Under an Enchantment: A Novella

by Anne Stuart

  “You don’t think I’m simple, do you, Torquil?” she asked in a plaintive voice that sounded madder than anything Malcolm had heard from her before.

  Torquil looked very pleased. “Of course not, my love.” “Because you wouldn’t want to marry a woman who was half-mad, would you?” she continued. “Even for the sake of my inheritance you wouldn’t want to be saddled with a barren idiot.”

  “Ailie!” he protested, his good humor vanished.

  “Though we don’t know for sure I’m barren, do we?” she continued in that light, singsong voice. “That’s what you and Angus are waiting for. To see whether I’m breeding or not. It certainly would complicate matters if I were. Though I suppose I could ask old Morag the witch to take care of it for me.”

  She’d managed to shock even the phlegmatic Torquil into silence, and she took advantage of that fact, pulling away from him with gentle force. “I’m going back to the dower house,” she said. “It doesn’t appear as if we’re going to be getting any tea today.”

  Malcolm wanted to go with her. He told himself it was out of his need for revenge, but he knew he lied. He wanted to see what else she might say, what outrageous things might come from that artless mouth. He wanted to touch her hair, to see if it felt as soft and silky as it looked.

  “I’ll accompany you,” Torquil said hurriedly.

  She spared one brief, sly glance at Malcolm. “No,” she said to Torquil. “You won’t.” And with a whirl of her skirts and her rich golden hair she was gone.

  “Damn,” Torquil said, watching her run. He turned and shrugged his shoulders, giving Malcolm a smile that was no doubt meant to be man-to-man. “She’s a rare handful. She’s safe enough here on the island—if any man were to offer her insult, half the villagers would gut him.”

  “Is that a warning?” Malcolm murmured.

  “Of course not, dear fellow. You can see as well as I that she’s not quite right in the head. Never has been, for that matter, though no one has ever been sure of the reason. Why, she thinks you’re a selkie! Of all the absurd fancies. I know I can count on you not to pay too much attention to the things she says. She’s a complete innocent, unaware of how her words might sound.”

  Malcolm doubted that. Mistress Ailie seemed fully aware of the havoc she was wreaking. He simply smiled, a wintry, noncommittal smile. He’d always been adept at patience, at hunting for his prey. His prey stood before him, fat and sleek and ready for the slaughter. Malcolm was going to enjoy himself immensely.

  But not yet. There’d be time to savor his revenge. To get it right. “I’d best be getting home,” he murmured to the man he’d sworn to destroy.

  “I’ll convey your regrets to Sir Angus and Lady Wallace,” Torquil murmured, making no effort to stop him.

  The air was cool, crisp when he left the Wallace manor house, and Malcolm took a deep, cleansing breath. He’d met his enemy, face-to-face. The last remaining villain who’d engineered his mother’s near murder. Odd to think that the fat, smug old man was some sort of blood kin to him. A few hours on St. Columba and the truth of James MacLaren’s words came home to him. James was his father, the only one worth having. His kin lay back in Glen Corrie, not on this beautiful rocky island.

  He started up the pathway to the northern coast of the small isle, wanting to investigate the house where his mother had been born, to see if any trace of the once carefree lass remained. Not that she’d been careworn during his childhood. She’d taken her blindness in stride, doing more than most sighted women could have accomplished, and doing it with calm good humor, ordering her servants, raising her brood of children, loving her husband.

  Collis would meet him when he finished with the day’s catch. Like most highland crofters, he counted on a number of things to scratch a living out of the unfriendly soil—the sparse crops he could grow, the sheep he tended, and the fish he could draw from the sea.

  He found himself grinning, remembering Ailie Spens’s deliberately artless question. He almost wished he had the strength of purpose to swallow a live fish, just to see the reactions of the good people of St. Columba.

  The sky was fading into the dim halflight that would linger well toward midnight. He walked swiftly, trying to still the restlessness that danced in his veins. He needed to be patient. His revenge must be delicately taken for it to provide a mortal sting. He couldn’t rush into anything.

