“It’s a hard climb. Are you willing?”
He had already started.
Five minutes later they were standing at the entrance.
“I’ve seen red deer here, and the first year I lived on the mountain a fox made her den just over there.” She pointed. “There are ptarmigan and blackcock and other types of grouse, and I’ve seen wild swans swimming in the wee lochan.”
“It’s unbelievable.”
“It’s protected from man and sheep, and from the worst of the elements. There are plants growing here that I’ve yet to see anywhere else in the immediate area. Those are the seeds we’ll collect today.”
“What do you plan to do with them?”
“Spread them to other places where they might find some protection. In time, perhaps they’ll colonize. Man has no’ been kind to the earth here. We brought in the sheep and cut down nearly all the trees, and now we’re planting our bens and braes with species that were never meant to grow in the Highlands. It’s our task to restore what we’ve destroyed.”
“And this is your way of doing it?”
“It’s a wee small thing.”
“Enough wee small things can make a great big difference.”
“Aye. I think so, too. Now we must be canny, Duncan, when we take seeds. Only a few at a time. We’ve no right to destroy the balance in this place.”
Her tone was reverent. She might as well have been praying in the village kirk. He was enchanted with Lon an Sith, but more so with her. “I don’t know a thing about collecting seeds. Are you going to show me how?”
“I’ll show you.” She led him to a smattering of plants he recognized as a local wildflower, spikes of purple bells that he’d often seen cultivated in cottage gardens. “Do you know this one?”
He hedged. “It’s familiar.”
“I’ll make a gardener of you yet, Duncan.” She knelt beside it and motioned him down. “Now there’s nowt rare about this. It’s foxglove, found all over Scotland. But there are few plants that can match it for beauty. I’ll tell you how it got it’s name.”
He crouched beside her, and watched the way the sun set her hair aglow. “It’s truly lovely,” he murmured.
“Long ago the flower was called Folksglove, the glove of the fairies. Do you see the wee spots inside it? That’s where the fairies have placed their fingers.”
The petals were velvety and surprisingly sensual to the touch. He brushed his fingers over them lightly. “The fairies had a good thing here. Is that why you named this place Lon an Sith?”
“No. I’ll show you why later. You’ve heard of digitalis? The drug used for heart disease?”
“Sure.”
“This is where it comes from. The Latin name of this plant is Digitalis purpurea. We’ll just take a few seeds now. It hardly needs our help to flourish, but it’s a bonny plant to demonstrate on.”
He watched her caress the plant gently. Desire stirred inside him. He could imagine her hands touching him the same way.
“Different plants sow their seeds in different ways. Some store their seeds in pods that burst open when they’ve dried and seed flies out like wee cannon balls. Some, like this one, have pods that ripen a bit at a time, and as they dry they open and spill their seed, so it’s best to collect them each day. Like this.” She twisted off one of the withered blossoms at the bottom of the stalk. Then she took a white tissue from her pocket and spread it on the ground and gently shook the bloom. Tiny seeds fell to the tissue. She gestured to the plant. “Now you try it.”
He selected a blossom, but she put her hand over his. “That one’s too new. The seed probably has no’ had time to develop enough. Try one farther down.”
He selected another, and she nodded. He twisted it as she had done and waved it over the tissue. Several seeds fell out. “How’s that?”
“Truly brilliant.” She smiled, but her eyes turned a deeper green as he bent his head to kiss her.
Her lips were as soft as the flower petals. The fragrances of the earth surrounded her and entwined with the scent of her hair and skin. He wanted to fill his hands with her hair and hold her there forever. They had been lovers for months, but he couldn’t seem to get enough of her. Each time he touched her, each time he made love to her, he found himself wanting more.
“Shall I show you some of the other plants?” she asked.
He didn’t trust himself to answer. He stood, and she took his hand and led him between trees and stones, stooping to show him the plants she wanted to collect seeds from today and teaching him how to collect as she went. She identified a rare white lousewort along with butterwort, its leaves spotted with insects entrapped by the plant for a leisurely dinner. In the deepest of the woods she showed him wild orchids and white habenaria, varied species of violets and saxifrage. She took seeds when she could until finally she put her carefully marked collection safely in a bag and stored it back in her pocket.
“That’s all for today. This will give me plenty to do. I’ll have to find places for each seed with conditions nearly the same as I have here.” She put her hands on his chest, and he put his arms around her. “Would you like me to show you why I call this the fairy’s burn?”
He could think of a thousand things he wanted her to show him, none of which had to do with the landscape, but he smiled. “I’d like to see it.”
“You’re a game chappie, Duncan. You’ve stood up to this well.”
“It’s really a lovely place. Why haven’t we come here before?”
“I’ve never brought anyone here. It’s my very own dell. I’m no’ even sure that anyone else knows it exists. I come here when I’m loneliest, or when I have a problem to solve. I can sit beside the burn and listen to its song, and when I go back home, I’m stronger.”
He was touched that she had shared her special place with him. He let her lead him to the brook. They walked beside it until they came to the place where the water flowed out of the rocks. “This is the source,” she said. “And this is where I come to sit.” She stepped across a series of boulders to a wide grassy mound. The sun fluttered through leaves and dappled the ground. “Come join me.”
