Our Shared Horizon (Kaitlyn and the Highlander Book 10) Read online

  Magnus held up his glass, “Aye, I ken tis true. I will be there for it.”

  Quentin entered the kitchen. “Ready to go, Boss?”

  I looked at our calendar hanging on the refrigerator. “To the gym?”

  Magnus kissed me on the cheek. Quentin said, “I’m taking Magnus to the gym then Beaty and I are going to the animal shelter.”

  Archie pattered into the room, climbed into my lap and made me read him a board book until he fell asleep for a nap, pinning me to a chair for the next hour. Even after all this time, I would not dislodge him, he deserved a lap. He also would be dislodged soon enough because of the baby. I wanted to give him plenty of Kay-be time before the baby came.

  While I was pinned I asked Emma to bring me the antique ‘Johnny’s book’ and while I read it, I made notes. I had found the list of vessel symbols there, and had found a way to correspond them with the tracker we had over our house. But most of the vessels were in the vault in the future.

  I had talked with Magnus about him going there to photograph the vessels so I would have notes to catalogue them, but whenever he talked about going it got weird for me, the idea of him leaving, even for a day.

  Quentin and Beaty returned from the animal shelter in Jax. She was wearing very high heels and collapsed onto the couch. “M’feet are verra pained.”

  Emma said, “You don’t have to wear those, dear Beaty. It’s not an every-woman thing, nor an everybody-who-is-modern thing, it’s just a style. You can choose a different style—”

  Beaty said, “Aye, but I want tae be in the style of Khloe — have ye seen her fashion? Her heels are verra high.”

  Emma sighed. “Of course I’ve seen her, she is a fashion icon, but you could also choose Meghan Markle. She is an actress who is now British royalty. She might be a better role model—”

  “Och? The monarchy?” She waved her hands. “If tis nae Stuart, I daena want tae ken of it.”

  Emma looked at me for help.

  I said, “No, I believe Queen Elizabeth is a Windsor, the intrigue between the Stuarts and the succession is so three centuries ago.”

  “Tis why I am nae tae look like a queen and instead I want tae look like Khloe.”

  “A Kardashian while at the animal shelter?”

  She said, “Aye, what better place than this, so full of animals that be needin’ help?”

  I asked, “You didn’t bring any home?”

  Quentin said, “Not for lack of trying.”

  Beaty said, “We need some barn cats, Quenny, one in every color.”

  He explained, “I thought going to the shelter would get her mind off Murthy, the pig, but now I think I prefer the idea of a pig and some chickens to the idea of twenty cats.”

  I said, “Beaty, I’m allergic to cats, I just... I’m so sorry, we just can’t have one.”

  She sighed. “But what will chase the vermin?”

  “We don’t have vermin.”

  Quentin said, “We have a ton of cockroaches.”

  Chef Zach from the kitchen said, “No we don’t! We do not, we do. Not. If you see one tell me, I’ll call the exterminator.”

  Emma said, “What we need are more lizards to eat the cockroaches.”

  Beaty said, “The ones outside?” She shivered. “Would they live here with us in our home?”

  “No, just outside.”

  “Oh! They can keep the pig company then.”

  We all laughed. Archie woke up from my chest and reached for Beaty, “Beebee,” and held out his hands to get picked up and carried to the kitchen for a snack.

  Beaty did look beautiful, fresh and pretty. Her makeup was flawless and her clothes expensive and well-planned. She even had Quentin dressed in the same kind of style, jeans and trainers, but hip because of her influence.

  Quentin sat down beside me and glanced at his gold watch. “I need to pick up Boss in about ten minutes. What are you working on?”

  “Making notes about the vessels. I want to catalogue them all and begin to locate the ones that are missing, but I need to see them. I have the list and the rest are in the future in Magnus’s vault. And for obvious reasons I don’t want to part with him.”

  “I will go.”

  I thought for a moment. Then said, “You’d have to see Lady Mairead. You’d have to get around the kingdom without Magnus or me... then again Hammie is there. You could meet with him. He’d show you around.”

