by Tracy Fobes
Colin swore loud and long. “Get my horse, now. If you saddle and bridle him in less than a minute, I’ll see you’re kept on. Go!”
Flying into action as though a shovel full of hot coals burned in his pants, the groom called out to his cronies, and a team of men saddled the large, chestnut-colored thoroughbred that clearly delighted in unseating him at every opportunity. Colin eyed the horse grimly as the grooms ran him over to Colin’s side.
“Unseat me now, you bastard, and I’ll shoot you myself,” he vowed.
The horse snorted and sawed on the reins in response. Nevertheless, he stayed uncommonly still while Colin mounted. Colin pulled the reins to the left and jabbed his heels into his mount’s side at the same time, and the horse took off like a shot, charging through the archway. Directing him southward, Colin held on as they cantered wildly through the grasses where he’d last seen Sarah.
When he reached a hedgerow, he pulled his horse up and scanned the brush for a trampled area that would reveal her passage. Quickly he discovered an area of broken gooseberry branches and clods of dirt from a fast-galloping horse. He plunged through and emerged in a field of waist-high straw. Crushed grasses formed a path through the field, and Colin followed it, aware that they were gradually riding uphill, in a direction he’d never traveled with Sarah during their rides together.
At the next hedgerow, he paused again. The bush wasn’t very high here, and another field stretched uphill for almost a mile. There, at the top of the hill, he saw Sarah, her black hair completely undone and flying out behind her like a banner. A shout built in his throat. He choked it back. She would never hear him.
The wind picked up, ruffling through his hair and whispering urgently in his ears. Spurring his mount forward, he charged after her, his worry growing more acute with each passing moment until it felt like iron bands tightening around his chest. The smell of salt tinged the air, reminding him what lay beyond this latest field: a cliff that dropped directly down to the cold, swirling waters of Loch Fyne. Did she know she was heading for a bluff?
An image of Sarah trying to pull her mount up at the last moment, unsuccessfully, ached in his mind like a canker. He could almost see her sailing over the cliff, only to be broken like a rag doll on the rocks below. He kicked the big thoroughbred beneath him to even faster speeds, aware that if the horse happened upon a single rabbit hole, he would be jolted off his mount and would likely die of a broken neck.
He didn’t care.
“Come on,” he gritted his teeth, leaning forward into the horse’s mane. The horse galloped so quickly now that the wind tore at him and made his eyes water. At last he crested the hill, and brought his mount to such an abrupt halt that the horse neighed in alarm and reared.
Stunned, Colin stared at Sarah’s abandoned mount.
Where was she?
His horse pawing nervously at the ground and dancing around beneath him, Colin scanned the surrounding countryside. There, far below, the town of Inveraray spread out in orderly fashion. Smoke drifted from a few chimneys. Beyond the town, two single-masted ships lolled in the harbor. He twisted around in the saddle, searching to the left, right, and behind him for Sarah’s slender form. He saw nothing remarkable other than the small stream several paces north, which plunged over the edge of the cliff to land in the valley beneath.
She seemed to have disappeared. Unless . . .
His heart giving one mighty thump, he dismounted and walked over to the cliff edge. He peered over the edge, almost afraid of what he might find. But she hadn’t thrown herself over. In fact, to his utter amazement, he espied her working her way down the cliff face. Mist obscured the valley below and had nearly swallowed her, too.
What in bloody hell?
Sighing raggedly, he found the starting point of the path she’d taken and, clinging to dew-covered rocks and exposed roots, started down as well. Too soon, Sarah disappeared into the mist, leaving him alone to find his way. Anger at her built in him yet again, for risking herself so needlessly. Mouthing silent oaths, he climbed into the mist swirling upward from the valley, the roar of the waterfall growing louder.
Everything was gray and moist, and smelled of earth. He couldn’t see much more than ten feet in front of him. But he knew he was close to the bottom, for the ferns grew thicker and more lush with his every step, and soon bushes and trees stretched up around him.
