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Home of Violet Graham
Leith, Scotland
“Virginia Hughes, oh my blessed Lord!”
Ginny rolled her eyes but couldn’t suppress a smile as Violet Graham smothered her in a tight embrace. “Hello, Granny.”
“Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?” her grandmother asked as she drew back to look into Ginny’s face with a beam of pleasure before squeezing her close again. “I would have picked you up at the airport if I’d known.”
“It’s fine,” she assured the older woman. “I flew into Glasgow anyway. Besides, I didn’t want to trouble you or Brontë.”
Having her older sister assigned to the task would have meant an hour or more with no escape as she was pummeled with unanswerable questions. A couple of months ago Brontë wouldn’t have had a pedestal to stand on, given her own troubled past with relationships. Regrettably, these days her sister had not a mere boyfriend, but a fiancé. Now, there was sure to be a patronizing oration about how lucky she was to have found the “perfect man”—as if that were a real thing—while Ginny failed to do the same. From there, maybe a neat segue into how someday Ginny might be as fortunate as she.
The usual standard practice of sisterly superiority. Brontë meant well, but no thanks.
“Even so, you should have called. Everyone deserves a happy face waiting when they finally see themselves freed from a giant metal tube after nine bloody hours of captivity.”
Ginny grinned at that. Her grandmother was notorious in the family for her hatred of flying, which was why they’d come to Scotland to see her so often over the years rather than the other way around.
Violet’s soothing gaze sobered despite Ginny’s fixed smile. Her cool fingers trailed down Ginny’s cheek as a frown furrowed her brow and her lips turned down in a moue. “What is it, dear? You have such sadness in your eyes.”
Immediately Ginny closed them, cursing their betrayal...and her grandmother’s uncanny ability to read her granddaughters’ moods. “I’m fine, Granny. You look great, by the way.”
Her grandmother didn’t take the hint. “You’re not still mourning that ex of yours, are you? You’re better off without him.”
“I know.” She opened her eyes again and summoned another stalwart smile. “I know,” she insisted under Violet’s dubious stare.
She did know. Life without Luke Jorgenson was a million times better than it had been with him. Problem was, it had taken the humiliation of divorcing him after less than a year of marriage to realize it. No, that wasn’t quite right. It had taken less than a month after marrying him for her to realize it, but months more to worm her way out of it. The real problem was in Luke’s inability to come to the same conclusion about her. If there was one thing more mortifying than being married and divorced by the age of twenty-three, it was having an ex-husband who refused to accept the finality of it all. In the five months since the divorce was finalized, he added stalker to the list.
He hadn’t merely driven her from him and their home. He’d driven her out of an entire country. Hence, her hasty trip to Scotland, the land of her mother’s birth. Hence, the plethora of calls and texts that had gone unanswered. She didn’t want him to know where she was. Didn’t want to share the air she breathed with him ever again.
Unfortunately, in her rush to get away from him, she’d put herself within earshot of her grandmother and the inevitable series of lectures beginning with I told you so and If you had listened to me in the first place that she would undoubtedly be blessed with in the near future. Granny had been the only one who hadn’t been charmed by Luke. The only one who had warned her.
Ginny could only hope that Violet would parse those sermons out over the days and weeks to come rather than heap them all upon her while Ginny stood in the foyer with her backpack at her feet.
All the more justification for her circuitous route between here and the airport. Granny didn’t need to know that she’d spent the last four days hiking across the country in an effort to delay this dreaded moment.
“What’s keeping ye there, Vi?”
To Ginny’s surprise, an aged yet sprightly Scotsman joined them in the entry hall. His age was difficult to pinpoint. The many wrinkles on his face and thinning hair were at odds with his ease of movement and the animated twinkle in his blue eyes. He could have been sixty or an octogenarian like her grandmother.
He caught her hand with an engaging, impish grin. “Och, what have we here? This must be another of yer bonny granddaughters, aye Vi?”
“I am.” Ginny gazed down at him as he was a few inches shorter than she, shaking his hand. “And you are?”
Her granny cleared her throat. “This is my...friend, Donell. Donell, this Virginia.”
Friend? Was that a blush on her grandmother’s cheeks? OMG, did Granny have a boyfriend?
“Call me Ginny,” said granddaughter corrected. “How did you two meet?”
