The Presence
He walked to the door of the dividing bath and then paused. He returned to the bedside.
She slept, an angel still. That spill of hair …
It might have been any hair.
He hardened his jaw and swore softly, decrying his own nonsense. It was fucking dawn. He needed to get some sleep.
Thayer Fraser shivered as he walked along the path, heading down toward the stream, valley and forest. “A
nice brisk walk in the lovely morning air!” he said, speaking aloud. “Actually, that would be fucking cold morning air! “ he added. His voice sounded strange in the silence of the very early morning as it echoed off the stone walls of the run-down castle. Eerie, even.
At the base of the hill, he turned back. Most folks outside the country didn’t know that there were still many such places as this castle—smaller castles, family homesteads, not the great walled almost-cities-within-cities such as the fortified castles at Edinburgh and Stirling. They could be found, and some of them poor, indeed, much smaller than many a manor house. And naturally, in a far sadder state of being.
He stared up at the stone bastion, beautiful against the sky this morning. There was not a drop of rain in sight, not a single cloud. Ah, yes! This was the stuff of postcards, coffee-table books and calendars, the kind of thing American tourists just had to capture in a million and five digital pictures!
So far—though they all claimed to be in the bad times together, just as they were in the good—they were all secretly blaming Toni. For she had been the one to find the property on the Internet. She had been the one to write to the post box. And she had been the one to receive the agreement, bring it to her lawyer and then pass it on to all of them.
So, yes … they were blaming Toni. But pretty soon they’d be looking at him.
After all, he was Scottish, born and bred. He’d seen the advertisements in Glasgow, and had told Toni that it looked fitting for their purpose.
“Shite!” he muttered aloud.
He looked to the forest. Hell, he’d actually never known what they called the damned place. They should understand that. Most Americans had never seen their own Grand Canyon. Why should he be supposed to know about every nook and cranny of Scotland?
Hopefully they would continue blaming Toni, his American cousin. His kin. With her wonder and exuberance, she had convinced them that they could do it. He could remember first meeting her, how pleased she had been to meet a Fraser, an actual—if slightly distant—member of her father’s family. He’d been bowled over by her. Indeed, he’d found her gorgeous, stimulating, though she’d rather quickly squelched any thoughts of more than a brother-sister relationship between them.
It wasn’t as if he didn’t have enough blokes for friends in Glasgow, but she and her American group had been a breath of fresh air. In Glasgow, it was too easy to get into the old work by day, live for the pub at night mentality. The Americans had nothing on the Scots when it came to alcoholism and drug addiction. The working class was the working class, and therein lay the pub, the delights of escape, drugs—wine, women and song.
And though Toni might not want a hot roll in the old hay with him, she trusted him. Liked him. Relied on him.
He smiled grimly. Oh, aye! Americans, God bless them, just loved to look back to the old homeland. Give them an accent and they were putty.
He stared at the forest again, a sense of deep unease stirring in him. He never had known the damned name of the place, and that was a fact.
The forest was still as dark as a witch’s teat in the glory of dawn. Dense, deep, remote. And he realized that he was just standing there, staring into it. Time had passed, and he hadn’t moved. He’d been mesmerized.
It was an effort to draw himself away, to shake the sudden fear that seized him. It was almost as if he had to physically tear himself away from the darkness, as if the trees had reached out, gripped him … and held him tight.
“Fooking ass!” he railed against himself as he turned and hurried back to the castle.
Jonathan Tavish sat at his breakfast table, morosely stirring the sugar in his tea.
His home might be old by some standards—built around 1910—and it might have a certain thatched-roof, quaint charm. But it sure as hell wasn’t any castle.
Through the window, he could see the MacNiall holding, just as he had seen it all of his life. A dilapidated pile of stone, he told himself.
But it wasn’t. It was the castle, no matter what else. It was Bruce MacNiall’s holding, because he was the MacNiall, and in this little neck of the world, that would always mean something, no matter how far the world moved along.
Bruce had been his friend for years.
“Wonder if he knows what I’ve felt all these years?” Jonathan asked out loud. “You’re a decent chap, Laird MacNiall, that y’are! Slainte, my friend. To your health. Always.”
