The Chieftain's Yule Bride - a Highland Christmas novella (Clan MacKrannan's Secret Traditions #10) (3 page)

The subject was changed as easily as that in the Scottish way of latching onto an area accent to wheedle out your entire family tree.

The same happened when they went to the herbery on the outskirts of the village.  A very capable teenager in a white labcoat gave them an informational talk as they peered through the windows above the production lines that made the beautiful herbal and floral scented items, all the packaging done so classily with the clan crest logo.

The only irritant was the ping of text messages which suddenly began coming into the boy's phone.  Far too many all at once to be ignorable.  She understood that so well and didn't mind when he excused himself for a moment.  His chatty manner had changed when he returned.  Some work crisis, no doubt, though it was odd that he now looked more at her than he did at the production line.

This time Freya didn't wait to reach the Gift Shop before handing over her business card and asking, "Is your manager free?"

That card was a passport which had opened suppliers' doors worldwide.  This place should have jumped at the possibility of selling their stuff to new hotels.  But the boy seemed more interested in the card itself than answering her question.

"Sorry, Miss, I doubt she'll be back today," he said without looking up.  "If you leave a message at Reception..."

"So she's in the castle at the moment?"  A non-committal and rather uncomfortable silence.  "Alright, I'll do that.  What's her name?"

"Gillian MacKrannan."

She didn't get to ask for more detail than that because Zavier interrupted with a soap dish and candleholder, wanting to know what they could have engraved on them instead of the
I Got Smashed
shot glasses.

The entrance to the Spa was like going down a rabbithole and much of the place underground, set as it was into a hillside overlooking the beach.

Freya booked in for the Argyll Yoga class next morning.  Zavier opted for breakfast in bed.  They borrowed swimwear and she went ahead of him into the relaxation pool which was eye-level with the horizon.  What an incredible view!  She felt so much a part of the December sunset over the ocean and the distant islands that a sudden homesickness welled up in her and she quelled it quickly.

She loved her job, her globetrotting world of working achievements and celebratory parties.  Scotland was here whenever she needed it, and right now she had a wedding to plan.  Zavier was booking their honeymoon in Hawaii and that would be awesome.  It just had to be her home country for the wedding itself.  A little thing to do after all Auntie had done for her... and hopefully a balm to the hurt Freya had caused her.

Zavier jumped into the pool beside her with a noisy splash and grabbed her round the waist.  "The manager Kenzie is in a meeting and yes, her name's MacKrannan before you ask.  My god, you Scots are an incestuous lot!"  He leaned her against the edge, pressing himself at her bottom despite the other guests nearby.  "Nice view.  Are we done here?  Want to try out that four-poster before dinner?"

For the first time ever, Freya didn't feel at all like responding to his invitation.

The Turret of the East had the scent of the unused about it when Callum took his seat at the circular oak table.  Five years and more since he'd been in here, summoned then by the same four Clan Elders who sat round the table now.  Their lapel name-badges looked incongruous against the backdrop of richly-carved wall panels of Celtic gods and goddesses long forgotten by all but the devoted in this new world of technology and speed.

This was one of the many rooms which were never in the guide-books, never photographed, and not even known to the historical authorities.

A regular meeting in his office that morning had been all business chat.  The success of Kenzie's Argyll Yoga classes at the Spa.  Temperature control measures for Tara's bees, currently in their winter clusters.  Gillian's latest tirade about the potential impact of windblown commercial farming gunge on her acres of wholly organic herbs and flowers.  A report on new Events bookings from Robbie that omitted the name of Freya Harper because she'd waited until the afternoon to walk in and blow his life apart.

Meetings like this one in the Turret of the East began with a song that Callum was no' expected to join in with.  More of a singsong chanting, really, with words in a language so old that none but the few remaining Elders like themselves still knew.  It chilled him to his bones to hear it, firing his blood in a fall through the centuries to ancient times and fetching up the spirits of his ancestors and theirs.

"The wisdom of those gone before us be with us now," chanted Robbie and the ladies, suddenly reverting to plain Scots.

"The wisdom of those gone before us be with us now," Callum mumbled.  Silence descended as he leaned his hands flat on the table like the others and felt the power of its oak surging through him.  A Druid thing, the wood of the Bard.  It was at times like this that being a MacKrannan took on new meaning... or reverted to a very old one, truth be told, for every Chief and chieftain in his long line had partaken of this and felt what he did now.

The responsibility was given him at birth. The knowledge of what his clan used to get up to was trained into him.  As a newborn he'd been ritually blessed in every water on MacKrannan lands – sea, waterfall and streams – ending up in a bucketload from the well in the castle's courtyard.  His learning had been constant as a youth, from a tour of the paintings and the stories that went with them to a tour of the Vault and other numerous chambers deep under the castle, plus a tour of upper rooms and secret passageways he'd never known were there.  Come the age of twenty-one he'd been summoned to partake in a few Traditions, and had his eyes opened to some things that would never be in any clan history printed for the public.

Times changed.  Even in his own lifetime, the castle had turned from being his family's private home into an upmarket hotel overrun with strangers.  The guests would freak out if they knew what pagan rituals had once gone on in the very rooms they slept in.

