Laird of Twilight (The Whisky Lairds, Book 1)

by Susan King

  “Ah,” James said. “Yes.”

  “You must invite them to dinner while we are here,” Patrick said. “Miss MacArthur attended the Ladies’ Assembly in Edinburgh, did she not?”

  James took a sip of coffee, then nodded. “I have met the MacArthurs here.”

  “That very pretty Highland lass? She seemed quite taken with you in Edinburgh.” Philip grinned. “The kisses flowed that afternoon, as I recall! You and Miss MacArthur seemed in good agreement with one another.”

  “Met a Highland lass, did you?” Eldin asked. “Very good.”

  Sensing the edge in the tone, James smiled flatly. He would be glad to see Eldin’s fancy black barouche roll away from here at last, along the same rough and rutted glen road the man complained about.

  And may the very de’il bounce him back to hell, he thought.

  Chapter 17

  Taking a full roller of tartan off the loom, the result of several days’ work, Elspeth set down the heavy bolt, set an unused roller on the loom. Then she took a little time to remove the last yarn sett from the loom, winding the spare yarns into bundles as she thought ahead to the next design. She had planned to make another arisaid pattern after completing the last commissioned tartan. Instead, she decided to make a gift plaid for Struan.

  She was not sure when—or if—she would see him again, but she wanted to give him a length of yarn that she had made herself—then some part of her would be with him.

  In the past fortnight, she had let her work possess her as she sat at the loom for hours night and day. Her grandfather’s work was otherworldly, but she could keep a fast enough pace and lose herself in the creation of the cloth without hint of the glamourie.

  A few other weavers in the glen worked hand-looms for Kilcrennan too, and Elspeth regularly visited their cottages to collect goods and pay them for their work. She had learned the art from her grandfather, and some from these folk, including her cousin Margaret. Donal had tutored Margaret and her husband Robbie, in the weaving arts, but they did not know the secret that allowed Donal MacArthur to work so quickly. Only Elspeth, Peggy Graham, and now Struan himself knew that.

  Lately, busy with her weaving tasks, Elspeth had neatly avoided her grandfather’s attempts to talk about Struan, and marriage, and her future. She also tried not to think about it much, though the matter burdened her heart and soul. Even stepping inside her cottage brought back memories of being there alone with the man she knew she had come to love.

  Now, she stepped outside, took a deep breath of the fresh mountain air, and headed to the storage house where yarns and supplies were kept. Inside, soft sunbeams poured through cracks in the shutters, and motes floated on the light. From a shelf, she took a copy of Wilson’s Key Pattern Book and sat at the worktable turning the pages.

  Published by an Edinburgh tailor years earlier, the book contained hundreds of tartan designs, each assigned to particular clans. Some were based on old, accepted clan traditions, while many, she knew, had been invented more recently. The tartan patterns and clan associations were part of the current craze for Highland culture. The desire for plaid cloth had greatly benefitted the MacArthurs of Kilcrennan and other weavers too.

  Studying the meticulous hand-colored tartans in the book, she hardly noticed a knock. As the door opened and sunlight poured over the table, she glanced up to see a young woman enter.

  “Margaret!” Elspeth slid from her stool to embrace her cousin. “I did not expect to see you today!”

  Margaret Lamont smiled, round face beaming, brown eyes sparkling. Her red hair was tucked in a thick braid wrapped and pinned over the crown of her head, making her seem even taller, her full figure due to her fourth babe on the way. A brawny lass, Donal MacArthur fondly called his niece, who worked with raw wools and dye baths as well as weaving. “Reverend Buchanan kindly brought me here on his way elsewhere,” Margaret answered.

  “Dear Margaret! You look so healthy,” Elspeth said. “I hope you are feeling well, and not working the dye baths too often. It is not good for your back now, and the smell of it could make you ill.”

  “Rob has others doing the dyeing now, while I do the spinning and combing. Today I had some free time, with my mother watching the children, so I came out to get some fresh air and visit you. And I would love to see what bonny cloths you and Uncle Donal have been weaving with my yarns.”