Violet hemmed and hawed. “Oh, here and there! We’ve known each other for years.”
“It was autumn of ’75,” Donell countered with a faraway but fond expression. “Bumped into one another quite literally at a conference on sex discrimination at St. Andrews.”
With a slow blink, Violet nodded. “My goodness, that’s right. You convinced me to join the protesters outside Parliament....”
“Where ye walloped some puir bobby’s noggin wi’ yer sign....”
“And you bailed me out of jail,” Violet finished with a nostalgic smile. “I’d almost forgotten about that.”
My God, Ginny thought, they’re finishing each other’s sentences. Granny did have a boyfriend. Incredible.
Donell turned his grin upon her. “Yer dear grandmother helped pass the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975, ye ken?”
“I never would have been there if it hadn’t been for you,” her granny told him.
“That’s me.” He offered a modest shrug. “Pulling the strings of history.”
“Fascinating.”
Ginny’s droll response hid the fact that she actually did find it fascinating. She’d love to hear more about it, but at that moment, she was dead on her feet from days of walking. Emotionally exhausted from her escape from New York and trek around the Highlands. More than anything she wanted a shower, a hot meal, and a nap. In that order.
“Do you mind if I go up to my room, Granny? I’m pretty tired.”
“Jet lag.” Violet nodded sympathetically. Ginny didn’t correct her assumption. “We can catch up later. Brontë and Tris are away on one of their trips at the moment, so there’ll be plenty of peace and quiet for you.”
Ginny’s phone buzzed in her pocket as if reminding her of the conflict she’d fled from. Yes, that sounded perfect. Kissing her grandmother’s cheek, she hugged her close for a moment. “Thank you, Granny.”
* * *
Peace and quiet lasted about as long as her shower. Ginny was just getting dressed when there was a hard thump against the wall followed by muted conversation. She finished dressing and went down the hall to investigate.
“Just cut the string then. A girl needs to breathe.”
In the next bedroom, her sister stood in the middle of the room with her back to the man behind her. Brontë’s long hair was pulled over one shoulder, but it didn’t begin to cover her curious costume. Or the stays that cinched her waist.
“What are you wearing?”
Her sister’s head popped up, expression shifting from astonishment to joy in the blink of an eye. She ran to Ginny with her arms wide, and with no deceleration, flung her arms around Ginny, momentum carrying them back several feet before they teetered and fell to the floor.
“Oh my God, I’ve missed you!” Her sister’s effusive enthusiasm was lost to laughter as she kissed Ginny’s cheek and smothered her in a hug that rocked from side to side. “What a surprise! Why didn’t you text me and tell me you were coming to visit?”
Maybe because the last time Ginny had seen her sister was when Brontë had come to New York to be a bridesmaid at her wedding to Luke. No embarrassment there. Brontë had been living in London at the time prior to moving to Edinburgh to stay with their grandmother after an accident the previous year that had left Granny confined to a wheelchair with casts on both legs.
Back then, Brontë’s life had been as bleak as Ginny’s in many ways. With nothing good to report on either end, they’d hardly texted at all until recently, much less visited.
Brontë’s demeanor expressed none of the despondency her texts once had, a tenor that changed a few months ago when, out of the blue, she announced her engagement to a man the rest of the family had never even heard a whisper about. In person, she exuded enviable bliss encompassed by an aura of contentment her former boyfriends had never been able summon. Laughing in a way that seemed to come from the inside and radiate outward, she climbed to her feet and helped Ginny up.
“What are you doing here? Don’t you have classes to teach?”
The presence of another person in the room unbalanced Ginny sufficiently to send whatever excuse she was considering spiraling into oblivion. If this was the reason for her sister’s happiness, she could completely understand the rapid progression of their relationship. He was gorgeous. Beyond gorgeous.
“Oh! Ginny, allow me to introduce you to Mr. Tristram MacKintosh.” Ginny cast Brontë a curious glance as her perky tone shifted to one of peculiar formality. A quick look only. She turned back to the handsome man as her sister continued, “Tris, this is my younger sister, Ms. Virginia Hughes.”
As Violet had, Brontë kindly dismissed the Mrs. and the Jorgenson that had been fleetingly attached to her. Ginny offered her hand. To her surprise, he didn’t shake it. Rather he engulfed it between his in a far warmer welcome. He topped it with a slight bow over their clasped hands that should have come across as pretentious but suited him perfectly.
