“I understand that,” Mrs. McCreedy said with a nod. “Plenty of scenery here for the viewing, especially if you’ve a strong stomach for things of a more... magical nature.”
“Really,” Emma said dryly before she realized Mrs. McCreedy wasn’t kidding. She blinked. “You’re serious.”
“Highland magic saturates these hills, lass. Now, if you’ll have my advice on where ’tis to be found, I think I can point you in the right direction.”
“I think I might like to know where it is so I can avoid it,” Emma said honestly. “I’m not much of a believer in supernatural things.” Actually, she wasn’t any kind of believer in anything that smacked of anything remotely paranormal.
She paused. All right, so she had occasionally pondered the problem of socks losing their mates, but that was most likely a dryer issue, not ghosts in her laundry. As for anything odd happening in her current locale, Scotland was drenched in history, not things that went bump in the night.
Surely.
“I wouldn’t wander overmuch on MacLeod soil,” Mrs. McCreedy said, obviously not offended by any inadvertent expressions of doubt.
Emma pulled herself back to the conversation at hand. “MacLeods,” she repeated, wondering if she needed to be writing that down. “Are those local landholders?”
“Aye,” Mrs. McCreedy said. “The laird James and his brother—his cousin as well—own most of the land in the area.” She looked off into the distance for a moment or two, then seemed to come back from wherever she’d been mentally— no doubt wandering over that MacLeod soil—and looked Emma full in the face. “I think I won’t say anything else.”
Emma wanted to point out that she hadn’t said anything at all, but decided that wouldn’t be polite. “I don’t suppose you would have a map that might tell me which paths I should avoid, would you?”
Mrs. McCreedy looked a bit startled, if such a thing were possible for a woman that seasoned. She continued to look at Emma as if she’d just seen a ghost, then reached under her counter and produced a single sheet of paper. She looked at it for a moment or two in silence, then folded it up and held it out with a hand that shook just the slightest bit.
“This will be what you need,” Mrs. McCreedy said. “No charge.”
Emma took the map and forced herself not to unfold it and have a look at it right there in the store. The terrible nature of not knowing surprised her with its intensity. Just what did her new map show? Treasure? Haunted castles?
Reclusive millionaires?
The possibilities were endless and past tempting to contemplate, but she didn’t want to look like the gawking tourist she most definitely was. She smiled instead and tucked the map into her jacket pocket.
“I’ll return it,” she promised. “Thanks so much.”
Mrs. McCreedy nodded, but said nothing else. Emma wasn’t one to endure uncomfortable social situations any longer than necessary, so she escaped the store before anything else weird happened, pulled the door shut behind her, and started back up the street toward her hotel.
She only made it half a block before she couldn’t take the suspense any longer. She looked around her in her most surreptitious fashion to make sure she wasn’t going to be interrupted, leaned casually against the corner of a building to get out of the wet, and unfolded the map.
Well, that looked a bit like the village, a determination that was made quite a bit easier by the label ofVillageplaced on the appropriate spot. That was, however, the only thing about the map that made any sense at all. She didn’t want to concede anything that might make her sound crazy, but she had to admit that what she was holding in her hands looked remarkably like a treasure map. She saw a handful of things that could have represented castles or large houses, but the rest was a smattering of Xs, as if some crazy teenager had spentthe past year digging around in his father’s backyard, looking for loot.
The map wasn’t an original, though it looked as if the original had been hand drawn. It was a photocopy, and obviously not fresh off the copier. In fact, she supposed that if Mrs. McCreedy had charged her for it, she might have been tempted to return it and ask for a refund. It was so creased she could hardly see what lay in the folds, and unfortunately those folds seemed to be obscuring the exact location of some of the more prominent Xs. She stared off into the distance for a bit, wondering what she might find there with a bit of effort, then she realized she was doing exactly what Mrs. McCreedy had been doing in her shop while talking about those MacLeod landholders—
She decided quite suddenly that maybe she’d just had enough for the day. A Gothic inn, bounty hunters in short skirts and heels, and now a treasure map delivered by the local green grocer. All of that would have seemed nothing terribly out of the ordinary if she hadn’t been wandering around in a fog. All she needed was a good night’s sleep and things would look much better in the morning.
She turned and walked back to her hotel. She didn’t believe in omens or portents or things of a paranormal nature. She had come to Scotland because there was sky and heather and mountains that reflected on the waters of still lochs. She had more photographs of the same than she wanted to admit to buying, but pictures had been all she’d been able to manage at the time.
Now, though, she had the real thing within reach. What she wanted was to take her view of those raw Scottish elements and hammer them into gold and silver, to immortalize them somehow. She hadn’t decided exactly how that was going to happen, never mind how she might use it to salvage her business, but perhaps that was something better left to think about in the morning as well.
She paused and looked up at the gray sky for a moment or two. It was odd that she’d chosen the village of Benmore to land in. The name of the place had come to her a few months earlier, almost as if she’d dreamed it. She knew that wasn’t the case, but maybe it didn’t matter how she’d wound up where she was. She was there and she was going to make the best possible use of her time.
She got back inside the inn, then managed to get to herroom without trouble. She kicked off her shoes, brushed her teeth, then dug around for pajamas before deciding that was just too much trouble. She shucked off her jeans and felt her way into bed. She realized that she still had on her coat and she hadn’t managed to get any dinner, but she was too far gone to care.
She pulled her coat up to her ears, snuggled down in spite of the springs that poked her in the back, and surrendered to the pull of sleep. Her conversation with Mrs. McCreedy echoed in her mind, but she didn’t have the energy to even shake her head over it. Maps, recluses, and warnings about magic? Those were all probably things the villagers trotted out simply to keep the tourists happy.
She didn’t believe in ghosts, magic, or treasure maps. She liked mysteries that were solved with common sense and good old-fashioned detective work. Anything else was too out there for her.
She would get up in the morning, make a very sensible list of things to do, and leave anything else in the realm of dreams, where it belonged.
Just being in Scotland was magic enough for her.
Chapter 2
