Chapter Fifteen
“You saw her just now?” Fiona stared up at him.
“Not this time. But I felt her presence.” He had revealed too much, which was unlike him. The ease he felt with Fiona MacCarran, the trust building there, continually surprised him. “I have seen such before.”
“So you have seen the woman?” Her blue eyes were wide in her pale, lovely face, with a flush to her cheeks—brought on by kissing, and perhaps the drink, and he should have been more careful with her—but she was beautiful, alluring, creamy skin, sparkling eyes, hair like dark silk.
He did not want to talk. He only wanted to kiss her again. He only nodded.
“Not her, perhaps, but others like her. When I was young,” he said firmly, straightening away as if to distance himself from the truth he was about to tell her, “I sometimes saw—unusual lights, and people that others did not see. A small beautiful woman, and other strangers. Just now, I sensed one of them was near,” he confessed.
“You did not say so.”
“I keep such things to myself. Some Highlanders have the ability to see the Fey, with or without the whisky. It is a natural ability among some of the MacGregors of Kinloch and their kin—like the MacArthurs. Other clans too.” He felt he was admitting too much—felt foolish about it as well—yet he wanted her to know.
She was not merely intrigued and curious.
Fiona MacCarran had responded to the fairy brew in an extraordinary way that said something important about her, something she might not know herself.
Fairy blood, he thought. That was said to be what gave some Highland folk the ability to see the Fey.
She might not know it, but she must have the ancestry.
Reaching out, he brushed his fingers over her hair.
“I am very careful about who drinks the fairy brew. It has a strange effect on a very few people.”
She tipped her head. “What does it do?”
“It opens the veil between worlds so that some can see the Otherworld of the Fey.”
“Belladonna can do the same, but the visions are not real. It is a drug, then.”
“Not a drug. It has to do with Highland ancestry. If the bloodline includes the fairy ilk—the ability may appear.”
“It did seem very real. Do you add something to the drink?” She did not look pleased. “You ought to label it if so.”
“There is nothing special or harmful added to the brew. It is a simple recipe.” He thought of the morning dew gathered from the flowers up on the mountain, in the little glade that his father had shown him years before.
“Legend says fairy ancestry grants the power to only a few who taste their ancient whisky recipe. For anyone else, it is just a very good whisky.”
“I do not understand.”
“If your ancestry includes fairies, you may have the ability. So they say,” he added.
He saw her go a little pale. “Fairy ancestry,” she echoed, and nodded. “Tell me, do the Fey make the brew themselves? But if they do not exist, how could that be? Wait. You make it yourself, you said so.”
“I make it, just like the lairds of Kinloch before me. By tradition, only the laird himself can make it according to an old and secret family recipe. The fairies made that condition long ago, so the legend says. I suppose it seems quite mad.”
“Not to me. My grandmother wrote about fairies, and now my brother, a scientist, does as well. And I know a little about the power of conditions,” she added, sounding wry. “Are there more secret legends of fairies among your kin?”
“Every clan has its legends, and we have ours. Some are known, some we keep to ourselves. This particular tradition claims that the fairies require secrecy from Kinloch in exchange for the recipe of fairy brew. That secret is passed down from the laird to his heir, and only the closest kin may learn it. A grandfather. A father. A son, a daughter. A wife,” he added.
He felt the urge to tell her more. Suddenly, keenly, he wanted Fiona to be part of that circle.
He pressed his mouth tight, folded his arms against the feeling.
“We have legends in our family too that might seem odd to some. And my grandmother’s will is certainly—” She paused, shook her head, drawing the brocade robe snugly about her.
“Well,” she went on, “can you tell me more, or is it not permitted to speak of it? After all, I did see the fairy of the whisky just now,” she pointed out.
“The fairy of the whisky! Perhaps that is who you saw.” He smiled at her description.
“Very well, since she appeared to you. According to the old legend, long ago a laird of Kinloch did the fairies a favor, and in return they gave him a recipe known only to the fairy ilk. We must make it a certain way, and can only give it away, and only to a few. We must never sell it or profit from it.”
He was telling her more than he should. It felt like a promise for the future.
“Then you cannot make much quantity,” she replied with a half laugh. “It is not economical.”
“Not very. It is blessing from the fairies, not a means to an income.”
“They must have given it to your kin for a very special reason.”
