Read Under an Enchantment: A Novella for Free Online Page B

Ailie was standing by a window, staring out at the sea, her long hair hanging down her back. She’d heard him, of course, but she paid him no notice, intent on the rough water that lay beyond the rocks.
    “ Do you love the sea?” she asked in a vague, faraway voice.
    “ You shouldn’t be here.”
    She turned then, to smile at him. “A daft question,” she said, ignoring his comment. “Of course you love the sea. It’s your home.”
    “ Does your cousin know you’re here?” She looked like a ghost, standing there in the shadowed room, and while he ought to thank the fates for putting her in his hands so rapidly, he wasn’t ready for her. He wasn’t going to take her in his mother’s house, against her will. This house had known too much joy, too much sorrow, as it was. His grandparents had died shortly after Catriona had gone into the sea, never to know that their daughter lived and prospered, blind but loved.
    And he wasn’t going to take her at all if she was anywhere near as mad as she pretended to be. He was a bastard in deed as well as name, but even he had limits. There would have to be another way to get to Torquil Spens. Another way to avenge his mother.
    “ No one knows where I am,” she said simply. “I like it that way. They’ll tie me down soon enough. For now I simply disappear when I want to, go where I want to. I wanted to come here.”
    “ Why?”
    “ I’ve never been here,” she said, wandering past him, looking around her with a curious eye. “They say it’s haunted. The old couple died long before I was born, and their daughter was lost at sea.” She turned to glance at him. “I don’t suppose you knew her? Her name was Catriona MacDugald.”
    It took an effort to control the shock her eerie words had given him. “How should I have known her?” he demanded hoarsely.
    “ In the sea, Malcolm,” Ailie replied patiently, as if he were the one who was mad. “Maybe she didn’t drown at all. Maybe a selkie came and stole her away, and she’s living there still, with a dozen seal pups to watch over. I wonder if she’d miss her family.”
    “ I doubt it,” he said wryly.
    “ Well, I wouldn’t if I were her,” Ailie said, whirling around, the skirts dancing about her long, shapely calves. “Family is a mixed blessing, and mine has proved more of a curse. If you’re here to take me to the sea, I won’t argue. I imagine living beneath the waves is very grand.”
    Heaven preserve him, he thought wearily. He reached out and stopped her in the midst of her turning, holding her steadily. “You have too much of an affinity for Ophelia, mistress,” he said. “She ended badly.”
    He’d hoped to startle her. She simply smiled at him, her face almost at a level with his, and he wondered what it would be like to hold such a tall woman in his arms. How would she fit against him? Beneath him? “That’s a matter of opinion,” she said. “She went where no one could reach her. I consider that to be a triumph.”
    “ Suicide, Ailie? Isn’t that a wee bit drastic?”
    She stood there, staring at him, suddenly serious. “No, Malcolm. I might go into the sea with you if you asked me, but otherwise I’m promised to this life. I wonder. . .” And her voice trailed off.
    “ You wonder what?”
    Once more the mischief lit her blue eyes, and she raised her hand to his face. Her fingers brushed his mouth, lightly, and it took all his self-control to keep still beneath her touch. “Whether your lips are cold as the sea. Or warm.”
    “ And what have you discovered?”
    “ They’re warm,” she said, her fingertips tracing the outline of his lips. They were soft, gentle, and then to his shock she reached up and brushed her mouth against his as well, a feather-light caress. Before he could react, could pull her into his arms, she pulled away, moving across the room toward the door.
    He watched her go, relief and regret and the slow burning coals of desire at war within his body.