Chapter 3
"I do not believe so, Mr. Stewart," Margaret MacNeill replied to his question. Her voice was quiet and melodic, her English perfect, with the soft lilt of the Gael rather than the broader Scots English. Her voice was careful and she seemed wary. Shy, perhaps.
Dougal nodded, and could not help but note as he glanced at her that she was slim and neatly made beneath her plain garments.
Her feet were sand-dusted, her clasped hands smooth and lovely.
If she worked with nets and gutted fish, like many Hebridean women, her hands did not show it.
Her thick golden curls were pulled back beneath the drape and shadow of the light plaid, and her features were beautiful, delicate—yet with a trace of stubbornness in the chin and set of her lush mouth.
No wonder he thought he had seen her before. Such fair coloring and elegant bones were typical of many Hebrideans due to Viking ancestry. Norrie had it, too, in his fair complexion, high cheek bones, and vivid blue eyes.
Her eyes were luminous, silvery aqua. Frowning as he studied her, he remembered a moment when he had opened his eyes from sleep to see the girl sitting at the mouth of the little cave they had shared in the storm.
In dawn's light, he had seen her face and her extraordinary eyes clearly, their color the delicate blue-green wash of a sky just before dawn.
Margaret MacNeill had those eyes. In fact, she was so much like the sea fairy he remembered that he felt the shock of recognition all through his body—a prickling along his skin, a deep clutching of certainty in his heart and gut.
Could she have been real and he so muddled at the time that he had not known?
If she knew him, she gave no sign, no start. She seemed calm and cool, but he noticed a fine-drawn nervousness, a tight clasping of her hands, a flickering away of those eyes, the clenching of her narrow toes in the sand.
Still frowning, uncertain quite yet, he gave his attention to Norrie MacNeill. "Mr. Stewart is the chief of the lighthouse on the rock," Norrie told his granddaughter.
"Resident engineer," Dougal corrected, smiling. "I was assigned here by the Northern Lighthouse Commission. We have a grant of permission to build on Sgeir Caran and to maintain work buildings here on Caransay."
"I know, Mr. Stewart," the girl said crisply.
If she recognized him, Dougal realized, she was hardly delighted to see him. He could not blame her. What he had done was reprehensible. Disturbed by that thought, he kept an outward calm, yet he knew he must speak with Miss MacNeill alone, and soon.
What he would do about this, he did not yet know. Clearly he owed her an apology and an explanation—providing his behavior that night could be explained. He had been a thousand times a fool, and he must admit that to her.
"I saw you and your men cutting into the hard place today," Norrie said. "I heard your sledges and chisels when I went out over the waves to draw in my nets."
"The hard place?" Alan Clarke asked.
"Sgeir Caran," Margaret MacNeill explained, and Norrie hissed as if to shush her. "My grandfather, like many Hebridean fishermen, will not say the rock's name aloud."
"It is not a good thing," Norrie said.
"I'll remember that," Dougal said. "I will do my best to respect local traditions while I am here."
"Then why do you build on that rock," the girl asked tartly, "when it is legendary among the people of this isle?"
"I was not aware of any legends associated with the rock."
"The hard place belongs to the each-uisge," Norrie said. "The lord of the deep."
"The who?" Alan asked.
"A sea kelpie," Margaret MacNeill told him, "supposedly a creature of great magical power, who sometimes takes the form of a white horse and sometimes the form of a man."
"It is said that he comes to the rock now and again, seeking a bride," Norrie went on.
"The black rock is his, you see. If his bride pleases him, he will quiet the storms that blow here, summon more fish into our nets, and bestow good fortune on us all.
But if he is displeased, he will raise great storms and the fish will flee our waters.
His power and his wrath could sink the hard rock, and Caransay itself, into the waves. "
"Your kelpie is no fellow to cross," Dougal said.
"It is nothing to laugh at," Norrie's granddaughter said.
"We have a tradition on this island to make sure the each-uisge is happy," Norrie said.
"If I were a kelpie, I'd want oatcakes and whisky and all the bonny human lassies I could get," Alan said.
Norrie chuckled, then stopped when he saw his granddaughter scowling at him.
"We have honored these traditions for centuries," she snapped, "even if some do not."
"I beg your pardon, Miss MacNeill." Dougal inclined his head.
