Chapter Ten
“And voices in me said, If you were a man
you would take a stick and break him now…”
~D. H. Lawrence
Two weeks had passed since the disastrous disco night. Brian didn’t know how to broach the subject with Angel. Though he’d tried to apologize on several occasions, his effort always resulted in the same shrugged indifference from her, he stopped trying to soothe her displeasure. She’d spoken cordially at family gatherings, offered guidance on any subject he raised about current events and engaged him briefly at the clinic. All those banal, detached conversations frustrated his desire to engage in more relaxed exchanges, as they had before the disco night. Despite a continued icy reception toward him, she hadn’t closed him off completely, so he waited.
As far as he knew, she had not spoken with Char again either. He’d run into the woman once or twice, but she just waved and moved on. It bothered him that the women’s friendship seemed fractured because of that night, but he had no idea how to fix it.
Something about the man Angel had been speaking with right before leaving the disco also niggled at him. Char said the man was someone from Angel’s past, but she refused to elaborate further. He hadn’t liked the look of the man. Not his actual looks, tall, blonde-haired, with a rakish saunter, but his interaction with Angel seemed to add to her anger that night. Of course, she clearly held some anger toward him and Char as well. He maintained some solace that not all her displeasure rested solely on his shoulders.
Brian had settled into a rather staid routine. Every morning, he rose before sunrise and returned to the cliffs above the ocean. Angel and Simon often followed him, as they did today, always with the excuse he’d get lost. An absurd excuse at this point, but he didn’t challenge her. He’d accept any engagement, even if in the guise of keeping him from losing his way on their morning runs.
He turned toward Angel who stood several yards behind him on the edge of the cliff. Her delicate profile, the determined lift of her face as she watched the mist curl over the hills and creep across the waves, seared her image in his mind. She presented the perfect expression of repose. The soft flow of her unbound hair ensnared him. He desired her, he needed her, and that thought shook him to his core. Since when did a warrior need a lass? Yet her presence, even when silent and aloof, grounded him. He craved her company, especially on these early morning hikes when they barely exchanged more than a few words.
He’d almost given up on the idea of falling back through time, but not completely. The need to see his mother, to provide comfort in her grief over the loss of his father, never left him. It pained him to think about the turmoil she must be experiencing over his unexplained loss.
And yet, during these hushed morning ramblings cloaked in fog with the steady crash of waves against the shore below, even the greedy, squawking seagulls seemed to calm his over stimulated mind. In these moments, he reluctantly accepted that he might be exactly where the fates intended he should be. These moments prepared him for the hectic onslaught of the city where he now lived, where he might remain for the rest of his life. A daunting and terrifying thought, when he gave it much consideration.
He shook his head, attempting to dispel his mind’s direction and turned to Angel. “You’re still angry with me, aren’t ye, lass? It seems ye won’t talk with either me or Char.”
“How do you know I haven’t spoken with Char? We only see each other on these early walks, at the clinic, or during occasional meals with the family. Our conversations are hardly engaging. Besides, what makes you think I’m angry? You hardly know anything about me. As for Char...”
She didn’t need to finish that wistful statement. The furrows in her brow spoke clearly enough. They seemed to have a complicated history. Granny M had also noticed their lack of contact and commented on it, but Angel simply shrugged off the inquiry.
“I need to head back, grab breakfast, and get to school. Will you be at the clinic later today?” She glanced at him, then quickly looked away as if it pained her to look him in the eyes.
They both worked at the clinic several afternoons a week, and Brian worked full days on Wednesday and Saturday, two of the busiest days. He fulfilled a wide range of tasks, stocking shelves, cleaning up rooms, learning the inventory, managing unruly or drug-crazed patients, and anything that involved heavy lifting. Every spare moment between those tasks, he spent with his nose in one reference book after another, attempting to cram three hundred years of history and knowledge into his always-exhausted state of confusion.
“I don’t think I’ll get to the clinic until at least four o’clock today. But since it’s our slowest day, and we close by six, it shouldn’t cause any problems.” She turned and started walking back up the path never looking directly at him.
“I can manage.” His long strides reached her side in moments. “When you arrive, I’ll stock the shelves in the dispensary and prepare the rooms for tomorrow’s patients. We should be ready to complete the inventory long before eight, as usual.”
Their final daily tasks at the clinic included a documented double inventory of all drugs and supplies and a triple check on all locks. At first, he’d found these odd jobs demeaning work for a warrior, but he owed these people more than his life. He owed them what little sanity he’d managed to maintain. Besides, this work would be temporary until he could either return to the seventeenth century or find a productive direction for his changed circumstances. The job paid a reasonable wage, and since the Adairs provided him with a room and meals, he managed to save money as well as cover his personal expenses. He’d tried to pay Alistair, but he refused to take money until Brian had a “cushion to fall back on.” That phrase always made him laugh. His debt to the Adairs humbled his warrior pride. Eventually, he’d find a way to repay their generosity.
