Page 5

“What about the castle?” Hamish jerked his chin toward the window. The long shadow cast by the turret was slowly advancing as the morning marched on, darkening the already dim interior of the pub. “They must allow visitors.”

“You want some advice, friend?” Munro set his pint on the table and turned a pair of bloodshot blue eyes on Hamish. “You’ll stay away from that place if ye know what’s good for ye.”

Ah. Now they were getting to it. “Why is that? Is it one stiff wind from toppling into the sea?” Hamish cocked his head as if considering it. “It doesn’t look terribly sturdy.”

“Nay, that’s not it. That castle’s been hanging on to that bit of rock these two hundred years or more.

I reckon it’ll stay as it is for another two hundred.

” Munro contemplated his pint glass, his expression thoughtful.

“Mayhap it’s all gossip, but there are those that say there’s some dark doings up there. Dark doings, indeed.”

Doings so dark, so evil they’d drive a man to drink apparently, because no sooner had Munro uttered this warning than he brought his pint to his lips and tipped the whole of it into his mouth, as if he were cleansing the wickedness from his throat.

“Another?” Hamish nodded at the empty glass. “Unless you prefer something else?” Preferably something that would loosen the man’s tongue more quickly than ale would.

Munro shrugged. “Arthur has a nice whisky back there behind the bar. You fancy a taste?”

Hamish hid his wince. Whisky, of all godforsaken swill. But it was no use asking for claret here. “I don’t see why not.”

“Fetch us that Glenturret, Arthur,” Munro called to the barkeep.

Arthur rummaged underneath the bar, then approached the table with a dusty bottle of amber liquid and two glasses in his hands. Hamish slid the bottle toward Munro, who wasted no time relieving it of its cork and pouring two deep measures into each glass.

“We’ll keep the bottle, Arthur.” Hamish slid a banknote into the man’s hand, then turned his attention back to Munro. “I hear tell there’s three women living in that castle.”

“Aye. Three sisters.”

“Well, what sort of bad doings can a handful of women get up to? Not much, I’d wager.” It would have been a sound enough wager if the three women in question hadn’t been Rory MacLeod’s progeny, and thus more apt to be the troublesome sort.

“Depends on who ye ask. I don’t credit gossip, ye ken, but there’s those in Dunvegan who’ll tell ye those women get up to plenty of no good up there in that castle of theirs.

They’re redheads, you know. All three of them.

” Munro gave him a significant look, as if the red hair somehow explained everything.

Ridiculous, of course. It wasn’t a mystery, that red hair. Rory had been a redhead, too.

Yet it was as good an opening as he was likely to get. “Redheads? How curious. I haven’t seen any redheaded women wandering about. Do they ever come into the village?”

“The eldest one, Catriona, used to come often enough. Not so much now. It’s been weeks since the last time.” Munro leaned over the table, lowering his voice. “Devil only knows how those three occupy themselves, but the old women in the village say as they’re up there summoning spirits.”

Hamish choked on the whisky he’d just swallowed.

Spirits? He’d never heard such nonsense. The only spirits he believed in were the kind that came in a bottle. “Surely not.”

“Who’s to say?” Munro leaned closer. “That Catriona? The eldest? She’s ah . . . what do you call it? Them that know how to mix up potions and whatnot.”

“Potions? You mean a chemist?” How intriguing. He would have said he’d heard every rumor there was to hear about the MacLeod sisters, but he hadn’t heard that .

“Aye. Those that make up witch’s brews, ye ken? That one? Catriona? You go see Mrs. MacDonald, friend, and she’ll tell you Catriona’s got a cauldron hidden up there in that castle.”

A cauldron ? Good Lord, had he traveled back to the previous century?

Dunvegan was a tedious little village, but at least he was getting somewhere. What other useful secrets could he squeeze from Munro’s loose tongue? “A cauldron, you say? And what does she brew in this cauldron of hers, do you suppose?”

“Eh, who knows? She’s a healer, is Catriona, so maybe it’s medicines and whatnot, but there’s plenty in Dunvegan who’ll tell you she’s up to no good.

She used to come and spend hours with Glynnis Fraser, up at the apothecary’s shop.

She and Glynnis are as thick as two thieves, they are.

” Munro held up his hand, his fingers crossed.

Hamish widened his eyes as if there were something inherently suspicious about a young woman visiting an apothecary. “Do you suppose she was procuring the ingredients for her next potion?”

