The Legend of Lady MacLaoch (11 page)

“The ring,” I said, finding my voice again, though this time it was shaky. “Did this really once belong to Lady MacLaoch? The one the legend is about?”

“Aye, it did,” he said, matching my tone. “But,” he added, sounding, it seemed, incredulous, “how’d ye know tha’?”

I turned finally to look at him, no glass between us.

I’d say this for the MacLaoch chieftain—the way he was dressed then, I would not have mistaken him for anyone but the clan’s chieftain. He was a man of impressive bearing, hands relaxed in the pockets of his tailored black slacks; the black sport coat he wore pulled snugly across his shoulders, flattening his light-blue, collared shirt.

I gave him a small smile in greeting. “I know that because I can read.”

MacLaoch squinted at me. “Explain,” he said, the mood shifting away from the metaphysical and back to the present.

I pointed into the glass case. “It says right here . . . ” Again I lost my train of thought as I looked into the case. The card next to the ring just said Antique Ring. That was it. Nothing else.

I scoured the case. Perhaps the simple act of looking away had caused the card to fall into a nonexistent crack, or to spontaneously combust.

MacLaoch came up close behind me and looked over my shoulder into the case. “Ye were saying?” he said quietly.

“It was . . . there just a second ago . . . I’m pretty sure,” I mumbled, baffled that I could have seen that text on my own.

MacLaoch leaned against the case next to me, close enough that I could feel the warmth of his body. “No. We have never put the true description of that ring anywhere, except with the insurance company.”

Insurance company. The description I saw earlier had been detailed down to the millimeter, just like an insurance description.

And yet, there I was, shoulder to shoulder in another awkward situation with the MacLaoch chieftain. How would I explain that with any semblance of normalcy?

“I must have been mistaken, or remembered it from something similar, and made the connection.” I gave a small wave, dismissing the whole thing. “You asked me to stop by? If it is in regards to the research I’m doing, or last night . . . ” I trailed off as MacLaoch just watched me—as if he had a thousand questions for me as well.

“Come,” he said, and strode from the room.

I took a deep breath. I was not excited about what I felt was coming next.

CHAPTER 16

I
followed the chieftain out of the artifacts room a short distance, then stopped as he opened a narrow door that he had to turn sideways to get through. The stairs leading upward were merely notches in the stone wall and only a bit wider than the door. MacLaoch seemed to simply disappear up into the stairwell and, after a moment’s hesitation, I followed.

By no small feat, I was able to close the door behind me and nearly scaled the dark staircase as though I were climbing a rock wall. The room at the top was surprisingly open and bright; the floors were made of a rich hardwood and the walls were solid stone, though tapestries and large rugs covered most of the surfaces. A handsome wood desk with a computer workstation filled the center of the room; bookshelves anchored the far wall and the wall under the windows. The windows took up the entire wall to my left and, from where I stood, I could see out over the castle gardens. The space felt very much like it was MacLaoch’s personal office. If I wasn’t mistaken, behind the far door would be a kitchen—it was a push door, no knob—and the smaller of the two rooms to my left would be a bathroom and the other a master bedroom. This was the den of the MacLaoch chieftain, his home.

MacLaoch was pulling together papers on his desk and gestured me
into a chair in front of him. I sunk into the plush leather chair as he handed me what looked to be some sort of official report.

The report was moderately thick, about half the size of my master’s thesis. I automatically started skimming the report, thinking more about the note in my jacket pocket I had yet to give him. Then some text stopped me, refocused my attention fully on the report. I read back through the pages of the report, flipped again to the beginning. I read the title page thoroughly one more time for good measure. I was looking at the history of a man named Iain Eliphlet Minory.

“How?” I asked. “Is this from my records request through Deloris?” I heard the volume of my voice rise. I remembered distinctly that Deloris had received a phone call from the historian saying that the documentation that I held in my hands did
not
exist.

