Page 3 of A Rogue in Twilight
Elspeth sat besideher grandfather in one of two green brocade chairs flanking the fire. She watched small blue flames lick around peat bricks and traced her fingers over the worn brocade. Sitting proper and straight, as their housekeeper Mrs. Graham always admonished her, she smoothed her blue dress, patted her dark curls, crossed her feet in white stockings and black slippers, and watched her grandfather.
He studied a page in the small leather book where he kept his notes and the criss-cross drawings for his weavings. He wrote something with pencil,scritch-scratch.
“Grandda, will you teach me the weaving?”
“Someday,” he murmured, distracted.
She swung her feet like the clapper of a bell. “Tell me about the Fey again.”
He smiled, and looked up. “So beautiful, like you, hey. Quick-witted and joyful, like you. But fickle, which you would never be.” She laughed, and he continued. “Remember, if theDaoine Síthlike us and love us, good fortune is ours.”
“If they are pleased,” she prodded.
“Aye, if they become annoyed, they will turn their hearts and their backs to us, and their blessings and gifts will become curses. And we must never look back if we walk away from them, or we will be in their thrall forever.”
“Never look back,” she repeated dutifully, nodding. “My father looked back.”
He nodded sadly. “He did. They love and live joyfully, but they have hidden powers, and they do not forgive easily, if ever. That’s the Fey.”
“What do they look like?” She had heard the stories often and delighted in them. She wanted to know more about the realmwhere her father lived. Her grandfather had a storyteller’s way about him that made every repeated tale sound new.
“Some are golden as sunshine, some dark as midnight. You are like the dark ones.” He reached over to tap her knee. “Hair like jet, eyes like moonlight in that small and perfect wee face. You take after your fairy mother. But you have your father’s stubborn chin and his temperament. You do not always do as Mrs. Graham and I ask.” He looked stern for a moment.
“I try to listen, but sometimes I want to do as I please.”
“Just like your father. Willful and smart, with a mind of your own.”
“I wish my parents were here with us,” she said wistfully. “Grandda, let’s try the guessing game again. I will tell you what page you are looking at in the book.”
“Very well.” He turned a page and covered it with his hand.
She closed her eyes. She liked this game well. “It says,blue, blue, green, green, and five threads of yellow for the weft threads.It is the MacArthur tartan! You are looking at the weaving pattern for our own plaidie!” She opened her eyes and he showed her the page.
“True! One of my cousins wants a length of wool for a new waistcoat.”
She smiled. “Peggy Graham says I have the Sight.”
“And so you do. The fairies gave it to you.”
“Someday perhaps I will see where their fairy gold is hidden so we can return it to them. And then they will be grateful and happy, and send my father back to us.”
Donal MacArthur sighed. “Niall and the fairy treasure may be lost forever. But anything is possible, aye?” He returned to his notes.Scritch, scratch.
Elspeth looked into the leaping, delicate flames, and wished she could see the fairies too, as Grandda sometimes did. She squeezed her eyes shut. Nothing came to her.
Sometimes she had lovely dreams where a handsome young man and a beautiful dark-haired lady came to her, laughed with her, hugged her. She thought they were fairy people, but was not sure. She wondered if they were her own parents.
Someday she would see them,she promised herself.
Chapter One
Scotland, Edinburgh
July, 1822
“Fairies! You cannotpossibly mean, sir,” Patrick MacCarran leaned forward, knuckles pressed on the lawyer’s desk, “that a parcel of blasted fairies stands between us and our inheritance!” He glanced at his three siblings, while the men behind the oak desk, one seated, the other standing, remained silent.
“We need not assume ruination.” James MacCarran, Viscount Struan gave a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders in good black serge as he spoke quietly. He deliberately maintained an unruffled demeanor and casual pose as he leaned against the doorframe of the lawyer’s study, though he felt as stunned as the others. “Let Mr. Browne and Sir Walter finish before we decide that we are done for.”
