by Gwyn Cready
He hadn’t until she’d asked. But now he saw that the waters around him churned and shifted according to more than her movement, and the pool’s buoyancy increased, as if it was being infused with helium. If there was magic to be had here, he wondered if in fact it came from her, not the water.
Her hair had loosened from its tightly pinned knot. Transfixed, he watched the long strands swim in wriggling lines behind her, like a school of golden eels. He found himself wondering what it might be like to draw his fingers through it.
“The power of the water does not come from its potential for impropriety,” she said, interrupting his daydream, “though that can be an effect. It comes from the power to concentrate your mind. What do you want, MacHarg? Think.”
He closed his eyes and tried to sort through the conflicting desires in his head. “To go home. To free Abby. To prove my worth.”
“That is three things. You defeat yourself before you even begin. Concentrate.”
He did. He saw a red-haired man in a Highlander Regimental kilt—him, it must be, though the man was older—middle-aged, even—sinking on top of a young woman in a meadow. As they kissed, drumming rose in the distance, an insistent, forbidding drumming. The lovers vanished, replaced by the thunder of cannons and an acrid cloud of smoke that galloped toward him like a sandstorm, gaining speed and height as it rolled over top of the never-ending lines of redcoats descending the hills until it filled the sky with black.
Heart pounding, his eyes flew open. All of it, somehow, represented a danger to Abby.
“You saw it, didn’t you?” Undine said, “The change that’s coming?”
“Aye.” The sense of devastation was as clear in his head as if he’d been part of the battle, and he struggled to slow his heart.
“Scotland will be destroyed. This is more important than Abby or Rosston or the canal or your vanity, MacHarg. What can you do to change what happens? Why were you sent?”
He didn’t know. He could fight with passion but no skill. He thought of the English and what they would do in time to the Scots, though he knew it didn’t happen—not in its ugly, disgusting entirety—until the 1740s.
Undine dove under the water and made a wide, easy circle around him. She moved like a great ray, banking with the barest effort and staying submerged for so long, Duncan’s own lungs cried for air.
“There’s a colonel in the English army,” she said, surfacing without a gasp, “a cruel, vainglorious man, but a man smart enough to know the value the Kerr canal might represent to England. His name is John Bridgewater and he’s pushing the English army to claim this piece of Scotland. It is my most heartfelt wish to remove him from power.”
Duncan knew well the story of the Debatable Lands, the tiny sliver of Scotland that changed hands between England and Scotland again and again during the warring years. But he didn’t have specific knowledge about a confrontation in 1706.
“How do you know this?”
“I have acquaintances on both sides of the border,” she said with a mysterious smile. “Sometimes information makes its way from the English army to my friends here.”
Duncan remembered Abby’s reference at the clan meeting to the spy who brought her information about the army. He wondered if he was looking at the secret envoy right now. If so, Undine was involved in a very risky game.
“But you’re an Englishwoman,” he said, shocked. As such, passing secrets to the Scots made her a traitor.
“I am a believer in peace, MacHarg. Helping those transgressed against is a way to keep power balanced and guns quiet. There are a number of us who feel that way—a growing number.”
Was Abby part of this mission too? The look in Undine’s eyes made him refrain from asking. “I want to help Abby but I don’t know how.”
“Maybe it’s enough that you want to,” Undine said. “Maybe you simply need to keep that in your heart and the answer will come to you.”
“Och.” He hated not having a plan, not having a goal to shoot for. He was not one to stand on the sidelines. But if Abby was going to need help, that was going to be his only choice. “Waiting is the worst job.”
Undine smiled. “We canna choose how we will be needed. But we can choose to accept our assignment with grace. I think you had better get dressed, though. Serafina has started from the castle to find you, and I should hate for her introduction to the future of Scottish soldiering to be illustrated in quite such vivid detail.”
Thirty
Duncan had managed to dress himself without feeling too much under Undine’s observant eye, and now they walked the path that would return them to the castle. “What does Serafina want of me?”
