Fairy Tale (9 page)

Her laird.

Her chieftain.

Her self-appointed guardian.

Fiona glared down in concern at the chalice she’d placed back on the desk. “You’re going pale, Marsali. You’re looking very unwell, indeed. How much of that potion did you drink, anyway?”

“It’s not the potion,” Marsali muttered, turning away in agitation.

“It’s the MacElgin.” Colum swung his legs over the bunk, bony knees protruding from his nightshirt. “That’s what has the lass all undone, isn’t it, Marsali?”

A large wave crashed against the ship. Fiona grabbed Marsali’s arm and guided her over to the bunk, the candles in the brass sconces on the bulkheads guttering in their wake.

“Come on, Dad, move over a moment.” Fiona crowded into the bunk beside Colum, dragging a reluctant Marsali down between them.

“Go to your own bed, Fiona,” Colum said with a disgruntled sigh. “I’m resting to work late tonight.”

“My cabin is leaking again,” Fiona complained, “and you’ve stolen all the warm quilts. We were better off living in the woods. And you, Marsali, you’re the one in the family who’s supposed to have all the common sense. Why are you not home snug in Bride’s cottage? Who is this MacElgin anyway, to be brewing such a tempest?”

Marsali curled up under the threadbare quilts Fiona had confiscated from her father.
Bride was Marsali’s sister-in-
law, always pregnant, always tired, always needing a hand with her brood of children. The cottage, with its reek of peat smoke and genteel poverty, depressed Marsali beyond words.

As much as she adored her boisterous nieces and nephews, even her own dimwitted brother Gavin, Marsali felt unbearably lonely in the crowded home, restless with needs of her own that she was half afraid to analyze, reminded of
the future she had lost. Aye, she had her dreams, dreams of a snug home to call her own, bairns snuggled on her lap by the fire, a fine man
…

“When my back gets better, lass,” Gavin would console her, “I’ll find work again, and we’ll set sail for Virginia. We’ll grow rich raising tobacco and carriage horses. There’ll be no rebellions and raids in the middle of the night. You’ll sip tea and wear satin.”

Duncan MacElgin had laughed at that dream, and suddenly, damn him, it did seem stupid, if not impossible.

She sat forward, her small face intense. “I need your help, Uncle Colum.” She untied the silken cord from her neck and laid it carefully on the quilt. “I want you to take the MacElgin’s hairs from this necklace and work your most powerful spell on him tonight.”

Colum did not respond, staring down at the quilt with a frown of concern. She had never asked him to work magic for herself before.

Fiona ran her forefinger over the cross, her eyes misty. “A love spell. Oh, my poor desperate cousin. The man is no here a full day, and you, who scorn the ancient arts, who deny the Wiccan blood in your own veins, are imploring me to use my powers to win the man’s heart. I’m so happy for you, Marsali, I think I’m going to cry.”

“Well, don’t take out your handkerchief yet, Fiona,” Marsali said waspishly. “And not to offend your awesome talent for spellcasting, Cousin, but it’s Uncle Colum’s help I really need. He has a wee bit more experience with this sort of—”

“It didn’t look to me like you and the laird needed the help of a love spell on the beach,” Colum said gruffly, not touching the cross.

Fiona’s leaf-green eyes widened. “Why? What were they doing then?”

“Nothing at all,” Marsali said, her face warming at the embarrassing memory. “We were stuck together by accident. And I don’t want to win his damned heart either because he probably doesn’t have one.”

“Then what exactly am I
to do with his hair?” Colum asked, a frown carving deep grooves in his forehead.

Marsali’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Send him into the
Otherworld. Or make his man-thing wilt for a month. Cut his pride down a notch or two. Make him feel powerless.”

“Was he misusing his man-thing?” Colum inquired sharply.

Marsali squirmed under the quilt. “Well, no, but one can assume he had it in mind. Eventually, I mean.”

“How ‘eventually’?” Colum demanded.

“Did he show it to you?” Fiona whispered. “Was it very big?”

