A Well Favored Gentleman

by Christina Dodd

  “You’re one of Armstrong’s brood, aren’t you?”

  Shanley nodded again. “Right again, Mr. Ian.” Cautiously he walked toward Tocsin’s head.

  “When you see your father, reassure him all my man-parts are still in working order.”

  “He wouldna ask!”

  “I’d hate to have him wonder.” Ian handed over Tocsin’s reins. “The horse has had a pleasant ride. Rub him down, brush him, and I promise you he will give you no trouble.” Tocsin huffed, but Ian stepped around to Tocsin’s head and looked into his eyes. “Will you, my lad? Will you?”

  The stallion’s nostrils flared, but Ian held his gaze. Finally the animal conceded with a grudging nod, and Ian scratched his nose. “You’re a beauty,” he crooned.

  “Aye, Mr. Ian, that he is.” Young Shanley ventured to stroke Tocsin’s neck. “Has anyone ever told ye ye have a way with animals?”

  “A few people.” The horse swung his head toward Shanley, and Ian watched as the boy scratched under Tocsin’s chin. Tocsin stretched out his neck. “You have quite a way with them yourself,” Ian observed.

  “’Tis in the blood,” the boy answered absently.

  Startled, Ian asked, “What do you mean?”

  Shanley glanced at Ian almost guiltily. “Nothing. Just a saying we have in these parts, that’s all.”

  Tocsin laughed, a great horse-snigger, and the boy stood on tiptoe and whispered toward his ear, “Dunna be telling tales on me, great one.” With a click of the tongue, Shanley turned Tocsin toward his stall.

  Brow knit, Ian stared after him. Many people claimed to have a way with animals, but few truly did. Odd to find the two of them in one place at the same time.

  Following Wilda’s course, he made his way up the ragged stone path to the manor. Ironically, the witch’s garden was better kept than this place. Since his father’s advent, and probably before, the manor’s maintenance had been neglected. The dairy’s roof sagged. The scraggly trees hung branches low enough to strike a man in the face. One of the manor windows had been broken and patched with a wooden shingle.

  Yet for all that, the manor delighted Ian’s eye. The compact building seemed comfortable on its high perch, accustomed to the wind off the sea and proud of its view. Two wings had been added at various times and in various styles, giving a bird-like resemblance to the manor. The gray stone turrets were quaint replicas of a bygone age, and the broad stairway to the entry doors invited Ian to walk in.

  He did, into a capacious corridor lined with doors. One led to the study, one to the library, one to a sitting chamber, and one went down the stairs to the kitchen and laundry. Straight ahead of him lay the great hall, with two corridors that led off in circular routes to the bedchambers. In one of those bedchambers his father rested, and there Ian should go.

  Should. He leaned a hand against the ornately carved table.

  Should. Duty.

  Since he had arrived in Scotland, those words had ruled his life. He enjoyed performing his obligations to Fionnaway, but the neglected estate consumed hours of his time and demanded more. He dreaded the hours spent caring for his father, knowing that nothing he did could ease him and that, in Leslie’s eyes, he never did enough. Now he also had to consign time to overseeing Wilda, and that was time he didn’t have.

  “Ye’re looking fagged still, Mr. Ian.” Mrs. Armstrong, tall, stout, walked toward him with an armload of dirty linens. “Didna the ride refresh ye?”

  “The ride, yes.” He squared his shoulders. As always, he would do what he had to. The days of dissipation were long past. “The witch is on her way, although your husband’s none too happy about it.”

  “So he told me.” An undemonstrative woman, was Mrs. Armstrong, and she had been at Fionnaway all her life.

  “The witch spoke to me of Lady Alanna,” Ian said. “She seems convinced the young lady is still alive.”

  Mrs. Armstrong shifted the laundry to her hip. “If that were true, then ’twas na a ghost ye saw.”

  “I never doubted it. Her knee left bruises on my chest and her knife slit a hole in my throat.”

  “We didna know ye when ye staggered out screaming of a ghost that night. We’d take ye more seriously now.”

  That was as close to an apology as he was likely to hear. It was also a testimonial to his character. Mrs. Armstrong, whose judgment he valued, had declared him a man to be trusted.

