Ian ran his gaze critically over the rest of him, too. The fellow had been visiting London tailors recently, for every stitch he wore reeked of faultless fashion.
“Laird of the clan? Are you really?” Ian managed to inject a measure of surprise into his tone. “I thought Lady Alanna was laird.”
Brice tried to smile, but the curve of his lips looked more chagrined than pleasant. “The title goes to a male descendant.” The smile grew malicious. “Much to your father’s dismay. I had heard he was ill. I hope it’s not serious.”
He’s dying, but damned if I’ll let him go until I have somehow secured my position here. “Not at all.”
“Will we be dining with him?”
Who invited you to dinner? “He’s still recovering from the physician’s last visit. You know what an ordeal that is.” Ian leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. As earnestly as he knew how, he said, “I’m embarrassed to say I don’t understand Scottish law. If you could explain to me. You have the title of laird of the Fionnaway MacLeods?”
Edwin stopped pacing and said fiercely, “As prestigious a title as any English lord’s.”
“Of course, of course.” Ian nodded agreement. “Yet Lady Alanna inherited Fionnaway.”
“The title must go to a man, but only a direct descendant of the original MacLeod can inherit the estate.” Brice allowed himself a tight, triumphant smile. “Or at least until there is no one else to inherit. Or if that direct descendant breaks one of the rules governing the inheritance.”
“Rules?” Ian didn’t have to fake confusion this time. “Don’t you mean laws?”
Edwin said eagerly, “No, Fionnaway is special. It’s bound by a pact that states—”
“What he’s trying to say,” Brice interrupted smoothly, “is that Fionnaway is so old that laws aren’t as important here as tradition.”
Ian looked at Edwin. “Oh, is that what you were trying to say?”
A dark flush streaked along Edwin’s cheekbones. “Aye. So it was.”
Edwin was lying. He did it badly, then retreated toward the fireplace where he stood tapping on the mantel.
“So…” Ian concentrated his attention on Edwin. “If Lady Alanna had a son, he would be laird?”
Brice answered for his brother. “That branch of the family has only daughters.” He allowed himself a smug little smile. “My branch of the family has never failed to produce sons.”
I could get a son on Alanna. The thought surprised Ian in its clarity.
“And anyway,” Brice said, “Lady Alanna is no longer with us.”
“You seem to have coped with your bereavement quite well,” Ian observed.
Grasping the arms of the chair in his fists, Brice leaned forward. “After Aunt Keven’s death, my family visited often.”
“Aunt Keven is Alanna’s mother,” Ian surmised.
“Aye. A lovely lady, but with little wisdom in her choice of husbands.” Brice glared as if Ian were to blame, and in tones of doom said, “She married an Englishman.”
“And lived to regret it,” Edwin said with priggish delight.
“We all regretted it,” Brice said harshly. “Alanna most of all. I know. We used to play together. Talk together. Fight together. When she disappeared, I prayed for her safe return. But it has been apparent for some time that that was a futile prayer, and someone needed to take charge of Fionnaway before—” He stopped his impetuous rush of words.
“Before your father ran it into the ground,” Edwin finished scornfully.
Brice glared at his brother.
Edwin subsided. “Sorry.” He shrugged and grinned repentantly at Brice.
Irritation etched Brice’s face, yet he settled back into his chair with a fair assumption of ease. “Edwin lacks diplomatic skills. I hope you will forgive him.”
“Of course,” Ian murmured.
Swinging his booted foot, Brice said, “What an interesting ring you wear.”
Ian glanced down at the middle finger of his left hand. “More interesting than you know.”
“May I look at it?” Brice asked.
Ian extended his hand without hesitation, allowing Brice to grasp the ring and twist it gently.
“Beautiful.” Brice betrayed envy and amazement. “Where did you get it?”
“I’ve always had it.” It was true. Ian couldn’t remember a time when it hadn’t encircled his finger.
“Family heirloom, then.”
“You might say that. Rub the stone.” Ian remembered the witch’s quick refusal, and wondered if Brice would be as well informed.
