Page 76 of Laird of Secrets
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.”
“True. It is blessing from the fairies, not a means to make money.”
“They must have given it to your kin for a very special reason.”
“Just so.” He leaned his 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.
“And you can make it but must never sell it?”
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, I suppose, a daughter, though so far I do not think that has happened.”
“So it stays with the MacGregors of Kinloch. I see. And 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 MacArthur, 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, tourists might even come here to make a romantic spectacle of our glen.”
“Tourists.” She sighed. “Highland romantic legends are very popular now.”
“Lovely as it is, I intend to keep my glen from becoming an attraction.”
“You are right to be careful. This beautiful 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.”
“Althought,” 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. “As I recall, you have been anxious to be rid of your Lowland teacher.”
“I am reconsidering.” He settled back against the table. “Tell me about your family legend. Sit, Miss MacCarran,” he urged her, seeing that she swayed a bit and had set a hand to the top of the wing chair.
She did then, demurely adjusting the overlarge robe around her lithe and slender form. “I have heard that 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 something that was declared by a rather special ancestor long ago, and tradition claims that the MacCarrans of Duncrieff are obliged to follow it. If we do not—” She stopped, her blush deepening. “You will think it very silly.”
“I make whisky according to an old fairy recipe. Nothing you could say would ever seem foolish to me, 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 a very long time ago.”
“And she proclaimed a motto that you are all obliged to follow? Can you tell it to me, or is it a 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.”
“It is not an easy thing to find, that. What is the consequence of not finding this elusive true love?”
“Poor luck for the family. And we have surely had some.”
“That is often the way of it, with fairies,” he said, shaking his head. “They bless and curse freely, without thinking about the effects of their ultimatums.”
“Sometimes,” she said, “the tradition says, members of our line must marry those with fairy blood. If we can find someone tomeet that condition.”
