The Highland Dragon's Lady (16 page)

Gammy Jones was
old
—not with the cheerful, plump old age of Pater’s parents, nor the dour yet formidable state that Reggie had seen from a dozen dowagers in a hundred ballrooms over the years. The woman was skeletally thin, bent until she barely came up to Reggie’s shoulder, and completely toothless. More than that, there was a sense of ethereality about her, a feeling that she didn’t quite belong to the world any longer.

Once again, Reggie thought of fairy tales, but she didn’t think she was seeing Red Riding Hood’s grandmother. She thought of witches instead.

It wasn’t Gammy Jones herself who answered the door, but a woman in her fifties, heading straight for the dour-and-formidable model. Both of them wore black, but Gammy’s dress was a faded and frilled thing, probably from before Reggie had been born, while the younger woman’s was more modern and quite plain. She wore it like a uniform.

“Can I help you?” she asked, eyeing Reggie and Colin with a stare about two degrees friendlier than one might have seen over a shotgun.

Reggie was glad that she’d paid the farmer and his sons—the Weatherbys, as it had turned out—to take her auto back and had come on with Colin. He’d been right. She didn’t think anyone recognized her, and she didn’t look much like a squire’s daughter should, but a young woman was at least dimly reassuring. She doubted Colin would have gotten anything except screams and threats if he’d come alone, particularly as he’d left the cake in the auto.

“I’m Reggie Talbot-Jones,” she said, stepping forward, “and this is Colin MacAlasdair. We’d come to talk to Mrs. Jones. I’m, um, not related or anything.”

“I should think not,” said the younger woman, and she turned back to the elder, who was sitting at the table beyond and peeling potatoes with still-quick hands. “Mum?”

Gammy Jones looked up. Her eyes were cloudy, but she seemed as if she could see at least a little. “They be the ones little Tommy Hill mentioned, likely. Sit yourself down, Sarah. And the two of you.”

There were chairs enough for that purpose, though barely, and the cushions were not an improvement over bare wood. The cottage was mostly kitchen, sternly clean but still smelling of woodsmoke and onions—unsurprising, as strings of said onions hung from the ceiling, as well as garlic and other vegetables that Reggie couldn’t identify offhand.

“We were going to bring a cake,” said Colin, “but I’m afraid the storm ruined it rather. We’ll make it up another time.”

“Very nice of you,” said Gammy Jones, continuing to slice potatoes away from their peel. “I be partial to lemon. No walnuts, if you please.”

“I’ll be sure they don’t sneak in,” Colin said gravely.

The old woman smiled, a flash of bare gums and wrinkles. “You trust your cook, then. If you know baking, I be a mule.” She looked back and forth between Colin and Reggie, her eyes narrowing, and Reggie fought the urge to squirm. Her hair was disarranged, but she could blame the storm for that. Surely nobody, especially a half-blind old lady, could tell what she’d just done. “Sarah, put the tea on. We’ve visitors.”

“We don’t want to put you out,” said Reggie.

Gammy Jones snorted. “You want
something
, an’ you might as well have tea with it, an’ so might I. You, you be the gel from the big house, be you not? The new lot from up London way?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Reggie.

“Hmm. Your mum be a kindly sort of lady. An’ your da’ hasn’t too heavy a hand with the place, from what I hear. Good folks. Not blood, but—that be just as well, mebbe. More than just as well, considerin’.”

“Mum—” said Sarah, turning from a small cupboard where she was assembling a tea service.

“It’s all right,” said Reggie.

“We’ve actually come to ask about that,” said Colin, “or about something related.”

“Have you, now? Hmm.” The old woman pushed the bowl of potatoes to one side and leaned forward. “I thought someone would, soon or late. You’re not of the family, though, young man. Not of any family ’round these parts, not old nor young.”

“However were you telling, lass?” Colin asked, exaggerating his accent.

Reggie giggled at that, Gammy Jones chuckled, and even Sarah cracked a smile as she put down saucers and teacups, yellowed china with faded violets around the rims. “Co—Mr. MacAlasdair’s a friend of my brother,” said Reggie, and she didn’t meet either Colin’s eyes or Gammy Jones’s. “He’s staying with the family for a while.”