“Ms. Hughes, I am delighted to make yer acquaintance at last. Brontë has told me many stories about ye.” He punctuated it all with a smile that reached all the way to his muted green eyes and made her believe he was actually delighted to meet her. Not a mere platitude, but sincerity.
“And I am equally delighted to make yours,” she responded, realizing it was the truth.
There was something rather delightful in knowing there was an honest to God man out there who could bring such happiness to a woman, her sister most especially. When their eyes met, however brief, the look conveyed intimacy and affection. Envy wrapped its ugly little fist around Ginny’s heart for an instant before she kicked it to the curb. Curious and skeptical of the haste of the couple’s courtship prior to her arrival, she now found herself thrilled for Brontë.
She also found herself eager for her sister’s lecture on relationships so long as it came with the assurance that the good fortune that had befallen Brontë would soon come her way.
She’d be ecstatic to be so lucky at love for a change. If this wonderfully tall, dark, and handsome Scot and the equally impressive one she’d seen at the battlefield were any indication, there might be a man worth having in Scotland.
What were the odds of finding one?
“I don’t know what you’ve heard about me from Brontë, but I have to say, I haven’t heard anything about you yet,” Ginny said.
Tris grinned and crooked his arm in Ginny’s direction. “We’ll have to remedy that straightaway. I would also be interested in hearing yer perspective as a teacher on the modern school room. First, may I ask after yer journey? I hope it was without incident.”
She cast Brontë an inquisitive look, but her sister only gazed upon him with dazed adoration. “I’d rather talk about yours. Granny said you were travelling. To where? A renaissance festival?”
Her sister was bound in tight, rigid stays over a loose blouse with a drawstring neckline and billowing sleeves. Her bottom half was covered by a full, floor length tartan skirt, the rich blue wool plaid crossed with lines of black, red, and green. A black bodice and cloak were tossed across the foot of the bed. Tris was clad in dark green knee breeches and a matching wool coat with bright gold buttons, and stockings as white as the folds of the cravat peeking out from the neckline of a black waistcoat. While the exceedingly retro style sat ill on Brontë’s shoulders, Tris seemed oddly at ease with the formality.
Having been a costumed historical interpreter—aka tour guide—at Colonial Williamsburg once upon a time, Ginny could place the period clothing with pretty fair accuracy to the pre-revolutionary era of the mid-1700s. Not the sort of stuff one wore around the house.
Or around the century.
“Seriously, why are you dressed like that?”
Brontë crossed her arms over her compressed bosom with a blatantly guilty look. “Don’t tell Granny.”
As good as a confession that something was up. It was an unspoken fact in the family that Brontë loved Granny perhaps more than she did their parents, and vice versa. The pair had their little secrets for as long as Ginny could remember, but never from each other.
Her eyes widened even more when out of the corner of her eye she saw Tris sweep a small pile of coins on the dresser into the top drawer out of the corner of her eye.
Along with—a handgun? Something that was pretty damned illegal in Scotland.
“Is that a gun? What the hell, Brontë?”
Brontë closed the door with a hiss. “Shush, Granny doesn’t know we’re back yet.”
“Wow, that bad, huh? What have you gotten yourself into?”
Though her sister looked awash with guilt, Tris merely chuckled under his breath and pressed a kiss to Brontë’s temple. “Ye’ve always been a terrible liar, lass.”
“I’m an excellent liar!” Brontë protested.
“No, you’re not,” Ginny and Tris responded at the same time.
Still smiling, Tris opened another drawer and pulled out some clothing, then retrieved a shirt from the wardrobe. “Ye might as well tell her, lass. Meanwhile, I’m going to change and then fetch some refreshments for us all. I have a feeling we’ll be needing some fortification, aye?” He paused by the door and executed a bow in Ginny’s direction. “A pleasure, Ms. Hughes.”
“Please, call me Ginny.”
“And ye must call me Tris. I’ll return shortly.”
When the door closed behind him, silence rang through the room. Ginny wanted to pelt her sister with questions about what she was hiding, but she was more curious about Tris. His demeanor and the formal cadence of his speech were charming, but completely abnormal. And his reference to the modern school room?
“Where did you find him?” Ginny asked as she plopped down on the end of the bed. “Don’t tell me at the local pub. I won’t believe you.”
