The Legend of Lady MacLaoch (21 page)

“Rowan,” I said, catching up to him once more. “Is that what gave you that scar? The war, the same battle when your friend was killed?”

Rowan stopped again and looked up into the night sky as if praying for mercy. “What is it tha’ ye want from me, Ms. Baker?” I felt the impersonal blow of him using my formal name. “Haven’t I told ye enough for ye to understand tha’ the bed I lay in is one of thorns?” Looking back at me, the demon knife twisting in his gut, he asked, “What will it do for ye, knowing my darkest moments?”

Reeling from his aggressiveness, I remembered back to when he had met me—his tone and countenance were just the same. The same way that blackberry thorns worked to keep the soft fruit protected behind the spines. Steeling myself against his rebuke, I responded quietly, “It will do nothing for me, Rowan, but don’t you think it will help you? That’s what I want. I want to help you.”

The fog, it seemed, grew thicker, like a cocoon, a gentle protection from everything around us, allowing us to focus on just here, and now. Rowan simply lifted a finger to my hair, gently brushed a curl off my shoulder. He looked me in the eye. “No one can help me,” he said, and simply walked away into the mist.

That time, I let him.

CHAPTER 29

E
xhaustion came quickly for me that night, and just as quickly came the dream. As if it had been hovering all along, waiting for the shutdown of my conscious mind.

The Isle of Lady MacLaoch was once again beneath my feet—cool waters lapped at the cove rocks, and the dusky evening breeze played with my hair. I was just as I was in the last dream, only this time I recognized the ring upon my finger immediately, and knew that it was mine. Closing my eyes, I described the ring to myself as if it were a game, the simple act of concentration pulling me deeper into the dream.

I remembered what came next—the man in my dream, the one I could not recognize but loved with an aching heart. I looked back down at my ring and then up to the shoreline where he had been before. He wasn’t that far away this time. He was standing next to me, wearing what he had the day I met him in real life.

Rowan turned as if he was just discovering that I was standing next to him as well. A slow smile spread over his lips—it was one of relief. In that very moment, the cove dissolved into a hot desert, sandstone mountains jutting up in the distance surrounding us. Rowan was dressed in a drab olive flight suit and suddenly, he hunched over in pain, grasping his side.

In the distance, there was a skirmish—to my untrained eye, I could only make out parachutes fluttering. Then gunfire riddled the air, and fear tore through me. I was in Rowan’s nightmare.

I looked back at Rowan. “Cole,” he whispered. “Help me.” Behind him the firefight raged on.

“Rowan, what’s happening? What happened?” I said, reaching for him.

Rowan pulled his hand away from his side. Blood had saturated his flight suit and still oozed from the small tear under his hand. His hand, too, dripped blood. “Help,” he said again.

I thought of Dr. Peabody and what he had said about the two descendants of the curse, and about reciprocity. If Rowan could pull me into his nightmare, I could pull him into my dreams. Hugging Rowan to me, I thought of home. I thought of my family and our orchards in South Carolina, the pecan and peach fields I’d run through in late summer, filling my shirt with the last of the season’s dropped fruit, and the sweet smell of ripe peach juice as it clung to my arms and dripped off my elbows. I opened my eyes within the dream—juice was indeed streaming down my arms, and the heavy, warm air was South Carolina, not the Middle East. I looked over—Rowan was with me. He held a large peach in his hand and stroked the fuzzy surface with his thumb. “Peaches?” he asked simply.

I could feel myself smile. “Yes, why do you sound surprised?”

He gave me a wicked smile. “Aye, I was thinking tha’ it would be your breast. Seeing tha’ ye have come to me in a dream.”

In the next moment, Rowan and I were on the ground, both of us naked, and he was indeed gently cupping my breast. Then he lowered his mouth to it.

“Holy shit!” I gasped and sat straight up in bed.

