A Good Scot is Hard to Find (Something About a Highlander Book 2)

by Angeline Fortin

  “Donell!”

  “Aye, lass.” His enigmatic smile was back. “’Bout time ye remembered.”

  “Inveraray is a long way from Edinburgh,” she retorted.

  Yet, Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre had been where she’d first met the man so many referred to as Auld Donell. Not that she’d had much direct contact with him in her position as a makeup artist. He’d been acting as the stage manager of a traveling production of Cyrano de Bergerac that passed through her workplace the previous year.

  What was he doing here now, acting as the owner of this wee whisky store? “Acting” being the key word there, she thought.

  Because she knew this man was no more a mere whisky shop owner than he was a theater stage manager. What he was exactly, she wasn’t quite sure, but she did know that he had more mischief up one sleeve than Violet could manage with her entire wardrobe. He’d proven himself to be a master manipulator, a man with a plan, as it were. One unafraid to lure in unsuspecting participants into his schemes, though he’d been — purposefully, she suspected — vague on the exact details of that plan.

  While her path had rarely crossed with Donell’s, his had with Brontë’s — Aila’s closest friend and Violet’s granddaughter — with astonishing effect. Brontë had been inadvertently given an object precisely like the one the old man offered Aila now. A time travel device. A time machine, to be more precise. Her friend had spent months stumbling around in the past, saving lives only to lose them again. Back and forth she’d gone, trying to change the history books to suit her purpose.

  And his.

  Her friend had later discovered that Auld Donell had a firm hand in steering Brontë about. Aila would have been bloody well pissed being toyed with like that. Brontë might have as well.

  If she hadn’t wound up with a deliciously scrumptious Edwardian lover as a result.

  Now Brontë was in love, planning a wedding, and living two lives with her true love. One in her time and one in his. While the pair seemed to enjoy their tumultuous life, the thought of such chaos entering hers when she’d only just settled into the eye of her own personal hurricane gave Aila a chill.

  “Och, ye can get that thing away from me, auld mon.” She held up her hands with a firm shake of her head. “I want nothing to do with any of that. I’ll no’ be another puppet for ye to jerk about.”

  “Puppet? Nay.” Donell clicked his tongue mournfully. “’Tis adventure I offer, and since when are ye no’ up to adventure, Aila Marshall? Ye’ve spent yer entire life grasping life by the horns.”

  “Aye, and look where that’s gotten me,” she retorted, without addressing how he knew anything about her. She’d learned enough from Brontë’s tales that the old man had a way of knowing more than he ought. No doubt, nothing in her twenty-seven years of life was a mystery to him. “Homeless and alone.”

  “Aye, naught to keep ye from a noble quest a’tall,” he agreed. “Though I would argue that ye are neither homeless nor alone. Ye’ve got friends enough to envy and a home at the heart of them.”

  She did.

  A pang of love clenched at Aila’s chest at the truth of his statement. She slid onto one of the wooden barstools on her side of the long counter with a sigh. Rab settled himself, draped over her feet with a similar exhalation. His warm, heavy body pressed up against her shins, his presence comforting where Donell’s was disturbing. Despite the old man being right.

  After a rough breakup with her longtime boyfriend six months earlier, Violet and Brontë had given her a place to live under the pretense of the elderly woman’s need for a caretaker. What they really provided was a home and a family. Support and friendship.

  Things Aila had been missing most of her life.

  Stability in the midst of a life that — contrary to Donell’s assessment — had been more packed with foolery and failure than adventure.

  “Och,” Donell’s scornful dismissal tore through her sentimental thoughts, “I’ll no’ for one minute believe ye content in such passive muck, lass. Ye’ve more spirit in ye than to settle for that.”

  “Ye ken nothing about me, auld mon,” she argued, though in truth, she was quite afraid he actually did. Brontë had said he had an almost mystical way of perceiving her thoughts and feelings before she had a chance to express them herself. And in some cases, even experience them.

  “I ken ye love a mystery,” he contended. “That ye appreciate a challenge.”

