“Donal told me about your conversation earlier,” the older woman said softly, turning from closing the door to gesture with what she’d brought into the room. To Delilah’s surprise, she was holding a wine bottle and two glasses. “Thought you could use a chat.”
“That is exactly what I feel like,” Delilah said, intensely grateful for the woman’s presence.
Mary smiled, and pulled a chair up to the side of the bed before pouring them each a generous glass of wine. It was red, and, as Delilah discovered when she sipped it, absolutely delicious. They sat in pleasant silence for a long moment as they sipped the wine, and once they’d both put a good dent in their glasses, Delilah took a deep breath, which seemed to cue the conversation.
“How are you getting on with Gavin?” Mary asked over the rim of her wineglass.
Delilah sighed.
“Not well. I —” She hesitated. “All the others… they’re all married, aren’t they?”
“Oh, yes.”
“To the men their ancestors had relationships with.”
“Aye.”
She hesitated again, hovering on the brink of explaining what was going on with her and Gavin to this sympathetic woman. Could she trust her? Would word get back to Gavin? She hoped not… not that she knew Mary especially well. But it was just exhausting, keeping all of this to herself — so in a rush, she caved in. “So the fact that I’ve — sort of — developed a huge crush on Gavin…”
“Is no surprise, no,” Mary said solemnly, though there was a smile lurking in her eyes. She certainly didn’t look surprised, Delilah noticed. Something very irritating about that. “The girls have been taking bets on how long it’d take, I’m afraid to say.”
Delilah ground her teeth. “It’s infuriating! He’s been rude and controlling and unpredictable and terrible to me. The Laird had to almost threaten him into telling me an extremely useful piece of information about my ancestor. I have absolutely no idea why I’m interested, I really don’t. It seems extraordinarily poorly timed.”
“Destiny,” Mary said, shrugging. “The heart is never particularly concerned with its timing. Why, I was betrothed to another when I fell in love with Donal and Colin’s father.”
“You what?”
“A story for another time,” Mary said, nodding at Delilah’s half-full wine glass. “Drink your medicine.”
Delilah snorted laughter. Mary was full of surprises. “Did you know Morag?” she asked once she’d taken another sizable sip of the wine — it was almost too delicious to be drinking this quickly, but the pleasant buzz of alcohol was already beginning to curl around her mind. God bless Mary. This was exactly what she needed.
“Aye, I did. She was an odd woman, but very kind. Driven. Extremely dedicated to protecting the wellbeing of the village.” Mary sighed. “And a practicing witch. Unapologetic about it, too. The village loved her, mind you. She was always helping the folk with their problems — curing problem ailments, helping find lost objects, bringing people home safe from their travels. But the Laird of the MacClarans at the time was a God-fearing man. He banned her from the castle grounds, and told everyone here that consorting with her would be punishable by lashes.”
“But that didn’t stop Gavin.”
“Ask him to show you his scars sometime,” Mary confirmed, her eyes twinkling, though there was a sadness on her face. “He was badly injured in a sparring match once — entirely accidental, but a wound on his leg got infected. It looked dire, too. Everyone thought he’d lose the leg. But thank God, the man he’d been sparring with smuggled Morag herself into the castle to treat him, and sure enough, he was healed within the month. Had to keep visiting her, of course, to continue the treatment.” Mary grinned. “But he kept visiting her long after his leg was good as new.”
“But what happened? Who killed her?”
“Ah,” Mary said sadly. “That’s a tragic story and no mistake. Gavin fell hard for Morag, and made no secret of his opinion that the Laird ought to reverse his position on witchcraft. They had dozens of arguments about it. Many members of the Clan agreed with Gavin — myself included, for the record. We’d lost too many good men and women to preventable ailments to spurn the help of such a skilled healer. But on the Laird’s side was a man named Kenneth — and he was a little too dedicated to his position. He was a deeply religious man — hated witches with all his heart. He thought Morag had put a spell on Gavin when she was mending his leg as a way of creeping into the castle and taking it over, Lord knows why.”