“Ha, yes,” said Gammy in a knowing tone. Reggie didn’t want to press her about
what
she knew or thought she did—it didn’t matter, and in her experience, there was no convincing old women out of anything they’d made up their minds to believe. “And it be the Morgans you want to hear of? The madman, the rake, or the witch and her sister?”

“The madman would be Old Morgan, I’m thinking,” said Colin. “I’ve not heard anything of the rake, though. Have you?” He looked over to Reggie, who shook her head. “And the witch would be Janet?”

“Aye, that was her. Lady Janet Morgan. Gold hair an’ cold heart, they used to say when I was a gel.” Gammy chuckled again, low and thick in her throat. “’Course, you bear in mind that she was considerably ’afore even
my
time. I never met the lady, but my auntie told me of her—me and the other kiddies ’round here.”

She paused as her daughter poured the tea. It was very strong, and there was sugar and cream to go with it, both in the same ancient china. After a hard look from her mother, Sarah got out a packet of ginger biscuits, too, and handed them around on a plate. Reggie took one, more to occupy her hands than for any other reason. Her fingers brushed against Colin’s as she passed him the plate, and even that brief contact sent a shiver through her body.

For a moment, she was very aware of her body: an unfamiliar soreness, an equally unfamiliar satisfaction, and the potential, so soon, to surrender once again to passion. She forced all of those feelings aside, concentrated on the Jones women, and tried not even to look over at Colin.

“Lady Janet was the oldest, my auntie said,” Gammy began. “The Morgans were a good family back then, a
noble
family, and they went back far. She was the oldest, an’ her sister was the youngest, and their brother an’ heir came between. My auntie said it might’ve been better had she been in her brother’s place, and he hers, but ’twas nothing to be done about it—she was the eldest, and she was a gel.”

“Oh,” said Reggie. “Did she mind?”

Gammy shrugged. “At first? Mebbe not. She was a dutiful gel, from what my auntie says, an’ a man leaves his wealth to his sons. That’s right an’ custom, it is. She’d have known it, Janet would, an’ she was proper. Problem was—he wasn’t.”

“Ah,” said Colin, and Reggie knew he was making an effort to sound thoughtful rather than reveal what he knew, even by the tone of his voice. “Older siblings tend to mind that, on occasion.”

Edmund never had. Reggie had been lucky that way. She wondered about Stephen—the brother who was the fatherly type—and any other siblings in the MacAlasdair family, and how they’d been with Colin, who was anything but proper. But maybe he had been, earlier. More than a hundred years gave a man a lot of time to become respectable, or not, or both.

She jerked her attention back to the task at hand.

“…and finally,” Gammy Jones was saying, “he took up with a gel. A farmer’s daughter, they say. They also said it was the first respectable thing he ever did, and that he was in love with her. And he might have been,” she added, dunking a ginger biscuit into her tea, “at least for the moment. He’d have been a romantic sort of chap, from the stories, and they fall in love easy enough. Never lasts, ’course, but the young take no heed o’ that.”

She paused, gummed part of the biscuit, and drank tea from the saucer. “Any rate, some say his intentions were honorable, an’ some say he brought the girl up to the house without the benefit of clergy—if I be not offending either of your tender ears. And
you’ve
no call to look so shocked, Sarah Williams, as you’ve been a married woman these twenty years.”

“Mum,” said Sarah, a weary reproof that didn’t expect any results.

Gammy shrugged. “Whether they married or no, Janet hated ’em for it, an’ hated her pa for letting it happen.
She’d
never married, of course.”

“Of course,” said Reggie, biting back a sarcastic reply.

“Might have taken her mind off brooding if she had. Instead—well, I heard that she raged, and she screamed, and then she seemed to calm herself some. And then”—Gammy Jones leaned forward, her eyes glinting like stars through the clouds—“she made herself a pact.”

“A pact?” Colin asked, still in his tone of offhand curiosity.

“Aye. Signed in blood—and not all hers. Her brother’s woman sickened and died. Her brother got more biddable. Moved around like a cow in the field, they said. And children went missing.”

The tea stuck in Reggie’s throat momentarily, in a way no liquid should have been able to do. She swallowed several times before it went down. “How many?” she asked.

“It’s a story. I couldn’t say. Even those who lived in her shadow couldn’t say, mebbe—the world was wilder when I was a gel, and wilder still in Janet Morgan’s time. There are bogs in the woods and there were men on the roads. But they say she killed at least three before the end.”

