Page 63 of Laird of Secrets
“Good,” she said. Dougal cocked a brow and smiled a little.
“My uncles and I will stay and help clear the debris as soon as it cools enough,” he told Neill. “Miss MacCarran, the smoke is making you cough. You should go down the hill, and home.”
“I am fine. Neill, you should rest. Come away from here, lad.” Fiona spoke calmly, touching the boy’s arm. Neill seemed to relax a little.
The woman had a serenity about her, Dougal thought appreciatively, and a quiet, capable air that could bring peace to others. He felt that influence himself, he realized. When he was with her he felt good, solid, focused. He had seen her quiet strength the night she had approached the excise men, and saw it again tonight when she had not flinched or crumbled in the midst of chaos and disaster. He was glad she had come with him to follow Hamish.
“Miss MacCarran,” Neill said, “it is not the time to ask, but perhaps I could attend your school? It will be a while before I have a still again. And it would please my father.”
“You are more than welcome, Neill. Come to school whenever you like.”
In that moment, Dougal realized how deep his own dilemma had just become. He and his uncles agreed the teacher must go. But each moment with her showed that it would be better for many if she stayed. Her pupils needed her.
He needed her.
Scowling against the thought, he quickly changed to a flat smile just as Fiona looked up. Tilting her head, she gave him a puzzled expression.
“I had best go to school,” Neill said. “I am not much of a brewer.”
“Everyone makes mistakes,” Dougal said. “It will all come right again. Here is your father—we will leave you two to talk.” He turned as Thomas came toward them. Saying his farewells, he took Fiona’s arm as they left.
Although the stream had absorbed most of the burning fumes, sizzle and smoke lingered in the air and patches of flame still burned on the water and along the bank. Hamish, Pol, and others were stamping out small flames on the turf as Dougal and Fiona walked toward them.
She began coughing in earnest. Dougal rubbed her back, thumping gently, then dropped his hand away. “You need better air than this.”
“The wind is clearing the smoke away—oh!” She gazed up, eyes wide. “Look!”
“What is it?” He peered upward, expecting to see smoke or flame.
“Those tiny lights, just there! I saw them earlier and thought they were sparks or a reflection. Do you see them?”
He saw them, but would not say so. He knew very well what they were. “I am not sure,” he said carefully, astonished. Could she see them too?
“Could they be fireflies?” Her shoulder pressed his arm. “So lovely!”
Lovely indeed, he thought, but he was staring at her. She saw them, the fairy lights he had seen as a boy. She saw them too. His mind whirled. He had believed that he alone could see them, as his father had seen them too.
Glancing toward the lights that swirled and glittered like dabs of sunlight, he tilted his head. He had noticed them earlier in the glen, sparkling and spinning among the trees. Whether a warning or a lure, he did not know, but he had thought he was the only one aware of them, magical and mysterious, in the air tonight.
To be sure, he had not seen them often in his life. First with his father, who had explained that the tiny lights were visible only to a special few who could perceive them. They marked the presence of fairies, John MacGregor had said. They were not the fairies themselves, somehow, but signified they were close by, like guardians to that sort. The Fey themselves kept hidden, so legend claimed, and so his father had said. Dougal had seen them only a few times since then. Until now.
Yet Fiona could see them too. Dougal watched her, wondering. She smiled up at him. “Do you see them, there? What are they?” she asked.
“Sparks, or reflections from the fire or the sunset. It is growing late, Miss MacCarran. We should not linger here. Pol can walk you back to Mary MacIan’s.”
He took her elbow to guide her away from there, away from the Fey. They were calling to him after a long absence—and calling the schoolteacher as well.
What that was about, he could not begin to guess.
Chapter 13
“Pol cannot walk the lass home, he has gone with his brother to hide parts of the copper still,” Hamish told Dougal. “And Miss MacCarran cannot walk the glen alone, with Tam MacIntyre out and about.”
Dougal sighed, glancing at Fiona, who had insisted she was fine. Now she stood at the stream bank watching the last of the flames flickering into darkness. She was coughing, holding a kerchief to her mouth. “The smoke is affecting her poorly,” Dougal said. “I will take her up to Kinloch House myself.”
“I wonder if she could cook some supper,” Hamish said.
“She is our guest, Hamish. If Maisie is there, we will ask her to stay and cook a meal, or we will fend for ourselves again. Lucy has gone to Helen MacDonald’s for the evening, and we cannot have it said that the teacher stayed at Kinloch House with only the laird and his kinsmen there. Nor that they treated her like a servant and had her do the cooking.”
