The Adventurer (12 page)

Who was this woman?

“Aye. I am Calum Mackay of Wrath.”

She looked startled, her brow wrinkled in confusion. But then, after a moment, she simply nodded and said, “Yes. Yes, of course you are.”

It seemed as if she was speaking more to herself than to him.

Calum watched as she sat forward on the chair, looking at him with a peculiar expression, as if she were trying very hard to be brave, while at the same time a little frightened, too. It was interesting to watch the conflict of emotions that flashed across her face, like the flipping pages of a book where the story changes one chapter to the next.

The woolen that had covered her slipped from one shoulder, revealing that she wore a traveling gown, the sort with a flared jacket that had been fashioned after a man’s and that buttoned up the front to her chin. It was a fine garment, silk adorned with braiding and many buttons, indicating she came from a background of some affluence.

Was she Lord Belcourt’s daughter?

God help them if she were.

“You won’t need that,” he said when he noticed that she was clutching a candlestick, blunt end up, underneath the woolen, just in case, he realized, she should need to cosh him. “I’ve no intention of harming you.”

She nodded. She didn’t, however, set the candlestick aside.

She slid her legs forward from where they had been curled beneath her and he saw the skirts, layers of them. He caught a glimpse, just a hint of white stocking and delicate, arched foot. She stood and faced him at a height that barely reached his chin, even with the cocked heels of her shoes. The light from the hall behind him shone on her face and he saw her hair, dark as midnight, against eyes that were startlingly blue.

Blue as the depths of the Hebridean sea ...

Calum found himself getting lost in those eyes, mesmerized by them, until she moved, and the chain she wore around her neck sparked in the light.

He’d almost forgotten the stone altogether.

He felt himself suck in his breath as he looked at it settled softly against her breasts.

Calum had never seen the MacAoidh charm stone, had only heard it described around the light of the peat fire on chill winter nights. But the moment he saw it hanging on that silver chain, he knew. It was as if every drop of Mackay blood within him sang with it.
This is the one.
Even in the near-darkness, it held a mysterious, inexplicable light, speaking to the very origin of his name.

MacAoidh—the Sons of Fire.

Calum reached out his hand as if to take the stone, but his fingers stopped inches away, hovering just out of reach.

“This stone you wear,” he said softly. “Where did you get it?”

Her fingers lifted to the chain as if to shield it from him. “Why do you ask?”

“Because it belongs to my family.”

She nodded. “Yes, I know.”

“It was taken many years ago.”

“Yes ...”

Calum stood back and looked at her. “Did you steal it?”

It was a senseless question, he knew, because she wasn’t nearly old enough to have taken the stone—in fact, she couldn’t be any older than two-and-twenty, perhaps three. But that didn’t mean the stone hadn’t been left to her by someone, a relative perhaps—

Perhaps even his father’s murderer.

“Did I steal it?” She looked startled at the question. “No. I only intend to return it.” And then she repeated. “I only intend to return it to its rightful holder.”

Those words,
rightful holder,
sparked at something, a lifelong shadow of insecurity that lay deep inside of Calum. He took a breath, held it, and asked, “And who is the rightful holder?”

“I do not yet know.”

He frowned. “Where did you get it?”

She stared into his eyes, deeply. “I think you already know that.”

She wasn’t providing any answers. Only questions. More questions.

Calum took a step toward her, leaning in close, his voice like the rasp of sand against stone. “Who the devil are you?”

If he had hoped to intimidate her into spilling the truth, he was sorely disappointed. She merely looked back at him and blinked.

“I think you already know the answer to that, as well. I think you’ve known it all your life.”

Calum took a step back. And then another. He stared at her. And he scowled.

“I don’t know what sort of trickery you seek to practice, lass, but you’ve no notion what you’re about. I will have your name. And I will have it now.”

She swallowed, betraying the nervousness she was trying so hard to hide.

“My name”—she hesitated—“my name is Maris.”

Maris?

“I do not know any Maris, lass.”

“You’re certain of it?”

