked up the phone.

"h.e.l.lo?"

"Jane, dear," Miss Witherspoon said, sounding rushed, "just a few last-minute things before we visit yet another royal residence. So many beautiful gowns preserved for the discriminating eye, you know.

Remember that we'll be hopping back over the Pond on Tuesday."

Yeah, on the Concorde, Jane thought with a scowl.

"Europe has given Alexis such glorious design inspiration..."

Not even Europe will improve her stick figures, Jane thought with a grumble.

"... Christy and Naomi will be in early next week, so you'll want to be sure to remain behind the scenes. Alexis will do the showing of the gowns, of course, for we all know she has the beauty to complement them while you do not!"

Jane had no reply for that, so she merely rested her chin on her fist and thought Gloomy Thoughts about her less-than-arresting face.

"Oh, and one last thing, dear. I want you to check in the workroom immediately. There was a rat heard frolicking about there this afternoon."

Rats. What else? Jane put the receiver back in its cradle, her head down on her desk, and sighed. Miss Witherspoon never would have asked Alexis to check out a rat rumor. Alexis wouldn't have been any good at rat patrol anyway. Alexis was from California. If they had rats, which Jane doubted they did in Alexis's neck of the woods, they were no doubt tanned, relaxed, and unaggressive. Alexis was not up to the New York rat, a hearty, belligerent beast. Jane, however, was unafraid.

At least that's what she told herself as she picked up a yardstick and headed for the back room.

She opened the door, flicked on the light, and spared a brief moment to look at her creations hanging so perfectly on the long racks against the wall. Every pearl in place, every tuck just so, every drop of lace dripping as if it had been poured that way. Jane had to admit that even though she wasn't all that fond of bridal wear, the gowns were beautiful. She had taken the styles of the period and put as much of her personal stamp on them as she could get away with. It wasn't much more than an unexpected tuck here or an unusual bit of lace there, but at least it was something.

It was then that she was distracted by the sound of crunching.

She glanced down and saw a trail of junk food wrappers leading over to the corner.

And she m.u.f.fled a squeak of fright.

Well, it was obvious that the rat wasn't dining on satin, so what was the use of chasing him out right then? Jane let the benevolence of the moment wash over her as she quickly retreated from the room. She left the light on and shut the door. Maybe the light would convince the rat that he'd wandered into the wrong place and he would abandon his designs on the workroom.

That sounded much better than trying to convince him to leave by means of a flimsy stick.

She quickly packed up her bag, put on her sneakers with the rainbow shoelaces-not chic maybe, but definitely colorful-and hurried out into the Manhattan evening. The colors and smells of the twentieth century a.s.saulted her, a.s.suring her that she wasn't trapped in a Victorian sweatshop. She took a deep breath, slung her bag over her shoulder, and set off down the street to her sublet, thoughts of rats temporarily forgotten.

By the time she reached her building, she was sweating and cross. She trudged up three flights of stairs, stood outside her door until her breath caught back up with her, then shoved her key into the lock and welcomed herself home to her glorified attic apartment. She turned on the lights, then closed the door behind her and leaned back against it, letting her bag slide to the floor. A quick survey of her surroundings told her she was indeed in the black-and-white s.p.a.ce she had created for herself upon her arrival in New York. She had been convinced a monochromatic scheme was perfectly in keeping with her chic, designer self and would do nothing but enhance her creativity.

Lately she had begun to have her doubts that this was good for her state of mind.