“Miss MacNeill, I must ask. Have we met before?”
Chapter Three
“Ido notthink we have met, Mr. Stewart,” replied Margaret MacNeill. Her voice was soft and melodic, her English perfect, with the soft, precise lilt of the native Gaelic speaker rather than broad Scots English. She seemed wary or troubled. Perhaps she was shy.
“Ah. I thought I had seen you somewhere before.” He smiled a little.
“I cannot think where,” she said primly, glancing away.
Dougal nodded, studying her. She was slim and neatly made beneath her plain garments, her feet sand-dusted, her clasped hands smooth and lovely. If she gutted fish and worked with nets, like many Hebridean women, her hands did not show it. Her thick golden curls were loosely pulled back with a leather tie, and her features were delicate, though he saw definite stubbornness in the set of her chin and her lush mouth.
But fair coloring and elegant bones were common in Hebrideans due to Viking ancestry, so it was said. Her grandfather had similar fair coloring with high cheekbones and vivid blue eyes.
In the late daylight, Margaret MacNeill’s eyes were a luminous aqua. Dougal was reminded of a girl he had met and loved years ago whose eyes were the same extraordinary color, a sea-washed blue-green—he had glimpsed her at dawnjust before he left the cave. The eyes of a sea fairy, he thought whimsically. He had never discovered who she was.
But Miss MacNeill had the same eyes, and she otherwise resembled that gorgeous creature, the sea fairy he had dreamed was a girl. A shock of recognition ran through him—a prickling on the skin, a clutch of certainty in the gut. He had been muddled that long-ago night, thinking the girl he met was a magical being. In the years since, he felt she must have been real, and he feared he would never see her again.
He had tried to find her, searching on every isle in the vicinity of Sgeir Caran. But he had never found a girl like the ethereal, lovely lass he had met on the rock.
Could she be the one? His heart thumped. Could she?
She gave no sign of recognition, a calm, cool, natural beauty who all but ignored him. Yet he noticed nervousness in the tight clasp of her hands, the tucked frown, the clench of her narrow toes in the sand.
Not sure, he turned to smile as Norrie MacNeill addressed his granddaughter. “Mr. Stewart is the chief of the lighthouse on the rock.”
“Resident engineer,” Dougal amended. “Assigned by the Northern Lighthouse Commission. We have permission to build on Sgeir Caran and to set up buildings for our needs on Caransay.”
“I see,” the girl said crisply.
She was not pleased to meet him, that was clear. He was aware that the islanders did not approve of the lighthouse plan, nor did the island’s owner, Lady Strathlin. Miss MacNeill echoed the sentiment of her kin and friends; surely that explained her scowling glances.
But—what if she was the girl from years back? That girl would be unhappy to see him too, nor could he blame her. She had left first, but as he sailed away with the men who’d come toget him, he’d noticed a boat pulling away—had it been Norrie’s boat, even back then? Dougal had been in a haze still, thoughts blurry from a knock to the head, his comprehension of things not quite fixed.
Keeping his outward calm, he promised himself to speak with her alone soon. What would he do if he discovered she was indeed that girl? Beyond apology and explanation, what more could he do? He had been a fool then. He had wanted to return immediately, but work duties had called back to the mainland for months. Later, he could not trace the lass.
Heart beating fast, thoughts distracting, he lost the thread of the conversation. Norrie cleared his throat.
“Mr. Stewart! I saw you and your men cutting into the hard place today,” Norrie said. “I heard the noise of your sledges and chisels when I went over the waves to draw in my nets.”
“The hard place?” Dougal asked.
“Sgeir Caran,” Margaret MacNeill explained. “Myseanair,my grandfather, will not say the rock’s name aloud.”
“It is not good to speak it,” Norrie admitted. “No one should say it when directly on the sea. The hard place has a power that can pull you in so you would be lost.”
“Ah.” Dougal understood that more than Norrie could guess. “I will try to respect the local traditions.”
“If so, why would you build on the great rock,” the girl asked tartly, “when it is a place of legend and significance to the people of Caransay?”
“I am not aware of a legend about Sg—the hard place.”
“The hard place belongs to theeach-uisge,”Norrie said. “The lord of the deep.”
“The ech-ooshka?” Dougal asked.
“Sea kelpie,” Margaret MacNeill explained. “A horse-like sea creature of great magical power who can take the form of a white horse in the waves and sometimes takes form of a man.”
“Aye, they say he comes to our great rock now and then to find himself a bride,” Norrie went on. “The black rock is his place, you see. If he claims his bride, he will be good to the island. He will quiet the storms and summon more fish into our nets. He will bestow peace and good fortune on us. If he is displeased, he will raise great storms and the fish will flee our waters. His power and his wrath could destroy our lives and even sink Caransay into the waves.”
