Highland Fairy Tales, #2
by Lecia Cornwall
Publication Date: November 1st 2016
Genres: Historical, Romance
She is his greatest enemy and his only salvation…
PROLOGUE
Edinburgh 1707
Malcolm MacDonald’s lodgings were cramped
with unexpected visitors.
He knew the three Highlanders felt it too.
They were more used to the wide-open spaces of their MacDonald homeland,
perhaps, where there was naught to contain their big bodies but peaks, sea, and
sky. They looked unhappily around the wee closet Malcolm called home. He
followed their gaze. There was a narrow bed with a small table beside it. His
clothes hung on pegs along the wall and his books were stacked in teetering
piles under the window. Writs, wills, and deeds covered the surface of the
table like a fall of new snow, deep, crisp, and legal.
He could smell the salt that clung to the
damp wool of their plaids, the smoky tang of peat fires, and the whisky on
their breath, though they were neither dirty nor drunk.
It made Malcolm aware of his own smells—the
leather binding of his books, the sharp gall of ink, and the burned oat smell
of his neighbor’s breakfast, seeping through the thin walls. He went to the
narrow window and opened it, letting in a few inches of air. Now the stench of
the city drifted in, gutters, livestock, and cookshops, borne on the sluggish
wind that came from the docks. The Highlanders wrinkled their noses, and
Malcolm resisted the urge to lower the warped sash again.
He stood back and let them see the view
instead. His fifth-floor lodgings looked down upon the Royal Mile. If one
leaned out the window and looked to the left, the Palace of Holyroodhouse stood
golden and grim against the startling green of the hills. If one looked
straight down, there were pigs blocking traffic, and merchants with their wares
spilling out of crowded shop fronts into the street. The fifth floor was a fine, middling place to
live for an unmarried junior lawyer of modest means. Richer folk lived on the
floors below him, and the people who made their homes above Malcolm’s meager
room were ever-so-slightly less respectable than he was. There was a widowed
seamstress upstairs, and a one-eyed poet above her. The poet was nearly as old
as Malcolm’s three visitors, who had introduced themselves as the elders of the
MacDonalds of Dunbronach, his kinsmen.
Dougal MacDonald was bent and bandy legged,
and his green eyes flitted about the room like trapped birds.
William MacDonald was as tall as a tree and
twice as broad. He stood ramrod straight and nodded silently when Dougal
introduced him. He kept his eyes on Malcolm and his hand on the hilt of the
sword belted to his hip.
Fergus MacDonald sat in the only chair, his
hands clasped on his bony knees, his face was a mask of cold disapproval.
“Will you take a drop of sherry?” Malcolm
asked his guests, since no one immediately gave a reason for their visit. He
poured out three delicate glasses of amber liquid, Spanish and expensive, and
they squinted and frowned at it. William quaffed his in a single gulp, then
made a face and declared, “It’s no’ whisky, is it?”
Dougal sipped and pursed his lips, and Fergus
set his glass on the edge of the table, untouched.
“Ye look like yer da, Malcolm Ban,” Dougal
said for the second time, leaning on the gnarled root that served him as a
walking stick.
Malcolm folded his arms over his chest and
leaned back on the edge of the table.
“So you’ve said. Is he well?” Malcolm had not seen his father in nearly
fifteen years, and to a lad of nine, Archie MacDonald, the laird of Dunbronach,
had been the biggest, broadest, loudest man he’d ever seen. He’d been in rude
health then and somewhat drunk as he sat in his uncle’s elegant Edinburgh
parlor. He’d looked as out of place there as—well, as these Highlanders looked
here.
Malcolm still recalled how Archie’s face had
fallen when his mother introduced him. “Who’s this weedy lad?”
“Malcolm, of course. Your son,” his mother
had assured her estranged husband.
“My
son?”
His mother’s eyes had flared. “Ye can see
that he is, Archie. He’s as much a MacDonald as you are. He has your eyes, your
height—or he will have. He’s smart. He’ll make a fine lawyer someday, like his
uncle.”
“A lawyer.” Malcolm still remembered how his
father’s mouth had twisted bitterly around the word.
