The Selkie Bride Read Online Free Page B

the fierce black eyes or the alabaster skin, or the long hair that fell in a sleek cascade to below his shoulders. Or perhaps, most alarming of all, it was how not a drop of rain seemed to cling to him—not to his hair, not to his skin, not to the old-fashioned sark and kilt he wore most sloppily. A drop of blood ran down the side of his face, and he had an odd fur coat slung over his back.
    “ Co tha seo ?” The voice was deep, the eyes compelling, and I thought of the entry about water demons I had just read. “ Nach eil thu ‘gam aithneachadh ?”
    He was speaking Gaelic. My grandmother had sometimes spoken the language, and my husband had used it with his few friends, so I recognized some of the stranger’s words. The man was asking who I was and if I recognized him.
    The voice was a bit like a rusty razor that was perhaps not often used but capable of cutting deeply if needed. Against my will I answered. “ Is mise …Megan. And I don’t know you.” I gasped the last bit, and it sounded something like laughter—hysterics, though, not girlish giggles meant to attract a man.
    The stranger inhaled deeply. His eyes widened and his pupils expanded, blotting out the dark irises and then even the whites. All the stories about Fergus being in league with the Devil came rushing back at me, and I did something I had never done before: I put a hand over my heart and fainted.
    As the world went black, I remember seeing arms reach for me, and I felt a small measure of relief. Not because someone was there to break my fall and catch the lamp before it started a fire, but because I momentarily had my legends confused, and my last thought was that this man couldn’t be the Devil, because he had passed over my doorway without an invitation. It was only later that I recalled this idea and realized that I was confusing vampires with devils. The Devil may come and go as he pleases. And anyway, if gossip were to be believed, the Devil had already been invited into the cottage by its former owner. He didn’t need my permission to enter. This was a definite down side to living in a cottage old enough to recall the Dark Ages.
    When I awoke sometime later, it was to an empty cottage and the first light of dawn toying with the sky outside the uncurtained window. I might have assumed that I had been caught up in a nightmare, but it was obvious that someone had been in the cottage. I knew that I had not hallucinated the event, because peat had been added to the fire and there were a pot of tea and a mug on the table at the left arm of the settee where I was lying with a blanket from my bed draped over me. Of my strange visitor there was no sign.
    Herman was sitting on the hearth looking unruffled, and I envied him his peace of mind. I was still thoroughly alarmed by the trespass. Especially when I looked to the front door and found it closed but unbarred.
    A quick search revealed that Fergus’s journal was gone. So my mysterious visitor was a thief—but perhapsa kind one, since he had bothered to make up the fire and drape me with a blanket. He also felt enough at home to make a pot of tea before departing. Not that anything would induce me to drink it. I could think of no reason why this stranger would wish to poison me, but in my uneasy state I was not prepared to take chances. I felt suddenly very young and inexperienced.
    The loss of the journal annoyed me, and I seized on this emotion since I liked it better than fear and bewilderment. The book was nonsense, all of it. Flesh-eating water demons and fallen angels? What rot! I hadn’t read such nonsense since my days of childhood fairy tales. But the book did belong to me, and might have been a nice addition to the local tales of sea monsters that I had been collecting. If the stranger came calling again—and I sincerely hoped he didn’t—I promised myself that I would demand the journal’s return.

Chapter Three
    Houses will build themselves, And tombstones re-write names on a