* * *
Angel had ushered the last patient out over an hour ago, and busied herself with reports at the front desk. Brian worked in the stockroom and organized the treatment rooms. Other than a brief greeting when he arrived, they hadn’t spoken a word all evening. All their encounters were polite but tense. Her continued rebuffs didn’t simply annoy him, anger seethed just below the surface. He wanted to punch something; maybe his own thick skull would be a good place to start. Why could they not breech this hollow divide?
A loud crash and scream of alarm had him rushing to the front office. Two men dressed in heavy, dirty boots, black attire except for the silver studs and chains on their garb, and black leather caps on their heads, yelled at Angel. “Now, be quiet hot-stuff. If you give us the drugs, we’ll only play with you a little while before we leave.”
Rage burned through Brian’s limbs. The flash of sharp-edged knives drew his attention to the men’s hands. One of the ruffians held Angel with one arm wrenched behind her back and a knife at her throat. Something about them clicked his memory, throwing him back to the first day he’d arrived in San Francisco.
He stepped into the room. “Let the lass go. She cannae help ye.” Brian held his hands loosely at his sides, a sharp double-edged sgian dubh tucked behind closed fingers in his right hand.
“Well, lookey what we have here, a fairy in a skirt.” Brain wore his kilt several days a week and Granny had managed to procure a second one for him. It generated no shortage of bold approaches from both men and women when he donned his kilt, but he hated the chaffed, confining feel of modern day pants.
The second man wrapped a chain around his hand and clutched it in a menacing fist. “Give us the drugs, and we might let you watch as we play with this lovely flower. Perhaps we’ll even let you take a turn if you’re man enough.”
The first man snarled, “Get moving,” he pushed Angel still holding the blade at her throat. All the blood had drained from her face, but she didn’t shriek or faint. What a brave lass.
“I’ll give ye what ye want, just let the lady go.” Brian moved slightly toward the door and closer to the man advancing with Angel in his grasp.
“A lady. De ya hear that, Carl. That’s a laaady you’re hold’en.” His laugh held no note of fear. It was clear they thought they had the upper hand, but Brian had faced worse ruffians than these bullies.
As the men blustered, Brian advanced by small increments. He had to act now before they entered the narrow hallway leading to the back rooms where he’d have less space to maneuver against two men at once. The tighter space would also place Angel in the middle of any skirmish.
The minute the man holding Angel glanced at his crony, Brian moved. Quick as lightning, and at the exact moment he lunged to grip the wrist of the man wielding the knife, he thrust the sgian dubh at the man with the chain wrapped around his fist. He snapped knife-man’s wrist like a twig. The sgian dubh landed in the other man’s gut below his rib cage. Brian threw Angel behind him as he punched knife-man in the face breaking his nose. Blood spurted everywhere. The man’s head fell back with the impact. Brian hit him again in the left eye and kneed him in the groin. When the man fell, he pulled Brian to the floor with him. Meanwhile, chain wielding-man had ripped the sgian dubh from his stomach and launched himself toward Brian, chain and knife flailing.
In his peripheral vision, Brian saw Angel grab a side chair and smash it over chain- wielding-man’s head with all her strength, causing the sgian dubh to fly from his hand. Unfortunately, the hit didn’t knock him down, and he turned toward her releasing the chain like a whip. Although she raised an arm in defense, the chain hit the edge of her jaw and knocked her over the desk behind her.
A black fury erupted inside Brian. Jumping to his feet, he released a warrior’s howl and grabbed the hair at the back of the man’s head throwing him onto the floor. The man tripped Brian, and when he hit the floor again, they rolled exchanging several punches before Brian snatched the chain out of the man’s hand and pressed it across his neck.
Brain’s whole focus centered on choking the last breath from the man who’d dare strike Angel with such violence. The man clawed at Brian’s hands as his face turned scarlet. Angel screamed and tugged at his arms until he released enough pressure to allow the villain a gagged breath.
“Please stop, Brian. Don’t kill him. I’ve called the police. They’ll be here in a moment. Tie him up, let the authorities deal with these brutes. Please, please.” A bruise already darkened her jaw, and tears streaked down her face.
His breath rattled heavily in his chest, sweat poured off his face and ran down his sides and back. It took every ounce of control to reign in his battle lust. He barely managed it. She begged him to stop. Only her terrified pleas prevented him from killing the man, though it went against everything he believed as a warrior. He flipped the bastard over lashing the chain around the man’s wrists and then crammed a piece of the broken chair leg through the chain’s loops effectively locking his hands. The other man still writhed on the floor cursing and screaming. The chained man coughed and gagged but couldn’t speak a word.
When Brian stood, he kicked the other man solidly in the ribs. “Shut yer trap, or I’ll forget the lady’s pleas and kill ye both where ye lay.”
Suddenly, the door crashed open, and the police entered with guns drawn.