“Aye.”
“What, once a week? Several times a month?”
“I haven’t kept track—” He trailed off, passed several cars without so much as a pucker marring his perfect brow, then pulled back into his lane. He glanced at her. “I suppose I could tell you exactly when and where I’ve been probably for every week of those past several years. Trying to balance two lives has been difficult.”
She imagined that was an understatement. She thought back over the course of her acquaintance with him. She had suspected there was something going on with him, obviously, having seen who she thought was either him or his twin popping in and out of the mist. But she never in a million years would have guessed this was what that something was.
He might have been exhausted, but he looked a bit like a man who had just unburdened himself of a terrible secret.
“Want to tell me more?” she asked.
“I find I do,” he said seriously. He took a deep breath, then began. “My mother had passed suddenly and I thought it would take my father’s mind off it—and mine as well, to be honest—to play a few rounds of golf on her native soil.”
“Were you living in Scotland at the time?”
He shook his head. “I’d moved to London by then. My father had gone back to New York, I think in an effort to have a change of scenery to ease his grief.”
“Wait,” she said, “back up a little. Where were you before London?”
He shot her a brief look. “New York, slaving away in my grandfather’s firm.”
“After having graduated from Columbia,” she said.
“Aye, guilty as charged,” he said. “The rest is boring, but I’ll tell you to keep you awake, if you like.”
“I like. Start with Granddad. He sounds fabulous.”
Nathaniel laughed a little. “He’s less fabulous than he is a miser with delusions of landing himself a title, but he certainly has the money to buy one if he weren’t so cheap. I’ll admit with a fair amount of shame that I made him buckets of money to add to his enormous piles during my tenure at his firm. I had money enough of my own, though, thanks to my father having given me my inheritance early. I had already been working for myself, living in London, when my mother died.”
“Is yours a good business?”
“Extremely.”
She smiled. “Hence the Aston Martin?”
“Exactly.” He shook his head. “My parents had been here in Scotland, in a little cottage on the shore, for the last few years she was alive. After her passing, as I said, my father returned to New York.” He sighed. “He had intended, before she fell ill, to retire and take her on a tour of the world. Events caught them both up before he could.”
“What does your grandfather do exactly?” she asked.
“He invests,” Nathaniel said. “Or I should say, rather, that he sits in his den, counting his money, whilst others do the investing for him. He limits himself to finding ways either to get back what he’s loaned out—which happens very rarely—or to make trouble for his posterity—which he does constantly. He amuses himself by arguing about inheritances until he can see the corpse for himself and make sure it’s not going to rise like a damned zombie. Old money and vats of it, I’m afraid.” He shot her a look. “I have the feeling you understand that.”
“Don’t remind me,” she said grimly. “My father’s Seattle roots extend back to the first timber company.”
He smiled briefly. “I understandthat, believe me.” He shook his head. “So, I had rented that wee cottage that is now my house because my father had sold the place he’d lived with my mother and I didn’t think I should try to buy it back. We had had ourselves a proper breakfast, then set off to play a bit of golf. A storm came up suddenly, and my uncle and I—my uncle had come along with us to add to the distraction and because he is a very keen golfer—ran with my father to find shelter in the forest.” He glanced at her. “I suppose I needn’t tell you what happened next.”
She shook her head because she honestly couldn’t help herself. “If it hadn’t happened to me, I would think you had hallucinated it. So, did the three of you travel... well, you know.”
“My uncle and I wound up in the past whilst my father, quite fortuitously, remained in our current day.”
She looked at him gravely. “That must have been terrifying.”
“It was,” he agreed. He dragged his hand through his hair. “I don’t like to think about that next few weeks, to be honest. I was able to come home, but my uncle remained in the past.”
“Is he still there?” she asked in surprise.
“Aye, and willingly.”
She watched him as he passed another car or two and wondered if he might have unburdened himself enough for the day. “You don’t have to tell me anything else,” she said. “We could just drive in silence.”