Undine looked at him, surprised. “I have no idea,” she said, as if his assumption of her knowledge of Serafina’s state of mind had been akin to an assumption she could fly. “I haven’t seen her since yesterday.”
“Then how did you—” He stopped. There was no point in asking how Undine knew anything. He just needed to accept it. Just as he needed to accept that serving Abby meant stripping himself of preconceived ideas of being her savior or protector.
“How has your strong-arm training been?”
“Well, I had my first go at swords yesterday—stripped to the skin, of course.”
Undine coughed. “Stripped to the skin?”
“Aye. I got the traditional first lesson. And I’m surprised to say I think it really helped.”
“I’m curious, sir. Who gave you your lesson?”
“Actually, it was—” He stopped. “There is no tradition of stripping, is there?”
Undine shook her head.
Idiot. “Fell for it, did I?”
“I’m afraid so. That must have been quite the spectacle. I’m afraid your teacher was having a bit of fun with you.”
“Aye. So it seems.” He supposed it was the price he had to pay for observing her diving session. Given what the naked lesson led to, it wasn’t too much of a comeuppance.
Serafina came into view at the next rise. She was racing Grendel downhill, and Duncan was reminded how young she really was.
She saw them and waved. Duncan waved back. A thought had been niggling at him since they’d started back. “Maybe I do know why I was sent here, Undine.”
She regarded him thoughtfully. “Oh?”
“Because I know what will happen.”
Undine chuckled. “Dinna be so certain. First, no man knows everything. While you stand outside the castle wall waiting for the tyrant to fall as has been written, you dinna see the wagon that runs ye down. Second, the past is more mutable than ye know. A delayed attack here, a missed appointment there. Suddenly, the warp and weft has changed, even if the fabric remains whole. And third, even if ye do know, ye must take care. That kind of knowledge is a danger to possess. Do not let any but those you trust absolutely know about it.”
“Are you saying I shouldn’t tell Abby about the future?” Or you, he almost added, for she had asked him no questions about it since his admission at the pool.
“I’m saying use your knowledge with care, and dinna be too certain of it.”
Serafina arrived beside them, cutting short the possibility of asking anything more.
Her energetic curtsy was punctuated by Grendel’s barks. “I’ve been looking for you, Mr. MacHarg. I hope you have recovered from your run-in with Lord Kerr. Lady Kerr was up half the night stitching his chin. I dinna think the poor man has been having much luck convincing her he’s the man she wants. I do wonder if the nursing session might have helped turn the tide for him.”
“Duncan has fallen in love with Lady Kerr,” Undine said abruptly.
“Oh. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said—”
“I have not fallen in love with Lady Kerr,” Duncan said, rising from a round of Grendel ear scratching. “And she has decidedly not fallen in love with me.�
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“Then the fight was not about Lady Kerr?”
“Hardly,” Duncan said. “Rosston made a comment regarding a member of Clan MacHarg that required a response. That is all.”
Undine said, “I see you’re rewriting history already, MacHarg.”
“If it’s any comfort,” Serafina said, “Lord Kerr has not made an appearance since it happened. Of course, neither has Lady Kerr, and I—” Her face clouded. “Oh, dear. That’s probably not a good thing, is it?”
Duncan groaned. If Serafina was right, he’d certainly been a fool.
Undine said to him, “Sometimes one forgets to weigh the cost of a lifetime of regret against the satisfaction of a few moments.”
“I get it,” Duncan said sharply. “I screwed up.”
She touched his arm. “I meant Abby, my friend.”
Clearly distressed by her misstep, Serafina said, “Sir, I’m sorry to have added to your burden. But if you’re in love with Abby, you cannot let this lie.”
“And that is my cue,” Undine said. “There are some things over which even a fortune-teller has no power. Best of luck in untangling this.” She hurried off.
