The Legend Mackinnon (30 page)

“Fine. But you have a message here you might want to read. Came in late yesterday.” He handed her the white paper, a shy smile on his apple-cheeked face which faded abruptly as he glanced at Rory. “Appears your cousin is in town and lookin’ for you.”

“What?” Cailean then spun to Rory. “She’s here! Maggie has come. She must have changed her mind and left right after I did.” Cailean couldn’t believe she’d left Duncan behind so soon. A thought struck her. She spun back to the clerk, interrupting him as he tried to speak again. “Did she have someone with her? A big, tall man with long, dark hair?”

“No ma’am. Her name wasna Maggie. I wrote it down, it was somethin’ unusual.”

Cailean stared at him, confused, then uncrumpled the note she’d crushed in her hand. “Delaney Claren,” she read. “I’m staying at the Skeabost Hotel. Please call as soon as you get this. It’s urgent.” There was a number after it.

Frowning, Rory took the note from her. “How many cousins do ye have running about?” he said.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “The third cousin.” With everything that had happened, she’d totally forgotten about her. “She really exists.” Stunned, she turned back to the young clerk, who was once again looking uncomfortable as he stared at Rory.

“Did you take the message? Did she give it to you in person? What did she look like? Do you remember?”

The man’s head bobbed up and down repeatedly and then, at the last question, a broad smile split his smooth features. “Oh, I remember all right. Hard to forget that one. She was shorter than you, but, well …” He blushed furiously. “Curvier, ye know? She had short black hair and these unusual eyes. Purple they were. I never recalled seein’ purple colored eyes before. Like Elizabeth Taylor, ye know? She reminded me of her.”

Cailean stared at him for a moment after he finished babbling. “Did she say anything else?”

“No. Just that she was real sorry she missed you and for you to call as soon as you got in.”

Cailean nodded slowly. “Thank you.”

She turned to Rory, who was scowling. “Let’s go upstairs. We can figure it out there.”

“What’s to figure out?” he asked. “I dinna have time for this—”

Cailean motioned with a small jerk of her chin. “Upstairs? Please?”

Once they were in the room, she watched Rory prowl around with an animal-like grace that made her shudder and ache. Staring out the window, she said, “I have to call her.”

“You have to drive to Glasgow and catch a plane.”

She turned and braced herself against the cool glass. “I will. Right after I call Delaney. When I looked at Lachlan’s documentation of our parents’ generation, there was a third child born to his nephews. I didn’t know her name, or that she was still alive. I was going to try and track her down while I was here, but Lachlan’s solicitor wasn’t at all forthcoming. And then I met you.” She turned back around. A headache was forming behind her eyes. Wasn’t everything complicated enough?

“Then how did she find you?”

“I haven’t any idea.” She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “Let me at least call and find out what she wants.
A few more minutes won’t hurt anything. We won’t be able to fly out until tomorrow anyway.”

She felt him come up behind her. Her fingers were brushed away and his own strong fingers took over the gentle massage. “Magic fingers,” she said. “You could license them and make a fortune.”

“They earned me a few pence here and there.”

She opened one eye and turned enough to level it on him.

He raised one brow in return. “Jealous?” he said, a smile almost curving his lips. “Don’t be. It was before you were even born.”

That jolt of reality was enough to make her pull away. She smoothed the note once again and went to the phone. Her fingers hesitated just above the pad, a strange sense of foreboding washed over her. She tensed, half expecting a vision to overtake her, but it didn’t come. She sighed in relief and quickly punched in the number. At the answering voice, she said, “Delaney Claren’s room please.”

As she waited for the connection, she looked up at Rory. He nodded once, just a slight dip of the chin. She gripped the phone more tightly at his show of support.

Then a sharp, take-no-prisoners voice invaded her ear.

“Delaney Claren here.”

“Hello, this is Cailean Claren. You wanted to speak to me?”

“Cuz!” If it were possible, she was even louder now, but definitely more jubilant.

Cailean held the phone away from her ear, then placed it back again. “What?”

“You’re speaking to your long-lost cousin, Delaney Claren,” she said. “Old Lachlan left me some land over here and I finally got around to seeing it. It’s gorgeous, but I can’t afford to keep it. I talked to a realtor about listing it for sale and she’s apparently a friend of a friend of Lachlan’s lawyer’s secretary and she mentioned something about another
relative of Lachlan’s being in town doing some family research and well, what a surprise, huh?”

Cailean sat there, reeling from the impact. Delaney Claren was like a tornado and Cailean was left feeling a bit windblown. “You’re selling the land?”

“As far as I can tell, it’s just a big pile of rocks. Oh, and a graveyard. Sort of spooky and maybe not something I should point out right off to a prospective buyer, but hey, we’re family right?”

“Right,” Cailean echoed numbly.

“So, you in the market for a piece of family history?”

Cailean stared at Rory and had to fight the sudden urge to laugh hysterically. “You have no idea,” she murmured.

C
ailean hung up the phone. “She’s coming over.”

Rory sat down, rattling the table next to him. “What?”

“I said she’s—”

He held up a hand. “I heard you.” He stood and began to pace. “And I suppose you can’t wait to see her.”

“If she is my cousin, then yes, I’d like to meet her. You might be interested in meeting her as well.”

“Another bluidy Claren? I dinna think so!”

“I’m a Claren and you’ve managed to tolerate me well enough.”

“I didna have a choice.”

Cailean sat down, very carefully. “I see.”

He stalked to the bed and stood towering in front of her. “Do no’ take that tone wi’ me. You know as well as I that our situation is different.”

She’d come to think of them as far more than just a forced union, that their being together meant more than a means to an end. More fool she for thinking he felt the same way. She stood and pushed past him. “You still might want to reconsider meeting my cousin.”

