“Ye’re a MacLeod,” he said softly, not terribly surprised. He put his other hand beneath her chin and tilted it up. “Of course, they would send someone tae me who shared the cousin-red.”
She looked confused. “Cousin-red? Oh. Blood.” She swallowed again. Color was beginning to flood her cheeks. Too much of it. “Yes, I’m a MacLeod. At least, my mother was.”
“And what are ye called?”
“Taffy. Tafaline, really, but I prefer Taffy.” She peered at him in the deepening twilight. Her breathing had not slowed and she was showing some signs of alarm at his fingers, which remained tangled in her hair and beneath her chin.
“Taffy,” he repeated, tasting the syllables. He wasn’t surprised by her words. They were as his inner dream had predicted.
“And you are Malcolm, the piper, aren’t you?” It was just barely a question. “And this is really Scotland in sixteen-hundred and forty-four—and those were Campbells chasing us.”
“Aye. You kenned that, did ye?” He reached out and caught a second tuft of her golden hair. He stared, mesmerized as it curled about his blistered fingers. He tugged experimentally and then started to wind the tress about his fist in the manner of a distaff.
“Yes. I saw their banner and—Malcolm?” She stepped forward a pace as he wound her hair tighter. This was no fairie, no apparition that had come to aid him. Unable to resist, he bent down to take a tiny taste of his beautiful, human savior.
As he suspected, she was sweet. She was also very near collapsing now that the battle rage had worn off, so he contented himself with only the smallest of touches before releasing his hold upon her. His body ached to do more, but Malcolm fought his baser impulses down.
“My gratitude tae ye,” he whispered, suddenly thanking the still-folk for more than just his life.
Taffy knew that at various times in history, kissing had been used as an ordinary mode of casual salutation, rather than any special endearment between lovers. But she felt sure that wasn’t the case in seventeenth-century Scotland, where Puritans had outlawed kissing, even between mother and child. A single look at Malcolm’s face assured her that the piper was feeling anything but casual. The emotion there might be gratitude or excitement—or even something wholly different—but whatever it was, it would have to wait for another time. In spite of her determined struggle, Taffy feared that she was going to be ill.
“Excuse me,” she gasped, dropping her rifle and rushing for the cover of a mountain ash. The trees limbs obligingly parted to let her pass.
“Lass?”
“I’m fine,” she managed before being sick. She added a moment later when the spasms subsided: “I’m just not used to killing people.” Or faerie magic. Or flying through time. Or kissing strange men.
“Are ye not then?” At last he seemed surprised. Surely it was surprise and not amusement that colored his voice! “Ye’ve certainly a natural talent for it. Must be the MacLeod blood.”
“So it seems,” she muttered unhappily, thinking of the men she had shot without any thought, other than that they were an obstacle between Malcolm and freedom. What had happened to her?
“Well, they wrought long and difficultly for such an end. And ‘twas a kinder end for the Campbells than any they ever gave an enemy. Dwell not long on the subject. They are traitors to Scotland and wished us dead—either they had tae fall in battle or we did.”
Taffy didn’t answer and after a moment there was a rustling of shrubbery and then a warm, and oddly proprietary hand rested gently on the back of her neck. Taffy fished out a handkerchief and wiped her mouth hastily as she gave her companion a reproachful glance.
Wasn’t the day sufficiently cursed with bloodshed? Did Malcolm need to see her vomiting and wearing an ugly dress, with her hair all about like a birch broom? Why didn’t the ground just open and swallow her?
There was a sudden trembling beneath her feet, as though the soil thought to oblige her with her request, but Malcolm lifted her up off of it. He set her on a flat-topped stone where her sliced skirt fell open revealing her white shift.
Malcolm didn’t notice. He was frowning down at the earth, his grip tight.
Taffy swallowed. What had they been speaking of? Oh yes! The Campbells and being morally stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea. She found it very hard to concentrate with his hands upon her. All her senses seemed located beneath his burning palms where the flesh prickled with unnatural heat.
“There is that fact in mitigation, I suppose. Though I am not a Scotswoman.”
