by Susan King
Heart pounding, Fiona pressed close to Dougal. “There—she is by the bookshelves now. Do you see her?”
He glanced at her. “What are you talking about? I see nothing.”
“The ghost.”
“We have no ghosts that I know of, old as this place is.”
“Or was it a fairy?” she whispered to herself. The woman had been a sparkling luminosity, a mystical form that could have been other than ghostly.
“Fiona,” Dougal murmured. “Come—“
“I need paper and ink,” she whispered. He turned his head to listen. “I must make a drawing of the—the fairy.”
“Good God,” he said. “You are seeing things.”
“It is just what I hoped to see in Glen Kinloch. A fairy.”
“What?” He frowned at her. “I thought you came here to teach.”
“I did, and also—oh, she is gone.” The beautiful woman in gold and gossamer had vanished. Fiona sighed. “It was not my imagination. I did see her just there. But I suppose you will say me wrong.”
He was staring at the spot where the woman had stood. “No one is there.”
“I saw her, I swear it. A ghost, or a fairy woman. I hoped to—” She stopped, bit her lip.
He narrowed his eyes. “Was there some other reason you came to Glen Kinloch, other than to teach?”
“I must find fairies, in order to get the money,” she blurted. She did not feel herself at all. She felt expansive, excited, feeling an urge to be honest, to be bold. “And I came to the Highlands to find—well, perhaps to find you. But you are not what my grandmother wanted. Or Sir Walter Scott either. My brothers will like you, though. That is, if you will have me.”
“What money? What about Sir Walter Scott? And your brothers? What are you going on about?” His eyes blazed as he frowned at her.
She was blathering on, she realized, and ought to stop. The whisky had loosened her tongue, made her thoughts and her words race too quickly away from her. No dram or drink had ever affected her like this. She put a hand to her head. “I had little more than a glass of whisky. What was in that silver flask?”
“A particular brew that I should have locked away. Fiona, tell me what you are talking about. Why did you come to the glen? What money?”
She looked up into his green and scowling gaze. “Do you know, sir, you are a beautiful man, and I think I want to kiss you.”
“What—” He caught her by the arms as she lifted up on her toes and leaned forward, stumbling against him. She kissed him, felt him lean hard away as her mouth pressed to his. He resisted, then murmured under his breath, a soft growl, as he took command of the kiss, so that it turned sure and fierce, lips seeking.
Sighing, she felt her knees melt, felt as if she tumbled from a height, as if her heart bloomed like a flower. And she knew then, fou or sober, bold or shy, capable or wild, that she was falling in love.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, pressed close to him, stunned by her own feelings. Safe, welcomed, partnered. Loved. He was kissing her again, gently now, soothing his mouth over hers, kissing her into breathlessness. His lips caressed, his hands cradled her head in a warm, luscious chain of kisses that made her knees tremble, her body ripple with desire. Joy sparked inside her like a candle. Love took flame, filled her. She slipped her fingers through his hair, the dark silk of it, as he traced his lips along her jaw and throat. She moaned softly, wanting more desperately, her heart pounding.
“Dougal,” she whispered, savoring his name as he gathered her closer. She faltered a little, her legs unsteady. She felt overtaken by the whisky and overwhelmed by the emotions emerging within.
Then he pulled away, brows drawn tight. “Lass,” he murmured. “I did not mean to—”
“I am glad you did.” She closed her eyes, tipped her head against his shoulder. “Oh. I feel so dizzy.”
“We had best get you upstairs. But first, tell me what you saw in this room.”He kept a hand on her arm, and she was grateful for the steadying.
“Moments ago? A lovely creature, like a sparkling mist. At first I thought she was a ghost, but I think now she was a fairy, so beautiful and delicate.”
“I see. And how much did you pour from the silver flask?”
“It was not imagination,” she defended. “I did not have that much. The flask said Uisge-beatha an ceann loch—Kinloch whisky. You said I should try it. Did I take the wrong bottle? I am sorry, if so.”