Apparently not, for he rubbed his finger across the rippling-smooth stone, and gave an exclamation of delight. “It changes color! Look, Edwin.”
Edwin hustled to Brice while Ian struggled to control a sudden, dark revulsion. Foreboding welled in him, and he barely refrained from jerking his hand from Brice’s grip.
Then Edwin grasped Ian’s hand, and Brice rubbed the stone again. “The stone turned from blue to green. And look—it’s turning again.”
“How unusual.” Edwin shoved Brice’s hand away and rubbed it himself. “It’s turning black.”
Ian struggled to read the two brothers and fought to understand the looming sensation of disaster.
“Edwin, is this like the stones Uncle Darnell showed you?” Brice asked.
His brother scowled. “He didn’t show me anything.”
“But you said—”
“I said no such thing.”
Ian extricated his hand. Then both brothers lurched, straightened, stared, their jaws dropped open.
Wilda drifted toward them across the great hall.
Good. The men would be busy.
The thought hovered in Ian’s mind. Then he felt nothing. Nothing but the hideous supernatural scourge of his dark gift. Cold raced from the stone and ripped through his bones like a doctor’s amputating knife. Cold so violent he almost fell to his knees. He fought it; eyes closed, jaw clenched, left hand wrapped around his right, ring clasped in his palm.
For just a moment, the room and Fionnaway Manor faded completely from his consciousness, and he hovered above an abyss so deep and stark that if he fell, he would shatter. His heart stopped. Death captured him, and all the angels fled from the monster he was. He was sliding down to—
“Ian, who are these handsome gentlemen?”
Wilda. Wilda spoke to him.
“Yes, sir, won’t you introduce us?”
And that boy. What was his name? Edwin. Edwin MacLeod. He wanted to meet Wilda. Slowly Ian opened his eyes.
The chamber remained as it had been. The fire still gave off warmth. Light still streamed in the windows. The men stood before Wilda with those love-stricken expressions, much like deer hypnotized by a flaming brand. No one had noticed Ian’s distress. He need give no explanation.
He only wished he could explain it to himself. He’d used his ring for years as a way to discover a man’s true nature, and always before it had simply involved the ring changing to cool green or heated red or coy peach. Never had it turned black. Never had he experienced such emotions. He scarcely recognized them, they were so intense. He only knew they twisted his gut and brought him close to insanity.
And wasn’t insanity always just a chance away for a creature such as he?
“Ian?” Wilda prompted, her gaze flitting from Edwin to Brice.
Ian performed introductions without really knowing what he said, but it must have been right, for Wilda extended her hand to each of the MacLeods, and each of the MacLeods carried it to his lips as if it were a sacred icon.
“Will you be staying?” she asked.
“Aye, aye,” they stammered together.
They were violently in love with her. Ian knew that, for he’d seen it happen hundreds of times. Every man who ever laid eyes on a Fairchild woman fell in love.
Turning away, Ian squeezed his fingers to his temples. He had learned so much today. His father was dying, but Alanna was alive. Alive!
And ready to return as the lady of Fionnaway. A chill swept him. She could return, and Ian would once more be what he had always been—a man without name or place.
Yet he could do something. A way existed in which to secure his position.
He looked again at the MacLeod men as they fawned over Wilda. For this evening, at the least, Brice and Edwin would be dazed and overwhelmed by Wilda’s every utterance. They would vie with each other for her attention.
And they would not notice when Ian slipped away to seduce a witch named Alanna.
The legend tells that selkie and MacLeod first formed their alliance during one of Fionnaway’s harshest winters. On land, MacLeod’s people were dying of starvation and cold, and the MacLeods could do nothing. They had nothing to trade to their more affluent neighbors for food or fuel. The selkies couldn’t bear the sound of the children’s crying, so they brought up stones from the deep—precious stones of mutable colors and mystical qualities. The humans accepted them, took them to the South where the sun shone warmer, and to their amazement they found they could feed their babes off the profit. But being MacLeods, they insisted on repayment.
