by Becky Banks
“But we still don’t understand why Eryka loathes me,” I said, coming back around to the point at hand. “Are she and Kelly dating?” I asked.
“Dating? No.”
The implications of what Kelly and Eryka were doing hung in the air between us, neither of us wanting to mention that imagery.
“Now tha’ I know it’s ye that she’s aiming at,” he continued, “I think I have some idea on why she’s set her sights on ye.”
“Really? Enlighten me.”
“Eryka’s a jealous woman—” he said and broke off the thought as if checking himself.
“And?”
He was silent for a bit and then said, “Ye have what she wants.”
I thought about that. I have what she wants. What did I have?
“What do you mean I have what she wants? Being American? Not having a job, because that’s certainly not perfect. Curly hair?”
MacLaoch didn’t respond right away. I could feel the wall being built, once again, between us—building itself brick by brick.
“Doesn’t matter anyhow. She’s not in my employ anymore.”
“You fired her?”
“Aye, I did.”
“Oh.”
We were quiet the rest of the way back to Carol and Bill’s, each of us immersed in internal dialogues. Mine was very much on the hamster wheel of: He fired Eryka? What did he mean, I have what she wants, and should I be sure to look over my shoulder more often?
He, I had no doubt, was concerned about how much he had shared with me and was admonishing himself for all that he had divulged.
Rowan spoke again as we came to a stop at the B&B’s stoop. “Were ye able to get a dress for tomorrow?”
“I did. I’m actually getting one made at the dress shop down the way from here.”
“Is that with Wanda?” he asked. Small towns made the guessing easy.
“Yes, it is. Have you seen anything she’s done?”
“Aye, I’ve heard she’s quite good.”
“Yes,” I said as I fished my key out of my pocket. “The fabrics she has there are incredible, better than anything I’d be able to get from the dress shops. In a way, Eryka helped me out there.”
“Aye, I should have recommended her to ye . . . ” he said.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said in a rush, awkwardness replacing the ease we’d had between us not so long ago. “The dress she’s making me for tomorrow night is amazing. Wanda described it best—she said that you will be amazed because it’ll move like water against my skin and puddle around my ankles when it comes off.” I realized, too late, what I had just said. Aloud. I did not check his reaction. “Goodnight!” I rushed into the B&B, slamming the door behind me and leaping the stairs two at a time.
In my room, I threw my keys on the bed, light still off and just stood, then pinched the bridge of my nose in disbelief.
I crept to the window, staying in the shadows, and looked down to the front door. Rowan was standing there, hands in his pockets, face tilted up at the second floor. Then, slowly, a grin broke out on his face; he turned from the door and took his time walking down the sidewalk back to Castle Laoch.
CHAPTER 23
Monday arrived and the butterflies in my stomach almost made me lose my breakfast on the way to Wanda’s dress shop. Not only was I about to try on a dress hand made for me and that I would wear at a gala that night, but I’d realized that morning, thanks to Carol’s squeals about it, that I had no shoes and no jewelry besides my simple gold bangles. And even if everything superficial somehow turned out just dandy, I was walking into some big stuff tonight: the research opportunity of a lifetime, a very public date with a very public official and, not to mention, a centuries-old curse.
“Gute! You are here! Here is your dress!” Wanda exclaimed.
I instantly forgot all the worries I’d carried into her shop with me.
“It’s. It’s. Whoa.”
The dress hung simply on a hanger on a coatrack in the middle of the small shop, but as I closed the door behind me a faint draft caught the edge of the dress and it moved like liquid.
“Try, try!”
Wanda locked the door, pulled the drapes, and changed the door sign to say Closed. I tried on the dress and held my breath.
“Oh,” I breathed out.
The dress moved, whispering in harmony with the creamy gold of my skin. My copper curls showed off the subtle highlights in the icy green. I’d never felt so beautiful in my life—the dress literately floated against my curves like, yes, oil against water. The straps were gauzy, so they looked like tiny wings and finished the otherworldly feeling of the dress. Wanda hadn’t been kidding—I had no doubt that when I took the dress off, it would pool like water at my feet. I just hoped Rowan didn’t think that when he saw me.