I sat there in the dark, breathing deeply, looking around my chilly room at the bed-and-breakfast. “That wasn’t real. It was just a dream,” I said out loud to myself, and repeated it once for good measure. Then once more.

But it wasn’t the last portion that had me doubting—rather, it was the vividness with which the desert battle had replayed itself for me.

CHAPTER 30

T
he next morning Carol hovered while I picked at my breakfast. Finally she pulled out a chair and sat across the table from me.

“Och, now,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Tell me all the details! Who was there last night, and what is all this commotion about someone getting struck, and the MacLaoch chieftain himself saved the day??”

Oh god.

I did my best to reenact the entire night for Carol over my porridge. Omitting the pinching, the punching, the sexual lusting, and the emotional trauma. I was sure Rowan would thank me.

“Och, good! It sounds like ye had a nice time. I bet ye can’t wait for Friday now, can ye?” Carol asked, beaming.

“Friday?” Then remembered before she said it.

“Och, ye are so modest, the final gala of course,” she said and gave me a wink before reporting back to the kitchen for round two of the meal.

A short time later I found myself at the research section of the library’s basement.

“Good morning, Deloris,” I said as I dropped my bag at one of the desks.

“Aye, good morning tae ye.” Deloris came to the front counter. “I suppose ye didnae find what ye were looking for last night then, eh?”

“What I was looking for?” I asked.

“Aye. Or ye wouldn’t be here this mornin’.”

I nodded, realizing what she meant. “I learned much last night”—she nodded; she’d heard at least some gossip—but, unfortunately, nothing that will be of help to my original search.” I took a deep breath and admitted defeat aloud: “I think I need to know everything there is on the Lady MacLaoch curse.”

Deloris blinked. “Oh, so ye didn’t find out about the Minarys then?”

“No,” I confirmed. “I’m beginning to believe that I am in fact the descendant of Iain Eliphlet Minory. I think,” I paused, not sure I wanted to say this aloud, “that I am indeed meant to, somehow, fulfill an ancient destiny.”

“Oh.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s weird. But I just feel that if I could read all I can about this curse, something will pop out at me that will tell me what I need to know.”

“Well, I’ll round up what I can for ye.”

A short while later Deloris and I settled in together to review the documents she had uncovered. The variety of curses the MacLaochs were apparently under was amazing.

“These all are dramatically different depending on the person’s bias,” I said. “‘And she said unto him that he should never love another, though if he shall, his babes will have the heads of horses.’ Heads of horses?”

“Well, it’s more exciting than this one—this says the male MacLaochs will all become strong and virile. Not much of a curse if ye ask me.”

“Ugh,” I said, and put my chin in my hand. This was going nowhere.

Just then the door chimed open and Dr. Peabody strolled in, holding a large box.

“Ah, hello, Nicole and Deloris! Doing research?” He sounded as though the strange evening mere hours before had never happened. He placed his box on the reception counter and came over to us.

“Yes. And you?” I asked. Thinking of my bruised arm, I added, “I hope you’re not here to prove any more theories.”

“Wasn’t it magnificent!?” he beamed, obviously missing my point.

“Which part? Your proving your theory or bruising my arm?”

“Oh yes, I am sorry about that, Ms. Baker, though what it proves is substantial,” he said. “But sadly, I must conclude my business here in Glentree—my family and I are headed back to the States after a tour through Craigellachie. So,” he said, looking at Deloris, “I’ve come to return those materials I borrowed. I didn’t know which ones belonged to Castle Laoch, so I’ve just included everything in the box.”

Dr. Peabody took a deep breath. He had the obvious look of a man who didn’t want to rush away from a center of research—more specific, to leave his research subject behind.

I smiled at him knowingly. “Ed, before you leave, I bet you can help Deloris and me with our current question.”

“Yes?”

Why did I want to give him a little going-away gift? I had no idea. But it
was
fun to see how giddy he got over research.

“There are as many versions of the curse as there are days of the year. How can we weed out the most credible of the bunch?”

