The Legend of Lady MacLaoch

by Becky Banks

  MacLaoch had an expression that could only be recognized as humor: a light lift at the corner of his mouth and eyes.

  “Aye, a fuck ye to us both,” he said under his breath as he eyed the empty glass. “Fletcher. Know how to play the one about the seafarer?” he said, standing and putting his hand out gently to stop me from going.

  Fletcher made a noncommittal sound.

  “Good. Play it for me, aye?”

  He brightened at this. “Aye! Anything for the chief.”

  I watched Fletcher go back to his crew and pass along the request and begin to play before it fully sunk in that Fletcher had just called this MacLaoch Chief. As in, Chief of the Jerky people, I thought snidely in my whisky haze.

  I turned back toward MacLaoch to find him looking down at me, “Come,” he said, giving me his hand.

  I looked at it, then back to him. It seemed as if the jovial feel of the pub had actually caught up with this man.

  “I promise I won’ bite.”

  “Fine,” I heard myself say, and I let my hand slide into his. It was rough and firm and very warm.

  I felt the music catch me up into its rhythm as we moved into the dance area—the song was so hauntingly beautiful that the urge to move with it was undeniably strong. I felt the Celtic echoes of the Scottish pipes meld into one with the slow pace of the strings, and beneath it all the rhythmic pounding of the drums adding an exciting anxiety I couldn’t place. It was as if the sound of the drums was awakening a memory that was beginning to hum into life.

  “Have you danced to Gaelic music before?” he asked. “Except with my cousin, of course.”

  “No, and I wouldn’t consider being mauled by Kelly as dancing either.” I leaned back and looked up at him so that he could see that I was serious.

  “Well, this will be new for ye then,” he said. “Just relax an’ I’ll show ye how it’s done.”

  Before I could respond, he put one hand firmly at my lower back and the other kept its grasp around my hand and then he moved me. Really moved me, with the gentle strength and confidence of a man who knew exactly what he was doing. I closed my eyes, giving in, and moved with him. This, I thought, is how it should be.

  The MacLaoch was a different man than the one I’d interacted with the day before, as if he’d begun to believe that I was who I said I was, and in my reason for being there in Glentree.

  As the last notes of his whisky hummed in my system, I noticed small things about the MacLaoch—the faint smell of ocean and the blustery pastures of his skin. The look and feel of the soft wool of his sweater and the strength of his hands. He was a solid width and the perfect height, such that if I wanted to, I could rest my head just under his chin. This clansman had a compelling force of nature to him. Something in that thought made me think of what Fletcher had said earlier.

  I leaned back to look up at him again. “Why did Fletcher call you the chief?”

  He shrugged. “I suppose it’s because I am the chief.”

  “The chief of what?” I said as the obvious explanation hit me.

  He tipped his head back to look at me, as if to make sure I wasn’t having a laugh. I was so busy trying to make him a groundskeeper, Kelly’s caretaker/bodyguard, castle caretaker, and even clan historian that not once did I think of anything else, much less a chieftain—which I had assumed was a regally dressed person with a starched, affected attitude.

  “I see . . . You are the thirty-fourth clan chief of Clan MacLaoch.” I spoke softly, feeling my embarrassed blush start at my neck and cruise up to my hairline.

  “That I am,” was all he said, watching my reaction.

  All the things that transpired between us began to replay in my mind’s eye: My yelling at him, my physically threatening him, my trespassing. My busting into his castle, and later, my reading the letter from his uncle. And he’d paid my bar tab. Sure, his cousin was an ass, but . . .

  I could feel my skin getting hotter and my stomach getting queasier and looking him in the eye was getting harder and harder to do. I had to go, and right then was the time.

  “Whoa,” he said and firmed his grip on me, reading my expression exactly. “What are ye running from, lass?”

  I twisted my hand from his grip. “Please just let me go,” I mumbled, the queasiness getting stronger.

  He stopped dancing and released me.

  I turned from him and walked out the front door without a backward glance.

