The Presence

  “There’s definitely a problem, I’m afraid.”

  “Aye, but they been good, Bruce, really good a fixen ’er up!” Eban announced suddenly.

  “We really have put a lot of hard work into it,” Ryan said.

  Apparently the tourists had been loaded back onto their buses. David and Kevin came back into the hall. For a moment, they were all a tableau, at an impasse. David moved up awkwardly. “Laird MacNiall?” he murmured. “David Fulton, and my friend, Kevin Hart. We’re only beginning to understand the gist of what went wrong, but, honestly, no group could have put more toil and loving effort into making improvements here. If you’ll take some time and look around, you’ll see what very real elbow grease has gone into our stay here.”

  Then, to Toni’s amazement, Bruce MacNiall uttered an oath beneath his breath, and made what to him must have been a very generous statement. “All right. It’s Fri day night. Jon is here with us and can validate who I am, but the legal offices are in town and they won’t be open again until Monday morning. Until then, I believe you’ll have to stay.”

  “We’ll have to stay because we paid a great deal of money to be here, and we have legal documentation,” Toni said stubbornly.

  Gina jabbed her with an elbow to the ribs. She winced, realizing that maybe she was pushing it. But she wasn’t going to blindly believe this man, or even the local-yokel constable, when she had brought the agreement to an attorney, and he had read over the deal.

  “We do have an attorney!” she murmured.

  “Solicitor,” Thayer murmured to her softly. “We have solicitors here.”

  “I get the feeling he knows what an attorney is,” Toni murmured back softly.

  Jonathan Tavish cleared his throat. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m truly sorry now that I didn’t try to stop you. As I said, I didn’t know for certain that Bruce hadn’t decided to rent out the old ancestral place. But I am afraid that someone knew about the castle—and how much Bruce traveled—and took you for a soaking.” He cleared his throat and looked at Bruce with an uncomfortable shrug.

  “Should I take those papers now? Not much I can do on this till Monday, though. Law enforcement spends the weekends goin’ after the dangerous fellows running around out there, I’m afraid. All the law offices are closed.”

  “We’ll keep the papers until Monday,” Toni said. Gina stared at her, but the papers were all that they had. She wasn’t letting them out of their own keeping.

  “Fine,” Tavish said. “When you come in Monday, bring all your papers.” He cleared his throat. “If you say that everything is in order for the night, Bruce, I’ll be going.”

  Bruce MacNiall inclined his head toward the constable, as if he weren’t just the laird here, but world royalty. “Thanks, Jon,” he said. “Come Monday morning, we’ll get these papers they’re talking about into the hands of the proper authorities. Hopefully they’ll be able to track down the frauds who soaked them for their money.”

  “Hopefully,” Jonathan Tavish agreed. He gave a smile that seemed to offer some sympathy to the group. “Don’t feel too badly. Won’t be the first time Americans have been taken in. And it won’t be the last. We’ll see what we can do.”

  “Thank you,” Thayer said.

  Jonathan Tavish gave them all a nod.

  “Good night!” Gina called cheerfully.

  “And thank you,” Kevin added.

  “I’ll be movin’ along, too, then, lest y’be needin’ me,” Eban Douglas said, looking at Bruce MacNiall.

  “I think I can manage, Eban,” MacNiall said.

  Eban turned and left. He didn’t have a hunched back, nor did he limp, but he somehow gave the appearance of both.

  “Do you, uh, stay here when you’re in town?” Ryan asked politely.

  The answer was a little slow. An ironic smile seemed to twitch MacNiall’s lips. “With the ancestral home filled with unbelievers? Indeed.”

  “Want me to see to the horse? I did some work in the stables. He isn’t usually there, is he?” Ryan asked. “I only ask because the stables were in serious disrepair, and this fellow is so obviously well tended.”

  “He was boarded in my absence.”

  “How long were you gone? Twenty years?” Toni muttered.

  Once again Gina jabbed her fiercely in the ribs.

  “I’ll take him out, bed him down,” Ryan offered.

