Night of the Highland Dragon

by Isabel Cooper

  She had two brothers, and William had just missed seeing them. They were both married and living elsewhere now. On that last, public sentiment was mixed. The young regarded such defection as only natural, while the old said that it was a pity—but that it had always been the MacAlasdairs’ way to wander about. Either way, general agreement had them being fine, handsome young men, with a minority (a spotty youth being most vocal among them) voting for “think they’re too good for the likes of us, of course” or just taciturn shrugging when the subject came up.

  Nobody could recall or had even heard of a time when the MacAlasdairs hadn’t been in the castle.

  Nobody had heard of any mysterious deaths recently either. Every few years, a man might break his neck hunting, but that was generally due to bad luck or drink. Disappearances were more common, but mostly young people running away to try their luck down the mountain, getting shed of their parents or the girl who’d turned them down, or in at least one winked-at case, the boy who hadn’t been turned down and the unfortunate results.

  Nobody could say for sure how old Lady Judith’s brothers were or how old her parents had been when they’d died. They had to have been close on ninety, William’s informants had said, though neither of them had much looked it, and Lord MacAlasdair in particular could have passed for a man of sixty. “Well-preserved” was the term. It made William think of jam and reflect that, generally speaking, preserving was an intentional process.

  Nobody knew exactly why the MacAlasdairs didn’t want anyone in the forest.

  People did keep to themselves, particularly up here. Particularly when the other party was nobility. William tried to remember that and not jump to conclusions.

  Then he met Ellen Ruddle. One of Claire’s friends, she was short and cheerful, as ready to giggle as any of the other girls. She had a touch more composure though, a sense about her that she wasn’t going to lose her head easily. That might have come from being a couple years older than the rest, but William was more interested in the other potential reason: her work at the castle.

  “She’s got a half holiday today,” said Claire by way of introduction. William had come outside to find the two of them leaning on a fence and talking, a dust rag tucked absently into the waist of Claire’s skirt. “Ellen’s a housemaid up at the castle. An’ not the most junior either.”

  “Aye, I’m an old hen,” said Ellen, elbowing the younger girl in the ribs.

  William produced a greeting just on the charming side of polite and, after providing the requisite few sentences about himself, added, “I’ve only seen the castle from a distance. Vast place, from the look of it. And you’re in charge of the whole thing?”

  “Get out of it, you fooler,” said Ellen, waving a hand at him as if to shoo a fly. “There’s a head housemaid and Mrs. Lennox over me, as I’ve no doubt you know. But Mrs. Lennox did say as how she couldna’ do without me,” she added, shaking back her dark curls.

  “I’ve no doubt. It looks like quite a job, even for a whole army of housemaids—or are some of the rooms shut up? I’ve heard that about some of these old castles.”

  “There’s the north wing,” Ellen began, “but—”

  She stopped, frowned, and shook her head.

  “But?” William asked, not sounding eager despite all temptation.

  A curious look came over the girl’s face then, a mixture of surprise and annoyed resignation. If an expression had words, this one would have said, Oh, fine then. Have it your way!

  She shook her head again. “Oh, nothing important. ’Tis shut up, is what I meant to say, and we’re not to go into it, but I canna’ imagine it’s as bad as all that.” She stopped for a second. “They’re not the sort to be letting a place fall down, aye? Even if they dinna’ use a part of the castle, they’ll be keeping it in repair.”

  “How industrious,” said William. “And less for you to do, which must be convenient.”

  “Oh, aye. I’m glad enough of it,” she said. “Especially these last few months with the whole family up. I thought for a bit that we’d have to take on extra hands.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “Too hard to find folk we can count on,” she said and then changed the subject.

  Looking back, William could only think of that one moment, that brief look that had been anything out of the ordinary. If it hadn’t fit the pattern he was starting to perceive, if not understand, he wouldn’t even have noticed. Small towns were odd. Everyone knew that.

