The Immortal Highlander

Page 78

Or worse, go find more wine, and she knew that was a really, really bad idea.
The MacKeltar wives were cozily ensconced in overstuffed chairs in a bright sunny room that opened off the second floor of the great hall, the east wall a bank of unbroken glass overlooking a lush tumble of gardens. They blinked up at her with warm smiles.
“Oh, come in! We were just talking about you,” Chloe said, beaming, and patting a chair beside her. “Please join us. Have you had breakfast yet? There’s coffee and pastries”—she waved a hand at the side table—“dig in. Gwen and I always breakfast in the solar; you can find us here every morning. We wanted to wake you, but Adam insisted we let you sleep. Said you hadn’t gotten the chance to sleep in a real bed for a while.”
The permanent scowl that seemed to have taken possession of Gabby’s face eased a bit. He hadn’t brought her coffee, but at least he’d thought of her. “Where is he anyway?” she asked peevishly, reaching for a buttery, golden-crusted scone.
“He went riding with Drustan and Dageus early this morning,” Gwen replied. “They were talking nonstop in Gaelic as they rode out and it sounded pretty intense, so I think they might be gone awhile. What did you do that’s so awful?” she asked avidly, plucking a clean cup from the table and offering it to her.
Sinking into a chair next to Chloe, Gabby poured herself a cup of coffee, heaped in sugar, and sipped greedily. Nice and strong, she noticed. Thank you, God. They waited patiently while she fortified herself, though by the time she’d finished her second scone, Gwen was tapping her fingernails against her cup.
Drawing a deep breath, Gabby began. Encouraged by their sympathetic responses, she ended up confiding the whole sordid debacle. Beginning with too much wine, skimming over the crying and the almost-phone-call, and ultimately to her confrontation with a contingent of the Maid Parade.
By the time she’d finished, Gwen and Chloe were laughing so hard they were wiping tears from their eyes.
“I can’t believe I did it,” Gabby said for the dozenth time. Blessed caffeine was thrumming through her veins, the scones had soaked up most of the sick feeling in her stomach, and the jackhammers in her head had died down to a dull tapping. She was beginning to think she might actually be able to take a shower sometime today. The mere thought of one when she’d awakened, the mere idea of little beads of water making contact with her tender scalp, had been more than she could bear. “Bananas,” she said, appalled. “Do you believe I said that? I’ve never done anything like that. I don’t know what got into me.”
The moment she said “bananas” her hostesses started laughing all over again, holding their stomachs.
A very small, though bone-deep-embarrassed, smile curved Gabby’s lips as she watched them laugh. It was kind of funny, or at least it would have been if it had been someone else who’d behaved so moronically. If her friend Elizabeth had done something so idiotic, she’d have laughed about it for months.
When they finally sobered, Chloe said softly, “Oh, please. What got into you was that last night every woman in the castle was looking at your man like he was their favorite kind of ice cream and they couldn’t wait to devour him. Believe me, I can relate. Merely walking down a crowded street with Dageus can make me crazy some days. He and Drustan are hardly your average twenty-first-century men; women go nuts over them. The last time we were in Inverness some crazy romance author on a tour of the Highlands tried to get Dageus to model for the cover of one of her books.”
Gwen nodded with a wry look. “It does get old. I nearly got into a bit of a tussle in a sporting goods store with a saleswoman.”
But Gabby heard only one thing. “He’s not my man,” she told Chloe tightly. And wasn’t that just the crux of the problem? “As a matter of fact,” she added broodingly, “he’s not really even a man at all.”
“What on earth do you mean by that?” Gwen exclaimed.
“He’s a fairy, Gwen.” She couldn’t believe she had to point out the obvious. Hadn’t somebody told her last night that Gwen was a brilliant physicist?
“A male Tuatha Dé,” Gwen corrected. “That’s how we think of them. Calling them fairies makes them sound like diminutive little things with wings. And they’re not. They’re just a different, highly advanced civilization, a race with vastly superior technology, but Adam’s still every bit a man. Heavens, don’t you see how he looks at you? If you have any doubt about what he is, look at that. That’s pure man and nothing but.”