  Toni wanted to knock him in the head for the offer, but she knew that he wasn’t being subservient. Ryan simply loved horses. And she had to admit that the animal was magnificent.

  “Sure,” MacNiall said. “Thanks. His name is Shaunessy.”

  “Shaunessy?” Toni couldn’t quite help herself. “Not Thor, Thunder or King?” Gina’s third strike against her rib cage nearly caused her to cry out. She winced. “Shaunessy,” she said. “Great name.”

  Ryan came to lead the horse out. “I’ll give you a hand!” Kevin offered quickly, and they departed.

  “There’s tea!” David said suddenly into the awkward silence. “And scones. Great little scones.”

  “Wow, tea! I’d love tea!” Gina said. “You’d love tea, too, Toni!” Gina grabbed Toni’s hand. “And we’d love for Laird MacNiall to join us so we can explain about how and why we rented the place…talk about all the work we’ve done here, and find out about Laird MacNiall, while we’re at it?” She looked at him hopefully.

  “Since you’ve been so kind to let us stay while we get to the bottom of this, would you be willing to join us, Lord MacNiall?” Thayer asked.

  “Thanks. I had a long flight in today, a lot of business and a long drive, only to find out that the castle had been…inhabited,” MacNiall said. “I’ll just retire for the night, if you don’t mind. Please feel free to enjoy your tea, however. And the hospitality. Until Monday.”

  “Until Monday?” Toni said, and her reward was a final jab from Gina. This time she protested, staring at Gina. “Ow!”

  “Good night!” Gina said, “And thank you.”

  “Your papers,” MacNiall said, handing them back to Gina.

  “Thank you,” Gina said again. “And thank you for…for letting us stay until Monday. Until this is all straightened out. I don’t know where we’d go, especially at this hour.”

  He inclined his head. “I sympathize with your situation,” he said. “Good night, then.” He took one long last look at Toni and turned away.

  Toni opened her mouth, about to speak, but Gina clamped a hand over her mouth, desperately whispering, “Just say, ‘Good night, Laird MacNiall!’”

  MacNiall looked back, all six feet three inches of him. His eyes now appeared to be more of a true blue, and as sharp as a summer’s sky. Something strange ripped through Toni. She was caught, frozen. She felt as if she knew him, knew the way that he looked at her.

  Had known him before.

  And would know him again.

  A tremor ran down her spine. Ice. Fire. She had invented him!

  He was just a man, she told herself—irritating, superior and angry that they were in his house.

  Not true. If his hair were a little longer, his clothing a bit different, just a bit different…

  “Good night,” he said.

  The ice and fire, and a feeling of foreboding so intense she trembled, became too much, far too intense. She turned herself and hurried down the stairs. Ran.

  Yet a voice whispered to her all the while.

  You can’t run away. You can’t run away.

  And something even softer, an afterthought.

  Not this time…

  Interlude

  When Cromwell Reigned

  From his vantage point, MacNiall could see them, arrayed in all their glittering splendor. The man for whom they fought, the ever self-righteous Cromwell, might preach the simplicity and purity one should seek in life, but when he had his troops arrayed, he saw to it that no matter what their uniform, they appeared in rank, and their weapons shone, as did their shields.

  As it always se
emed to be with his enemy, they were unaware of how a fight in the Highlands might best be fought. They were coming in their formations. Rank and file. Stop, load, aim, fire. March forward. Stop, load, aim, fire….

  Cromwell’s troops depended on their superior numbers. And like all leaders before him, Cromwell was ready to sacrifice his fighting man. All in the name of God and the Godliness of their land—or so the great man preached.

  MacNiall had his own God, as did the men with whom he fought. For some, it was simply the God that the English did not face. For others, it had to do with pride, for their God ruled the Scottish and Presbyterian church, and had naught to do with an Englishman who would sever the head of his own king.