A faint sound beneath the waterfall’s roar teased his ears. It grew louder, then ebbed away as he followed it. He couldn’t identify the noise; still, it had rhythm and cadence, and he knew it had to be human in origin.
Sarah, he thought.
The sound filled out as he closed in on it. Soon he identified the blurts of noise as sobs. Remorse choked him. He walked more quickly, caring little for the exposed roots and boulders that sought to tangle his feet. The mist grew heavier, and the waterfall crashed and gurgled somewhere in front of him. He found a small path and strode toward the sounds of her sobs.
Slowly, as he grew closer, the mist cleared around a small figure with long black hair, dressed in a bottle-green riding habit. With a start, Colin discovered she was crouched by a small creature of some kind. Her small body blocked most of the creature from his view. Nevertheless, he guessed she’d found a recently shorn sheep, judging by the creature’s short white coat.
And yet, something about the scene gave him pause. The creature’s coat wasn’t really the dull whitish pink of a sheep’s skin. No, this animal glittered white and silver, reminding him of a spray of stars against a velvety black sky. He transferred his attention to one of the creature’s hooves, which poked out from beneath her gown. It, too, looked silvery. The hairs at the back of his neck prickling, he slowed down. Then stopped.
The creature neighed softly.
A pony then, he thought, not certain why he was growing more uneasy with every moment.
Mist swirled around Sarah and the creature, alternately revealing and obscuring them. She was murmuring softly to it now, her hand lifting to brush a soft, white-gray nose. Then she shifted, revealing the creature’s face.
His mouth dry, he stared. His uneasiness solidified into fear.
The horse had an ivory horn poking out of its forehead.
He began to tremble. Childhood tales of faeries invaded his mind. For one startling moment, he felt sure that Sarah wasn’t human. No, she was one of the fey folk, sent to walk among mortals and tease them. Maybe she even stole their hearts and took them back to the place of the fairies, leaving only husks behind.
His hand shaking, he lifted it to his own forehead and touched it softly, as though he were the one possessing the horn. Chill after chill began to race through his body.
My God, she’d found one.
A unicorn.
He squeezed his eyes shut, then popped them open again.
The unicorn hadn’t disappeared. Sarah still cried over it and murmured to it like an old friend. Just then, a shaft of sunlight pierced the valley, settling unerringly upon Sarah and the unicorn. The mist swirling around them turned gold, each tiny droplet of moisture reflecting with light, until it seemed magic surrounded them and blessed them with brightness.
Colin staggered over to a boulder and held on.
As if sensing Colin’s movement, the unicorn opened its eyes and looked at him. Hardly breathing, Colin returned the white beast’s stare, losing himself in intensely blue eyes darkened with mysteries, wise with ancient knowledge, and wearied by terrible pain. Even as his throat grew tight and his heart raced, something inside him loosened in some strange way. His mind grew fuzzy. He found himself remembering his past, times in his boyhood when he’d cried, in his early adulthood when he’d helped someone in need, and later, as a man, when he’d indulged in sensations of the flesh.
These memories seared his gut with an almost physical pain. They reminded him of what he’d once been, and what he’d become. He tried to force them away, but they kept coming at him relentlessly. Just when he thought he might cry o
ut, the memories came slower, then dissipated, leaving him with the sight of Sarah crying.
Colin’s shoulders slumped. He’d often heard that the unicorn was a creature of truth, and sensed that the beast had looked into his soul and judged him. He’d made many wrong choices. Was he beyond redemption?
The unicorn closed its eyes and lowered its head.
His emotions shredded, Colin struggled back to his feet. “Sarah,” he murmured huskily.
Visibly starting, she spun around and squinted at him, as if she couldn’t believe her eyes. “Colin?” Without waiting for his reply, she slowly got to her feet and walked toward him, her hand outstretched. “Colin?”
Aching with the need to cry out, to rail at fate for revealing the unicorn to him and destroying him in the process, he walked toward her and grasped her hand. “Thank God I’ve found you,” he managed, and before she could object, dragged her into his arms and squeezed her so tightly that she gasped. “Please don’t run away from me ever again.”