“My fault. I should have made the difference clear. Glen Kinloch whisky is in a brown bottle. The silver flask holds more properly what you might call Uisge-beatha síthiche ceann loch—we call it Kinloch fairy whisky.”
“Fairy whisky!” She blinked up at him, startled. “But you said there is no such thing, that the brew is only a legend.”
“We make a particular whisky from a very old family recipe that is traditionally called fairy whisky. The MacGregors of Kinloch have distilled it for generations. We do not make much, just enough once a year to share with kin and friends.”
She was delighted. “I drank fairy whisky, truly? How nice!”
“Not always. It can be potent stuff, far more than the other.”
“My brother once tasted fairy brew. It is rare stuff, he told me. His wife’s cousin makes it and brings it to her grandfather. His wife is your cousin, Elspeth MacArthur. Are you the one who makes the fairy brew?”
He sighed. “That would be myself, aye. I give some to Elspeth MacArthur’s grandfather every year. Donal and Elspeth are my cousins, and among the few of my kin who can feel the special power of the brew. Not everyone does. There is a magical spell about it, they say, and some have the ability to sense it. We treat it with care, because of the legend.”
“Legend?”
“The origin of the stuff. That is all,” he said simply.
“I felt something too from it. How odd.” She shook her head a little, trying to clear the fog away. Had the whisky given her the ability to see the dazzling woman in the library? “I did see her, the fairy woman. I am sure of it. She stood just there. She reached out to touch you, but you did not notice.”
“I knew she was there. I have seen her, and her ilk, before.”
Chapter 15
“You saw her just now?” Fiona stared up at him.
“Not this time. But I felt her presence.” He had revealed too much, and that was unlike him. The ease he felt with Fiona, the trust building there, continued to surprise him. “I have seen such things before.”
“So you have seen this woman before?” Her blue eyes were wide in her pale, lovely face, with a flush to her cheeks—brought on by kissing, and perhaps the drink, and he should have been more careful with her—but she was beautiful, alluring, creamy skin, sparkling eyes, hair like dark silk. He did not want to talk. He only wanted to kiss her again. He only nodded.
“Not her, perhaps, but others like her. When I was younger,” he said firmly, straightening away as if to distance himself from the truth he was about to tell her, “I sometimes saw—unusual lights, and images of people who others could not see. I have seen a woman, and some others. So just now, I sensed one of them was here,” he confessed.
“You did not say so.”
“I keep such things to myself. Some Highlanders have the ability to see the Fey, with or without the whisky. It is a natural ability among some of the MacGregors of Kinloch and their kin—like the MacArthurs. It is not widely known.” He shrugged, again feeling he was admitting too much—feeling foolish about it as well—and yet he wanted her to know.
She was not merely intrigued and curious. Fiona MacCarran had responded to the fairy brew in an extraordinary way that said something important about her, something she might not know herself. Fairy blood, he thought. She might not have heard about such legends among folk with Highland blood, and she surely had that. Reaching out, he brushed his fingers over her hair. “I am very careful about who drinks the fairy brew. It has a strange effect on a few people.”
Sh
e tipped her head. “What sort of effect?”
“Some can see the fairy realm. It opens the veil between worlds.”
“Belladonna can do the same, but the visions are not real.”
“Not like that. It has to do with the blood. The ancestry of the person.”
“This was very real, or seemed so. Is there something added to the drink?” She did not look pleased. “You ought to label it if so. Or not set it out at all.”
“There is nothing special or harmful added to the brew. It is a simple whisky recipe.” He thought of the morning dew gathered from the flowers up on the mountain, in the little glade that his father had shown him years before. “Legend says the Fey grant a magical power to only a few who taste their brew. For anyone else who tries it, it is just a very good whisky.”
“I do not understand.”
“If fairy blood is in your ancestry, you may have the ability. So they say,” he added hastily.
He thought she went a little pale. “Fairy ancestry,” she echoed, and nodded to herself. “Tell me, do the Fey make the brew themselves? But if they do not exist, how could that be? Wait. You make it yourself, you said so.”