He didn’t need another invitation. He followed her path and sprawled on the grass beside her. There was a distinct chill in the air, but the earth was still warm. Duncan lay on his side and propped his head with his arm so he could watch Mara.
“Now, are you listening?” she asked.
“To what? To you?”
“No’ to me. Close your eyes. Put everything from your mind.”
“I’d rather look at you.”
“Close them. Go on, now. Do it, and listen carefully.”
His eyelids drifted shut. Warmed by the sun and lulled by the murmuring water, he let his mind go where it would. There were birds singing somewhere close by. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d listened to them. And bees humming, preparing, he supposed for a cold, damp winter.
Unaccountably he heard laughter and knew it came from inside him. He remembered another day, one so long ago that he couldn’t say what year it had been, when he had gone walking with his father and Fiona. Fiona had been tiny then, a laughing, chirping baby-child, and his father had carried her on his shoulders. Now he could almost hear her laughter, and his father’s, too.
His father had laughed. As a young man, Donald Sinclair had laughed. Duncan had forgotten that until now. And once, Fiona had been afraid of nothing.
What an enormous burden of guilt his father must have borne to change from that youth joyfully carrying his beloved daughter, into the stern, brooding man Duncan had known in later years.
He didn’t want to examine that memory too closely. He opened his eyes, and saw that Mara was watching him. “This is a magic place,” he said.
“What did you hear?”
“Laughter.”
“That’s as it should be.”
He turned to his back and closed his eyes again. He could feel the sun against his eyelids and deep
inside him. Mara lay down, and he could feel the length of her leg against his, the dip of her waist and the soft pressure of her breast against his arm. He reached for her, pillowing her head against his shoulder.
And then he heard the music.
At first he thought the sound was coming from his memory, just as the laughter had. But the song that resonated from the earth was like nothing he had ever heard before. It was the sound of the Scottish countryside, pipes and fiddles and an accordion, too, but played with such artistry that it seemed to fuse with the air he breathed. It was made up of sunshine, of the clearest, cleanest air, of the scents of late summer and lacy flakes of winter snows. He listened and saw the wildflowers Mara had picked so carefully, the glisten of Loch Ceo in misty moonlight, snow-covered, barren peaks and an endless stretch of unruly sea.
“Do you hear it?” Mara whispered.
He listened harder. There was a minor note, too. Battle cries and the weeping of women. Screams of defeat from Culloden Moor, the hand-to-hand clatter of dirk and sword as clan battled clan, the voices that still sounded today, demanding separation from the remainder of Britain. And there was the babble of languages, the soft guttural sounds of Gaelic, the sharply accented burr of the lowlands, the lyrical, poetic speech of the highlands.
The sounds, the music, clutched at his heart. He opened his eyes and stared at the sapphire Scottish sky. For a moment he couldn’t breathe properly. “What do you hear?” he asked.
“Fairy music.”
“Is that what it is?”
“We’re on their roof right now, you know. They live in this hill. And the music is their gift to us.”
“Is it?”
She turned so she could see his face. She was smiling. “You can no’ tell anyone, Duncan. No one else would understand. The local folk are afraid of the fairies.”
He managed a smile, too. “Shouldn’t they be? Don’t fairies carry away mortals and imprison them until they’re very old?”
She laughed. “And how would you know?”
“I’ve read the book you gave April.”
“Duncan and the Fairies? Aye, that’s what happened to poor Duncan, I’m afraid. But he had cut away the fairies’ roof, after all, even though they’d warned him to take his peat from another place.”
The birds were singing louder and the burn was bubbling merrily as it emerged from the stone. He knew the birds and the brook were all he had heard, and yet… He threaded his fingers into Mara’s hair and turned to her. “Then they won’t be angry with us for lying on their roof?”
“Does it sound as though they’re angry?”
“Will they mind if I kiss you here? Will they spy on us?”
“I dinna know what they’ll do. I’ve never kissed a man here before.”
He pulled her a little closer. “Shall we try?”
“I think we should. For the sake of fairy science.”
He brushed his lips against hers. Once. Twice.
And the music began again.
CHAPTER 14
Fearnshader was too Gothic for Duncan’s tastes. Had he come across it on a New York City street, he would have assumed Fearnshader was a church where every Sunday morning a stern message of sin and redemption was trumpeted to shivering parishioners who wished they were home in bed reading the Times.
On a rambling, tree-lined Scottish wynd miles from the nearest village and a stone’s throw from the hulking remains of Ceo Castle, Fearnshader could only be a country home built by a humorless laird and lady of a past century. Castellated, parapeted and foreboding, Duncan loved Fearnshader still. He wondered if Mara, who was cuddling beside him with her hand on his knee, would sense the happy hours he had spent here. Would the laughter of three young boys still hang in the hallways for her to hear?
“There’s been much unhappiness here,” she said instead, as he parked beside the gatehouse. There were other cars there already.
“That’s a safe bet. What old house hasn’t known unhappiness?”
“It’s no’ always the first thing I feel.”