Silence was thick in the room. Now Reggie did look to Colin—a brief glance, just to make sure he was still there and still hearing what she was. The day was warm, now that the storm had passed, and the cottage was close, but she felt an echo of the cold that had surrounded her during the exorcism and knew that, if she pushed her sleeves up, she’d see every hair on her arm standing on end.

At the same time, a small voice inside her said that she should have known, that she couldn’t be surprised. Colin and Edmund had told her about the grave. They didn’t bury someone outside church grounds for rumors or for being a priggish sort of harridan, not even in the bad old days. Not if you were
Lady
Janet Morgan, from a good family and an old one.

Not being surprised didn’t make the information go down any easier. She almost reached for Colin’s hand, and only the gimlet eyes of Mrs. Williams made her draw back. Either unseeing or uncaring, Gammy went on.

“Her sister found her out, they said. Some said she found Janet’s book of spells, an’ some say she found bones or a bloody knife. One I heard said ’twas a room like that Bluebeard chap in the stories, but I never counted that for much. Too many people up at the house, even then. But Lisbet found it, whatever it was, an’ she followed her sister out to where she met with Old Scratch, and nary a one ever saw them again.”

“Where did she go?” Colin asked.

Gammy Jones shrugged. “Couldn’t say. Off in the forest, most like. An’ most of it may have been a story—though the two of ’em disappeared right enough. Their brother, Michael it was, had the men searching for days, and nobody found a sign of ’em. There’s graves in the village, but nowt in either one.”

“And—Michael? Did he get better?”

The old woman raised a hand, the knuckles swollen and the nails long, and waggled it back and forth in the air. “Better. Never good again. He took himself off to London a bit after. Folks said, when I was young, that he drank like a fish and he babbled to himself, an’ his man said he screamed in the night often, but his bride was dead and his sisters were gone. It’s enough to drive a man mad, that. He married again, in time. There’s plenty of gels willing to look past a bit o’ madness for such as him. His son was worse than him, and
his
son worse than that. Old Morgan, that was. Last of the line.”

There was that third cousin in London, Reggie thought, but he wasn’t worth bringing up. He had no part in this, whatever
this
turned out to be.

She made herself drink more tea and, despite her earlier resolve, watched Colin as he spoke again. “We’re quite obliged for your time, Mrs. Jones,” he said, “and your hospitality.”

“It makes a change, having visitors,” she said. “Mind you take care, though, boy. They say Janet Morgan’s spirit rests unquiet—and if she did half of what the stories say, ’tis no wonder at that. Take good care.”

“For once in my life,” said Reggie, “I think I will.”

“I’d say it’s spread a bit thick, even with all we’ve seen,” said Edmund, perched atop his bay gelding and looking like one of his hounds had gone astray. “The devil? Really?”

“
A
devil,” said Colin. “’Tis as fitting a name as anything else for the creature she would have been bargaining with. There are things outside the world, things inimical to it and all dwelling there. They’ve been known to deal with us from time to time, though never honestly nor with good grace. What else would you be calling them?”

That sent Edmund into silent thought. Horses and riders continued down the trail toward the forest: Edmund on his tall bay, Reggie crisp and sportive on a chestnut, and Colin on a gray gelding, old and plump and docile. Even in human form, men of his bloodline didn’t get on particularly well with horses, other than those bred and trained to the MacAlasdairs’ service. Some clump of the beasts’ little minds was likely to speak up and say
predator
.

He’d chosen a mount that he doubted would be perturbed by firecrackers going off under its nose. If Reggie hadn’t known his true identity, it would have been rather embarrassing.

Now she was turning to look at him, her own seat and her grip on the reins careless with experience, her gaze speculative. “Does
the
devil exist?”

Colin had given some thought to the question before. He considered his answer again before speaking, though. A man’s views bore contemplation, especially on such issues as this. “A greater creature might spawn the things I’ve seen, or lead them. They’d not be easily led, though.” He shrugged. “In the end, I don’t know much more than you do.”

“That’s rather a relief,” said Reggie, laughing.

They rode onward. The trail took them under pines and oaks, and for the first part of the journey the road was broad and well kept. The sky overhead was clear, and various birds sang in the trees. The whole scene was very pastoral, very wholesome—as long as nobody was listening to their conversation.

“The two of you didn’t meet at a séance, did you?” Reggie went on, turning from Colin to Edmund with the same deliberately joking air. “Never took you for the levitation and tea leaves sort, Edmund.”