“I do make it, just like the lairds of Kinloch before me. By tradition, only the laird himself can make it according to an old and secret family recipe. The fairies made that condition long ago, so the legend says. I suppose it seems quite mad.”
“Not to me. My grandmother wrote about fairies, and now my brother, a scientist, does as well. And I know a little about the power of conditions,” she added, sounding wry. “Are there more secret legends of fairies among your kin?”
“Every clan has its legends, and we have ours. Some are known, some we keep to ourselves. This particular tradition claims that the fairies required secrecy from Kinloch in exchange for the recipe of the fairy brew. That secret is passed down from the laird to his heir, and only the closest kin may learn it. A grandfather. A father. A son, a daughter. A wife,” he added. He felt the urge to tell her more. Suddenly, keenly, he wanted Fiona to be part of that innermost circle. He pressed his lips together, folded his arms against the feeling.
“We have legends in our family, too, that might seem odd to some. And my grandmother’s will is certainly—” She paused, shook her head, drawing the brocade robe snugly about her. “Well,” she went on, “can you tell me more, or is it not permitted to speak of it? After all, I did see the fairy of the whisky just now,” she pointed out.
“The fairy of the whisky! I quite like that.” He smiled at her description. “Very well, since she did come to you. According to the old legend, long ago a laird of Kinloch did the fairies a favor, and in return they gave him a recipe known only to the fairy ilk. We must make it that certain way, and we may only give it away to a few. We must never sell it or profit from it.”
He was telling her more than he should. It felt like a promise for the future.
“Then you cannot make much quantity,” she replied with a half-laugh. “It is not economical.”
“True. It is blessing from the fairies, not a means to make money.”
“They must have given it to your kin for a very special reason.”
“Just so.” He leaned his hip against the table, folded his arms. “One of my ancestors saved the life of a fairy woman one night during a blizzard. He brought her to his house and revived her with a dram of whisky to warm her.” No harm in telling her the legend, he told himself.
“And you can make it but must never sell it?”
He nodded. “One must never profit from a gift the fairies bestow freely. The recipe is known only to the laird and his wife, and passed down to a son—or, I suppose, a daughter, though so far I do not think that has happened.”
“So it stays with the MacGregors of Kinloch. I see. And it is a potent drink, more so than the usual whisky.” She set a hand to her head. A high blush colored her cheeks, and her throat was pink at the open neck of the dressing gown. “I do feel it. Oh, my.”
“Sit down,” he said, though she did not. “Word about Kinloch fairy whisky got out eventually, over generations. It is known to be extraordinarily good stuff. We gift it here and there. My cousin Donal MacArthur, for one.” He smiled ruefully. “If it was better known, there could be a clamor for it, and we cannot make it in quantity. And if word got about, tourists might even come here to make a romantic spectacle of our glen.”
“Tourists.” She sighed. “Highland romantic legends are very popular now.”
“Lovely as it is, I intend to keep my glen from becoming an attraction.”
“You are right to be careful. This beautiful glen would no longer be a remote and private place. People would come to explore, and would want fairy whisky.”
He nodded. “They already come in droves to Loch Katrine, wanting to experience the Highlands of the Bard of the North, as they call Scott.”
“Althought,” she ventured, “your glen might be rescued from poverty if tourists were allowed here, and paid a fee to visit and stay at an inn, and so on.”
“I refuse to encourage the traffic of strangers in the glen. But I will tolerate one Lowland teacher.” He smiled, slight but sincerely, hinting at more than he dared tell her.
“Will you now,” she said wryly. “As I recall, you have been anxious to be rid of your Lowland teacher.”
“I am reconsidering.” He settled back against the table. “Tell me about your family legend. Sit, Miss MacCarran,” he urged her, seeing that she swayed a bit and had set a hand to the top of the wing chair.