  Another confirmation he belonged here. “The witch said she knew Lady Alanna well.”

  “Did she now?” Mrs. Armstrong’s voice rose as if she were surprised, and she dropped a towel.

  When she bent to retrieve it, Ian placed his foot on it. “What do you say about that?”

  Reluctantly she straightened and looked at him. “I dunna remember this witch ever meeting Lady Alanna. The old witch, aye, but na this witch.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We always have a witch here in Fionnaway, always living in that hut in that clearing. There’s some who say ’tis the same witch, just growing older and uglier, but that is clearly nonsense. A witch grows old, another witch appears.”

  She sounded so matter-of-fact Ian forced himself to remember this wasn’t England. There witch-hunting had ceased and learned men laughed at superstition. These were the Highlands of Scotland, virtually untouched by civilization. Mrs. Armstrong, who seemed so sensible, obviously believed in some kind of magical transfer from one witch to the other. He couldn’t scoff, not without offending her, so he politely asked, “From where does this new witch come?”

  Mrs. Armstrong slapped down Ian’s insolent assumption. “’Tis na that she’s really a witch. If ever any magical creatures lived here, they must have died years ago.” She chuckled, inviting him to do the same.

  He could not. He could only produce a strained smile.

  “The new witch who appears is no more than an old woman thrust out of a less compassionate village. The old witch teaches her the medicines so when one dies, we have another t’ tend our illnesses. Now, Lady Alanna did spend time with the old witch. Her mother died too early, you ken, trying t’ bring forth a son, so the witch taught Lady Alanna the arts of healing. The chatelaine of a great estate must know these things.”

  Slowly Ian leaned down and picked up the towel. “So the witch I met today is the new witch. Fascinating. You’ve given me something to think about.” A piece of Fionnaway’s puzzle. Tucking the towel into the center of the laundry, he looked Mrs. Armstrong in the eye. “You might be a little more careful what you say around Wilda. Although she doesn’t have even ordinary sense, she has very acute hearing.”

  Mrs. Armstrong raised her brows in query.

  “I found her at the witch’s today.”

  A life as the manor’s housekeeper and as the mother of seven children seemed to have inured Mrs. Armstrong to shock, but she still gave a murmur of anxiety. Patting his arm, she said, “Ach, Mr. Ian, that could have been disaster. She must have heard Agnes and me when we thought she was toasting her toes before the fire. Very well, I’ll warn the others.”

  He lingered for one more moment. Mrs. Armstrong had been his father’s attendant during Ian’s absence today; she was the only servant who dared. “How is he?”

  She didn’t ask who he was. She knew. “Mr. Fairchild has been blaspheming against ye again.”

  “There’s nothing new in that.”

  A howl of unearthly proportions sounded down the corridor, and the imperturbable Mrs. Armstrong shuddered.

  “The witch had better hurry.” Ian tugged off his coat and rolled up his sleeves. “He needs help, and I do not know how to render it.”

  “Dunna fash yerself, Mr. Ian. There’s naught can be done for him,” Mrs. Armstrong said. “’Tis the ancient disease he suffers from, and he brought it on himself.”

  She sounded almost callous, and Ian asked, “What do you mean?”

  “The sinner will be punished, and the lost lamb redeemed.” She nodded and gathered the load of laundry tig
ht against her belly. “Remember that, Mr. Ian, when he’s shrieking his curses on you.”

  “Yes.” Ian had no idea what she was talking about, but he had little to do with God. God had no compassion for creatures such as Ian, although he wouldn’t distress Mrs. Armstrong with such sentiments. As she turned away, he said, “Oh, one more thing.”

  She stopped. “Aye, sir?”

  “How old would Lady Alanna be if she were here?”

  “How old?” Mrs. Armstrong faced him and looked him over doubtfully. “Are ye a wee bit more tired than ye want t’ admit, Mr. Ian?”

  “How old?” he insisted.

  “Twenty…nay, almost twenty-one.”

  So his computations were correct. And—“Do you know the date of Lady Alanna’s birth?”