  CHAPTER 13

  I didn’t sleep well that night. I kept waking up thinking of all the things I had said and done to the man who was head of Clan MacLaoch.

  When I did sleep, it was a sleep filled with lucid dreams.

  One in particular stood out from the rest. I was standing at the water’s edge across from Castle Laoch, on the ill-fated Isle of Lady MacLaoch. I could see the castle in the distance, the steel gray of the still ocean water reflecting the light of the overcast sky. My feet were bare—the round, hard stone of the shore’s tumbled black rocks were beneath my feet—and the frigid water lapped at me gently.

  While I knew in my dream that it was my body I was in, in the same breath I knew I was not in it alone. Our hair was down and curling about us, alight on the on-shore breeze blowing gently about our face. We pushed it back and looked into the wind, the gauzy white of our ancient dress floating on the soft, moist ocean air.

  The woman within me was happy: someone had arrived. She could rest in peace now. I could feel the ease in her heart as if a great project, one that had consumed her in life and in spirit, was coming to an end. The door to her chapter was closing, while mine was just beginning.

  Her happiness caught me up—giddiness bubbling through us, we couldn’t wait any longer. Around the bend at the end of the rocky beach, he strode, and our body lit like a torch. Warmth and a soulful love bloomed within us at the sight of him, and we ran to him.

  I yearned with each stride to hold him once more to me, to feel his embrace. It felt as though I had waited centuries for his return, yet I knew in that place between reality and dreaming that it was I who was returning; he had been there all along.

  I started to recognize him, but before my sluggish, dream-addled mind could place him, a glint on my ring finger stopped me. I staggered in my dream, caught by the light reflected off the gold. The ring was a fine engraving of a thistle, and I felt I knew the clan crest; I looked closer, curiosity distracting me. I felt rather than knew that the ring upon my finger was mine, destined always for me.

  Yet, I had no one in my life that I felt so drawn to. Never had I felt this connection to another, and I hungered for it.

  In that moment, the woman who shared my dream left me. I was me, it was now.

  All the powerful feelings within me manifested into life the instant the arms of the man wrapped around me. He slid one hand into my hair and the other around my waist, pulling me close. I embraced him in return; it felt like the sharing of souls, each of us pouring a piece of ourselves into the other.

  I woke suddenly, my heart pounding.

  The man in the dream hovered on the edge of my consciousness, turning to vapor when I reached for him again.

  CHAPTER 14

  The next morning I woke as the first trickles of defused light came over the horizon. I’d slept little after the dream and, lying in bed, I stared at the ceiling, my mind on a racetrack. What had that dream been all about? I can’t believe the man I met yesterday was the MacLaoch chieftain. Oh lord, did I really shout at him and slam his whisky?

  I groaned and rolled over, stuffing my face and all my problems into the pillow.

  Worse than just being embarrassed, I was going to have to rectify the situation. My stomach churned, due in part to being slightly hung over but mainly to the thought of admitting to all the things that had transpired between us.

  Restless, my mind fully awake then and yammering away on my problems and how to fix them, I decided to get some fresh air.

  I tossed on clothes and jotted down a not
e for Carol, letting her know I was skipping breakfast, and shoved it under the door of the breakfast room. Outside, I felt a tad clearer in the head, with the crisp, foggy morning air filling my senses. I turned toward the downtown area, hoping there was a café open with Internet access. I needed to know more about this MacLaoch, and what it meant to be a clan chieftain in the twenty-first century.

  There was only one coffee shop in Glentree—a place that prized its tea—but it was open. Moments later, with a frothing cup of coffee, a scone (still warm from the oven), and a slow Internet connection on the café’s lone public computer all before me, I searched online for the thirty-fourth clan chief and came up with one Rowan MacLaoch. Links showed his name everywhere: parliamentary documents, witness testimony over escaped sheep, an old article mentioning him as the newest clan chieftain—and the youngest. The last link I clicked on was an article naming him as the benefactor of the Victor Ivandale Memorial Garden in Lassiemouth; Ivandale had been a fighter pilot who had died in action.