She did then, demurely adjusting the overlarge robe around her lithe and slender form. “I have heard that there is an old family seat at Duncrieff, and inside the castle there is a cup. A band of gold set with jewels encircles the cup, engraved with a motto. It was something that was declared by a rather special ancestor long ago, and tradition claims that the MacCarrans of Duncrieff are obliged to follow it. If we do not—” She stopped, her blush deepening. “You will think it very silly.”
“I make whisky according to an old fairy recipe. Nothing you could say would ever seem foolish to me, lass. Who was this special and wise ancestor?”
“An ancestress, actually. A fairy. So they say,” she added quickly.
“Ah. Fairy blood somewhere in you, then. Go on.”
“The jeweled cup was the gift of a fairy bride who married a MacCarran a very long time ago.”
“And she proclaimed a motto that you are all obliged to follow? Can you tell it to me, or is it a secret?”
“Not secret,” she said. “Love makes its own magic, the cup says.”
He caught his breath, then nodded. “Nothing silly about that. What is the obligation? Be kind to others? You do well in that regard, I think.”
“We are obliged to honor her gift by finding true love,” she said quietly. “It does not always happen.”
“It is not an easy thing to find, that. What is the consequence of not finding this elusive true love?”
“Poor luck for the family. And we have surely had some.”
“That is often the way of it, with fairies,” he said, shaking his head. “They bless and curse freely, without thinking about the effects of their ultimatums.”
“Sometimes,” she said, “the tradition says, members of our line must marry those with fairy blood. If we can find someone tomeet that condition.”
“Difficult to manage, I imagine.” He looked at her steadily, wondering at her family tradition. “Even to me it seems impossible, and at the least would not encourage the continuance of generations.”
“Indeed.” She stared up at him, her graceful fingers folded together, her beautiful eyes gray-blue in the shadows. “Very hard to manage.”
“It might interest you to know,” he murmured, heart beginning to pound, “that I have a bit of fairy blood.”
“Do you?” She blushed deeply. He watched it flow into her cheeks.
“So they say.”
“That is interesting. And not sur
prising, I suppose.” She cleared her throat.
“My guess is that you have more than a slight trace of fairy blood yourself, judging by the way the fairy whisky took you.”
She lifted her brows. “Because I claim to see lights, and—the woman?”
“Because you did see the lights, and the lady as well. I believe you.”
“Thank you.”
He nodded. “They say the fairy whisky only affects those with fairy blood in their veins. So you must have the wildness of the Fey in your blood. Otherwise, you would think it just a very good whisky.”
“These are all just legends,” she said quickly, shrugging.
“Can we ever say for sure what is truth and what is legend?” he asked softly. “What if your reaction to the whisky proves the claim? You knew nothing of the legend, yet you saw something extraordinary. They do say the fairies choose who sees them and who does not. They chose you, lass,” he murmured.
“Perhaps there is another reason they chose me,” she whispered, glancing down. “Well, no matter. Your excellent whisky has worn off. If I drink it again will the lady return? I would so love to see her again.”
“Why?” He smiled, touched by her earnestness and her interest.
“I want to make a drawing of her.”
“You will have to draw her from memory. Even if you drank your fill she might not return. She allowed you to see her, but the Fey are a fickle lot.”
“But you have seen the same lady before?”
“When I was a boy, aye. Or I thought I did.”
“Where do the fairy ilk live in Glen Kinloch? Is there a place we could find?”
“They are everywhere,” he said, straightening. He reached out his hand to her, and she stood. He drew her toward him as he spoke and she moved gently closer. “It is said they dwell peacefully here, but we cannot seek them out. They choose the when and the where of it.”
“Perhaps I came to the right glen after all.”
“Why do you say that? Was it fairies that drew you here, or teaching?” Or this, he nearly said, as he pulled her toward him. The keen awareness that they were alone attuned him further to the desire he felt, and the bond that he sensed growing between them. The impulsive kisses earlier had taken him by storm, and his body still pulsed easily near her. She was damnably distracting, but he wanted to be near her, wanted her close for more than physical reasons. He was increasingly certain that his feelings for her were real and worthy, and would not easily be dismissed.