  “I suppose I do,” she said indignantly. “I was her mother’s attendant! ’Twas in the summer, in the month o’ July. The twenty-first, I think.” Mrs. Armstrong’s brow crinkled as she pondered. “Aye, ’twas the twenty-first, the day before I gave birth t’ my Jamie.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Armstrong. You’ve been of great assistance.”

  As she walked toward the laundry, he stared at the stone of his ring. The twenty-first of July. Lady Alanna’s birthday was only a fortnight away.

  He had less time than he thought.

  The elderly folk of Scotland smile tolerantly when the young ones ask about their enchanted heritage. ’Tis not a thing they have time for, they reply. The mere effort of scraping a living from the harsh soil or netting it from the hostile sea requires all their time.

  Some of the young ones listen, and bend their backs to the work as they should.

  Others see only the romance of magic. They hope to ease their lives with its assistance. They want potions. They want spells. They seek aid from charlatans and old women who call themselves sorceresses.

  They are the fools, for everyone knows there are no such things as witches.

  Chapter 4

  Dressed as the witch, Lady Alanna eased open the door of Fionnaway Manor. Night pressed in behind her, and before her the glow of the night candle beckoned. With elaborate care she shut the door, and stood to listen to the silence.

  No one was awake. No one greeted her, but as she entered her home, joy almost brought her to her knees. Only once since the day she had run away had she dared come, and then to commit murder.

  She couldn’t do it. She should have known better. But the news that Mr. Fairchild’s son had arrived had shaken her to the core, and she’d panicked. She’d grabbed her herbs and her sharpest knife and sneaked into his bedchamber in the night.

  She still groaned when she remembered the mess she’d made of that, and she’d taken care to stay well away from Fionnaway since.

  But he’d come to her today. Despite her uneasiness, he hadn’t reconciled Lady Alanna with the witch, and she’d been ordered here by the man who fancied himself Fionnaway’s new master.

  So she arrived blissfully, and stood listening to the sounds of the manor. She had missed the creaking of the shutters in the wind. The scent of sweet wood in the fireplace. The texture of stone beneath her fingertips.

  Yet at the same time, she arrived reluctantly. She didn’t want to treat Mr. Fairchild. Although he couldn’t die soon enough to please her, still she knew herself well enough to comprehend she would help him if she could.

  But more important was the realization she dared not see Ian Fairchild if she could help it.

  Mr. Fairchild had lied about his son, of course. The old blackguard would tell a lie when the truth would do as well, and she should have suspected it. Ian stood tall and proud, his shoulders muscled and broad, his legs long and powerful. His short black hair and beard displayed no gray, none of the signs of age his father had described.

  And Ian’s eyes—she shivered and clasped her necklace of rune stones in her fist. Ian’s eyes were as his father described. Large and darkly lashed, the kind of eyes foolish girls melted over, although why, she certainly didn’t understand. They were brown. Just plain brown. Yet…his gaze could never be called ordinary. Piercing, impatient, amused by her as if he could see right through her disguise and down to the solitary woman beneath it.

  For the first time in too long, someone had looked at her, really looked at her.

  Why did it have to be a Fairchild?

  And why now, when her goal was in sight?

  A fresh layer of ash coated her face and sifted from her hair as she slipped along the corridor. Hung with shadows, the great hall opened up before her, but she couldn’t linger. She had been too long already. Unerringly she headed for the master’s bedchamber. Mr. Fairchild had appropriated it as his own immediately after his arrival, and nothing she had done had dislodged him. She had tried, of course; it was her mother’s room.

  But Mr. Fairchild had sneered at her in his superior way and proceeded to redecorate with velvet hangings and gaudy furniture, and he had tossed every bit of MacLeod history in the dust bin.

  The servants had rescued it and brought it to her, and thus the battle had been joined.

  In the shadowy corridor, the master’s door was open and light spread from it. She crept toward it, wishing she could turn back.

  But she didn’t make the mistake of thinking Ian would let her fail in her duty. He’d made himself clear on that account, so she clutched her bag of herbs and stepped within.

  Nothing moved except the wheezing figure on the raised bed. Mr. Fairchild breathed, then sighed and halted, making her hold her own breath until he gathered the strength to inhale once again.