“Why not? Tris loves a good pint.”
“There isn’t a Scotsman born who doesn’t, I’d wager. That’s not the point. There’s no way you just happened to stumble upon a guy like that in the wild. He’s so... too...” The words trailed off as she tried to identify exactly what it was that made coming across a man like that at ladies’ night at the local bar or on a dating app an absolute impossibility. “Too polite...” No, that wasn’t it. Plenty of people were polite. Rare, but still. “Courteous? No, proper. That’s it. Proper.”
Brontë offered a slight wince at the word, though her expression lit with a different sort of mischief. “I can assure you, Tris is not at all proper.”
“Come on. You know what I’m talking about. That formality? That polish? It’s not normal.”
“He’s working on it.”
“Why would he have to work on it?” she pressed. “I know there’s something you’re not telling me. Spill.” Ginny’s phone rang just then. “Shit.”
She pulled the phone from the rear pocket of her denims and rejected the call without looking at it. As always, the sender had been identified with the apt herald of John Williams’s “Imperial March” from Star Wars. She flipped the button to put the phone on vibrate.
“Yikes, who’s so low on your shit list that they were assigned that for a ring tone?” Brontë asked. “Let me guess. Luke?”
“No, you’re not getting out of it that easy. We were talking about you. What’s going on?”
“Why don’t you block him? Or at least turn off your phone?”
There was no way she was going explain. Leaving her phone powered on left her subject to Luke’s incessant calls, true. But it also kept her appraised of his movements. Better to have fair warning than to be left in the dark. Telling her sister that would only lead to more questions.
“I’ll tell you if you tell me what’s going on here first,” she lied.
Gnawing her lower lip, Brontë only turned her back to Ginny. “Can you untie this for me, please? Tris couldn’t get the knot out.”
“Fine, I’ll unknot. You talk.”
“Hey, who’s the older sister here?”
“Brontë!”
“Alright, but you’re never going to believe me.”
Ten minutes later, Ginny stared down at the flat oval object her sister offered up as testament of her outlandish explanation. Not a button or dial to mar its surface, it looked harmless enough. Under her fingertips, the white ceramic was smooth. With a touch, however, a bright neon blue circle appeared with the current date and time below it right down to the second. It counted them off for about ten seconds before the lights faded away.
“That’s ludicrous.”
If Brontë were to be believed, this device somehow opened a microscopic quantum portal through time. Through time! She’d traveled into the past numerous times, met their great-great-grandparents, saved their lives, and met Tris in the process before bringing him home with her. Not only that, Brontë and Tris planned to continue traveling back and forth between their two times, living two lives simultaneously.
“Didn’t I say you wouldn’t believe me?” Brontë grinned in a blasé manner that said it didn’t matter one whit what Ginny believed. That was her story and she was sticking to it.
Thing was, the time travel portion of her explanation in and of itself wasn’t what Ginny found preposterous. Fantastical, maybe. A stretch of the imagination, certainly. But she possessed imagination enough to believe many things existed in the world that she hadn’t seen for herself. The presence of such an unusual person in her sister’s bedroom nailed that reality home for her.
No, what confounded her most was the notion that Brontë somehow managed to stumble upon the perfect man in the process. Just like that. Even time travel couldn’t explain that sort of karmic, convenient good fortune.
Honestly, it wasn’t doubt or disbelief that kept Ginny agog at the miraculous device in her hands. It was envy that engulfed her, pure and simple. A different sort than she’d experienced earlier upon meeting her sister’s new beau or even for that cosmic good luck in finding him to begin with.
It was something stronger. Greener.
“What was it like?” The question emerged in a fragile whisper.
Brontë frowned. “Which part?”
“Being in another time.”
Being a witness to history. Not through books or documentaries or revisionist movies but to be granted every true history lover’s heartfelt wish to view it in the first person. To explore it with all five senses. See with her own eyes the color, the movement. Hear the voices, the bustle of life in action. To smell it. Taste it. Touch it. Weigh it like a tangible object in her hands.
To live it.
Damn, but she envied her sister that more than anything else.
“I have pictures,” her sister offered. “I’ve been dying to show them to someone.”
“I’d love to see them.”
Knowing there was the possibility of so much more, though...
Ginny knew pictures wouldn’t be enough.