My Heart's in the Highlands Read Online Free PDF

dream, she was only—how to put this?— mostly Mikah.  Hence the schizophrenic paranoia.  She didn’t feel delusional or insane … just sort of dually occupied. 
    Pushing this Hero Conagham back, trying to stuff her into the back of her mind, was a battle Mikah knew she couldn’t win.   It was as if she had been placed in a fantasy world where she was but portraying the lead character. If Mikah tried to inject herself into the role, the script became ambiguous. 
    Trying to fight it only made her head hurt more, so deciding that things would get easier only if she embraced this weird dream, Mikah let this Hero inside of her take the starring role.  Once Mikah committed herself to the character, so to speak, everything was more fluid.  What was elusive when she struggled now hovered at the forefront of her mind.  The lines rolled off her tongue.  Hero knew them all.  She knew the rules of this time and place.  She knew how to dress.  She knew what to say and how to act. 
    Embracing Hero Conagham fully immersed Mikah in her delusional role.  Mikah knew where she was, when she was, and who she was supposed to be.  All of Hero’s memories were suddenly there, as vivid and real to Mikah as were her own … and they felt like her own.  Every emotion, every moment of heartbreak or joy, was hers.
    She remembered Hero’s wedding to Robert Conagham nine years before when Hero had been just nineteen to his forty-three.  The marquisate of Ayr had been just an earldom until Robert Conagham’s father had gained a higher ranking for service under William IV.  As a duke’s daughter, Hero had been trained well for her new responsibilities, though her marriage to Conagham had been one more of friendship than anything else.  Their marriage had been comfortable, companionable. 
    Mikah also remembered Robert Conagham’s death —her husband’s death—just nine months before.  The wait at Cuilean to see if she would bear the next marquis.  Her retreat from her home of almost a decade when it was determined that she would not.
     
    Still, Mikah’s own life and memories were just as clear.  Her life and family, growing up near Oshkosh, going to car shows in Stevens Point with her dad.  Getting hassled by her brothers all the time and going to the prom with Billy Pierson.  Graduating from Northwestern and getting her job at the Milwaukee Art Museum.
    On the other hand, Mikah vividly recalled the gut-wrenching agony of having several miscarriages and the death of Hero’s infant daughter as if it were her own.  The barren life of childlessness.  Mikah felt the anguish of that loss acutely, felt Hero’s agonizing pain.  As singular friends of Victoria and Albert, Robert and Hero had enjoyed the Queen's favor. Queen Victoria, who already had eight children, frowned upon the lack of children to the marquisate but had been compassionate to Hero’s struggle.  Hero had compensated for her losses by showering attention on the little princes and princesses.   She had frequented Windsor and been a guest at Balmoral.  Mikah could describe with some accuracy the inside of that castle, just as she knew the history of the one she was fast approaching.
     
    Dùn Cuilean.
    Mikah leaned to the side so she could see out the carriage window more fully , hoping to catch the first glimpse of the castle.   “See there, Papa?  You can catch a glimpse of the castle through those trees.”
    Hero’s father leaned forward eagerly.  “Do you think they have pudding in Scotland?”
    “Of course, Papa,” she said as she patted the hand of the older gentleman by her side.  Hero’s father.  Her father.  “Scotland is not so different from England, and Cuilean’s cook is an excellent one.”
    “Perhaps a nice treacle then, as well?” he added hopefully.
    Mikah smiled affectionately.  Hero’s father was the Duke of Beaumont.  He was a tall, thick man of about sixty years with a deep, booming voice that suited him