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

castle is officially open—and I’ll personally give ye a tour of Castle Laoch and the legend tha’ haunts us.”
    “I don’t think so,” I said, and I moved quickly down the stairs and out the front doors, back to Will and Carol’s along the main road.
    • • •
     
    F reshly showered, I curled up on the window seat in my room, which looked over the road below and Glentree harbor in the near distance. I picked up my pen and wrote in my journal, logging the day’s events as I had planned to do in order to remember the trip and keep track of clues for my research. But by the time I got to the boat tour in my narrative, my hands were shaking so badly that I had to put my pen down.
    Not only had I nearly gotten killed once and passed out twice, I had also learned about an ancestor who may or may not have been mine. It was true that the difference between the two names was just a single letter, but it was also a fact that the difference between kilter and killer was a single letter. A single letter was not anything to be dismissed, especially if I intended to be 100 percent certain where my bloodline had originated from, and that one letter would be a sticking point when I went asking for historical information about the Minarys. There would be at least one person at Castle Laoch who would not believe me should I go there to use the expansive library for research. Unfortunately, that was where I felt I would have the most luck finding information about Iain. But if the man I had met was part of the castle management, as I suspected, I probably could avoid him by going straight to the clan historian.
    I just hoped he wasn’t as superstitious as the rest of this island appeared to be.

CHAPTER 11
    T he next morning I quietly made my way through breakfast as Carol rushed busily about, attending to the other guests, a whole troupe of German tourists loudly and boisterously enjoying their breakfast. This allowed me to avoid Carol—not that I was ashamed of not taking her advice but rather, because I didn’t need the extra comments, especially the way the day had turned out.
    I was halfway down the stairs when Carol’s voice pulled me back. “Oh, Cole! Wha’ are your plans today?” she asked, wiping her hands on her apron as she came down to me.
    “Uh, I hadn’t really—”
    “If ye’re going tae be about tonight around nine,” she interjected, obviously not caring what I did have planned, “there’s a spot of live music in the hotel next door. Good Gaelic music, not that contemporary crap. I have a nephew, Fletcher, who’s playing in the band.” She squeezed my shoulder. “You’ll be up then?”
    I had been prepared for some sort of rebuke for my excursions yesterday, thinking that Glentree was a small town, so it would only be a matter of time before she found out. I wasn’t ready for this.
    “Um, sure, I’ll be up. Are you and Will going?”
    She laughed at that. “Och no! We’re tucked in by eight. Thought ye might like tae meet my nephew and see some local music, ye know, have fun.”
    I laughed to myself, once I understood. When you’re single, you can smell these setups coming a mile away. “What does he play in the band?” I asked.
    “Och, I’m no’ sure wha’ it’s called in English, I think the fiddle.”
    After trying not to commit more than my just a toenail to the evening festivities, I made my way back to the documents room at the Glentree library.
    It was a beautiful, overcast Scottish day, and the curls in my hair did their unruly thing and bounced on the breeze. I hoped that the clan chieftain went to the library often enough that Deloris could act as a liaison of sorts for me. The MacDonagh brothers also seemed to think that the chieftain was open enough to sharing information with the locals, so the Deloris avenue seemed like a good way to go.
    “Ah! You’re back,” Deloris called as I stepped into her domain. She popped out from the shelves to meet me at the counter. “I