“So he killed her?”
“Not immediately.” Mary sighed and poured another glass of wine, topping Delilah’s up as well — she sipped at it, spellbound by Mary’s story. “Gavin decided to call the Laird’s bluff. He asked Morag to marry him — did it in the village square, so the word would be sure to get back to the Clan. She was delighted, of course. They were quite the pair — I mean, you’ve seen him. Enormous man like that, with a woman like her beside him — they certainly turned heads. The Laird was furious when he found out. He absolutely forbade the marriage. Threatened to turn Gavin out if he chose to go through with it — his own kin. And Gavin, for all his faults, has never been anything but devoted to his family and to the castle. He’d have been lost without his home. He had no cards left to play. So Morag took matters into her own hands.”
“What did she do?” Delilah had a sinking feeling she knew. And sure enough, Mary nodded.
“She cursed the MacClarans. Sent a letter to the Laird, telling him that any woman who fell in love with a MacClaran man would die tragically and young until such time as she and Gavin were allowed to marry. The Laird had just gotten engaged, you see,” Mary explained. “He was absolutely besotted with his young wife, and Morag hoped that his fear for her would serve to change his mind and allow Gavin and her to marry. She promised to lift the curse as soon as they were wed. But it was not to be.”
“She was killed.”
“Aye, she was,” Mary said heavily. “Kenneth took her prisoner the day the letter was delivered. Gavin discovered where he was keeping her, but he was too late to intervene. She died in his arms. He took his cousin’s eye out in vengeance,” Mary said heavily. “The Laird banished Kenneth from our lands. He didn’t like witchcraft, true, but Morag was a resident of the village and under the Clan’s protection despite her practices.”
“The curse… caused the deaths of young women who fell in love with MacClarans.”
“Aye. It took the young Laird’s wife soon enough,” Mary said sadly. “Thank God he sent us Audrina in her place.”
“But why does God bring their ancestors back in time to the castle?” Delilah pressed.
“I don’t know, Delilah. I truly believe it’s the grace of God. Such an unjust death — such a terrible situation… He didn’t want us left in such bleak circumstances.”
She blinked a little at that. She hadn’t realized that Mary was a religious woman — hadn’t given much thought to faith at all, in fact, since she’d gotten here. A lot of her fellow academics were interested in faith, but it had never factored into her research much. She’d always been agnostic — not exactly opposed to the concept of a God, but without any formal religious education she’d never really come to any strong convictions. Her father never talked about what he believed, either, though she’d seen him praying once. Just once. She never mentioned it to him, and he never brought it up.
But should she reconsider her position? She’d been thinking about magic being real all day… what if it was the grace of God that had truly brought her back through time? That certainly wasn’t a common idea in theology, she thought with some amusement. She supposed it was impossible to know — but the idea still lingered in the back of her mind even as she turned her attention to what Mary had said. The curse… the terrible things that had been done as a result of it… and poor Gavin, blaming himself in some way for what had been brought upon his family…
“Poor Gavin,” Delilah murmured, finally understanding
why the man had been so cold and strange with her since she’d arrived.
“Aye, he’s never been the same since. A few women have pursued him in the years since Morag’s death, but he’s rebuffed them sharply. Doesn’t want the same fate to befall them. I think your being here is good for him,” she said thoughtfully. “It’s helping him work through what happened. At least, I hope it is. As for your feelings for him… well, it was inevitable.”
“I couldn’t possibly — pursue him. Not like that. Not knowing what I know about Morag.”
“Aye. Well. The Lord moves in mysterious ways, Delilah. Just be patient with him. And if you ever need someone to speak to…” Mary smiled. “I always know where to find a bottle of wine.”
