Night of the Highland Dragon (4 page)

By the time Judith and Dr. McKendry reached the castle, Jack Shaw the Younger was unconscious. Shock might have done that, or lost blood—the lower part of his right leg looked badly broken, and the skin was punctured in several places—but Mrs. Lennox was holding a large brown bottle that also went a way toward explaining his condition. Judith was glad to see it. Setting a leg was no comfortable matter, even in these days when there was a fair chance it would succeed, and she disliked screaming. It brought back too many memories.

Healing magic had never worked for the MacAlasdairs. During one of his scholarly periods, Colin had rooted out a few spells that were supposed to work all right, even if one of them did involve unpleasantly close contact with a chicken liver. One of them,
not
the chicken-liver one, might possibly have helped a cut mend faster than it would have already and hurt less in the process, but there wasn't enough difference to be sure. The others, even the ones Colin had seen humans cast on each other with success, did nothing. Moreover, none of the spells worked when a MacAlasdair cast it on a human being. Colin had talked about “the law of similarity” and found it all rather fascinating.

For themselves, it didn't really matter. Their blood did more for them than any spell, particularly when they were in dragon form. Magic could do lasting damage, as could silver and a few kinds of wood. Wounds to the heart and the brain were generally fatal because they didn't give one any time to heal. The rest got better, generally at ten times or so the speed of human wounds.

But she could lend nothing of that to her tenants.

Judith kept out of the way, letting McKendry do his work with one of the two grooms to assist him. Having played her role, Mrs. Lennox was shooing the three maids back into the castle, saying firm things about the lateness of the day and the amount of work still to be done. In all likelihood, Mrs. Frasier and Mr. Janssen were still inside, neither cook nor butler being terribly burdened with curiosity.

Most of the servants weren't, when one came right down to it. Judith looked for that quality, as her father had done before her.

Standing in the shadow of the castle, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise. She turned quickly but saw nobody—and who was there to be seen?

Clearly, the last few days had not been good for her nerves. She'd have to go hunting soon and work off the tension. The body, she'd learned before she'd become a woman, responded very much to the mind. With her family, that could end badly.

She cleared her throat, stepped forward, and did her duty, addressing herself to Jack Shaw the Elder. He'd been watching the doctor's progress with his son's leg, his face beneath its gingery beard distinctly grayish, and it was probably time for him to turn his attention elsewhere.

“I'm sure he'll be all right,” Judith said. She was telling the truth by the standards she'd grown up with. The boy might walk with a limp, but he'd probably keep the leg, and now that doctors used alcohol and carbolic acid and whatever else was in McKendry's bag, there wasn't much chance of blood poisoning.

She hoped she was telling the truth by Shaw's light as well.

Regardless, he turned to her and managed a nod. “Thank you, m'lady.” He glanced over his shoulder to where the broken remains of the ladder lay at the foot of the castle wall. “Devilish thing. I—I would swear it was whole enough this morning. Would ha' sworn so,” he added, looking back at the still figure on the ground.

“I'm sure of it,” Judith said. “I've never known you to be a careless man. I expect,” she said, letting the words come to her as they might and bring what comfort or reassurance anyone in her position could give, “I expect that wood goes bad from the inside at times, and anybody might miss that. Certainly when a thing has so many parts.”

Shaw nodded again. He still stood stiff, his hands clasped in front of him and his face set like one of the stones he worked with. There was no knowing if what she'd said had been helpful; there so rarely was. “It wasna' new, like, but no more than two years old. I recall Keir makin' it that spring when the river near flooded.”

“Keir's a good hand with woodworking,” Judith said. The man who served as groundskeeper and herdsman and general jack-of-all-trades was off keeping a watchful—she hoped—eye on the sheep.

“Aye,” said Shaw, “and it never went at all bad afore this. Not wi' all the climbing we've been doing, an' all the stones an' mortar. So I'm no' saying 'tis any fault of his.”

“No, of course not,” said Judith.

She would have wagered half her fortune and all her lands that Shaw didn't know
what
he was saying, or at least that he wouldn't remember it by evening. Men rambled at times like these. If you had to talk about things you couldn't fix, you at least picked the ones that didn't cut so close.

“Bad luck,” she said. “Rotten bad luck, and I'm sorry for it. You know he'll have a place here whatever comes, d'you no'? A likely lad like him can always be useful.”

She would also pay McKendry's bill, but quietly. One didn't say certain things aloud.

“Aye,” said Shaw, and he did relax a bit at that, if only a hair. “Thank you, m'lady.”

