Hugh led the way into the Kirkyard Hotel. His guests followed in varying stages of wonder. While he purposefully chose a hotel housed in an older building, the seventeenth century structure was still more modern than fifty percent of them were accustomed to. The old-world décor more in tune with Connor and Emmy’s time.
Still, the dark paneled walls and heavy furnishings weren’t as shocking to Laird and Rhys as the evening wear displayed by some of the ladies lingering in the lobby, waiting for tables at one of the restaurants. Great expanses of bare feminine legs weren’t something they’d had a chance to encounter at the hospital.
At the front desk, he gathered up keys for the extra rooms he’d reserved. The electronic key cards would no doubt raise a dozen questions. Hugh chuckled at the thought, remembering how incessantly inquisitive he had been when he’d first roamed Claire’s compact townhouse in Spokane.
What is this? What is that? Why? Why? Why?
He still did the same thing sometimes, when he came across something new. He’d studied hard to acclimate to this time, to fit in, but surprises still came his way. Laird, Rhys, and Connor had displayed none of the same curiosity in Hugh’s presence, as yet. Not about the car he drove or the more modern buildings they’d passed. Not one of them had played with the controls for the windows.
Either they had more self-control than he, or Scarlett and Emmy had done a thorough job of preparing them for the future.
Hugh wished he’d had any preparation at all. Hearing how they’d met and married their spouses had been a revelation to him. Not at all like his experience. He had to wonder why.
“There you are, Mr. Urquhart.” The front desk clerk handed him the keys with a smile. “The rooms are all connected as you requested.”
“My thanks.”
“Oh and I have a message for you.”
“A message?” He looked to Claire. They hadn’t told anyone where they’d be.
He unfolded it and read the short missive with a frown.
“Who’s it from?” his wife asked curiously.
“My publisher,” he answered. His upcoming novel reminiscing his many conversations with David Hume, Frederick the Great and François-Marie Arouet, known by most in this time by hisnom de plume,Voltaire, as a work of fiction was set to be released in the spring. His publisher had been hounding him as if the event were happening the following week. “I’ll return his call down here while all of ye head to the rooms and get settled.”
He dealt out the key cards and watched them head to the elevators. A part of him would regret witnessing their reactions when the doors closed. His first encounter with a lift had been horrifying.
With a sigh, he turned on his heel and headed not for the public phones but to one of the hotel bars called The Whisky Room. A more apt place to meet his visitor, Hugh couldn’t imagine. The sight of the old man at the end of the bar hunched over a tankard of ale was one he’d seen a dozen times or more. Three hundred years before.
Donell pushed back his cap when Hugh took the barstool next to him. His ruddy face wrinkled. Little tufts of gray hair stood out over his pointy ears, but his eyes were like those of a child. Lively and impish. “Ye got my message then.”
“Aye, though I’m curious why ye asked me to come alone.”
The elfin old sot took a long pull on his ale before answering. He did seem to get some perverse pleasure out of making people wait. “I wanted to hae a chat wi’ ye wi’oot the others’ ceaseless badgering. I truly dinnae expect ye here, ye ken?”
“But now that I am, perhaps ye can explain to me why my story is such a far cry from the others.”
“Aye, I suppose I should hae done it long ago. ‘Tis one of my greatest regrets.”
Still, rather than giving Hugh the satisfaction of producing an immediate explanation, Donell buried his nose in his tankard once more. Exasperated, Hugh lifted a finger to draw the bartender’s attention and ordered his favorite rye shaken neat.
It wasn’t until he’d taken his first sip that Donell came up for air, dragging the back of his hand across his lips with a lusty sigh.
“Well?”
“Well it ‘twould be easiest to blame yer wife, to be sure.”
“Sorcha? How would she be to blame?”
“Getting her to come aboot took longer than I anticipated,” Donell confessed, then ordered a refill on his ale.
“Come aboot to what?”
“Yer Claire’s no’ the sort of lass ye can just drop the perfect man in front of and expect her to gi’ in to the throes of love, ye ken? No’ in the state she was in at the time,” the old man explained.
The state she was in at the time they met held no mystery for Hugh even as ambiguous as the description was. When he’d first met her, she’d been in full mourning for her first husband. Closed off completely from any sort of romantic relationship or even a physical one. Though she’d come around eventually, he had no doubt if he’d tried to pick her up in a bar like this one in the beginning, she would have dismissed him without a second look.
