Men of Midnight Complete Collection

by Emilie Richards

  “I’m really just fine,” Billie said. “Better than that. Just the tiniest bit wobbly, but even that’s going away.”

  “So much the better,” Iain said dryly. “I’ve a mop and bucket in the corner. You can start on the floors immediately. Then by all means proceed to the rest of the house and do whatever seems fitting.”

  “You scowl so wonderfully, Iain. I’m frightened half out of my mind. Does everyone always do exactly what you say?”

  Alasdair laughed. “Has he been browbeating you, Miss…?”

  “Harper,” she supplied. “And no, he’s much too upper-class for that. He just lifts a brow and makes me feel small and insignificant.”

  Iain knew his scowl had been replaced by a smile, even though he also knew what a bad idea that was. Billie Harper was unexpected sunshine in a cloudy life. “Insignificant will be the least of it unless you sit down over there and let this man examine you right now.”

  Her eyes sparkled. She looked up at him through her ridiculously wonderful lashes, and something deep inside him responded with a silent hallelujah. “I live to obey you, my lord,” she said.

  And for a moment Iain found himself wishing it were true.

  * * *

  “You really were quite fortunate Iain saw you, you know,” Alasdair said.

  Billie had been thinking just exactly the same thing. She’d left Flora’s cottage that morning to explore the Scottish countryside. And in the few hours that had elapsed she had nearly died—and nearly fallen in love.

  She turned to watch Alasdair, who had volunteered to drive her home. She had to remind herself which way to turn. She still felt disoriented in a car with the steering wheel on the right. “I’m fortunate he’s a stronger swimmer than I am.”

  “Iain was always the best at everything. As a lad I nearly worshipped him. I wanted nowt more than to be him.” Alasdair chuckled.

  The town’s new doctor was easy to talk to and pleasant to look at, with a nice laugh as well as a warm smile. Billie imagined that he would find his way into the villagers’ hearts and homes with little difficulty. “Then you knew him as a boy?”

  “Aye. My father was Lord Ross’s gamekeeper.”

  “Wait a minute. If his father was Lord Ross, does that make Iain…”

  “Lord Ross? Oh, probably, although I’m no’ sure the title is more than a mark of respect. But he is the local laird. He owns a fair share of this part of the Highlands. I could no’ even guess how wealthy he is. His family’s been here for centuries.”

  “That part I know.” Billie leaned against the headrest and closed her eyes. “And yours, Alasdair? Has your family been here forever?”

  “No. And I did no’ finish my growing up here, either. We left Druidheachd just before Lord Ross’s death and settled to the east. But when I learned there was a chance to come back, I jumped at it. I’ve never forgotten this place.”

  “I can understand that. It’s like another world…or another century.”

  “Will you be here long?”

  “I plan to be.” She was too tired to elaborate. The events of the day had caught up with her. “You’ll have an advantage, won’t you, since you lived here as a boy? I don’t think this is the sort of place that accepts strangers immediately.”

  “No? Have you had trouble?”

  “Oh, no. It’s just that people are naturally wary. It takes time to gain their confidence. You shouldn’t have that problem.”

  “We’ll see. I’ve been here only a few days. Iain did no’ even know I was back.”

  “Do other people remember you?”

  “A few, certainly. The other two lads of midnight remembered me…with a little help.”

  “Lads of midnight? Is that a club of some sort?”

  “You have no’ heard of our famous wee laddies of midnight?”

  She scented a tale and opened her eyes. Her fingers itched to pick up a pen. “Tell me.”

  “Well, Iain’s one of them, you know. Three babies born in the village hospital exactly at midnight on Hallowe’en. No one knows which one came first. There was an old woman in the village, a seer, who claimed that the births were a sign and that the three laddies had to be raised together. And so they were.”

  “Together? In the same house?”

  “At times, surely. They were passed around like good whiskey. It’s a strange thing, really, that their parents agreed, but after a while they became such strong friends that no one could separate them anyway. No’ even when Duncan was taken off to America. When he came back that next summer it was as if they had never been apart.”