Chapter 13
They drank and talked for hours after that, though they left the subject of Morag and witchcraft where it was. Mary was an absolute delight, and Delilah was more than happy just to listen to her talk, regaling the younger woman with tale after tale of the castle over the years. She’d lived here all her life or thereabouts, it seemed, and she was the kind of woman who everyone trusted with their stories. The number of scandals Mary knew about — of forbidden romances, of love stories that blossomed despite all the odds… not to mention the amazing collection of anecdotes about guards doing things they shouldn’t. She learned the entire fascinating saga of Marianne’s husband, who had almost been kicked out of the castle and banished for good from MacClaran lands for killing a man in a tavern brawl — never mind that he hadn’t even been present at the tavern brawl in question.
“Why didn’t he just say that?” Delilah demanded, her eyes wide. To think of the bear-like Captain of the Guard being banished from the castle he loved so much… “Why didn’t he just explain himself?”
Mary’s eyes twinkled. “Let’s just say his alibi would have caused more trouble than it was worth. He was with a woman at the time, you see. A woman with whom the Laird would not have wanted him to be, if you can catch my drift.”
The women laughed, giddy with wine and good company. And eventually, a little cautiously at first but with clear curiosity, Mary started asking Delilah about her own life. Where she was from, what it was like there, what she’d done all the way back in the future. And Delilah was happy enough to talk about it. Oddly enough, it seemed to ally her homesickness a bit, just talking about everything she missed from the future — and a few of the things she didn’t miss, truth be told.
“Marianne talked a lot about her phone,” Mary agreed when Delilah explained that she’d been surprisingly happy without technology. “She said it could be a bit of a prison. Can’t say I understand it myself — the idea of being able to get in contact with anyone on the planet by pressing a few buttons sounds like magic to me.”
“It starts to get a bit — intense,” Delilah explained thoughtfully, trying to articulate just what it was about being without her phone that made her feel so much more peaceful and free. “Because everyone’s got them, everyone starts to expect that you’re always going to answer their call straight away. It’s like having everyone you ever met in your pocket all the time, and any time they like, they can yell at you to pay attention to them. No matter where you are — asleep, eating, bathing…”
Mary laughed. “Conversations with distant friends in the bath! What an astonishing life. If you ever do find a passage back to your own time, well, I’ll be the first volunteer to go along with you.”
“I think you’d do well in San Francisco,” Delilah laughed, picturing Mary in a modern dress, walking down the streets of her city. Yes, Mary seemed like the kind of person who’d be able to fit in there. “Do you think the other women would go home, if they could?”
“Well, not without their children and families, of course,” Mary said thoughtfully. “And I’m not sure how well the little ones would fare with such a big change. The youngest ones would be fine, of course. Babies don’t know where they are at the best of times, a big shift in time would hardly rate so long as they still had all the milk and cuddles they wanted. But the older ones… aye, they might have trouble.”
“But — it’s our home. Truly, you believe Marianne and Audrina and Cora and everyone would just… stay here, even if they didn’t have to?”
“This place is their home,” Mary said softly, looking at Delilah. “Maybe you don’t feel that way yet — and fair enough, too, never let it be said I’d judge ye for feelin’ homesick, especially so early in your stay with us. But I truly believe that this is where those women belong — that being born in the future was the accident, not the teleportation back. All of the women — they’ve all admitted that bein’ here feels like more of a home than the future ever did. Not that it was bad there, but that here was more fulfilling for them than anything they’d experienced. Like they’d spent their lives waiting to get back here, without even knowing that that was what they were waiting for. Again, that’s not necessarily going to be the case for you. But it might be. Try to be open to it, yes?”
“I do like it here,” she admitted thoughtfully, but she wasn’t convinced. Scotland was beautiful, true. She loved walking down the road to the village, loved the smell of tree sap and clear air in the forest, even loved the accents and the funny characters she’d met so far. And of course, she’d spent so much of her life studying it — there was a strange sense of destiny about all of this, about her having been brought here the same day as she’d come to visit the ruin in the future. But did she really love it more than her home? Or could she grow to love it more than her home? There must have been something that drew her attention about Castle MacClaran — something that had caused her to specialize in this place and time, above all other places and times in recorded human history. Whether that was magic, or fate, or the Lord himself working in mysterious ways, she had no idea — only that it was true that there was something fateful about her presence at Castle MacClaran.