  She walked forward and stepped up on the dais, and stared. “By the stones,” she whispered, “what can I do to help him?”

  The fat that he had restrained with whalebone corsets had been melted away by the disease that ate at his body. In its place, an unhealthy bloating distended his belly beneath the bedclothes. His flamboyant rings had been cut from his swollen fingers. His wig was gone, no longer an adequate disguise for his bald head. He had chewed his lips until they were bloody, their fine line ragged from pain. “Poor Mr. Fairchild,” she said. “All your vanities are vanquished at last.”

  “You took your own sweet time in getting here.”

  The voice from the doorway made her jump, and she turned on her heel. “Ian.” She bowed, unwilling to make excuses to her usurper.

  “I expected you this afternoon.” Striding toward the bed, he loomed above her.

  Too proud to step back, Alanna strained away and snapped, “The herbs retain their magical qualities when gathered fresh, and gather them, I did.” She reached into the bag hanging on her belt and thrust a handful in his face. “Houseleek for ulcers, and to assuage the soreness of the mouth. Cicely for the debilitated stomach. Egrimoyne for a liver tonic—and to lay under his head to induce sleep. And betony as a panacea for all ills.”

  “Whew!” Ian waved his hand and backed away from the odors, off the dais and toward the roaring fire laid in the massive fireplace. “Betony? Isn’t betony endowed with a power against evil spirits?”

  She raised her eyebrows in mocking surprise. “A knowledgeable man? I’d believed the words were mutually exclusive.”

  Ian didn’t slap her as he should. He didn’t snarl and he didn’t scold. As he had earlier, he ignored her insult as if it, and she, were of no importance.

  She didn’t know what to make of that, but she didn’t like it.

  “Can you make him more comfortable?” Ian warmed his backside before the hearth. “He frightens the servants when he screams, and they’ll not enter even to save their own skins.”

  “Who’s cared for him?”

  “I have, for the most part.”

  Magic pervaded this part of Scotland. She’d heard tales her whole life of elves and dwarves, wizards and werewolves. Fionnaway survived because of magic, yet Alanna had never seen a magical creature in her whole life.

  Until Ian. Handsome was too weak a word to describe him. He moved like part of the nig
ht, dark, sleek, sweeping in like a black storm off the sea. His body formed a force of nature, moving gracefully yet with the power of the wind. He sought to conceal his wildness beneath his glossy, well-trimmed beard. The severe cut of his hair couldn’t disguise its ebony gleam.

  His eyes narrowed as he watched her watching him, and he demanded, “What’s your name?”

  Not Alanna, she reminded herself. Not to him. Carefully she said, “At Fionnaway we’ve always called our witches ‘Mab.’”

  “Ah.” He rubbed the warmth into his rear. “Then you’ve not always been Mab?”

  “I took the title when the old witch died.”

  With the pleased air of a man making a deduction, he said, “So you weren’t always an old witch. You were, perhaps, a lady.”

  Consternation made her bump against the bed, but Mr. Fairchild didn’t stir. “Why would you think that?” she asked quickly. Too quickly.

  “You speak English well to be a peasant.”

  She challenged and distracted him with a question in return. “How old are you?”

  “Four and thirty. And how long ago did the old witch die?”

  “Six months. Have you always lived with your father?”

  “Since I was twelve. How long have you lived here as witch?”

  “Four years. Where is your mother?”

  “She abandoned me. Are you lonely?”

  “She abandoned…?” she began. Then his second question made its impact, and she stuttered, “Lonely? Well…aye.” Seeking to put him back on her level, she asked, “Are you?”

  He laughed, a deep and pleasant laugh. His eyes crinkled at the corners, his lips smoothed and quirked. This man, the one she thought so dangerous, fairly purred with charm. In that he was, perhaps, more dangerous than she had realized.

  “What can I do to help you take care of my father?” he asked.

  “I need…” She took a breath and tried to calm her racing heart. He wasn’t seducing her. To him she was only an old hag. Any stirrings she experienced were figments of her own desolation. “I need a kettle full of boiling water and some maids to help me move him.” She glanced at his doubtful face. “I’m the witch. They’ll come if I tell them to.”