He smiled slightly. Aye, he could have told the Americans easily enough that there was a Bruce MacNiall. Then again, why the hell should he have done so? Bruce had never seen it necessary to explain his absences from the village, or suggest that Jonathan keep an eye on things or, heaven forbid, ask his old chum to keep him informed when he was away. And that was often. Bruce spent time in Edinburgh, confiding often enough with Robert, his old friend from the service, delving into matters though he’d been out of it all long enough himself. Of course, with the events of the last year or so …
Then there were his “interests” in the States. Kept an apartment there, he did. Well, money made money, and that was a fact.
Hell, who had known when he would return this time. It was all legitimate that he hadn’t said a word to the new folk about there being a real Bruce. And those folk had, amusingly enough, done real work at the place. Bruce sure hadn’t kept up the place. In fact, there were times when it seemed that he hated the castle and the great forest surrounding it, even the village itself.
That, of course, had to do with Maggie….
“Well, old boy,” he said aloud softly, “at least you had her once. She loved you, she did. She was my friend, but she loved you.”
Maggie had been gone a very long time. There was no sense thinking about those days anymore.
Impatiently Jonathan stood, bringing along his tea as he walked to the window. There it was, the castle on the hill. Bruce’s castle. Bruce was the MacNiall. The bloody MacNiall. Laird MacNiall.
“To you, you bloody bastard! These are not the old days, my friend. I am not a subject, a serf, a servant. I’m the law here, the bloody law.”
He stared at the castle and the forest, the sun shining on the former, a shadow of green darkness enveloping the latter.
“The bloody law!”
A crooked grin split his lips.
“Y’may be the MacNiall, the bloody great MacNiall, but I am the law. I have that power. And when it’s necessary for the law to come down, well … friend or nae, I will be that power!”
4
“What are we going to do about tonight?” Gina asked Toni.
They were alone in the kitchen. Gina had been the first up. Ever the consummate businesswoman, she had apparently been worrying about the tour they had planned for Saturday night since waking up. In fact, she might not even have slept.
Toni was still feeling fairly haggard herself. When she woke, she had found the chair empty and the dividing doors shut. She’d tapped lightly at the bathroom door, but there had been no answer. She had entered, locked the other side, gotten ready and unlocked it. She hadn’t heard a sound and assumed that he was at last sleeping. The night seemed a blur to her now.
Even the absolute terror that had awakened her seemed to have faded. And yet … something lingered. A very deep unease.
“Toni, what on earth are we going to do?” Gina repeated.
“Maybe he’ll just let us have our group in,” she said.
Gina folded her hands in front of her on the kitchen table, looking at Toni. “We could have had our butts out on the street last night. You have to quit aggravating the guy.”
“Wait just a minute! I was actually in the right last night. How did we know—until the constable came—that he really was who he said he was.”
“You have to quit being so hostile to him,” Gina insisted.
“I talked to him again last night. And I wasn’t hostile,” Toni told Gina.
Gina instantly froze. “You … talked to him again?” She sounded wary and very worried.
“I told you, I wasn’t hostile!”
David, looking admirably suave in a silk robe, walked into the kitchen. “Did I hear that Toni was talking to our host again?” He, too, sounded very worried.
“Hey, you guys! This isn’t fair. When he came bursting in like Thor on a cloud of thunder, I assumed we were perfectly in the right,” Toni said, exasperated. “And we were. We did everything right.”
“Well,” David said, opening the refrigerator, “for being right, we’re looking awfully wrong. We have tourists coming in tonight. What are we going to do?”
“What else? I’m going to get on the phone and cancel,” Gina said. She laid her head on the table and groaned. “Where am I going to get the money for refunds?”
David smoothed back his freshly washed dark hair and shut the refrigerator. “Wow, we sure have made this home. Do you think it’s still all right if I delve into the refrigerator?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Toni said. “It is our food in there. There wasn’t a thing in the place when we arrived, except for a few tea bags!”
“Hey, I know. I’m going to whip up a really good breakfast. Think Laird MacNiall will like that? You know, Toni, you’re going to have to be careful when making things up from now on. This guy turned out to be real, and you have his ancestor being a murderer! From now on, invent characters that are noble and good.”
