He bobbed his chin in gracious acceptance of the backward compliment. “Why thank ye, lass.”
“So, what do ye want from me? Precisely?” Aila pressed when it became clear he wasn’t going to offer the information freely.
“Want? No’ a thing.” He shrugged as if that were obvious. “I merely thought a lass such as ye would enjoy the opportunity to solve the mystery of the treasure’s whereabouts.”
“Me, or any lass who happened to wander by?”
“Ye, of course.”
Again, as if his purpose were clear as day rather than being murkier than Scotland’s deepest bog. And the bogs could get mighty murky here.
“Why no’ look for it yerself?” she pressed warily. “Why me?”
Donell shrugged. “Mayhap I already ken what it is. And would ye no’ like to ken?”
“It would be nae more than a puzzle to work out then?” she clarified. Like reading a mystery novel that had already been written. What could go wrong? Ha, with Donell? A lot. “Nae ancestors to save from desperate assassins? Nae wrongs to be righted or the like?”
“Do I need to have an ulterior motive?”
“I get the impression that ye typically do.”
Donell said nothing more, merely stared at her over the rim of his glass as he finished off the costly libation, his fathomless blue eyes steady on her as if he might hypnotize her into compliance. Finished, he smacked his lips with a nod. “Ye should be on yer way, lass. Vi will be wondering what’s come of ye.”
Aila slid off the stool and squatted down to smooth her fingers over Rab’s head. His brown eyes were adoring. “Ye’re a good lad, Rabbie.” With a tweak of his ear, she stood and went to the door feeling his grumble of disappointment.
“Ye forgot this.”
She turned back to Donell, prepared to have him thrust the time machine into her hands. Instead he held out the bottle of Dalmore he’d selected for Violet. She took it and made her way to the door without further delay. Hand on the knob, she glanced over her shoulder.
“That’s it? Ye’re going to let me leave without argument?”
“I dinnae like to force these things upon anyone, lass,” he said, then added under his breath, “No’ anymore at any rate. Learned my lesson there.” A smile touched his lips again, creasing his forehead into deep horizontal rows. “Moreover, I suspect ye’ll return on yer own soon enough. Once ye get a glimpse of the Clan Boyce in action, ye willnae be able to resist.”
“Will I no’?”
“Curiosity has its own reason for existence,” he answered. “One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.”
“Well, aren’t ye the poet.”
“The words are Albert Einstein’s, no’ my own,” Auld Donell told her. “Fine mon.”
She wondered if he knew from personal experience.
“He was brilliant, aye. Still a dullard when it came at times. Sometimes couldnae see the obvious for the need to see the logic in all things,” he went on. “Sometimes the best things in life are the unexplained.”
“The unexplained?”
“Ye’ll see soon enough.”
“Nay, I willnae!”
Chapter 3
Aye, she would.
As much as she wanted to deny Donell a puppet for his quest, he was right. An hour amongst feuding Boyces had fueled her curiosity regarding the mystery prize they sought. They bellowed curses in Gaelic at one another, tore into one another as thoroughly as they tore up the house. All the while, not one of them knew what it was they searched for. None knew what their distant ancestor had done to be so bestowed by the long gone Duke of Argyll to receive it.
Still they searched and scavenged. Pried up floorboards and carved out holes in lathe and plaster while the elders among them waved canes and ticked off the of list places that had purportedly been searched and dismissed in years gone by. Their obsession sparked a corresponding one in her. Aila found herself assessing the small cottage for overlooked possibilities.
