Sarah Gabriel (20 page)

“In some ways, it is so,” he agreed. “Kilcrennan tartans themselves can cast a bit of a spell, bringing happiness through the wearing of the plaid.” He smiled.

“Grandda, if I ever fell in love, all that magic would end. You said yourself that it would break all the fairy spells over us. So I cannot…fall in love. All this would end.”

“Ellie, you would be happy. That is blessing worth the rest.”

“What makes you think I am unhappy now? I love Kilcrennan. I love my work.”

“That may be enough for some,” he said. “But I think it is not enough for you.”

She sighed. “But it cannot be, and that is that. When I was fourteen, you took me to see the place where you first found the fairy portal, and you told me the truth of the fairies of this glen that day. You
said that if I found true love, all binding agreements would be broken. You said that love—” She stopped, her throat constricting suddenly.

“Love is the greatest magic humans possess,” he finished for her. “It is more powerful than fairy magic, and can undo spells and satisfy bargains.”

Love makes its own magic,
Margaret had told her—the motto of the MacCarrans. James knew about that. He had to know, and yet he insisted that such things were fanciful. “I cannot bring ill fortune to Kilcrennan,” she said.

He frowned. “I made a mistake, those years ago, telling you this when you were too young to understand that your happiness is all that I have ever sought.”

“What of your happiness? You would lose your fairy power. And the rare privilege of your visits to the fairy realm every seven years. I will not ruin that for you.”

“Is this why you refused the laird?” Donal folded his arms. “For the sake of my rare gifts?” He looked stormy.

She nodded. “As for my birthday coming up, and this lost fairy treasure—which I fear will never be found, certainly not by us—if the fairy ilk wish me to return to them, I cannot stop them. I have no magic of my own against that.”

“You do,” he said.

“I do not want to be taken by those I do not know, to live forever in someplace that is…not my home. Grandda, I have not always believed what you said, until the night I saw the Seelie Court riding through the gardens of Struan House. I saw the Fey,” she said. “And I do not want to go with them. Yet I cannot break those spells, for you, or me…or for the sake
of any of those that we love. And I do not know what to do.”

“You have the Sight,” he said. “The fairy queen’s own gift to you when you were an infant. With it you can see what cannot be seen. Use it to protect yourself.”

“I do not understand,” she said impatiently. “My gift is unpredictable. I cannot control what I see with the Sight. Often it is weeks, months with nothing, then many things at once. Please understand, Grandda,” she pleaded. “I must stay at Kilcrennan. And I can never fall in love.”

“It is too late,” Donal said, regarding her soberly. “You already have.”

Inked pen scratching over paper, James sat at his desk after luncheon, writing a few thoughts on geology before he returned to the task of organizing and annotating his grandmother’s manuscript. He would have a new series of lectures to deliver after the Christmas holidays, and though it was only October now, he was not one to fall behind. While his observations upon exploring the hill near Struan were fresh in his mind, he wanted to write more notes about it. He had spent the last hour making pencil sketches of the rocks he had collected, and those were scattered over the desk now, each one labeled with a small tag tied with string.

“The earth is still evolving into its present and future states,” he wrote. “Lava, volcanoes, floods and tidal waves, earthquakes and other catastrophes caused massive shifts of land and sea, leaving earthly documents in rock and stone, such as the ripples seen in rocks along the shore, the cracks formed in mud
that dried in hot sun, and the imprints of sea surges, raindrops, steady trickles of water, as well as the fossil remains of marine shells, plants, mammals, and reptiles.”

He murmured to himself as he wrote. Osgar, who had been napping beside his desk, sat up, looking attentive, enough of an audience that James directed some of his comments toward the wolfhound. After all, he would be delivering these words to a full lecture hall at some point. “Since the Greeks,” he said, while the dog tipped his head, “man has noted the evidence of a long-ago sea that surged as high as the mountains, and whole continents that once lay under water. A record of the truth is preserved in rock, and those secrets can be interpreted by astute and educated investigators.

“The present is the key to the past,” he read even as he wrote it. He paused, waggled the pen in the air. “And the past is the key to both present and future.”