They stood there for a while. There were no more words to distract either of them, no words at least that could pass between a stonemason and even the eccentric lady of a small village, perhaps no words in any case. Behind them, the cracks and squelches came at irregular intervals, without even a rhythm one could eventually tune out. Sounds like that drowned out all words over time, even all thought.

The castle's shadow stretched long and cold around them. Judith generally wasn't fool enough to envy her servants—she treated them well but knew her own good fortune—but just then, she would have liked to have been a housemaid, whose duty lay inside.

For all Ross MacDougal's comments, Dr. McKendry moved swiftly, and his hands were steady on the wood and leather of the splint he was constructing. Judith seized on that as one good sign in the day. All sentiment aside, she didn't want to have to bring a new doctor up to Loch Arach any time soon. Nobody in the village showed signs of going into the profession, and introducing men from outside was always tricky, particularly in these days of telegraph and photograph.

Arundell hadn't shown any inclination to tromp about with a camera, at least. Not that there was anything for him to see—not unless he really managed to go where he'd no business being—but men with cameras tended to pry more than those without, in Judith's experience. Arundell asked too many questions already.

She wondered if that was the way of city men now. The painter hadn't pried, but he'd been artistic. Mrs. Simon had told stories of him coming downstairs with one boot unlaced, or of not showing up for meals at all because some view had distracted him. Although city-born, Mr. Hamilton was McKendry's friend and so far seemed willing to imitate his host in discretion.

She would have preferred to think that impertinent questions and searching looks just came naturally to city men. The alternative meant trouble. She doubted Arundell, or whatever object he might have, was magical. The brief glimpse she'd gotten of his aura, in Agnes's parlor, had shown it to be an unremarkable and irksomely pleasant shade of silver-gray.

He could be after money in one way or another. Judith had turned down two offers from mining companies since she'd returned to Loch Arach. Arundell could be working for either or a third, and trying to find anything they could use. He could be a newspaperman who'd run into one of her brothers and was looking for scandal—or who thought a “quaint, old-fashioned village” in the Highlands was just the sort of place his readers might want to visit, which would actually be worse.

He could have heard rumors or legends. Judith knew they existed, but she didn't know how far the stories went, or what shape they took outside Loch Arach itself. As her mother had told her, there was only so much you could do to keep people from talking, and then the key was to make sure nobody really knew what they were talking about.

There was a great deal she didn't know. There was a great deal she'd chosen
not
to know in the last twenty years. Now, recognizing that lack, she had the urge to arch her neck and bare her teeth.

Of course she didn't. Only so much eccentricity would pass without comment, even in Lady MacAlasdair. “There, poor lad,” said Dr. McKendry, tying a last knot and stepping back. “I've plaster with me, but I'll want to be making the cast properly once he's in his own bed. If you'll help me get him to his home,” he said to Shaw Senior and to Peters, the groom, “I'd count it a kindness.”

“He'll stay here,” Judith said and then looked at Mr. Shaw. “If you'd like, of course. It being closer to hand and all.”

The castle would also have more room for the doctor to work, and it'd be far less hardship for one of the maids to bring young Jack his meals than it would be for his mother or one of his sisters. Such things were like McKendry's bill though. One didn't say them out loud.

“Aye, that'd be most kind,” said Shaw.

“It's the least I can do,” said Judith, since they both heard what she didn't say. “It was my roof he was mending, and my ladder that failed on him.”

They passed through the great doors, heavy oak-and-brass monstrosities that Judith only had closed at night, and entered the castle proper. Walking was more of a relief than Judith had anticipated. As she went inside, a restlessness, almost an itch, lifted from her. Standing around never had been good for her peace of mind, particularly when others were working.

They trooped across the courtyard like the soberest parade in the world, and then, thank God, Judith was able to step aside and let the others go up the servants' stair. “I'll only be in the way up there, I'm afraid,” she said. “You'll let me know what happens, Doctor.”

“Aye, I will that,” he said, distracted as a man in his position ought to be.

Judith turned to her office and her own distractions—factoring McKendry's bill and the cost of boarding Shaw into the month's accounts and going through the list of able-bodied men in Loch Arach. Most of them would be busy with the harvest now. Winter would see them with more time on their hands, but winter was not when one wanted a hole in the roof, even above a seldom-used attic. She'd likely have to send to Belholm.

Perhaps she'd even go this time. A change of scene might do her spirits good—and it would show Arundell that she got out more often than he might think.

“Mr. Arundell,” William said, handing his card to the surprisingly young man in a butler's uniform who'd answered the door. “Calling on Lady MacAlasdair.”

