Under an Enchantment: A Novella Read Free Page B

life,” he replied in a casual tone to the man who’d been his mother’s servant and friend a lifetime ago.
    “ Ye’re not to harm her.”
    Malcolm turned to look at the little old man whose help he needed. “Of course not,” he said simply.
    Collis stared at him sharply, and then he nodded. Believing Malcolm’s lie.
    Because Malcolm James Kendrick MacLaren had every intention of harming Ailie Wallace Spens, if need be. He wasn’t about to let sentiment stop him. She might be the only way he could get to his last surviving enemy. The only way he could strike beyond the grave of her father and husband.
    And if he had to hurt an innocent, half-mazed creature to do so, then he wouldn’t hesitate. He’d traveled too far to weaken.

Chapter 2
     
    “ Torquil’s been looking for you.”
    Ailie paused at the gate of the dower house, fighting the frisson of uneasiness that stretched up her backbone. She wasn’t afraid of man or beast, enchanted creature or wild animal, but Domnhall the seal hunter came close to making her cower. Not that she was about to let him see it.
    She turned, smiling up at him with a particularly witless look, meant to disarm. “He knows where to find me, Domnhall,” she said in a tranquil voice. “When did you start taking his messages?”
    “ I don’t mind doing him a favor or two,” Domnhall said, his small, dark eyes sweeping over her in a look that could only be called predatory. “Knowing he’ll be paying his debts, sooner or later.”
    “ He has debts to you?”
    Domnhall looked displeased at her quick question. He was a huge man, broad, just beginning to go to fat as he reached into middle age, with mean eyes, rough hands, and a cruel nature that had been whispered of on St. Columba for years. He took delight in killing innocent things: the seals who came too close to his fishing nets, the birds that flocked near the hovel he called home. It was rumored he’d even killed the young woman he’d married and buried in record time, but there’d been no proof. People steered clear of him, eyeing him warily. All, that is, except for Torquil Spens, who wasn’t averse to using any tool that came to hand, no matter how tainted.
    “ You’re smart enough when you’re paying attention,” he said. “Not quite as mazed as you’d have one think, are ye?”
    She smiled sweetly. “Not mazed at all, Domnhall.”
    “ Where were ye just now?”
    She could have told him it was none of his business. If she were the sort of woman her family wished her to be, she would have done just that, with cool dignity. But she wasn’t the woman they wished her to be, and never would be. “I was off to see the selkie.”
    His reaction was instantaneous, and she cursed her flapping tongue. “He’s either a seal or a man,” he said in a low, evil voice. “And I kill seals.” He looked down at his brutish hands, and Ailie could see the dried blood beneath his dirty fingernails. “I wonder what color his pelt will be.”
    “ You’ll leave him alone, Domnhall MacAlpin,” she said fiercely.
    He looked at her from his great height, unmoved by her fury. “And who would make me?”
    She fought the panic that swept over her at the thought of brutish Domnhall going after the man at Collis’s croft. He was swift and brutal with a knife—she’d watched him skin a seal once, and been heartily sick afterward. The slender, wiry strength of the selkie would be no match for him.
    “ There are powers, Domnhall,” she said. “Creatures of the night, who could haunt you and chase you. The spirits of the ones you’ve murdered, following after you, driving you mad. There’ll be no escape for you, none at all, until you run screaming into the sea.” Her voice sounded like an ancient curse, called down upon his head, and he turned pale.
    “ I don’t believe in such things,” he said, backing away from her.
    Ailie smiled at him serenely. “You’d be wise to do so. You never know when your deeds will come