  “Your yarns make the best weavings,” Elspeth said. “I have finished several tartans lately—I will show you. Just now I am here searching for a new pattern.”

  Margaret peered at the pages spread open on the table. “What a great book it is,” she said, speaking in Gaelic, as she and Elspeth often did. “Tartan is in such demand now that even the king is interested in wearing it. And Kilcrennan weavers are doing well because of it. The demand will keep us all busy for a while to come, so I hope.”

  “It is good,” Elspeth said. “Grandda is most content when he is busy at the weaving.”

  “What sett will you choose?” Margaret turned a page or two.

  “I was looking for MacCarran.”

  “Lord Struan’s plaid?” Margaret asked. “You met him at Struan House, I heard. Reverend Buchanan told me, and Uncle Donal said so too, for I saw him outside now when I arrived. He and Peggy Graham told me...something interesting might have happened between you and Struan, is it?”

  Elspeth felt a blush heating her cheeks. “Grandda cannot always keep a secret for long.”

  “He has your best interest at heart.”

  “I know.” Elspeth sighed and turned another page. “I thought to weave a cloth for Lord Struan so that he could have a kilt made up in Edinburgh.”

  “Would this be your wedding gift?”

  “Och, Grandda has indeed been chatty! Of course it is not.”

  “Uncle Donal seems to think otherwise. It is Highland custom for the bride to make her husband a tartan of his clan, if she has the skill for it. I did that for my Robbie Lamont when we married.”

  “This would be more a parting gift,” Elspeth murmured.

  “Would it, now?”

  “It is more likely that than what Grandda thinks, I promise you.”

  “Peggy Graham and your grandfather love you so much,” Margaret said quietly. “And they fret over you. Whatever may have happened between you and Lord Struan, your family does not want you to be hurt. They worry it might discourage some other man offering for your hand if he hears of it. Those Buchanans have been spreading some gossip.” Margaret sighed, touched Elspeth’s shoulder. “Peggy and Uncle Donal wish you would accept the laird’s offer of marriage.”

  “So they told you that. I was going to confide in you, but I have made my decision. They are simply not happy about it.”

  “If he has offered, you would be wise to marry him. Do you care for him?”

  Turning another page, Elspeth did not answer directly. “It is all my doing, this kerfuffle. I asked him to ruin me, Margaret,” she admitted.

  “Asked him?” Margaret half laughed in surprise.

  “I wanted to escape the Lowland marriage that Grandda was about to arrange for me. As it turned out, that will not happen anyway. And I never thought—well, it is no matter.” She had nearly blurted that indeed, she did have feelings for Struan.

  “You told your grandfather you did not prefer the tailor?”

  “He scarcely listened. He is so determined to find me a Lowland suitor that he will keep looking. Now his mind is set on Lord Struan.”

  “An improvement over any suitor, I think. I hear the viscount is a bonny man.”

  Elspeth felt her blush deepen, and knew that Margaret saw it. “Grandda wants my happiness, true. And I need to stay here at Kilcrennan. I do not want to go south to follow a husband, be it Lord Struan or anyone. I thought if I were compromised, no one would want to marry me, and that would settle the matter. But Struan...offered, and feels obligated, although it was all my doing.”

  “All yours?”

  “Well. Mostly
mine. I did not—say him nay.”

  Margaret’s lips quirked. “It takes two, love, but both have a choice. Will you not change your mind?”

  Elspeth shook her head. “I cannot.”

  “Peggy says he is a lovely braw man, with a good heart and a good head.”

  “Oh, aye,” she said quickly.

  “Did he? Ruin you, I mean?”

  “Not entirely, if that is what you ask. He was a gentleman, refused to—” Her breath quickened. “But I never expected that I might—well.” Her voice caught.

  “That you might fall in love?” Margaret asked quietly.

  “I—it is all so confusing.” Elspeth flipped pages frantically. “I cannot find the pattern I want.”

  “The MacCarrans are a small clan,” Margaret said. “It may not be in the book.”

  “Grandda has notebooks with all the patterns that Kilcrennan weavers have made over generations. It may be there.” Elspeth turned, relieved for the distraction, and took a black leather notebook from the shelf, very worn, with slips of paper stuck among its tattered pages. She opened it to page through, and stopped, spreading the book open. “Here it is!”