“You have a lot to think about, my dear,” Mary said finally, “and I’m a little more drunk than behooves a woman of my station. So I’ll leave you now.”
Delilah got to her feet — then impulsively drew Mary into a hug. The older woman laughed with surprise but squeezed her back, her arms surprisingly strong for such a slender woman.
“Thank you, Mary. Truly, this was exactly what I needed.”
“Any time, my dear. Any time at all. Just say the word.”
Left alone, Delilah finished the last of the bottle of wine, feeling the pleasant buzz in her mind intensify just a little. Thank God for Mary and her wise counsel. She was still so full of questions, of course — but Mary had given her a great deal of extremely important information. She grabbed her little book and steadfastly set about recording what she’d learned before she could forget the details, writing what Mary had said verbatim where her memory allowed her to do so. Direct quotes were always better than paraphrasing, especially when it came to folklore. She’d learned a special kind of shorthand while she was studying — a combination of the International Phonetic Alphabet and her own short abbreviations for longer words. It let her record things faster than she could by typing — a useful skill. People tended to get uncomfortable when interviewed by someone who was typing on a computer, but someone taking notes in a book was fine. Plus, it was nice that nobody else could read her cipher. She knew her notes were private, because nobody but her could make sense of the scribble she used to keep them. Still, she didn’t much fancy the idea of anyone else getting their hands on this book, especially with how rare paper seemed to be. She’d be careful.
Witchcraft and magic. Subjects she never thought she’d be approaching as anything other than fiction. God, she wished she had some of her books with her. Distorted by time and word of mouth as they were, she knew that the old folklore of Scotland had the ability to help her here. But she could only rely on her own experiences, and what she’d learned since she’d been here. It was clear that magic was real, on some level — how else could she and the other women have been brough
t back here? She found herself dismissing, more and more, the idea that this whole situation was the result of some kind of psychotic break. If she was mad, she was mad, and there wasn’t much she could do about it. Much more practical to just proceed with the understanding that this was all real. Occam’s Razor — the belief that the simplest answer was the best. And magic was a much simpler explanation for all of these goings-on than the idea that her brain was creative enough to come up with such a vivid, detailed, consistent hallucination. (Or God, she supposed, giving the ceiling a brief glance. But what could she do if it was God? She’d just have to proceed as though it were magic, she thought ruefully, offering an odd little apology-prayer on the off-chance some religious figure was listening in.
But how did one lift a curse? She thought through all the stories she knew about curses — a lot of very bloody ones, she thought with some dismay, and a lot that ended bleakly. Blood and death were certainly popular endings to these kinds of stories. True love, as well, for the more cheerful ones — she thought unwillingly of Gavin, then scowled at that impulse. How dare he insinuate himself into her feelings like that. How dare he, in general, actually. Fancy not telling her all that information about her ancestor until he’d been forced to by the Laird himself. She chuckled to herself at that thought — Mary had quite a few hilarious stories about Laird Donal, being his mother. He’d been an absolute terror as a child and no mistake. A sickly boy who nevertheless managed to be an absolute handful every minute of his life. But her good humor couldn’t last, not when she was thinking about Gavin. Why hadn’t he told her who she was — or who her ancestor was, at least? Why had he stormed out of the hall like that instead of speaking to her like a normal human being?
Maybe it was the wine that gave her the courage, or maybe it was finally having gotten fed up with his nonsense, but with a decisive motion, Delilah got to her feet and put her boots on. It may well have been the middle of the night — there was a chill in the air creeping through the little window in her room, and the sounds of the castle had all but died down — but damnit, she was going to go and confront him. Right now — before she could lose her nerve, or overthink everything. She deserved better than the treatment she’d gotten at his hands. She deserved a real conversation, a real confrontation, and ideally, a sincere apology for being such a complete shit.
Highlander Cursed: A Scottish Time Travel Romance Page 12