Charming the Highlander Laird

by Verlin Underwood

  “Are you forgettin’ somethin’?”

  Colin stared at him blankly for a moment. Did he want money? He shuffled around in his bag and withdrew a gold coin. “Will this do?”

  The man laughed at him, causing spittle to land in Colin’s face. Colin didn’t dare wipe it away. “Are you serious?” he asked.

  Yes, quite, Colin thought, but he didn’t react when the man grabbed Colin’s entire bag. The man looked through its contents and, seemingly satisfied, swung the bag over his shoulder.

  “This will do,” he told Colin.

  That was all the money he had, as well as all of their clothing. Colin bit his lip, struggling not to punch the man across the face. He said nothing as the Scot joined his comrades and continued down the road. He even had the gall to whistle a merry tune.

  Colin unclenched his fists. It took a while for his heart to beat at a normal pace.

  “They talked strangely,” Baldric quipped from behind him as they finally started to ride back toward Haddington. “Is this Scotia?” he asked hopefully.

  “Aye, it is. They speak a different language up here,” he told him. “As well as English. They have a heavy accent. I suppose they think the same of me.” He turned to look at the boy. “You did very well at staying quiet,” he said. “Well done.”

  Baldric’s smile lifted Colin’s spirits a bit. He might not have any money with him, but they still had each other. “Why don’t you play with your knights for a little while, Baldric? We should be at Haddington shortly.”

  “All right!”

  “You can stay up a bit later than normal if you want to play with them. Just promise me you’ll stay quiet.”

  “I promise!” Baldric said.

  “And if you look very closely out the window, you might see a dragon!”

  The happiness in the boy’s eyes was enough to quell the sour mood Colin had acquired from the Scots.

  Chapter 6

  Tara and Ealair made their way through Edinburgh, a lively city that took Tara’s breath away. It was her first time being in such a large city, and the amount of people that buzzed to and fro in the streets was staggering. She had to take care not to run into people who harrowingly dashed across the road in front of their horses. They were seemingly oblivious to being a hair away from being trampled.

  “Lady Maxwell, look,” Ealair said, pointing at something to her right. Tara turned. The great fortress of Edinburgh Castle stood watching over the city. It had been in English hands less than twenty years ago, but thanks to a stalwart laird, it was back in the hands of the Scots. The story went that Laird Douglas and his men threw the English off the cliff that the castle stood on. Very admirable, indeed.

  “What a beautiful castle,” Tara remarked. “An’ well-fortified, too.” From where she was, she could see men in almost every window, gazing out into the city. She could imagine a bow at the ready in their hands, waiting for any sign of attack.

  “Yes, it is,” Ealair said. He sounded wistful. “I’m from Edinburgh, y’know. My father fought alongside Laird Douglas when he overtook the castle.”

  “You don’t say!”

  “Aye, he did,” Ealair replied, grinning. “I learned from the best.”

  As irksome as Ealair was, he was a decent guard. She felt bad for how she had treated him before. “Ealair, I’m sorry if I have come across as rude durin’ your time at Dunaid Castle.”

  “Oh, not at all, m’lady,” Ealair reassured her. He hesitated and fidgeted in his seat. “Y’know, I care verra much for you,” he said in a shy voice that was very much unlike him.

  “What do you mean, Ealair?”

  “I mean what I said,” he insisted. “I verra much care for you.”

  “Ealair…”

  Ach, so he was in love with her! Her fear of unwillingly enchanting men made her not wish to get involved with the matters of love. She long thought she would spend her days as a spinster. Besides that, she harbored no such feelings for Ealair, no matter how poorly she felt for the way she treated him.

  “You are a very wonderful guard, Ealair…”

  “But?”

  “Can we just leave it at that?”

  “Aye, I suppose…” He took his rejection rather well. He was soon back to his old self, commenting on everything he saw as they walked their horses through the streets of Edinburgh and out of the city toward Haddington.