  Billie was fascinated. She forgot she was tired. “What were the births a sign of?”

  “I’d say a need for better prenatal care.” Alasdair flashed her a smile. “Dr. Sutherland would have known the three weans were due at the same time if their mums had just come in to see him more often. But Lady Ross planned to travel to Glasgow to have her baby, and Andrew’s mum planned to have him at home.”

  “No, seriously, why were the three boys supposed to be raised together?”

  “I’m no’ certain I ever heard. But now they’re the men of midnight. All still living here. It’s an odd story, but a charming one, is it no’?”

  Billie closed her eyes again. It was an odd story, exactly the kind she liked most. “I came to the right village.”

  “Pardon?”

  She smiled sleepily. “Sometimes I have the damnedest luck.”

  * * *

  Three babies born at the same hospital on the same night at exactly the same time. A folktale in the making. A legend evolving in front of her eyes. Billie sat on a stone bench under a rose arbor twining with leafless, thorny branches and watched Flora Daniels planting tulips. It was nearly dark, and Flora had been working since early afternoon.

  “Are you sure you don’t want some help?” she asked.

  “And let’s say ye were feeling strong enough, would ye know what to do?”

  “Believe it or not, I would. I have a middling green thumb.”

  Flora pushed back her wide-brimmed hat to peer at Billie. Every time Flora went outside she covered every inch of her body, but it was much too late to protect her complexion from the sun. She was in her eighties—or possibly older—and there wasn’t a place on her face to fit another wrinkle.

  “Be that as it may,” Flora said, “if ye planted my bulbs, then they would no’ be my bulbs anymore, now would they?”

  Billie grinned. “I’ll be quiet and watch.”

  “Ye dinna know how to be quiet.”

  “Do I annoy you too badly?”

  “Ye dinna annoy me at all.” Flora went back to her digging.

  “Flora, why haven’t you ever mentioned the men of midnight to me?”

  “Have ye asked about them?”

  “How could I ask if I didn’t know?”

  “And what have ye heard?”

  Billie repeated Alasdair’s story. She had already told Flora all about her near disaster, about meeting Iain and her drive home with Alasdair. Flora had promptly gotten up from the garden, gone inside, mixed a special blend of herbal tea from her own garden and forced Billie to drink the entire pot. Billie intended to mosey on down to the hotel pub in a little while to see if she could rid herself of the taste.

  “That’s the story,” Flora said. “Ye’ve heard it all.”

  “Do you know why they were supposed to be raised together?”

  “No.”

  “Doesn’t it seem odd to you that their parents agreed to it? I mean, Iain’s father was a lord, for heaven’s sake. Were the others nobility, or at least prominent citizens?”

  “No’ a bit of it. Duncan’s father was the innkeeper, and Andrew’s father a bit of a scoundrel, as it were. But remember yer Scottish history, lass. Fostering was an important tradition here. In the olden times a highborn lad was often sent to live with a humbler family to learn the things he might no’ learn at home and to forge new alliances.”

  “I
nteresting. So a tradition from the past continues. But there’s been no hint of why it was necessary?”

  Flora was silent. Billie sat back and waited. She had sensed when she first met Flora that the old woman probably knew everything that Billie needed to learn about Druidheachd, but that she would only dole out the information bit by bit, as it suited her.

  “There was a black cloud,” Flora said at last. “Hanging over the village, it was. And until the lads were born…”

  “Until they were born…” Billie prompted, when it seemed clear that Flora had finished.

  Flora shrugged.

  “And it’s gone now?” Billie tried again. “The black cloud’s vanished?”

  “No. I dinna think it has.”

  Billie knew a scholar’s frustration. “Fat lot of good they did then, huh? Well, at least Iain had friends, or has them, I guess. I sensed loneliness there, Flora. He seems to have everything, but…” Now her own words trailed off. She and Flora were a team. Neither of them seemed to be able to finish a thought out loud.

  “Our Iain’s had his share of misfortune.”

  “Has he?” Billie paused for one heartbeat, another… “Do you know about the curse my family put on his?”