“Like his uncle,” his mother had repeated.
“He’s not cut out to be a Highlander, Archie. Is that why you’ve come?”
His father was silent for a moment. He looked
Malcolm over once again, then turned away with a sigh. “Nay,” he muttered.
“Nay, I suppose not.” He left the tea in the fancy china cup, rose, and
departed from his brother-in-law’s house. He did not returned again. Even when
Malcolm’s mother died he’d not bothered to send condolences. His uncle had
taken Malcolm as his protégé, and he’d almost forgotten he even had kin in the
Highlands, at Dunbronach, a place he barely remembered.
Dougal’s eyes shifted to the worn rug that
covered the floor. “Er, nay, lad, I wouldn’t say yer father’s well. In fact,
he’s dead.”
Malcolm’s brows rose. “Dead?”
“Aye, and a good many other folk,” Fergus
growled from his chair.
“There was a terrible sickness,” Dougal said.
“It carried off fifty-four MacDonalds.”
“Ye could say we’re half the clan we were,”
William put in.
His father was dead. He tried to feel some
pity, to picture his father’s face, but he’d barely known Archie MacDonald. It
was like being informed that a stranger had died and his heirs needed a lawyer.
“I see—then you’ve come for legal advice, I assume. Is there a will that needs
executing, or funds to invest?”
Fergus flashed a sharp look at William, then
raised his chin. “Not a will. More a dying wish.”
“A command,” William said.
“And
there are no funds,” Dougal added.
“Not a penny,” Fergus growled, glaring at
Malcolm from under the tangled thatch of his gray brows.
“I see,” Malcolm said, though he didn’t.
“Do ye?” Fergus asked gruffly. His eyes slid
over Malcolm and flicked away, as if he’d found him as wanting as Archie
himself had.
“We should kneel as tradition demands,”
William said. He lowered himself to the floor, his joints creaking. Dougal
joined him.
Fergus rose to his feet, but did not kneel.
He raised his chin instead, fixed Malcolm with another dark glare. “It was yer
father’s wish that ye be the next laird of Dunbronach.” He said it through
gritted teeth as if it pained him. “Archie named ye so on his deathbed.”
Laird? The wee sherry
glass in Malcolm’s hand fell to the floor and shattered. The elders of
Dunbronach stared at the shards of glass for a moment in silence, then Dougal
spoke.
“Never mind, lad—Laird—you won’t be needing those wee cups at Dunbronach. We have
good sturdy ones carved of horn.” He took a flask from his sporran, and held it
out. “Here.”
Malcolm took it and sipped. He nearly choked.
His throat burned, and something exploded in his belly, sent shock waves
through his limbs. “What the devil is that?”
William rose, slapped him on the back.
“Finest Highland whisky, Laird. Don’t worry, ye’ll grow used to drinking it
every day, and it will soon flow through your veins like liquid honey.”
“Warm and sweet as a lover’s kiss,” Dougal
added with a grin.
“But I can’t be the next laird,” Malcolm
said. “I have a brother—half brother—Cormag…”
“Dead,” Fergus said.
“Dead,” Malcolm repeated. He looked around at
the faces of the elders, as weather-beaten, gray, and seamed as the Highlands
themselves, as if they’d been hewn from the very rock of Dunbronach.
He shook his head. He wasn’t one of these
men, a Highlander. He had a life in Edinburgh, a career in his uncle’s law firm,
and a fiancée…well, almost. He was about to make an offer for the hand of the
lovely and wealthy Miss Nancy Martin. Once he was married, his uncle had
promised to make him a partner in the firm. He could not picture Nancy making a
life in—or even a visit to—the Highlands.
Dougal frowned. “Did I see that aright? He
shook his head, said no? I can’t have—to
do so would be to reject his birthright, go against the wishes of his sire and
laird—”
“Is
there no other candidate?” Malcolm asked. “A man who was raised at Dunbronach,
who knows the people, the land—”
“No,” William and Dougal said quickly in
unison.
“There’s Maccus,” Fergus said.
“Maccus?” Malcolm asked hopefully.
