She looked startled, then gave him a genuine smile. “Aye. As a matter of fact, it was.”
She wasn’t lying, and he eased one leg across the other.
“That’ll do you no good, sonny, if the witch of Fionnaway decides to peel your family apples,” she said gleefully.
One moment she was a menace. The next she was only an obnoxious old woman. An obnoxious old woman who knew more than she would say. “Where is Lady Alanna now?” he demanded.
“I don’t know.”
“Come here.” She obeyed, as he knew she would. When he used that tone of voice, everyone obeyed. Holding out his hand, he allowed the sunlight to strike his ring, and her gasp filled him with the deepest satisfaction. “Beautiful, is it not?”
He turned it so the silver filigree reflected the light. The stone, however, did not. The sea opal created its own light deep within, and the witch stared as if the gleam entranced her.
“Touch it,” he commanded.
Her withered-looking fingers stretched out toward the stone.
“You want to,” he said softly. “It’s calling to you.” And when she touched it, he would know so much about her…
The sunlight struck her ash-slathered hand. She focused on it and seemed to come to her senses. Leaping back, she cackled. “Nay, dear lad, I’ve dwelled here all my life. Do you think I don’t know the legend of the sea opal? Although I wonder how you learned of it. Why do you think you can use those powers? And where did you get that ring?”
“It was my mother’s.” He answered the last question with no intention of answering any of the others. She had a strong will, this witch, and he’d have to depend on nothing more than his canny good sense to ferret out the secret of Lady Alanna—before he’d lost Fionnaway completely.
Lady Alanna, and the witch, were in trouble.
Yet the old hag wasn’t afraid. As she plucked leaves into the mortar, her gaze clashed with his. “How can you live with yourself, knowing you will inherit that dear, sweet girl’s lands and fortune?”
He wouldn’t, if he wasn’t careful. “I’m preferable to the English buzzards.”
“Are you not an English buzzard?” she asked, her Gaelic accent stronger than he’d noticed before.
He hated to divulge the truth, but he had sworn long ago never to be ashamed. “My mother’s family has lived near here since time eternal.”
The pestle screeched as it slipped in the bowl, and Ian shuddered at the sound, so like fingernails across flint. The crone’s gaze flew to his ring.
Before she could question him, he distracted her. “I’ll treasure the lands and the people, Granny.”
“You’ll treasure them, you say?” With an old woman’s impudence, she snorted and neighed. “Treasure them as Leslie does? Tax the farmers on a failing crop? Demand the children hunt the sea caves for precious stones where there are none? Seek the chance to destroy the lands and the beaches for a silly whim?”
“Is that what you expect?”
“Of course,” the witch muttered, pushing back the gray hairs that hung over her right eye in an ungainly cowlick. “Mr. Fairchild has no more honor than a billy goat. No more than you, I suppose.”
“I suppose.” He grinned at her chagrin, but before she could retort, a light rap on the outside wall of the hut brought both heads around.
“Miss Witch?” called a timid voice.
Ian recognized the voice.
“Miss Witch? Excuse me, but are you home?”
Ian whipped around and glared at the evil one. “Wilda?” Grabbing the old woman’s shoulders, Ian set her aside and stepped out. “Wilda, what are you doing here?”
Wilda, golden-haired, sweet-faced, innocent-looking Wilda, jumped and winced as if he made a regular habit of beating her. “Ian! What are you doing here?”
“I asked first.”
“But, Ian, I never thought to see you here. I mean, I can’t imagine you coming to consult a witch for anything like you have an excess of toadstools or your voice is too high or anything. Not that it is. Too high, I mean. It’s a pleasant voice, really, and I like the way you sound even when you’re galled by me”—Wilda peeked at him from under the round brim of her velvet riding hat—“like I guess you are now?”
“Very galled.” He kept firm control of the voice she praised. With Wilda, if one didn’t take command immediately, she galloped away with conversation, good sense, and sanity. “Why have you come here? Who told you about this place?”