“Not directly,” said Colin.

“Literary types, mostly,” said Edmund. “I told you about a few of ’em. Bright chaps and quite willing to let me lurk round the edges, though I’ve no talent myself.”

“As a fellow lurker,” said Colin, “I’ve found that they generally prefer a man who can listen to and applaud a fellow artist. One only wants so many rivals, you know.”

Before them, the road forked, and the three of them paused to look at each other for direction. “Don’t ask me,” said Reggie. “I told you—I’m not up here very often. At least Edmund comes up for the hunting.”

“And nobody I’ve ridden out with has stumbled over anything suspicious as yet. Might as well go left—it looks more overgrown.”

Colin couldn’t see much difference himself, but left made sense. One took the left-hand path, were one inclined as Janet Morgan had been. Left was
sinister
, in the Latin. The left path was certainly as good as the other.

They turned, and now they kept a lookout as they rode, scrutinizing the trees and undergrowth to either side of them, searching their own senses for a hint of unusual cold or a trace of nausea. “One day,” Colin said, half to himself, “I’m going to try and develop a manner of tracking magical trails.”

“Like a compass,” said Reggie, “or a bloodhound, if you could get one to pick up that scent. I’ve a friend in London who breeds dogs—I’d introduce the two of you, if I thought she’d believe a word of what you wanted.”

She sounded as she always had: straightforward and friendly, with her mind on the problem in front of her. Colin kept trying to hear something in the way she spoke or see something in her face that had changed since their time together in the hayloft. So far he’d found nothing. As he’d thought before, that should have been a relief, but he simply couldn’t believe she really had taken their passion so lightly, that she wanted nothing more from him than that afternoon.

Judith would have said more than a few words about vanity and might have boxed his ears into the bargain.

“Is that Louisa?” Edmund asked.

“Mm-hmm. Lovely girl, though I’ll never know what she sees in such a messy business.” Reggie frowned over at the trees to her side, then shook her head, dismissing whatever she thought she’d seen. “Asked after you when I was leaving, actually. I’d forgotten in all the trouble. She said she had a setter pup she’d like your opinion on, when you’re in Devon next.”

“Did she? That’s good.” Edmund rubbed his chin. “That’s jolly good,” he said and then added quickly, “I don’t guess Janet Morgan would’ve gone off cross-country. Even to meet with Lucifer himself.”

“Doubtful,” said Colin, remembering the woman in the portrait and the journal. “She’d have wanted a fairly remote place to conduct her rites, but she’d have looked for a path there, even a small one.”

“Any path might have grown over in the last century or so,” said Reggie, sighing.

“Aye,” said Colin, “but—well, give me a moment. And your discretion, of course.”

“Of course,” Reggie said and lifted her eyebrows.

Colin wasn’t a blushing man, but he was glad to have the spell as a distraction just then, even if it didn’t do very much. Whatever magic Janet Morgan had performed once upon a time, it either hadn’t been nearby or hadn’t left a trail. The forest swarmed with the sort of auras he saw anywhere full of life: the solid green and gold of the trees, the bright sparks of animal life, and the more complex clouds around his companions. Edmund’s was a deep navy blue, he noticed, while Reggie’s was a lighter color, shot through with gray like the sea during a storm.

He didn’t see the rotting greenish-gray that he’d spotted when he’d sought the white figure, nor the swirling radiance he associated with magic. Still, he kept the veil of the world parted. He could manage a docile horse well enough in such a condition, particularly when Reggie and Edmund were with him.

“Nothing,” he said. “Or nothing yet. Let’s press on—I’ll try to keep my seat.”

Without seeing her face clearly, he felt Reggie’s attention. It appeared in her aura in a pattern of light and movement that Colin hadn’t yet learned to translate into words. “…miss the branches…” she said, her voice faintly muffled. “Rocks too.”

They started forward again. The landscape went by in shifting kaleidoscopic waves. When they grew too confusing, Colin looked to Reggie without thinking about it.

After the third time, she turned to him. “Anything wrong with me?”

“Not at all. You clear my head. Steadying.”

Her laughter came to him as through water. “First time for everything…”

“…more responsible than most…” said Edmund.

“In comparison. You…” Reggie said and went on. She was joking, or trying to. She was also worried, and about more than their immediate threat. “…tired.”