  Her boyfriend, Kyle, had been both of those in the beginning. Look where that had gotten her. She was stubborn, too. A trait that had kept her from seeing the truth until it was nearly too late.

  “Tenacity isnae a bad thing,” Donell carried on, continuing to follow her thoughts. “In the right instances, it can be a powerful tool. The stubborn can be a force to contend wi’. Why, wi’ curiosity enough and a daring disposition, an obstinate lass could solve a centuries-old mystery.”

  “Nice segue,” Aila said dryly. “Pour me something, would ye?”

  Five minutes of conversation with him, she needed it.

  Donell grunted and turned away to fetch a bottle from its velvet cradle in a polished wooden case at the center of his vast display. The contents sloshed up the inside of the bottle as he sat it before her. She ran a finger down the angular slope of the thick crystal container mentally comparing the shape to a genie’s bottle, pointedly ignoring the time travel device he’d left on the counter as he gathered up a pair of tasting glasses.

  “Pretty bottle.”

  “’Tis Lalique,” he said in his thick gruff brogue, popping the notched crystal stopper to fill the glasses with far more than a mere taste. Setting the bottle aside, he lifted his glass. “Slàinte.”

  “Slàinte.” Aye, she had health if nothing else. Aila took her glass and sipped the amber libation, enjoying the smooth taste on her tongue and its warm descent down her throat.

  “Macallan 72.” His burr thickened with appreciation. “Tastes like the Highlands in autumn, aye?”

  She nodded in agreement. It really did. The aroma of peat greeting her nose as she recognized the flavors of green apples, vanilla, raisins, and ginger. “It’s good.”

  “It ought to be,” he told her as she lifted the glass to her lips once more. “Only six hundred bottles were made. Cost upwards of a hundred thousand pounds a bottle.”

  The whisky caught in her throat until it burned, and her eyes watered as she choked down the swallow. “A hundred bloody thousand pounds?” she coughed out once she could speak. “Why are ye drinking this? Ye should be saving it!”

  “Saving it for what, lass?” he asked as he sipped more of his portion. “Whisky is like life. ’Tis no’ to be saved but to be savored. Each sip like a day of yer life, relishing the taste, the smell, the feel. Experiencing it in that moment for all it’s worth because ye never ken when the bottle will run dry or yer days will run out.”

  How poignantly poetic. Aila grunted in a pseudo-agreement to his philosophical soliloquy and took another cautious sip of her drink, appreciating it more this time around. “Aye, but on the flip side, ye never ken when life will bite ye in the arse, either.”

  Donell nodded. “True, ye never ken what ye’ll get served up wi’ if ye rashly pour out a bottle wi’out reading the label.”

  “Life doesn’t come with warning labels unfortunately.”

  “On the other hand, for good or bad, ’tis always an adventure to taste the unknown.” He held up his glass, swirling the amber liquid around the sides as light played off its depths. “Once ye’ve had a dram or two, does it no’ leave ye wanting more?”

  Rocking her own glass to set the whisky swooshing from side to side, she met his gaze directly once more. “Ye ken, it takes talent to work such circular bullshit all the way around an argument without once addressing the core of what ye want from me.”

  He bobbed his chin in gracious acceptance of the backward compliment. “Why thank ye, lass.”

  “So, what do ye want from me? Precisely?”
Aila pressed when it became clear he wasn’t going to offer the information freely.

  “Want? No’ a thing.” He shrugged as if that were obvious. “I merely thought a lass such as ye would enjoy the opportunity to solve the mystery of the treasure’s whereabouts.”

  “Me, or any lass who happened to wander by?”

  “Ye, of course.”

  Again, as if his purpose were clear as day rather than being murkier than Scotland’s deepest bog. And the bogs could get mighty murky here.

  “Why no’ look for it yerself?” she pressed warily. “Why me?”

  Donell shrugged. “Mayhap I already ken what it is. And would ye no’ like to ken?”

  “It would be nae more than a puzzle to work out then?” she clarified. Like reading a mystery novel that had already been written. What could go wrong? Ha, with Donell? A lot. “Nae ancestors to save from desperate assassins? Nae wrongs to be righted or the like?”