  Others fought because it was their land. Chieftains and clansmen, men who would not be ruled by such a foreigner, men who seldom bowed down to any authority other than their own. Their land was hard and rugged. When the Romans had come, they had built walls to protect their own and to keep out the savages they barely recognized as human. In the many centuries since, the basic heart of the land had changed little. Now, they had another cause—the return of the young Stuart heir and their hatred for their enemy.

  And just as they had centuries before, they would fight, using their land as one of their greatest weapons.

  MacNiall granted Cromwell one thing—he was a military man. And he was no fool. He had called upon the Irish and the Welsh, who had learned so very well the art of archery. He had called upon men who knew about cannons and the devastating results of gunpowder, shot and ball, when put to the proper use. All these things he knew, and he felt a great superiority in his numbers, in his weapons.

  But still, he did not know the Highlands, nor the soul of the Highland men he faced. And today he should have known the tactics the Highlander would use more so than ever. For MacNiall had heard that these troops were being led by a man who had been one of their own, a Scotsman from the base of the savage lands himself.

  Grayson Davis—turncoat, one who had railed against Cromwell. Yet one who had been offered great rewards—the lands of those he could best and destroy.

  Like Cromwell, Davis was convinced that he had the power, the numbers and the right. So MacNiall counted on the fact that he would underestimate his enemy—the savages from the north, ill equipped, unkempt, many today in woolen rags, painted as their ancestors, the Picts, fighting for their land and their freedom.

  Rank and file, marching. Slow and steady, coming ever forward. They reached the stream.

  “Now?” whispered MacLeod at his side.

  “A minute more,” replied MacNiall calmly.

  When the enemy was upon the bridge, MacNiall raised a hand. MacLeod passed on the signal.

  Their marksman nodded, as quiet, calm and grim as his leaders, and took aim.

  His shot was true.

  The bridge burst apart in a mighty explosion, sending fire and sparks skyrocketing, pieces of plank and board and man spiraling toward the sky, only to land again in the midst of confusion and terror, bloodshed and death. For they had waited. They had learned patience, and the bridge had been filled.

  Lord God, MacNiall thought, almost wearily. By now their enemies should have learned that the death and destruction of human beings, flesh and blood, was terrible.

  “Now?” said MacLeod again, shouting this time to be heard over the roar from below.

  “Now,” MacNiall said calmly.

  Another signal was given, and a hail of arrows arched over hill and dale, falling with a fury upon the mass of regrouping humanity below.

  “And now!” roared MacNiall, standing in his stirrups, commanding his men.

  The men, flanking those few in view, rose from behind the rocks of their blessed Highlands. They let out their fierce battle cries—learned, perhaps, from the berserker Norsemen who had once come upon them—and moved down from rock and cliff, terrible in their insanity, men who had far too often fought with nothing but their bare hands and wits to keep what was theirs, to earn the freedom that was a way of life.

  Clansmen. They were born with an ethic; they fought for one another as they fought for themselves. They were a breed apart.

  MacNiall was a part of that breed. As such, he must always ride with his men, and face the blades of his enemy first. He must, like his fellows, cry out his rage at this intrusion, and risk life, blood and limb in the hand-to-hand fight.

  Riding down the hillside, he charged the enemy from the seat of his mount, hacking at those who slashed into the backs of his foot soldiers, and fending off those who would come upon him en masse. He fought, all but blindly at times, years of bloodshed having given him instincts that warned him when a blade or an ax was at his back. And when he was pulled from his mount, he fought on foot until he regained his saddle and crushed forward again.

  In the end, it was a rout. Many of Cromwell’s great troops simply ran to the Lowlands, where the people were as varied in their beliefs as they were in their backgrounds. Others did not lay down their arms quickly enough, and were swept beneath the storm of cries and rage of MacNiall’s Highlanders. The stream ran red. Dead men littered the beauty of the landscape.

  When it was over, MacNiall received the hails of his men, and rode to the base of the hill where they had collected the remnants of the remaining army. There he was surprised to see that among the captured, his men had taken Grayson Davis—the man who had betrayed them, one of Cromwell’s greatest leaders, sworn to break the back of the wild Highland resistance. Grayson Davis, who hailed from the village that bordered Mac Niall’s own, had seen the fall of the monarchy and traded in his loyalty and ethics for the riches that might be acquired from the deaths of other men.