“I heard my maid talking to Mrs. Armstrong about the witch. You know, she’s a very good maid. When you brought me here, I never expected to have a good maid. I mean, they serve oatmeal and it’s cold all the time”—Wilda shivered in her well-tailored blue riding costume that so brought out the sapphire of her eyes—“and I think a country that can’t even work up a decent summer leaves much to be desired in the way of civilization, but the servants are lovely to me. In fact, everyone has been lovely to me.” She smiled at the witch. “Don’t you find the people here lovely?”
The witch, when Ian turned to her, wore the same battered, stupefied expression most of humanity wore when subjected to Wilda’s babble for the first time. “Lovely,” she mumbled.
Wilda nodded with satisfaction. “I wanted to talk to you, but I can’t talk while Ian is here. It’s girl talk, and you know how men hate girl talk. Mama says that most men are worried that women are smarter than men, but I’ve never found it so. Most men I know seem positively sure they’re smarter than me, which is silly, because most men are so stupid they can’t even look above a girl’s bosom to look at her face, much less review her intelligence. Don’t you find it so?”
The dirty, ugly, disgusting witch looked from Ian to Wilda in bemusement.
Ian had seen that reaction before. She didn’t know if Wilda was serious or mocking her, and he wasn’t in the mood to explain. “Wilda,” he said. “Do you see my horse?”
Wilda glanced around the yard until she saw the stallion grazing peacefully in the shade of the forest. “Oh.” She dimpled. “There’s Tocsin. Is that how you got here?”
“That’s how I got here.” He took her arm. “How did you get here?”
“I rode.” Wilda nodded, and the feather on her hat bobbed in his face.
“Where is your horse?”
“I left him right over—” She pointed, then her finger drooped. “Well, I thought I left him over there.”
“Did you tie him?”
She clapped her gloved hand over her mouth.
“You must remember to tie your horse,” he reminded her gently, as he had reminded her so many times before.
“Yes, Ian.”
“I’ll take you back to Fionnaway.” Pushing her toward Tocsin, he said, “Go on, now. I have to finish my business with the witch.” He waited until Wilda walked out of earshot, then pitched his voice low. “Old woman, if you ever harm Wilda, you’ll discover the rumors are true.”
She gaped at him. “Which rumors?”
“The ones that say I’m a force to be reckoned with.”
Her mouth snapped shut. “What will you do when you discover rumors are true?”
“What rumors?”
“The ones about the rightful heir’s return.”
They had gotten to the truth with a vengeance. “If you know something which might interfere with my claim on Fionnaway, then you should confess it to me. For witch-burning is an old and honorable pursuit, and very, very painful for the witch.” As he towered over her, thunder boomed from the clear blue sky.
Nothing else he had said had intimidated her, but the threat of fire worked. She cowered almost to the ground and whimpered, and for one bitter moment he wondered if it was the Fairchild heritage that made him so proficient at terrorizing this old woman.
But she deserved it, damn it, with her innuendoes about the rightful heir. If it weren’t for Wilda’s inopportune appearance, he would get to the bottom of this matter right now. Instead, he stared threateningly into the witc
h’s eyes…They were large, and as he gazed into them, he fell into their depths—clear to her lonely soul.
A witch? No. He didn’t believe in witches. Evil? She was defiant, frightened, and determined—and if that made a spirit evil, then Armstrong would have to tie Ian to the same stake.
Bound by some unholy fascination, they stared at each other, and a sensation of mystery deluged him. There was something here, something peculiar, something familiar…He would have sworn he’d looked into her eyes before.
If he could only see this old woman as she really was, without the mask of old age and wickedness, he would discover the truth. He strained, traveling through layers of deception, toward the center of her essence.
Close, he was so close—
“Ian,” Wilda called. “Tocsin won’t let me mount him.”
The witch blinked, and a shutter fell over her mind.
Ian stepped back, released by the spell of her lure, and reeled like a man after a three-day drunk. The giddiness had been wonderful while it lasted, but it left him disgruntled and irate.
Wilda squealed. “Ian!”