Dr. Peabody beamed. “Ah, yes. Which one is the truest form? A very good question, and I think I can help.”

“Really?”

He turned to his box, unloaded a few top files, found the one he’d been looking for, and flipped it open. “Here,” he said, handing me a sheet of typewritten paper. “This is dictation taken from a Secret Keeper. That’s someone who’s been nominated to remember the story—every generation has someone who is in charge of memorizing the curse
verbatim
from the past generation.”

By the time I’d finished reading, all the hair on my body was standing on end.

“This is it,” I whispered. “Do you know who the current Secret Keeper is?”

Dr. Peabody shook his head sadly. “No, I don’t know who this person is. It’s not listed anywhere.”

I reread the curse. “This sounds just like the one the MacDonagh brothers told to me. Here, this is the part I was looking for: ‘When they have walked the lonely halls of despair will I bestow upon them a peace I once held long ago and then, only for a moment,’” I recited the words and fell silent.

“What are you suggesting?” Dr. Peabody asked.

“Well, it seems obvious, doesn’t it? That what she’s saying is that only when the MacLaoch chieftain shares her pain, and I assume here that she means, feels pain equal to or greater than the one she felt, that only then will the clan be free of the curse. Or, in other words, once you walk in my shoes, I’ll lift the curse—you can love freely as you would have done before me,” I said and sat back.

“And?” Dr. Peabody asked.

“And what?”

“Well, my dear, we know that Rowan has seen the likes of her pain, so the question is, now what do you do?”

“Wait now,” Deloris piped up. “I don’t want to pry, but I gather ye both think that Rowan has seen the likes of her pain?” She pointed to the transcript of the curse.

Dr. Peabody and I looked at each other, then back to her, and said, “Yes.”

“Oh, all right, then. So how come the chieftain seems still to be cursed?”

I had felt it earlier but now it was much stronger: the low hum in my belly. Since I had become aware of whom—not what—was the cause of the hum, I could not ignore it. Rowan was near.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It seems from this that the simple act of having seen the likes of Lady MacLaoch’s pain would do the trick. The MacLaochs, however, are strong believers that the descendant of the Minory will break the curse.”

Peabody nodded, spectacles swinging in his hand as he looked off into the distance, contemplating. “Yes. You are right the MacLaochs do believe the Minory will break the curse, and those who stick to the original concept of it realize that the Minory returning is the signal of the broken curse—mission completed, if you will.”

“Oh, so you are saying that my simply being here has broken the curse, if the chieftan’s pain hasn’t already?”

“Yes, my dear, I do believe that. However, I am just one person, and if Deloris here believes it as well, that makes for only two people. I’m afraid that just because we believe it doesn’t mean that the rest of the clan will. And there are a few who are dogged in their determination to become better acquainted with you because of it.”

“Oh, brother,” I said. “The eternal fan club.”

“Hmm,” Peabody said. “More or less.”

This time it was my turn to think. I didn’t have the deep, satisfying feeling that came after a long slog of research ending in the right answer. There was more.

“In the past few days, I’ve had a recurring dream about Lady MacLaoch and an ancient ring. In those dreams I’m wearing the ring and it belongs to me, but in reality it’s sitting in the Castle Laoch antiques display.”

The glasses dropped from Peabody’s hand. “You mean
the
Lady MacLaoch ring?” he asked breathlessly.

“Yes.”

“You’ve dreamed about it? Have you seen it in real life?”

“Yes and yes. Though I first dreamed about it before I saw it on display at the castle.” It felt a bit odd admitting to having dreamed of something before having seen it, though I did realize I was talking to Dr. Peabody.

Peabody sat back and blinked rapidly. “I think . . . ” he said and stopped—he seemed to be immersed in a very serious internal dialogue. “I think, Nicole, that . . . I believe, and this is just a theory—one I’ve just thought of, so I haven’t addressed all the holes in it but . . . ” he said and was silent again.