  Flora’s hand paused in midair. The tulip bulb she was holding seemed doomed to flower in space. “Ye know about the curse?”

  “Nope. Wish I did. Iain mentioned it in passing. You know, ‘Here’s a towel, here’s a bathrobe. By the way, your family put a curse on mine about a million years ago.’“

  “Then ye told him ye were a MacFarlane?”

  “I might as well have told him I was a Martian. I gather being a MacFarlane is nothing to brag about here. And really, we’re not that bad, Flora. A little pigheaded, a little unconventional, maybe. My mother married the local junkman, after all, her with a master’s degree in linguistics. In the mornings she finishes odd pieces of furniture that Daddy finds and in the afternoons she works on the definitive book about the subtle connections between Hungarian and ancient Finnish. And she speaks Gaelic whenever she’s lecturing us, which, frankly, is more often than not. We’re a pretty obnoxious brood.”

  “Are there lots of MacFarlanes, then, in America? MacFarlanes from here?”

  “Not anymore. Mom was an only child of an only child, and a passel of relatives were killed in both world wars, not to mention all the ones who passed on before them at the end of a hangman’s rope. I don’t think there are many of us left. Maybe some very distant cousins somewhere who’d rather forget their roots than be reminded.”

  Flora laughed. “Ye do go on!”

  “Awful, isn’t it? Can you tell me more about that curse?”

  “Do ye think I dinna know what ye’re doing? Ye go on like that, and then ye slip in a question. I’ve faith ye’ll find what ye need…when ye need to find it.”

  “Now, what on earth does that mean?”

  “Ye’re a smart lassie. Ye’ll figure it out.”

  “Lord, I think I’ve met my match.”

  “I think ye may very well have,” Flora said. “But no’ the way you mean.” She lowered the formerly doomed bulb to the hole she’d dug for it and began to cover it with soil. “Aye, I think ye’ve met yer match, Billie MacFarlane Harper. And it’s glad I am that I’m still alive to witness it.”

  * * *

  “No, it’s not short for anything.” Billie smiled at the man seated at the table beside her. The Sinclair Hotel pub was crowded, and it hadn’t seemed odd to her that a stranger had asked to join her. “Billie for Billie. My mother was sure I was going to be a boy, like all her other kids. She said it took a couple of weeks to notice I wasn’t. By then the name had stuck.”

  Andrew MacDougall grinned back at her. He was a large man, with shoulders wide enough to thrill a football coach and hands powerful enough to crush a brick. He had hair the dark russet of autumn maples and a smile that could turn a woman inside out. Sitting beside him, Billie thought she could still hear the thundering echo of all the women who had fallen at his feet.

  “And are you liking Scotland, Billie?”

  “Oh, I’m liking it a lot. It’s the strangest thing, but I feel at home here, as different as it is from what I’m used to.”

  “Aye, I suspect it’s quite different.”

  “But people are people for all that, aren’t they? Same hopes, same fears.” Same stories, she hoped. She was in the pub tonight to see if she could hear any. She sipped the bitter brew that Brian, the barman, had recommended to her, and watched Andrew over the rim of her glass.

  “We share common traits, that’s for certain.”

  “Have you always lived here?”

  “Aye, I was born here. I work on the oil rigs, but I make my home here when I’m no’ on duty.”

  Billie knew what a common name Andrew was, but she wondered if she was talking to one of the infamous men of midnight. He seemed to be around the same age as Iain, late twenties, perhaps a year or two older. Flora had said there was a Duncan and an Andrew. She wished she had tried to worm last names out of her—not that she would have been successful.

  “I heard the strangest story today.” She glanced down at her drink. “Do you know about the men of midnight?” She looked up again quickly.

  “Aye.”

  “Are you the Andrew I heard about?”

  “And what would make you think so?”

  “Oh, you’re about the same age as Iain, and you’re from Druidheachd.”

  “Then you’ve met our Iain?”

  “Your Iain?”

  “How did you meet him?”

  “Andrew, why doesn’t anybody in this part of Scotland answer a question directly?”