MacLeods, selkies say, do not accept gifts readily.
The selkies also knew that, although they were creatures of the sea, they had to have the air to breathe. They had to come on land to mate. So years upon years ago, the MacLeod and the selkie laird came to terms. They wrote down their agreement, and so the pact was drafted.
Chapter 8
The breeze turned colder as the sun slipped behind the clouds. Alanna dove one more time into the frigid waves, then swam toward shore. The currents were tricky and she had stayed in too long. She was cold and tired, but how the sight of the pact had exhilarated her!
Treading water, she scanned the tiny beach and the cliffs surrounding it. Nothing unusual stirred; only the shore plants swayed in the stiffening wind.
As she thought. No cottager had ever dared to come down to the sea at dusk when the selkie of Fionnaway gamboled in the waves. She glanced behind her into the open water of the Minch. No selkie had ever come, either, not even in her childhood when she had implored them for a glimpse. Yet she believed they were here; after all, she’d just seen the proof.
Scampering up the beach on tiptoe, she snatched her rough linen towel and dried herself briskly. She wrapped the cloth around her hair and flung on her cape. With dusk gathering, the disguise was sufficient to assure her she wouldn’t be recognized by any chance-met fisherman.
It always made her nervous, this scramble up the bit of a cliff and out into the flat open greenery the sea had created. There existed no cover for a selkie who wished to conceal her limbs; the ever-blowing breeze prohibited the growth of any but the most stunted of shrubs.
And this evening, as she skipped toward the hills rising at the edge of the plain, she thought she heard the wind moan her name.
“Alanna. Alanna.”
Swinging in a wide circle, she could see no one. This beach was far beyond Fionnaway Manor. The village huddled on the far side, and no one could have hailed her from there. If someone crouched beneath the edge of the cliff and called her, the wind could have carried it to her…
Or the creatures of the wild Atlantic Ocean, the selkies of legend, might be anxious for her companionship.
Maybe she didn’t really want to see them.
Wrapping the towel tighter around her head, she ran to the path that wound up over the fell and home, ignoring the whisper that again sighed, “Alanna. Alanna.”
She really couldn’t hear it.
In the enveloping shadows of the trees, she paused. Nothing was there, she assured herself. Only the wind, rising with the coming storm. The setting sun illuminated the woods with an eerie glow. Its indirect rays spread above the clouds, behind the clouds, creating a world of castles in the air and silent limbo below. Hurting her eyes, the golden light bathed the branches in precise detail and traced the dust motes as they danced in the air.
“Alanna. Alanna.”
Was someone behind her? She whirled, but there was no one.
Walk quickly, she advised herself, but with dignity.
A twig broke. A cloth snapped. Feet scraped on the trail.
She abandoned dignity and scurried off, almost at a run.
Don’t look back, don’t look back—but she did, and in that instant the boiling clouds clabbered in the air above her, plunging the world from twilight to night. Almost as if a sorcerer ordered the transformation.
Gulping in air, she calmed herself. Then she hurried. Unpierced by any moonlight or starlight, the dark strained her eyes. She knew the way to the cottage well, but tonight it all looked different. Stories of fairies who moved the paths and trapped unsuspecting mortals flitted through her mind.
Not that fairies scared her. It was the other stories that rasped at her good sense. Stories of goblins who preyed on innocent women, plucking at their clothes and poking their ribs with bony fingers. Stories of ghosts, those briefly animated corpses stained with earth and wrapped in tattered shrouds, who followed the living with envy.
Most of all, stories of great wizards haunted her. Stories of wizards who resented mortal challenge; who directed hordes of corrupt spirits and commanded the sea and the air. Sorcerers who might seek revenge on one lone woman who dared to pretend familiarity with the powers of the ancient world. Sorcerers who were weatherworkers, brewing wind and rain into a tremendous stew to pelt the presumptuous human below.
The simultaneous flash and boom of the storm pushed Alanna into flight as surely as a hand in the middle of her back. The thunder deafened her, the lightning blinded her. She could smell sulfur, charcoal, a whiff of fire and of brimstone. She could feel something watching her: eyes in the dark, observing her flight with relish. Her scramble up the path on the mountain became an undignified tumble over protruding roots and through clawing branches.