  William knew that. He also knew just how dangerous “odd” could be. He’d tried to find the missing children of an “odd little town” in Ireland and had only succeeded in killing the gnarled man-thing that had sent them elsewhere—not the last of its kind, he was sure. He’d infiltrated an “eccentric gentleman’s club” in London and discovered the Things to whom its members dedicated themselves and the methods by which their allegiance was bought.

  At times, perhaps usually, odd was just odd. But his duty to Queen and Country meant he could never assume that.

  When the note arrived from Dr. McKendry, offering dinner and cards “if we can dig up a fourth,” he was glad to go—not just to have mature masculine company for a whole evening, but because McKendry was likely to at least have been educated in a city, and his friend Hamilton came from Aberdeen. William’s perspective was skewed one way, while the locals’ perspective, and perhaps their loyalties, leaned in the other direction entirely. He wanted to hear a voice from the ground in between.

  He was almost on the doctor’s doorstep when he heard trotting hooves and looked up to see Lady MacAlasdair.

  As he might have expected, she rode astride. When she passed William, he could see the outline of her leg pressed clearly against the yellow flowered cotton of her dress. It was a rather shapely leg too, he noticed, being a man of some experience. Being also a gentleman, he quickly lifted his gaze.

  She nodded at him but didn’t speak until William went to help her down and she waved him off. “Oh, Lord, no. Thank you,” she added a second later, and she swung down out of the stirrups, apparently not caring about any stray flash of petticoat that resulted. As if he had been one of the horses, she brushed past him, stepped briskly up to the door, and rapped several times.

  “Tell Dr. McKendry that I need him up at the castle,” she said when a maid answered. “Jack Shaw’s fallen and broken his leg. It looks bad. I’ll wait for him here.”

  Ave Caesar, William said mentally.

  Imperious as Lady MacAlasdair sounded, neither her tone nor her posture was that of the typical lady making demands.

  William hadn’t served under many officers in his life, his position being very irregularly attached to the army, but he knew how they spoke. Make Lady MacAlasdair male and give her a few bars across her chest, and she would have passed nicely on any parade grounds.

  As he smiled at the thought, the door closed, leaving the two of them alone together. Quickly, William banished any trace of mirth. “Sounds like a nasty fall, by Jove,” he said, turning to face the lady. “Is there anything I can do?”

  She regarded him from under the thick darkness of her braided hair. The excitement made her eyes almost glow, like fireflies on a summer’s evening, but William wouldn’t have envied the lad who tried to catch them. “Set any broken bones, have ye?”

  “Afraid not,” said William. In fact, he knew the theory. He knew a lot of theory, but so far he’d mercifully escaped the need to practice. “I could hold the chap steady though, or fetch water and bandages or whatnot.”

  “We’re no’ so short of servants as ye might think,” said the lady. Her accent was thicker now than it had been in Mrs. Simon’s parlor and different from what he’d heard from the locals, though William couldn’t say why. Lady MacAlasdair let out a breath and then added, “But ’tis good of you to offer, all the same.”

  “Oh, one tries to be helpful.
I hope everything turns out well. What happened?”

  “He’d been mending the roof,” she said after a moment, during which William could almost read her thoughts: It’ll be all over the village tomorrow. May as well tell him myself. “The ladder broke. Not while he was at the top, God be thanked.”

  “Indeed,” said William. “Not his first day on the job, was it?”

  “No,” said Lady MacAlasdair, her eyes narrowing. “They’ve been mending the walls for five years, Jack and his father, and there’s no’ been any broken bones before.”

  “First time for everything, I suppose,” said William. He looked over the lady again as she stood waiting with her hand on the horse’s neck. She was a fine-looking woman, even in a plain dress and with her hair in a hasty braid. Her body rose from the ground like an oak sapling, graceful and yet with the implicit promise of strength and power.

  He wished he could have viewed that last as an unqualified positive. “Will you be able to hire other men from the village, or will you send to Belholm?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it yet,” snapped Lady MacAlasdair, and her horse shied suddenly, though William hadn’t seen any movement in the doctor’s yard. She took a slow breath. “You’ll forgive me, I’m sure.”

