“Hush,” her sister said softly.
“But—”
Perpetua gently but firmly patted her palm. “We don’t want to bore Miss O’Hara. It appears she has other things to worry about. As usual, the gentlemen have gone through all the food and they’re back to fighting again.”
Hope gave a slow, distracted nod. “I’ll get the chocolate mocha pound cake.”
“But what was his name?” Morwenna demanded.
“MacLeod. Ronan MacLeod.”
A little sigh emerged from the three sisters in unison. “MacLeod,” Perpetua said slowly. “The name sounds familiar. I wonder if he was related to the Portree MacLeods by any chance.”
“But why did he go?” Morwenna persisted.
“Because it was best. For both of us,” Hope whispered.
“Oh dear, they’re fighting again.” Honoria tugged at Hope’s hands, pointing to the meeting room. “Talk to them, Miss O’Hara. Tell them you’ll send them home without any cake if they don’t behave.”
Hope sighed as Archibald Brown delivered a resounding left hook to his opponent, who looked perfectly delighted to answer in kind. Two chairs toppled and a tweed jacket went flying.
Was there something in the water?
She was about to intervene in the altercation when Gabrielle touched her shoulder. “It is the telephone for you. It is your friend Jamee McCall. Now you will talk and I will see to these men who act like little boys.”
Hope sent a last anxious glance at Morwenna as she left the room to take her call. “Jamee, is that you?”
“I’m surprised you remember my name. An odd sort of friend you are. You never return any of my calls.”
“It’s been a little…complicated here.”
“Hope, is something wrong?”
Hope sighed. She had never been able to keep secrets from her oldest friend. “So, Lady McCall, how does the noble life of ease suit you?”
“Noble life?” Hope’s American friend, married for less than a year to the twelfth laird of Glenlyle, gave an audible snort. “I’ve married into chaos. It was bad growing up with four brothers, but nothing prepared me for Glenlyle at Christmas. We’ve got half-stitched teddy bears stacked on every table, scraps of tartan jammed in every corner, and as usual, Ian is working himself to pieces.”
Hope chuckled. “I suspect that both of you are loving every second.”
“Actually, I do believe we are. But what about you? How is business? Have you had any more visitors?”
Hope stared out at the front salon. Archibald Brown was struggling to his feet, and Morwenna and her two sisters were brushing off his jacket and tie. He had been toppled by a left hook from his adversary, who disagreed with his stock assessments.
Life was never dull in Glenbrae.
“We’ll manage.”
“That’s not what I asked, my wonderful, infuriating friend.”
“I know it wasn’t.”
“If you have room, Ian and I would love to come visit. We’ve been planning to come down for a long stay. We could leave just as soon as we finish the last shipment of bears for Windsor. My brothers are dying to see the place, too. I’m sure they would be delighted to join us.”
She waited. An unspoken question hung in the air.
Hope’s fingers tightened on the telephone. She wasn’t ready for Jamee to see Glenbrae House until it was full of paying guests. She wanted desperately to succeed here. “I’d love to see you and Ian. Your brothers, too, of course. But right now…things are a little hectic.”
“You’re full?”
Hope bit her lip, trying not to lie. “Actually, we have some German visitors due any minute.”
“That’s wonderful, Hope. Are they business travelers? People who will be impressed by the detailed restoration work and the fine antiques you’ve gathered?”
“Not exactly.”
The last of the investment club members were filing down the path at the front of the house, and Jeffrey waved to Hope from the stairwell. He was carrying a microphone, a black light and Hope’s voluminous costume. He pointed at his watch.
Showtime, Hope thought. “I’ve got to go, Jamee. Give my love to Ian, will you? And to all those cute little bears.”
“But, Hope, I…”
“Talk to you soon, Jamee.” Feeling guilty, Hope hung up before her friend could ask any more pointed questions.
She watched her friends vanish up the glen and suddenly felt empty inside.