Glancing over, he saw her hopping with her hands clasped on the saddle and one boot stuck in the stirrup. With hardly a thought, he abandoned the old woman and her mystery. “Wilda, you can’t manage a stallion!” He caught Tocsin’s reins and brought the indignant animal to a standstill. Lifting Wilda away, he mounted, then held out his hand.
Guilelessly Wilda placed her palm in his. The saddle’s well-tanned leather creaked as she settled sidesaddle in front of him, and only then did Ian allow his attention to return to the old woman by the hut. Guiding Tocsin close, he said, “I’ll send someone to fetch you to Fionnaway.”
Ducking her head, she muttered, “I’ll come on my own.”
He hesitated. Should he trust her? But where else had she to go? “Don’t lose your way.”
His warning lingered, as did Wilda’s artless “Farewell!”
The witch rose slowly from her obeisance. Stepping into the June sunshine, she watched Ian, and his strange passenger, ride away.
Then her metamorphosis began. Her spine straightened into the tempered sword of youth. She shook her hair back and coughed as a cloud of gray ash enveloped her. She tossed the wads of padding out of her gown and tightened her belt around her slim waist. With a shrug, she shed her woolen hump and used the corner of the material to wipe the grease from her face. As if she were a delicate butterfly who had escaped from the dull cocoon that bound her, she stretched and twirled.
Like the shape-changer the steward called her, she had transformed herself into a young woman. She wore the rough woolen clothes of a Highland villager and a necklace of polished rune stones; she lived alone in a hovel in the woods, but only a fool would fail to recognize her—and although he had not seen through her disguise, she didn’t make the mistake of thinking Ian a fool.
His parting words disturbed her, and his strength of purpose confounded her. The cat prowled out the door and rubbed her ankles. Without thinking, she hoisted the husky feline and scratched his neck. “He’s clever, Whisky,” she told the animal. “More clever than his father. And polite.” She held the cat up and looked into its golden eyes. “More polite than his father, but that goes without saying. And bonny…he is the bonniest man ever I saw, and it’s obvious he attracts women—beautiful, chatty women—like the thistle attracts the bee.” Whisky kicked in disgust and she put him down. “Now it remains to be seen—is he as clever as the witch of Fionnaway? Is he as clever as Lady Alanna?”
Chapter 3
“Ooh, she was ugly.” Wilda shivered in the saddle in front of Ian. “I don’t know if I can talk to her without staring, and Mama says it’s rude to stare, although some people I just have to stare at. I mean, my eyes just go to them, and if I try to look away, I feel all embarrassed, so I look back and then I just stare. Of course, if she took all that gunk off her face, she’d look better.”
Caught in that whirlpool of illogic Wilda created around her, Ian asked, “Your mother?”
“No, the witch! Isn’t that who we were talking about?”
“Of course.” Several moments ago.
Wilda sighed in exasperation. “Witches are scary, don’t you think? I mean, I’ve always been frightened of them, although Mama told me they weren’t real, but if a witch lived on the Fairchild Estate, she wouldn’t reveal herself to Mama, now would she? It just wouldn’t make sense to walk up and say, ‘I’m a witch,’ just like that, because Mama wouldn’t believe her, and even if she did, she wouldn’t allow a witch to live there, and I can’t imagine a witch defying Mama, can you?”
He didn’t know whether to shake Wilda until she ceased her rattling, or run so far away he didn’t have to hear her anymore. But she was his cousin, twenty-nine years old and still unmarried. He’d brought her to this godforsaken country where people spoke incomprehensible English and ate a mixture of sheep’s lungs, hearts, and liver mixed with the everlasting oatmeal and boiled in the slaughtered animal’s stomach. They called it haggis. He called it revolting.
“Ian, are you listening?” she wailed.
Schooling himself to patience, he guided the horse up the hill toward the manor. “Of course, Wilda. I always listen to you.”
She twisted around and stared up at him, her countenance innocent and her blue eyes wide. Then a ravishing smile transformed her from a silly widgeon to one of the most beautiful women in the civilized world, with the inborn seductive grace of a Helen of Troy—or a Fairchild of Sussex, from which family she indeed hailed. Patting the arm wrapped around her, she confided, “That’s what I like about you, Ian, you never make me feel stupid.”