  The clan’s crest dotted many of the web pages I looked at, matching in complete detail the one on the ring in my dream. A medieval shield with a massive sword bisecting it, an abundant thistle bouquet to one corner, and encircling the entire thing, what looked like a decorative belt. The clan’s motto was inscribed in bold letters on the belt: A warrior unto death.

  Fitting, I thought, given what I knew of the clan’s history of fighting. It seemed, from my few interactions with him, that this chieftain still carried that fearsome trait in his blood.

  By far the most impressive report was from a Scottish Living article that pegged MacLaoch as the number-one richest clan in Scotland. Not only did it still have political sway, it was worth a fortune, due to its ownership of a large number of highly collectable and historically rich artifacts. Due, most likely, I thought, to the clan members’ pillaging habits in earlier centuries. No one had tried to take anything back, apparently, because the MacLaochs were a miserable lot with a curse on their heads.

  Despite that, I was the one feeling cursed—there was an underlying theme to all the things that I had read: the MacLaochs were a large group and governed by one man. He was a leader, protector, and land overlord, mentor and skirmish queller. He was the clan’s chieftain and his name was Rowan James Douglas MacLaoch. The list of indignant things I’d done to him ran through my mind yet again—all the way back to the first moment I laid eyes on him, threatening his person for having slapped me awake.

  Feeling queasy again and thoroughly stuffed full of information, I wrapped up my search and headed outdoors. Remembering signs on my way into town to a rare coral beach, Tràigh a’ Chorail, I headed back the way I came and then down the well-marked trail.

  The day was turning out overcast again and the short trail was sparsely populated, following the steely ocean’s edge, winding through cow pastures and over small hills.

  I made my way up the tall hill that jutted over the beach, which offered a 360-degree view of the shore below and the low-sloping, foggy mountains behind. The last little hill peaked and the white of the sand gleamed. If it weren’t so chilly, it would be just like an overcast day in some tropical paradise. The emerald-green of the pastures rolled down to meet the cream-colored sand, which spilled from the grass’s edge and into the ocean, revealing its true color—turquoise. Throw out a couple beach umbrellas and take its picture you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who would guess this was Scotland.

  But in person, it was all Scotland. The weather was a mirror of my mood, storm clouds threatening on the horizon and the wind blowing my curls around my face.

  I remembered the MacLaoch chieftain’s words as I’d danced with him the night before. “That I am,” he had said when I’d finally understood his true role in the clan. Those three words confirming that I had treated a Scottish dignitary about as well as I had an incoming college freshman. If I ever wanted to learn anything more about an Iain Eliphlet Minory, I was going to have to kiss and make up with this clan and its chief, no matter how brutal their ancestors may have been.

  Sitting in a protected rock outcropping overlooking the beach, I began mentally drafting an apology letter—I’d tell him in writing about myself, come clean on the true spelling of my ancestor’s last name, my research, and why I was doing it. Explain to him that it was just pure coincidence—that there was no relation that I knew of between the Minorys and my family name, Minary. I’d offer the possibility that they were brothers separated at birth, or cousins who were never invited to the same family reunions, or that this was just one of those freak coincidences, a strikingly similar name that differs by a single letter. I would elaborately and painstakingly explain the importance of a single letter difference.

  Being in the open was soothing, and the tedious activity of mentally drafting and editing my letter distracted me long enough that exhaustion snuck in.

  I hadn’t realized how tired I’d been until I jolted awake—no doubt my mind being alarmed that it’d allowed me to nap cradled in a rock outcropping, in a foreign country. Despite the stiffness that had settled in from my snoozing on rock and in the gentle drizzle, I felt better. Standing, I scrubbed my face to clear the remnants of fatigue.

  Back along the trail, I decided that I would head to the B&B, write my letter, and mail it. I was not sure I’d be able to face the chieftain in person and speak my words of apology aloud—a detailed letter would be the best way.

  I made it all the way back to the trailhead parking lot with my clear plan before it was sabotaged.