“Hey, Othello was noble, and he killed his wife,” Toni said.
“That breakfast doesn’t sound like a bad idea,” Gina said.
“We should make Toni cook,” David said.
“No!” Kevin protested, standing in the kitchen doorway. “We’ll definitely get kicked out if we do that.” He grinned, taking the sting out of his words, and surveyed the kitchen. “Imagine this place if we had a few more funds! I’d love to see baker’s rows of copper pots and pans and utensils.”
“It’s not our place anymore,” Gina reminded him.
“Soft yellow paint would bring in the sunlight,” David mused.
“How the hell can you be so cheerful this morning?” Gina asked him.
“I’m eternally and annoyingly cheerful, you all know that,” Kevin said. “Things will work out. Hey, whoever made the coffee did a full pot, right?” he asked, moving to the counter.
David closed the refrigerator door and leaned against it, looking at Kevin. “Think that Scottish lairds like eggs Benedict?”
“Shouldn’t we do something with salmon?” Kevin countered.
“Good point,” David agreed.
“I’m glad you two can worry about breakfast,” Gina murmured. “What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to sit down like the good friends we are and figure a way out of this,” David said flatly. “Where’s your husband, Gina?”
She shook her head. “He wasn’t in the room. He’s out somewhere … walking, playing in the stables, Lord knows.”
Thayer came walking into the kitchen, bearing the newspaper from Stirling, the nearest major city. He set it on the table, offering them all a grimace. “Good morning, we can at least hope.”
“Maybe, but only if we start over with the coffee. Gina, did you make this?” Kevin asked, tasting the brew. “What did you use, local mud?”
“It’s strong, that’s all,” Gina protested.
“So, what do we do?” Thayer asked.
“We’ll wait for Ryan and then figure out what we can do. Of course, we have until Monday before we need to worry about where we’ll sleep!” Gina sighed. “I should call the travel agency in Stirling and start canceling the arrangements for tonight.”
“Sixty people at twenty-five a pop—pounds sterling,” Thayer said woefully. “My place in Glasgow is small, but if we buy a few pillows we’ll be fine.”
“We all quit our jobs,” Kevin reminded him.
“And we can get new ones,” David said.
“There has to be some recourse here,” Toni said.
“Toni has been talking to Laird MacNiall again,” Gina warned, trying to keep emotion from her voice.
“I wasn’t fighting with him!” Toni protested.
“Well, you didn’t exactly offer him warm and cuddly Southern hospitality,” David reminded her.
“I’m not Southern!”
“You could have faked it,” Kevin said.
“Actually, you are from the south—the south side of D.C.,” David offered.
She glared at him. “Look, I had a conversation with him, and he wasn’t miserable at all,” Toni said.
David gasped suddenly and walked around to her, looking down into her eyes. He squeezed her shoulders. “You didn’t … I mean, Toni, we’re in trouble here, but you don’t have to … you don’t have to offer that kind of hospitality, no matter how dire things are looking!”
“David!” she snapped, feeling a flush rise over her cheeks. “I didn’t, and I wouldn’t! How the hell long have you known me?”
Gina giggled suddenly. “Hey, I don’t know. In the looks department, he’s really all right.”
“What she really means is,” Kevin teased, “if it weren’t for Ryan, she’d do him in a flash.”
Gina leveled a searing gaze at him. “The breakfast better be damned good.”
“Look!” Toni said. “I talked to him but I didn’t sleep with him. He was in my room, but …”
“What?” David demanded, drawing out the chair at her side and looking at her, his dark eyes very serious.
“It seems that I was in his room, so I moved into the next one,” she told him. “We had to talk and we were both cordial, okay?” she said.
“You just talked to him … without …”
“Being bitchy?” Kevin asked bluntly.
“Dammit! I was polite.”
“Okay, okay!” David said.
That was it. She was offering no further explanations of how she might have gotten into a cordial conversation
with the laird. “And now I’m thinking that if we ask really politely, maybe he’d let us do tonight’s performance so that we can recoup some of our losses.”
“She’s got a good idea there,” Thayer said.
“Omelettes!” Kevin said suddenly. “Salmon and bacon on the side. So who gets to ask Laird MacNiall if we can do the tour tonight?”