More open as well as younger than his counterparts in the city, the butler stared for a second, either genuinely surprised or trying to remember rules of etiquette he'd likely thought he'd never have to use. “I'll see if she's at home, sir.”

William fully expected to be shown into a drawing room, to wait there for a few minutes, and then to hear that Lady MacAlasdair was most definitely
not
at home. His gamble would at least have gotten him entrance to the castle and a bit of time in which to look about.

He hadn't expected the lady herself to come through one of the doors at the end of the hallway, striding across the thick rugs with a list in one hand. “Janssen, have you seen—oh.” She smiled thinly, obviously wanting to curse. “Mr. Arundell. This is an unexpected pleasure.”

“He'd come to call on you, m'lady,” said the young man who presumably was Janssen. “I'd been about to show him into the drawing room, not knowing if you were at home.”

“Of course,” said Lady MacAlasdair. She was good, but William was better, and he saw her face change as she thought out her options. She clearly
was
at home, turning him out in front of the servants would cause talk, and if she pled business, he might ask more questions. She was trapped and she knew it.

William knew it too, which made him feel rather like a cad. Had the lady not been a possible murderess, he would have felt worse.

“We'll be in the east drawing room, Janssen,” she said with another patently false smile. She handed the list to the butler. “Ask Dunbar to go over these figures, and tell him I'll meet him in half an hour in my office.”

“I hope I'm not inconveniencing you,” said William as Lady MacAlasdair led him through a door.

“No, not at all,” she said, giving him the polite lie.

Like the front hall, the east drawing room was stone-walled and stone-floored, smaller and darker than any such room in London would have been. Two high windows let in some afternoon light, but the oil lamps were lit even this early. The furniture was dark and old, polished wood and thick plush, and a stag's head mounted over the mantel gave William a resentful stare as he walked in.

“Alas, Actaeon,” he murmured.

Lady MacAlasdair flicked a glance at him as she took a seat on an overstuffed sofa. “You're well-schooled.”

“One can learn a great deal from myths.”

If the smile she gave him was more genuine than any she'd produced in the front hall, it was also far more predatory. William fancied for a second that he saw fangs. “Such as the dangers of trying to see what you shouldn't, aye?”

He took a seat opposite from her. The wooden chair was less comfortable, but the couch didn't quite seem safe.

“Or the need to know you can trust your companions,” he said.

“You can trust dogs to be dogs. Just don't be fool enough to hope for more.” Lady MacAlasdair sat with her hands clasped in her lap. What would have been prim and correct in any other woman merely highlighted the restless way her fingers brushed against each other as she talked. “What brings you here? Or is this a social call? You'll have to excuse me—it's been some time since I was in society.”

She threw the last words out at him like a challenge:
See? I've said it, and now you can't imply it
. Then she smiled again. Her lips were slim, William noticed, and darker than he would have expected from a woman of her complexion.

“Primarily social,” he responded a second later than he should have. “I wanted to ask after that poor chap who'd broken his leg the other day. Dr. McKendry says he's recuperating here.”

“Kind of you,” she said. “Mr. Shaw's doing as well as anyone can in his condition. The break was bad, I hear, but healing well. Or so I understand.”

“I'm glad to hear it,” William said. “And it's kind of you to put him up. I hope he appreciates his good fortune in employers.”

Lady MacAlasdair's eyes narrowed, blazing green between long, dark lashes. “He's been a good tenant and a good worker. I owe him this much at least.”

“Yes, you seem very much alive to your responsibilities,” William said. “It's refreshing in this day and age.”

She shifted her weight, leaning forward on the couch, and swept her gaze over him from head to foot, stopping finally on his face. “What are you after, Mr. Arundell?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Beautiful as Lady MacAlasdair's eyes were, he'd seen the expression in them from men with their hands on knives or their fingers on triggers.

“What do you want here?” she asked, pronouncing every syllable carefully and clearly. “What do you want with Loch Arach? You'd not be asking so many questions if you were only after a change of scene, and you'd not be going to any length to charm me—which you're not managing, by the way. So what is it you're here for?”

Responding wasn't a matter of making up an answer, but of choosing the option he wished to use, like picking a waistcoat or a rifle sight. As always, William thought of plausibility, effectiveness, and closeness to the truth.

Then he sighed and gave in—just not all the way. “An acquaintance of mine met a nasty end in these parts recently,” he said. “I thought perhaps if I spent some time near where he died and learned a few things about the place, I might gain a better perspective.”

Lady MacAlasdair's eyes didn't change. “Nobody's died in Loch Arach this year, nor last,” she said without even hesitating to think about it.