“He’s your third cousin,” Dougal said. “He’s
one of the sons of the chief of the MacDonalds of Sleat—his bastard son. He
willna do as laird.”
“Maccus MacDonald is not a good man, or a kind
one. I’ve doubts he’s a man at all—more a bear crossed with the trunk of a tree
and a wolf, but less pleasant. He has a certain dark reputation. Our women
wouldn’t be safe around him,” William said.
“Nor would our sheep,” Dougal added. Fergus
frowned at him.
“Och, ye’ve heard all the same stories about
Maccus that I have,” Dougal said.
Fergus clapped his bonnet back onto his head
and strode toward the door. “We’ve done our duty as the laird wanted. He’s said
no. We’ll take our leave.”
The other two didn’t move.
“Can
ye no’ be convinced, lad?” Dougal pleaded.
“But I’m a lawyer—” Malcolm began, but Dougal
interrupted with a grin.
“Ach, is that what’s worrying ye? We can
forgive that.”
Malcolm regarded the hope in Dougal’s gray
eyes, the determination in William’s, and the fierce anger in Fergus’s. “You
don’t understand. I have a career, a fiancée. I have—” He paused. He recalled
the day he’d sailed away from Dunbronach as a wee lad, so small he had to hold
tight to his mother’s hand in case he tripped and fell into the water. He
remembered the castle, a gray and forbidding place perched high on a rocky
knoll above the sea. There’d been people on the beach watching them go—no doubt
these men were among them, and his father and half brother too. Someone had
been playing a sad tune on the pipes, and there were seals in the water,
regarding him with dark eyes. His mother had buttoned his coat against the
chill wind off the sea, and told him it was better to forget Dunbronach, that
she was a gentleman’s daughter of fine education and delicate sensibilities.
She wasn’t meant to be a Highlander, and neither was he.
He looked at the elders in their threadbare
kilts and scuffed deerskin boots. They believed they were doing him a great
honor. There was pride in every line of their bodies, despite their age and the
long journey they’d endured.
“We’d best tell him the rest of it, Fergus,”
Dougal said.
“If he’s
not going to be laird, it hardly matters,” Fergus replied, still standing by
the door, his hand like an eagle’s talon on the latch.
William folded his arms across his broad
chest. “It was the laird’s dying wish, Fergus.” The glare that passed between
them could cut iron.
“There’s a certain duty ye must fulfill…”
Dougal began, then paused. “Did I mention how much ye look like your father?”
“And all the fine MacDonald lairds before
him, all the way back to the first one, who was also named Malcolm—Malcolm the
Bold,” William added.
Dougal puffed out his chest. “I’ll tell him,
since I’m the seanchaidh, the keeper
of the history of the MacDonalds of Dunbronach.”
“Do ye believe in magic, Malcolm Ban
MacDonald?” Fergus interrupted.
Malcolm smiled slightly. “Of course not.” He
watched the light dim in Dougal’s eyes.
Fergus sniffed. “There, ye see? He’s not the
right man to be the next laird of Dunbronach, even with Archie’s blood in his
veins.” He opened the door, but Dougal used his stick to block his exit.
“Archie’s blood is what makes him right.” He turned to Malcolm. “D’ye recall the wee island
just off shore in Dunbronach’s bay?” Malcolm remembered a windswept hump of
rock surrounded by fierce currents and worse winds. There was a standing stone
on it. He nodded.
“We call it the Sea Maiden’s Isle, Eilean Maighdeann Mhara,” Dougal went
on. “The great standing stone upon it was raised by the king o’ the sea nearly
three hundred years ago in thanks for a kindness done by the first Malcolm
MacDonald—the ancestor ye’re named for.”
“We haven’t time for the whole tale now,”
Fergus snapped.
Dougal rolled his eyes. “Well then, to cut a
long story to kindling wood, the maighdeann
mhara herself, the sea king’s youngest daughter, granted Malcolm and his
descendants three wishes. Each wish was to be spoken every hundred years, on
Beltane night.”
He picked up Fergus’s abandoned glass of
sherry and swallowed the contents. “A man could get used to the sweetness,” he
said to William.