  His grandparents’ house was a small, sturdy stone cottage by the edge of the sea. Part of the roof had fallen in, some of the windows were broken, and the garden was a riot of overgrowth and color. Collis had taken him there this morning, and he’d immediately felt an affinity for the place. It was all he had left of his mother’s family—a deserted old farmhouse. It both soothed him and strengthened his determination.

  The shadows were lengthening when he opened the front door, listening to it creak noisily. He wouldn’t oil it—it would prove a warning if Torquil began to suspect he had other reasons for being here. He stepped inside, staring around him at the dust-shrouded hallway.

  His mother had grown up here. He could imagine her, a bonnie lass, racing down the steep front stairs. He could almost sense her presence, hear her breathing, smell the faint trace of flowers.

  It wasn’t his imagination, or wishful thinking. He wasn’t alone in the old house. Someone was there with him. And he had a fair idea who it might be.

  He walked into the empty drawing room. Ailie was standing by a window, staring out at the sea, her long hair hanging down her back. She’d heard him, of course, but she paid him no notice, intent on the rough water that lay beyond the rocks.

  “Do you love the sea?” she asked in a vague, faraway voice.

  “You shouldn’t be here.”

  She turned then, to smile at him. “A daft question,” she said, ignoring his comment. “Of course you love the sea. It’s your home.”

  “Does your cousin know you’re here?” She looked like a ghost, standing there in the shadowed room, and while he ought to thank the fates for putting her in his hands so rapidly, he wasn’t ready for her. He wasn’t going to take her in his mother’s house, against her will. This house had known too much joy, too much sorrow, as it was. His grandparents had died shortly after Catriona had gone into the sea, never to know that their daughter lived and prospered, blind but loved.

  And he wasn’t going to take her at all if she was anywhere near as mad as she pretended to be. He was a bastard in deed as well as name, but even he had limits. There would have to be another way to get to Torquil Spens. Another way to avenge his mother.

  “No one knows where I am,” she said simply. “I like it that way. They’ll tie me down soon enough. For now I simply disappear when I want to, go where I want to. I wanted to come here.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve never been here,” she said, wandering past him, looking around her with a curious eye. “They say it’s haunted. The old couple died long before I was born, and their daughter was lost at sea.” She turned to glance at him. “I don’t suppose you knew her? Her name was Catriona MacDugald.”

  It took an effort to control the shock her eerie words had given him. “How should I have known her?” he demanded hoarsely.

  “In the sea, Malcolm,” Ailie replied patiently, as if he were the one who was mad. “Maybe she didn’t drown at all. Maybe a selkie came and stole her away, and she’s living there still, with a dozen seal pups to watch over. I wonder if she’d miss her family.”

  “I doubt it,” he said wryly.

  “Well, I wouldn’t if I were her,” Ailie said, whirling around, the skirts dancing about her long, shapely calves. “Family is a mixed blessing, and mine has proved more of a curse. If you’re here to take me to the sea, I won’t argue. I imagine living beneath the waves is very grand.”

  Heaven preserve him, he thought wearily. He reached out and stopped her in the midst of her turning, holding her steadily. “You have too much of an affinity for Ophelia, mistress,” he said. “She en
ded badly.”

  He’d hoped to startle her. She simply smiled at him, her face almost at a level with his, and he wondered what it would be like to hold such a tall woman in his arms. How would she fit against him? Beneath him? “That’s a matter of opinion,” she said. “She went where no one could reach her. I consider that to be a triumph.”

  “Suicide, Ailie? Isn’t that a wee bit drastic?”

  She stood there, staring at him, suddenly serious. “No, Malcolm. I might go into the sea with you if you asked me, but otherwise I’m promised to this life. I wonder. . .” And her voice trailed off.

  “You wonder what?”

  Once more the mischief lit her blue eyes, and she raised her hand to his face. Her fingers brushed his mouth, lightly, and it took all his self-control to keep still beneath her touch. “Whether your lips are cold as the sea. Or warm.”

  “And what have you discovered?”

  “They’re warm,” she said, her fingertips tracing the outline of his lips. They were soft, gentle, and then to his shock she reached up and brushed her mouth against his as well, a feather-light caress. Before he could react, could pull her into his arms, she pulled away, moving across the room toward the door.

