He closed his eyes, trying to forget the sight of a woman he would never see again, then shook his head sharply and pushed himself to his feet. He’d had a ridiculously long trio of days and what he needed was a decent night’s sleep for a change. With any luck, he might manage to make the previous twenty-four hours fit into his to-do list. Perhaps it could count not only meditation but a change of diet and some sleep.
He checked locks one more time, commended that long-haired serving girl to her proper place in time with a wish for her happiness, then put himself to bed and hoped his insomnia would consider a holiday for itself as well.
Six
When a gel was offto engage in subterfuge, ‘twas best to get an early start.
Mairead walked quickly up the meadow, keeping to the eaves of the forest, and hoped none of her cousins would decide that following her would be good sport. She’d left her flock in the care of a younger cousin, made excuses to everyone else about needing to find the last of the year’s plants for dyeing, then marched off with a purpose.
If she found herself roaming a bit further afield than usual or using her well-honed tracking skills to determine where a certain guest had wandered off to, who was to know? She had a knife down the back of her belt and her favorite shawl wrapped around her to not only keep her warm but allow her to blend into the landscape. She would be perfectly safe.
Safe, but perhaps a little more curious than was good for her. Then again, what else could she do? ‘Twas nothing more than a commitment to proper hospitality that demanded she make certain their guest hadn’t inadvertently left anything behind: a belt buckle, a riding crop, or perhaps an extra ball from his pistol that she hadn’t seen but was certain he’d had until he had been, as he’d said, robbed blind and abandoned by his friends.
And if he’d happened to leave behind any folios detailing more of his adventures, good manners behooved her to pick them up and keep them safe in case he returned for them.
She supposed it would have been easier to simply ask him about his adventures, but he’d left yesterday before sunrise whilst she’d been trapped in the kitchens, seeing to things that should have been seen to by Tasgall’s wife. She might haveconsidered a bit of a ramble later in the morning, but the scouts who had followed him had returned and reluctantly admitted that they had lost sight of him sooner than they’d cared to.
To her mind, that either meant he was a ghost, which she doubted, or he was highly skilled in keeping himself unobserved, which left her wondering how it was he’d been robbed.
Her uncle would have suggested that faeries were involved, she was sure, perhaps even those bold ones who had once upon a time made off with the Laird James and his lady wife. She, however, wasn’t susceptible to that sort of foolish thinking. There was a reasonable explanation for everything and the first part of that included determining where Lord Oliver might have gone.
She stopped on a somewhat contested stretch of ground that marked the end of her clan’s holdings and the beginnings of those belonging to the Camerons and studied the landscape. Lord Oliver couldn’t have simply appeared from nowhere, surely. She looked around herself for clues, then reluctantly looked down at the ground under feet.
‘Twas an odd patch of earth, that smallish ring of plants there in the meadow. She had always used it as a way to mark the border given that it was either in bloom with flowers in the spring or still bearing leaves in the fall with the leavings of its stems always visible against the grasses that surrounded it no matter the time of year.
Her animals never stepped inside it, though she’d led them through that meadow countless times. The lads didn’t either, though she couldn’t credit either her cousins or those Cameron lads with any more sense than her sheep, so perhaps she was the only one who noticed.
She considered, then decided there was no point in not testing its magical properties for herself and putting the entire ridiculous piece of speculation to rest. She put her shouldersback, then deliberately stepped into the circle, then out of it again.
She looked over her shoulder and found the witch’s forest lingering there to her right. Her own meadow lay directly behind her and Cameron lands still lay comfortably to the north in the valley that gave way eventually to a rather lovely stretch of meadow that led directly to Cameron Hall.
There were, however, no sprites dancing in the fall grasses, no fairies peeking out at her from behind trees in the forest, and nothing of an otherworldly and fantastical nature galloping across the meadow to sweep her up into a tale fit for a drunken bard’s worst offering. Nothing had changed save perhaps her good sense which had obviously deserted her.
She looked up and was relieved to find not only that the sun was in its accustomed place in the sky, it had apparently decided to push aside a few clouds and pour down a good deal of unexpected warmth. That was an auspicious sign, to be sure, though she couldn’t decide precisely why. She drew her shawl more tightly around her just the same, turned to the east, and carried on with what she had come to do.
She shivered as she walked under the eaves of the forest. The sun filtered down through the trees here and there, but it was hardly enough to keep her warm.
If she might have been slightly unnerved by the memory of seeing a man with fair hair out of the corner of her eye, then consigning the sight to her admittedly ungovernable imagination—the one that tended to stroll hand-in-hand with her insatiable curiosity—was perhaps understandable. She put that aside as something to tell her uncle when he exhausted his own stories of ridiculous happenings and carried on under the trees.
She paused several times to study the ground. There was something… She rolled her eyes and forced herself to simplywalk on. Her imagination was truly demanding to be taken out and exercised, but she suspected she might do well to keep a tight rein on it. There was nothing unusual about the forest. The trees were simply trees, and the forest floor was disturbed either from the rain that had descended like the flood the day before or from the feet of those lads who had attempted to follow their guest. She had to admit she hadn’t been completely unhappy the day before to remain in the hall where at least she’d been dry.
She wasn’t one given to flights of imagination, but she was beginning to feel as though she’d wandered into a dream. The trees were the same, and yet somehow… not. Perhaps she hadn’t paid enough heed during all the times she’d wandered through that forest, keeping a weather eye out for wild animals and unruly cousins.
She blew out of her eyes a few stray hairs she’d caught on branches she hadn’t paid any heed to, then continued on her way. The first thing she would do once she returned to the hall was set herself on a stringent course of pretending to listen to her uncle whilst never hearing another word about magical creatures in the forest. She was fairly certain there had been more than one woman inhabiting the witch’s croft she could see in the distance who might have agreed with her.
She continued toward it, somewhat relieved to find it in its usual condition. She stopped a few paces away from it, then frowned. Perhaps that wasn’t as true as she would have preferred it to be. There was something about the rock that seemed more weathered, if that were possible—
The door to the croft opened suddenly and she jumped in spite of herself. She would have ducked behind the tree closest to her, but she found that her feet were rooted to the ground.
She looked down quickly to make certain there weren’t tiny faeries holding her there, but she saw nothing but the usual foliage that covered the forest floor. Perhaps ‘twas just hersurprise that left her unable to move. That and she didn’t want to startle the creature exiting the house.
It was a man, obviously, though he was dressed in black from head to toe. Well, not his boots, which were a rich, dark brown, but he wore strange-looking trews that were black and an even stranger shirt—also black—that only came to his hips.
She looked heavenward to avoid seeing things she absolutely didn’t want to, then decided that necessity dictated she venture another look.
The man wore a sword strapped to his back, that she could tell from the hilt that was visible to one side of his head. He held a book in his hands, which she didn’t know how to interpret at all. The sunlight that had somehow found its way through the trees fell on his blond hair, turning it to spun gold, a heavenly sight which was at odds with the rest of his admittedly wonderfully fashioned self which she had the most unpleasant feeling had come from a different direction entirely.
He had also obviously caught sight of her poor self because he’d frozen in place, looking as if the slightest movement on her part might leave him bolting.