Edmund’s sigh went out from him in a cloud of blue-tinged gray. “I am. My own damned fault, isn’t it?”

Worry became sorrow, which Reggie immediately translated to sharp-edged impatience. “…be completely gormless, Ed. You know—”

On the edge of Colin’s vision, the gray-green hue he was looking for flickered through the trees. He glimpsed it just as he heard Reggie, though he saw her surprise first.

“—the hell is she? Hello?” She raised her voice. “Didn’t mean to intrude—is anyone out there?”

Suddenly the world around them went rotten: putrid green lay over the trees, the ground, even the sky. Reggie and Edmund stood out against it, untouched. The horses were less clouded, but even they took on a sickly, greenish cast. The color seemed thickest around Reggie’s, even seeping into the whites of its eyes.

Before Colin could truly register what he was seeing, much less work out what it meant, Reggie’s gelding threw its head up and screamed.

It was a terrifyingly human sound. Colin knew it of old, from fields and lonely highways where human screams had usually played a grisly accompaniment. His own horse shied in response, and he snapped his attention unwillingly away from Reggie as the gray fought him with a strength and violence he’d never have expected.

“Easy there—” Edmund was saying, sounding outwardly calm but doing a bad job of disguising both alarm and bewilderment. “Easy—what the devil?”

A
devil
, Colin heard himself say. This was Janet Morgan’s doing—hers and her ally’s—whether it was her will striking at them deliberately or simply natural creatures panicking at her unnatural presence. For the present, the difference didn’t matter.

“Turn around!” he yelled, having to raise his voice because all three of the horses were screaming now. He heard hooves hit the ground as one of them reared and plunged. “We’ll have to go back!”

Turning, he discovered even as he shouted, was all well and good in theory. His horse snaked his head around and snapped at Colin’s leg when Colin tried, then suddenly bucked like an unbroken colt. Janet or the gelding’s own fear was using the horse’s body unmercifully. If he’d had a moment to spare, he would have felt sorry for the beast.

On his other side, Reggie was cursing, low and hopeless. Colin saw her in flashes: the iridescent blue feather in her hat, the dark lines of her arms as she pulled on the reins, and the desperately clenched muscles of her legs as her struggle yanked her skirt tightly over them. He caught his breath at the sight, and stamped on the urge to reach for her, knowing it would do no good. If he could only get his own damned horse to settle—

“Jump off!” he heard Edmund say. “No calming them—jump and let ’em run!”

Not needing to be told twice, Colin kicked his feet out of the stirrups, let go of the reins, and all but launched himself from the gray’s back. He hit the ground with none of his usual balance, coming up beside Edmund.

As Edmund had said they would, their two horses dashed off, saddles on and reins dangling. Reggie’s chestnut didn’t. She was still mounted, trying to disentangle herself from the sidesaddle, while her horse screamed and reared up, hooves lashing at the trees in front of it. Branches broke beneath the blows. Colin saw foam around its mouth, and wide rings of white around its dark eyes.

Years around horses told Colin that his presence would frighten the creature still more. Only that held him in place.

Edmund stepped forward. “Good old fellow,” he said, voice low. He and Colin both knew it was hopeless, even as he spoke. “Nothing to worry about…”

Once more the chestnut reared, with Reggie leaning forward on its back. This time, its downward plunge took it just under a tree branch—to Colin, it looked the size of a whole tree itself. He saw Reggie duck at the last minute, then heard the sickening dull
crack
that meant she hadn’t ducked fast or far enough. He saw her body topple out of the saddle.

She fell into the undergrowth, where the brush grew too high for Colin to see whether she was breathing or not. Her horse didn’t run like the others had, but stood over her, snorting and pawing at the ground. When Edmund started forward, it flattened its ears and snapped at him, blank murder in its eyes.

“
No
,” Colin said from deep in his rapidly expanding chest. He felt fangs lengthen in his mouth, knew when his feet had split his boots, and didn’t care. Meeting the horse’s eyes with his own, knowing that his gaze was no longer human, he addressed it and the beings behind it both. “Leave. NOW.”

He roared the last word. Edmund turned to gape at him, seeing a monster and not his friend. The horse saw a monster too, and its instincts overpowered any control the ghost-witch had over its mind. It turned tail and fled, leaving the path clear so that he could sprint to where Reggie lay.