For some reason, the phrase made his think of Elspeth with a sharp, sudden longing. Sanding the ink and blowing that gently over a tray, he put the sheaf of paper away with his other scientific notes. Thoughtful, he glanced at his grandmother’s manuscript, stacked high and untidy to the left side of the desk, divided into two piles, the way he had been working on it throughout his weeks at Struan. Then he shifted a few of the labeled rocks out of the way, knowing he must finish this fairy business.

A knock sounded at the door, and Osgar loped to his feet, tail and ears alert. James went to the door and opened it, Osgar at his heels. Eldin stood there.

“Struan,” he said, looking grim and unreadable.

“Come in,” James said somewhat reluctantly. Yet he realized there was something to be got through
here, and not to be postponed. Nicholas stepped inside, and James closed the door. “May I send for coffee or tea?”

“Thank you, no. Your housekeeper has been generous with refreshments, and Sir John and I will be leaving shortly. What a handsome animal,” he said, stretching out a hand toward Osgar. “A proud and ancient breed, these hounds.”

“Aye.” James hoped that Osgar would growl ominously, sensing his master’s enemy, but the wolfhound merely nudged his head under Eldin’s hand. “Greedy beast,” he muttered.

“I will take only a moment of your time, sir. I understand through Mr. Browne that you may decide to sell this house. If so, I am prepared to offer for it.”

James stared. “I have not entirely decided.”

“Perhaps I should make it clear that Lady Struan’s decision regarding my role in her will was wholly her own. I did not influence her in that.”

“I am aware that you and Lady Struan corresponded often, with some business dealings in common, from what I understand of her last months.”

“In the last few years, she invested some of her capital in certain enterprises—jute, herrings, salt—in order to support Scottish industry. I assisted her in those transactions. And though it may surprise you, she made more than a little profit in the last years in illicit trading as well, mostly whiskey and salt. She believed that Highlanders who already suffered from the clearings of their homes after the landlord’s sale of the properties should not also pay exorbitant tax duties on necessary items. It was because I helped her to earn those extra funds,” he said, nodding his head a little, “that she included me in her will as a sort of…contingency.”

“So you know the conditions of Lady Struan’s will.”

“I do,” Nicholas said. “And I wish you the best of luck in your endeavor.” His eyes were snapping, so dark a blue that they seemed nearly black. James found the man’s cool, neutral, hawkish expression nearly impossible to decipher.

“To be honest, sir, my family are convinced that you exerted a good deal of influence over Lady Struan. But I will say no more on that topic, as there is nothing to be done about it.”

“Absolutely nothing,” Nicholas responded in a cool tone. “Nor is there anything to be done about other bygones.”

“You watched our cousin die on that bloody field, and did nothing to save him,” James said in a near growl. He flexed fingers on the doorknob. “It is not forgotten.”

Nicholas glanced down, his gaze taking in James’s left leg, injured on that same field in his attempt to rescue Archie MacCarran, the young chief of their clan. “Some situations,” he said, “are not to be helped. Were they repeated, perhaps circumstances would not change.”

“Particularly if one chooses to save himself while a friend and kinsman suffers.”

“Subjective interpretation must be one of the basic laws of existence, is it not? As a professor, you must know such things.”

“Indeed,” James said, fuming. At his side, Osgar pricked up his ears and trotted to one of the large windows in the study; one looked out on the side garden, and the other on the trees and lawn at the front of
the house, where Osgar now stood, tall enough to rest his chin on the windowsill. He whimpered a little, tail wagging. James glanced that way, and saw a gig coming past the trees toward the house. The dog woofed quietly.

“Down,” James said, watching the approaching vehicle, which carried an older man and a young woman, who wore a plaid shawl and bonnet over her dark-as-night hair.

Elspeth and Donal MacArthur. Nicholas joined him by the window. “Ah. Visitors,” he said. “Would this be the potential Highland bride, by any chance?”

James stayed silent, looking through the window. Osgar nudged close to his leg, and he reached down to pat the great, rough head.

“I believe Lady Rankin has it in mind for you to wed Miss Charlotte Sinclair.”