“Aye, our historian sends all requests tae do with the Minory and MacLaoch lineage though me. And since ye and I are well
acquainted
,” he said, with more inflection than necessary, “there’s no need tae have tae go through Deloris. Go on, read about your great-great-granddad.” He sat on the edge of his desk.

My great-great-granddad
. My mind repeated his words, each one landing like a lead weight in my lap. I read the title page yet again, and felt warming in my cheeks. I’d led the MacLaoch chieftain to believe that my family’s spelling was exactly like that of the man in my hands and the one I’d read about in the letter from his uncle. No doubt the clan had the full history of this Iain; they probably even knew if he sat to pee. But, technically, he was
not
my ancestor—one little letter made sure of that, and all of this I had explained in the note I wrote to the chieftain. The one still in my pocket.

“This,” I said, not knowing the best way to start, “isn’t my great-great-granddaddy. You see, I had learned before I hiked over here the other day about the Minory and MacLaoch tale, and when you and I met, I was a little flustered with everything that had happened. I really didn’t think I’d see you again, nor even fathomed that you were the chieftain of this clan, so I pronounced his name to my gain.” I finished quickly and painfully.

MacLaoch became like stone. “Aye? And what is your great-great-granddad’s name, if it’s not Iain Eliphlet Minory?”

I had not thought that the chieftain’s demeanor before had been warm and welcoming; in fact, I had felt the opposite. However, I was suddenly aware that there was a level of subzero possible from the man. I was suddenly out of favor—in the few moments of being together with the ring, we had brokered some trust and now, just as quickly, every ounce of it had been revoked.

I tried to speak, yet no words came out. I snapped my mouth shut but still felt foolish. I could see my research and all the goodwill of the clan and their historical documents getting closed off to me. Swallowing, I found a croak of a voice. “Iain Eliphlet Minary,” I coughed, my voice scratchy with anxiety. “It’s with an
a
not an
o
.”

With each second that ticked by, I watched my research source closing up before my eyes. I realized I’d been clutching the document in my lap, and I forced myself to place it on the coffee table. Hands purposefully loose in my lap, I found when I looked back at MacLaoch something had happened with him. I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed that the hard lines of his face and the stiffness in his posture had softened ever so slightly.

“Minary,” he said, trying out the name as I had pronounced it. “With an
a
?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He thought on this before saying, “This Iain Eliphlet spells his last name with the common spelling of an
o
, and I’ll tell ye that this clan knows of each and every Minory that ever lived. If there was another Iain Eliphlet and he lived on this scrap of land, even if his was spelled with an
a
, I’d know of it. Before ye dismiss him as not being your great-great-granddad, have a look.”

Hesitantly, I picked the report back up and started reading again. By the end of the report, I was glad this character possibly wasn’t my ancestor. The history of this man was less of the quiet hero that I was hoping my Iain Eliphlet Minary would be and more of a rap sheet.

This Iain Eliphlet Minory was a brawler, a drunk, and a gambler. He lived in Merchant City within Glasgow for a bit—maybe under the guise of working to send money home to his wife, Marion Anne Campbell Minory, and her children, five to be exact, from her first marriage (she was a moderately wealthy widow when he married her). More likely he spent his paychecks down to the last cent. The report ended with the equivalent of a modern-day arrest warrant and then documents saying the authorities assumed that he had died.

“He was a busy man,” I said under my breath, thinking that “busy” didn’t quite cover it.

“Aye.”

Despite the lack of great accomplishments by this Iain Eliphlet, there were a few dates and places in this man’s history that were notable, and they didn’t line up with that of what I knew of my Iain Eliphlet, his death being the biggest one.

“Well,” I began, “there’s a problem. This man died about twenty-five years before, and an Atlantic Ocean away from, the known death of the Iain Eliphlet I’m researching. So this is probably a strange coincidence of similar names, or possibly the first case of identity theft. This man might have taken the name of my ancestor to avoid his gambling debts, for example . . . ” My words hung empty in the room.