  “Let’s talk about it with Magnus. I’m offering to go. Each thing we do makes us safer and safer, and this is one of those things. I’ve been walking around an animal shelter all day, I could use a purpose. I was a colonel there for a while. I was protecting a castle. Now I’m kind of bored.”

  “Yeah, let’s talk to him about it, maybe that’s what we need to do.”

  The next day there was a storm.

  Twenty - Kaitlyn

  Magnus and Quentin went to meet the storm. I stayed in the house and chewed my fingernails down to the quick. I had to cancel a video conference call with an antiquities dealer because I couldn’t handle that right—

  Quentin texted:

  It’s Hayley, we called an ambulance. We’re headed to the hospital.

  Oh shit.

  Yeah, she doesn’t look good.

  I’ll meet you there.

  I ran through the house, yelling like a mad woman, “Hayley is going to the hospital! Beaty want to come?”

  “Nae, I daena like the hospital, tis nae...” She shivered at the memory.

  I crouched down in front of Archie. “Kay-be needs to go to the hospital to see Aunt Hayley. I will be right back. You stay with Emma and Beaty. If you need me, you tell Emma that you need me and you can talk to me on the phone. Okay?”

  “Okay, Kay-be...” He threw his arms around my neck and we hugged tightly, with only a few squeezed tears from my heart. Every hug from him made me awfully emotional. I grabbed my keys and searched for my bag.

  Emma met me in the hall. “Here’s a stack of clothes.”

  I stopped in my tracks. “You have these?”

  “Yeah, a pile of clothes for emergencies. They’re for you, but they’ll work for Hayley too. She’ll just have to roll up the cuff on the joggers.”

  I threw my arms around her neck. “Did I tell you today how much I love you?”

  She said, “No, but you did tell me yesterday when I remembered to pick up chocolate.”

  “Well, I do, and it’s not just because you remember things, that’s only one of the many amazing things about you.”

  The next thing I was driving to the hospital.

  “How many times have we been here before?” We were sitting in Quentin’s truck in the parking lot of the hospital, waiting for news.

  Quentin said, “Too many times, way too many.”

  “Did she say anything? Where’s Fraoch? What happened?”

  “She was coughing, sick, and sopping wet.”

  “Great, they’re going to think it’s Coronavirus.”

  Quentin said, “Yep, her mother is out of town with her boyfriend, she hired a manager to run the shop. She said she would come back if there’s a need. She wants you to call her as soon as you know.”

  I asked, “Do we have our backstory?”

  “Yep, worked in Scotland for Magnus. Hard to explain the clothes though.”

  “True that. Weird how Scotland is a modern country yet women still have to wear these bodices and wool skirts — it’s a travesty. The UN should do something.”

  A while later we spoke to a nurse on the phone. No, we couldn’t come in. Quentin passed his phone to me. The nurse asked, “Has she traveled to Asia, Europe, or Africa?”

  “Um, yeah, she was in Scotland.”

  She said, “Okay, we’ll run tests.”

  “Oh.” I took a deep breath, “Could you do all the tests? It’s a... like a musty castle where she was staying, like run a test on plague if you don’t mind.” She didn’t seem to understand the urgency, so I said, “I’m serious, chec
k her for plague, the fevers, not just the new viruses, all the viruses through history.”

  She sighed irritably. “It’s probably a virus we know.”

  “Sure, but check for the old timey viruses too, just to be on the safe side.”

  “Fine, we’ll call you when we know what we’re dealing with.”

  “Oh, yes, of course.”

  Quentin asked, “What should we do?”

  “We go home. They’ll let us know tomorrow.”

  Her tests came back negative, and the next day she got to come home.

  I helped her up to her room, and got her into her bed. She said, “I don’t want to talk, I just want to sleep.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “Yeah, well welcome home, you look terrible. Like you’ve been living-in-the-eighteenth-century-and-not-well, terrible.”