“Aye. Quite certain. I have been all across this land and I have never encountered anyone with that name.”

She lifted her chin. “Who said anything about it being on the land?”

Calum stared at her.

Maris.

It was Latin for “of the sea.”

Had that been her name? The one he’d seen in his dreams?

He pushed the thought away just as soon as it had come, trying to ignore his drumming heartbeat. “What are you saying? You’re not ...” He shook his head against the very thought of it. “You’re not trying to tell me that you’re a ...”

Mermaid.

Though he hadn’t spoken the word out loud, his thoughts had all but bellowed it. Could it be? Could
she
be?

The saner side of him dismissed the notion out of hand as nothing more than stuff and nonsense, and childhood dreams. But there was a part of him, the part that had been reared on tales of superstition and legend—in particular,
that
legend—that couldn’t help but wonder, just a little, if it might be even the slightest bit possible.

How many hours, days, months even, had he spent sitting on that bluff above that bay, waiting and watching those brilliant blue waters for that legendary lass to appear? Could it be that the lass he’d been calling to in his dreams was suddenly, inexplicably standing before him, wearing the very stone he’d been seeking all his life?

But how could she be?

“You’re lying,” he said.

“That is possible,” she said softly. “But it is also possible that I was sent here, to return the stone. To restore the balance.” She looked deep into his eyes. “To choose between the two.”

Calum felt a chill all the way to the bottom of his belly.

How? How could she have possibly known, when even most of his crew didn’t?

“I don’t believe you,” he said, more to himself than to her. Only to his thoughts, it sounded more like “I don’t believe
in
you.”

“Do you believe in this?”

Calum watched as she lifted the stone into her hands before him.

It was as if he stopped breathing. He opened his mouth to speak, but the words fell silent when he noticed that the stone had suddenly begun to glow. First it turned a dull, dark red, then lighter, pink to orange to vibrant yellow, as if the lass held a secret, mystical flame right in the cup of her hands.

In the light from the stone, Calum could see her eyes, wide with wonder, her face radiant as the summer sun.

All his life, he’d heard the tales of the stone, and of the merlass who’d brought it to his people. He’d watched for her, waited for her, believing that someday she would return, believing, too, that she would return the stone.

Believing she would return the stone to him.

But as he’d grown older, more practical, Calum had begun to abandon those boyhood dreams as fairy-tale nonsense, the yearning for days that were long since past.

But the dream itself would not be denied. For when he’d banished it from his thoughts by day, it had only stolen into his sleep at night.

And now?

Now she was here.

There was no denying this. And there was no denying this lass.

She looked at him above the light of the stone, which had cooled to a milky blue-green, and said, “Do you think this a bit of trickery, too, Mr. Mackay?”

Calum wondered if she meant the stone ...

... or her.

He never had the chance to answer her.

“Laird?”

The voice came from behind him. As soon as it did, the light inside the stone went out like the flame of a candle to a gust of wind.

Calum drew a slow breath. He didn’t so much as shift his eyes away from the lass to answer Lachlann who stood at the door.

“What is it?”

“There is”—Lachlann hesitated—“an urgent message just arrived for you.”

A message. That could only mean one thing.

“I’ll be down shortly.”

“The, uh,
messenger
who brought it awaits your response.”

Damn!

Calum nodded to Lachlann. “Have him await me in the lower hall. I’ll be there in a moment.” He turned to look at the girl again. She had not moved nor had she said a word. “Lachlann?”

“Aye, Laird?”

“Send down to M’Cuick to see what he can do about offering our guest something to eat.”

He stared at the lass. A part of him didn’t want to go, didn’t want to turn away lest she somehow magically vanish.

Just like the Mackay and the mermaid ...

“I must go. There is”—he hesitated—“a matter which requires my immediate attention.” He stared at her. “This conversation, however, is far from over, madam.”

She simply nodded, and Calum turned to leave the room.

Isabella finished the last sip of her tea and set the cup in its saucer with a tiny porcelain
chink.
She pushed back her chair and stood to walk about the room with the sound of her footsteps scuffing on the floor around her.

