Free The Legend of Lady MacLaoch by Becky Banks Page B

me to the MacLaoch and back.
    “It’s all right, Fletcher,” the MacLaoch said and clasped him on the shoulder. “She’s messing with ye. How’s your mother?” He asked, nonplussed by the whole situation and smoothly shifting subjects.
    “Och, she’s good.” Fletcher replied without a hitch, as if it were natural that everyone was interested in Fletcher’s pathetic life. “Bitches too much, says how I have to go get me a real job. What she thinks I do ’ere, I don’ know.”
    “Mmmph,” MacLaoch said.
    “She’s such a pain in my arse, ye know?”
    “Well, she’s yer mother, and ye’d do well to mind her, aye?” MacLaoch said, leaning against the bar, cradling his whisky in the palm of his hand, regarding Fletcher as a teacher might a wayward, but ultimately harmless, student. He seemed so at ease offering advice and taking in Fletcher’s ridiculous concerns.
    “I do . It’s just that she does it all the time.” Fletcher shook his head in exasperation. “Fucking women.”
    MacLaoch closed his eyes as if praying for mercy. “Och, Fletcher. Mind.” He nodded his head in my direction, his brows drawn together in disgust.
    “Oh, sorry, aye,” Fletcher said to me, not really meaning it.
    “Fuck you, Fletcher,” I said without emotion, but really I felt it toward both of them, so I plucked MacLaoch’s expensive whisky from his hand and polished it off. It slid down smooth and blossomed like a smoky sea with an afterkiss of vanilla and honey.
    I slammed down the glass. “Well it’s been fun, boys, but I’ll be seeing y’all.”
    MacLaoch had an expression that could only be recognized as humor: a light lift at the corner of his mouth and eyes.
    “Aye, a fuck ye to us both,” he said under his breath as he eyed the empty glass. “Fletcher. Know how to play the one about the seafarer?” he said, standing and putting his hand out gently to stop me from going.
    Fletcher made a noncommittal sound.
    “Good. Play it for me, aye?”
    He brightened at this. “Aye! Anything for the chief.”
    I watched Fletcher go back to his crew and pass along the request and begin to play before it fully sunk in that Fletcher had just called this MacLaoch Chief. As in, Chief of the Jerky people, I thought snidely in my whisky haze.
    I turned back toward MacLaoch to find him looking down at me, “Come,” he said, giving me his hand.
    I looked at it, then back to him. It seemed as if the jovial feel of the pub had actually caught up with this man.
    “I promise I won’ bite.”
    “Fine,” I heard myself say, and I let my hand slide into his. It was rough and firm and very warm.
    I felt the music catch me up into its rhythm as we moved into the dance area—the song was so hauntingly beautiful that the urge to move with it was undeniably strong. I felt the Celtic echoes of the Scottish pipes meld into one with the slow pace of the strings, and beneath it all the rhythmic pounding of the drums adding an exciting anxiety I couldn’t place. It was as if the sound of the drums was awakening a memory that was beginning to hum into life.
    “Have you danced to Gaelic music before?” he asked. “Except with my cousin, of course.”
    “No, and I wouldn’t consider being mauled by Kelly as dancing either.” I leaned back and looked up at him so that he could see that I was serious.
    “Well, this will be new for ye then,” he said. “Just relax an’ I’ll show ye how it’s done.”
    Before I could respond, he put one hand firmly at my lower back and the other kept its grasp around my hand and then he moved me. Really moved me, with the gentle strength and confidence of a man who knew exactly what he was doing. I closed my eyes, giving in, and moved with him. This, I thought, is how it should be.
    The MacLaoch was a different man than the one I’d interacted with the day before, as if he’d begun to believe that I was who I said I was, and in my reason for being there in Glentree.
    As the last notes of his