  The man was wounded. Blood had all but completely darkened the glitter of the chest armor he wore. His face was streaked with grimy sweat.

  “MacNiall! Call off your dogs!” Davis roared to him.

  “He loses his head!” roared Angus, the head of the Moray clan fighting there that day.

  “Aye, well, and he should be executed as a traitor, as the lot of us would be,” MacNiall said without rancor. They all knew their punishment if they were taken alive. “Still, for now he will be our captive, and we will try him in a court of his peers.”

  “What court of jesters would that be? You should bargain with Lord Cromwell, use my life and perhaps save our own, for one day you will be slain or caught!” Davis told him furiously. And yet, no matter his brave words, there was fear in his eyes. There must be, for he stood in the midst of such hatred that the most courageous of men would falter.

  “If you’re found guilty, we’ll but take your head, Davis,” MacNiall said. “We find no pleasure in the torture your kind would inflict upon us.”

  Davis let out a sound of disgust. It was true, on both sides, the things done by man to his fellow man were surely horrendous in the eyes of God—any god.

  “There will be a trial. All men must answer to their choices,” MacNiall said, and his words were actually sorrowful. “Take him,” he told Angus quietly.

  Davis wrenched free from the hold of his captors and turned on MacNiall. “The great Laird MacNiall, creating havoc and travesty in the name of a misbegotten king! All hail the man on the battlefield! Yet what man rules in the great MacNiall’s bedchamber? Did you think that you could leave your home to take to the hills, and that the woman you left behind would not consider the fact that one day you will fall? Aye, MacNiall, all men must deal with their choices! And yours has made you a cuckold!”

  A sickness gripped him, hard, in the pit of his stomach. A blow, like none that could be delivered by a sword or bullet or battle-ax. He started to move his horse forward.

  Grayson Davis began to laugh. “Ah, there, the great man! The terror of the Highlands. The Bloody MacNiall! She wasn’t a victim of rape, MacNiall. Just of my sword. A different sword.”

  Grayson Davis’s laughter became silent as Angus brought the end of a poleax swinging hard against his head. The man fell flat, not
dead—for he would stand trial—but certainly when he woke his head would be splitting.

  Angus looked up at MacNiall.

  “He’s a liar,” Angus said. “A bloody liar! Yer wife loves ye, man. No lass is more honored among us. None more lovely. Or loyal.”

  MacNiall nodded, giving away none of the emotion that tore through him so savagely. For there were but two passions in his life—his love for king and country…and for his wife. Lithe, golden, beautiful, sensual, brave, eyes like the sea, the sky, ever direct upon his own, filled with laughter, excitement, gravity and love.

  Annalise.

  Annalise…who had begged him to set down his arms. To rectify his war with Cromwell. Who had warned him that…there could be but a very tragic ending to it all.

  2

  Gina caught up with Toni at the bottom of the stairs.

  “What are you doing?” she asked in dismay.

  “What am I doing?” Toni echoed. Now that she was away from him, from the way that he looked at her, the trembling had stopped. The strange moment was gone. He was just a man. Tall, wired, muscled, imposing—and irate that they were in what he claimed to be his property.

  “Gina!” she said, determined that they would not be groveling idiots, no matter what the situation turned out to be. “Do you hear yourself? You’re thanking him for throwing us out on Monday, after all this!”

  “Shh!”

  Gina pulled her along, anxious that Laird MacNiall not hear any more of her comments. They moved from the great hall, through a vast dining area and then through another door to the kitchen, a large area where a huge hearth with antique accoutrements still occupied most of the north wall.

  There were concessions to the present, however, including the modern stove, freezer, refrigerator and microwave. The huge island counter in the center of the room, set beneath hanging pots and pans, was surely original, and at one time had certainly hosted huge sides of venison, boar and beef. Now cleaned and scrubbed, it was a dining table with a multitude of chairs around it.