  A list of situations I would have rather found in the parking lot: all the contents of my suitcase strewn about, an angry mob of Gypsies, another date with Fletcher, or all of that added together. Instead, I returned to find Ice Empress Eryka and her black Car of Doom.

  Eryka’s face emerged over the frame of the open back door of an idling, tinted-window luxury car. She stepped one heeled shoe out of the car and looked me up and down. She was dressed as if she were headed off to work at a New York fashion magazine: second-skin pants, see-through white shirt (with black bra), and leather bomber jacket. Her hair was pulled back so tight I was surprised her lips didn’t blink.

  Instinctively I thought of Kelly and looked around. Eryka didn’t seem like she was dressed for a kidnapping, but I was taking no chances.

  “A word with you,” she said, pink lips highly glossed so that they looked like plumped pastries. “What are you doing here?” The ws in her speech sounded like vs and, to my untrained ear, she spoke her words like she had a mouth full of marbles.

  She held a cream-colored envelope in one hand. She stepped her other foot out of the car and slowly walked a circle around me in her four-inch pumps, somehow avoiding the multitude of potholes.

  Feeling like that question was typical of the people associated with the MacLaochs, I spit out, a little more harshly than needed, “Why? Is this MacLaoch land too?”

  “Ooh, tut-tut,” she said, coming to a stop in front of me and tapping my shoulder with the corner of the envelope. “No need to get upset. I was just asking vhy you are here, in this place, in Glentree.” She looked around us, gesturing with the envelope.

  There was something about this Eryka woman that set my teeth on edge, something about the way she spoke to me. As if I were a dolt or a small child and she were someone I should look up to and respect—all I wanted to do was knock her off her teeter-totter shoes into the muddy pothole behind her. She and Kelly were of one mind, it seemed—they both wanted the same thing. What it was, I couldn’t put my finger on, but I knew for sure that anyone associated with Kelly was someone I wanted nothing to do with.

  “Doing research.” I said, exercising some patience.

  “Mmmm,” she said and dragged the envelope down my arm. “What kind of research?”

  “Stop that.” I batted the envelope away, sending it fluttering onto the soggy ground.

  Eryka looked at it, then back to me. “What kind of research?”

  “F
amily research. And if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to it.” Patience thoroughly exercised, I walked off through the parking lot toward town.

  The woman had me fired up for no apparent reason, other than her attitude and her association with Kelly. With everything that had happened yesterday, the day before that, and particularly last night, I was already nursing a sore mood and in no way ready to deal with her.

  I heard Eryka’s car; it pulled up next to me. I watched my reflection disappear as the glossy window rolled down.

  Eryka looked me up and down, again. “I don’t know what they see in you,” she said disdainfully.

  I held my hands up, frustrated. “What? What do you want from me?”

  She shrugged. “Nothing.” Then she nodded back toward the parking lot. “That letter? It’s for you.”

  I stopped walking and watched as her car pulled away, the window rolling back up. I kept watching as the car picked up speed and disappeared around a corner before I went back to the parking lot and picked up the letter.

  The envelope flap was embossed with the MacLaoch crest; the paper had gotten soggy from sitting on the ground and the adhesive gave no resistance as I lifted the flap and gingerly withdrew the wet contents.

  While the ink had bled, making the once-black letters a purply-blue, the words were completely legible and their owner’s signature unmistakable.

  Ms. Nicole Baker ~

  I formally request your presence at Castle Laoch,

  at your earliest convenience.

  Sincerely yours,

  RJD MacLaoch

  My stomach did an acrobatic flip and I felt a mild case of anxiety come over me. This was regarding the night before, no doubt. It seemed that I would be hand delivering my apology letter after all.

  CHAPTER 15

  I arrived at the castle in the late afternoon with my letter in hand.

  The front entrance to the castle was much more open, welcoming, and grand than the back door I’d barged through the other day. The front entry hall opened directly onto the carpeted staircase and I immediately recognized the airy second floor from my prior, hasty departure. I made my way to the massive oak reception counter and the two women behind it.