Malcolm looked up from the now-calm ground and Taffy looked down at it. The quaking had hidden the evidence of her upset stomach, she was glad to see.
“Ye are Sassenach? Do ye regret saving me then?” Malcolm’s voice was neutral, but the hands on her waist were not relaxing their grip.
“No. Those Campbells are a right pot of poison. Especially that she-devil who leads them.” Taffy looked up from the mercifully barren soil into his face, and in the last of the daylight she saw his lips quirk, probably at her strange speech. Certain idioms did not translate well into Gaelic.
“I’m speaking Gaelic,” she said aloud, surprised and pleased. She knew that she should have been shocked as well, but was too tired to manage any more astonishment.
“Aye. Though very strange Gaelic it is, too.” Malcolm plucked her off of her rock, took her arm in a gentle grip, and led her back into the clearing. “If it is too difficult we may converse in the Latin, French, or Sassan tongue.”
“What? The Gaelic is fine. Or Scots. I think I can speak in all of them,” she answered without thinking. The plants were making way for them!
“Ah! We’ve had company,” he said. “A pity that they couldnae fetch my pipes as well.”
Newly alarmed, Taffy searched the darkening glen. Immediately she spotted her satchels and camera, which were laid down next to her discarded rifle.
“How did they get here?” she demanded.
“The still-folk brought them, of course.”
“Still-folk? Where—the lantern, too! Oh no!” she exclaimed in a failing voice.
“What of it?”
“It was my marker. For the door home,” she said hollowly. “I can find the copse, I think, but without a marker I don’t know if I can rediscover the door. It was set so tight in the mountain face that there was barely even a seam to set it apart.”
“Dinnae trouble yerself, lass. When the time is right, the road for us shall be revealed.”
“And when might that be? I saved you, didn’t I? The curse is broken. I have to go back now. My father will be worried…They will let me go back, won’t they?” she asked, as Malcolm guided her to her neatly stowed gear. Her movements were made clumsy by her sudden trembling. “I won’t have to shoot anyone else, will I? Because I really would rather not do that again.”
Malcolm picked up his weapons and stowed them away. “I cannae say. There is likely something that we must do for the still-folk before we can depart. They fetched us here for a reason—and I doubt it was tae kill Campbells. There are plenty of men tae do that work for them.” Malcolm urged her down to the grass. “Set, lass. Ye’re chittering in the knees.”
“Oh, thank you. I think I had better sit. But I don’t understand. What else could they want?”
“Is it possible that you have brought some bread somewhere in those great, bulging bags?”
Taffy blinked at the change of subject, for a moment completely uncomprehending.
“Of course. That one there has food—and drink,” she added, relieved that she had thought to include a flask of whisky. She felt the need of a revivifier.
Malcolm grunted in pleasure as he untied the lacing and found the bounty within.
“I have no’ eaten since the day afore last. And ye need some meat as well.”
“I need a drink,” she muttered, plucking out the silver bottle and bolstering her courage with a largish swallow. The fiery taste nearly shriveled her tongue. There was a mom
ent when her twitching stomach threatened to reject the panacea, but it apparently had had enough upheaval for one night and let the Scots’ water of life keep its place inside her.
She handed the flask to Malcolm and laid back on the grass. She closed her eyes on the encroaching darkness, as though she could wish the present away. Almost, that seemed a possibility.
“Ah! Highland whisky,” he said with satisfaction after taking a hearty swallow.
“You can tell? By taste?” she asked, momentarily diverted.
“Aye, that I can. There’s heiland scotch and lowland scotch, and like the men, there’s no mistaking the character of either. Poor lowland villagers, weary of the mirky barley-bree they brew and living in their muddy huddles.”
“I live in a huddle,” she volunteered after a moment. “A large one. It isn’t muddy, though.”
“And the name of your huddle?” He took another swallow of whisky.
“London,” she said baldly. “And recently, New York.”
“London?” he stared at her and then shook his head. “You haven’t the look of a true Sassenach, lass. Too tall. Too bonnie. That ye are a Yorkshire lass I can more readily believe.”