Wanda nodded, beaming at me. “Gute, very gute. Now, the finishing touches,” she said and held out a white fur stole and silver shoes.
After trying on the dress for fit, I spent the rest of the day under Wanda’s watchful eye. Turned out that Wanda was the oldest of ten sisters and as much a wizard with hair and makeup as she was with cloth. At a quarter until seven, there was a rap on the door. Wanda left me to put on my shoes, and I took one last look at myself in the mirror as I did so. My red-stained lips were Wanda’s final accent for my ensemble—she said that she wanted people to hear what I had to say. Or at least look like they were listening.
When I stood up and looked to the door, my butterflies fluttered back in full force.
Up until this moment, I realized, I had been walking on the outside of Scottish culture. Only there, standing at the front of the shop, was true Scotland in my world.
The MacLaoch chieftain stood tall in his formal clan regalia. Extra fabric from his kilt draped over his shoulder; there was a decorative knife at his calf, and at his waist, a fur pouch. The silver brooch that secured the red tartan to his black evening coat at his shoulder matched the one on the waist bag, both emblazoned with the clan crest.
“Hi,” I said, realizing that I had just raked him head to toe with my eyes. His expression was one of a man trying to hold and catch his breath at the same time.
“Good evening Ms. Baker,” he said quietly.
Wanda stood between us beaming—then, realizing I hadn’t moved, came over to usher me to him. She propelled us both out the door with exclamations that she had work to do for my next dress.
Rowan helped me into the dark chauffeured car waiting outside the dress shop and slid in after me.
“God help me, I cannae imagine what the next one will look like. I’m not sure I can take it,” he mumbled as we got under way.
“What?” I asked, not sure that I’d heard him correctly.
“Nothing. Ye look well this evening, Ms. Baker,” he revised.
“Thank you,” I said, still taking in the full ensemble of his attire. “You look nice, too—though I have to say it’s the first time I’ve been out with a man in a skirt,” I said and smiled, waiting for the dirty look that was sure to follow.
Rowan cut his glance over to me. “Skirt? Oh aye, you’re having a laugh,” he said, and looked away.
“That I am. Really though, I’ve never seen a full evening suit with a kilt.” I touched a finger to the woolen fabric. “Seems like I should be wearing a tartan and not mink.” Realizing I was touching his thigh, I snatched my hand back and instead worked my nervous fingers in the large fluff of my stole, the fur moving under my breath as I looked down at it.
“I think you will be excused. You will not disappoint for sure.” Then, as if just remembering something, he said, “Though I had thought to bring you something.” He lifted a black felt box that had been camouflaged on the black leather seat between us in the darkened cab and opened it.
“Those had better be on loan or cubic zirconium,” I choked out. The necklace was a cascade of diamond lace dripping into a single teardrop-shaped stone the size of my thumb. The earrings were two more tears.
“You’re kidding,” I said, but did, pulling my hair out of the way.
As soon as the weight of the stones was around my neck and safely secured, there was no doubt they were real. I touched them, and my fingers warmed.
I turned to face him. “Rowan,” I said softly, “please tell me these are rented.”
“Why?” he said, and placed a large drop at my ear. I was no help.
“Because, these are worth millions!” I whispered, exasperated.
Who the hell gave diamonds to a woman on their first date?
“No, Cole,” he said. The single syllable of my name was infused with the weight and emotion of what he was giving me. “These are not worth a thing.” And he fastened the other drop at my other ear. Rowan’s fingers ran warm along my jaw, tracing, memorizing. “They are priceless.” He looked at my lips, then back into my eyes. Slowly, I felt him shift, his fingers stronger against my chin, encouraging.
Just then, the back door of the car swung open and the driver announced our arrival.
Reality poured over me like ice water splashed in my face. I hadn’t heard the car come to a stop, much less known we had arrived.