The trees were alive, holding her back, ripping her skin. She lost her towel, snagged by the fingernail of a malevolent tree nymph. The rain roared down with abrupt disdain for her footing on the grassy trail. The deluge washed salt from her hair as it washed chill into her bones.
Her cape flapped open as she scrambled up the incline, and water drenched her body. She reached the peak above her wee valley. She could see her cottage illuminated in the eruptions of lightning. She could feel those eyes boring into her back. In one last courageous stand, she whipped around and peered into the forest—and saw, rising up on the path, a bat-winged monster.
The brightest bolt of all cracked the sky. In the moment before the explosion shook the mountain, Alanna glimpsed its terrifying countenance. Its eyes were blackened sockets, its teeth gleamed. It expanded up and up until—
She broke and ran.
She dodged off the trail, with its easy slope, choosing instead the fast downhill route to her hut. She vaulted over shrubs and around trees. Her foot slipped in the sloppy mud. She skidded to the bottom, somersaulting the last few feet to the fence marking the boundaries of her garden. Leaping over the fence, she raced to her door.
For one dire moment she fumbled with the latch, unable to loosen it.
But it gave. Flinging the door aside, she dashed in and slammed it behind her. Safety.
Her eyes strained in the dark of the hut. Safety.
The last flash of the storm, the biggest flash, illuminated the room as the thunder exploded in its finale. From her own table rose a miniature version of the specter on the hill. Up and up it rose, mouth wide, fangs bared, eyes glaring.
With a petrifying yowl, it streaked across the room toward her.
Alanna screamed at last, a full-bodied shriek that released all her fears in the forest, all her fears on the hill.
The monster skidded to a stop under her cloak and meowed pitifully.
“Oh.” She clung to the support of the door for one more moment, then reached down. “You idiotic cat.” Her trembling hand petted his fur, erect with electrified terror. The snap of stati
c shocked them both, and she scooped him up with a flimsy admonition. “Don’t fash yourself. The storm’s almost done.”
Something—not her words, surely—brought abatement of the pandemonium. The lightning subsided, the thunder growled good-night. High clouds scuttled across the sky, leaving straggling wisps to foretell another squall. Moonlight, like a trickle of liquid sea opals, leaked through the cracks in the shutters to burnish the furs on the bed.
Alanna passed one hand across her forehead and felt the grains of dirt grind into her skin. Stupidly she brought her hand before her eyes and stared at it. The dark patches were only mud, and yet—
Setting the cat on his feet, she flung the shutters open, wet her hands in the runoff from the eaves, and rubbed them together. She winced at the pain and examined her palms again, cleansed now. Dark spots remained. Spots that grew as they oozed blood. Alarmed, she looked down at herself in the luminescence of moonlight.
Mud coated her from head to toe. Leaves and bits of branch protruded from her earthy wrap, mud encased her foot like a cast. “Ah, Alanna, what have you done?” she murmured with disgust. She stripped off her cloak, tossed it in the corner, and snatched the bucket from its place by the table. Her feet carried her to the door, her hands reached for the latch—and belated caution struck. After all, she had seen that bat-winged thing on the fell…hadn’t she?
Easing the door open, she inspected the bit of yard she could see through the crack. It was moon-bright and very still. Opening it still wider, she leaned her shoulder on the plank.
Nothing. The stars sparkled with effervescent fervor. The three-quarter moon sailed through the new-washed blackness. Water dripped into shallow puddles. The air smelled fresh and potent. Her herbs shook off the heavy beads of rain and released their savory scent.
The sylvan clearing around her home appeared normal; so distressingly normal she derided herself, Some witch you are. Cowering from a storm. She stepped off her threshold, armed only with the bucket, and strode to her rain barrel. She dipped out wash water—but prudently kept her back to her hut and her eyes on the encroaching woods.
A Well Favored Gentleman Page 7