After her encounter with Calum Mackay, she had been shown to what had once been the great hall, where the castle populace would have gathered in another age to hear the latest news, plan battle strategies, and celebrate great victories. The ceiling rose high above her head, and banners would have once hung from the rafters, fluttering a swirl of colors whenever the wind whisked through the ramparts off the sea.

Weddings would have been witnessed there, births announced, and families would have made memories that would last for generations. And perhaps, just once, a duel might have been fought, with claymores sparking against the very stones she stood upon. She could almost imagine it, the desperation of thrust and parry, the stumble of the weaker warrior, and then the victor towering, breath fogging from the cold as he listened to the dying rush of his foe’s last drawn breath.

Now, however, the room was just a lonely, dispirited shell of a place lost deep in the bowels of a seemingly deserted castle. Veins of cracked mortar spidered the stone walls like aged leafless ivy. At one end stood a cavernous stone hearth that looked as if it hadn’t been used in more than an age. The floors were scuffed, the plaster that covered the walls pitted and cracked.

Outside the window, she could see now in the daylight that much of the castle compound lay in similar ruin. Whole sections had buckled, and outbuildings were naught but stone skeletons perched high above the cliffside.

Nothing but sea and endless sky stretched in the distance. It looked quite as if they stood at the very edge of the earth.

Isabella paused for a moment at the window. Apart from the fact that they were obviously somewhere in Scotland, she had no idea where they’d brought her. She had tried to keep watch from the ship’s deck as they’d sailed, but had gotten lost in the swirl of the mist and murk that had surrounded them. From the bite in the wind and the direction of the daylight, however, she could only imagine that they were somewhere far to the north. Unfortunately her knowledge of that vast unknown part of Scotland was scarce. Anytime she’d looked at it on maps, it seemed as if the mapmaker had stopped recording the names of towns at Inverness, leaving the section above it as blank as a painter’s canvas.

She’d endeavored just to keep track of the days that had passed since she’d been taken. The
Hester Mary
would have reached Leith by now where Elizabeth and Douglas, her father and mother and sisters, would have been waiting to greet her. What had Idonia told them? Her mother would be beside herself with worry. Douglas and the duke, and Elizabeth, too, would want to come immediately after her. But how could they possibly do that? They would have no idea of where to find her.

How could it be that less than a fortnight before she had been in Paris, where the most exciting thing she’d seen had been the man with the trained monkey at the Place Royale? And to think she’d been lamenting the fact that she’d never had an adventure, had resigned herself to the belief that it just wasn’t meant for her.

Now, in just a handful of days, she had visited the French king, had had supper with his famous mistress, and had been given an enchanted stone by a mysterious comte. And then, she had been carried off by a band of Scottish pirates to a clifftop castle somewhere in the wilds of the Highlands.

Was Fate making up for lost time all at once?

But while it didn’t seem as if the Scots had waylaid the
Hester Mary
by coincidence, Isabella didn’t believe she, or the stone for that matter, had been their primary objective. Their reasons for intercepting them had had something to do with Lord Belcourt. She’d gathered that much from the conversation she’d overheard through the soil chute. The fact that they were Mackay pirates and had recognized the stone she wore could have been nothing short of—

What was the word the author Mr. Walpole had coined?

—serendipity.

And what of the man Fate had brought her to, what of this Calum Mackay?

When he had come into that room to confront her, Isabella hadn’t known what to expect. With his dark eyes and long hair, and the beard that covered his face, he had the appearance of an utter brigand.

And he was a brigand, a highwayman of the sea. Hadn’t he and his men suggested ransoming her? Hadn’t they suggested doing far, far worse than that? She shuddered as she remembered the Scotsmen’s conversation about the archaic and utterly horrific custom of the
droit du seigneur.
They suspected she was somehow related to Lord Belcourt, and they sought revenge against him just for the fact that he was an English lord. What would they do if they discovered her father was a duke, and not just any duke, but the English Duke of Sudeleigh?