“That’s too bad,” Kris said mournfully. “At least tell me he has an accent.”
“He does.”
“Now I’m jealous.” Kris paused. “Can you get pics?”
With a honk, Myles pulled to a stop on the opposite curb and got out of his car. He waved an arm and Mikah held up a finger. “I’ll see what I can do. I’ll call you later, okay?”
“One pic! And I’ll be waiting for it. You better be a good girl, though,” Kris warned. “Your dream man might not like you messing around on him.”
Mikah rolled her eyes, pushing aside the guilt thatwasniggling at the back of her mind, as if she were being unfaithful to her dream man by going out to dinner with the handsome curator. “I regret ever telling you about that.”
“You know I love you.”
“I know.” She darted a quick look down the street to her left before stepping out into the street to dash across the four lanes of traffic between her and Myles. “I love y—”
The words were cut off with a startled cry as a long series of honks to her right reminded her abruptly that the traffic would be coming from the other direction. Cars swerved around her, wheels squealing and horns blaring.
“Mikes!” Kris shouted.
One car continued to come straight at her and caught like a deer in the headlights, Mikah could only stare in horror.
It sped toward her.
It galloped toward her?
Wait! Were those… horses?
“Mikes,” Kris yelled again, in the background.
The world went dark.
Chapter Two
“Lass? Lassie!” a gravelly brogue cut through her unconsciousness. “Are ye all right?”
Mikah blinked her eyes open and stared up at the faces surrounding her, trying but failing to focus on any one of them. Stars burst painfully in front of her eyes and she squeezed them shut again, raising a hand to her temple. “I don’t think so,” she murmured, but even that little effort felt like it would split her skull.
“My lady!” a new voice broke through the haze that surrounded her. Mikah cracked her lids apart to squint at the newcomer, a youngish man in a red coat and black hat who looked like a cross between a member of the British Royal Guard and an equestrian rider. He pushed through the onlookers ogling the spectacle she was making and came quickly to her side, kneeling next to her.
He was followed by a young woman in a gray dress, who also dropped down at Mikah’s side. “My lady, are you all right? I couldn’t believe my eyes when that wagon ran into you. Then to go on as if nothing were amiss!”
“I don’t… I’m not…” Mikah stuttered, letting them pull her to a sitting position but then stared blankly at the red-jacketed man and the woman in the long dress. “Who are you?”
“Och, but the lass must have taken a blow to the head,” the older man to her left declared, drawing her attention. He was dressed in rough clothing of browns and blacks and wore a day’s growth of gray beard and a cap on his thinning hair.
“Do I know you?” she couldn’t stop herself from asking. The effort brought further pain to her temple and she tried to rub it away. She heard Kris’s panic echoing in her mind. Where was her phone?
“I think the question, lass, is whether ye ken who ye are,” he said in his thick brogue.
“Of course, I do,” she responded immediately. “I’m Mikah…”
She halted with a frown, for that seemed suddenly wrong, though she couldn’t understand why. She was Mikah Bauer, no doubt about that, but at the same time, she wasn’t. It made no sense at all and merely made her head hurt more to contemplate the incongruity, so she just shook her head.
Taking her head shake for a negative, the older man grunted as if his theory had been confirmed, but the younger woman, seeming eager to please, said, “This is Lady Hero Conagham.”
“The old Conagham of Ayr’s widow?” one of the crowd asked, and the young man nodded in confirmation.
“Thought she were down in Lundun these days,” the old man argued. “Been over a year since the old laird died. What’s she doin’ up ‘ere now?”