He knew that the Hebridean day relied on superstitions, and on traditions and a belief in magic that created a sense of security and power in what could be a harsh and unpredictable place.
He heard Alan murmur an apology too, while the girl looked sternly from one to the other.
"Stewart, we have heard about your troubles with the lady," Norrie MacNeill said then.
"Lady Strathlin? Aye, some troubles. I understand that she keeps a holiday home on this island. Might she come to Caransay soon? I would like to meet with the baroness and show her the work we are doing."
Awkward silence followed as the old man dragged slowly on his pipe and clicked it between his teeth, and the girl turned to gaze out to sea.
"I am thinking the lady is not here," Norrie said.
"If she does come here, I would like to meet with her."
"When she comes here, she stays at the Great House and sometimes sees no one."
"The Great House?" Dougal asked. The girl was silent, offering nothing, tipping her head under her plaid. But he felt her gaze, steady and keen, and not especially favorable.
"Clachan Mor is her manor house on the other side of the island," Norrie replied. "It is the biggest house on Caransay. So if the lady comes out here," Norrie said, watching the smoke curl up from his pipe, "you could send her a note."
"I prefer to meet with her."
"She does not like visitors." Norrie cast him a sharp glance. "I am thinking you do not have her permission to use the beach and harbor. But you go ahead with the work." He scowled.
"I had no choice, sir," Dougal said, surprised by the urge he felt to earn the old man's approval.
"Well, the lady does not like strangers on Caransay, but if we see her we will tell her you are here." Norrie pointed with his pipe toward the rock in the distance. "To please the lady, find another rock for your light. She wishes to protect the privacy of the island. "
"And the location is dangerous," Margaret MacNeill said then. "There are wild storms and high waves out there."
"I know, Miss MacNeill," Dougal answered quietly, looking down at her. "I know that very well."
Her aqua-blue gaze caught his then, and he saw a flash of awareness there. And anger. Then she hastily looked away.
Oh aye, he thought. You are the one.
* * *
Unable to sleep, Dougal left his barracks hut and walked over the machair in the darkness, the wildflower meadow that stretched across the island near the dunes.
Overhead, the sky had finally gone to indigo—Hebridean summer skies could hold a lavender evening light until an hour or so before dawn—and the moon was high and pale, reflected in ripples on the sea.
He strolled deep in thought, considering a stubborn engineering problem.
Rectangular stone blocks, each weighing several tons, had to be precisely trimmed to fit the circular foundation cavity.
He had drawn diagrams and devised measurements, yet each block had to be hand shaped in situ to ensure the tightest fit between the stones.
His masons were reliable, but the figures he gave them, and his design, must be accurate.
A long walk often helped him think it through.
He paused to gaze out over the sea, his mind restless as the waves—not because he puzzled over granite blocks but because Margaret MacNeill had invaded his dreams, and that was why he had not slept well, why he had woken.
In his dream, she had slipped into his arms, her lips comforting, her embrace luscious, turning hot and passionate.
She whispered that she forgave him, and asked his forgiveness.
My dear, it was not you did the wrong. My dearest girl. ...
A most disturbing fantasy. He had woken in warm sweat with a wrench of longing, aroused and quickly furious with himself. And that was why he was walking the machair, trying to shake off the haunting power of the dream.
Waves poured to the shore as he watched, rolling, plunging, streaming in a seductive rhythm. Moonlight gleamed pale through arches of water, their lacy curls looking much like the proud heads and breasts of white stallions.
There are the water horses of Sgeir Caran, he thought.
Seven years ago, washed onto that black rock, he had been drunk, concussed, and nearly drowned when he had imagined seeing those creatures. A man might see anything under such circumstances, even fairies.
So the girl he had encountered there had been a girl of Caransay, and the pale, proud horses that had saved him had been the waves of the sea. And he had been daft that night, daft and lost and misbehaved.
He had to find a way to make amends with the girl. She knew him and he knew her, and neither would say. Yet he could not live with himself, knowing what he had done to that lovely innocent. The look in her eyes just hours ago had been accusing, angry—and still hurt.
Far out, Sgeir Caran was a dark silhouette. Smaller rocks jutted through swirling water, part of the long reef where ships had sunk, lives had forfeited over the centuries.