  Haddington was a smaller town by far, but still very much lively. It was early evening when they arrived. The smells of people cooking dinner wafted through windows, making Tara’s stomach rumble with hunger. She hoped they would find an inn soon.

  “Do you know where this woman’s school is?” Ealair asked her.

  “I know not,” Tara admitted. She doubted the school would be plainly advertised as a place for fairies to meet. “Ah, here is a decent-looking place, don’t you agree?”

  They stopped in front of an inn called the Frog’s Grog, dismounting from their horses and tying them up to the post outside the building. After a decent dinner of boiled rabbit stew and bread—a simple meal, but the tastiest she’d had since they left Dunaid—she retired early to her bed.

  Tomorrow, she would wake up and figure out where Rhona Thorne was, if she even existed.

  Ealair was still asleep when Tara rose the next morning. As she pressed her ear against his door, she could hear him snoring lightly on the other side. Downstairs in the tavern, she ordered a slice of thick bread and cheese to go and ate it as she walked down the streets. She would rather go to Rhona by herself instead of having Ealair accompany her.

  As it was still early in the morning, the streets were a lot quieter than yesterday evening. A few children, filthy from head to toe, helped to clean the streets of mud and muck, and merchants were opening their stalls to sell their wares for the day.

  If I were an old witch, Tara thought, where would I be hiding? She thought of asking someone if they’d heard of the woman, though she couldn’t find anyone that looked to be the slightest bit Seelie or Unseelie. If there were fairies about her they concealed it well.

  Her walk led her all the way to the other side of town, where she was met by a slowly-moving river. A bridge crossed to the other side, but there was not much else save for a few tiny houses. Disheartened, Tara turned back around. Maybe there were more buildings she hadn’t seen off the main streets.

  She went through an alley to another small street, this one covered in cobblestones rather than dirt and mud. Tucked tightly between two houses was an old church with a steeple roof and stained-glass windows. There was nothing about the church that seemed remarkable, which made Tara want to walk up to it and inspect it a little more closely.

  On the faded red door was a rune that Tara had recognized in her mother’s old books. She cursed herself for not taking some books with her on the trip, but she did know enough to recognize the rune was from a Nordic region. To the untrained eye, the rune would go unnoticed, but Tara knew that this particular marking wouldn’t usually be etched on the door of a church of God.

  Should she knock, or should she walk in? Tara finally decided on the former and knocked softly on the door. She waited, but no answer came. She knocked a little bit louder the second time and jumped back in surprise as an old woman quickly opened the door.

  “Shh!” the woman hissed, a gnarled finger pressed to her lips. In her other hand, she held a long, wooden staff. She was dressed in a nun’s robes and was staring at Tara suspicious eyes milky with age.

  “Oh, I apologize,” Tara said, making to turn around and leave. Maybe she had made a mistake and only stumbled into a nunnery. “I thought this was someplace else.”

  “Wait, lass,” the old woman called out. “I want to look into your eyes.”

  Tara turned around slowly and met the old lady’s eyes. She immediately noticed the glint of fairy there.

  “Ah, just as I thought,” the old woman said, seemingly satisfied with what she saw. “Come in, lass.” Tara hesitated, and the woman
smacked her staff down firmly on the church’s stone floor. “Don’t be churlish. Come in, I said.”

  “Yes’m,” Tara said. She didn’t expect to be intimidated by the woman!

  The church hall was dark and lit with a few candles. Here and there, people sat with books sprawled around the ground, bodies hunched over as they studied.

  “Over this way,” the woman said. She led Tara through the backside of the church to a small room. A painting of the Virgin Mary hung above the window, which let a dismal amount of light in.

  “What’s your name?” the woman barked at her.

  “Tara Maxwell,” she replied. “Are you Rhona Thorne?”

  “Aye,” she said, and grinned. Half of her teeth were missing, which made her look a bit senile. She cackled. “It’s one of my names.” With great effort, she sat down on a tiny wooden stool and with both hands, leaned on her staff. “Ye can call me that, though, if ye wish.”

  “I can call you somethin’ else, if you’d like,” Tara insisted.