Unwillingly he released her and stared at her.
Lips trembling, she returned his regard. Then her attention drifted behind her, to the unicorn. “He’s dying,” she murmured.
Colin linked hands with her and approached the unicorn hesitantly. It was so beautiful, and pure, and true that he ached to touch it. But he didn’t know what the beast would do if he dared. Jaw tight, he kneeled down by the beast’s side and placed a gentle hand on its chest. A heart beat sure and true beneath his palm.
“How do you know he’s dying?” he asked, fighting a sense of unreality. They’d left so many things unquestioned, so many things unsaid.
“Sionnach and I found him here almost two months ago, right after I came to Inveraray,” she whispered, like a physician who doesn’t want his patient to overhear bad news. “He hasn’t moved since I first discovered him.”
“Are his legs sound?” he whispered back.
“As far as I can tell.” She paused, fixing him with a searching gaze. “There’s something else, Colin. When I touch his horn, I see things in my mind. I believe that’s how he communicates.”
“Your panflute doesn’t work?”
“I’ve tried using it, without success. I cannot talk to him. I can only see the pictures he creates in my mind.”
Brow furrowed, Colin moved his hand from the unicorn’s chest and gently caressed its nose. Then, his fingers shaking ever so slightly, he touched the horn.
Nothing happened. Nothing formed in his mind.
He grasped the horn more firmly. “Do the pictures come to you immediately?”
She nodded.
“Then he chooses to speak to you alone, for I see nothing.” Colin released the horn, something inside him rejecting the notion of the unicorn’s death. He couldn’t allow a creature as magnificent as this to die. “Perhaps we should carry him back to the Maltlands,” he ventured. “With expert opinion, proper care, and medicine, he might heal.”
“Think for a moment what would happen to him, once his existence became common knowledge,” she pointed out. “He’d instantly be placed in the regent’s menagerie.”
Colin considered Sionnach, who was slowing wasting away in the barn. Then his thoughts centered on Sarah herself. Society had taken something away from her. Every time he thought about it, he ached deep in his gut. And if society had done that to her, it would kill the unicorn.
“Anyway, I don’t think medicine would help him,” she added. “The pictures he creates for me are almost always the same. I see a castle, and a man, and, well, a female unicorn. The female unicorn was captured many centuries ago. He’s been longing for her ever since. You might even say he’s dying of a broken heart.”
Her voice gaining intensity, she described in great detail the scene where their unicorn played with his mate. He asked her to repeat it many times, and as she did so, an odd sense of familiarity nagged at him.
“Tell me about the man in the vision again,” he insisted.
“I’ve already told you everything I remember.”
“Tell me again. Please.”
Sighing, she repeated her description of the warrior’s face — his deep-set eyes, chestnut-colored hair, and flowing beard. His dazzling golden breastplate and helmet suggested to Colin that not only had the man lived several hundred years before, but also had been very wealthy.
“I can almost see this man in my mind’s eye,” he said. “What colors formed his tartan?”
“It has a red background, with green checks, and yellow and white stripes.”
Colin frowned. Something lurked around the edges of his consciousness, teasing him. He just couldn’t grasp at it. “The unicorns ran freely in his presence?”
“I had the odd impression the unicorns considered him their pet,” she confirmed.
“Describe the castle again.”
She told of its trio of arched windows looking out onto a gently rolling hillside.
Frustrated, he sighed. “By God, I feel like I’ve visited this castle before. If we could discover where it’s located, we would stand one step closer to finding the female unicorn.”
They both fell silent. Colin absently rubbed the unicorn’s velvety coat, reassured by the steady beat of its heart beneath his hand.
Without warning, Sarah tensed. “There’s something else. I’ve just remembered it.”
“What?”
“A silver circlet secured the man’s plaid. It bore the figure of a blue lion and the word fumerus, or fuimus, maybe.”