  “Do we no’?”

  “Andrew, I’m feeling inordinately frustrated.”

  He sprawled back in his chair, but he never took his eyes off her. “How did you meet Iain?”

  “I’m sure you’ve heard already. Haven’t you?”

  He grinned. “So, you’re the fish who thought to feed herself to my creature.”

  “Your creature?”

  “Aye, she’s my very own darling. She’s belonged to my family for centuries.”

  “You keep your own private monster in the loch?”

  “Tell me, Billie, did you really jump in to save Iain’s dog?”

  “I’m sure Iain’s already told you. You are the right Andrew, aren’t you?”

  He laughed. “Iain has no’ told me a thing, but the story’s all over the village how the American lass jumped into water cold enough to freeze a witch’s…nose and nearly drowned.”

  “Terrific. I’m sure everyone will take me seriously from now on.”

  “And should we? Are you a serious person?”

  “Only about things that matter. Like finding out if you’re the Andrew who was born at the same moment as Iain and someone named Duncan.”

  Andrew rose. “I’ll be back.”

  “Primed and willing to talk, I hope.” Billie watched Andrew stride away. He didn’t get far before someone stopped him to chat. Someone else joined them. She realized it would be a while before he made his way to her table again, because quite obviously, with his easy charm and warm hazel eyes, everyone liked to talk to Andrew.

  Billie sipped her ale and continued the survey of the pub that had begun before Andrew had asked if he could join her. The gray stone hotel was centuries old, comfortably shabby and sturdy enough to withstand an earthquake of monumental proportions. This room was everything a British pub should be, dark, crowded and buzzing with hearty conversation. It was also smoke-filled, which was less appealing, and vaguely dungeony. She had always been the slightest bit claustrophobic, and now, after a morning of practicing drowning, she found herself looking for windows and exits.

  “Do you mind if I join you?”

  Billie halted her survey to gaze up at the man standing over her. He was older than Andrew by at least a dozen years, and from the frown on his face she suspected he would be less appealing
company. “Well, I’m waiting for someone to come back.”

  “No problem. I’ll leave when he does.”

  She nodded, because she was in no position to make enemies.

  “I’m Jeremy Fletcher.”

  Billie held out her hand and gave her name, and Jeremy took the seat across from her. “You’re an American?”

  “Born and bred. But a Scot by descent, as well as about fifty other things on my father’s side.”

  “I thought maybe you were. You have the look.”

  “Do I?” She wasn’t at all sure he’d meant it as a compliment. He was a handsome man, but one who seemed never to have learned to smile. He had thick silvering hair and darkly tanned skin, and he wore his expensive sport coat like a man used to fine things.

  “It’s rare that we have visitors this time of the year.” Jeremy signaled the barman for a drink, then turned back to Billie. “Who comes to Scotland just before winter when there’s the south of France or Spain?”

  “I’ve always prided myself on doing things backward.”

  “Are you enjoying yourself?”

  “Sure. It’s a tourist’s delight. Today I swam for a while, then I toured one of your wonderful manor homes.” She favored him with a brilliant smile to see if she could evoke a glimmer in return. “I’d say Scotland in the autumn is highly underrated. There are hundreds of things to do.”

  “I’ve never thought so. I try to stay away as much as possible.”

  “Why come back at all, then?”

  “I suppose I need a place to gather myself for the next foray out.”

  “Then you work out of the country?”

  “He works anywhere there’s someone weaker than him to take advantage of,” Andrew said.

  Billie looked up to see Andrew standing beside the table. She glanced back at Jeremy to see how Andrew’s words had affected him. “MacDougall,” Jeremy acknowledged. “You’ve changed not at all.”

  “Nor have I any intention of changing,” Andrew said. “Now if you dinna mind, the lady and I were having a conversation.”

  “So she told me.” Jeremy rose. He was just a fraction of an inch shorter than Andrew. “Are you staking a claim, MacDougall? Does Miss Harper know she’s chosen a man who’ll live and die here without anything to show for it?”