Taffy felt herself blush and was grateful for the dim light. She didn’t try and correct his geography.
“What manner of thing might the still-folk want from me?” she asked again, ignoring his compliment since she couldn’t think of how to respond. “Can I do it soon, do you think? Before morning?”
“From us,” he corrected. “They need us both, I think, or some other event would have occurred.”
“From us then.”
When Malcolm didn’t answer, she cracked open an eye to see what he was about. It was hard to observe clearly in the twilight, but she felt his steady gaze resting upon her, assessing her health and nerves.
“Well?” she demanded in a stronger voice, lest he think her too fragile for the truth.
“Mayhap a night’s rest would be best afore facing any more difficult things,” he said, apparently unimpressed with her tone, before biting into one of her sandwiches and chewing with relish.
“That is not an answer that will send me into comfortable sleep,” she informed him. “I can’t spend the night with you. It would be scandalous. What would people say?”
He chuckled softly.
“Nay. That it isn’t, for ye cannae be wandering about wi’ Campbells so close by. ’Tis my duty tae protect ye. Be sensible. There is no scandal in that.”
“Duty?” Then, tiredly: “Bloody hell!”
He laughed again.
“Aye. Well then, lass, if ye want the truth, I can think of only one reason why I was spared the axe and ye were finally given earthly form—”
“Earthly form?” She blinked, the scotch beginning to creep into her brain and play strange games with its usually sensible thoughts.
“Aye, until this day I saw ye only as an apparition. A wee ghosty wandering about with yon box.” He pointed at her camera.
“I’m not a ghost,” she assured him. “Actually, you were the ghost. You’ve been haunting me since they found your body under the castle floor.”
Malcolm considered her blunt words in silence, making her feel tactless and uncaring.
“I’m sorry, Malcolm,” she said, sitting up and reaching out an apologetic hand. “That was not well said—”
“ ’Tis nought,” he said. But he allowed her to pat his knee with her soft fingers. As her hand touched his skin, he seemed to shiver with pleasure and he closed his eyes. Then he frowned and went on gently: “Ye come from the futurity then, not the dead. How many years have ye traveled, Taffy MacLeod, tae find me here?”
She didn’t correct his use of her mother’s name. In this instant it was the most relevant of her titles. It made them kin—even if of a very distant variety. That was somewhat reassuring.
“Two-hundred and forty-four years,” she said softly, patting his knee again, aware that it was an inadequate gesture but uncertain of what else to do.
“They’ve had a long search then,” he said absently. “A long wait for a woman of MacLeod-red tae find my bones.”
“The—the still-folk, you mean? Faeries.” She stopped patting him, but left her hand to rest on the crisp hairs that pricked her palm. “Homo arcanus.“
He cocked an eyebrow, probably at her use of Latin. That she was educated in Latin would probably not make much sense to him in this time and place—it never had to her father in the present.
“Aye. That they would be called, I suppose, by a priest or scholar.”
“Why did a MacLeod need to find you? Because of the guiding dreams?”
“A woman MacLeod, of a certain age and face, aye,” he said again.
“But why?” she asked softly, frustrated by her ignorance, but also nervous of the answer, which she suspected might be large and ominous.
“Because I needed a reason tae live,” he said cryptically.
“And I’m that reason?” she asked, baffled, flattered, and frightened by the idea of being that important to anyone. Since her mother’s death, no one had claimed to have such value for her.
“Eat your supper, lass,” he said gently, taking her hand from his knee and putting a sandwich in it. “The answer will present itself wi’ time.”
Deciding that she had been valiant enough for one day, Taffy accepted the somewhat stale food and ceased asking uncomfortable questions.
Malcolm dug deeper in her sack and discovered her chocolates and rather crushed berries. He consumed both with great enthusiasm and a blithe unconcern about putting anything aside for future meals. It seemed he was on a one-man mission to empty their larder. Apparently, the still-folk would provide food or else he felt a skilled enough huntsman that he could catch prey with only the short dirk he carried.
