Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3)(67)

Lachlan was a steady, loving presence at her side. All through the boisterous banquet, she made sure that her smile told him how much she adored him. The only thing she regretted was that they could not extend this joy through the night, because the minute she had been deemed healthy enough to emerge from Angus’s tent, Angus himself had insisted she be relegated to sleeping in the women’s quarters with the other unmarried maidens. There, the beds were stuffed with feathers rather than hay, but without Lachlan, they were not nearly as warm.

The morning after the banquet, she was roused early by a young servant boy. She tossed her tunic over her head, slipped on her leather slippers, and grabbed her sack before following the child out of the room. Lachlan waited for her in the mead-hall amid heaps of snoring men, his own belongings rolled up tight and slung over his shoulder.

“Are we to sneak out,” she whispered, once they’d stepped into the courtyard, “without even a last good-bye to Fingal and Elspeth?”

“They’ll be down anon, along with Angus.” He tugged on her hand. “But there’s something I want you to see.”

She did not have to guess what he wanted to show her. The creatures had slipped into her dreams last night, and now she heard them barking long before she and Lachlan passed under the raised portcullis to step onto the narrow causeway. Upon the rocks scattered along the shore of Loch Fyfe, hundreds of seals sprawled, raising their heads to the skies.

As she and Lachlan emerged, the seals turned their soft brown eyes toward them. The barking intensified as if the creatures expected them to toss buckets of fish.

She asked, “Do they usually come in such numbers?”

“Never. When I was young, we’d see a family or two in the fall. It was always the same family, so we came to know their markings well. But I’ve never seen so many.”

“But surely,” she said, remembering the seals around Inishmaan who loved to loll upon the rocks, their white pups close, “it’s the season for them to come to a safe cover?”

“It’s not, and the sea’s a good league away.”

“Well, this crowd seems happy to see us.”

“I think they are, lass.”

She slid him a glance. “So you are a selkie then?”

She’d meant it as teasing, but his expression became pensive. “I’ve no yearning to dive into the deep, if that’s what you’re thinking.” He slipped his arm around her and drew her close into his warmth. “Not unless you promise to dive in with me.”

“It’s the high, lonely places I fancy,” she said, “though if you’re there to keep me warm I’ll reconsider.”

They stood for a while, basking in the odd, barking praise of a herd of seals. She knew that Lachlan’s mind spun with questions and confusion. Like any woman who could read a man’s mind, she waited in silence until he was ready to talk.

“All this barking,” he finally confessed. “It’s unearthing a memory that I’d thought was a dream.”

Because he struggled so hard to explain it, she slipped into his thoughts to share in the dream-memory. It was a watery, salt-sea dream. The sharing was so vivid that she found herself rubbing her shoulder where a shadow of soreness throbbed, in the same place where Lachlan now bore his scar. Beyond the pain, the dream-memory was filled with sleek shadows slipping dark through cold waters, and the sense of being bumped toward a bluish light by strong, whiskered snouts.

She said, “You once told me that your mother’s people were from Orkney, said to be descended from the Finnar. The selkies.”

“I’m mad enough to believe it,” he said, “now that I’ve witnessed all that you’ve shown me since you saved me.”

“I don’t know if I have an explanation for that dream,” she said, “except that it might explain how you washed up on the shores of Inishmaan.”

He blinked in that way he did, whenever she was telling him something too far out of his ability to understand.

“All otherworldly creatures feel the power of the dolmen stones,” she explained. “Perhaps these seals—and maybe a selkie or two among them—felt the desecration upon the council height keenly, and hoped you, with a bit of their blood running through your veins, might be able to put matters back to rights.”

“So they sent me to you,” he murmured, “because I couldn’t do such a task alone.”

She nodded. She was part of this, too. When she’d touched the dolmen stones, her gift had changed profoundly for the better. Perhaps that was the Otherworld’s way of showing gratitude for the risks she’d taken, unknowingly, for their sake.

“So what you’re telling me,” he persisted, as he pressed his lips against her hair, “is that you and I were brought together for some greater purpose.”

“Oh, Lachlan. I’ve no doubt we were.”

His nod was thoughtful. She laid her head upon his shoulder, burrowing into his warmth. For a long time, they stood on the causeway with the wind blowing off the lake, watching the seals frolic as the people in the castle behind them woke to the day.

“So today we begin the journey back to Inishmaan,” he said into the silence, “and yet we never really spoke about it.”

“It will always be that way with us. We know each other’s hearts.”