“He wasn't from here,” said William. “He was traveling. They found his body in the forest near Belholm,” he went on, heading off her next objection. If the stakes hadn't been so high, he would have enjoyed the challenge of anticipation and response. Part of him did anyhow, which probably spoke volumes about his moral character, none of them good. “But he hadn't been there very long either, and I thought he might have come here, or meant to. Places like this appealed to him.”

“Places like this? Hah.” Lady MacAlasdair breathed the syllable out on a laugh. “I'm sorry for your loss, I'm sure, but what do you know about places like this?”

“Not very much. That's why I'm trying to find out.”

She tilted her head to the side and watched him. Gradually, a little of the tension left her. It wasn't much, but she'd shifted her weight back, metaphorically speaking. The defense was still very strong, but she'd dropped the offense for the moment. “What was he like, this friend of yours?”

“Younger,” said William. “Black hair, brown eyes. Tall, for his age. Girls might have thought him handsome.” He called to mind all the description that Miss Harbert had given him. “Not very well off. He might have been selling things, trying to pay his way along.”

“He doesn't sound like your sort of company,” said Lady MacAlasdair. She cast a significant glance at his well-tailored suit, paused, and frowned again. “From the sound of it, you didn't know him well at all.”

“I'm here on behalf of someone who did.”

“Hmm,” she said, and William could see her going through the possibilities. He knew what she was thinking when her lips twitched. If the woman had a poker face, she didn't bother with it now. Her fingers brushed over the fabric of the sofa's arm, fingertips going back and forth in a steady line. Her fingers were very long, the nails smoothly tapered. On her left hand, a large square-cut emerald flashed in the lamplight.

She hadn't been wearing a ring when they met the first time. And her clothing now was plain: a dark skirt and a high-necked, long-sleeved shirtwaist in a blue-and-green swirling pattern. It was pretty, but it wasn't the sort of fancy that would justify extra jewelry.

“Are felicitations in order?” he asked, though the finger was wrong.

“What?” She followed his gaze to the ring. “No. It's been in the family for a while. I dig it out and wear it on occasion, usually when things go a little mad. It'd be a waste otherwise.”

William smiled. “A good-luck charm? Better than a rabbit's foot. I'd a friend at school who carried one around, though if it helped him with exams, I never noticed.”

Lady MacAlasdair laughed again, more willingly this time. “Both less messy than pouring wine on the deck, as they do for long voyages,” she said. “Though I'd never thought of it as a charm. It”—she touched the ring absently—“keeps my feet on the ground, maybe. Reminds me of where I come from and where I am now. I never thought of luck.”

“Not superstitious?”

“No,” she said. “Either you can change a thing straight out, if you know the way of it, or you can't change it at all. No point asking favors.” She cleared her throat. “How did this man die?”

“Badly.”

She nodded. Then, as calmly as she'd asked about his friend: “Are you a policeman?”

He felt the wind from that shot. “No,” William said. “Nor do I work for them. I'm not here to see anyone arrested. I'll give you my word on that.”

“Your word as a gentleman?” In her mouth, the common phrase took on an exotic flavor, or perhaps an antique one.

“If you'll take it.”

“I never doubted you were a gentleman,” she said. “I'll believe you.”

The way she said it, William knew it was a choice. He hadn't convinced her, this sleek, dark woman who he'd never yet seen looking less than watchful. She wouldn't take anything on faith. She had consciously decided to accept what he said—for as long as it made sense to do so. He didn't think she gave a damn about his word.

“I hope I've set your mind at ease,” he said nonetheless, because one said certain things.

“I wouldn't hang well,” she replied with a grim little smile, and then went briskly on. “I don't recall this man you talk about. We do have peddlers once in a while. Once in a great while. It's possible.”

“Possibilities are all I have to go on just now. It's my duty to look into them.”

“Ah,” she said. “Speaking of duty, I should be getting back to mine.”

The lady got to her feet. Naturally, he did too, and the size and excessive furniture in the room meant they stood facing each other for a moment, only a step or two from touching. Close at hand, Lady MacAlasdair smelled of autumn leaves and woodsmoke. William felt his pulse quicken.

Being a gentleman, he kept his eyes on her face. He did not let himself regard the way her breasts swelled beneath her blouse. He did, however, see the movement of her throat as she swallowed before speaking.

“I still don't know what you're hoping to find here, Mr. Arundell,” she said. “Dead is dead. Bad, good—once it's over, it's over, and most of the time it's better that way. No answer you'll get here will change that, not from me nor from any of my folk.”