Duncan, who was in no mood to be upbraided over his failures with Abby, said, “But this is not the reason you came looking for me,” he said. “What can I do for you, milady?”
“I am full serious,” said Serafina, who would not be diverted. “If you love her, you must act. And if you do not love her, say so now. I know ye wouldna lie.”
“Well, I…I mean, Lord Kerr seems to have…” He wilted under her probing gaze. “Aye,” he said, “I do love her if ye must know.”
“I knew that was why the spell brought ye here! But have you told her?”
“What if I have? It didn’t do me any good. She spent half the night tending to Rosston’s cheek and the other half to his—”
“Mr. MacHarg!”
“I was going to say vanity. In any case, Lady Kerr is rather angry at me right now.”
“May I ask why?”
Duncan shifted. “It would probably be better if you didn’t.”
“I see. May I give you some advice?”
Her tone indicated what followed would be less like advice than a direct order. “Well—”
“First, get yourself a clean set of clothes. That plaid is filthy. Would ye wear a butcher’s apron to a ball? Second, never make reference to any other suitor. ’Tis impolite, it betrays a lack of confidence, and it paints you as a churl. Third,” she said, holding up a hand to stop his response, “apologize. Instantly. Effusively. And quite possibly from your knees.”
Duncan crossed his arms. Regret was one thing. An apology was another. “Mmphf.”
“And fourth, kiss her. Thoroughly.”
He shifted. “She might not let me.”
“She might not let you? Mr. MacHarg, if that is your primary concern, we have a much bigger problem on our hands.”
“What I mean is, she may not want an apology—or like me kissing her.”
She gave him a fiery look. “You will bear up somehow. I’m sure of it.”
“Your hair color suits you. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“Many. My father, especially.”
“Was it his color too?” Duncan’s had come straight from his grand-da through his ma to him.
“My da? No, black as coal, but he was my stepfather. My real father died before I was born. And my mother’s hair was golden. I suppose it came through her people. I never met them. They came from up north.”
Duncan brushed off his plaid self-consciously and offered her his arm. “Have you finished your instructions? If so, and if I promise to abide by them, will you do me the honor of telling me why you were looking for me?”
“There was a note from Lady Kerr. She has called a meeting of clansmen—”
“Not again!” He calculated the time it would take him to reach the castle.
“Dinna worry. The meeting is not till the strike of ten. But I was to fetch you and to tell you the meeting is to be kept secret.”
“Oh. Well then.” The bells at the castle had only just struck nine. What secret did Abby Kerr have to share with him?
“Mr. MacHarg, may I observe you are looking a bit smug for a man who needs to be guided by humility—especially as you are not the only clansman invited to this meeting.”
Thirty-one
Duncan tugged the belt tight over a clean plaid and sark, pinned the wool at his shoulder, and flew down the hall with Grendel at his side. He intended to be on time, at her side, and adding value from the start. He might not be the only man there, but he would be the handsomest, tallest, and smartest.
However, the Great Hall was empty. And after the footmen there claimed to know nothing of the meeting, Duncan began to wonder if perhaps Abby had played another trick on him.
“Any thoughts, old boy?”
Grendel looked in the direction of Abby’s room and whined.
“Och. Are you sure?” Duncan could face her in a room full of men. Finding her lounging in bed, eating bacon and eggs with Rosston would do very little for his morning.
Fortunately, Abby did not answer his knock. On the chance he might catch her with her father, he headed up the stairs.
He rounded the top and found Molly standing by the bed, bundling a blanket around her shoulders. Her cheeks were flushed. So were Lachlan’s.
Duncan scooped her cap from the floor and handed it to her. “Do you know where her ladyship is?” And does her ladyship know you are bedding her father?
Molly gave him a piercing look. He hadn’t seen her hair before. It was blond, which surprised him, given her dark brows and eyes.
“I havena seen her since yesterday.”
He ducked his head toward Lachlan, who seemed to be staring out a window that didn’t exist. “Is he in his head?”