“Really? I hadn’t heard,” James drawled, though it was common knowledge.

“You ought to consider it seriously. Miss Sinclair is a handsome young woman, and moneyed as well, which should appeal to you in your current state. Well, as I said, sir, I will not take up your time. I wished only to extend my offer of purchase.”

“Which you have done. Good day, sir.”

Nicholas turned for the door. “Your ghillie will bring the barouche around, and Sir John and I will be departing. Thank you for your hospitality.” He glanced around. “It is a fine estate.”

“It is,” James murmured, gazing through the window at the approaching gig. He heard the door close behind Eldin. Calling Osgar to follow, he left the room himself.

In the corridor, he heard a faint, unexpected sound as a shriek echoed somewhere overhead. He glanced up just as Mrs. MacKimmie came around the corner.

“Och, sir, what is our banshee wanting to tell us now?” she said with a half smile. “Our laird is already here. Who else important could be coming to that door?”

The laird’s bride
, he wished he could say. But he only inclined his head to allow the housekeeper to move ahead of him. “Let us go and see, then, Mrs. MacKimmie.”

“Grandda, what are you doing?” Elspeth asked. “When we left Margaret’s to take her home, I thought we were going back to Kilcrennan along the glen road. This is not the way!” She saw they were headed for the earthen road that led to Struan House. The manor sat a mile ahead, its profile elegant among autumn hills beneath a blue sky.

“The glen road is in poor condition after the flooding. We’ll have to go this way.”

“There is no reason to go this close to Struan House.”

“I forgot to answer the laird, who sent us a dinner invitation for later this week.”

“Send our refusal by post or messenger, like anyone else. Stop, please. I do not want to see Lord Struan now. Not yet,” she added miserably.

“The viscount also asked that you work with him in his library. You will have to refuse him yourself, for I will not.”

“You’ve quite an imagination to think I want to see him.” She lifted her chin.

“I have done things I am not so proud of, either,” he said wryly.

“You are a good man,” she said, “except when you do not listen to your granddaughter. Please, turn the gig and go back to the moor road—”

“When I was a young man, when I first met the queen of the fairies of this glen,” he said, “I fell under her glamourie. I went into that hill for what I thought was a week or so…and when I came out, seven years had passed.”

“I know,” she said. “That was when the fairies gave you the gift of weaving. And later your son met them, too, and decided to stay with his true love—and so I was born, and you promised to take care of me. And now you can turn around and go home.” She snatched at the reins, but he avoided her hand.

“The story I told you was not all the truth, Ellie.”

“We have time for all the truth on the home to Kilcrennan. That way.” She pointed. He ignored her and continued to drive toward Struan House.

“I made a wicked bargain that first time I went into the hill,” he said. “I traded myself to her, to the queen. I did it to further my business, and I did it for my family, and for the wealth that would make them happy. She gave me the gift of the weaving in barter for my companionship. I was lured in by her charms, and believed it a fair trade—earthly riches earned through my own efforts, with a little help from the fairies. But I was wrong, Elspeth. I made a mistake, and I pay for it by returning there every seven years.”

She looked over at him. “What are you telling me?”

“I became the queen’s lover,” he explained, “and she calls me back to her.”

“Perhaps I should not hear this,” she said uneasily.

“Perhaps you should, so you will understand what danger they can be, especially for those who dismiss their power. I am bound to the queen by a spell that I cannot break. I do care for her, but I do not love her. For years I have disliked being held fast by the glamourie she put on me. It is a wicked trap. Years ago I betrayed my wife…Niall’s mother…for that bargain. That good woman died knowing that I was caught in the thrall of a fairy lover.” He glanced at Elspeth. “And I would do anything to be free of it.”

“Free of the Kilcrennan Weavers, and of all that you have worked for?”

He slowed, stopped the vehicle to look at her. “I would give all of it up,” he said, “and never visit the land of the Fey again, never see my son again, he who chose their ilk over his own. I would give all that privilege up, Elspeth…for you, and for the privilege of living with my own love. Peggy Graeme,” he said softly.

“Peggy!” Elspeth caught her breath. “Oh, Grandda, I did not know.”