The Wedding Dress

“Yeah, well, maybe I’m allergic. You can see the feet and—and holes where the eyes used to be in those things. God knows what else might be under all that fur.”

“Once we get the hearth burning the smoke should drive out most of the bugs.”

“Bugs?” Just the mention of them made Emma’s skin crawl.

“I know how important historical accuracy is to you,” Butler said. “So if you feel any bugs biting you tonight, just chalk it up to research.”

“You’re hilarious, Butler.”

“Come morning, you’re going to find out just how much fun I can be. Meanwhile, I’ll send one of the grad students up with your dinner once it gets too dark to dig. Make sure you find your iPod or PalmPilot or whatever is so damned important so that your suitcase is ready to be hauled out of here by then.”

“Fine.”

“Use tonight to settle in. I’ll be taking the flashlight with me.”

And then the room would be movie-theater dark. She’d probably break her neck tripping over something. No wonder Angelica Robards hadn’t survived the training process without a trip to the hospital.

“Terrific,” Emma said, still warily eyeing the animal fur. “It’ll be just me and Bambi here.” Alone. In the dark. With a whole colony of bugs, no doubt planted by Attila the Scot.

“I’ll light up the fire and one candle for you. After that, you’re on your own. Everything you’ll need for the next six weeks is in that wooden chest over there.”

“I don’t suppose there’s a medieval Porta Potti in it.”

“No hot water either. We jerry-built a garderobe in an area beyond the dig site. The student will show you where it is. Starting first thing in the morning you’re going to get a crash course in medieval life in Scotland. You’re going to eat, sleep and breathe the life of a Scottish chatelaine.”

“A chat-a-who?”

“A noblewoman caring for her husband’s castle while he’s off fighting for his king.”

“Isn’t that just like a man,” Emma quipped. “Running off to play with the other boys, leaving the responsibilities to the woman.”

“Despite all the twisted shite people get fed in movies, with fainting damsels in distress needing to be rescued, medieval women were a strong lot. I suppose we’ll find out what you’re made of.”

“Yes, you will. May I give you one little bit of advice?”

“I doubt gagging you with duct tape would stop you.”

“Try not to drop me over a cliff, Dr. Butler, no matter how great the temptation. Damaging one actress is an accident. Damaging a second would look downright suspicious.”

“Not by medieval standards. Men could go through a half dozen wives between accidents and disease and childbirth. And in desperate cases you could always lock her in prison somewhere.”

“Like Henry II did Eleanor of Aquitaine.”

Butler looked taken aback. “You read about…?”

“I saw the movie. Lion In Winter. Katherine Hepburn won an Oscar in the starring role.”

“You’re sure as bloody hell no Katherine Hepburn,” Butler scoffed, starting for the door.

Cold, wet and tired, Emma sobered. That was what she was afraid of.

THERE WAS NO QUESTION of escape. Jared glared out the office trailer’s window to where the mess tent blazed with lights, even more dancing shadows silhouetted against the canvas than there had been when he’d checked the same scene an hour ago.

It seemed that no matter how many times he paced the narrow aisle between his desk and drafting table, every student on the site was determined to wait out his appearance, no matter how physically and mentally exhausted this day full of mud and rain had left them.

He might as well get it over with, he reasoned, reaching for the cool logic of a scientist. Sooner or later he’d have to face his students and endure their barrage of questions about their famous guest. But damn if he wanted to listen to the kids whose intellect he’d prized raving about Emma McDaniel, dazzled by the glitz and glitter of a world Jared didn’t trust.

Having her here is the price you agreed to pay, he reminded himself grimly. He hoped he wouldn’t discover that cost was too high. Bracing himself, he stepped out into the night. A hunter’s moon sailed the sky, limning the world in silver.

Biting wind, still fresh from the afternoon’s storm, tangled invisible fingers through his hair as he removed the battered brown canvas hat he’d hung by its leather cords on the outer doorknob. The wide-brimmed hat dangling there was a signal every bit as dreaded by the students and staff alike as a skull and crossbones would be on the high sea.

Only someone with a death wish would disturb Jared those rare times the hat appeared on the door. But he’d bet that several of his students had considered braving his wrath tonight. Thankfully, nineteen-year-old Davey Harrison, Jared’s personal assistant and longest-running team member, had managed to dissuade them.

But damn if Jared was going to waste any more time trying to sort through the feelings Emma McDaniel stirred in him. The anger, the outrage, the sensation of being trapped. Between Angelica Robards’ training and accident and Emma’s arrival, he’d surrendered too many precious days already. With every hour that passed, the end of summer crept closer. And the end of summer meant the dig had to close.

At least not permanently, Jared reminded himself with grim satisfaction. The university that had sponsored the study for students from around the world might withdraw its funding, move its program on to some site in Greece—just for variety’s sake, to give the kids a different kind of experience. And the grant funds he’d hoped for might be promised elsewhere. But Jared had found his own way to keep the dig afloat. By selling the rights to his book to Hollywood, making a pact with the devil. It seemed even Jared’s soul had its price. The hard part was forcing his pride to pay it.

He’d imagined celebrity mania would poison the kids when they heard of Jade Star’s imminent arrival. The reality was even worse.

From the most insecure undergraduate to his most trusted assistant, they all but stampeded him as he entered the mess tent, the kids barely giving lip service to his questions about any finds that had been made in his absence.

“What’s she like?” a breathless kid on foreign study from Northwestern University pleaded.

Too brave. A little wild. Trying to protect that air-brained girl in the airport the only way she could.

“She’s a pain in the arse,” Jared said.

“Is she really as beautiful as she looks in the movies?” Nigel Sutherland asked.

Jared didn’t bother to hide a smug grin as he recalled Emma McDaniel’s rain-soaked million-dollar face, with ropes of wet black hair straggling across it. That picture made him feel better. The poor wee bairn, going to bed with sodden hair and not a blow-dryer in sight.

“With all those movie tricks they use, Hollywood could make me look like Prince Will i am,” Jared growled.

“That would be a crying shame,” a coed named Gemma whispered to Veronica Phillips, a fresh-talking doctoral candidate from St. Andrews who had made it obvious that the body she hoped to uncover this summer still had plenty of life in it and belonged in her bed, not some museum.

“Why tamper with perfection?” Veronica teased, flashing Jared a sultry grin.

Jared was man enough to be tempted on a purely physical level. It had been a long time since he’d let himself take what a woman offered, but he knew firsthand that the price was too high. The danger too great. That part of him was dead. He’d killed it, as surely as he’d killed Jenny.

Where had that thought come from? He’d buried Jenny, the way Vikings buried their treasure hordes, then tried to forget where he’d left all the memories, all the self-blame.

He’d become an expert at seeming oblivious to women’s flirtations, ignoring Veronica’s comment as he had all the other glances filled with soulful feminine longing that had been thrown his way over the past ten years. Damn, if they knew how much he hated it, that adoring light that told him what they were thinking—that they fancied him a modern-day Lancelot come to save his fair lady from the stake.

If only they knew that was one quest he’d already failed.

“Emma McDaniel’s coming here is quantitative proof that life is not fair,” Davey Harrison said at the edge of the crowd. The favorite student Jared wasn’t supposed to have shook his head wistfully, then plopped a canvas hat identical to Jared’s down on his flyaway dark blond hair.

“Exactly what do you base your conclusion on, Mr. Harrison?” Jared asked.