  “You’re worried. It’s commendable.”

  He wished that he hadn’t been sincere when he spoke. Admiration would only make his job harder.

  The lady’s mouth twisted into a hard smile. “I’m glad you approve, sir.” Before William could protest, she went on. “The repairs aren’t as urgent as all that. I’ll see if anyone from the village is willing and able. Then maybe Belholm.”

  “You don’t go often, do you?”

  “I wouldn’t go this time,” she said. “My steward’s better at hiring, and Mr. Shaw knows best who’d be a good partner.”

  The doctor came out the door again, thick-bearded and short and grim, gripping a medical bag in one hand. William made a polite answer to his distracted apologies, got out of the way, and noted silently that Lady MacAlasdair had not actually answered his question.

  Six

  By the time Judith and Dr. McKendry reached the castle, Jack Shaw the Younger was unconscious. Shock might have done that, or lost blood—the lower part of his right leg looked badly broken, and the skin was punctured in several places—but Mrs. Lennox was holding a large brown bottle that also went a way toward explaining his condition. Judith was glad to see it. Setting a leg was no comfortable matter, even in these days when there was a fair chance it would succeed, and she disliked screaming. It brought back too many memories.

  Healing magic had never worked for the MacAlasdairs. During one of his scholarly periods, Colin had rooted out a few spells that were supposed to work all right, even if one of them did involve unpleasantly close contact with a chicken liver. One of them, not the chicken-liver one, might possibly have helped a cut mend faster than it would have already and hurt less in the process, but there wasn’t enough difference to be sure. The others, even the ones Colin had seen humans cast on each other with success, did nothing. Moreover, none of the spells worked when a MacAlasdair cast it on a human being. Colin had talked about “the law of similarity” and found it all rather fascinating.

  For themselves, it didn’t really matter. Their blood did more for them than any spell, particularly when they were in dragon form. Magic could do lasting damage, as could silver and a few kinds of wood. Wounds to the heart and the brain were generally fatal because they didn’t give one any time to heal. The rest got better, generally at ten times or so the speed of human wounds.

  But she could lend nothing of that to her tenants.

  Judith kept out of the way, letting McKendry do his work with one of the two grooms to assist him. Having played her role, Mrs. Lennox was shooing the three maids back into the castle, saying firm things about the lateness of the day and the amount of work still to be done. In all likelihood, Mrs. Frasier and Mr. Janssen were still inside, neither cook nor butler being terribly burdened with curiosity.

  Most of the servants weren’t, when one came right down to it. Judith looked for that quality, as her father had done before her.

  Standing in the shadow of the castle, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise. She turned quickly but saw nobody—and who was there to be seen?

  Clearly, the last few days had not been good for her nerves. She’d have to go hunting soon and work off the tension. The body, she’d learned before she’d become a woman, responded very much to the mind. With her family, that could end badly.

  She cleared her throat, stepped forward, and did her duty, addressing herself to Jack Shaw the Elder. He’d been watching the doctor’s progress with his son’s leg, his face beneath its gingery beard distinctly grayish, and it was probably time for him to turn his attention elsewhere.

  “I’m sure he’ll be all right,” Judith said. She was telling the truth by the standards she’d grown up with. The boy might walk with a limp, but he’d probably keep the leg, and now that doctors used alcohol and carbolic acid and whatever else was in McKendry’s bag, there wasn’t much chance of blood poisoning.

  She hoped she was telling the truth by Shaw’s light as well.

  Regardless, he turned to her and managed a nod. “Thank you, m’lady.” He glanced over his shoulder to where the broken remains of the ladder lay at the foot of the castle wall. “Devilish thing. I—I would swear it was whole enough this morning. Would ha’ sworn so,” he added, looking back at the still figure on the ground.

