"Tell who?" she asked suspiciously, straightening up, but she was beginning to have an inkling.
"Nothing, I didn't mean… Look, here are two copies of the work I retrieved. You didn't lose anything."
Bella found herself feeling almost sorry for him, though she knew he didn't deserve it.
"I've given you a discount, too."
MacLean was behind this. Bella opened her mouth to ask questions, and then closed it again. How could she phrase them? Oh, by the way, did a six-foot-four invisible Highlander pass this way? And anyway, the laptop was fixed now. She was annoyed, yes, because she had been prepared to stand up for herself and MacLean hadn't given her the opportunity. Didn't he realize that threatening someone just because you didn't like the way they looked at you wasn't allowed nowadays? But that was the thing, he didn't. Where MacLean came from, it was perfectly natural for him to take charge and enforce his will. Bella knew she'd have to explain matters to him before he got himself arrested.
After she thanked the shaking wreck that was the repairman, and who seemed extremely eager to see her gone, Bella made her way to the Ardloch library. They didn't have the number of the private collector, but rang through to someone who did. Armed with name and address and telephone number, Bella contemplated what else she should do.
There was a possibility that she could track down what had happened to the land at Loch Fasail after 1746, when it had reverted to the Crown, but the Ardloch library would be unlikely to hold such records.
Apart from that, and more importantly, she needed food. MacLean was eating her pantry bare. He seemed to have developed a love of the chocolate peppermint ice cream she herself craved. She had been having a few nice fantasies in which she dripped the melted mixture onto his skin and licked it off, but so far she hadn't quite found the courage to follow them through.
She shivered.
Suddenly all she wanted to do was get back to Loch Fasail and the cottage. And to MacLean.
The stark truth made her catch her breath. She had fallen in love with him. With a man who died in the eighteenth century and who may vanish again at any moment. And really she only had herself to blame.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-two
MacLean stood by the wall near the Gailleach Stones and looked about him. Aye, this was where he had been in his dream. This was where the hag had spoken to him.
They were murdered, cut down most foully. They cried to me as they passed because you were not among them. They asked me why you had abandoned them at such a time, but I had no answer. But there was one of them who did not weep…
MacLean set his jaw. He was tempted to lock away the pain as he had been taught to do, but lately he had learned that if he was to be a complete man again, then he must face that pain, admit to his mistakes, and try to resolve them.
Last night he had gone out into the darkness and gazed at the sky and called for the Fiosaiche. MacLean wanted to ask her what Ishbel was doing here, and how she had slipped through the door into the world of the living. But the sorceress had not come. She had not visited him since the day she ordered him to return to the cottage and face his past.
If the Fiosaiche would not help him, then there was only one person who might be able to. Someone else who straddled the between-worlds and the mortal world.
The hag.
The air was very still, dragonflies zipping about him, barely brushing the surface of the loch as they hunted. A fish splashed, capturing one of them, and sank back below the surface with the iridescent wings spilling from its mouth. The sour smell of broken weeds and crushed grass rose from where he stood waiting. It was almost eerily quiet.
MacLean closed his eyes and tried to reach that state between waking and sleeping, the place where dreams resided.
At first it was difficult. He felt his mind drifting, back into his childhood.
Dinna hurt her! He heard his own voice, childish and strained. His mother was holding her cheek, tears in her eyes, staring up at his father. But she wasn't so much frightened and bowed by the blow as defiant. Her voice was measured.
Ye may not like what I say, but I will continue to say it.
MacLean was reminded of Bella. She had that same quality of steel beneath the soft sweetness of her exterior—she just didn't know it. But once she had learned how to use it, she would be formidable—a woman others would look up to and admire.
"Och, MacLean."
The voice was faint and weak. Shocked, his eyes sprang open and he spun around.
The hag was standing behind him, a green arisaid tucked over her stringy white hair. Her eyes were blue and milky, as though she could no longer see, and yet she was looking directly at him.
"MacLean," she whispered. "Why have ye come? The each-uisge is on the loose, the land reeks of danger. None of us are safe."
"I have come for your help."
"The Fiosaiche doesna want you to have help, Morven MacLean. We must abide by her wishes." She gave a toothless smile. "The Fiosaiche has her reasons. We must trust in her and hope for the best."
"You said that my people passed through this door into the between-worlds?"
"Aye, they did, a long twisting line of them, wailing and crying and calling your name."
"But one of them wasn't crying."
"Ishbel Macleod. She was there with them. She died here, too, MacLean."
Ishbel died here? He did not know what to think, but he didn't have time to speculate on why Ishbel should have been with his people when the massacre occurred. Other matters were more pressing.
"Ishbel is here now. I have seen her. She is the each-uisge."
Her face grew even more skull-like within the folds of the green arisaid. "Aye, I know. We all have a choice in such matters and she has taken the dark road. Over the centuries she has thrived on her misery and turned it to wickedness. She tricked me into teaching her things…" Her wavering voice was bleak. "When the Fiosaiche discovers it, I will be punished."
"Then I am sorry for you. Ishbel has threatened Bella."