"Right, folks," Robbie said cheerily, getting down to business.  "I'm convinced that the Fair Lass of Monlachan has come to us.  The signs were there.  Tara was told by her bees of it and Kenzie foresaw her during meditation, all independently confirmed by Gillian with her cloud-divination.  Chieftain, you recognized the Fair Lass?"

"I did, from the old portrait done by the Orkney minstrel, though the name you've just called her is unknown to me.  Monlachan, you say?  Up past Inverness?  Can't think of any clan connection to us in that area."

Robbie shook his head.  "It's one of those oral legends passed down Bard to Bard, Wisewoman to Wisewoman.  The Elders of each generation must look out for her and be sure the painting remains with the clan – or so it is written somewhere in our Books of Tradition, but you'll appreciate I've no' had the chance to go searching in the Vault yet."

"Get on with the history lesson and how it involves me."

It was Tara who spoke next to answer him.  The Beekeeper and manager of the Brewery had a quirky smile on as she faced him across the table.

"The Fair Lass of Monlachan is a gift for the
Chieftain
of MacKrannan.  All these generations have passed and you're the chosen one!"

Callum snorted in amazement.  "Aye right... with a fiancé in tow and booking for her wedding here in a few weeks?"

The three ladies took a giggling fit like daft wee lassies, and every one of them the wrong side of thirty.

"See now, Chieftain," said Kenzie, struggling to sober up, "why would that matter?  She could be intended as a bringer of a prize at the Highland Show for you, or fair weather all next summer, or new double-glazing for the entire castle."

These ladies were better at their jobs than any he'd met in his travels.  They were also the clan's Three Wisewomen, Elders with the Bard, and took far too keen an interest in the old Celtic fertility rites.  The unusually high birth rate in the village was put down to the benefits of organic food, long winters in cosy cottages, and men keeping their ballocks cool by wearing the kilt.  The clan knew it was far more than that which kept the local pre-natal clinic so busy.

He looked round the table at each of them.  And they were off again, laughing themselves silly.  Even Robbie was smirking fit to burst.

"Fair enough," said Callum with a shrug.  "No' a crime to have an eye for a pretty lassie, and a disgrace to my name if I didn't.  Tell me about the portrait.  Is it of her ancestor?"

"A composite of her bloodline, I would think, her name being Harper," said Robbie.  "Bound to be a Viking throwback somewhere with that coloring.  It was painted as a prophetic gift, a sort of good wish to come true in the future, so to speak.  One of those 'From My Family To Yours' kind of thing."

"What?  You mean he painted something to make it happen? 
Someone?"

"Oh aye," said Kenzie.  "Used to be a common enough thing.  Likely it started out with cave paintings of animals when folks were wishing for a herd to come by.  I'm always telling my clients that visualization techniques are nothing new, though folks would usually expect results quicker than two centuries."

Callum brought a hand up over his jaw and then put it back on the table quick.  Damned if the oak's feel had no' gone through his head and set his spine ringing.

"So you're telling me he painted this lassie as a wish?  A wish for what?"

"What I got told by my dad was that some chieftain would know her when he saw her," said Robbie.  "Never happened until now."

"I knew her straight away.  Like shaking hands with a ghost, I can tell you.  So how old is the painting?  When was this minstrel here?"

"More recently that you might think," said Gillian.  "Only about two hundred years ago.  My gran told me that the Chief was so delighted with his music that he lauded him to all the Yule guests and filled up his diary for years ahead."

Callum cocked a brow at her.  "A
Regency
minstrel?"

"Indeed he was, and could turn his hand to many a thing beyond his travelling harp.  Most artisans had second and third trades in those days, in case of injury or the work drying up.  My gran also told me he didn't live very long after he left here.  Went home to Orkney and died happily in his bed.  A shame, that.  He would have been famous in good society had he lived."

"Right... and he made the Chief a present of an imaginary lass who might or might not stop by here one day.  Or she might miss seeing the chieftain by a week, or might never be born at all."

Tara scoffed wryly at that.  "Ach, chieftain, it's a nice painting anyway whatever its purpose.  And she does exist.  She's just walked into MacKrannan Castle by name of Freya Harper!"

She started giggling again and set the other two Wisewomen off.  Callum couldn't help but grin at this unexpected turn his life had taken.  Unexpected to
him. 
Apparently this lot had always known it for a possibility and had been foretold of it far more recently.

"A pity she did no' come packaged with an instruction leaflet," he said.  "So what I am to do with her?  Will there be a formal Tradition written in the books by way of ritual to follow?"

"I do no' recall there being anything at all," said Robbie.  He ran his eyes round the Wisewomen who all shook their heads.  "You're on your own with this, chieftain."

"I doubt that."

"Trust in your ancestors to guide you on the right path and we'll be here if you need us."

"That I never doubted.  The painting's safe in the Vault?"

A rumble of thunder sounded over the ocean.  Winter was definitely upon them.

"Oh aye.  One of the first to go down there when the castle was getting opened to the public.  The only one the insurers are ignorant of and therefore absent from the database.  You'll be wanting another look at it?"

Callum turned to the window where the rain and hailstones were now lashing against the panes.  A crack of lightning lit up the darkened ocean briefly.

"Let's wait and see if she's here to do something about the weather first."