The Night Side Read Free Page A

was called, always appeared whenever a Balfour was supposed to die. She had never seen the beast, but many of the castle inhabitants swore it had been about the night her father had died.
    George brought his club down hard, spraying Frances with sand. As with his previous ball, George’s latestefforts lofted it off of the true course and out toward the sea.
    “Damnation,” he muttered. “I think perhaps we need to play as they do in the Lowlands.”
    “And how is that?” Frances asked, dusting away sand as George pulled another ball from his bulging sporran and dropped it upon the ground.
    “Well, you are supposed to take a nip of whisky at the start of each hole. It keeps you warm and limber when you have to get things out of the water. Nor do you mind as much when you lose your ball.” A small dimple appeared in his cheek.
    “They don’t have cliffs in the Lowlands,” Frances said repressively. She did not care for whisky and did not want her cousin to develop a taste for it. Many who came to like the uisge beatha at a young age were immoderate in its consumption, and it made them drunken imbeciles in adulthood.
    “Fortunate Lowlanders,” George grumbled. “They may also play futbawe.”
    Frances began to tell him that football was a vulgar sport for common people. Then, seeing him again taking an improper stance and unable to resist any longer, she added: “Try keeping your head down when you swing and do step a little closer to the ball.”
    George swung a second time. The club connected with a satisfying whap and the ball shot over the thistle hedge.
    “There it goes!” he said excitedly.
    “ Oui, into the great sand pile.”
    George’s face fell. “Do you truly think so?”
    “Je regrette, but yes. Do not worry, though. You may borrow my bunkard club.”
    “Thank you,” George replied, going to pick up theirbag. Frances had devised it out of a pannier and a strap so it was not so burdensome to carry their different clubs about.
    Both cousins looked around carefully before leaving the shelter of the castle wall and venturing out to the cliffs. There were three sound reasons for this caution. The first was the stinging midges that rushed inland any time the wind abated. Secondly, there was always the possible danger of kidnap by their neighbors. And the third cause, which was by far the most pressing reason for caution, was to avoid a meeting with Tearlach MacAdam.
    Tearlach, the mad broganeer of Noltland, was a castle fixture. He had been around from the beginning of Frances’s time here, and there was no apparent hope of convincing him to go elsewhere to live. He had been a boon companion of the last Balfour and was, the castle staff assumed, basically well-intentioned in his infliction of company upon the new laird and heiress.
    But the two cousins did not care for him. George disliked him because of his bagpipes, and Frances because she found Tearlach’s often-obscene abstrusities impossible to tolerate. Frances called him homo absurdian when others could not hear, a bit of ill-natured name-calling that she did not direct at any other residents, however annoying their habits.
    Possibly this malice was reserved for the broganeer because Tearlach also had the infuriating habit of stripping down to a dirk and boots and then wandering about so that he might “air his pores.” He would then take up his bagpipes—which he played so very ill that others referred to him as Agonybags —and join George and Frances out on the heath as they attempted to play golf.
    His nakedness and awful playing were equally hard to endure.
    And of course, though no one else realized it, Frances knew his talk of the healthful benefits of airing the pores was all a lie. She had seen the wicked glint in his eye when he watched her. Like most Scots, he probably thought her a woman of low morals because she wore the forbidden silk of France and played a man’s sport—and played it well. She thought it stupid to equate