  “Do I need to have an ulterior motive?”

  “I get the impression that ye typically do.”

  Donell said nothing more, merely stared at her over the rim of his glass as he finished off the costly libation, his fathomless blue eyes steady on her as if he might hypnotize her into compliance. Finished, he smacked his lips with a nod. “Ye should be on yer way, lass. Vi will be wondering what’s come of ye.”

  Aila slid off the stool and squatted down to smooth her fingers over Rab’s head. His brown eyes were adoring. “Ye’re a good lad, Rabbie.” With a tweak of his ear, she stood and went to the door feeling his grumble of disappointment.

  “Ye forgot this.”

  She turned back to Donell, prepared to have him thrust the time machine into her hands. Instead he held out the bottle of Dalmore he’d selected for Violet. She took it and made her way to the door without further delay. Hand on the knob, she glanced over her shoulder.

  “That’s it? Ye’re going to let me leave without argument?”

  “I dinnae like to force these things upon anyone, lass,” he said, then added under his breath, “No’ anymore at any rate. Learned my lesson there.” A smile touched his lips again, creasing his forehead into deep horizontal rows. “Moreover, I suspect ye’ll return on yer own soon enough. Once ye get a glimpse of the Clan Boyce in action, ye willnae be able to resist.”

  “Will I no’?”

  “Curiosity has its own reason for existence,” he answered. “One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.”

  “Well, aren’t ye the poet.”

  “The words are Albert Einstein’s, no’ my own,” Auld Donell told her. “Fine mon.”

  She wondered if he knew from personal experience.

  “He was brilliant, aye. Still a dullard when it came at times. Sometimes couldnae see the obvious for the need to see the logic in all things,” he went on. “Sometimes the best things in life are the unexplained.”

  “The unexplained?”

  “Ye’ll see soon enough.”

  “Nay, I willnae!”

  Chapter 3

  Aye, she would.

  As much as she wanted to deny Donell a puppet for his quest, he was right. An hour amongst feuding Boyces had fueled her curiosity regarding the mystery prize they sought. They bellowed curses in Gaelic at one another, tore into one another as thoroughly as they tore up the house. All the while, not one of them knew what it was they searched for. None knew what their distant ancestor had done to be so bestowed by the long gone Duke of Argyll to receive it.

  Still they searched and scavenged. Pried up floorboards and carved out holes in lathe and plaster while the elders among them waved canes and ticked off the of list places that had purportedly been searched and dismissed in years gone by. Their obsession sparked a corresponding one in her. Aila found herself assessing the small cottage for overlooked possibilities.

  If that hadn’t been enough, the tour of the local castle had sealed her interest. There were abundant riches in the carefully recreated tableau on display there. Silver aplenty in the dining room. Rich tapestries and gilded walls. Crystal chandeliers that looked as though they dripped with real diamonds. More of the same filled a parlor with massive marble fireplaces and a ceiling covered in frescos. What could a man with such wealth consider a prize? It could be anything.

  Aila’s adventurous spirit — long stifled — reared its head at the scent of adventure. The thrill of the hunt. Just as Donell anticipated.

  She hated to give him the satisfaction.

  “Don’t you like the fish, dear?”

  Aila glanced up from the history book she’d bought from the gift shop with a sheepish grin. “Sorry, Vi. Dinnae mean to be rude. Nay, it’s delicious.”

  Dutifully, she picked up her fork and applied it to the promised plate of salmon before her, fresh caught from Loch Fyne that morning. The flight of whisky samplings Violet had chosen for her were equally tasty, though none summoned the feeling of autumn as the Macallan she’d shared with Donell.

  Auld Donell. Her eyes strayed back to the history book. From everything Brontë had shared, Aila knew he was a wily old man. He’d tempted her friend with a chance to change her fate and that of many others. All of it nothing more than subterfuge to satisfy his own ends. What ulterior motive could he have in sending Aila back to find this treasure? Despite his assurance, there had to be one, didn’t there?