“Get on with it,” Fergus said.
Dougal set the glass down and looked at
Malcolm again. “The point is that Malcolm claimed the first wish when it was
granted, and a hundred years later, his great-grandson claimed the second.”
“And the third?” Malcolm asked, his mind
turning to thoughts of contracts and legal definitions. A promise was a
contract, but this was magic. Surely there was no precedent for challenging an
agreement made with a mythical creature that didn’t exist…
Dougal looked at him without speaking for a
long minute, and his curling white brows rose expectantly. William had the same look in his eyes.
Fergus’s expression remained cold and flat.
Realization hit Malcolm in the belly. “You
want me to come to Dunbronach and—make a wish, based on a legend?”
Dougal stiffened. “It isn’t a legend, lad.
It’s our history, and yours. It’s why ye were born, your destiny. You are the
last of Malcolm the Bold’s line.” He shut his eyes for a moment. “It’s been a
terrible winter for our kin. The Sickness took our farmers and craftsmen—even
our piper. The young folk who remain are talking of leaving Dunbronach.” He
twisted his bonnet in his hands. “That wish is our only hope—”
“Will
ye no’ honor yer father’s dying wish and come?” William asked gruffly.
Malcolm was tongue-tied. He never thought
he’d see Dunbronach again, never mind
to rule over his father’s—his—clan. They clearly needed help, but a magic wish?
He’d read of new farming methods, improved
ways to raise sheep, build mills, weave and sell cloth… The prospect of using
his mind and his hands for that tempted him. And if Malcolm became a man of
property and status, with a fine income from a prosperous, well-run Highland
estate, then Major Martin would have no further reason to deny Malcolm’s suit
for his daughter’s hand. He imagined the admiration in his uncle’s eyes, the
prestige a lairdly lawyer would bring to the firm. He could convince these
superstitious men that magic didn’t exist, that it was science and modern thinking
that would lead them forward, and make them strong.
Not a wish.
Perhaps a short visit was in order. He
needn’t stay long. He could take things in hand and order improvements. How
long could that possibly take? Then he’d hire an overseer to manage things
while he returned to Edinburgh.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll come in the
summer.” The early days of February were upon them now. It was not a time when
sensible folk traveled—especially to the cold, windswept Highlands. He’d take
time to study his books, speak to engineers and scientists, meet experts in
crop rotation, animal husbandry, and the wool trade. He’d call on geologists,
even, and—
But Dougal frowned, and his brows dropped
over his eyes like storm clouds. “That will be too late. Perhaps I haven’t made
myself clear. The wish must be made on Beltane night—in May.”
“So will ye come or no?” Fergus demanded,
still hovering in the open doorway, ready to leave.
Malcolm looked around the tiny room, at the
piles of books and papers, and considered the problem of leaving Nancy Martin.
He thought again of the day he’d left Dunbronach, of the peaks and skies and
the sea.
“I’ll
need time to get things my affairs in order.”
Fergus shut the door and returned to the
chair. He crossed his legs and folded his arms. “Then we’ll wait.”
“There’s no need for that—“ Malcolm began,
but William shook his head.
“We’re
your tail, Laird—your escort. Ye can’t travel anywhere without us. ’Tisn’t
decent.”
Dougal filled the remaining sherry glasses
with whisky from his flask and passed them around. “Here’s to Malcolm Ban
MacDonald, our new laird.” He quaffed his drink in a single swallow, poured
again, and handed the glass to Malcolm.
Malcolm sipped the whisky, and felt it burn
and sing in his veins. Or was it the enormity of the decision he’d just made
that buzzed through him? Then the warm glow of the whisky washed over him,
softened his doubts and fears, and made the world bright with possibility.
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Author Info
Lecia Cornwall lives and writes
in Calgary, Canada in the beautiful foothills of the Canadian Rockies, with
five cats, two teenagers, a crazy chocolate lab, and one very patient husband.
She’s hard at work on her next book.
Come visit Lecia at www.leciacornwall.com,
or drop her a line at leciacornwall@shaw.ca.
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