He stared back at this artlessly kind woman. She loved him, treated him as if he were no different from anyone else, and for that notion of normalcy he would have done a great deal more than lend an ear to her babbling. “Only a fool would think you are stupid, Wilda, and no one calls me a fool.”
“Well, except your father, but he calls you all kinds of things.”
He stiffened, the old wound always ready to bleed.
She giggled. “He’s trying to make himself better than you, poor thing.”
Facing forward again, she rubbed the rippling-smooth stone of his ring with her finger, and he felt the familiar warmth he associated with Wilda. She wasn’t stupid, exactly, only unschooled, and despite her upbringing, naive to the point of absurdity. Because of her astounding affection for him, he would protect her against any threat. And for that reason he asked sternly, “What were you doing at the witch’s hut?”
“Well, it was a beautiful morning and I thought I would take a ride because it’s almost warm, although I must tell you, Ian, my feet are solid chunks of ice inside my boots because you’ve got your feet in the stirrups and mine are dangling.”
“Wilda,” he said. “What did you want from the witch?”
“The horse they gave me in the stable was a nice horse, one of those female ones, so I am surprised she wandered off. Do you think she’ll be unharmed?” Wilda was stalling; unusual behavior for her, for she usually chattered on with no ulterior motive.
But he answered patiently, “That horse was picked for you specifically because she always wanders back home.” He indicated the stable, now in view. “I’m sure she’s there.” He had little time to finish his interrogation, and with Wilda, a little time was seldom enough. “Now—what were you going to say to the witch?”
Wilda slumped in the saddle and with one finger traced the ornate embroidery on her skirt. “I wanted something.”
“From a witch.”
“Well, who else could get this for me?” To Tocsin’s distress, her booted foot swung back and forth. “I need a spell.”
Ian soothed the animal with a pat on the neck. “For what?”
“I can’t tell you that! It would ruin the magic.”
He hoped the witch helped his father enough to warrant the trouble she was creating. “That witch doesn’t have an
y magic.”
“That’s not true!” Wilda twisted around to look at him again. “Haven’t you heard about Kennie the blacksmith?”
Lifting his hand, he rubbed his eyes. “Innumerable times.”
“There you are!” she said triumphantly.
“Who told you?”
Her generous mouth pouted. “No one.”
“Then how did you know about the witch?”
“My maid and Mrs. Armstrong were whispering about her.” She brightened. “I have silver. I can cross her palm.”
“The witch’s. Yes, you could, but I think that’s for Gypsies, dear.” At the sound of Tocsin’s hooves in the gravel outside the stable, one of the stable-boys stuck his head out of the door. He grinned, a smile that showed a decided gap between his two front teeth, and Ian nodded in return.
In a low tone he said, “Wilda, listen to me. It’s dangerous to go wandering in the woods, and it’s even more dangerous to go seeking a witch. She might not be magic, but she’s a crafty old woman and could use you for harm. You must promise me you won’t go seeking her again.”
“But, Ian—”
“Promise me, Wilda.”
As he drew Tocsin to a halt, she whimpered.
“Or I’ll send you back to Fairchild Manor.” It was the ultimate threat, and cruel, but as he well knew, trouble would find Wilda. Wilda didn’t have to go looking for it. “Cousin.”
She capitulated as he knew she would. “Fine. I promise I won’t go seeking her again. But you’re mean, Ian.” Before the stableboy had even caught the reins and secured Tocsin, she slid off the saddle onto the mounting block. “And I don’t like you anymore.”
She flounced off.
The boy glanced at her, smiling. “Ach, she’s as sweet a Sassenach as ever I’ve met.”
“Yes.” Ian dismounted. “Sweet.”
“Ye came back!” The boy congratulated Ian. “’Tis a good thing t’ have escaped the witch’s coils.”
“I’d agree with you there, Shanley.” Ian loosened his cravat, already crumpled from a day in the saddle. “It is Shanley, isn’t it?”