  “You can call me a duck, for all I care. Names matter not to me. Not anymore.”

  Tara looked longingly at the exit of the room, wondering if it would be better to just leave than to stay with someone who was mad.

  “Aye, but ye have leannan sith blood, don’t ya?” Rhona said, squinting her eyes at Tara. “Is that why ye come to me?

  Tara opened and closed her mouth a few times before she found her words. How did Rhona know that? “Aye, my mother is a leannan sith.”

  “An’ yer father?”

  “He was a human.”

  “Are ye sure about that?”

  “Well, I never met the man, but that’s what I’ve been told.” Tara paused. “Why do you ask that?”

  Rhona groaned as she pushed herself up off the stool. Tara made to go help her, but the old lady swatted her away. “I may be old, but I’m not completely feeble yet,” she snapped at her. Tara took a few steps back, letting the woman have her space.

  Rhona walked a circle around Tara. “Aye, ye have some leannan sith in ye, but there’s somethin’ else.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Impossible?”

  “My father was a simple laird. He had no fairy blood in him. My mother would have told me. She would have…” Would her mother have told her if she knew? The woman barely gave Tara the tools to learn her own magic, focusing instead on herself.

  “Well, then ask yer ma who yer da was, because it was definitely not a full-blooded human.”

  “My ma is… not around,” Tara told her. “Can you tell me what it is that you are sensing?”

  “Hold out yer hand and close yer eyes.”

  Tara stared at her. “I am not stupid,” she said.

  “I’m not gonna hurt ye, lass. If ye wanna know who ye are, close yer eyes and hold out yer hand!”

  Tara sighed and did so. A sharp prick made her jump. “I thought you weren’t going to hurt me!” she cried out, pressing her bleeding hand to her mouth.

  Rhona stared at the little knife in her hand that glittered crimson with Tara’s blood. “Oh, come now. It was just a tiny poke. I need to look at your blood a bit.”

  Tara lowered her hand. “Why? Will that tell you somethin’?”

  “Hopefully!” Rhona hobbled over to her stool and sat back down on it. She took the knife and a piece of parchment and ran the knife along the paper as though she had a quill full of ink. From where Tara sat, it looked as though she drew some sort of rune. When Rhona finished she leaned back, admiring her work.

  “Do you see anything?”

  Rhona frowned at her. “Best wait until tomorrow. Sometimes, magic takes time to do its work.”

  “All right then.” Tara had one more question before she left. “Are there others here who are like me? Half-fairy and the like?”

  “Oh, aye, most of them are. Most of the children who come here have been cast away by their families and barely know a lick of their own magic.”

  Well, it was nice to know that she wasn’t the only one, as unfortunate as the circumstances were. “I see,” Tara said. “Well, I thank you. I will be coming back tomorrow for the results.”

  The woman, however, barely listened. She was muttering to herself as she stared at Tara’s blood. Just as she left the room, the parchment began to glow; from Tara’s magic or Rhona’s, she knew not. The old woman noticed Tara watching and scowled at her.

  “I need my privacy,” Rhona admonished. She used her staff to swing the door shut.

  Tara blinked at the closed door for a moment before walking back through the main room to the exit. She paused as she noticed the students, some older and some younger than herself, poring over ancient tomes, not even noticing her. She thought for a moment to introduce herself, but they seemed so wrapped up in their studies that she decided against it. She left the church to head back to the inn for her midday meal.

  Tara never knew her father. But based on what she had heard about him from Adam, he was just a regular man who had been, unfortunately, enchanted by her mother. But Calum Maxwell died when Adam was young, so who knew what secrets their father kept from them?

  As she rounded the corner back down the alley to the main road, she walked by a man holding a young boy in his arms. They looked to be father and son, having the same wavy, golden hair and hazel eyes. The man was tall and handsome, but he looked weary. His clothes were torn and dirty, and there were dark circles under his eyes.