“Hope, we don’t have much time.” Jeffrey held out her costume, grinning. “We need one last run-through with all the modifications and this version should be quite something to remember.” He paused. “Are you listening? Hope?”
“Ready to go, Jeffrey.”
“Grand. Just break a leg, all right?”
“I certainly hope not.”
“I’M SO GLAD we saw you there by the loch. Your name is MacLeod, you said?” Morwenna Wishwell smiled up at the tall man in a well-worn tartan.
“So it is. Do you need my help getting back home?”
Morwenna took his arm. “That would be lovely. It isn’t far, but in the dark it’s easy to stumble.” Morwenna Wishwell hadn’t missed a step yet, and her feet looked entirely steady. In fact, all three sisters looked hearty beyond their years.
But MacLeod was happy to stay far from Hope’s sight. He had found random footprints by the rear gardens and a broken lock on a lower window, but nothing that should have left him so convinced of her danger.
He should have been putting his mind to finding a way home. There were people back in his own time who needed him. He hadn’t the leisure to flounder about here in a world of talking boxes, bath bubbles and a woman who turned his soul upside down.
It was time to go home, just as he had promised her.
He stared at the black hills, ignoring a black, racing regret.
“Mr. MacLeod? Is something bothering you, dear boy?”
Dear boy. No one had ever called him that. He tried to be angry at the delicate white-haired lady, but couldn’t. He suspected a very keen mind beneath that fragile manner, and there was something oddly compelling in her tone.
“Perhaps.”
“We can help.” Morwenna patted his arm. “My sisters and I are very skilled in managing things.”
“What kind of things?”
“Oh, whatever you like, my dear boy. Trees, weather. Even people on occasion, though they are much harder.”
MacLeod felt an uneasy pricking at his shoulders. “And how do you…manage these things?”
They walked past the stone fence into the greater darkness of the forest. Somewhere an owl called, once and then again, the sound echoed by the sharp bark of a fox.
MacLeod had never heard any owls here in the glen. Nor had he seen any foxes.
His uneasiness grew as he heard another shrill bark from a blur of white along the cliffs. MacLeod watched the sleek form race up the glen, then vanish. “What was that?”
“A white fox, I believe. He lives up there in the mist.”
“I never saw such a creature.”
“Not many people have. Now, what were we discussing?”
“How you manage things.”
“Oh, yes. There are always variables, influences, external factors.”
“I do not understand,” he said.
“No, of course you wouldn’t. They didn’t speak of such things in your time, did they?”
He spun about, then froze. “What did you say?”
The woman’s laugh was gentle as the moonlight just peeking above the cliffs. “In your time, young man. Your time, which is not this time.”
Foreboding gathered, pressing against his chest. “You know?”
“All of it, I’m afraid. How you came in the storm and how you saved Hope O’Hara from falling. You performed even better than we had—” She stopped, cleared her throat. “It must be a terrible shock to you, coming to this world.”
The wind crept across his neck. “
You did this. You brought me here,” he said hoarsely. “You worked the magic and cast the black spells.”
She smoothed his arm companionably. “Nothing black, I assure you. Never that. And ‘spell’ doesn’t really describe our methods. There is hard science, careful calculation and the balanced focus of the mind. Yes, the mind is the most important tool of all.” Her eyes widened, and MacLeod thought he saw a tiny crescent moon held captive there.
“I do not care about why or how. I want to go back. Now.” He felt rooted to the damp earth, claimed by the glen that stretched dark and strange around him. He could not be part of it.
Not his glen. Not now, as the moon rose chill through the trees.
“Go back? After all you’ve seen?”
He laughed bitterly. “Because of all I’ve seen.”
“Logical, I suppose. And what about Hope?”
MacLeod watched clouds trail over the moon. Memories of her touch, her laugh, her soft, broken sounds of passion, assailed him. “What about her?”
