Page 16 of The Finest Scottish Fate

Mercury tossed his head and stepped higher, prancing like a show horse.

“Aye, ye’ll give the beast the big head, ye will.” Morganna led the way out of the village and toward a gently rolling valley bordered by impressive mountains of jagged rocks and crags. “Dinna give him his head, or ye’ll find yerself halfway across the Highlands afore ye know it.”

Evie tightened her grip on the reins. “Let’s stay close to Morganna and Darkstar, Mercury. I don’t want to get lost.”

The horse snorted and tossed his head as though laughing at that prospect.

Last night’s tension and worries melting away, she relaxed in the saddle and remembered all the happy times she’d helped Granddaddy with the horses. Maybe coming to Scotland wasn’t such a bad idea after all. A month of pampering and enjoying the sights would be a nice memory to revisit once she returned to Nashville and job hunting.

She pulled in a deep breath and smiled. Everything was so clean and untouched here. It was as though this place had been sheltered, a regular Scottish Eden in the Highlands.

“The hill is just up ahead.” Morganna pointed at the part of the valley that narrowed into a small pass between the mountains. “We go through there, and then it opens up again. If Callum is still there, we should be able to ask him about the man ye saw.”

“Did you happen to mention it to him last night?” Morganna had made it pretty clear that she and Callum lived together. Evie wouldn’t pry into personal things, but the question about her mystery man seemed harmless enough.

“I did mention it.” Morganna’s eyes narrowed as she squinted at something off in the distance. “But since I’d not seen the lad, I couldn’t verra well describe him.”

“But he didn’t have any hunches about who it might be?” Evie really needed to know more about the man in the fog. Mainly, that he was real, so she’d know for sure that long trips didn’t make her lose her mind.

Morganna frowned and took an unusual length of time to answer. “He had a few ideas. We’ll know more once we speak with him, and ye’re able to give him more details.” She flipped her reins and urged her horse to a faster trot, speeding into the lead by quite a bit.

Well, all right, then. Evie took that as a clear I-don’t-want-to-talk-about-it-anymore response. Morganna was a strange lady. Nice. But odd. She shrugged it off. Maybe Morganna felt the same way about her. Maybe it was a difference in cultures or something.

As they neared the pass leading out of the valley, she urged Mercury to catch up and close the distance between them. The towering walls of rock on either side blocked most of the sunlight, giving the impression that it was much later in the day. Even though there was no wind, it also seemed much colder, making her button her jacket and tug her collar up around her ears.

“Not much farther,” Morganna called back over her shoulder.

Evie was glad because she felt like a child in the back seat of the car, itching to ask their parent one more time, Are we there yet? It was then that she noticed Mercury had taken on an eerie glow—like one of those phosphorescent worms in a cave documentary she’d watched when nothing else was on television. She blinked to make sure she wasn’t imagining it. No. The horse was most definitely glowing like a soft night-light on a child’s bedside table. “Morganna?”

“Aye?” Morganna didn’t slow, nor did she look around.

“Mercury is glowing,” Evie called out, trying to sound as if that were the most normal thing in the world.

Morganna laughed, but it sounded strained. “’Tis just the angle of the light. Horses canna glow.”

“Angle of the light, my ass.” Evie pulled an old receipt out of her jacket pocket, held it up against Mercury’s coat, and could clearly read it by the animal’s illumination. What had they called that in the documentary? Bioluminescence?

“Did ye say something?” Morganna shouted back to her.

“This horse is glowing like a cave worm. I swear. Turn around and look.”

“A cave worm?” Morganna finally reined in her animal and wheeled it about. Darkstar didn’t glow. In fact, Darkstar was harder to see. He blended into the shadows so much that it made it seem as though Morganna were floating through the air.

Evie caught up a handful of Mercury’s silvery mane and let the strands run through her fingers. They looked like the fiber-optic lights she put on her Christmas tree last year. “See? Glowing like one of those cave worms in New Zealand.”

“I dinna ken a thing about cave worms in New Zealand.”

“But you agree this horse is emitting a light, right?”

Morganna didn’t respond, and in the shadows, Evie couldn’t read her expression.

“Morganna?”

“I still say ’tis the angle of the light through the pass. Come along now. We’re nearing the end and will be back in direct sunlight soon.” Morganna turned her mount and continued onward.

More irritated than vindicated, Evie urged Mercury to follow. “It’s not the angle of the light,” she told the horse. “I know you’re glowing.”

The animal gave a deep, rumbling whicker that somehow consoled her. At least he agreed with her. Of course, that still didn’t explain how he glowed in the dark like a freaking night-light. When she got back to the cottage, she’d Google glowing horses and see what came up.