A Kind of Magic (5 page)

Magic had clearly brought this woman here—some magic to do with last night’s lights in the sky. The fair folk had hunted her, of that he was sure. She was clearly lost and had thought him to be someone she knew. Her odd clothing and confusing questions showed her to be from some strange land very different than his own.

Perhaps she was some mortal woman stolen from her own kind by fairy magic. It could well be that she had escaped from the kingdom under the hills in a different time and place than her own, and took him for some ancestor or descendant of his own. She might not even remember the time spent among the fair folk, those who were taken often didn’t. Or she might be one of them playing some joke on mortal kind.

They might want her back, she might want to return to them, but she was here now.

His. Given to him to use as he needed. His to protect, not to cherish—to command, not to coddle. To breed with, if that would help his people, but not to love. For fairy love was as fleeting, as false, as fairy gold. His father had learned that to the cost of all the clan.

Rowan would not make the mistake of loving the savior of his people.

“Can you go into the church?” he asked as they stood before the door.

They were outside a low stone building. Maddie looked around for anything resembling a church. “I beg your pardon?” She decided to forget about the odd pronouncements of the grim Highlander beside her and looked at the equally forbidding group gathered nearby. “Excuse me,” she said, “but could I use a phone? Or call the police?” No one moved or said a word. “I’ve been kidnapped,” she went on.

“Abducted by this man. I’ve been in a plane crash—I think. I’m not sure about that part.

Would one of you please call the police? Or a doctor, ’cause I might have a concussion.

At least, I seem to be hallucinating.” She waved her hand in front of her. “Hello? Is anyone home?”

People continued to stare at her. Rowan Murray pulled her around to face him. He loomed and glowered down at her. She was just under six feet tall, she estimated that he was maybe an inch over six feet, so his having the ability to loom over her was more a psychological than physical. She also began to suspect he had an infinite variety of indiscernible dour expressions.

“You are a very uncooperative hallucination,” she told him.

“Can you go into the church?” he repeated.

“Sure. Where is it?”

His glower became thunderous. He opened his mouth but before he could snarl anything rude, two women pushed their way through the crowd to them. Aidan followed the women. Rowan turned his attention on them. So did Maddie, though she remained aware that Rowan’s hand was firmly wrapped around her upper arm. There was no escaping the man apparently.

One of the women was tall with a willowy figure and young, in her late teens, Maddie guessed. She had masses of shining black hair. The other was a few years older, 27

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also attractive, though shorter and more on the buxom side than her companion.

Maddie thought she detected a family resemblance between them, Aidan and Rowan.

The buxom woman planted herself in front of Rowan, her hands on her hips. She had quite a way to look up to meet his gaze but she met it squarely. “What news do you bring from the White Lady?” she asked. “And what’s this Aidan says about a wedding?” She glanced briefly at Maddie. “Who is this, cousin?”

“My name’s Maddie,” Maddie answered for herself. “I don’t know anything about a wedding. I just know that I have to get out of here. Do you have a fax machine I can use?”

Rowan wondered why he hadn’t bothered to ask the woman her name. It seemed wrong that someone else would know it before him. He frowned reprovingly at Maddie, as though it were her fault that he’d been ill-mannered. “She’s to be my bride, Rosemary,” Rowan said to his cousin. “I’ve just been trying to find out if she’s mortal or fair folk so I can know whether we’ll be married inside the church or out.”

“Maybe I could call a cab?”

“She’s mortal, though magic touched,” Aidan said.

“So I thought since she can grasp cold iron but I don’t think she’s sure just what world she belongs in.”

Maddie glared at her captor. “Of course I’m mortal. You however are nuts. Does a bus come through here?” she asked the woman. “A train?”

“Then we’ll have the vows indoors.”

“What vows?” Maddie asked.

Rosemary asked the question at the same time then went on, “You’re not marrying today, Rowan Murray. I’ll not have it.”

“Me either,” Maddie concurred. If she married anyone, it would be Toby Coltrane, not this look-alike barbarian. Who hadn’t even asked.

“Hush, woman,” Rowan ordered.