The woman sighed and shook her head. “So hard. Always so impatient, but most of all with yourself. You will have to change that.” She murmured a phrase, lilting and archaic words that made him turn in shock.
“You speak the old tongue?”
“Oh, yes. An older tongue than even you know, dear boy.” She added another phrase.
“You are sidhe.” It was both praise and accusation.
“We are…many things. Leave it at that.” The moon deepened in her eyes, a silver lantern that soothed him, compelled him, offering memory or forgetfulness.
He blinked, trying to clear his head. Trying to remember what he had asked. “I cannot stay. I am no part of this place.” He heard the pain in his voice.
“You are what you choose to be, Highlander.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Not easy. Never easy.” Suddenly there was steel in her words. Steel and anger. “Not for those who remember. Not for those charged to hold the legends against time.”
Something made MacLeod look down and touch her frail shoulder. “None can do it so well as you, I ween.”
A smile tugged at her lips, and mischief hung all around her. “In that you’re right, MacLeod of Glenbrae.” The scrutiny sharpened. “So you will leave her? Walk away as if you’d never met, never touched, never dreamed?”
“What do you know of that?” he demanded angrily.
“Enough,” she said calmly. “Now answer.”
He turned. “I must.” Again the wind touched his hair, and this time he could have sworn it held the first flakes of snow. “I must.”
“You will break her heart if you go.”
He glared ahead into the night. “She will be better without me.”
The trees shivered. “Just as well. Hope O’Hara is weak, after all. Not a match for one like you.”
“She is not weak,” he whispered. “She is fire and steel, more beauty than a man deserves to hold.”
“But a temper, nevertheless. She would curse your days and plague your nights.”
But what nights, he thought. What passion to share and sweetness to give. “Her temper is no worse than mine,” he said gruffly.
“And she is busy. Always fussing about her inn, always interfering in the lives of her friends. There would be no rest for you.”
Snowflakes whispered across his face. No rest. Nor would he want it any other way with Hope O’Hara.
But his will was cold and unflinching. “I cannot stay. I have duties of my own, given by a king. Hate him, I must, but an oath cannot be broken or all honor is lost.”
A low cottage was before them now, the long, overhanging eaves dusted with snow. A lamp burned in one window, drawing him as if in a dream.
“Honor.” She said the word in the old tongue in a way that made his skin tighten. “Now, there’s a word few men speak of today.” She stood at the end of the path, studying him. “And you wonder how they fare, back in your time. You worry that there will be harm or loss by your actions.”
“Do you see everything, mistress?”
“Much, dear boy. Very much.” With a sigh, she moved to the window. With one finger she drew a circle in the frost veiling the pane. Then she blew faintly. “Look, then. Stare within and see how they fare without you.”
“But I can’t…” MacLeod stopped as the circle began to glow with dim images.
He saw his groom, surrounded by villagers. The boy pointed to the fields, speaking with excitement and new maturity. Those around him listened, nodding.
“They will be fine, you see.” The woman’s voice was a rich hum of sound. “You are not needed there for a while.”
MacLeod shoved a hand through his hair. “And I am needed here?”
“There are factors we did not consider. Variables. Danger…”
He turned tensely. “Danger to her?”
“Yes—no.” She made an angry sound. “We cannot see, no matter how we look.”
“You must keep her safe,” he said fiercely. “Give me your word on it.”
The circle on the window faded into melting tracks of water. “We cannot. That is why we called you, MacLeod of the Isles, MacLeod of Outremar and the Crusade. She needs a warrior, a hero.” She stepped back into the shadows and pulled a long canvas sack from the bushes. “Here. You may require this.”
After a moment’s reluctance, MacLeod raised his hands. The sack was smooth and heavy beneath his fingers. “What is it?”
“You’ll find out soon enough. Now you’d better go. Tonight she will have need of the King’s Wolf.”
He made a flat, bleak sound. “But who will protect her from me?”