“Toni,” David said, suddenly determined. “She has to ask him. She’s the one who’s talked to him.”
“Toni? Oh, I don’t know about that,” Thayer protested. He looked across the table as she glared at him. “Sorry! But you seem to have a hair-trigger temper with the guy. It’s kind of like sending in a tigress to ask largesse of a lion!”
Toni groaned. “I don’t have a hair-trigger temper. Ever. He was very aggravating last night, and I thought that I was defending us.”
“You were,” David assured her.
“All right,” Gina said. “Toni, you ask him.”
“Ask him what?”
They all jolted around. Bruce MacNiall was standing in the kitchen doorway with Ryan. This morning, he was in jeans and a denim shirt. Apparently, he hadn’t been sleeping. His ebony hair was slightly windblown and damp.
“I’ve got to get dressed,” David said. “Excuse me.”
“I might have left the water running,” Thayer murmured. “I’ll be right back.”
“Got to plan the menu!” Kevin said, hurrying for the door. “Mr. MacNiall … Laird MacNiall, we’re going to cook a great … uh … brunch. In thanks for your hospitality, whether intended or not.”
Ryan, staring at all of them as if they’d lost their senses, came striding in, heading for Gina and Toni. “The countryside! My God, I thought I’d taken a few good rides, but you should see the sweeping hills! There is nothing like seeing this place through Bruce’s eyes!” Ryan loved both horses and free spaces. His work the last several years as a medieval knight at the Magician’s Court right outside Baltimore had seldom allowed him a chance to spend time with his beloved animals that wasn’t part of training in closed-in spaces. He must have been happy.
“Why don’t you tell me about it upstairs, sweetheart?” Gina said, rising.
“Why upstairs?” Ryan demanded.
“Toni wants to talk to Laird MacNiall,” Gina said. She rose, caught hold of his shirtsleeve and dragged him along with her, smiling awkwardly as she passed Bruce MacNiall.
Toni was left alone at the table. Bruce was aware that his arrival had caused an exodus, and he was evidently somewhat amused. Especially since it had been so very far from subtle.
“They’re afraid of me?” he queried.
Toni inhaled. “Well, it seems that we’re all realizing that you do actually own this place and that we have been taken.”
“Good,” he said, striding toward the counter.
Toni winced. “The coffee is a bit …”
He’d already poured a cup and sipped it.
“Like mud. It will do for the moment,” MacNiall said. He turned and leaned against the counter, looking at her. “What are you supposed to ask me?”
“Well …”
“Well?”
He might be in jeans and tailored denim, leaning against a counter with a coffee cup, but she could well imagine him in something like a throne room, taking petitions from his vassals.
She stared at him a minute, determined that she wasn’t going to be so intimidated. They weren’t living in the feudal ages, after all.
“We had booked a large tour group for tonight. We don’t want to have to cancel.”
“What?” His question was beyond sharp. It was a growl.
Maybe she shouldn’t have been quite so blunt. He had slept in a chair in her room last night, but that hadn’t made them bosom buddies.
“Look,” she said impatiently, wondering what it was about him that goaded her own temper so severely. “You know that we’re really in a mess here. And if you take a good look around, you’ll have to admit that you owe us.”
“I owe you?” The words were polite, but it was quite evident that he found the mere idea totally ludicrous.
So they were right! she thought with a wince. She was quick to become defensive and then offensive with the laird. But she had gone this far with a brash determination. There was little to do other than play it out.
“Yes,” she said with conviction. “We’ve worked on walls, done masonry, fixed electric wiring … scrubbed on our hands and knees! Quite frankly, we’re more deserving of such a place—at least we’ve put love and spit and polish into it. How you could own such an exquisite piece of history and … let it go like this, I can’t begin to imagine.”
She could see the outrage and incredulity slipping into his eyes. Though he didn’t move, every muscle in his body seemed to tense, making his shoulders even broader.
Inwardly she winced. Great, she thought. So much for playing it out!
She was supposed to be talking him into allowing them to operate their tour, not offending and angering him.
“So now you’re an expert on maintaining a Scottish castle,” he said.