The hag swayed toward him, but she was growing misty around the edges.
"She is coming to me in my dreams, old woman. I dinna trust myself to sleep in case I do Bella harm. This is your fault. You must help me."
The hag nodded sadly. "I am weak, but I will do my best to make a spell to protect the cottage and keep Ishbel out, for a little while."
"I thank you."
"Your Bella will be safe while she stays within," the hag went on, her voice tremulous. "But I canna do more than that. I am no' as strong as Ishbel. This battle is yours and ye must fight for your woman if you love her. Do ye love her, Morven MacLean?"
She was watching him closely.
Once, MacLean would never have admitted to such an emotion. Love was not something a Highland chief allowed himself to feel, unless it was for his horse and his dogs. But the days of denying himself were gone, and MacLean straightened his back as he spoke.
"Aye, I love her."
"That is good." She sighed, as if she were remembering something in her own past, and MacLean wondered if the hag had ever been a mortal woman herself, and if so, what had happened to her. Was being the keeper of the door a reward or a punishment?
"I canna stay any longer," she was saying, "but if ye need me, then call to me and I will try to help ye if I can."
And she was gone, the breeze stirring the grass, the dappled shadows teasing him with an echo of her arisaid.
"Did the laddie stare at your chest, Bella?"
MacLean was asking her the question in stern tones, his gaze fixed on her face.
Bella shook her head, narrowing her eyes suspiciously. "No, he didn't. He could hardly look at me. He fixed the laptop, and he saved my work, and that's more than I expected him to do the other day."
MacLean nodded, as if it were just as he had expected.
"What did you do to him, MacLean?"
He looked blank. "I dinna know what you mean, woman. How could
I do anything to him? I was invisible, remember."
"I know. I just…"
There was something, but before she could get to the bottom of it MacLean stood up and peered from the window at the calm twilight and said, "Come outside for a wee while." He was holding his hand out to her, and, bemused, Bella stretched her own hand toward him, letting his fingers close hard on hers.
Once outside on the flat area before the cottage, MacLean unstrapped his claidheamh mor from his body and drew the blade from the scabbard. For a moment he held it before him, both hands wrapped around the handle, testing its weight. He looked at Bella, who was watching him warily, and then lowered the sword and moved toward her, reaching to turn her about.
"MacLean?" she said a little anxiously, peering over her shoulder to see his face. "You're looking grim. Should I be afraid?"
"Whist, just trust me, woman," he soothed.
He positioned himself close behind her, his arms supporting hers, and clamped her hands, with his atop them, about the handle of his broadsword. He swung it a couple of times, gently, smoothly, his strength guiding her.
"Oh." Bella smiled.
MacLean brought the blade down from shoulder height in a slashing movement, first on one side and then the other, as if he were threshing wheat.
"This is easy!"
"Oh, aye?" Another smooth swing of the blade, and then he let her take some of the weight.
The sword sagged immediately, and would have struck the ground if he hadn't taken the weight again with his own powerful muscles and held it steady.
MacLean sighed. "Your arms are puny, Bella."
"I'm a writer, not a fighter," she protested breathlessly. "I never expected to wield something pointy that weighs as much as me."
"Sometimes even writers must learn to fight."
He sounded serious despite his attempts to make a joke of it, and Bella turned her head and gave him a long look. "What's the matter?" she said quietly.
"My sword is too heavy for you," he retorted, and bent and quickly kissed her lips, before disengaging himself from her and striding inside the cottage. Through the window he could see Bella staring after him, her brow furrowed as she tried to understand what was going on. MacLean sighed. And she would. This woman could find her way out of a maze in the dark with her hands bound, her mind was so sharp and clever, and MacLean knew she'd eventually wheedle from him the threat that was Ishbel.
But MacLean also knew that he was going to try very hard not to tell her. Not yet. Ishbel was for him to deal with, although he wasn't quite sure how one dealt with an each-uisge, a creature that straddled two worlds and could move so freely between them. But he would find away.
That didn't mean he wanted Bella to be completely helpless while he played the big man, because if something happened to him, if he wasn't able to be here, then she needed to know how to protect herself with something other than her clever mind. She needed to be able to wield a weapon.
No matter how puny her muscles were compared to his.
"Ah!" With a smile he closed the door to the cupboard he had been rummaging in and strode back outside with his prize.
When she saw what he had, Bella blinked at him and laughed.
"Tell me you're kidding, MacLean."
Even when he put the broom in her hands and proceeded to show her how to hold it and use it in lieu of the sword, she was still smiling.
"I will find you a proper weapon you can use," he promised, "but in the meantime this will have to do. You can deliver a painful blow with anything if you are determined enough, and your enemy would no' be expecting a woman like you to fight."
"A woman like me?" she asked carefully, as if she were expecting him to say something nasty.
"Sweet and gentle and clever, Bella. Ye dinna look like a warrior, so you will surprise your enemy all the more when you strike."
"My enemy? Just who is my enemy, MacLean?"
"Well, there is Brian, for one."
She laughed, as he knew she would.