Marsali gave a loud sigh. “Look, Uncle Colum, I know you’ve been predicting for months that the man destined to be our chieftain would magically appear out of the mountains like some sort of ancient god, but I’m afraid Duncan MacElgin is not the man in your vision.”

Colum’s hazel eyes glittered in the gloom. “How would you know that, Marsali, you who has refused to cultivate your own talents for prophecy?”

“Well, at first I thought you were right, and I was happy to let him order me around in front of the others—for the sake of the clan, you understand. But I’m afraid we’ve made a serious mistake. He has no intention of staying here longer than the summer, and he’s not going to punish that ass Abercrombie for having Liam flogged.”

“I saw the vision in the Samhain bonfire as clearly as I am looking at you now,” Colum said after a long silence.

“Well, Dad, it isn’t as if you’ve never made a mistake before,” Fiona said gently. “Remember when you predicted that flood, and we had the whole clan and all their smelly goats crowded onto this ship? It was the driest winter in anyone’s memory.”

Marsali leaned her head on her uncle’s shoulder, her voice sweetly cajoling. “Are you going to help me with the MacElgin, or do I have to get the others to do it?”

“I love you like one of my own, Marsali.” Colum’s voice grew reflective. “But heaven knows I have failed your father in watching over you. I should never have let things go this far. I taught you the academics, but nothing of life. Yes, I will help you with this man.”

Marsali swung her feet to the floor, restraining herself from releasing a whoop of victory. “Then it’s settled. What a relief.”

“Fiona, accompany your cousin halfway to the castle,” Colum said crossly, pushing off his warm quilts with a deep sigh at the night’s work that lay ahead. He had planned to concentrate on improving the oat crops, but that would have to wait.

“Do you think that the MacElgin might be lying in wait for her along the way, Dad?” Fiona asked, a gleam of hope in her big green eyes.

“I doubt it.” Colum looked
preoccupied, waving his blue-
veined hand in the direction of the door. “But I need peace to work. Get out, the pair of you. Your babbling drains my energy.”

T
he two young women crept like mice from the cabin and crossed the deck to the ship’s gangplank, a warped length of wormy oaken board that extended into the cliffside path to provide passage to dry land during high tide.

Without warning Fiona whirled around, grabbing Marsali by the arm with a wicked grin just as she stepped onto the wobbly planking.

“Are you in a hurry to return to the castle, Marsali?” she called over the wild music of the waves hitting the ship’s hull.

Marsali hesitated, shoving her bright curls from her face. Something inside her ached to see the MacElgin again before Colum turned him into a lobster, just to convince herself his voice was not as deep as she imagined, his magnetism not as overpowering. Something inside her wanted to give him another chance at redemption to prove his integral goodness. Hope did not die easily in her stubborn heart.

But then she remembered that he belonged to another woman, that he’d promised to “take control” of Marsali’s life—with all its chilling implications. And he’d fought for the English, given them the loyalty he owed his own people. Away from him, she could begin to untangle her thoughts.

Indecision tore at her. She thought of the various facets of his character that he’d revealed during the day: authority and anger, the talent for tactical organization that had served him so well as a military leader. The grudging respect he’d commanded from his reprobate clansmen.

But it was the vulnerability beneath the mask of defiance worn by the boy in the portrait that haunted her. Aye, it had touched her, made him a little more human. That and the horrible black humor he’d displayed when he humiliated her a few hours ago.

Duncan the man, matured with all his dark emotions channeled if not conquered. No longer just the boy in the portrait but the fierce ancestor who hung above it. A Celtic war
rior born
into a position of privilege.

A sad unpredictable warrior with the power to decide the destiny of a common girl such as she.

“No, I’m not in any hurry,” she said, shrugging off the day’s anxiety and exhaustion. “What are we going to do?”

Fiona gave her a sly look. “Won’t the laird be angry if you disobey him?”