She stared into her cup. A sudden and vivid recollection of falling into his lap came to mind. Her fingers against his flesh, pressing into his … lap. The easy way he rose and simply deposited her down …
Last night his behavior had been courteous—and kind. She realized then that she was attracted to him, and somewhat afraid of him, as well. And her hostility toward him had everything to do with her inner defense mechanism.
Ryan suddenly burst back into the kitchen. Toni was certain that he hadn’t been far away, that he’d been listening in.
“Toni isn’t explaining this very well,” Ryan said, turning toward her with a fierce frown. “We really did do a lot, and not just cosmetic work. We did some structural work, as well. Honestly—”
“Yes,” Bruce said, staring at Toni.
Her heart quickened.
“Pardon?” Ryan said.
“Miss Fraser wasn’t particularly eloquent in her plea, but I do see that you’ve done a lot of labor here. And I quite understand that you’re in a bad position. Your group can come. Apparently you’re going to need the money.” He poured his coffee down the drain and exited the kitchen.
Ryan stared at Toni in amazement. Then he bounded toward her, drawing her from the chair, grinning like a madman. “Yes! Yes!”
Gina came in behind her husband. They hugged one another, dancing around the kitchen.
In a moment Thayer was back in, and then David and Kevin. They were so pleased, Toni wondered if they realized that they hadn’t gained anything but a single night. And though it would keep them from sleeping on Thayer’s Glasgow apartment floor for the next week, it would far from recoup their investment.
“We’re going to cook up the best breakfast in the world,” David said.
“We might want to start by brewing a new pot of coffee,” Toni told them, and she couldn’t help a grimace toward Gina. “Laird MacNiall just dumped yours down the sink.”
“Really!” Gina said.
“So your coffee sucks!” Ryan said cheerfully, kissing her cheek. “You’re still as cute as a button.”
“Get out of here, the lot of you,” Kevin said. “Shoo! We have to cook.”
Toni rose to leave, and as she did so, she glanced at the paper Thayer had left on the table when he’d first come in. The headlines blazed at her: Edinburgh Woman Still Missing. Police Fear Foul Play.
“Wait! Not you, Toni,” David said.
She looked over at him. “What do you mean, not me? You all insult my cooking!”
“But you’re the best washer, chopper and assistant we’ve ever had,” Kevin told her sweetly. “And then there’s the table. We should set it really nicely.”
“Wait, I get to wash, chop and be chef’s grunt?”
David set his arm around her shoulders, flashing her a smile, his dark eyes alive and merry. “Think of it as historical role-playing. Everyone wants to be the queen, but you have to have a few serfs running around.”
“Serf you!” she muttered.
“The others will have to clean up,” he reminded her.
“All right, there’s a deal,” Toni agreed. She walked over to the table and picked up the newspaper, sliding it under the counter so that she could go back for it later.
“Laird MacNiall?”
Bruce had been at his desk—where, he had to admit, the lack of dust was a welcome situation—when the tap sounded at his door. Bidding the arrival enter, he looked up to see that David Fulton was at his door.
“Aye, come in,” Bruce told him.
Fulton was a striking fellow, dark and lean. His affection for Kevin was evident in his warmth, but he also seemed to carry a deep sense of concern for the rest of his friends, as did they all.
Bruce was surprised to discover he somewhat envied the repartee in the group. The gay couple, the married couple, Toni Fraser—and even her Scots cousin. They were a diverse group, but the closeness between them was admirable. Riding with Ryan that morning, he had gotten most of the scoop on the group, how they had met, and how they had first begun the enterprise as a wild scheme, then determined that they could make it real.
“We’re really grateful to you,” David said. “Anyway, we like to think that we’ve prepared a feast fit for a king—or a lord, at the very least. Would you be so good as to join us?”
Bruce set down his pencil, surveyed the fellow and realized his stomach was growling. He inclined his head. “Great. I’ll be right down.”
He waited for David to leave, then opened his top drawer and set the sheets he’d been working on within it, along with the daily news.
He didn’t close the drawer, but studied the headline and the article again, deeply disturbed. The phrase all leads exhausted seemed to jump out at him.
Jonathan Tavish was fine enough as a local constable, but he hated giving up any of his local power, and he just didn’t have the expertise to deal with the situation that seemed to grow more dire on a daily basis.