“I couldn’t say, but mayhap she was. Always up to something, those two. They’re both right clever. Hard to say what they might get up to if left to it, but Bryce Fraser doesn’t put up with any nonsense. He keeps that sister of his well in hand.”

Kept her well in hand, did he?

That sounded rather menacing, but Glynnis Fraser wasn’t any more his concern than the MacLeod sisters were. He’d come here for one purpose only—to fulfill his promise to his father and put an end to any rumors about his family’s association with Rory MacLeod.

He may be the Marquess of Ballantyne now, with a London townhouse, a country estate, and a seat in the House of Lords, but he was also a Muir, and the Muirs weren’t smugglers, by God.

Once he’d settled this absurd business about the stolen treasure, he’d leave Dunvegan, its castle, and its witches behind without a backward glance.

He peered out the window, but there were no stray women about, redheaded or otherwise, so he turned his attention back to Munro, who seemed to know more than he should about the MacLeod sisters and hadn’t the least compunction about sharing it.

And people claimed it was the old women who were the gossips.

“Do the three sisters live alone up there in that huge castle?” In other words, were there dozens of burly footmen he should know about?

“Aye. Old Duffy used to live up there with them. He was butler there when Rory was still alive, and his wife, Mrs. Duffy, the housekeeper, but the sisters dismissed them both some weeks ago.”

Not a single servant, then? That was welcome news.

Munro eyed him over the edge of his glass. “Were you a friend of Rory MacLeod’s?”

“I can’t say I was.” It wasn’t a lie. He’d never laid eyes on Rory MacLeod, but one could argue he knew him as well as one man could know another through the stories his father had told him. In a way, he’d grown up with Rory.

“Ach, well, he’s been dead these four months now, but he was an adventurer, ye know.” Munro leaned over the worn table, lowering his voice. “A smuggler, some say.”

“A smuggler? How shocking.” Or it might have been, if Hamish hadn’t already been aware of Rory’s criminality.

“Aye, a smuggler, and a thief, but not just any thief, ye hear? They say he went east on that last run of his, the one right before he died, and when he returned . . .” Munro cast a stealthy glance around the pub, but no one was paying any attention to them.

“Yes? When he returned?”

Munro took a healthy swallow from his glass, then set it aside, wiping his arm across his mouth. “He didn’t come home empty-handed, if ye ken.”

Oh, he kenned, all right. He kenned far better than Munro could ever guess. “No?”

“Nay.” Munro dropped his voice to a whisper. “They say as he found a fortune in treasure down Penicuik way, and the lot of it worth a pretty penny, by the sounds of it.”

Penicuik? More like Lochaber, but Hamish kept that bit of information to himself. “Really? Why, how utterly fascinating. What kind of treasure?”

“As to that, I can’t say for sure, but coins and jewels, I expect.” Munro gave a wise nod and poured another measure of whisky into his glass.

“I see. And what’s become of this treasure, do you suppose?”

“Can’t say for sure, friend. Mayhap those three women are hiding it up there in the castle. I don’t stick my nose into things that don’t concern me, ye ken, but there’s some people in the village who are none too happy about it.”

“Why should it matter to them? I don’t see that it’s any of their business.”

“Aye, and mayhap it wouldn’t be, but a month ago a smuggler’s lugger came calling at the castle for their share of the treasure, and there’s some in town who don’t want that sort here in Dunvegan.”

“Did they get their share of the treasure?” They hadn’t, of course, damn them.

Munro cackled. “Nay. They couldn’t find their way around those sisters. Ye ask me, and I’ll tell ye the truth.” Munro beckoned him closer. “No one’s ever going to get past those women.”

“I don’t see why not.” Hamish leaned back in his chair and let a mocking smile drift across his lips. “What are three old maids going to do to stop them? Nothing, that’s what.”

“Mayhap you’d be right if they were your ordinary old maids, but they’re not.” Munro pointed a finger at him. “They’re cunning ones, make no mistake. That lugger that came? It disappeared, never to be seen again.”

Disappeared? Hardly. Clyde and Dougal and that creaky old lugger of theirs were still in existence, and no wiser from their experience with the MacLeod sisters, either. “Nonsense. Boats don’t just vanish into the air.”