“I don’t know.” Marsali shivered as a smattering of spindrift hit her face, remembering Duncan’s unbridled anger when he’d confronted her in the cave. “I don’t care, either.”

“It’s still light, Marsali. I was going to sneak back to the cairn and give the Otherworld another chance. But let’s try and raise a storm instead. I’ll just run back to the cabin to fetch my things.”

“Oh, all right,” Marsali said without a great deal of enthusiasm. From her perspective, however, the day had begun and ended stormily enough, with no lull on the horizon either. Everyone said her uncle worked genuine magic, and she’d never really taken advantage of his occult abilities until now, except to help a sick bairn or animal.

All she knew was that he’d have to work quite a spell to help her out of this coil. The MacElgin obviously possessed his own potent brand of power, a power that had proved to Marsali her precious freedom could not only be threatened but taken away by a snap of his long elegant fingers.

F
iona slipped soundlessly back into the cabin. Easing the door shut, she paused to breathe in her favorite scents in the world: melted wax, herbs, burnt wine. Eun did a shifting dance on his driftwood perch, recognizing her through the little red velvet hood he wore.

Her father did not acknowledge her at all. Mumbling to
himself, hunched over the assortment of Wiccan’s tools arranged on his desk, he was already too deep in concentration to notice his daughter’s return.

She picked up her pouch of sacred stones, wolves’ teeth, and flowers plucked under a full moon at midnight, padding up behind him. “No one
’s ever asked me to make a man-
thing wilt before. Do you mind if I watch?”

He spun around, clearly startled by her voice, if not the question. At the strange intensity of his face, his gaze so oblique in the candlelight he appeared not to know her, Fiona stumbled back a step.

“Dad,” she whispered, a quiver in her voice, “are you all right?”

He scowled at her from beneath his thick white brows, his voice a rasp of sound. “Get out of here, Fiona. Now.”

She stared past him in fascination toward the desk. An altar strewn with dried rosebuds and a red silk cloth; a mortar and pestle; salt, oil; a thurible burning cloying incense. Gasping softly, she lowered her gaze to the strands of hair woven into nine thin knots, black tightly entwined with auburn.

Lovers’ knots.

The chieftain and her cousin.

Swallowing, she noticed the triangle drawn in chalk on the dull wooden floor. “Dad,” she said again, backing into the bucket Marsali had overturned earlier. “The Irrevocable Spell. Why are you doing this?”

“She needs a protector, Fiona. I have failed at the task, and the man who loved her is dead. No one else in the clan is good enough.”

Fiona shook her head in bewilderment. “But everyone said Duncan MacElgin is a devil. He caused a clansmen’s death and disfigured another. He—he murdered his own parents.”

“Andrew said the lad had been mistreated and had a good heart beneath all the drunken deviltry.”

“Then it must have been buried very deep,” Fiona said in a tremulous voice. “And he must have terrified the life out of Marsali to bring her here for help against him in the middle of the night.” She darted forward to stay his arm. “You can’t do this.”

He shook her hand away, his fine white hair failing into his face. “I’m only helping along the attraction I saw with my own eyes tonight. If it’s not meant to be, then all my magic will not matter anyway. Now leave me to do my work. See your cousin back to the castle and mind you behave yourselves.”

“Papa—”

His voice rose into a fearful roar. “You will not learn the secret of penetrating the Otherworld if you interfere with me tonight. Go!”

Throwing him a final desperate look, Fiona found her pouch in the wall cupboard and hurried from the cabin. As she met Marsali pacing on deck, she squelched a surge of guilt at the enormity of what her father had undertaken.

The chieftain and her cousin.

Duncan and Marsali.

Bound together for all eternity in earthly passion and spiritual partnership in a spell that linked soul to soul. Fiona was sick with fear and envy.

She lowered her troubled gaze, marching past Marsali to the gangplank. She had no power, mortal or magical, to countermand her father’s spell. “Come on,” she muttered. “We’ll work our own magic from the cliffs so the waves won’t wash over us when I start to raise the storm.”