CHAPTER 24
Rowan kept me at his elbow as he worked the grand marble ballroom, and I was one part glad for his constant presence and one part uneasy that I couldn’t just escape without notice. It was comforting that he guided me through the intricacies of meeting the other clansmen, him murmuring under his breath who they were and what they did for work before we actually approached them to shake hands. What made me uneasy was that everyone seemed to know my name before I said it, and when those from the older generations addressed me, they called me Lady Minory with a bow and a kiss to my hand.
These greetings made Rowan’s arm under my hand stiffen. “It’s Ms. Baker,” he said each time in a clipped voice before moving us along.
As we got moments to ourselves here and there, Rowan explained to me that, earlier in the day, at the initial Gathering meeting, Clive the clan historian had something fresh to share in his opening speech. A Minory had been discovered.
That Minory was me.
I felt a chill ripple through me as we moved through the room; I really was like a lamb who had been invited into a den of lions. The head of which would either protect me or feed me to them as dinner, I still wasn’t sure.
After a while MacLaoch said, under his breath, “There he is. Come, Ms. Baker, there is someone I think you will be fond of meeting.”
Dr. Edwin Peabody was a short man with glasses, thinning brown hair and, I’d learn quickly, an infectious attitude. He stood with his hands clasped behind him, rocking softly back and forth, observing the room at large until he saw us approaching from the other side of the dance floor, and then he smiled broadly.
“Oh-ho-ho! This is the fabled Ms. Nicole!” he said and gave my hand a vigorous shake.
“It’s fabled now?” I said, smiling back at him. I glanced at Rowan; he was grimacing.
“Dr. Peabody is a professor with an American university—Vassar, is it?” Rowan asked.
“Yes, yes, but please just call me Ed.”
My curiosity was certainly piqued. “What do you teach?”
I felt Rowan turn as someone grabbed his attention on his other side.
“Oh, nothing of consequence,” Ed said, waving his hand. “My passion is in what I don’t teach or, rather, what I wish I could be teaching: paranormal science.”
“But I’m sure you could be allowed to teach paranormal sciences at Vassar,” I said encouragingly.
“Oh yes, surely if I put my mind to it, though I teach microbiology and unfortunately do so quite well enough that I’m unable to do much else. But alas! My hobby, or encore career, as my wife has started calling it, is the study of the metaphysical, and most recently my research has been on my clan. This clan,” he said, his eyes gleaming with excitement.
I smiled back at him, guessing at what was making him glow. “I take it that you are studying the family curse?” I noted that Rowan was still engaged.
“Why yes! And it’s extremely fascinating!”
“So what part of it are you studying, exactly?”
“Energy!”
“Energy? As in, metaphysical energy?”
“Yes! First, are you familiar with the concept that energy is neither created nor destroyed?” he asked, launching immediately into a subject he was obviously passionate about.
“Yes, somewhere in my six years of college, I believe I took a physics course. Energy is merely transferred?”
“Well . . . ” he said, hesitating, “yes and no, but for this purpose let’s say yes. In the case of metaphysical energy, it is essentially the energy left of—oh, I suppose I should ask if you are devout in any religion?”
“As in, a devout something or other who wouldn’t believe in the supernatural?”
“Ah, yes.”
“No, I am not, Dr. Peabody.”
“Please, call me Ed.”
I smiled. “Alright Ed, please continue.”
And he did.
“Every being, when it dies, leaves its mark. An energy fingerprint, if you will—one that, over time, becomes consumed by life and the tangled web of energy consumption through birth and death.”
“Wait, I don’t follow you. Energy consumption through birth and death? What do you mean?”
“You see, as human beings, we are full of energy, potential and kinetic; it goes down into the molecular structure of our selves, beyond the cells. We are, in some circles of opinion, just manifestations of energy.”
“Oh. OK . . . ”
“So when things die, since energy is neither created nor destroyed, some of that energy is left behind and some of that energy isn’t consumed again by life.”