“This one did. I reckon those sailors met their end right there on the rocks below the castle.” Munro ran a hand over the scruff on his chin. “Like as not they got what they deserved, but mayhap the less said about it, the better.”

Oh, no. That wouldn’t do.

Hamish scoffed. “It all sounds like bollocks to me. I don’t believe a word of it.”

Munro snorted. “That’s as you please. Maybe it’s all just stories, but they say as how that middle one—Freya MacLeod, her name—conjured a wild storm out of a clear sky as soon as the lugger approached, only to get smashed to bits on the rocks.

Or how the youngest one, Sorcha by name, and the wickedest of the three, if you ask the villagers—set a horde of birds loose on them, like to scalp them where they stood. ”

And there it was. The same outlandish story he’d heard from Dougal and Clyde.

Useless, those two, coming back as empty-handed as when they left, their mouths full of extravagant tales about three witches guarding the castle. To hear those fools tell it, the MacLeod sisters could cast spells and curses, control the weather, and command birds and other animals.

But it wasn’t just Dougal and Clyde telling tales about the MacLeods. In the six weeks since the lugger had been driven from the waters of Loch Dunvegan below Castle Cairncross, the rumors had traveled from mouth to mouth into every corner of Scotland.

Violent storms conjured out of thin air. Massive attack birds with grotesquely long, sharp beaks, strange lights flickering inside the castle, and three redheaded sorceresses sending innocent young sailors to watery graves with a wave of their magical hands.

But he knew better. Far from perishing, Dougal and Clyde had made their way back to London, and nearly every fool at the Lamb and Fig in Covent Garden had been standing them drinks on the strength of that tale ever since they—

“There she is.”

“Who?” Hamish paused with his drink halfway to his lips. Across from him, Munro was staring out the window behind him, his eyes wide.

“Catriona MacLeod.” Munro jerked his chin toward the window.

Hamish turned, expecting to find an enormous, raw-boned harridan with a crooked walking stick in her bony hand and an aura of evil surrounding her.

But that wasn’t what he found.

A man would be hard-pressed to describe either of the two women on the other side of the glass as threatening. The elder was a withered, sour-faced old crone, but she was far too advanced in years to be one of Rory MacLeod’s daughters.

As for the other . . .

No. There had to be some mistake.

“Where is she?” He turned back to Munro. “I don’t see any witch.”

“Are ye blind, friend?” Munro nodded at the window again. “She’s right there, plain as day.”

“What, you mean that tiny little thing there? The chit wearing the flour sack?”

“Aye, that’s her.”

Hamish turned toward the window again, blinking.

That dainty little thing? That was Catriona MacLeod?

She was draped in a coarse brown cloak from the top of her head to the toes of her boots. It did an admirable job of hiding her, but there was no disguising those narrow shoulders or the slender line of her back.

She was no bigger than a hummingbird, for God’s sake.

“ That’s one of the infamous sorceresses?” Why, a stiff wind would send her sprawling. “She doesn’t look as if she’s up to summoning so much as a butterfly.”

Still, there was no denying she was a MacLeod.

The ridiculous hood hid her face, but a wayward curl had escaped, and it gave her away as surely as if she’d shouted her name.

It was as red a curl as he’d ever seen.

Munro pointed a finger at him. “Don’t let her fool ye. I tell ye, there’s those in Dunvegan who swear Catriona MacLeod is as wicked as the devil himself.”

Wicked? Perhaps. Cunning? Certainly.

If she and her sisters hadn’t been as devious as a trio of foxes with their eyes on a henhouse, they never would have come up with such an ingenious scheme to frighten off their attackers. They’d put on some sort of performance, that was certain, but it was merely that—a performance.

Whatever it was they’d done, they hadn’t done it with witchcraft. He couldn’t say how they had done it, precisely, but it seemed they’d inherited their father’s wiliness, his intelligence, and his creativity.

His ruthlessness, as well. They were his daughters, after all, and his father had always said that a man underestimated Rory MacLeod at his own peril.

Damned if their scheme hadn’t worked, too.

He watched through the window as the girl made her way down the High Street toward the apothecary’s shop at the other end, her shoulders hunched and her head down, as if she could pass unnoticed if she only made herself small enough.

Not likely. The MacLeod sisters weren’t destined to live quiet, anonymous lives, any more than their father had been.

Clever, clever little witches.

But this time, Catriona MacLeod had met her match.