A Kind of Magic by Susan Sizemore Read Free Book Online Page A

then downed the drink in one long gulp. Her eyes widened with pleasure. “Not bad.”
    “Rosemary brews the best mead in all Sutherland,” he told her. “Or so she’s happy to tell everyone.”
    Maddie set the cup down before her and decided to try a conversation with Rowan Murray rather than to continue telling him she didn’t want to marry him. “I shouldn’t be in Sutherland,” she explained. “We were heading for Glasgow, that’s way south of here.”
    “So it is. We went to a fair in the village of Glasgow once. I thought little of the place.”
    She watched his reactions carefully as she went on. “I work on one of the North Sea oil rigs but I was spending my vacation visiting friends on the Isle of Lewis. I’m a systems engineer. And Her Majesty’s government isn’t going to take kindly to your abducting an American citizen, you know.”
    The one thing he knew for certain was that Maddie had a lovely voice. It was deep and melodious. It made him wonder what the sound of her singing a babe to sleep would be like. He wondered what it would sound like late at night when she held him close and murmured love words into his ear. He thought that he must be careful not to become entranced by her voice, but as for what she’d just said, none of it made a bit of sense.
    “I know where the North Sea lies,” he told her, “and the Isle of Lewis, but no queen rules Scotland, nor ever has.”
    “What about Mary Stuart?” When he just stared at her in confusion, Maddie added,
    “You know, the one who got her head chopped off by the English?”
    “I’ve heard the Sassenach below the border are barbarians but they’ve killed no queen of ours. The last I heard old William the Lion still sat his throne in the south.”
    And as long as the old king stayed where he belonged well below the Great Glen that 33

    Susan Sizemore
    was fine with Rowan. His loyalty was more or less with the MacDonald who styled himself lord of the Isles.
    She sighed and closed her eyes for a moment. “I’ve studied Scottish history,” she said when she looked at him again. “William the Lion ruled from the late 1100s to the early 1200s. Died in 1214, I think.”
    “Will he?” The date of a king’s passing was a useful thing to know. Perhaps she would save his people with foreknowledge and that was why she had been sent to him.
    “Have you the Sight then? Rosemary will be pleased. She’s always saying we need someone with a stronger sense of foreknowledge in the family.” Rowan wasn’t particularly pleased though. He was sick of all the dealings his clan had with magic.
    Maddie considered the way Rowan answered her comments and questions. The way he phrased things disturbed her and made her suspicious. “This is sometime before 1214?” she asked carefully.
    “Aye.”
    “But—that can’t be.”
    Her face was turned toward him, her expression lost. He couldn’t stop himself from cupping her soft cheek in his hand. “Nothing makes sense,” he told her as reassuringly as he could. “Not to me, not to you. We have our fate to face together and that’s all there is to it. Don’t fret. If the fair folk took you from your own time, there’s nothing that can be done about it.”
    Her skin was ash white and cold against his palm. “Took me—from my own—
    time?”
    Each word came out softer until she only mouthed the last one. Her eyes grew large and dark then slowly closed. Even before she had completely fainted, Rowan snatched her up in his arms. He held her close, cradled like a sick child against his chest, glared around him at the questions and looks from his clans folk and carried her off to his bedchamber.
    * * * * *
    “I’ll do no such thing.”
    “I said to get you gone and I meant it.”
    “This is my room! That’s my bed! She’s my wife!”
    “You have made two out of three correct assertions, which for a man is not bad at all. Go.”
    “This is not your wedding night.”
    “You stay out of this