The Secret Gift by Jaclyn Reding Read Free Book Online

her,
tsk
ing over her tale of having gotten so utterly lost and shaking their heads in dismay over the unqualified Neanderthal who had threatened her with the shotgun.
    “I cannot think of who it could have been,” wondered Aggie aloud. “They’re a simple folk in this village, fisherfolk and farmers mostly, but gentlemen the lot of them. There’s none would dare point a shotgun at a lady any more than he’d dare point it at himself. And to refuse to help you when you were so obviously lost—”
    “Unless—” Maggie spoke up, her pin-curled head cocking to one side.
    Aggie stared at her, reading her thoughts as twins often do.
    “Aye, you’re right, Maggie, dear. Could be that Angus MacBean has been distilling that nasty brew of his again. Remember that time he got himself so drunk, he convinced himself he was a Jacobite back at Culloden? Ran around the hills in naught but his nightshirt ranting about Bonnie Prince Charlie and unrequited glory. Nearly got himself killed when he jumped into the loch.”
    “Oh, ’tis true, ’tis true,” Maggie agreed. “Tell me, dear, what did the man look like?”
    Libby tried, but for the life of her she couldn’t think of a single feature, until—
    An image, gray eyes the color of storm, flashed through her mind.
    “I—I don’t remember,” she mumbled.
    “Was he tall or short?”
    Tall ... very tall.
    “Tall, I think. I don’t really remember.”
    “Dark or light?”
    “I didn’t notice ...”
    “Old or young? Fat or thin? Clothed or wearing his nightshirt?”
    Libby simply shook her head, closed her weary eyes. The whiskey was having a wonderful effect on her, making her feel as if every limb were happily aglow.
    “Well, no matter,” Aggie said. “You’re here now with us, safe and well. ’Tis been some time since we’ve had an American come to stay, off the beaten path as we are up here in this village. Tell me, what is it that brings you to us, dear? Dear ... ?”
    “Oh, the poor sweet lamb,” said Maggie to her sister. “She’s fallen off to sleep. We should wake her, so she can sleep in a proper bed.”
    “No, let us leave her ’til the morn. I daresay she’ll be too tired to notice, and that couch is soft enough. We can talk with her again in the morning. Her story, whatever it is, will certainly keep till then.”
     
    When Libby next awoke, the sun was shining on a new day.
    She closed her eyes, blinked, filling her lungs with a long, deep breath that smelled of potpourri and baking, then reached for her eyeglasses. But they weren’t there, where she usually left them, tucked in her bedside tissue box. A moment later, it hit her.
    Scotland.
    It hadn’t been some crazy, terrible dream after all.
    Libby sat up, looked around. Through the haze that was her myopic vision, she spied what appeared to be the rounded figure of a clock sitting on the table beside her head. Its face was a blur, but her glasses, which she didn’t even recall having removed the night before, were set beside it. She pushed them onto her nose and then picked up the clock, an older, windup model. She put it to her ear. Surely it couldn’t be ticking. It couldn’t really be noon.
    Could it?
    “Ah, good morning, child. Or should I say good afternoon?”
    It was Miss Aggie, Libby remembered, coming that moment into the parlor, almost as if she’d been watching for Libby to wake. She was wearing a frock of pale yellow almost as sunny as the light coming through the curtained front window, her hair curling like a soft halo around her face. She looked fresh and cheery and endearingly lovely.
    Libby, however, was still wearing the clothes she had worn the day before, and her hair was in an utter muddle around her utterly muddled head.
    She pushed it back and out of her eyes.
    “I’m so sorry,” she said, squinting her eyes, which still rebelled against the glare of the sunlight. “I seem to have fallen asleep in your parlor. I don’t usually sleep this late.”
    “Oh,