The Presence

“The great laird returns to his castle?” he said weakly.

“Where he finds …?”

The black stallion let out a wicked-sounding snicker.

Ryan’s horse, their handsome roan named Wallace, shied. “Another great laird with a bigger horse! Okay … This great laird is leaving,” he said quickly, getting the gelding under control. “But I’ll be back,” he promised.

He turned and left, the roan clattering its way out of the castle.

“I really will have the lot of you arrested,” Bruce MacNiall said. It was more like a growl than a spoken comment. “How dare you burst in here, mocking Scottish history? Americans!”

“Excuse me, I think that we’ve explained all this. We have a lease, a legal document,” Toni said. “And we’re not mocking Scottish history, we’re here because we love it.”

“Listen to me one more time, you addled woman! I own the place, and it has never been for sale or lease!”

It simply couldn’t be, yet his irritated aggression was so vehement that Toni found herself suddenly afraid that something could be really wrong. Gina looked stunned, and equally worried.

Toni stepped up to the plate, ready to do battle. “You’re wrong,” she informed the man claiming to be the living MacNiall. “We have an agreement.”

“The hell you do!”

“We should have you arrested, since you’re doing your best to destroy the tour,” Toni told him, aware that she was taking a slight step back despite her words. “And you’ve certainly no right to call me an addled woman. We have papers that prove we have leased the place. Now you say that you own it! It was filthy and in horrid disrepair. It was obvious that no one had given the least care to this place in years. We’ve been through here repairing electrical connections, replacing wires, plastering and painting—just to keep the place from falling apart completely. The first day, David and Kevin shored up the front wall. We’ve worked our asses off to make it livable.”

“I told you, I’ve been out of the country.”

“All of your life?” she said sharply. “Because if not, you should be ashamed. This place is incredible. If I had owned it since birth, I’d have never let it come to this!”

“My castle is not your concern,” he said icily.

“But it is, because for the next year—at the least—it’s our castle,” she said tightly.

“No, it is not,” he said. “I own the place and I did not lease it!”

Toni was forced to feel another moment’s unease. There was definite conviction in his voice.

“I can see that you’ve put time and work into the place,” he told Gina. “For that, I’m sorry. But the place is not now, nor ever will be, for rent. I would have stopped you, but as I said, I’ve been out of the country.”

“Well, that’s just amazing,” Toni said, stepping in before Gina could reply. “In this day and age, one would have thought that someone in this little village might have known where you were and called you, or at least said something about you when we were buying the paint and materials!”

“Right!” Gina said.

At that moment Ryan came striding back into the great hall. Being Ryan, however, he paused. “Great horse!” he said, staring at the stallion. “What a beautiful animal.”

Bruce MacNiall started back down the stairs. “He’s a mix of long and careful breeding.”

“Draft horse … look at the muscle and the size! And there’s Arab in the history somewhere. He’s almost got the legs of an American Thoroughbred,” Ryan said.

Bruce MacNiall kept walking down, talking to Ryan as easily as if they were friends meeting at a horse show. “Good eye,” he commented. “The mare was a cross between an American Thoroughbred and one of our own stallions. He is something. He’s got the strength of a Belgian, the grace of an Arab and the dignity of a Thoroughbred.”

“Majestic,” Ryan agreed.

Toni and Gina stared at one another, then followed MacNiall’s path down the stairs. The men were both standing at the stallion’s head, admiring the length of his neck and the wide set of his very large eyes.

“Excuse me, but we have a problem here,” Toni reminded them.

“Yeah, what’s up?” Ryan said. He flashed a smile. “Has Toni’s invention come to life? I’m Ryan, by the way. Ryan Browne. Gina’s husband.”

“Pleasure, but I’m afraid that I’ve been very much alive and well for quite some time,” MacNiall said, staring at Toni. She seemed to be the one capable of really drawing his wrath.

Ryan cast his brown gaze toward Toni worriedly. “Didn’t the rental company tell us that the family had died out?”

“They did,” Toni said.

“They lied,” MacNiall informed them. He stared

straight at Toni. “Either that or you’re lying.” His words didn’t seem to include the others, only her. “And you are all trespassing. Which you should know, because it’s obvious that you’ve gotten hold of family history and local lore and rumor.”

“I did not lie!” she protested indignantly.

“Well then, you ‘imagined’ an incredible facsimile of the truth,” he said.

She shook her head. “I knew that a family named MacNiall had owned the place, but that was it. Bruce is a common enough Scottish name. Since we have been working our butts off here, we didn’t really get a chance to question the community on the past!”

“Six-three, pitch-black hair, gray eyes … like the devil’s own,” Gina murmured, staring at the man, then looking at Toni.