“Give her one month, MacLeod of the Isles. Keep her safe until the moon waxes and wanes one cycle.”
MacLeod raised his head, watching the moon caught in the dark arms of a tree. Again the high cry of an owl filtered through the glen.
There was no answer behind him.
“Hello?”
He turned to find the windows dark, the lantern gone. Silence gripped the little clearing, and no living thing moved save himself.
He shivered, touched by something beyond his knowing. It was not fear but comprehension that made him step back and turn away without speaking.
Give her one month, MacLeod of the Isles. Keep her safe.
The trees dipped. One month, we ask of you.
The silent urging brushed his face like snow, though he fought its charmed, faerie pull.
Follow your heart, Highlander. Now, before your time runs out, as ours did.
He felt a sudden premonition of danger somewhere in the darkness.
Hope…
He turned and ran while a fox cried shrilly in the night.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
SKY AND LOCH HAD BLURRED into black as Hope took her place at the top of the stairwell, clad head to toe in her luminous costume.
Outside, snow drifted down and wind played through the glen. Then an engine backfired and Gabrielle poked her head excitedly from the kitchen.
“They’re coming! Dieu, there must be twenty of them. Young and old. Big and small. In a bus, they come.” Gabrielle seized Hope’s hand and dragged her toward the back stairway. “Come, you must hurry. Vite, vite.”
Hope rolled her eyes, feeling more dishonest by the second. “How do you say ‘boo’ in German?”
“Forget this boo. You will keep to the plan that Jeffrey has given,” Gabrielle said sternly.
“Fine, fine, let’s just get it over with.” Hope suddenly frowned. “Where is Banquo, by the way? If he charges through the room and knocks down all the wiring, we’re sunk.”
“Already taken care of,” Gabrielle said smugly. “I put him in his cage for the night.”
“Has everyone else gone?”
“Every last graying head. Though I wish one younger man were not gone,” Gabrielle murmured.
Hope pretended she had not heard.
The lights flickered, then went out, as pre
arranged. Hope slid her hood into place as ghostly light rippled off her full-length skirt. Thunder boomed down the staircase, her signal to appear.
She prayed that she wouldn’t catch her foot again, topple down the stairs and break her neck.
Cold wind rushed past her face. Hope turned, sensing a presence nearby. “Banquo?” she whispered. “Is that you?”
When the silence held, she shrugged. Nerves, she told herself.
Another peal of thunder cascaded through the hall.
The German tourists stood in a huddle by the door, staring upward. Suddenly Hope felt the drama of the moment. If they wanted a ghost, then she would give them one.
MACLEOD RAN, ignoring the branches that slapped at his arms and chest. A warning beat in his heart as he shot across the field, passed the loch’s stony edge and plunged through the black orchard.
No owl cried to greet him.
No fox barked from the cliffs.
The earth itself seemed to mock him, hindering his progress and catching at his feet. And as MacLeod ran, his fear grew apace.
Give her one month, MacLeod of the Isles. Keep her safe until the moon waxes and wanes one cycle.
No time to make sense of their odd speech. No time to understand what magic they had worked to bring him here.
Only Hope mattered.
Glenbrae House was before him when he made out the prints of running feet. From the woods they came, flying along the stone fence toward the south wall of the house. MacLeod tossed the canvas sack over his back and fell to one knee.
The prints stopped abruptly in the middle of a dark tangle of holly vines, as if the runner had vanished into air.
Frowning, he scanned the lawn and the stable beyond.
When he looked up, fear roiled into fury.
High above, a window lay open, its long lace curtains flapping in the wind. MacLeod drew back, just able to make out a black shape vanishing over the sill.
Follow your heart, Highlander.
Now, before your time runs out, as ours did.
With a ragged curse he peeled open the sack and ran his hands over the smooth, curved wood inside.
SHOWTIME.
Hope’s heart pounded as she gripped the stair rail.
Draycott Everlasting: Christmas KnightMoonrise Page 18