“So, Nathaniel, you’re dating your assistants now?” Poindexter asked tartly.
Emma didn’t have a chance to even take in a breath before her father had leaped into the fray.
“She isnothis assistant,” Frank said, his voice dripping with newer old money, “she’s a successful businesswoman in the middle of launching a fine jewelry business. All her own creations, of course. Her client list already is extremely exclusive.”
Emma looked at Nathaniel and shrugged. That much was true. Her client list consisted of her mother’s bridge partners, and they were indeed filthy rich and very exclusive.
Her father looked down his nose at Nathaniel. “What I want to know is what you intend to do with that thing there who assaulted my daughter.”
“Why don’t I offer my refuse removal services?” Patrick put in pleasantly. “I’ll see to him, these two can clean up from their recent adventures, and we’ll all meet up later at my brother’s. He’s the chief of the clan MacLeod, though perhaps Lord Poindexter is already familiar with that?”
Emma leaned back gingerly against the railing with Nathaniel. “If he attaches a title to my father’s name,” she murmured, “I’ll know we will have definitely come back to an alternate reality.”
“If that reality has a shower and a bed, I don’t care how alternate it is,” he said.
She drew his arm carefully over her shoulders and helped him up the step to the porch and into his house. “Want me to get Patrick to come back? I think he knows some medieval sorts of herbal remedies.”
“Aye, if you would.”
“Do you need help with anything else?” she asked. He didn’t look at all good, which made her wonder why the hell she hadn’t stopped the madness outside a bit sooner.
“You just cannae keep yer hands off me, lass, can ye?” Hesmoothed his hand down the front of his disgusting plaid. “I can understand why.”
“Do you ever stop talking?”
“When I’m dead, darling, and even then I imagine I’ll have aught to say. I think I can manage a shower on my own, though I’m not opposed to company.”
She pointed toward his bathroom. “Go.”
“If you hear a crashing noise, that would be yours truly, taking a header out of the tub. Come rescue me and don’t linger over the view.”
She laughed, and hoped it didn’t sound as forced as it felt. She was accustomed to Nathaniel being larger than life. He looked presently as if most of the life had been sucked from him. She helped him over to the bathroom, then turned him loose.
“Be a love and text Patrick, would you?” he said. “I have to admit—and deny it loudly later—that I feel particularly awful at the moment. I would prefer not to alert the rest of the rabble to my condition.” He clutched the doorframe of the bathroom and looked at her blearily. “I may go right to bed after I wash up, which doesn’t do anything for you. My apologies. Can you find my mobile?”
“Since I’m the one who used the password you gave me to get into it last, probably,” she said cheerfully. She watched him shut himself into the bathroom, waited to listen for the shower to start without any loud crashes, then went to go find his phone.
She texted Patrick for help, then set Nathaniel’s phone down with hands that weren’t at all steady. She sat down on a kitchen stool, cold and tired and hungry, but relieved.
If she patted Nathaniel’s dagger that was sitting on the table, no doubt waiting for a certain collector to come back from Florida to claim it, well, who could blame her?
She sincerely hoped she would never have to see it again outside its Plexiglas case.
Chapter 32
Nathanielwoke, froze, then realized several things in no particular order.
He could stretch out his legs, which was less comfortable than he would have expected it to be. He could feel his hands, which was also less comfortable than he would have expected it to be. He wasn’t, however, sitting in slime any longer, he didn’t smell any longer, and there was someone in his kitchen humming a medieval drinking song.
Ah, the future. What a place.
He looked up at the ceiling and wondered how long he’d slept. There was sunlight leaking in through the curtains, so he supposed it was daytime. Whether one day or many days had passed since he’d stumbled out of the shower and into bed, he couldn’t say. He remembered with uncomfortable clarity the things that Patrick MacLeod had forced him to drink. He also remembered quite well all the things he’d called the young Himself, which he supposed Patrick was used to.
He sat up, clutched his head for a moment or two until the world stopped spinning so wildly, then swung his feet to the floor. The stone was bloody chilly, but at least it was a chill he knew he could mitigate with a pair of slippers. He looked for clothes, managed to cover the bottom half of himself without falling over, then stumbled over into his kitchen to examine the lay of the land, as it were.
The good lord of Benmore was sitting with his feet toasting quite well against his Aga. Patrick looked over at him.
“Breakfast?”
