Love in the Time of a Highland Laird (A Laird for All Time Book 3), Angeline Fortin [top ten ebook reader txt] 📗

of the city. He called orders to the men, directing them this way, and disappearing into the darkness.

It was like her light had gone out with him. Her confidence leeching away. She was so strong with him but reverted to her old inhibited self the second she was apart from him.

It had pained her to leave him and she knew from the hard pressure of his hand around hers before he’d determinedly let her go, he felt the same.

It wasn’t until they were some blocks away, she realized she hadn’t told him. At least in so many words. The temptation was strong to say ‘screw the mission’ and run back to him and assure him she felt for him every ounce of the love he so eloquently described and more.

No chance with someone as headstrong as Mathilde tugging her along.

“You should come to court someday if you want to know what it truly feels like to be groped. Why, I could tell you some stories about King George that would make you blanch. There was this one time…”

Mathilde carried on with her atrocious stories of having hands thrust down her bodice and up her skirts in the dark staircases and back halls of Windsor Castle, as they wound their way through the dark streets of Edinburgh with only the light of a single lantern to guide them. Al cringed for womankind, and desperately missed for just a instant, a world where a woman could walk in safety.

Well, at least in a palace.

She doubted the Queen put up with bullshit like that in Buckingham.

The walk wasn’t a long one but there were miraculously no direct through streets in the handful of city blocks they needed to cover. They were forced to turn this way and that. Thank God for Mathilde’s company and lead. She would have never found her way through the maze on her own.

Would have chickened out long before they reached their destination.

Cutting through a dark alley, they found themselves on Canongate Road. What Al knew as the Royal Mile.

Mathilde covertly pointed to the prison. As Keir said, it was a fortress. Four stories with more than a half-dozen gables tenting up from the slanted roof. In the center, a circular turret arose from the central block. An arched opening hollowed it out at the bottom.

“That’s where the door is. It’s sheltered from the street. No one should see you once you’re in there.”

The problem was, there were several people on the street, despite the late hour. Two redcoated men patrolling together near the western corner of the building. Another flirting with a woman across from them. Just a block away, Cumberland’s platoon thankfully hidden from sight beyond the Canongate Church.

As she stood there worrying her earlobe, Al’s eyes darted up and down the street. She was losing her nerve despite overwhelming moral cause. She didn’t know if she could summon the courage to get the job done.

Then she saw him. Keir, farther down the street, leaning against a building across from the gaol as if he had nothing better to do.

Of all the ballsy…

“Go distract those two down there,” she whispered to Mathilde.

“How?”

“Flirt. Swish your skirts.” Al rolled her eyes. “I’d bet you know exactly how to befuddle a male mind or two. Get to it.”

With a saucy grin, Mathilde took off, sauntering straight down the middle of the street. Swishing her skirts as if she hadn’t a care in the world. She walked right by the pair of guards, even caught the eye of the other man as she passed. And kept going. The three men couldn’t look away.

Heartened, Al crept down the street keeping to the shadows until she was directly across from the prison door. Taking a deep, bracing breath and a page from Mathilde’s book, she strolled casually across the street. Hoping she wasn’t attracting the same attention as Mathilde, but she hadn’t wanted to catch anyone’s eye with a sudden movement of her lantern either.

Safely in the shadow of the door, she drew the battery/bomb from her basket and began to unwrap it. The lock itself was a broad metal plate across the right-center portion of the door. That was it. Nothing but a notched out keyhole to upset the clean aesthetic.

Luckily, the keyhole itself was so large, she should be able to wedge the battery right into it. To her pleasure, it fit. Tightly enough she needn’t worry about wiring it in or about it slipping out. Close enough to the mechanism, the heat of the blast should crack the bolt without trouble, allowing the door to be pushed open by Keir’s Highland men waiting to storm the building.

Unwrapping the two wires from the wax paper, she made sure to keep them far apart and she stretched the wire down to the ground. With the straw she included in the basket, she made a cushion on top of one knife and laid the second diagonally across from it.

That was it.

Removing the stub of her candle from the lantern, she held it near the straw but hesitated in lighting it. Thoughts of the butterfly effect staying her hand. Everything she’d ever heard or read about time travel said any change to the past could have disastrous effects on the future. Surely she hadn’t made much of a ripple so far, but this was big. A game changer. She was about to change history by setting the people inside this prison free.

Or was she?

This wasn’t her history. The days ahead weren’t her future. It was a different reality and by lighting this straw she’d only be creating another.

Accidents happen for a reason.

Keir had said. That funky little man, Donnel, had said it.

Maybe this was the reason. Casting her lot, hoping fate truly did have a plan, she lit the straw. Making sure it was burning steadily and wouldn’t go out, she blew out the candle and darted away from the building.

Dashing into the shadows on the other side of the street, she saw Keir