Free Under an Enchantment: A Novella by Anne Stuart

she’d be released from her prison, to marry the fat old man who’d take her money and her body but let her dream her dreams.
    Twenty-four hours. And then he’d leave St. Columba to go back to where he belonged. Back to his real father, his family. Vengeance wouldn’t return his mother to him, or give her back her youth and her vision. Too much time had passed, and he’d been a grief-mad fool to think he could change things.
    He would leave. And do his best never to think of a half-mad lass named Ailie, who danced with the faeries and stirred his blood to fire.
     
    The night was warm and laden with mist. Ailie sat in the darkness, the pillows piled high behind her back, and considered her options.
    The door was locked. Fiona had seen to it, making certain Ailie was fully aware of the turn of the key. But they hadn’t seen fit to bar her windows.
    Even now she could hear them in the drawing room below. It always astonished her that they considered her deaf as well as witless, so loud did they discuss their plans for her. Torquil Spens would settle ten thousand pounds upon Angus in return for his help in securing her hand in marriage as soon as a decent period had passed. Not that Torquil would miss it. Once he wed Ailie, he would have control of her substantial inheritance. As well as control of her body.
    She rose from her bed, moving silently to the open window. The warmth of the day combined with the coolness of the land created a faerie mist that eddied and swirled around the dower house. It was past ten at night, and Ailie had no interest in sleeping. She wanted to find the selkie.
    He was calling to her, she knew it. She could feel it in her blood, her bones, all the dreams and fancies she’d nurtured were coming to fruition. She’d believed so long and so hard in that unseen world that she was being rewarded. Illusion made flesh, made glorious, enticing male flesh, and she was going to go to him.
    She knew what would happen, and she wasn’t afraid. He would take her, a demon lover and his earthly bride, he would take her body and give her a bairn, and in doing so he would turn her into a seal creature, as he was. There had been a reason that Sir Duncan could never claim his husbandly rights. She’d been kept, safe, untouched, for Malcolm MacLaren to walk from the sea and take her.
    It wasn’t the first time she’d climbed down the thick vines that covered the dower house. Granted, before it had been in broad daylight, and there’d been no cause for stealth. If Margery had caught her at it, she would have screeched at her, but there was little to risk but a bruised backside.
    Angus was drinking heavily, arguing with Fiona about how they’d spend the ten thousand pounds. Angus was for paying off a portion of the gaming debts he’d run up in Edinburgh, Fiona wanted to finance a trip to London and a season of gaiety as soon as she produced the bairn who'd swollen her body and roiled her indigestion. They didn’t hear a thing as Ailie scrambled down the vines as thick as her wrist, her bare feet clinging precariously, her flowing white nightrail billowing around her. If they were to glance outside, they might think it was a ghost come to haunt them.
    She rather liked that idea. The ghost of Sir Duncan’s first wife, the immensely wealthy Lady Barbara, who’d failed to produce an offspring despite Sir Duncan’s best efforts. It was her money that had ensured the prosperity of the Spens family. Her money that her brother and sister-in-law were wrangling over.
    Or perhaps they might think it was the ghost of Sir Duncan himself. She could do a fair imitation of his harrumphing voice, enough to terrorize the superstitious Fiona into running screaming up to her room.
    Tempting as the thought might be, she didn’t dare risk it. Angus was more hardheaded than his shrewish wife, and he’d be more likely to check out the apparition. He’d stop her from going to the selkie, and she didn’t think she could bear