“Do we dare?”
Considering what he usually dealt with, the thought of merely muscling his way into a group of well-dressed tourists seemed like nothing at all.
“Absolutely,” he said confidently. “We’ll see how far flattery gets us.”
Emma didn’t seem to be opposed to the idea, so he locked up his car and hurried with her to the front gates. He didn’t recognize anything about the collection of souls there except their accents, which he supposed he might be able to imitate with enough effort.
He engaged the most senior-looking man of the group, expressed his disappointment at having arrived to find Macbeth’s reputed home to be closed for the winter, and wasn’t it the damndest thing when one didn’t check one’s phone often enough, what?
“Oh, too true,” the man said. He paused. “Don’t suppose you’d want to join us, would you?”
“Brilliant of you, of course,” Nathaniel said, putting a saddle on his best Etonian accent and taking it out for a bit of a trot. If that accent contained a touch of lesser royal, well, what could he say? He was a damned fine mimic, if he did say so himself. “I can reimburse you now or perhaps later over drinks at the pub—”
“Dear boy, of course you won’t. What did you say your name was again?”
“Nathaniel MacLeod,” he said.
The man studied him. “Born and bred here in the north, or do I detect other flavors?”
“Eton,” Nathaniel said with a deprecating smile, “as well as a bit of a slog through the familial firm in New York—”
“Your grandfather is Dexter MacLeod,” the man said, looking stunned. “I know him. Well, not well, of course, but I’ve crossed paths with him at the occasional soiree. You resemble him greatly.”
“I could only wish to,” Nathaniel said as humbly as possible. “I wish he were here to walk these halls with us, but he’s comfortable across the Pond.” Actually, he wished Poindexter MacLeod would walkintothe Pond and drown, but perhaps that was a bit too blunt for present company.
He and his grandfather had a complicated relationship.
“You’ll take good notes for him, then,” the man said cheerfully. “And your girlfriend here?”
“Emma,” Nathaniel said, reaching for Emma’s hand. “She hasn’t met the old boy yet. We’re saving that for Christmas.”
“You’ll come to tea next time you’re in London,” the man said. “I insist. I’ll make sure you have my card before we part ways—oh, Helen, you won’t believe who we have joining our little outing today.”
Nathaniel made polite chitchat with Helen and her husband, Richard, then hung back with Emma as their hosts went ahead. Emma watched them go, then leaned in.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “This is pretty fortunate, isn’t it?”
Nathaniel had a different opinion, but that was because he felt something breathing down his neck. A draft, perhaps—or perhaps Fate. If it was the latter, he wasn’t going to pay it any heed. He was safely away from his usual time-traveling haunts and had no intention of being thrust back into a spot not at all his own. He didn’t even have a bloody penknife on his person. It was a little unnerving, he supposed, how proficient he’d become at surviving with his bare hands alone, but that was a skill he didn’t particularly want to have to use at the moment. He would be content to simply tag along after his wide-eyed Yank.
“I have to add that I can hardly believe what I just heard,” she added. “You sound like you should be working for the BBC. Do I want to know where you learned that upper-crust accent?”
“Probably not,” he said with a smile. He squeezed her hand. “You’re a good sport.”
“And you’re getting me into a closed castle, so I’ll ignore the fact that you didn’t answer. I wonder if they have a guidebook.”
Apparently they did. It was provided without her having to ask, along with a personal guide as well. Nathaniel might have felt slightly guilty at how ruthlessly he’d used his connections, but he had indeed put in several years in his grandfather’s firm where his working conditions had been only slightly above Dickensian. He tended to think of his grandfather as less Ebenezer Scrooge and more Scrooge McDuck, but runninghis grandfather’s Upper East Side accent through a Scottish dialect filter in his brain had been one of his tricks to keep himself sane. If he could leverage some of that suffering to a more pleasant purpose at the moment, so be it.
As he walked through the rooms, he wondered why he hadn’t come before. Cawdor was a lovely house, full of history and comfort and things arranged to suit the needs of a family.
The company they had tagged along with didn’t seem to find it as luxurious as he did, but they were Londoners. He wasn’t a snob, if that was the word he was looking for, but he definitely had a fair amount of national pride. If he began to hang back a bit from the group to better appreciate a local treasure without their running commentary, who could blame him?
Emma was apparently torn between watching their surroundings and watching him try not to grumble. He shrugged and attempted a weak smile. She only smiled wryly and continued on.
He tried to concentrate, truly he did, but his phone was buzzing incessantly, and he suspected that might be for reasons he shouldn’t ignore. He looked at Emma.
“I need to deal with this,” he said. “Do you mind?”
“Of course not,” she said. She hesitated. “Think they’ll notice if I just stay back here with you?” She smiled. “I won’t listen.”
