Sarah Gabriel
Authors: To Wed a Highland Bride
To Wed a Highland Bride
for Jennifer,
who knows all about
fairy stones
Buffeted by wind gusts, Donal MacArthur struggled as he climbed…
Fairies! You cannot possibly mean, sirs”�Patrick MacCarran leaned forward,…
Lifting the embroidered, flounced satin of her silver-blue court dress…
James heard the shriek as he stepped over the threshold.
These spritely creatures often inhabit the lush wooded groves of…
Up steps and along a corridor, its polished wood floor…
Ruination and compromise? Elspeth covered her face with her hand.
“There are guest rooms on this level,” James said as…
When the scream sounded, lightning blazed through the windows, and…
As the kiss deepened, James took over, his hands coming…
Firelight flickered on the curtains of the old-fashioned canopy bed…
Daunting, James thought as he surveyed the untidy desk piled…
When they met the ghillie’s coach on the road past…
James shrugged into a borrowed tartan waistcoat of dark green…
“The storms are clearing at last,” Donal MacArthur said, as…
Stirring in the dark of night, still groggy, James was…
Good granite was abundant in this part of the glen…
Removing from the loom a full roller of the tartan…
Like ghostly images, she saw two scenes before her�the…
“Best leave it open,” Elspeth said. “Charlotte will knock it…
“Look! Highland natives!” Lady Rankin pointed as the open carriage…
“If we do what?” The rain pattered on the rock…
“There’s no trace of a legendary treasure here,” James said.
“Surely we cannot fit another blasted thing into that carriage,”…
Scotland, the Highlands
Autumn
1801
B
uffeted by wind gusts, Donal MacArthur struggled as he climbed a rocky hill in moonlight. Hunched against the chill, his plaid billowing and snapping against his trousered legs, he walked along the shoulder of the slope to face a tall concavity in the rock, shadowed black in the darkness. He reached up to grope along a natural shelf formed by slate and gray stone.
There, he had it—the bit of crystal he had hidden there seven years earlier. It fit the palm of his hand, the clustered points jutting upward. Pressing it into a small opening in the wall, he felt it slide just so, with a chink and a settle.
He pulled the drape of his woolen plaid closer over his jacket and clamped a hand over his bonnet, for the wind began to whip as soon as he inserted the key—the crystal itself. He waited, knowing this was
not his usual appointed time, but they expected him. Every seven years throughout his adult life, he had come here, according to the agreement he had made. Seven years, and seven again, until seven-times-nine was reached. By then, he would be a very old man. Tonight, only a year and a day had passed since his last visit.
She
always expected him, and welcomed him into her presence, and into her arms. There, he would lose the sense of time for a bit, the sense of himself, his home, his dear ones at Kilcrennan. Inside the hill, he would revel in the pleasures offered, golden wine and ripe fruits, sweet crystalline music, dancing like joyful madness, the laughter as that of angels. Some said that was what they were, the Fey: fallen angels. He could well believe it, given their sweetness and their cruelty.
And the private pleasures with her—sinful, graceful passions, her body perfect and never aging, fitting exquisitely to his own, still hard despite his years. That lush, sensual feverishness always lured him back again—the craving pulsed through blood and soul, and slowed aging. He could not resist, nor did she ever deny him. Lips, touch, thrust, and magic—the blend was powerful and deep.
Inevitably, she would release him and he would find himself standing outside the rock again, in moonlight or at dawn: just Donal the weaver, tall and handsome, blessed in his friends, fortunate in his business; Donal MacArthur, who as a young man had made a dark bargain with a queen of the fairy ilk.
Now the rock wall shifted, opened like a door. Light glowed within, and he heard the pipes, the laughter. Oh, he wanted to go inside.
Not tonight
, he told himself.
“Donal, dearest!” She stood before him, and he dared not even think her name for its power. Inside the threshold, she was tall and elegant, glowing like a slender moonbeam. Her garments were gossamer, her face and form beautiful. He caught his breath.
“I have come back, a year and a day from the last time, as we agreed, for the return of my son, Niall. You agreed to bargain.”
“Did I? I suppose I did.” She laughed, silver music. Glancing over her shoulder, she beckoned. The sound of merriment, the fragrances of wine, apples, and cakes wafted toward the entrance. Donal drew breath, tempted.
Then Niall appeared, his handsome son, brown-haired and strong. With him stood the one who had lured him inside—a girl of uncommon beauty, black gloss hair and silver-green eyes. Sensing sadness in her, Donal wondered if Niall was about to leave.