“I swear, I made it all up!” Toni said irritably.

“We do have documents,” Ryan said.

Toni bit her lip. Ryan’s approach might work better than her own.

“All right, look, maybe you have some kind of documents—an agreement, a lease, whatever. The point is—” he paused to stare at Toni “—no matter what you have, I’m afraid that you’ve been taken in. Unfortunately, it does seem to be something that happens to Americans now and then. They believe in the almighty Internet, and don’t really research what they’re doing. This is Europe.”

He was beyond irritating. Toni looked at Gina. “Imagine that. This is Europe.”

“You’ve been taken, and that’s that,” MacNiall said flatly to her. “In American? Screwed, Miss Fraser.”

Toni stared at the man without blinking, feeling her facial muscles grow tense. “Gina, perhaps you could show the nice man our documents.”

“Oh, yes! Of course!” Gina turned and went flying down the hallway.

MacNiall shook his head, looking at her.

“We put so much into this—years of saving!” Ryan said with dismay.

MacNiall wasn’t budging. “I’m sorry,” he said flatly.

“Everything,” Ryan murmured.

“Wait a minute, we have to find out the truth here. There’s no reason we should vacate simply on this man’s say-so,” Toni stated. “He’s claiming that we have no right to be here, but how do we know that he really has a right to be here?” The man had called her a liar. She stared straight at him and smiled sweetly. “There are a lot of penniless gentry running around Europe, as we all know. Maybe Laird MacNiall is unaware that government powers have taken control of the property because of nonpayment of taxes or the like?” she suggested.

For a moment, she could well imagine the man strangling her in truth. He did, however, control his temper. His eyes scorned her to the core as he said, “I assure you, that is not the case.”

Gina came running back down the hallway, their lease agreement and licenses in hand.

“Look, Mr. MacNiall … Laird MacNiall.”

Papers fluttered. They all started scooping them up, including MacNiall.

MacNiall righted and studied the documents, shaking his head. “I grant you, they look good. And your licenses and permits appear to be in order. You simply haven’t any right to this place because you were taken in by fraud. I’m very sorry about that, but—”

“Bruce?” A sudden shout came from down the stairs. “Everything all right?”

The new voice came from the entryway. Toni saw that the village law had arrived in the form of Constable Jonathan Tavish. They’d met briefly in town. He was a pleasant man in his early thirties, with sandy hair and a beautiful voice. His R’s rolled almost hypnotically when he spoke. Though he hadn’t mentioned that there was a living descendant of the once great lairds, he had seemed to view their arrival and their plans with worry and skepticism.

Her heart began to sink, and yet, inside, a voice was insisting, No! This just can’t be!

“Everything is just fine, Jon,” Bruce said, eyes coolly set upon Toni once again. “But perhaps you could assure these nice people that I am indeed the owner of the property.”

“The Laird MacNiall,” Tavish told them solemnly. “Owns the castle, half the village and the good Laird above us all knows just what else.”

Toni stared at the man incredulously. Now her heart seemed to thump straight downward into the pit of her stomach. The stunned confusion remained, and once again her temper soared.

Toni suddenly found herself furious with the constable. How could the man have let them all do this without saying a word if there might have been a problem? “Constable Tavish, if this is all true, sir, you might have informed us that there was a living MacNiall who rightfully owned the property and wasn’t known to rent it out!” Toni said, trying very hard to keep her voice level.

The constable looked at her, grimacing ruefully. “If I’ve added to your confusion and distress, lass, I am, indeed, sorry. You never suggested to me that you weren’t aware that Laird MacNiall existed. And until I saw Bruce, I couldn’t be certain that he hadn’t rented the property … though I definitely found it a surprise that he might have done so,” Tavish said.

A crack of lightning showed them that Tavish had not come alone. Behind him was Eban Douglas, a man who had introduced himself as the jack-of-all-trades for the place. They’d explained that they’d put just about everything they had into the rent on the castle and for the repair materials. He’d seemed very pleased, but then again, he always seemed pleased. He was a small, wizened man with tufts of white hair on his skeletal face. Gina referred to him as Igor, and was convinced that he might have made a fortune in life performing as Riff-Raff for the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

He’d actually talked to them a great deal. At times, he’d appeared to help. And never once—in any way, shape or form—had he mentioned that there was a Laird MacNiall who still owned the place.

Despite that—and his rather creepy appearance—he had certainly seemed decent enough. Toni had seen him working about the grounds and had assumed that he was paid by the agency that had rented the castle to them.

A shopkeeper in town had told them that he lived in a little carriage house just beyond the hill in back, a piece of landscape created by the fact that the moat that had surrounded the castle no longer existed.

