Emmy exhaled with feeling. “God,yes. There’s nothing worse than carriages unless it’s the horses pulling them.”
“How long have you been gone?”
“Three months. You?”
“Five years,” Scarlett sighed.
Emmy’s shock showed in her rounded eyes. “Wow. That long?”
Scarlett nodded and turned her head to smile at her daughter, once again engrossed in the colorful pages. “It seemed so quick looking back, but now, here I feel like I’m out of my own skin somehow. This isn’t my home anymore, yet I’m already slipping back into the creature comforts.”
“It would be easy. Itwaseasy,” Emmy corrected. “But my life in Baltimore never suited again without Connor.”
Scarlett bobbed her head again. She knew all too well what home meant to a woman who’d found a love that transcended time. It was unlike anything she’d known before.
Through the open door, they observed the two men standing together in the hall. One in full kilt, the other in a tailored, if somewhat old-fashioned suit. The sight was so striking, Scarlett scarcely registered the mounting contraction.
Both men were well over six feet, broad of build. Fierce in a way that couldn’t be defined by twenty-first century standards. Men who had suffered, fought for life in a way no one had to any longer. Laird more so than Connor obviously. He was battle worn, tested by life, and while comfortable by his own time’s standards, far more primitive than anyone in this day and age could imagine. He’d suffered from hunger, disease, and war. At just thirty-two, there was already an attractive touch of gray in his beard. While he was so handsome he could still—and already had—turned the heads of women and men alike in any era, the experience of his life was etched upon him in scars both visible and unseen.
He was magnetic. Irresistible. To Scarlett, at least. A pang of tenderness tugged at her heart.
Rhys joined the men with his usual swagger and cocky grin. To her surprise, he sported blue scrubs instead of his kilt. All three men had been agog since entering the hospital, wandering the halls and touching everything in sight. They’d all been firmly admonished to keep their hands to themselves. Either Rhys hadn’t listened or he’d sweet-talked someone into touching for him. Arms held out from his sides, he turned to model the garb to the other men.
“I’d like to get a set of those and get out of this dress and corset,” Emmy lamented. “I wonder where he got them.”
As if in answer to her question, Rhys gestured down the hall. When he turned away again, Laird made to follow.
An ache of another sort pulled at Scarlett. Laird in scrubs?
“I do believe some deep-seated fantasy I never knew I had is about to come true,” Scarlett murmured, envisioning the end result.Yum.
Emmy giggled, a playful somewhat naughty sound Scarlett hadn’t yet heard from her. “Since it’s actually a fantasy I’ve been harboring for some time, I hope Connor changes, too.”
Then all thoughts of desire and muscles bulging against blue cotton fled. “Here comes another one.”
“Won’t be long now.”
“Laird better change fast or he might miss the birth,” Scarlett panted. “Damn, I won’t even be able to appreciate the sight of him if he changes, will I?”
“There’s plenty of time for that.”
Laird
The next morning
“She’s beautiful,” Emmy cooed over the newborn.
“She’s terrifyingly wee,” Laird contradicted, his burr grave with worry. He sat close to the portable incubator with Hermione on his knee, his arm through the hole, and his bronzed finger encircled by tiny pink fingers with a strength that surprised him. Yet she was so frail.
She had come into this world with only the faintest of mewls and been whisked away by the doctor named Patel before they’d even gotten a good look at her. They’d returned her hours later in this box with numerous tubes and wires connected to her wee body.
He’d only known real fear once in his life. Not in battle, when his life had been on the line, but at the thought of losing Scarlett years before. He felt it again now. A churning, knotted twist in his gut at the thought of losing this precious lass. Aye, they’d not the means to spare her in his time, but what benefit would there be in this journey if she could not be saved in this one?
“Hermione entered the world hale and hearty, wailing with volume enough to drown out a banshee. This one is like a kitten.”
Connor clapped him on the shoulder. “She’s a fine lass and soon she’ll have the lungs enough to bring down the roof, I’d wager.”
“Aye, I’ve two bonny lasses.” Laird spoke with more confidence than he felt, never tearing his eyes away from his newborn daughter. Willing her to breathe. To thrive. “Born of a bonny mother I love more than life. Even if she continues to bear me only daughters.”