“Consumed again by life?”
“Think of a stag that falls dead in the forest of old age. His body degrades through time as mold and fungus and bugs consume him. Those then feed the soil when they die or defecate, pardon the description. Plants then consume the nutrients in the soil, animals feed upon those plants, and so on. The energy is passed on through the cycle of life and death. But there is residual energy that cannot be consumed, and that energy is what makes the metaphysical imprint. Energy like that which makes up the waves in the mind or, as some refer to it, the soul.”
“Oh. I see,” I said, and more or less, I did.
“So my work in researching the legend of Lady MacLaoch and the Minory seafarer has been most fascinating,” Ed said. “I did quite of bit of other metaphysical energy research in the United States before I began our clan curse research. About ten years ago, a friend of mine who led rather hokey ghost tours around town had an actual energy meter. He accompanied me on some of my early grave searches. It was then that we discovered, well, I discovered, that when people die they leave dissipated energy markers.” Ed was still smiling. “My friend, to my surprise—and his too, perhaps—discovered that his energy meter actually worked. So, it is most fortunate that you are here!” Ed clapped his hands.
I couldn’t help myself—I rolled my eyes. “You can’t be serious.” I had been hoping that a man of science wouldn’t be interested in dragging me into the curse.
“I get that quite a bit! And yes, I am! You see, Rowan has been most kind to us—my family and I are his clansmen, after all—and has allowed me to meter him.”
“Really? That Rowan?” I turned and located the chieftain across the room with a tumbler of whisky in his hand, in conversation with two older men.
“It was odd,” Ed continued as though he hadn’t heard me, “because he is carrying metaphysical energy beyond the meter range I had expected.”
When he didn’t explain further, I asked what he meant.
“Well, from the age of the legend, I’d calculated that the energy fingerprint would be low. Lady MacLaoch watched the violent death of her betrothed a millennium ago. But Rowan was off the meter.”
“But what does that even mean?” I whispered, as people danced in front of us, swirling tartan and silk flickering our view of the chieftain across the ballroom floor.
“I, too, wondered if there might be some deep meaning,” Ed said, rocking back on his heels, “that would be exciting. But of course, I put my serious mind to it, and it probably just means that he was in close proximity to someone who died, and died violently.”
I sucked in air and turned back to Ed, expecting him to suddenly laugh and tell me he was joking. He did not. “As in, he killed someone violently?”
“No, not necessarily, but he has seen someone die by violence, and since he’s a man who has served on clandestine missions for queen and country, I’ve no doubt where he has seen it.”
I nodded. Of course. That made sense—perfect, logical sense—and I remembered Rowan mentioning to me that he had in fact lost a friend he considered a brother. “Did you ask him about it?” I asked.
“I did. I’m afraid I wasn’t so composed about it. I was quite sure I was going to see one number, and so when I saw another, I more or less accused him of something quite violent. I’m embarrassed when I look back on it, but Rowan was quite at ease about my outburst—I suspect now that he knew what my meter was going to do before I did.”
“Wow,” I sighed. “I’m not sure that’s what he was hoping we’d end up talking about when he said I’d be interested in meeting you.”
Ed’s own outward energy lowered, and I heard his sober professorial voice. “Yes, I’m sure he was thinking that I’d share my theories on what we could likely expect from the modern-day Minory . . . ”
“My family name was Minary, though,” I said, heading off that thought at the pass. I was sure by then that I’d never know about my Minary heritage while waist deep in Minory lore.
He waved my protest off as though it were a fly. “Yes, one-letter difference. I heard that argument—our chieftain lobbied hard in your defense this morning after Clive spoke.” He laughed at the memory. “I dare say Clive thought that those moments when he was retelling the story of finding you and how you fit into the legend were his last. Clive said, ‘With her return, our chieftain is truly saved,’ and Rowan stood.” Ed clapped his hands to indicate something speeding away. “Clive skittered like a field mouse off the podium then!”