“Niall, are you well?” he asked, heart thumping fast.
“Very well, and happier than any man ever was.”
“You must break their power over you—” he began, but Niall shook his head.
“The Fey have won, what’s done is done,” the queen of that hillside said, and smiled. “Niall has found true love’s enchantment here, which all humans long for. He reminds me of you, Donal.” Her eyes gleamed, and lust darkened her lips to rose.
“Do not dare,” Donal growled.
She laughed. “Come inside forever. Come with me.” She opened her arms.
Though it took effort, Donal ignored her to look at his son. “Come out, Niall.”
But Niall shook his head. “I cannot cross this
threshold now. I gave my promise…I must remain.” He gathered the black-haired beauty close. “I am happy, and gladly here forever.”
Donal knew that feeling too well, and his heart seemed to sink. “Och, lad.”
The queen, his own mysterious lover, reached toward him. “Forever would be bliss for us, too, my weaver. Come inside to me.”
Though he loved her in his way, he shook his head. “I will return at my allotted time, as we agreed so long ago. Every seven years for us.” He stepped back.
“Good. Oh, the gift! I do keep my promises.” She beckoned, and a Fey girl appeared beside her, holding a bundle. Niall’s black-haired lover reached out, but the queen snatched it and pushed down the blanket. “Donal, take this home with you.”
She held an infant swathed in glittering fairy cloth, a small, perfect creature with dark hair and wide eyes, so impish and lovely that his heart melted, there and then. “What is this?” he asked. “A changeling, who will be not so lovely a thing when I reach home?”
“No changeling. She is half our kind, half yours.” His longtime lover touched the child’s brow, and a blue glow like a beam of moonlight appeared and vanished. She offered the infant to Donal, stretching her arms through the moonlight. “I have given her a gift. She will see what cannot be seen.”
“The Second Sight, aye.” Such gifts were freely given by the fairies, it was said—though often there was a hidden cost. Donal accepted the feathery weight in his arms, and looked at Niall. “She is yours?”
His son nodded. “Your granddaughter. We lend her into your keeping.” His lover bowed her head, and Niall kissed her hair. Donal understood, then, why
she seemed sad. The Fey had good hearts for their own, and for humans, too, sometimes.
“She is yours now, in place of Niall,” the queen said. “This is our bargain. She is called Eilidh—as her fairy name, it holds great power. She herself must tell it to another only once.”
Ay-leth
, she pronounced it.
“Elspeth was my wife. I will call her that, and love her as if she were my own.” He stepped back quickly, before they changed their capricious minds. The squirming bundle was dear to him already. Tears stung his eyes. “Niall—”
“I will see you again. Father, remember this—the power of the Fey flows through my daughter’s veins, and the lure of this world will be strong for her. She will live with you in the Highlands until her twenty-first year. Then we will call her back to us.”
“But she will be happy and thrive in the earthly realm,” Donal said.
The queen shook her head. “She must return to us—unless you find our treasure, stolen from us long ago by one of your own name. Bring that to us, and the girl may stay with you. Though we will have one of you regardless, I promise you.”
“Fairy treasure!” Donal said. “No one knows where that lies, or if the legend is even true.” The Fey were given to exaggeration, he knew.
Daoine sìth,
they were called in the Gaelic—the people of peace. Yet they could be anything but peaceful if crossed.
“A MacArthur stole it from us.” Her voice was cold as ice. “We will have it back, or we will take souls from this glen, as we have done since its disappearance—your treasure for ours. Somewhere in these hills, or in human halls, it lies,” she went on, “and you will need two keys to open it. Here is the first one.”
She pointed to the stone he had thrust into the rock. “You hold the other key in your arms.”
“This child?” He was puzzled. “But where can I find the treasure?”
“If we knew that, we would not ask your help,” she said irritably. “Fetch our treasure to escape our thrall. Return it.” Her beautiful gaze held his. She lifted her arms.
Sensing her power igniting, Donal moved backward. “This is a wicked bargain. This child is half human, and should have her choice. There must be some other way to break this agreement.”
“Love,” Niall said suddenly. “That is the way to break all fairy spells, in the end. Love is the strongest magic in the earthly realm, as the Fey well know,” he added, looking down at his own dark-haired lover.
“If our daughter should find true love,” the child’s mother said, “all spells around her will dissolve. But then she would not return to us. Do not let her fall in love, Donal MacArthur,” she begged. “Never allow it. I want my child back.”