  The boy also looked tired, with smudges of dirt staining his plump cheeks. Tara wasn’t very good at sensing magic, but she could sense the tiniest bit coming from the two. One of them was definitely a fairy, or at least half-fairy, but she wasn’t able to get a good look at their eyes to see.

  Curious as to where they were going, she followed behind them. Sure enough, they stopped by Rhona’s church and knocked on the door. The door opened and they were led in. Rhona Thorne was a very busy woman, indeed.

  On the way back to the inn, Tara stopped by a few stalls and purchased an apple tart for her walk back. The weather was beginning to turn, and she felt a few big rain drops fall from the sky. She wrapped her breacan around her head and briskly made her way to the inn before her clothes became soaked through.

  The tavern was full of people also escaping the weather. She pushed her way through the crowd until she found a serving woman, ordering whatever was on the menu for that day. She found an empty seat and relaxed into it. She had spent most the journey riding her horse, and her feet were now sore from her walk across Haddington.

  Her respite was short-lived, as Ealair appeared from nowhere and sat down next to her, the tankard of ale in his hand coming perilously close to spilling over. “Where were you?” Ealair asked. Tara glanced at him. Based on his glazed eyes and odious breath, it was probably not his first drink of the day.

  “I went to find that old witch, like I said I would,” she replied. “And I’ll have you know that I was successful in my search.”

  “You went without a chaperone!”

  “I don’t need a chaperone wherever I go. Besides, there are plenty of people about, unlike when we were on the roads.”

  “Havin’ people about doesna lessen yer chance of danger.” He was slurring his words, but Tara sensed the anger in his voice. “Yer brother ordered me to protect you!”

  “Why does this upset you so?” she asked him. “Is it so that you will not upset my brother?”

  Ealair slammed his tankard hard on the table, causing Tara to jump. “I’m doin’ this because I still care for you!” he said. “Are you too simple to notice that?”

  Rather than being angry, Tara instead felt sorry for the man. Here he was, laying his heart out for her, and she was going to let him down. She did not want to devastate him by any means. She realized then that during his time with her he never acted enchanted, the way other men did.

  Even now, the men in the tavern kept glancing her way, their eyes drooping and unfocused. The only glazed looks she had seen fr
om Ealair came when he drank. Was he really in love with her, and was she not actually able to tell whether she had enchanted someone?

  “Ealair,” she began slowly, choosing her words carefully. “I’ve told you before that I’m not interested. I think your time would be better spent pursuin’ someone else. I’m not lookin’ to settle down with anyone any time soon.”

  “Is it because I’m a commoner?” he asked, staring down at his tankard.

  The barmaid set Tara’s food in front of her, and Tara thanked her. The maid continued on with the next patrons. “Ach, no. It has nothin’ to do with that,” she said to Ealair. “I just don’t think we would be happy together. An’ maybe if you think about it some more, you’ll realize that as well.”

  He seemed to want to refute that, but Tara wanted to leave before he put another word in. She stood up, gathering her food with her, and set a few coins down by Ealair’s tankard.

  “Here. Buy yourself some food. I’m goin’ to stay in for the rest of the day, especially with the weather how it is. I’m headin’ out to Rhona’s tomorrow mornin’, in case you’re wonderin’ where I am again.”

  Ealair wouldn’t meet her gaze. She at first thought he wouldn’t take the coin, but as she left him at the table and walked the steps up to the guest room, she saw him grab it and hand it to the barmaid.

  Poor Ealair, Tara thought as she got ready for bed. Hopefully he’ll find a nice lady someday. A lady who can appreciate his personality, as I certainly cannot.

  Chapter 7

  The next morning, Tara walked into Rhona’s church without preamble and crossed the main room toward the old woman’s study. She was about to walk in when she noticed the same man and boy from yesterday conversing with Rhona. She stopped just out of sight and listened.

  “I’m sorry I had to make ye leave yesterday,” Rhona was saying to the man. “I was very busy with other clients. It seems like this war has displaced many people who are now searchin’ for answers. Don’t worry, though. I care not for one side or the other.”