The Adventurer (11 page)

“The stone?”

“Aye.
Clach na Bratach.
The Mackay charm stone.”

M’Cuick only looked further confused.

“ ’Tis an old clan legend,” Mungo broke in, seizing any opportunity to justify their witless actions. “ ’Tis the legend of
an maighdean mhara nan MacAoidh.”

M’Cuick translated what he’d said from the Gaelic. “The Mermaid of Mackay?”

“Aye, the verra one. It was centuries ago,” Mungo said, falling into the lyrical voice of the
seanchaidh,
those ancient Gaelic storytellers of yore. “Longer ago than any o’ the living could e’er remember. The Mackay chief was for fishing out on Sandwood Bay when he spotted a bonnie maiden sitting atop a sea boulder. Och, she was a vision, she was, combing her long dark hair with a seashell and singing the loveliest song he’d ever before heard. He was captivated, he was, as much by her beauty as by her enchanting song. He sat upon the shore and listened to her, hour after hour, until the sun began to dip o’er the isles to the west. He was afraid if he left, even so much as turned his head away, he might ne’er see her again.”

Mungo paused, as any great storyteller would, for added effect. The pause worked. The others, excepting Calum, were staring at him, rapt as they awaited his next words.

Calum, on the other hand, was staring into his tea.

“Now,” Mungo went on, “when it seemed the mermaid might have finished with her singing, Mackay called out to her, beckoning her to the shore. But the mermaid, she only shook her head and beckoned him back to her, to the sea. She was so beautiful and the smile that she gave him stole Mackay’s heart. He knew in that moment he had to have her for his wife.”

“A mermaid for a wife,” M’Cuick snorted. “What’d he do? Offer her a nice herring from his fishing net as bait?”

“Nae, you lump,” Mungo went on, cutting the huge Scotsman a glittery stare. Mungo had no patience for a man who didn’t appreciate the telling of a good tale. “Our Mackay was much more canny than tha’. He promised the lass if she’d come to the shore, he would dance with her. Ah, what a heady temptation for the lass it was, for dancing was a thing she cudna do in the sea. And Mackay knew she would have to shed her shimmery tail skin to do it, knew, too, that if he could snatch up the tail and hide it, she would be unable to return to the sea. She would have no choice but to remain his forever.”

“And tha’s exactly wha’ happened,” Hugh piped in, stealing the glory of the story from his father. “She came ashore and she shed her tail skin so that she could dance with the Mackay. They danced and they danced until the moon was shining high in the night sky, glimmering on the waters of the bay like diamonds. After a spell, Mackay let go of the mermaid and stood back to watch as she continued to dance alone, twirling about the shore on her land legs. She was so caught up in this new experience, she ne’er noticed when Mackay took up her tail skin from where she’d left it on the shore and hid it in the bottom of his fishing sack.”

“Oy, the wily Jock!”

M’Cuick, it seemed, had grown interested in the tale. He was leaning forward on the table with his chin in his hand, eyes fixed on Hugh and Mungo.

Mungo went on.

“Without her tail skin, the merlass cudna return to her home in the sea. So she wed the Mackay and they had seven bairns—four lasses, three lads. Years passed and the merlass and her Mackay were happy, aye, but she ne’er forgot her true home. She a’ways felt a longing for the sea. Then one day, when the Mackay was out stalking about his estate, the bairns came a’running to their mither all in excitement, bringing her a strange green cloth they had found in their father’s old bothy. They thought it a present for their mammie, but she recognized it at once as her long-lost tail skin, and knew she could finally return to her home in the sea.”

“Losh!” M’Cuick threw up his arms. “So the man tends to her, gives her a home and a family, loves her, and she just thinks to up and leave?”

“ ’Tis the way of the merfolk, M’Cuick,” Mungo sighed. “There’s naught can be done for it.”

He took a deep breath, and continued with the story. “That night, afore Mackay had returned, she took up her tail skin. Tucking the bairns into their beds for the night, she kissed them each good-bye and headed for the shore. Just as she slipped into the water, Mackay happened by on his way home. He spied his wife and knew she must have found the tail, knew too that his worst fear had just come true. He shouted to her, begging her not to leave him, but she only shook her head. She loved him, aye, but she cudna change what she was. Even without her tail skin, she would always be of the merfolk. But afore she vanished into the dark sea, she threw to him a stone, a marvelous merstone on which she had cast a spell to protect the clan for so long as her bairn’s bairn’s bairns carried on.”

