Fairy Tale (10 page)

Marsali glanced back skeptically at the sea, the waves already lashed into angry whitecaps by a strong northwest breeze. In her opinion, there was a good chance of a summer storm before dawn, magic or not.

“I hope this won’t take long,” she grumbled as she followed Fiona down the unsteady gangplank, her skirts blowing up to her knees.

Fiona waited on the crooked path carved into the cliff, her face averted, her hand outstretched to Marsali. “It might take longer than usual since you knocked over my bucket of sacred well water. That was part of my offering to Taranis, God of Thunder, and the mermaids.”

God of Thunder. Mermaids.

Marsali rolled her eyes at this nonsense and allowed Fiona to pull her up onto the path. In silence they climbed to the clifftop, a raw breeze buffeting them. When they reached the summit, Marsali was reassured by the sight of
her horse standing patiently behind a grove of wind-blasted brush.

Duncan, however, was nowhere to be seen.

She shrugged, turning back to Fiona, who had deftly assembled a little altar at the edge of the cliff. With her thin brown arms thrown up to the sky, the would-be witch was chanting at the top of her lungs to a hodgepodge of Celtic gods.

“Hurry up, Fiona,” Marsali shouted irritably. “I’d almost rather be back at the castle waiting on his miserable lordship than standing here watching you making a fool of yourself.”

Fiona pivoted slowly, studying Marsali in concern. “It’s working already, isn’t it?” she whispered, biting her lip. “My poor Marsali.”

“ ‘Poor Marsali’ what?”

“Nothing. You could throw me into a den of lions and I’d never tell.” Fiona whirled back to the sea and hurled a handful of polished stones into the water. “Dance around the altar three times, Marsali.”

They danced. They blew their warm breath onto Fiona’s sacred stones. They took turns waving Fiona’s rowan wand over the ocean. If anything, the waves calmed, the breeze lessened. Finally, overcome with delayed fatigue, Marsali lurched to her feet and yawned.

“I’m going back to the castle and see if his lordship has been changed into a lobster. This is damned silly.”

Fiona looked up from her forlorn little altar, murmuring sadly, “Poor brave wee cousin. I should have done something to stop him. It’s probably too late now.”

Marsali was too worn out to try to understand what her cousin meant by her cryptic remarks. Marching to the verge of the cliff, she tossed over the stones and wolves’ teeth she’d been clutching in her hand.

“Those were for you, Taranis, God of Thunder, and the mermaids, though what the hell you’ll do with them is beyond me.” Her voice climbed into a mischievous shout. “Rise up and storm on Duncan MacElgin! Rain on his handsome head
, strike him down where he…
”

She hesitated, not hating him quite enough to wish him
actual physical harm, although he undoubtedly deserved it. “Strike the ground he walks on!” she concluded with a satisfied nod. “There, Fiona. I’ve said my piece. Good luck raising your storm.”

She whirled and threw the rowan wand back into Fiona’s lap. She had not taken two steps past the altar before thunder rumbled over the mainland. Fiona rose to her feet and stared, disbelieving, at the lightning that zigzagged directly over Castle MacElgin, illuminating the stark parapets in a flash of silver.

Fiona jumped to her feet. “You did it!” she shrieked, squeezing Marsali’s shoulder. “You raised the storm. For all we know, he might have been standing on the battlements, watching for you, and your lightning struck him dead.”

Marsali swallowed, reaching around her throat for the familiar comfort of her cross before remembering she had left it with her uncle. “I didn’t raise the storm, Fiona. It was going to happen anyway. All I did was give it a little helping hand, if even that.”

Fiona looked unconvinced, tom between professional jealousy and admiration. “But the lightning—right over the castle, Marsali.”

“Look, Fiona, if it struck him dead, then that was meant to be too. I won’t lose any sleep over it. And now it’s starting to rain, which means I’ll be soaked before I reach the castle.”

As Marsali strode off toward her horse, Fiona turned and stared down at the ghostly silhouette of the wrecked ship wedged between the cliffs of the cove. Yellow candlelight glowed behind the heavily curtained porthole of her father’s cabin.

It was going to happen anyway.

