The Presence

Her words were met with a collective “Ooh!” that was most encouraging. Toni flashed a smile to Gina, hovering in a room off the second-floor landing, watching. Any minute now, Ryan would come riding into the main hall.

“They say he roams his lands still, hunting for his wife, anxious to see her face, filled with love and lust … and a fury seizes him each time he would hold her in all her spectral beauty!”

She glanced at Gina, frowning. Ryan should have made his appearance by now.

Gina looked at her and shrugged, then lifted her hands, indicating that Toni should finish up, however she could manage.

“That night the great laird of the castle came bursting through his doorway!”

As if on cue, a fantastic flash of lightning suddenly tore through the darkness, followed by a massive roar of thunder.

The doors burst open … and a man appeared. Toni inhaled on a sharp breath of disbelief. It wasn’t Ryan. The man was on the biggest black stallion Toni had ever seen. She thought that the prancing animal might breathe fire at any instant.

And the rider … He was damp from the rain, but his hair appeared to be as black as pitch. And though he was atop the giant horse, he appeared massive himself. If his eyes had glowed like the devil’s just then, she didn’t think that she could have been any more surprised. He was the great Laird Bruce MacNiall, the warrior in mantle and kilt, just as she had described him.

Again lightning flashed and thunder rolled and roared.

Toni let out a startled scream, and a collective squawking rose from the audience.

Perfect! Toni thought. It was time to announce that the laird had come home, in all his glory—and wrath. But for once in her life, words failed her. Like the others, she was mesmerized, watching, afraid to breathe, thinking she must have conjured a ghost.

He dismounted from the stallion with such ease that anyone there with a question would still be in the dark as to what a Scotsman wore beneath his kilt. He looked around the great hall with dark, narrowed eyes and a jaw of concrete.

“Who is running this charade?” he demanded harshly.

The spellbound crowd still seemed to believe it was all part of an act.

David, down with the crowd, jumped to life. “The lady at the top of the stairs!” he informed the stranger, pointing up to Toni. Then he did his best to vacate the place as quickly as possible. “And there we are, at the end of the show. Ladies, gentlemen, thank you for your attention!” he said.

The crowd burst into applause, staring at the newcomer as they did so.

The stranger’s scowl deepened.

“Thank you again,” David said. “And now let’s adjourn into the kitchen, where we’ll have the promised tea and scones!”

As Toni watched the crowd disappear, she heard Gina whispering frantically to her. “What is it? What the hell …?” She stepped from the bedroom, moving out on the landing. “Is it Ryan? What on earth has he done now?”

“It’s not Ryan,” Toni murmured beneath her breath. Kevin had followed David and the crowd into the kitchen, but not before looking up the stairs and glaring at her, lifting his hands in a “what the hell …?” motion himself. Thayer must have gone out to help Ryan, since it appeared that Toni and Gina were alone with the irate stranger, who was now slowly striding his way up the stairs.

“Oh, God!” Gina breathed. “You said you made him up!”

“I did!”

“Then who or what is walking up the stairs? Never mind—I can tell you. It’s one very angry man.”

He was angry? Suddenly Toni, who had been so stunned and awed herself, was angry, as well. Who the hell was he, charging in on them? They had a lease option on the castle, and whatever he might be, Great Britain had laws, and he surely had no right here.

“Hello,” she said, determinedly putting ice and strength into her voice. “Can I help you?”

“Can you help me? Aye, that you can!” he snapped. Now that he was close, she could see that his eyes were gray, a dark stormy gray, right now. “Who in the hell are you people and what in God’s name do you think you’re doing here?” If his eyes were a storm, his voice was the thunder that cracked through it. He was a Scotsman, definitely—it was clear from the burr of his words—but his clean, crisp enunciation suggested that he had traveled, as well, and spent a great deal of time in other places.

“Who are we?” she said, frowning. “Who are you?”

“Bruce MacNiall, owner of this castle.”

“The MacNialls are all dead,” she told him.

“Since I am a MacNiall, I beg to differ.”

Behind her, Gina groaned. “Oh, Lord! It sounds as if there’s been some terrible mistake.”

“There’s been no mistake,” Toni said softly to Gina. “There can’t be!” To the stranger who had arrived in perfect theatrical form, she said, “We have a rental agreement, a lease-purchase agreement, as a matter of fact.”

“Whatever you have is not legal,” he said crisply.

“We honestly believe that it is.” Gina stepped forward, smiling ruefully and trying the polite approach. Gina was petite, with a wealth of lustrous brown hair, and green eyes that surveyed the world with intelligence and an easy courtesy. Her forte was public relations. “This,” she continued politely, “is Antoinette Fraser. Toni. I’m Gina Browne. Honestly, sir, we’ve gone through all the right steps and paid a handsome sum for the right to be here. We’re registered and have a license as tour guides. I can’t begin to imagine why you’ve suddenly burst in here tonight. The people in the village, including the constable, know that we’re here. If there was a problem, why are you appearing only now?”

“I have been traveling. The constable didn’t throw you out because he hadn’t had a chance to talk to me, and find out if, for some reason, I had decided to rent the place. I just arrived back in the village this evening, and learned that my home was being turned into the Pete Rose Circus!”

“Oh! Really!” Gina sucked in air.

Toni looked at her, smiling grimly. Gina looked stricken, and certainly she felt the depth of the insult herself. “I quite enjoy the Pete Rose Circus,” she said. Arms crossed over her chest, she turned back to the stranger. “Look, we’re truly baffled by your sudden appearance, especially since we didn’t know that you existed and because we do have legal forms. Perhaps people here keep their own counsel, but surely someone might have mentioned you to us! And … we walked right in here, without even having to acquire keys—we found a set on a hook by the door. Perhaps you’re out of town too frequently, Mr. MacNiall.”

“It’s Laird MacNiall,” he said, his tone dry. “And I could hardly expect to come home and find—”

“Aha!”

The roar of the word sounded along with a new clatter of hoofbeats, cutting off Laird MacNiall. Ryan Browne had at last arrived, sword drawn, risen in his stirrups. He realized almost immediately that the room was emptied of people and filled with a huge black horse. He reined in swiftly, his eyes following the steps until they fell upon the upper landing, and he stared at the three of them.

“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.