“Why haven’t you been here before? I can’t believe Iain hasn’t invited you before this.”
“He knew I preferred my own company.”
Something occurred to him, and he wondered why he’d never thought of it before. Iain had reassured him before Duncan had even met Mara. But he wondered… “Did Iain…” He tried again. “Did you and Iain ever think about having a relationship?”
She smiled. “What are you asking, Duncan? Do you want to know if Iain and I were lovers?”
“No. Of course not.” He considered his own answer and frowned. “No, I really don’t want to know if you were.”
“Well, we were no’, so you can rest your mind. He’s always been a friend, and nowt more. I was too much in need of solitude, and Iain, despite the face he turns to the world, is too much in need of distance to choose someone like me.”
“Like you?”
“Iain chooses women who will no’ feel badly when he moves on to another. Have you never noticed?”
It was almost exactly what Iain had said. “Iain plays the field, but he’s no different than a lot of men. He’s just not the type to settle down.”
“No, there’s more to it than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I dinna know.” She must have seen the doubt in his eyes, because she shook her head. “I really dinna know. He’s afraid of something.”
He leaned over and kissed her nose. “And well he should be. How many happy marriages have you seen?”
“Aye, it’s always a gamble. But Iain’s no’ a coward. There’s something more.”
“You look beautiful tonight.” He touched her hair. She had pulled it off her face and confined a portion of it in a sleek roll at the back of her head in honor of Iain’s dinner party. He wanted to take out the pins and watch it tumble over the lace collar of her dress.
“You look fair handsome yourself, Duncan. Harris tweed suits you well.” She laughed at her own pun. “Aye, at moments like this you look a Scot through and through.”
“We could make this a short evening. I could use April as an excuse.”
“And what did you have in mind?” Her eyes sparkled. “A stroll beside the loch? An evening of chess or gin rummy by the fire?”
“There’s nearly a full moon. We could haul some more peat.” He watched her cheeks color. They had gone to the peat bog one evening and ended up instead making love between mounds of earth on the open moor. They had found a hidden spot where the grass-covered ground was as soft as feathers, and as a sliver of moon had peeked at them between clouds, they had taken possession of each other’s souls. He had felt part of something ancient and lasting that night, just as he had this afternoon at the fairy burn, sealed somehow to the land where he had been born and to the woman in his arms.
“I’ll no’ be hauling peat with the likes of you again,” she said. “You’re all play and no work. I’ll be cold all winter because of you.”
“There’s always a warm fire at the hotel.”
She stroked his hair back from his forehead. “I know how warm your fire is, Duncan.”
The car was suddenly too warm. He’d believed on the night they first made love that the passion between them would one day burn itself out. Now he wasn’t sure of anything except that he walked around in a state of continuous desire, waiting impatiently for the moments when they could be alone. “We’d better get inside.”
“Aye, it would no’ do at all to have you zipping your pants and me straightening my hair when Iain comes to the door.”
He burst into laughter. She blinked innocently at him, and he grabbed her for one final kiss before he got out of the car.
Roses scented the air, old roses with pedigrees as ancient as Iain’s own. He stooped for a sprig of sweet william to tuck in Mara’s hair and one for his buttonhole. The air was growing cooler with the onset of fall, and he used the chill as an excuse to put his arm around Mara to k
eep her warm.
Iain didn’t answer the door. An elderly woman in a starched gray dress answered instead. “You were always late, Duncan Sinclair. Never as late as Andrew, mind you, but late. You always had the idea that whatever it was you were about was too important to interrupt for politeness sake. The good Lady Ross nearly gave up on you a time or twa.” She turned to Mara. “And you have no’ reformed him, I see?”
“I’ll confess I did no’ realize he had such a major failing.”
“Then he’s on time when he comes to see you?”
Mara shrugged. “Always.”
“It must be love then, pure and simple.”
Duncan cleared his throat. “If you don’t mind, Gertie, I’d like a kiss on the cheek.”
Gertie blushed like a schoolgirl, but she did as he’d asked. “So you remember me, do you?”
“How could I forget? But I thought you’d retired and gone to Glasgow to live with your sister.”
“Och, I dinna need all the noise and thrang of a city. And the sister had no notion how to keep me happy. If she told me once no’ to clean under her bed, she told me a thousand times.”
Duncan shook his head in mock disapproval.
“So I’m back, and I’ll stay here, thank you. Master Iain needs me, and he does no’ complain if I take the dust mop to his room every morning.”
“Well, he’s lucky to have you. If he doesn’t treat you right, you can come to the hotel and live with me.”
“And are you going to introduce me to your lady friend?”
“Mara MacTavish, this is Gertie Beggs. Renowned for having a worse bark than a bite.”
Gertie ignored him. “And you’ll be the lass they’re saying is the ferlie.”
“Aye.”
“Ferlie?” Duncan asked.
“You’ve been away too long,” Gertie said, shaking her finger at him.
“Something out of the ordinary,” Mara translated.
“Something strange and wonderful,” Gertie said. “And I can see it applies here.”
Iain, dressed in a dark suit, came up to stand behind her. “Are you going to let them in, Gertie? Have they passed muster yet?”
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