He leaned a hip against the table, folded his arms. “One of my ancestors saved the life of a fairy woman one night during a blizzard. He brought her to his house and revived her with a dram of whisky to warm her.” No harm in telling her the legend, he told himself.
But each revelation, each secret, brought him closer to—to some commitment he dared not pursue.
He trusted her—that was all, he told himself.
“So you can make it but must never sell it, only give it away. A lovely tradition.”
He nodded. “One must never profit from a gift the fairies bestow freely. The recipe is known only to the laird and his wife, and passed down to a son or a daughter, though so far it has only gone to sons and sons, and thus stays with the MacGregors of Kinloch.”
“I see. It is a potent drink, more so than the usual whisky.” She set a hand to her head. A high blush colored her cheeks, and her throat was pink at the open neck of the dressing gown. “I do feel it. Oh, my.”
“Sit down,” he said, though she did not.
“Word about Kinloch fairy whisky got out eventually, over generations. It is known to be extraordinarily good stuff. We gift it here and there. My cousin Donal, for one.” He smiled ruefully.
“If it was better known, there could be a clamor for it, and we cannot make it in quantity. And if word got about and brought tourists here, it would make a spectacle of our glen. We do not want that.”
She sighed. “Highland romantic legends are very popular now.”
“I intend to keep my beautiful glen from becoming an attraction.”
“You are right to be careful. This glen would no longer be a remote and private place. People would come to explore, and would want fairy whisky.”
He nodded. “They already come in droves to Loch Katrine, wanting to experience the Highlands of the Bard of the North, as they call Scott.”
“Although,” she ventured, “your glen might be rescued from poverty if tourists were allowed here, and paid a fee to visit and stay at an inn, and so on.”
“I refuse to encourage the traffic of strangers in the glen. But I will tolerate one Lowland teacher.” He smiled, slight but sincerely, hinting at more than he dared tell her.
“Will you now,” she said wryly. “I thought you were anxious to be rid of her.”
“I am reconsidering.” He settled back against the table. “Tell me about your family legend. Sit, Miss MacCarran,” he urged, seeing her sway and set her hand to the chair.
She did, demurely adjusting the overlarge robe around her lithe and slender form.
“I have heard there is an old family seat at Duncrieff, and inside the castle there is a cup. A band of gold set with jewels encircles the cup, engraved with a motto. It was gifted to an ancestor long ago, and tradition claims the MacCarrans of Duncrieff are obliged to follow that decree. If we do not—” Her blush deepened. “You will think it very silly.”
“I make whisky according to an old fairy recipe. Nothing you could say would seem foolish after that, lass. Who was this special and wise ancestor?”
“An ancestress, actually. A fairy. So they say,” she added quickly.
“Ah. Fairy blood somewhere in you, then. Go on.”
“The jeweled cup was the gift of a fairy bride who married a MacCarran long ago.”
“And she proclaimed a motto that you are all obliged to follow? Is it secret?”
“Not secret,” she said. “Love makes its own magic, the cup says.”
He caught his breath, then nodded. “Nothing silly about that. What is the obligation? Be kind to others? You do well in that regard, I think.”
“We are obliged to honor her gift by finding true love,” she said quietly. “It does not always happen.”
“Not an easy thing to find. What is the consequence of not finding true love?”
“Poor luck for the family. And we have surely had some.”
“That is often the way of it, with fairies. They bless and curse freely, without thinking about the effects of their ultimatums.”
“Sometimes, so the tradition says, members of our line must marry those with fairy blood. If we can find someone to meet that condition!”
“Difficult, that.” He looked at her steadily, marveling at her family’s tradition, understanding completely, for his kinfolk had met conditions for generations. “Even to me it seems impossible, and at the least would not help generations continue.”
“Indeed.” She stared up at him, her graceful fingers folded together, her beautiful eyes gray blue in the shadows. “Very hard to manage.”
“It might interest you to know,” he murmured, heart pounding, “that I have a bit of fairy blood.”
“Do you?” She blushed deeply. He watched it flow into her cheeks.
“So they say.”
“Not surprising, though.” She cleared her throat.
“My guess is you have more than a trace of fairy blood, lass, judging by the way the fairy whisky took you.”
She lifted her brows. “Because I claim to see lights, and—the woman?”