  They leaned together to study two pages filled with ink sketches and charts of weaving patterns. “‘The MacCarrans are a sept of the MacDonalds of the Isles,’” Margaret read aloud. “Here, this one is the MacCarran plaid.”

  “My great-great-grandfather wrote these notes,” Elspeth said.

  “It says Kilcrennan weavers made that tartan pattern for a laird of the MacCarran clan in the years of peace,” Margaret said. “That would have been a long while ago, before the Jacobites. Not all the old clan tartans are included in Wilson’s pattern book, so it is a blessing to have these old notes. The ancient plaid designs were not specific to a clan, certainly not in the way the new pattern books would have us believe. Rather they varied from glen to glen, changing with local weavers and the setts they favored and the dyes they made from local plants.”

  “So this tartan would be authentic to the local MacCarrans, made especially for them by my own ancestors,” Elspeth said. She studied the design and the color notes and numbered lines. “Twenty warp threads of deep blue, twenty warp of forest green, ten weft threads of red, five weft in white,” she read. When stretched crosswise on the loom in the warp and weft directions, the yarns would create one repeat, or sett, of the pattern, which would carry through the entire width and length of the plaid. “This would be a very handsome tartan.”

  “I have heard of the MacCarrans,” Margaret said thoughtfully. “A small clan with an interesting history. Do you know their clan motto?”

  Elspeth shook her head. “Lord Struan mentioned that family tradition claims a fairy ancestor, but he says many clans have similar legends. He thinks such things are just fancy, without truth to them.”

  “He should spend more time in this glen, and with you lot at Kilcrennan,” Margaret said wryly. “He might change his mind. Next time you see him, ask your braw viscount about the MacCarran motto.”

  “He is not my viscount.” Elspeth took a scrap of paper and a lead pencil from a box on the table and began to copy the sett instructions. “I may not see him before he leaves for Edinburgh. I may never see him again,” she added firmly. “But I will make a length of MacCarran tartan according to this sett, and send it on to the city as a gift from the Kilcrennan weavers. He can take it to a tailor and have it made up.”

  “Perhaps he will take it to the tailor Uncle Donal knows,” Margaret said.

  “I do not care what he does with it.” Elspeth focused on copying the pattern.

  “It will be a fine gift. But you should deliver it yourself.”

  She shook her head. “I have no need to go to Edinburgh.”

  Margaret sat in the nearest chair, arching and stretching her back. “Let me tell you what I have heard of the MacCarrans.”

  “If you like.” Elspeth shrugged, pencil in hand, but waited, listening.

  “The MacCarrans had a golden cup in their castle seat that was given to their clan long and long ago by a fairy ancestor. Around its base a motto was engraved.” Margaret paused. “‘Love makes its own magic,’ were the words.”

  “That is beautiful.” She felt tears sting her eyes.

  “I thought you might like that.”

  “Oh, Margaret.” Elspeth sighed. “What have I done?”

  “I am sure it can be sorted if both of you care, and I think you do,” Margaret answered. “If you love this man, I say marry him. Whatever the obstacle may be—and the MacArthurs of Kilcrennan have some secrets that even their close kin are wise not to ask about—just follow your heart, and all will be well.”

  “This situation is all my doing, and I am not sure how to undo it. I want to stay here. Grandda needs me. And yet—I want to be with Struan, as well.”

  “Things can often be sorted out more easily than we think, Elspeth.”

  “I do feel that he cares for me. A little, at least.”

  “Listen to me,” Margaret said gently. “If you love him and he loves you, do what you feel is best. All will be well.”

  “I wish it was that easy.”

  “Sometimes it seems complicated, but love is a simple, beautiful thing.” Margaret smiled. “Tell him how you feel. Give the man, and his good intentions, a chance.”

  Leaving the table, silent and thoughtful, Elspeth went to the shelves holding yarns. While she plucked colorful skeins for the MacCarran plaid, her thoughts tumbled. Suddenly she stopped, arms full—she wanted to weep, wanted to run out of the cottage and over the hills to Struan House, wanted to find him before he left the glen forever.