  She chuckled, “Ugh, that’s talking, not sleeping.” She pulled the covers up and closed her eyes.

  “Well, I want to hear all about it, you can’t make me wait, right?”

  She pretended to snore.

  “Fine, but just to put me out of my misery, tell me — did something happen with Fraoch?”

  She nodded, but her eyes were sad. She pulled the covers over her head. “I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

  “Okay, sure, I’m right downstairs. Here’s your phone though, thank heavens for your waterproof case because everything in your bag was sopping wet.”

  She reached out from under the covers for it.

  “Do you have photos?”

  “Yeah.”

  She pulled it under the blankets, and a moment later held it out for me to see. There was a photo, a selfie of Hayley and Fraoch on a bed smiling. Fraoch’s eyes were closed but his smile in his big beard was wide.

  “Aw honey, you got it on with the kilted hottie from the eighteenth century?”

  She was hidden under the blankets except for the top of her head. She nodded.

  I scrolled through photo after photo. It looked like the same few days, so her visit hadn’t been for very long.

  “Okay,” I tucked the phone back into her hand. “That will tide me over. Go ahead, get some rest. We’ll talk in a bit.”

  She nodded again.

  I turned the lights down so she could sleep and left her room.

  Twenty-one - Kaitlyn

  A couple of hours later she called me when I was in the living room. “First, I’m hungry, tell Zach I need food, wait, not food, I need treats. I need a Coke. Also, I need you, we need to talk.”

  I grabbed a can of Coke and a package of chocolate chip cookies, even though Zach protested it was the last thing she needed.

  I raced to her room, put the can on her nightstand, ripped open the box of cookies, passed her one, and climbed into bed beside her.

  She asked, “Did Zach complain?”

  “He called it junk food. We’ve discussed this before, sometimes it’s necessary. He doesn’t learn.” I bit a cookie. “Tell me everything. Because this has been exciting. Of course you’ve always been a bit of a drama queen—”

  She smiled. “You’re the drama queen and you know it. I’m the sensible one. Unless I’m drunk. I try not to be that.” She sighed.

  I said, “So you and Fraoch?”

  She nodded, then coughed, but it didn’t sound alarming. She took a long drink of Coke, then said, “I married his sorry ass.”

  “Uh oh, ‘sorry ass’? Tell me the story.”

  She turned to her side so we were facing each other on the pillows. “When I got there, you aren’t going to believe this, he was going to marry someone else.”

  “That’s fast, it was only a few days. What did you do?”

  She listed on her fingers. “At first I was disappointed yet accepting. Then I got sad. Then I got drunk. Then I tried to be a big girl. Then he told me he ‘wanted tae spend his life with me’ and so—”

  My eyes went wide. “He said that to you?”

  “Aye. He clutched my hand to his heart and said it — we were surrounded by the Thor comic books I was reading to him.”

  “This might be the greatest love story ever told.”

  “That means a lot coming from Mrs Magnus.”

  “So he said that and you...?”

  “I stood up over him and I commanded him to marry me.”

  I took a bite of cookie and said with my mouth full. “Dude, you’re awesome.”

  “That’s basically what he said.” A slow smile spread across her face. “I told him if he didn’t marry me he was going to break my heart and so he said he would marry me. He’s a good boy, he will do most anything I tell him to. And you know what he said? He still likes me, even when I was bossing him. He likes me.”

  I reached in the box and pulled out another cookie and passed it to her. “This sounds just like all your dreams come true.”

  “It is. Bless his heart, he has no idea how to do half the things he needs to do, but he’s a smart boy, he lets me tell him.”

  “Tell me about your wedding, was it beautiful, big? Did you tie your hands together? Did everyone ooh and ahh? Did he kiss the bride?”

  “Absolutely none of that.”

  My eyes went wide. “Tell me!”

  “He came to Lizbeth’s rooms to get me just before dawn. We rode in the rain from the castle to the village and went by ourselves to the church. We held hands and said a plight and troth, that’s what he called it, something like that. It was just us and the minister. Then we went through the rain to the inn.” She raised her brow with a wicked expression. “He seemed to think the consummation was what actually wedded us.”