“Bugger yourself,” Lachlan said.
Duncan sighed. “I’d like a word alone with his lordship.”
Molly gave him a look, and she left.
“Pretty girl,” Duncan said evenly.
“I thought ye were foucking my daughter. Or has she o’erthrown ye?”
“I feel certain the only foucking your daughter will be doing will be with her new husband. I’m told a wedding has been set for this week. She’s marrying Rosston.”
Lachlan’s eyes narrowed. He wanted to believe Duncan, that much was clear, but he was canny enough to know that if a wedding date had been set, somewhere in the reaches of the sandstorm he called memory, he’d be able to remember someone telling him about it.
“The thing is,” Duncan went on, “I have nae doubt the happy bride and groom will set about producing an heir tout suite. Winning over the clansmen is a tricky road, as you ken. Abby alone…” Duncan shook his head with regret. “The odds there are mixed at best. Abby with groom…better. Definitely better. But Abby with groom and son…” He ran a hand through his hair, pleased. “’Tis a combination I would not bet against. In fact,” he said, stroking his chin, “I suppose any man could father the child, really, no matter who the groom was, so long as Abby could say she’s produced an heir.”
Lachlan purpled instantly, his tongue churning thickly.
“But that is not what I have come for,” Duncan said. “You see, Lord Kerr, I am here on a very short visit. I have been tasked with helping your daughter overcome her financial difficulties. When I have done that, I will leave here. Forever. I should think that might be a very attractive proposition to you.”
Lachlan leaned forward far enough to spit out, “Bastard,” before collapsing back onto his pillows.
“The quickest way, it seems to me, is by breaking the back of this canal,” Duncan said. “Or rather unbreaking it.”
“Taxes,” Lachlan croaked.
“Pardon?”
“Taxes. We paid too much.”
Duncan had never met a Scot who didn’t think he paid too much tax, so he didn’t put too much weight on Lachlan’s assessment. Nonetheless, the complaint sounded like a bone the man had been chewing for a long time.
“Taxes for what?” Duncan asked. “The canal?”
“I told Moira, look at the taxes. But, no, Lachlan, dear, that is for you. I must ride. Ride, ride, ride. She rides all day, but she doesn’t look. She doesn’t see!” He clutched his covers, terrified. “Where’s Molly? I want Molly. Molly!”
The girl appeared so quickly, Duncan wondered if she’d been standing outside the door. He rather hoped she had. The message he’d delivered was meant as much for her as Lachlan.
He heard the first strike of ten.
“Dammit,” he said and caught Molly’s arm. “Where might a group meet if they’re not meeting in the Great Hall?”
“Do ye mean the group Lady Kerr has called together? I hear they’re in the Lady chapel.”
The sad cry of “Moira!” resounded as Duncan hurried down and down.
Thirty-two
The tiny chapel sat like a tree house on an ancient gray battlement wall that divided two baileys. A man Duncan did not recognize stood inside one of the chapel windows. He shook his head when he saw Duncan pelting across the bailey’s worn cobbles.
Duncan strained for the sounds of talking and heard an upraised voice—not Abby’s—though he could not make out the words.
God, he hated to be late for meetings. At his firm, the last person to arrive at meetings not only had to take notes, but refill coffee, stand, and pay a hundred-dollar fine. He doubted there’d be much coffee or note-taking here.
He hurdled over a largish trough, clearing it easily but failing to anticipate the orange tabby cleaning itself on the other side.
The cat screeched. Duncan’s ankle turned, and he hit the ground palms first. He was scrabbling to his feet when he heard the whoosh and smack.
The arrow had missed him, only just, and spun to a stop after hitting the cobbles. Standing, he scanned the sight lines. No one on the wall. No one now in the chapel window. No one in any of the castle windows, though the curtain in one window fluttered suggestively. It dawned on him that the angled shadow behind him was cast by the tower in which Lachlan was situated. But there was no one in any of those windows either, at least no one he could see.