“Don’t you tell me to hush. I don’t even know you.”

“That does not matter. You’re to be my wife.”

Maddie almost laughed but was afraid she might get too hysterical to stop if she did. The situation might be out of control but she wasn’t going to be. “Why do you keep talking about marrying me?” she demanded. Nobody had ever talked about marrying her, at least not before now. Yesterday the idea of somebody wanting her had been appealing. Now it was annoying and frightening.

Rowan sighed. He looked at Rosemary and his sister Micaela, who stood at her side, at the grinning Aidan and beyond them to the faces of his waiting clans folk. He looked everywhere but at the woman who probably deserved an explanation. He was impatient to get this over with. He was annoyed that his commands as laird of the clan would be questioned. He did not feel comfortable about not giving this lost stranger 28

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any choice in the matter. He hoped that the sooner it was irrevocably settled, the sooner she could adjust to what must be.

“Meg said you sent for her,” Micaela spoke up. “Or that Aidan claimed you did.”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“To marry her.”

Micaela pointed at Maddie. “Aidan said you wanted to marry the lady in gray.”

Rowan looked at Maddie and noticed the color of her odd, baggy clothes for the first time. Micaela was a gentle lamb with an eye for the details of feminine fashion and a longing for a wedding of her own. Though this was a secret she didn’t think he knew.

“I will marry this woman,” he answered Micaela.

“She should have flowers in her hair.”

He sighed at her foolish notions. “Then fetch some quickly.”

“What about Meg?”

This was going to take more explanation than he wanted to give but he supposed he’d best get on with it if he didn’t want to stand here all day. He told them as quickly as he could about his vow to the White Lady to wed the first woman he saw.

“Which was why you wanted Meg,” both Aidan and Micaela said over the murmurs of the crowd when he was done speaking.

He nodded. “That’s why I wanted Meg.”

“Well, Meg doesn’t want you,” the pretty girl in question spoke up from the back of the group. “It’s a good thing my father wouldn’t let me go with Aidan.”

Rowan blushed at such a firm rejection by a girl who should have been flattered to be his wife. “For shame,” he told her. “I am your laird.”

“And a fine one you are but you were trying to cheat the White Lady. I’ll have none of that.”

“And so she shouldn’t. For shame, Rowan Murray.” Rosemary wagged an admonishing finger under his nose. “There will be no wedding,” she went on.

“No,” Micaela agreed.

Rowan drew himself up. “I’ll not be thwarted in this. ’Tis for everyone’s good.”

“I’m with them,” Maddie said. She smiled at the two women who’d objected to the man’s strange plan. “Will you please let go of me?”

Rowan scowled at her. “No.”

“I said please.”

“You’ll not leave my side until the vows are spoken and not to go very far even then.”

She shook her head. “I never said I’d marry anybody.”

“I didn’t ask.”

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The man was infuriating! “No, you didn’t.”

“I need not ask. You are the White Lady’s answer to our problems.”

Infuriating and stubborn. While he looked at her with set jaw and the ice back in his eyes, she tried to explain his mistake one more time. “I don’t know who this White Lady is but I didn’t show up to fulfill her requirements. It was just a coincidence that I ran into you and a very weird one at that. I’m lost or hallucinating. Either way I have to find out what happened.” She looked to Rosemary for help. “Can I go now? Is there somewhere around here where I could rent a car?”

“Where’s the priest?” Rowan asked.

“Right behind you, lad,” Father Andrew said from the chapel doorway. Rowan turned his head to look at the big man as the priest went on, “Have you her father’s permission?”

“I’m not getting married. I think I’m going to try to wake up now.”

“Have you a father?” Rowan asked her.

“Perhaps you didn’t hear what I just said.”

“Answer the question.”

The coldness in his look sent a chill through her but Maddie refused to be intimidated. “My father’s in Montana. Why don’t you call him and ask my opinion of marriage?”
Just don’t get my mother
, she added to herself.
She’d tell you to go ahead with the
ceremony for my own good.

“It’s not a high opinion, is it?”

“No.”