  “I’m surprised to see you with a history book. Normally you have your nose stuck in an old mystery.” Violet offered an indulgent smile. “I take it you enjoyed the tour?”

  “I did,” Aila confessed. “That millstone? The one that’s said to be cursed? That’s fascinating.”

  A mystery in itself. The moss-covered stone displayed in the castle gardens bore no information other than a small plaque calling it the Blàr an Buie and stating that it was said to be cursed. She’d spent half an hour before supper Googling it, trying to pinpoint the source of the curse or anything about it with no success. Aye, Donell was right. She might not have been much of a history buff but she was a sucker for a good mystery.

  “I’m so happy you enjoyed it. I brought my granddaughters here a time or two. Jane and Brontë wanted nothing to do with it. Ginny enjoyed it. That lass has a love of history.”

  Aila bit back a smile as she savored a bite of the salmon. “I think ye’ll find that Brontë’s recently developed a fascination with history herself.”

  “Really? Perhaps I’ll persuade her to join me on a tour or two when she and her new beau return from their trip. What did my granddaughter say he did for a living again?”

  Lived a life in two different times, Aila thought to herself but answered aloud, “International relations.”

  “And constantly traveling for business? What a wretched lifestyle.” Violet clucked her tongue then grinned. “I’d much prefer a cozy drawing room. Nothing like that one in the castle though. It was a bit over the top, wouldn’t you say?”

  “It was. Far too much gilding for my taste. The weapons display in the hall was impressive, though, and overall it was stunning, if one likes that neo-Gothic thing.”

  Aila flipped through the book to a page with exterior photos of the castle and portraits of several bewigged men. They were captioned by an abbreviated history of the design, having first been sketched out by John Vanbrugh, the architect who designed Blenheim Palace, then built by Scottish architects William Adam and Roger Morris. The three men having died either before or soon after the groundbreaking, Adam’s sons James and Robert had completed the project.

  She turned the book to show Violet who slipped on her reading glasses to squint down at the page. “William Adam was quite famous. His sons and their work equally so. Not much to look at though, those historical lads with their wigs and paunchy bellies.”

  A grin teased Aila’s lips. “Oh, I dinnae ken. I’ve seen some evidence that there is at least
one good looking man in the history books. These poor lads? Probably had to get by on their talent alone.”

  “Sassy.” Violet shared her smile then tapped the book. “This other lad, now he’s a — what would you call it? Proper hottie?”

  Aila made a face. “I doubt that. Let me see.”

  Violet turned the book back around and Aila looked at the last of the tiny images. In her opinion, eighteenth-century period paintings tended to make people look soft and rather bulgy-eyed. Not a flattering look. Despite the romanticized styling, the older woman was right. He was a proper hottie. Not that she’d admit it. She looked down at the caption beneath the photo. “Lord Finlay Keeley. He’s no’ so bad I suppose.”

  “The first kind thing you’ve had to say about a man in months,” Violet teased. “He should be flattered by your enthusiasm.”

  “It would be just my luck to fall for a dead man.” Not that she wanted one at all. Aila pursed her lips, determined not to let Vi turn the conversation to one they’d thoroughly exhausted of late. “Astonishing that the castle took more than forty years to finish, isn’t it? Though logically I suppose it makes sense, given the available technology of the day.”

  “To build it in any manner at such a time in history is astonishing.” Violet set her fork and knife on her empty plate and lifted her napkin to her lips. Aila released a sigh, grateful the older woman accepted the change of subject without argument. “Most Scotsmen suffered financially in the years following Culloden, yet the duke had resources enough to build himself a new castle.”

  “That’s what happens when ye’re on the right side, I suppose.” Aila closed the book on Lord Finlay and rested a hand on the cover. “I read that the third duke at the time supported the English king, George I, rather than Prince Charlie.”

  “Simply because one is on the winning side of the war, doesn’t make it the right side. Campbells!” The older woman nudged her plate aside with a grunt. “Waving his wealth and privilege about in the faces of his countrymen who bore the consequences of the Clearances in the aftermath of the war.”