M’Cuick actually had the beginnings of a tear glistening in the corner of his eye when he turned to look at Calum. “And this lass they’ve brought to you. She has this merstone?”

“So they tell me. The stone disappeared some thirty years ago and hasn’t been seen since.” His voice softened. “My father died for that stone, died carrying it into battle for King James, our rightful king.”

This last statement brought a chorus of “ayes” from the others. Glasses were filled and whisky was toasted to the king over the water.

The group fell silent, savoring the whisky’s sting.

“So why did you no’ just take the stone from the lass?” M’Cuick asked a few moments later. “Why did you hae to take the lass along wit’ it?”

“A’cause there is a curse on the stone.”

“A curse? Then why the de’il do you want it?”

It was Calum who answered this time. “The curse is only on those who take it by force.”

M’Cuick scoffed. “Och, come on wit’ you now ...”

“ ’Tis no’ a laughing matter, M’Cuick. Back in the days of the Bruce, a rival Sutherland once stole into Castle Wrath, and snatched the stone, killing the old chief’s son and grandson for villainous measure. A fortnight later, the fiend’s wife awoke to find him dead in their bed, marked several places over by the bite of an adder. She, however, had been left curiously untouched. Others who dared to steal the stone met with freak deaths, hideous disfigurements, or some just suddenly vanished. Eventually the stone was returned to the Mackays, usually by the perpetrator’s next of kin who were desperate just to pacify the stone’s ominous wrath.”

Which only made Calum wonder just how the lass had come by the stone.

“So all you need do is convince the lass to give the stone to you,” M’Cuick said.

“So it would seem.” Calum turned to Fergus. “Where is she now, this lass?”

“Up in the seaward chamber.”

“You left her alone?”

“Nae. I’ve set Dermid and Graeme t’ guarding the door. Not tha’ it’s needed. She’ll no’ be going anywhere, Calum. We’re in the midst of nowhere, and besides, she’s no idea where we are. We could be in China for all she kens of it. She dinna e’en know why we took her in the first place.”

Oh, but she did.

Though Fergus didn’t realize it, the chamber into which he’d locked Isabella was in the very same tower, only two floors above the hall where he now sat. He didn’t realize that cut into the thickness of the wall behind him was a narrow shaft that ran the full height of the tower. In the castle’s heyday, it had been used for the dumping of wash water and other waste. Now, however, it provided the perfect device for her to listen to their conversation, to their plans for what they intended to do with her.

And, now that she’d heard them, Isabella knew just what she needed to do.

Calum took the stairs to the lass’s chamber with a particular slowness, stopping once, and then twice to reflect along the way.

He had, after all, absolutely no idea what he was going to find when he got there.

So they’d taken a hostage. He’d come to accept that. It wasn’t as if he had any real choice in the matter. What was done, was done. Now he just had to decide what to do about her.

He could simply let her go, and at first he’d considered doing just that. He would make Fergus do it, put her right back on that ship, and drop her at the nearest inconspicuous landing point near Edinburgh. They could forget any of it had ever happened. After all, it was Fergus’s doing that had brought her to the castle to begin with. Calum need not see her at all.

But there was one thing that had him changing his mind:

The stone.

Other than to have known his father, it was the one thing he’d wanted all his life. And now it was here, somehow, inexplicably within reach.

Who was she? How had she gotten the stone? Was she older or young? Fergus hadn’t said, but somehow Calum had gotten the impression that she was some years shy of matronly, yet old enough to have at least graduated the schoolroom. If she was quite young, she must at this point be frightened half to death. She’d been taken captive by a mob of pirates and brought to she-had-no-idea-where. What if when he went into that room she were hysterical? What if, two seconds after he opened the door, she took one look at him, screamed her face blue, and then fainted at his feet?

Or what if she wasn’t there at all?