She glanced up appraisingly at Marsali, her rain-blurred figure already receding as she cantered her horse toward the castle in the gloaming light. Strange how Marsali’s words had practically echoed Colum’s. Fiona didn’t know what conclusions she ought to draw from this, but she did know that Marsali had more talent for witchery than she’d ever admit. Or use. What a terrible waste. Fiona had to work so hard for her spells.

*
*
*

D
uncan stared down in astonishment at the crumbling mortar of the turret that had landed at his feet from the lightning blast. Another few inches and he might have been cleaved in two. Even the weather in this accursed castle was conspiring against him.

Andrew’s daughter. What a cruel joke.

He gripped the wet stone of the battlements, heedless of the storm that had erupted without warning. Soft summer rain splashed down his face and soaked his shirt front. He didn’t fight it. Aye, he needed to stand in a cold downpour after tussling with that imp in the sand. The irony of discovering her identity mocked his well-constructed plans.

To think he had even considered seducing her like a common serving girl.

Andrew Hay’s
daughter,
for the love of God. It made sense now. Hay’s had been the only voice of wisdom in his disordered clan, and it was with his death, and not the old chieftain’s, that the castle had begun to fall into chaos. No wonder everyone loved Mar
sali. They had loved the loyal-
hearted Andrew too.

He lifted his brooding gaze back toward the sea. The first night he had encountered Andrew was still emblazoned on his mind like a burn that had healed into a deep painful scar.

Panic. Fear. Grief. Rage. Memory after memory cascaded over him, a waterfall of human emotions. His chest tightened even now with the shocked disbelief of dragging his older sister away from the sight of their mother and Fergus’s unmoving body. He held his hands out to the rain unthinkingly as if to wash the viscous warmth of the blood from his fingers.

His older sister Judith’s voice, stark with horror, echoed in his mind. “What have you done, Duncan? Dear God, what has that violent temper made you do now?”

He pushed around her and stumbled outside, heaving in the thistle-choked yard until his stomach emptied. Judith followed, recoiling when he straightened and she saw his battered face in the moonlight. High on the hills behind them, the bonfires of the Beltane celebration burst into the night, a fitting backdrop of hell. The muted laughter of revelers rose into the silence, punctuated by the hysterical
screaming for help of Fergus’s elderly sister, who had awakened to see her brother and his wife dead on the floor.

Duncan grabbed his sister’s hand and dragged her into the woods that surrounded the stone cottage. She was the only person he had left; even though she was five years his senior, he towered over her, tall for his age. They had always protected each other.

“We have to run away, Judith,” he said in desperation. “We’ll take one of the fishing boats from the cove and row to France.”

“France?
France?
We’ve no siller, Duncan. No relatives over there. Who would take us in?”

There were shouts coming closer to them, hoofbeats, dogs barking. Judith worked her hand free, giving a quiet sob as she wiped the blood off her gown.

“Mama,” she whispered, clutching her midsection as she stared back at the cottage. “We can’t leave her there like that.”

The sound of wood splintering, an ax biting through the door, filled Duncan with a fresh surge of panic. He knew what his punishment would be. Never mind the reason. The chieftain wouldn’t let the crime go unpaid.

“Go, Duncan,” Judith cried softly, pushing at his shoulder.

“I’m not leavin’ you here to—”

Before he could finish, a gruff but gentle voice broke into the darkness of the tall beech trees that protected them. A short cloaked man stood staring down the incline. “The bairns could not have gone far, my lord. Pray God they were not hurt in the violence tonight. With any—”

A startled cry from inside the cottage interrupted him.

They’d found both bodies now, Duncan’s mother, the obscenity of her death, concealed beneath the plaid he had laid over her. He heard one of the chieftain’s retainers murmur, “Double murder,” and at that Judith panicked anew, shoving Duncan deeper into the wood.

“Go. I’ll be all right.
Go.
”

He wavered before he started to run, but he did not get far. Andrew Hay, the chieftain’s tacksman and closest friend, caught him even before he reached the top of the hill. Two great slavering hounds pounced on his back and
pushed him face down into the soggy grass. When Hay stuck his booted toe into Duncan’s ribs to turn him over like a snail, Duncan was cursing and crying, raising his fists to defend himself against the punishment he anticipated from experience.