He could not make such a promise, and he knew he must leave soon to protect the child. “Farewell, Niall,” he said, stepping back again. His son nodded sadly. Shielding the infant with his plaid, Donal turned away from the glow of that shining world, toward the cold wind and moonlight.
Elspeth would never go back to them if he could prevent it, Donal thought as he hurried away with his granddaughter. Somehow he would keep her in the earthly realm. Though he himself was bound to return every seven years to the hillside portal, he would keep the little one safe from the glamour of the Seelie Court and the irresistible enchantment of her kind. Someday
he would encourage her to find love, and to live with her husband far away from this place, to break any otherworldly hold. But what if love never came to her, and they took her from him, as they had taken Niall?
To spend forever in that realm—ah, no, he thought. Forever was too long.
Kilcrennan House,
1808
Elspeth sat beside her grandfather in a wing chair like his, the two chairs covered in green brocade and flanking the fire. She watched the small blue flames licking around the peat bricks, and traced her fingers over the worn, satiny textures on the chair’s arms. Sitting proper and straight, as their housekeeper, Mrs. Graeme, had taught her, she smoothed the pale pink and white gingham of her dress and reached up to pat the green ribbon wound in her dark hair. She crossed her feet, in white stockings and tiny black slippers, and watched her grandfather.
He was studying the pages of a little leather book, the one where he kept all the notes and curious crisscross drawings for his weaving. He marked a page with his pencil,
scritch-scratch
.
“Grandda, will you teach me the weaving?”
“I will,” he said, distracted.
She swung her feet like the clapper of a bell. “Tell me about the Fey again.”
He smiled, looked up at her. “So beautiful,” he replied. “Like you, hey. Quick-witted and joyful, like you. And fickle, which you would never be.” She laughed, and he continued. “Remember, if the
daoine sìth
like us and love us, good fortune is ours.”
“Only so long as they are pleased,” she prodded, for she knew all his tales.
“True, if they become irritated, if they turn their hearts and their backs to us, their blessings and gifts will become curses. And we must never look back once we walk away from them, or we will be in their power forever. Such happened to…someone I know.”
“Never look back,” she repeated dutifully, nodding. “My father looked back.”
He nodded sadly. “They love and live joyfully, but if they see a chance for power, they will take it. And they do not forgive easily, if ever. That’s the Fey.”
“What do they look like?” Elspeth had heard the stories many times and always delighted in them. She wanted to know more about the realm where her father lived. Her grandfather had a storyteller’s way about him, so that even a repeated tale sounded new. “Tell me again.”
“Some are as golden and sparkling as sunshine, and some as delicate and dark as midnight. You are like the dark ones,” he added, reaching over to tap her knee. “Hair like gleaming jet, eyes the color of moonlight, and a small and perfect face. You are like your fairy mother, though you have your father’s stubborn chin and his temperament, too, for you do not always listen to me or Mrs. Graeme.” He looked stern for a moment.
Elspeth smiled. “I do not always obey you, but I listen very well.”
“Like your father. Willful and smart, with a mind of your own.”
“I wish I had known my parents,” she said wistfully. “Grandda, let me try to guess what page you are looking at in your book.” She closed her eyes. She liked
this game well, for she often knew the answers. “That page says,
Blue, blue, green, green, and five threads of yellow for the weft threads.
It is MacArthur! You are looking at the pattern for our very own plaidie!” She opened her eyes.
“Very good,” he said. “I do happen to be looking at the MacArthur plaid, because my cousin wants a new waistcoat.”
She smiled. “Peggy Graeme says I have the Sight.”
“Mrs. Graeme,” he corrected gently. “And so you do. The fairies gave it to you.”
“Perhaps someday if I try very hard, I will see where their gold is hidden, the gold that they want us to return to them. And when I do, they will be grateful, and be our friends forever, and my father will come back to us.”
Her grandfather sighed. “I fear Niall and the treasure are lost forever, yet anything is possible.” Then he returned to his notes.
Scritch, scratch
.
Elspeth looked into the leaping, delicate flames, and wondered if she could see fairies too, as Grandfather had done. She squeezed her eyes shut. Nothing. Sometimes she had lovely dreams, in which a handsome young man and a beautiful lady came to her, laughed with her, hugged her. She thought they were fairy people, but did not know. She closed her eyes again. Nothing appeared.
Someday she would see them herself,
she thought.