“You, Eban!” Toni said. “Why didn’t you tell us about Laird MacNiall?” she demanded.

“Y’didna ask,” Eban told her, then grimaced. “I didna know myself—perhap His Lairdship had decided such folks as yerselves might ha been good fer the old place.” He shrugged. “After all, y’were doin’ a fine job of settin’ ‘er ta rights, that y’were!”

“Well, thank you for that acknowledgment, at least! I think we’ve been really good for it,” Toni said, feeling her jaw clench.

“Ah, then, back to the buses!”

David, who had apparently been charming the guests in the massive kitchen, came bursting back into the hallway, the large group of tourists behind him.

“Now, now!” David said as his group began to splinter. “The buses are waiting!” But he had lost control, and their guests began to mingle before leaving, stopping by Toni, Gina, Ryan and Bruce. The four of them, including Bruce MacNiall, received glowing compliments for their performances.

“Oh, it was great!” a woman named Milly—from Chicago, if Toni remembered correctly—cooed to Bruce MacNiall. “I mean, it was all just so wonderful. And then you on this magnificent beast here—pure magic! Thank you so very much. I’ll never, ever, forget this trip to Scotland. What a dream fulfilled it has been!”

“Thank you, dear,” Kevin said, quickly sweeping up behind her to draw her away.

“I loved it!” Milly said.

“Buses are waiting!” Kevin said cheerfully. “Mustn’t hold them up!”

“Really!” Milly called to Bruce MacNiall as she was ushered out.

He had the grace to slightly incline his head to her. “I’m delighted that you’re enjoying Scotland,” he said.

The crowd moved on, passing by the constable and Eban, the tourists chatting and boisterous as they moved out to the courtyard, ready to board their buses.

Thayer, however, was now in the room.

“My cousin! He is a Scotsman!” Toni said. Her words sounded defensive, as though, because Thayer was a Scot, they couldn’t possibly be in a mess here.

“A Scotsman, or an American of Scottish descent?” MacNiall queried.

“Glasgow, born and bred,” Thayer said, frowning. He stepped forward, offering a hand. “Thayer Fraser, sir. I’ve overheard just a bit of this. And I’m really sorry regarding this and my own confusion. We may well be at your mercy. Toni did the paperwork from the States after finding this rental through the Internet. The agreements went through a rental agency, a corporation. But we had a lawyer—and I saw the ads for the place myself, down in Glasgow.”

MacNiall shook his head. Toni once more felt a fierce irritation. Again, the men’s club was meeting, and she and Gina were entirely ostracized. MacNiall was decent enough about horses, and give him a fellow Scotsman and he could almost resemble polite.

“There’s definitely a problem, I’m afraid.”

“Aye, but they been good, Bruce, really good a fixen ‘er up!” Eban announced suddenly.

“We really have put a lot of hard work into it,” Ryan said.

Apparently the tourists had been loaded back onto their buses. David and Kevin came back into the hall.

For a moment, they were all a tableau, at an impasse. David moved up awkwardly. “Laird MacNiall?” he murmured. “David Fulton, and my friend, Kevin Hart. We’re only beginning to understand the gist of what went wrong, but, honestly, no group could have put more toil and loving effort into making improvements here. If you’ll take some time and look around, you’ll see what very real elbow grease has gone into our stay here.”

Then, to Toni’s amazement, Bruce MacNiall uttered an oath beneath his breath, and made what to him must have been a very generous statement. “All right. It’s Friday night. Jon is here with us and can validate who I am, but the legal offices are in town and they won’t be open again until Monday morning. Until then, I believe you’ll have to stay.”

“We’ll have to stay because we paid a great deal of money to be here, and we have legal documentation,” Toni said stubbornly.

Gina jabbed her with an elbow to the ribs. She winced, realizing that maybe she was pushing it. But she wasn’t going to blindly believe this man, or even the local-yokel constable, when she had brought the agreement to an attorney, and he had read over the deal.

“We do have an attorney!” she murmured.

“Solicitor,” Thayer murmured to her softly. “We have solicitors here.”

“I get the feeling he knows what an attorney is,” Toni murmured back softly.

Jonathan Tavish cleared his throat. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m truly sorry now that I didn’t try to stop you. As I said, I didn’t know for certain that Bruce hadn’t decided to rent out the old ancestral place. But I am afraid that someone knew about the castle—and how much Bruce traveled—and took you for a soaking.” He cleared his throat and looked at Bruce with an uncomfortable shrug.

“Should I take those papers now? Not much I can do on this till Monday, though. Law enforcement spends the weekends goin’ after the dangerous fellows running around out there, I’m afraid. All the law offices are closed.”