Never mind what she’d confessed to her mother before getting on the plane. She wanted someone in her life all right, but she wasn’t ready to think about any permanent relationship—with anyone but Toby that is.

“Nor is mine.” He put his hands on her shoulders and leaned closer. His voice was soft and menacing when he told her, “You’ll do as I say, woman. You’ll do it now and you’ll do it without fussing.”

Close as they were, she could see the bruise on his jaw where she’d hit him. For all his barbaric posturing, he hadn’t retaliated for the blows she’d dealt him. She gambled that he wouldn’t now.

“No.”

Rosemary forced her way between them, making Rowan take a step back. For the first time in hours Maddie was free of his touch. It made her feel oddly vulnerable and alone among all these people.

“The lass is right,” Rosemary told Rowan. “You can not be married.”

Maddie sighed with relief. “Well, thank God someone sees it my—”

“First we must gather the clan and hold a feast,” Rosemary insisted. “The omens must be read.”

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“The stars consulted,” Micaela added.

“The proper spells read over the marriage bed,” Rosemary went on. “Then we’ll have the wedding.”

Maddie’s groan was lost in the agreeing shout that went up from the crowd.

So was Rowan’s.

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“I love my kindred,” Rowan said to the woman seated beside him. As she gave him a wary glance, he went on. “I’d love for them all to go to the devil for just one night and leave us in peace.”

Her reaction was a blank stare. When he reached out to put his hand over hers, she promptly folded her hands into a tight double fist in her lap. He accepted this rebuff by settling back in his chair. Rowan tried to ignore the woman and retreated into his more usual morose silence.

Maddie almost smiled at her captor’s frustrated comment. She understood about large, interfering families, she came from one herself. If he hadn’t been talking about spending the night with her, she might have made some equally sardonic, understanding reply. As it was, she really didn’t have anything to be sardonic or understanding about. She thought she should treat the temptation to respond to the man on any level as some kind of aberration on her part. It was just because he looked so much like someone she loved and desired. That the aberration also probably took place on some basic, hormonal, female response to dominant male level was downright embarrassing.

Besides, it would be like teasing a tiger. He might be sleek and beautiful to look at, but a person could get killed mistaking a quiet beast for a kitty cat.

So she tried to stay as inconspicuous as her place beside him would allow. Being in the middle of a crowd only made her feel a little more secure. As Rowan pointed out, the crowd consisted of his extended family, and this strange, boisterous group was gathered in the cold, shabby hall for a wedding party. Though Maddie neither understood nor liked the reason for the gathering, she hoped it went on all night.

Though the people were strange, the setting was downright bizarre. The wide room took up the second floor of a stone tower. They’d entered via a ladder that led up to the outside door of the tower. The ladder had been pulled inside and a heavy door fastened in place as soon as all the Murrays were within. Maddie felt claustrophobic at being so closed in. Not only was she enclosed with a bunch of crazy people, she knew there was no escaping once the log-sized pole was lowered into massive brackets that held it across the door. She’d been shaking with terror at this realization when Rowan led her off to sit beside him at one of the tables. It had taken her quite a while to compose herself enough to survey the room, if not the situation, calmly.

Only wall torches and a bonfire in a central hearth gave any light or warmth, and not much of either. The place was smoky, the low rafters covered in soot since the tiny windows up near the ceiling let in more air than drifted out. It looked like a whole cow was being roasted over the fire. The smell was not particularly appetizing. A dignified 32

A Kind of Magic

man stood near the fire, his graying hair glimmered in the firelight as he sang. His rich baritone voice rose easily above conversation and the clatter of dishes. The whole setting made her feel as if she’d fallen into an illustration for a Walter Scott novel.

She had seen the ruins of several medieval Highland fortresses in the year she’d worked in Scotland and had talked a lot with her archaeologists friends. She knew there were no intact castles like this one in Scotland. That this place, these people, existed made no sense. That she was sitting in a dark, smoky room with them made less sense.

The airplane on the mountainside was impossible and telling herself she was hallucinating was just a cowardly way of trying to cope with this altered reality. She was too uncomfortable for it not to be happening.