For all anyone knew she could have escaped and was even now wandering the
parbh,
those endless miles of wind-lashed moorland that stretched beyond the castle’s walls? Men had been known to vanish out there, never to be seen again.

What if the stone was lost with her?

What if?

What if Fergus and the others had injured her when they had spirited her away? And just how exactly
had
they spirited her away? Had she fought them? Had they had to subdue her, bind her hands and mouth, threaten her with any number of injustices?

Fergus had never said and so, obviously, Calum’s imagination took over.

Calum shook his head. Oh, the scene it must have been, for while his people had certainly been reiving and thieving for centuries, the notion of his men attempting what they had made Calum cringe. Any number of misfortunes could have befallen the lass. She could have taken ill during the journey north. She could be in that room, alone, burning up with a fever and with no one being the wiser.

They didn’t even know who she was, or where she’d come from.

They didn’t even know her name.

Dia,
just the thinking of it was giving him a pain in his head, right between his eyes. And he had reached the top of the stairs. The door to her chamber stood right before him.

He could put if off no longer.

Calum approached the door with no small amount of unease. The two men Fergus had stationed outside were slumped against the wall. They appeared to be dozing, until he quietly and deliberately coughed. They shot to their feet, ready for his orders.

“Laird?”

“Has she said anything?”

“Nae. Been quiet as a dormouse, tha’ one.”

Calum didn’t even bother asking them if they were sure she was still inside the room. Letting go a breath of resignation, he reached for the latch on the door.

The creak its hinges gave off sounded like a mournful moan.

He pushed it open. The room inside was dark. There were no windows and there was only a single candle burning. It threw a fluttering mix of shadows across the pitted stone walls, making the place look more like a dungeon than a bedchamber. It was quiet except for the echoing sound of the surf breaking on the rocks beneath the castle cliffs. She didn’t scream. She didn’t make a sound. Calum stood there for a long moment, leaving the door open behind him to allow in the light.

“Lass?”

Silence.

And then he saw her.

She was sitting in a chair in the far corner, her feet tucked up beneath her, half in, half out of the shadows. She was wrapped in a length of faded woolen. She wasn’t screaming. She wasn’t even blinking, it seemed. Yet as he drew nearer, peering at her in the darkness, he could see her shoulders were trembling.

“You are cold,” he said softly.

Or scared to death, he thought to himself.

She barely looked at him. “A little.”

A little of both, he decided.

Her voice was quiet, nearly a whisper, and smoky rich, the sort of voice well suited to a darkened room. He moved in closer and her scent immediately took hold of him, a scent that was everything that is woman—herbs, sweetness, and that something else that draws a man in just as seductively as the flickering warmth of a hearth fire on a chill winter night.

Calum took a step back. His vision had adjusted to the darkness well enough for him to make out the shape of her face, the sweep of her nose, the elegant tilt of her chin. What he saw when he finally took her in was enough to make him blink.

Twice.

Hers was a face that could have been carved from alabaster, uncommonly, otherworldly beautiful. Thick lashes swept against a cheek that was pale as the moonlight, that looked smooth as the finest pearl. Her hair was dark, how dark he couldn’t quite tell, but it fell in untidy tendrils about the curve of her ear. He found himself taken with the urge to brush it away with his fingertips so that he could better see her.

She was simply exquisite.

Her brow arched in a soft curve above her eyes and her mouth revealed lips that were slightly parted, full and finely shaped. He knew just looking at it that her mouth would be soft. What he didn’t know was how it would taste, how it would fit to the shape of his own, how its kiss would ...

Calum blinked, startled at himself.

What the devil had made him think that? It was almost as if he’d been—

—enchanted.

He shook his head to clear it.

“Who are you?” She stared at him. “Why have you brought me here?”

Hers was a cultured voice, smooth and with words precisely pronounced. Moreover, it was unmistakably the voice of a Sassenach.

“I am Mackay.” He was almost afraid to ask. “And you are?”

“I am”—her brow drew close, confused—“did you say you were MacAoidh?”

She had pronounced the name in the ancient way, with the Gaelic inflection—
Mack’uy
—which was odd. Most Sassenachs seemed determined it should be
Mac-kay.