His mind racing ahead, Colin turned to face her. “The circlet most likely represented the man’s clan. I’m not sure which of the Scottish clans feature lions on their crests, but I do know that the duke keeps a few books on the topic in his study.”
He stood and held his hand out to her. “Come with me. We’ll look through the duke’s books together.”
Sarah wiped her face with her fingertips, then took his hand. “Do you think we might be able to find his mate?”
“We’re going to try, Sarah. We’re going to try very hard.”
Wasting little time, they climbed up the cliff face, hand in hand, and remounted their horses. They arrived back at Inveraray shortly afterward and discovered that the duke had gathered a few grooms about him and gone off looking for Sarah and Colin on horseback. Colin sent another groom to intercept the duke and inform him that they’d returned safely, then drew Sarah to the study. There he selected several books from the shelves and set them on the desk.
“Look through these,” he directed, pointing to the two topmost books. “I’ll take the bottom ones. Between the two of us, we’ll figure out which clan the man in your vision belongs to.”
As he paged through hand-painted sketches of plaids, Colin tensed with excitement and hope. The unicorn, he mused, had presented him with the perfect chance to redeem himself in Sarah’s eyes. If he could reunite the white beast with its lost mate, then surely she would be willing to trust him again, to believe in him, and forget the poems that he’d so foolishly written for Lady Helmsgate.
“Here it is, Colin,” Sarah informed him without warning, a quiver in her voice. She pointed to a page in the book she’d been looking through. “This is the tartan I saw the man wearing.”
Colin examined the sketch, then transferred his attention to the caption next to it.
“ ‘The House of Bruce,’ ” he breathed. Grasping her hand tightly within his own, he turned the page and found a sketch of the Bruce crest badge. “Here is our blue lion, and even the word fuimus — ‘We have been.’ ”
“The House of Bruce?” Sarah repeated, eyebrows scrunched together.
“It says here that the unicorn first made its appearance as the sovereign emblem of Scotland in the thirteenth century,” he told her. “The prestigious Order of the Unicorn, which carried the Grail motto ‘All as one,’ was also founded at this time . . . by Robert the Bruce.”
Excitement twisted in Colin’s gut. He flipped a few pages, coming to rest upon a des
cription of the House of Stewart. “Back in the thirteenth century, the men who served as stewards to the Bruce eventually became the Stewart clan, and ascended to the throne, becoming the Royal House of Stewart. Would you care to wager what they chose to display on their badge?”
“A unicorn,” she murmured, her eyes wide.
“Correct. And there’s more. James IV of Scotland, when he ascended to the English throne in the seventeenth century, created a royal arms picturing both England’s lion and Scotland’s unicorn, representing the joining of the two countries.” He snapped the book shut decisively. “Do you know what I think?”
She shook her head no.
“I think that through luck, or magic, or a bit of both, Robert the Bruce found the unicorns. They entranced him so that he made them the sovereign emblem of Scotland and created the Order of the Unicorn. I can’t even guess why he tried to capture them, or where he put the female unicorn, or even if she’s still alive.” He thought of the three high, arched windows in the castle she’d described. It all fit. “Even so, I know where to look for the female — in the Highlands where Robert the Bruce once lived. I believe Kildrummie Castle was the Bruce’s family seat, and Kildrummie has three arched windows like you described.”
“Where is Kildrummie Castle?”
“Along the east coast, near Inverness.” He grasped her hands. “I’m going to go there, Sarah. I have to try to find the unicorn’s mate.”
“You’ll never find her.”
“I’m going to try. Nothing is worse than having to live your life without the one you love the most.”
For the first time, she entwined her fingers within his. A glow entered her eyes. “You would do this for him, Colin?”
“I’m doing it for you. It’s only the second of August, leaving me a month before your debut. I’ll try to return in time for the ball.” He released her fingers from his grasp, plans already whirling in his mind.
She touched his cheek. “Take Sionnach with you. I’ll explain the situation to him and I know he’ll go. He can help you.”
