Page 75 of Laird of Secrets
She was delighted. “I drank fairy whisky, truly? How nice!”
“Not always. It can be potent stuff, far more than the other.”
“My brother once tasted fairy brew. It is rare stuff, he told me. His wife’s cousin makes it and brings it to her grandfather. His wife is your cousin, Elspeth MacArthur. Are you the one who makes the fairy brew?”
He sighed. “That would be myself, aye. I give some to Elspeth MacArthur’s grandfather every year. Donal and Elspeth are my cousins, and among the few of my kin who can feel the special power of the brew. Not everyone does. There is a magical spell about it, they say, and some have the ability to sense it. We treat it with care, because of the legend.”
“Legend?”
“The origin of the stuff. That is all,” he said simply.
“I felt something too from it. How odd.” She shook her head a little, trying to clear the fog away. Had the whisky given her the ability to see the dazzling woman in the library? “I did see her, the fairy woman. I am sure of it. She stood just there. She reached out to touch you, but you did not notice.”
“I knew she was there. I have seen her, and her ilk, before.”
Chapter 15
“You saw her just now?” Fiona stared up at him.
“Not this time. But I felt her presence.” He had revealed too much, and that was unlike him. The ease he felt with Fiona, the trust building there, continued to surprise him. “I have seen such things before.”
“So you have seen this woman before?” 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 younger,” 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 images of people who others could not see. I have seen a woman, and some others. So just now, I sensed one of them was here,” 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. It is not widely known.” He shrugged, again feeling he was admitting too much—feeling foolish about it as well—and 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. She might not have heard about such legends among folk with Highland blood, and she surely had that. 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 few people.”
She tipped her head. “What sort of effect?”
“Some can see the fairy realm. It opens the veil between worlds.”
“Belladonna can do the same, but the visions are not real.”
“Not like that. It has to do with the blood. The ancestry of the person.”
“This was very real, or seemed so. Is there something added to the drink?” She did not look pleased. “You ought to label it if so. Or not set it out at all.”
“There is nothing special or harmful added to the brew. It is a simple whisky 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 the Fey grant a magical power to only a few who taste their brew. For anyone else who tries it, it is just a very good whisky.”
“I do not understand.”
“If fairy blood is in your ancestry, you may have the ability. So they say,” he added hastily.
He thought she went a little pale. “Fairy ancestry,” she echoed, and nodded to herself. “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 do 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 required secrecy from Kinloch in exchange for the recipe of the 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 innermost circle. He pressed his lips together, 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! I quite like that.” He smiled at her description. “Very well, since she did come 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 that certain way, and we may only give it away to a few. We must never sell it or profit from it.”
