The Presence

David smoothed back his freshly washed dark hair and shut the refrigerator. “Wow, we sure have made this home. Do you think it’s still all right if I delve into the refrigerator?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Toni said. “It is our food in there. There wasn’t a thing in the place when we arrived, except for a few tea bags!”

“Hey, I know. I’m going to whip up a really good breakfast. Think Laird MacNiall will like that? You know, Toni, you’re going to have to be careful when making things up from now on. This guy turned out to be real, and you have his ancestor being a murderer! From now on, invent characters that are noble and good.”

“Hey, Othello was noble, and he killed his wife,” Toni said.

“That breakfast doesn’t sound like a bad idea,” Gina said.

“We should make Toni cook,” David said.

“No!” Kevin protested, standing in the kitchen doorway. “We’ll definitely get kicked out if we do that.” He grinned, taking the sting out of his words, and surveyed the kitchen. “Imagine this place if we had a few more funds! I’d love to see baker’s rows of copper pots and pans and utensils.”

“It’s not our place anymore,” Gina reminded him.

“Soft yellow paint would bring in the sunlight,” David mused.

“How the hell can you be so cheerful this morning?” Gina asked him.

“I’m eternally and annoyingly cheerful, you all know that,” Kevin said. “Things will work out. Hey, whoever made the coffee did a full pot, right?” he asked, moving to the counter.

David closed the refrigerator door and leaned against it, looking at Kevin. “Think that Scottish lairds like eggs Benedict?”

“Shouldn’t we do something with salmon?” Kevin countered.

“Good point,” David agreed.

“I’m glad you two can worry about breakfast,” Gina murmured. “What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to sit down like the good friends we are and figure a way out of this,” David said flatly. “Where’s your husband, Gina?”

She shook her head. “He wasn’t in the room. He’s out somewhere … walking, playing in the stables, Lord knows.”

Thayer came walking into the kitchen, bearing the newspaper from Stirling, the nearest major city. He set it on the table, offering them all a grimace. “Good morning, we can at least hope.”

“Maybe, but only if we start over with the coffee. Gina, did you make this?” Kevin asked, tasting the brew. “What did you use, local mud?”

“It’s strong, that’s all,” Gina protested.

“So, what do we do?” Thayer asked.

“We’ll wait for Ryan and then figure out what we can do. Of course, we have until Monday before we need to worry about where we’ll sleep!” Gina sighed. “I should call the travel agency in Stirling and start canceling the arrangements for tonight.”

“Sixty people at twenty-five a pop—pounds sterling,” Thayer said woefully. “My place in Glasgow is small, but if we buy a few pillows we’ll be fine.”

“We all quit our jobs,” Kevin reminded him.

“And we can get new ones,” David said.

“There has to be some recourse here,” Toni said.

“Toni has been talking to Laird MacNiall again,” Gina warned, trying to keep emotion from her voice.

“I wasn’t fighting with him!” Toni protested.

“Well, you didn’t exactly offer him warm and cuddly Southern hospitality,” David reminded her.

“I’m not Southern!”

“You could have faked it,” Kevin said.

“Actually, you are from the south—the south side of D.C.,” David offered.

She glared at him. “Look, I had a conversation with him, and he wasn’t miserable at all,” Toni said.

David gasped suddenly and walked around to her, looking down into her eyes. He squeezed her shoulders. “You didn’t … I mean, Toni, we’re in trouble here, but you don’t have to … you don’t have to offer that kind of hospitality, no matter how dire things are looking!”

“David!” she snapped, feeling a flush rise over her cheeks. “I didn’t, and I wouldn’t! How the hell long have you known me?”

Gina giggled suddenly. “Hey, I don’t know. In the looks department, he’s really all right.”

“What she really means is,” Kevin teased, “if it weren’t for Ryan, she’d do him in a flash.”

Gina leveled a searing gaze at him. “The breakfast better be damned good.”

“Look!” Toni said. “I talked to him but I didn’t sleep with him. He was in my room, but …”

“What?” David demanded, drawing out the chair at her side and looking at her, his dark eyes very serious.

“It seems that I was in his room, so I moved into the next one,” she told him. “We had to talk and we were both cordial, okay?” she said.

“You just talked to him … without …”

“Being bitchy?” Kevin asked bluntly.

“Dammit! I was polite.”

“Okay, okay!” David said.

That was it. She was offering no further explanations of how she might have gotten into a cordial conversation

with the laird. “And now I’m thinking that if we ask really politely, maybe he’d let us do tonight’s performance so that we can recoup some of our losses.”

“She’s got a good idea there,” Thayer said.

“Omelettes!” Kevin said suddenly. “Salmon and bacon on the side. So who gets to ask Laird MacNiall if we can do the tour tonight?”

“Toni,” David said, suddenly determined. “She has to ask him. She’s the one who’s talked to him.”