  “I’m sure of it,” Judith said. “I’ve never known you to be a careless man. I expect,” she said, letting the words come to her as they might and bring what comfort or reassurance anyone in her position could give, “I expect that wood goes bad from the inside at times, and anybody might miss that. Certainly when a thing has so many parts.”

  Shaw nodded again. He still stood stiff, his hands clasped in front of him and his face set like one of the stones he worked with. There was no knowing if what she’d said had been helpful; there so rarely was. “It wasna’ new, like, but no more than two years old. I recall Keir makin’ it that spring when the river near flooded.”

  “Keir’s a good hand with woodworking,” Judith said. The man who served as groundskeeper and herdsman and general jack-of-all-trades was off keeping a watchful—she hoped—eye on the sheep.

  “Aye,” said Shaw, “and it never went at all bad afore this. Not wi’ all the climbing we’ve been doing, an’ all the stones an’ mortar. So I’m no’ saying ’tis any fault of his.”

  “No, of course not,” said Judith.

  She would have wagered half her fortune and all her lands that Shaw didn’t know what he was saying, or at least that he wouldn’t remember it by evening. Men rambled at times like these. If you had to talk about things you couldn’t fix, you at least picked the ones that didn’t cut so close.

  “Bad luck,” she said. “Rotten bad luck, and I’m sorry for it. You know he’ll have a place here whatever comes, d’you no’? A likely lad like him can always be useful.”

  She would also pay McKendry’s bill, but quietly. One didn’t say certain things aloud.

  “Aye,” said Shaw, and he did relax a bit at that, if only a hair. “Thank you, m’lady.”

  They stood there for a while. There were no more words to distract either of them, no words at least that could pass between a stonemason and even the eccentric lady of a small village, perhaps no words in any case. Behind them, the cracks and squelches came at irregular intervals, without even a rhythm one could eventually tune out. Sounds like that drowned out all words over time, even all thought.

  The castle’s shadow stretched long and cold around them. Judith generally wasn’t fool enough to envy her servants—she treated them well but knew her own good fortune—but just then, she would have liked to have been a housemaid, whose duty lay inside. />
  For all Ross MacDougal’s comments, Dr. McKendry moved swiftly, and his hands were steady on the wood and leather of the splint he was constructing. Judith seized on that as one good sign in the day. All sentiment aside, she didn’t want to have to bring a new doctor up to Loch Arach any time soon. Nobody in the village showed signs of going into the profession, and introducing men from outside was always tricky, particularly in these days of telegraph and photograph.

  Arundell hadn’t shown any inclination to tromp about with a camera, at least. Not that there was anything for him to see—not unless he really managed to go where he’d no business being—but men with cameras tended to pry more than those without, in Judith’s experience. Arundell asked too many questions already.

  She wondered if that was the way of city men now. The painter hadn’t pried, but he’d been artistic. Mrs. Simon had told stories of him coming downstairs with one boot unlaced, or of not showing up for meals at all because some view had distracted him. Although city-born, Mr. Hamilton was McKendry’s friend and so far seemed willing to imitate his host in discretion.

  She would have preferred to think that impertinent questions and searching looks just came naturally to city men. The alternative meant trouble. She doubted Arundell, or whatever object he might have, was magical. The brief glimpse she’d gotten of his aura, in Agnes’s parlor, had shown it to be an unremarkable and irksomely pleasant shade of silver-gray.

  He could be after money in one way or another. Judith had turned down two offers from mining companies since she’d returned to Loch Arach. Arundell could be working for either or a third, and trying to find anything they could use. He could be a newspaperman who’d run into one of her brothers and was looking for scandal—or who thought a “quaint, old-fashioned village” in the Highlands was just the sort of place his readers might want to visit, which would actually be worse.

  He could have heard rumors or legends. Judith knew they existed, but she didn’t know how far the stories went, or what shape they took outside Loch Arach itself. As her mother had told her, there was only so much you could do to keep people from talking, and then the key was to make sure nobody really knew what they were talking about.