The unexpected compassion in Hay’s eyes struck him even more deeply than any physical assault. Duncan was an admitted thief, always in some sort of trouble. No one knew, or cared, that he was beaten into stealing for Fergus.

“Someone’s killed your parents, laddie,” Hay said quietly, lifting his foot away. “Do you know who it was?”

He leaped up and tried to run around Hay, only to find the castle dogs and the tall intimidating figure of the chieftain barring his way. Even then, staring into his natural father’s rugged face, he did not recognize the similarities between them. He spat instead at his feet, wild in his fear and grief, resenting the nobleman who represented everything Duncan would never be.

“Take the boy back to the castle,” Kenneth MacElgin said after appraising Duncan in endless silence. “See that he’s well treated as befits my only son and heir.”

Duncan sneered, ducking the hand Andrew extended to help him. Well treated. My only son and heir. Had the old man lost his mind? Was this a demented Beltane prank?

The memories faded. He forced himself to breathe. His lungs burned as if he had been running for miles.

The rain had stopped.

Brought back to his present dilemma, Duncan turned his head and stared out across the castle battlements. From the start, Andrew Hay had treated him with an understanding and a respect he had never deserved. Not even now, two decades later. He swallowed dryly. He wished that he hadn’t come back here at all, that Marsali Hay did not exist as a reminder of past sins and future temptations. He didn’t need to worry about a wild little waif.

He also wished that his
fiancée
, Sarah, and her brother were not due to arrive in a fortnight’s time. It would take an act of God to restore order to the clan before then, and God hadn’t bestowed any favors on the desolate castle for more years than Duncan could count. It didn’t take a crystal ball to foresee the disaster looming on the horizon.

“There ye are, my lord.”

Duncan glanced around at the vaguely familiar voice, recognizing the lumpy figure of Lachlan standing at the top of the stairs that led into the keep. The clansman stared down in awestruck silence at the pile of mortar at Duncan’s feet, clearly convinced the chieftain had tom the tower apart with his bare hands, perhaps even his teeth, in a fit of black temper.

“What do you want, Lachlan?”

“Er, never mind, my lord.” He crept back a step, a nervous grin pasted on his face. “Perhaps ’tisna a good time to disturb ye.”

“What do you want?” Duncan repeated.

“Well, there’s been another sighting in the guardroom. The men thought
I
should tell ye.”

“A sighting?”

“Aye, Effie—that’s the girl wi’ the piglets—was preparing a room for Marsali next to the guardroom, as ye asked, when the ghostie appeared, swearin’ her head off because Effie had moved the chamberpot.”

“Am I imagining this conversation?”

“I dinna know, my lord, but Effie said she heard Giorsal knock over a suit of armor and shout that ‘that damned chieftain will be the death of me yet,’ which of course wasna a reference to you, my lord, but to her already dead husband, Bhaltair, who was the chieftain two hundred years ago.”

Duncan’s smile faded. “Then it was probably some drunk in a nightshirt looking for the privy. Don’t waste my time with such nonsense again.”

He broke off as the crash of the drawbridge and subsequent resentful squawk of chickens in the moat heralded a late-night arrival to the castle. Duncan returned to the parapets and stared down in unwilling fascination, Lachlan completely forgotten.

Marsali had dismounted in the outer bailey, her tiny figure drawing a crowd of clansmen and castle servants from the darkened outbuildings. Even from the distance Duncan could sense their concern for her, conspiracy humming in the air as they gathered to discuss their common enemy.

Him.

He straightened almost in self-defense as Marsali lifted her face in defiance to the turret, where he stood as if to assert her independence. For now she held the upper hand, but not for long. She had no idea what she was up against.

“There will be a clan meeting the day after tomorrow in the hall,” he said curtly, moving past Lachlan to the dark hole of the stairs. “See that everyone is in attendance. And sober.”

“Aye, my lord.” Lachlan screwed up the last of his nerve to pluck shyly at Duncan’s shirt sleeve. “And the ghosties?”

Marsali’s soft laughter rose like a silver bell in the breeze, taunting, a challenge to the night. Duncan paused, his face caught half in darkness, half in moonlight. A chill of foreboding crept down his spine.

“Let the ghosts alone,” he said as he turned away. “They belong here more than I ever will.”