  He watched her go, relief and regret and the slow burning coals of desire at war within his body. “Are you leaving?”

  “They want to lock me away,” she said, seemingly a non sequitur. “If I won’t marry Torquil and sleep in his bed, then they’ll lock me away. I wouldn’t mind, but I should miss the sea, and the hills, and the creatures of the forest. So I’d best behave myself, for now. You’d best behave yourself as well, my selkie.”

  He didn’t correct her address. “Why should I?” “Because they don’t trust you. Neither my brother nor Torquil, and while they smile and say all the right things, they are capable of great evil. Smiling, damnable villains,” she said.

  “You read too much Shakespeare.”

  “I know,” she said. “It was ever a failing of mine.” And she disappeared, humming beneath her breath. An old Jacobite song that had been outlawed years ago. “Over the Water to Charlie.”

  “Making war on women is a shameful business.” Malcolm didn’t turn. He’d heard Collis’s approach, and while he’d wondered just how much he’d observed, the old man’s caustic observation gave him the answer. “I won’t hurt her,” he said.

  “You already have. Were you to go into the sea this night and never return, she’d mourn ye.”

  “That’s not my problem.”

  Collis shook his head in a disapproval. “I’ll help ye,” he said. “For the sake of Catriona. But I don’t hold with hurting helpless craitures. If you wound Ailie, you’ll have me to answer to.”

  Malcolm looked down at the sturdy, bandy-legged old man and told himself he should be amused. Unfortunately there was little to lighten his dark mood. “You and half the island,” he said. “She won’t suffer for anything I’ve done.”

  Collis just looked at him, uncertain whether to believe him or not. And then he nodded. “Ye’re a man of your word,” he said. “I’ve brought fish for your dinner.”

  Malcolm almost asked him if they were still alive and wiggling, but he controlled his dark humor. Collis wasn’t quite sure what he thought of Malcolm. He’d asked him very little—they’d come to an agreement without much talking. He knew Malcolm came from Catriona, but he didn’t know he was her son. For all Malcolm knew, Collis might truly think he was a selkie.

  It didn’t matter. People could believe what they wished. It would prove nothing but useful to have people think he was a seal creature, an enchanted being. The less people knew, the better.

  He wouldn’t hurt Ailie. Seduce her, yes, so that Torquil was painfully aware of it. Get her with a babe, as his father had failed to do. A fitting revenge on the man who’d sired him and then tried to have him killed.

  And then he’d disappear, leaving the daughter of Finlay Wallace pregnant. There’d be gossip, of course. From what little he’d seen of Ailie, she’d probably scarcely notice her disgrace.

  Perhaps Collis was right—it was a shameful thing to hurt an innocent like Ailie. But his dark revenge would be far sweeter than a dirk in the belly of Torquil Spens. She’d spent her life being prey to the whim of her menfolk. His use of her would be nothing new. And he had every intention of giving her pleasure as well as a bairn.

  He glanced around him, surprised to notice he was now alone. Collis was moving around in some other part of the deserted cottage, and Malcolm could smell grilling fish. At least tonight he wouldn’t be expected to bite the head off a trout.

  He could still feel the touch of her fingertips on his lips and her lips. He wanted more than the brush of her mouth against his. He wanted her body wrapped around him, her hair a plaid for them both. He never thought revenge would be near so sweet.

  Deep in the forest that fanned out behind the village, covering half the tiny isle of St. Columba, lay a clearing. In that clearing stood a circle of stones, ancient, beyond time, towering above the ground. The villagers kept away from the spot, known as the Seal’s Dance. It was haunted, they said, a place for faeries and broonies and the like. It was Ailie’s favorite place in the world.

  The old witch Morag was rumored to live there, though no one had ever actually admitted to seeing her but Ailie, and everyone knew the lass was mazed. The old woman was powerful nonetheless, and she was known to cast a spell on souls, a spell that rendered their fishing nets empty and their sheep dead. She’d put such a spell on Domnhall MacAlpin when he’d murdered Ailie’s cat, but the villagers didn’t consider it one of her happier acts. Domnhall had turned to seal hunting, and the good folk of St. Columba were waiting for the selkies to take their revenge.