“We’ll keep the papers until Monday,” Toni said. Gina stared at her, but the papers were all that they had. She wasn’t letting them out of their own keeping.

“Fine,” Tavish said. “When you come in Monday, bring all your papers.” He cleared his throat. “If you say that everything is in order for the night, Bruce, I’ll be going.”

Bruce MacNiall inclined his head toward the constable, as if he weren’t just the laird here, but world royalty. “Thanks, Jon,” he said. “Come Monday morning, we’ll get these papers they’re talking about into the hands of the proper authorities. Hopefully they’ll be able to track down the frauds who soaked them for their money.”

“Hopefully,” Jonathan Tavish agreed. He gave a smile that seemed to offer some sympathy to the group. “Don’t feel too badly. Won’t be the first time Americans have been taken in. And it won’t be the last. We’ll see what we can do.”

“Thank you,” Thayer said.

Jonathan Tavish gave them all a nod.

“Good night!” Gina called cheerfully.

“And thank you,” Kevin added.

“I’ll be movin’ along, too, then, lest y’be needin’ me,” Eban Douglas said, looking at Bruce MacNiall.

“I think I can manage, Eban,” MacNiall said.

Eban turned and left. He didn’t have a hunched back, nor did he limp, but he somehow gave the appearance of both.

“Do you, uh, stay here when you’re in town?” Ryan asked politely.

The answer was a little slow. An ironic smile seemed to twitch MacNiall’s lips. “With the ancestral home filled with unbelievers? Indeed.”

“Want me to see to the horse? I did some work in the stables. He isn’t usually there, is he?” Ryan asked. “I only ask because the stables were in serious disrepair, and this fellow is so obviously well tended.”

“He was boarded in my absence.”

“How long were you gone? Twenty years?” Toni muttered.

Once again Gina jabbed her fiercely in the ribs.

“I’ll take him out, bed him down,” Ryan offered.

Toni wanted to knock him in the head for the offer, but she knew that he wasn’t being subservient. Ryan simply loved horses. And she had to admit that the animal was magnificent.

“Sure,” MacNiall said. “Thanks. His name is Shaunessy.”

“Shaunessy?” Toni couldn’t quite help herself. “Not Thor, Thunder or King?” Gina’s third strike against her rib cage nearly caused her to cry out. She winced. “Shaunessy,” she said. “Great name.”

Ryan came to lead the horse out. “I’ll give you a hand!” Kevin offered quickly, and they departed.

“There’s tea!” David said suddenly into the awkward silence. “And scones. Great little scones.”

“Wow, tea! I’d love tea!” Gina said. “You’d love tea, too, Toni!” Gina grabbed Toni’s hand. “And we’d love for Laird MacNiall to join us so we can explain about how and why we rented the place … talk about all the work we’ve done here, and find out about Laird MacNiall, while we’re at it?” She looked at him hopefully.

“Since you’ve been so kind to let us stay while we get to the bottom of this, would you be willing to join us, Lord MacNiall?” Thayer asked.

“Thanks. I had a long flight in today, a lot of business and a long drive, only to find out that the castle had been … inhabited,” MacNiall said. “I’ll just retire for the night, if you don’t mind. Please feel free to enjoy your tea, however. And the hospitality. Until Monday.”

“Until Monday?” Toni said, and her reward was a final jab from Gina. This time she protested, staring at Gina. “Ow!”

“Good night!” Gina said, “And thank you.”

“Your papers,” MacNiall said, handing them back to Gina.

“Thank you,” Gina said again. “And thank you for … for letting us stay until Monday. Until this is all straightened out. I don’t know where we’d go, especially at this hour.”

He inclined his head. “I sympathize with your situation,” he said. “Good night, then.” He took one long last look at Toni and turned away.

Toni opened her mouth, about to speak, but Gina clamped a hand over her mouth, desperately whispering, “Just say, ‘Good night, Laird MacNiall!'”

MacNiall looked back, all six feet three inches of him. His eyes now appeared to be more of a true blue, and as sharp as a summer’s sky. Something strange

ripped through Toni. She was caught, frozen. She felt as if she knew him, knew the way that he looked at her. Had known him before. And would know him again. A tremor ran down her spine. Ice. Fire. She had invented him!

He was just a man, she told herself—irritating, superior and angry that they were in his house.

Not true. If his hair were a little longer, his clothing a bit different, just a bit different … “Good night,” he said.

The ice and fire, and a feeling of foreboding so intense she trembled, became too much, far too intense. She turned herself and hurried down the stairs. Ran. Yet a voice whispered to her all the while. You can’t run away. You can’t run away. And something even softer, an afterthought. Not this time …