The Legend of Lady MacLaoch by Becky Banks Read Free Book Online Page A

would willingly persist her way into a MacLaoch castle and pass out in our dungeon. Did ye no’ think tha’ maybe we’d just push ye into the hole and leave ye? We’ve done worse to your lot.”
    I narrowed my eyes. “I suppose you should have thought about that when you saved me earlier on that cliff—though I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, as you didn’t know then what family I belong to. But really? Leave me in the dungeon? Over a fairy tale?”
    MacLaoch raised his eyebrow at me. “Ye think it’s a fairy tale? It’s more like a curse, Ms. Baker.”
    “I suppose it matters what side you’re standing on. Though either way, it’s the twenty-first century, and this castle is open for tours—I doubt people would still come if my body were rotting in the dungeon.”
    “The fairy tale,” he said. “Is tha’ why ye are so persistent to find a MacLaoch? To cure what ails him?”
    I leveled my gaze on him for a moment, really taking him in. I was surprised that he was getting worked up over my being there, so I tried again to explain myself.
    “Look,” I said, “I’m here to do family research. I was raised in South Carolina, as were four generations before me, and I just discovered this last Christmas that, by blood, my father’s line is this Minory character.” I stuck to the o pronunciation.
    “South Carolina.”
    “Yes, South Carolina, since the mid-eighteen hundreds.”
    He just squinted at me as if trying to solve a mathematical equation he wasn’t so sure he knew all the variables of. I noticed the way his jaw muscle flexed and relaxed, as if it were helping him digest the information.
    Exhausted, I pointed toward him and asked, “Is that the exit?”
    He took a moment to look at the doorframe he was standing in. “Aye, it is.” Then he looked back at me.
    I raised an eyebrow at him. “Unless you are going to offer me a moist towel and a stiff drink, I have no reason to stay.” Then I added (because sometimes I remember that I do have manners and I should use them), “And I don’t want to take up any more of your time—my apologies for the intrusion.”
    Instead of moving as I approached him, he stood still and his gaze intensified. “Why are ye here? Why now?” His voice was low and barely audible. “And how in god’s name did he get to America?”
    It was as if I had stepped into a separate conversation, which he was having with himself—one so intense that he had completely disregarded that I was real and still present.
    I looked at him, exhausted, and simply answered with nonsense: “Dunno, fate?” I pointed at his chest. “Move?”
    MacLaoch stood back from the doorway, allowing me a narrow path to pass by him. My shoulder brushed his chest and for just that instant my insides quivered as if he were made of electricity. I paused in the next room.
    It appeared to be a formal dining room and looked out from the second story onto the castle gardens below. There were four doors on the opposite side of the long dining hall and no exit sign. My gut instinct told me to take the first door, but I was also highly aware of a set of eyes on my back waiting, and a charged silence that I was having a difficult time making sense of.
    I pointed to the first door and looked back at him. “That one?”
    “Aye,” he simply said. I noted the darkness in his demeanor had returned, but something else lingered. Something that seemed to have awakened since I first met him out on the cliff. Curiosity? Wonder? I suspected a third option, something I didn’t understand because it didn’t make sense: hope.
    I strode to the door, opened it, and felt a small surge of elation as I stepped into the hallway I had seen before. From my vantage point, I could see the grand staircase and the large front doors marked Exit.
    “Ms. Baker,” the MacLaoch said from behind me.
    I turned back to him. He stood watching me, his eyes dark and glittering.
    “Yes?” I asked.
    “Come back tomorrow—when the