"Let me do this for you, Bella," he insisted. "I canna do much, I know, but I can do this."
Bella still looked inclined to refuse to cooperate, but he pressed the broom into her hands with determination and she sighed and resigned herself. He knew she was humoring him, but he still managed to teach her a few basic moves, mainly in self-protection rather than aggression, and explained what she could expect from an experienced swordsman. Or woman.
"I think mabbe you should go for the eyes," he said, remembering the wicked green of the each-uisge's eyes in the mist, and the sharp white teeth.
"Go for the eyes," Bella repeated, jabbing into the air with the broom handle.
"Again."
She jabbed again.
"No, no, ye must really mean it!"
More vigorously this time.
"Good. Now you've taken out her… his eyes and he canna see where you are."
Bella wiped a hand over her brow, and he could smell the fine warm scent of her. "Okay. My enemy is blinded by my expertise with a broom. Now what?"
MacLean looked at her, standing with his hands on his hips, his feet apart, his expression thoughtful. His voice was measured, as if he were imparting tremendous wisdom. "Now you must turn and run away as fast as you can."
Bella burst into laughter. He couldn't help but smile back at the sound, even though he knew this was deadly serious. Bella couldn't imagine anyone in the world wishing her any real harm, but she hadn't lived as he had or been in the places he had been. MacLean was prepared to do all in his power to prevent her from being hurt, he would give his life for hers, but he was almost a mortal man now, while Ishbel was a creature of magic. His strength and skill alone may not be enough to defeat her when the time came.
At least the cottage was safe—he hoped the hag had seen to that with a combination of her spell and the stones from Castle Drumaird.
Bella had stopped laughing, but her face was flushed and her eyes sparkling. She looked so delicious that MacLean decided to finish his teaching for the day, and instead swung Bella up into his arms and turned to carry her back inside.
He expected her to struggle and protest and tell him that women in these times didn't want men carrying them about because they had two legs of their own. But she didn't. She snuggled up against his chest, her head on his shoulder, more than happy exactly where she was.
"You're carrying me," she whispered. As if it were the most amazing experience she had ever had. "MacLean, you're carrying me."
"Aye, I am." He raised an eyebrow. "Do you want me to stop?"
"No, don't stop. It's wonderful." She looked up at him. "You're wonderful."
MacLean smiled. "I will be. Just let me get you upstairs, Arabella Ryan."
* * *
Chapter Twenty-three
The drive down to Inverness was slow—there was no direct route from Loch Fasail—but after they reached Ardloch, Bella took the coast road and the views were enough to keep MacLean from worrying too much about other vehicles on the narrow roads. Now that he was visible, Bella could see why he felt carsick on their last journey to Ardloch. He was so big that he was squeezed into his seat like a sardine in a tin, and because she had not realized it she had not thought to make adjustments for his height and size. This time she was able to ensure he was far more comfortable.
They stopped for lunch at Ullapool, with its white houses facing the water, and MacLean could watch the passenger ferry arriving across the Minch from Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, while Bella was able to have a mochachino, so they were both happy. After that she took the faster route eastward, directly to Inverness.
"The Forsythes live to the southwest of the city, in a place called Auchtachan. When I rang Mrs. Forsythe said she will be at home but her husband is away, traveling overseas. He makes his living buying and selling historic documents. But she says it's all right for us to come and see the original manuscript—I think I persuaded her we aren't going to steal it. She's given me directio
ns to the house, and there's a hotel we can stay in not far away from them, but I want to drive on to Inverness first and buy you some clothes."
He grunted, which she took as a sign of acquiescence, and went back to staring at the passing scenery. The mountains were gray rock and scree, with barely a blade of grass in sight.
"It seems so empty," he said at last. "Are there no people anymore? I canna remember it being so bare."
"It is empty. The landscapes up here can be very harsh, MacLean, you don't need me to tell you that. Maybe people were willing to struggle on in your day, but these days they feel they deserve more from life than just surviving."
"Why?" MacLean demanded. "I canna believe my people would want to live in a dirty, smoky place like Edinburgh rather than Loch Fasail. At least you can breathe there!"
"But that's exactly what happened. In the nineteenth century Highlanders were dispossessed, their land taken over by sheep because the chiefs could make more money that way, or they simply could no longer survive on the small patches they were reduced to living on. Rents were high, and then there was a potato famine—"
"Potato famine? I have heard of potatoes, but they were still uncommon in my day."
"They became more common, a fallback when there was nothing else to eat. And then a disease struck the potatoes and rotted them in the ground, and because the people had come to rely on them so greatly, they starved. There was the herring fishing on the coast, and a lot of people were employed with that, but then it collapsed when there weren't enough fish left to catch and process."
He was frowning, clearly wanting to argue with her and yet fearing what she said was true.
"The Highlanders had no choice but to move south, to industrial cities like Glasgow and Edinburgh, and look for work in the mills and factories. Some of them emigrated, either by choice or else they were loaded aboard ships without any say in it, and sailed away to other countries like Canada and Australia and America, to make new lives. I'm very sorry, MacLean, but your Scotland has been gone for almost as long as you have."
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