  It was the time for faeries, that endless twilight of the northern isles, and Ailie’s bare feet were light on the pathway. Even if they suspected where she was, no one would come after her. They were afraid of the Seal’s Dance, all of them, even Margery. They would wait till she came to them, secure in the knowledge that the spirit of old Morag would protect her.

  They were the simple ones, Ailie thought with gentle derision. So busy looking just beyond the end of their noses that they could see no farther. They trusted only what they could see, smell, and touch. They were missing a world of glory.

  “There you are, lassie.” Morag’s voice came to her on the soft breeze, and she turned, gracefully, to see the bent-over old lady sitting on the ground by one of the stones. “I knew ye’d come to me this night.”

  Ailie didn’t bother to ask how she knew. In her experience Morag was as wise and as old as time. She crossed the thick mossy grass and knelt beside the old woman. “Who is he?” she asked, knowing she need explain no further.

  “He comes from the sea,” Morag said. “Dinna ye ken his eyes? He comes from the seal people.”

  “So do half the people of St. Columba.”

  “Aye,” she said, as if that answered everything.

  “What does he want?”

  Morag turned to look at her. Her eyes were milky, practically sightless, and yet she could see into Ailie’s heart more truly than any soul with perfect vision. “He means ye harm, mistress. He’ll change yer life, turn it upside down, and there’s no telling how it will end.”

  “Why would he wish to harm me?”

  “Not for your sake. For others’. It’s a blood vengeance, and you stand right in the midst of it. Keep away from him, mistress. I don’t want to lose ye.”

  “You won’t lose me,” Ailie said in a fierce, quiet voice that none of her kin would even recognize. “Haven’t you been more than a mother to me? I’ll keep away from the man.”

  “Ye don’t want to. I can hear it in your voice. He fascinates you.”

  Ailie didn’t bother to deny it. “I’ve never known an enchanted creature before,” she said. “It’s little wonder I’m drawn to him. He’s bonnie enough to make even a lackwit take notice.”

  “And ye’re no lackwit,
for all the pretense ye make of it,” Morag said.

  “I’m lackwit enough to come here tonight with no food for you,” she said wryly. “I’ll bring you a basket tomorrow.”

  “And ye’ll keep away from yon fine craiture?”

  Ailie thought back to him. To the eyes the color of the sea, the tall, strong body, thin but powerful, the strong nose, and firm mouth. And she remembered the warmth of his mouth beneath her fingertips. Beneath her lips. Morag had never asked anything of her—she’d been a lap to weep into, a voice of wisdom, the keeper of the stories, and a source of magic. Ailie would do as she asked, without regret.

  “I’ll keep away from him,” she said firmly, meaning every word of it. But she hadn’t accounted for her dreams.

  She slept soundly that night, in the high, soft bed in the dower house, at peace, knowing no one would come to her side, no one would insist on watching as she disrobed, his eyes bleary and hungry, his body aged and sick. She had no one to bother her, no one to question her, for at least the next few months. She could snuggle down in the feathery softness and know she would be blessedly, peacefully alone. Until she was forced to marry Torquil.

  She was standing alone on a rocky stretch of beach, her bare feet on a boulder as the water swirled around her. There was a cool breeze, tossing her long skirts against her legs, spilling her hair around her face, but she stood there, shivering in the chill air, motionless, as she watched him emerge from the angry green depths of the sea.

  His long black hair clung to his bare shoulders, beads of water glistened on his narrow, enigmatic face, his bronzed torso. He stood thigh-deep in the surf, and the icy sea swelled around his black pants.

  He stared at her, silent, demanding. And then he held out a hand to her and beckoned her.

  She shook her head. The water was too icy, she was too frightened, she who’d never been frightened of a man in her life. But then, he wasn’t a man beckoning to her, calling to her. He was an enchanted creature, one who would take her down, down into the frigid depths of the water to live among the seal folk.