“Ms. Baker, have ye done research before? I mean, before ye started with your family search.”

I eyed him questioningly. “I have—quite a bit actually, for my graduate program and master’s thesis. What are you implying?”

“I’m implying nothing, though I’m trying to understand why ye have just dismissed important research documentation as irrelevant due to dates of death—”

“Mr. MacLaoch—”

“Rowan.”

“Mr. MacLaoch,” I said, refusing to use his informal name—I was not feeling informal at the moment—“I have spent hundreds, thousands even, of research hours for my master’s thesis, which was scientific research. Science tells me, and this is basic, that if a man is dead, he cannot take a wife and produce offspring. This applies to the entire animal kingdom, in fact.”

“Aye, if he was dead,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.

I just looked at him. “What do you mean
if
?” I asked.

“I can see tha’ you are fact based and take written documentation to be true—I suspect this is from your schooling—but with historical documentation, Ms. Baker, ye have to expect tha’ there will be some anomalies. Sometimes people will write what they
think
is the truth, but yet it is far from it.”

“There are anomalies in science, I am not unfamiliar with them,” I rebuked. “But what are you implying? That the man here in this report faked his death? What documentation do you have to prove that?”

“Ms. Baker, for a moment, pretend tha’ ye are in nineteenth-century Scotland, Glasgow, no less—a bit of a rough-and-tumble place at the time—and then think about tha’ man. Ye ha’ no coin, ye are dead thirsty for drink, ye dinnae or cannae go home, and the law and every other knee-breaker ye owe money to is looking for ye. Now, imagine ye are hearing about a place called America where every man can own land and be free. What do ye think happened then?”

“I don’t buy it. He faked his own death and slipped onto a boat headed to the Americas? He’d have to be on a ship manifest and if that was the case I would have found that in my research. I specifically searched ships’ manifests before coming here.”

“Aye, he would have had to come out of hiding at some point during his trip, I’ll give ye tha’, but, Ms. Baker, ye cannae assume tha’ you have looked through
every
ship’s manifest.”

“No, I haven’t, but I didn’t need to, because someone else has done that research. There are dozens and dozens of archives that have all been painstakingly transcribed and put into electronic format for research purposes. If there was written documentation that existed, I would have found it. The only things I was able to uncover were his wedding certificate, birth certificate of his son—my great-grandfather—a property deed, and his death certificate. I will add, his marriage certificate is dated just a month after this Iain Eliphlet in your report died. It’s not him.”

“Weddings were performed regularly on ships heading to the Americas then.”

“You are trying to stretch the truth for your gain. This man is not my ancestor.”

“Ms. Baker, the similarity in the name is not without cause. It is the same man—he got married on the ship and got off in America a new man.”

I just shook my head. “The dates are all off, and unless several of these clerks were having a bad day and forgot what date it was, there is no explanation for these two to be the same. They are not.”

“The dates are off? Explain.” He squinted as if trying to puzzle out why I was daft—which was annoying.

“Well, for one, if he didn’t die in Glasgow, as you say, but rather took off as a stowaway in the cargo hold of some ship going to the Americas, the next date is the marriage. And no, I don’t believe that he somehow miraculously fell in love with some woman and married her on the ship.
But
giving you the benefit of the doubt, if he didn’t die, if he did fall in love and got married—”

“Love isn’t necessary for marriage, Ms. Baker, but yes, please continue.”

“Whatever,” I said, dismissing his comment. “If he did get married just a couple weeks into his trip, it still doesn’t line up with the birth of his first son. My great-grandfather would have to have been born almost three months premature at just six months after they landed.”

“Or?” was all MacLaoch said.

“Or what? There is no or.”

“Yes, there is an or, and ye are just not wanting to see it. For a moment, just one moment, do not think of all the numbers in a perfect world. Think of the numbers in the world tha’ this Iain Eliphlet Minory lived in.” He stressed that irritating point again, as if I weren’t.

“He was still living in the real world, there are just simple facts about—”