“I couldn’t imagine why.”

Cailean turned to him. “Because she’s your new landlady.”

“What!”

“She owns the land you’ve been living on, including Stonelachen. Lachlan left it to her. I guess Lachlan bought his way into that cemetery fair and square.”

“He doesna belong there,” Rory thundered. “He doesna belong with the sacred remains of MacKinnons who gave their lives defending that very soil against him and his like.”

“You yourself said that no man owns the earth, but is merely caretaker of it. Well, the Clarens took care of that land, too.”

“Not too damn bloody well they didn’t. They lost it to the MacDonalds before they could move into the place.” He stormed to the door, then back across the room again. “Once I realized the battle was lost, I made sure they couldna take Stonelachen without more cunning than the lot of them had together.”

“How could you protect the castle? The Clarens knew it was there.”

“Aye, they knew. Angus Claren himself had feasted with my da many a time in better days. But they didna know all her tricks. I moved walls, blocked passages. I made sure they never found all of her.” He folded his arms across his chest. “She was MacKinnon built and it was MacKinnons she protected. We were the ones who filled her with life, we were the ones who gave our lives for her. They might have conquered the MacKinnons, but I wasna about to let anyone else take Stonelachen without a fight.

“You can print all the pieces of paper you want and spend all the money you want. In the end, it all means naught. The land is owned by those who protect it and take their life from it. It’s a partnership, with the land as the only enduring partner. Men will come and go, ownership
as they see it will pass again and again depending on who is the most powerful or cunning at the moment.”

The intensity of his gaze held her still as surely as if he held her there by force. “But Stonelachen belongs only to a MacKinnon, first, last, and always. She only gives her secrets to those that made her. Always has, always will.”

“You’re right,” she said quietly, shamed by her earlier avowal. She had strong feelings for Stonelachen even she didn’t understand. But it wasn’t her heritage to claim, not truly, not in the ways that really mattered. “I thought that I understood the real power of family, of heritage. It’s my job to understand the foundation it can create.”

“Maybe it’s because you never studied the one foundation that mattered. Your own.”

“But I couldn’t risk that it would make things worse.”

His stance relaxed. He understood. “So ye form bonds with those whose lives have already been lived.”

She nodded sadly, feeling pathetic.

“ ’Tis understandable, Cailean. Dinna fash yerself this way. Ye are here now.”

“You’re right. Whatever my reasons for finally digging into my past, I
am
here.” She walked over to him. “I have to tell you something. I know how important it is for you to see Duncan. But ever since we left Stonelachen I’ve had this dreadful feeling that we’re doing the wrong thing.”

“We will come back, Cailean.”

“It’s not that.” She lifted her hands in frustration. The words she needed to explain how she felt wouldn’t come. “I am the Key, am I not?”

He inclined his head stiffly.

“I appreciate the significance of Stonelachen to you, and I agree that while it is part of my past, there is no denying the claim you have on it, or the connection you rightfully feel. I understand why you did whatever you could to preserve her sanctity.” She shook her head, amazed at the immensity of the task he’d taken upon himself. “You are like
the lone sentinel, the only one who knows her secrets, the only one left to protect them.”

She walked to him, pulling apart his stiffly crossed arms. “You’ve come back to her time and again. You’ve protected her for centuries, Rory. There is a reason you feel so tied to her. Somewhere inside is the secret that will set you free. I feel it, Rory. The answer is inside Stonelachen. We should be there, searching for it.”

“I will see my brother first. If the secret has been there all along, it will remain there.”

Cailean shook her head. “No—it’s both of us being there, now. It’s just something I feel, something I know.” She gripped his arms. “The answer is there, but this is the first time all the elements have been in place to unlock it.”

“Then we will both come back to it.”

She shook her head, frustration mounting.

“I hear what you say, Cailean.”

He pulled his arms from her and she let him go. “But you aren’t really listening, are you? You’re leaving anyway.”

He sighed again, but his expression softened, his voice gentled. “You have an understanding of me that runs far deeper than I expected. This connection we have terrifies me as much as it tantalizes me.”

He touched her face and she wanted to clutch at him, beg him to stay. She forced her hands to remain at her side, knowing what was coming by the sick knot of dread in her stomach.

“But I canno’ do as you ask.” He let his hand drop to his side and walked to the door. “I will see Duncan, with or without you.”

“You underestimated the power of a Claren Key once before. Are you so ready to make the same mistake twice?”

Rory turned on her, a new light in his eyes. “Do not toss that out lightly, Cailean Claren,” he said icily.

“I wouldn’t dare. I might have been confused by it before, but I am certain of it now. It’s that important, Rory.”

“And when did freeing me from the bonds of immortality take on such importance to you? Or is it that you are merely in a hurry to end these visions of yours?” He leaned his face into hers. “You have lived with your curse for a far shorter time than I have suffered mine. If I am willing to wait, so shall you be.”

“Even if it means losing the one chance you’ll have?”

“If you honestly think I believe you’ll leave me when you stand to gain as much as I do, well, perhaps you need to be more creative with your threats.” If she thought his tone was menacing before, she was chilled to the bone by what she saw in his eyes now.

“I don’t plan on going anywhere. But perhaps you’ll be interested in knowing that Delaney plans on selling the land you now reside on, land that contains Stonelachen and the key to your immortality.”

“What of it?” he said. “She will not find Stonelachen. Nor will anyone she might sell it to.”

“You could buy it.”

He bristled in outrage. “I willna be payin’ one pence for land that is already mine!”

“Fine.
I
know where Stonelachen is. Perhaps I’ll enlist her help in the hunt.”