  And find him, she realized, before she turned twenty-one by month’s end. Her grandfather had always said that on that day, according to the fairy bargain, she must return to the realm where she was born. She had never quite believed it. But what if it was true—what if she risked her dreams by dismissing Donal’s tale?

  Margaret joined her, reaching out to choose other yarns. “Your grandfather told me that he needs more of this deep red, here, and some of this onion yellow, for his work.” She handed them to Elspeth, who cradled several skeins. “Take these to him. Go on—there are things that must be said between you and Donal. Start there. I am going up to the house to visit with Peggy.”

  Elspeth dropped the skeins into an empty basket and hugged Margaret quickly. Heart thumping, she left the storage house to head to Donal’s weaving cottage. Seeing him inside, loom clacking at its regular pace, she knocked, entered.

  Donal glanced up as she set the yarns on a table, and she saw immediately that he needed no more colors; ample skeins were piled on the table already. But Margaret was right. Some things needed to be said.

  “Grandfather,” she began.

  “Aye then,” he said, stopping his work, hands folding. “What is it, lass?”

  “Kilcrennan Weavers is a flourishing business, in part because of your ability to weave tartan so quickly, by virtue of your skill. And your secret.”

  He nodded. “When the magic is upon me, aye. Go on.”

  “We can meet orders for tartan faster than many other weavers because you work so fast. Otherwise, we would need several weavers to fill our orders, not just two. Someday Margaret’s Robbie could join us, which might help replace some of the work you do when the magic, as you say, is upon you.”

  “I have been meaning to speak to Robbie about that very thing. I will not be here forever at Kilcrennan. What is on your mind, lass?”

  “You will be here a long while,” Elspeth insisted, ignoring his last question. “And I will help you. We could train new weavers. With the tartan madness upon the city folk and so many orders coming to us, the business is thriving. You have put your heart and soul into Kilcrennan weaving.”

  “We can thank the goodwill of the fairy ilk for some of that,” he said. “Our cloth casts a bit of a spell. Kilcrennan plaid brings happiness to the wearer.” He smiled. “All is well. But you se
em concerned about something, lass.”

  “Grandda, listen. You said that if I ever fell in love, the fairy spells would end.”

  “Love, is it,” he murmured, smiling. “And have you fallen in love?”

  “I cannot,” she said. “I never can. All of this would end.” She swept a hand wide.

  “You would be happy. And that blessing is worth any price to me.”

  “I am happy here. I love Kilcrennan. I love my work.”

  “That may be enough for now. But it is not enough for all your life.”

  She sighed. “When I was fourteen, you took me to the place in the hills where the fairy portal is hidden and told me about the fairies of the glen. Do you remember? You said if I ever found true love, all binding agreements would be broken. You said that love is the—” She stopped, her throat constricting.

  “Love is the greatest magic humans possess,” he finished. “It is more powerful than fairy magic. It can undo any spell, satisfy any bargain.”

  Love makes its own magic. The motto of the MacCarrans. Her heart beat faster. “But I cannot risk bringing ill fortune to Kilcrennan.”

  “Perhaps it was a mistake to tell you this when you were too young to understand. Your happiness is all I have ever wanted.”

  “What about your happiness? You would lose your gift, and your right to visit the fairy realm every seven years. To be honest, I have never known whether to believe all of it, but I will not ruin what you believe in and treasure.”

  “Is that why you refused Struan?” Donal folded his arms. “Because of my gifts?”

  She nodded. “Because I must stay in Kilcrennan.”

  “Your happiness is what matters to me,” he said stubbornly.

  “What of the lost fairy treasure, and what you said of my coming birthday? I do not know what to believe. I have no magic myself. It only seems to come to you.”

  “The Sight is your gift, and it is magical in itself.”

  She shook her head, yet remembered visions—Struan in battle, and how that was true. A host of the Fey riding horses through mist and moonlight—was that true? The stories of childhood seemed to unreal to believe, as Struan said. Yet no one believed these things more deeply than her own grandfather.