Darkness fell completely while they were eating. Malcolm rejected Taffy’s suggestion of lighting the lantern, telling her that the new moon would soon be up. Perhaps, living as he had in the country, the thick darkness did not disturb him.
Taffy was less sanguine of sitting out of doors after night had fallen, but Malcolm’s suggestion of a bath in the stream happily diverted her from thoughts of bears and wolves and the intensely desired bright light.
Again, she found her hand tucked inside his as he led her down to water. Having her wits about her this time, she was aware of his battered fingers.
“Malcolm,” she said unhappily. “Don’t they hurt?”
“They are a right soss,” he agreed, not sounding particularly pained or upset. “But they are still on my hands, which are still on my arms, so I willnae complain about them.”
“I’ll bandage them for you when we get back to…to camp.”
The gurgle of shallow water grew suddenly louder and soon Malcolm halted. The chuckling stream sparkled blackly in the shadows. It was impossible to know how deep or fast the water ran.
“There is a sand bar here where ye may safely bathe. I shall be but a few paces yon, so sing out if aught alarms ye.”
“All right,” she agreed after a moment, watching Malcolm’s shadow retreat with a strange and unexplainable mixture of alarm and regret.
Once alone, Taffy gathered her nerve. For centuries, people had bathed in streams. Outside. Without clothing. She could do it, too.
But she wouldn’t enjoy it.
What she truly wanted was to wash with lavender soap and then change into something more spectacular than a dirty dress of cut-up jean. Something that would be a bit more pleasing for the eyes. Something utterly frivolous, feminine, and impractical.
There came a tiny slithering from the bush behind her. She spun around.
“Malcolm?” she called softly.
“Aye, lass.” The voice was somewhat distant—just far enough to allow her modesty on a dark night, she told herself.
“The still-folk aren’t about, are they?” she asked, nervously pleating her thick skirt as she searched the woods with night-blind eyes
. The thought of being observed by anything, dark night or no, put her off any notion of complete nudity of limb during this bath.
“Not that I can see,” he answered, apparently amused at her timidity. “Nor are there any of the savage plague of locust Campbells about.”
“Bears?” she asked. “Wild pigs?”
“Not even a wee mousie, but do ye need me closer whilst ye bathe, lass—”
“Nay! I’ll manage, thank you.”
Taffy straightened and dropped her mottled skirt to the ground. She needed a bath to cleanse herself of the sweat and dust of Duntrune. It would be best to wash her clothes, too, if there were some way that she might dry them before sunrise.
The notion, once conceived, was tenacious, but there was little she could do to further it. She hadn’t planned on a prolonged stay in the forests of Argyllshire and had no change of clothing. And without a fire, the heavy jean would never dry before sunrise.
Hearing Malcolm move downstream, she set about removing her blouse. Fortunately, her rational dress had buttons in the front and did not require her to ask for assistance.
Malcolm watched Taffy carefully, his eyes able to see quite well even in the dark. She wore an expression that betokened a certain unhappy distraction of thought and—most amazingly—she blushed as she disrobed, even though, as far as she knew, no one could see her in the blackness.
He wondered if he should warn her to use caution in her wishes, words, and dreams while in the sacred glen. The old ones were close at hand and very good at guessing mortal desires.
Unfortunately, their gifts could be quite dangerous, especially for the unwary who did not realize the still-folk had complete control over this magicked glen.
His own wish and desire would be readily apparent to any who watched. He would try to be discreet with his spoken words, however, until Taffy was more used to being in his company.
It was unimaginable that a lass of her age—and so bonnie—could be a virgin still, but she certainly had the manner of it, blushing at the slightest touch and always looking away from his chest when her eyes strayed to his opened sark.
He was confident that with time she would perceive what was wanted of them. The still-folk would leave some obvious signs—which was fortunate, as he found himself unequal to the task of explaining his and Taffy’s situation. But that still left the matters of her reaction to the still-folk’s request—and to his own desires, for that matter—which were definitely better hidden for a time. Even a starving wolf would show more gentleness than the impulsive beast prowling inside of him.
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