  I squealed and clapped my hands. “Tell me more! I’m on the edge of my seat, what’s he got under that kilt?”

  She grinned wider. “That’s my husband you’re objectifying. He has plenty under the kilt.”

  “Were you satisfied? Did he bring you to... oh Fraoch, oh my, oh Fraoch, oh oh...?”

  “There was definitely some of that. The first time was kind of pedestrian but we had to stay in bed because it would not stop raining, so we got some practice in. He likes it when I ride his beard.”

  I pretended to faint away, flinging to my back in a swoon. I opened one eye and said, “That is fucking awesome.”

  “I loved him so much.”

  I rolled back to my side facing her. “That is past tense.”

  “Because I’m mad.”

  “So what happened?”

  “All these men filled the inn. We thought it was just to get out of the rain, but there were so many. We were trapped in our room because when we tried to leave they were wanting to grab me or kill Fraoch, or... God, it was awful. We had to escape. I had my handgun, Fraoch had his sword, we used loud music, we just pushed our way out of the inn. It was very tense and so freaking scary.”

  “What men were they?”

  “I’m not sure, though one of the men was Vile Mac, I killed him.”

  My eyes went wide. “You’ll need to tell Magnus about it.”

  “When we got to our horses they pulled me down, and so we had to fight to get away. That’s when I shot Vile Mac I killed a guy in the eighteenth century. Maybe more than one.”

  “Been there, done that.”

  “Fraoch killed men too, and then I got on Gatorbelle and she bolted and I thought I was going to die again as my horse ran away through the torrential downpour. Fraoch finally caught up to me at the castle and got me inside and that’s when I got sick.”

  “So you were still on your honeymoon, basically?”

  “The weather and the mob kind of stressed me out, I succumbed.”

  “And so you came home?”

  She pouted. “I didn’t want to leave him. I told him I wouldn’t leave him. I told him he had to come with me and do you see him here?”

  “No, he didn’t come.”

  “He let go of me at the last minute. He didn’t love me enough to come with me and...” She exhaled. “I might never ever forgive him.”
r />   I pouted along with her and we stared at each other quietly. Then I said, “You know why he didn’t come, right?”

  “Because he’s chickenshit and doesn’t love me.”

  “No, because he’s scared. He’s afraid of the vessels and doesn’t want to do it. He’s probably so sad that he couldn’t be brave enough to come. You should forgive him for it.”

  “Easy for you to say, your husband isn’t afraid of anything.”

  I scoffed. “Bullshit, Magnus is plenty afraid of things. Hospitals for one. He does not like physicians and all their blinky-light machines. He also, and this applies to your situation, Hayley, believed the vessels were evil and went against God. He truly believed that jumping through time was going to mean he’d spend eternity in hell. He prayed over it, a lot. He would have never done it and kept doing it unless it had been an absolute necessity. So Fraoch is feeling that way, I bet, and as much as he loves you, he’s afraid of God. What do you expect him to choose?”

  “I guess that would be difficult.”

  “Magnus got over it in time, sort of, but he’s often nervous and afraid. You can’t fault your man for that.”

  “I can fault him for lying to me. For saying he was going to jump and then not and...”

  “Did he think you were going to survive?”

  “No.”

  “Poor Fraoch. He lost his wife to childbirth and now thinks he lost you on his honeymoon... He doesn’t understand the vessels, or what to do to make God happy. He loves you and sent you away to get well. He was actually so selfless — you know what? I forgive him for doing it to you. I mean, I know you get to decide ultimately if you will forgive a man who would rather send you away to save your life than keep you there selfishly, but I’ve made my choice on it.” I smiled a little.

  She asked, “You forgive him?”

  “I saw Fraoch’s eyes when I forced him to jump, he was not kidding that he’s scared of it. So yeah, I just want you to know, if you complain about him, I’m going to take his side.”