Under an Enchantment: A Novella Read Online Free PDF Page B

diffident smile when he wanted to rip the man’s throat out. “I haven’t much money. It looked to be within my funds.”
    Angus’s smile was just as false as he promptly named a sum far too high for such a tumbledown place. That smile broadened when Malcolm agreed without argument, and his good humor was such that he invited him to tea. An invitation Malcolm accepted.
    The withdrawing room was decorated in puce silk, a color obviously designed to complement Lady Fiona’s complexion. It did no justice to Sir Angus’s high color, and it made the dark-clothed man who awaited them look sallow. Malcolm shuttered his expression as he looked at the other man, heard his greeting in that soft voice. “Torquil Spens,” Sir Angus introduced him. “MacLaren is a newcomer to the isle. He’s leasing the old MacDugald house from me.”
    “ I didn’t hear of any newcomers,” Torquil said smoothly, not bothering to rise from his chair. “I usually make it my business to hear of any new arrivals.”
    “ I’m here, am I not?” Malcolm said politely enough.
    “ So you are. I wonder why?”
    “ It’s a lovely island,” he said in a noncommittal voice.
    “ But I wonder—”
    “ Here she is,” Fiona announced in an aggrieved voice.
    Malcolm watched Torquil’s expression carefully as he rose to greet his intended, and he felt the exultation rush through him. He’d been right. Torquil was staring at the doorway with such avidity that it could only be called obsession, a lust of the body that would be his downfall.
    “ For God’s sake, Ailie, are ye daft?” Angus thundered. “Why didn’t ye warn me, Fiona?”
    “ I tried,” Lady Fiona said, flouncing past into the room, pausing long enough to give Malcolm an arch, assessing look before she sank onto a puce-colored settee. He was right; it had been chosen specifically for her coloring.
    He turned to follow the other men’s gaze, and he had to swallow a sudden burst of laughter. Ailie Spens stood there, Lady Spens, to be more accurate. She was barefoot, as she had been the day before, wearing a bright blue dress that was much too small for her long, strapping body. The hemline came midcalf, the bodice was pulled tight across her chest, accentuating her very pleasing curves. The sleeves had ripped when she’d pulled the outfit on, and her thick hair hung down to her waist, golden, lit with sunlight, so that a foolish man might want to sift his hands through its rich length.
    She was humming, something tuneless, swaying back and forth with eerie grace, unaware of him as he stood behind her bulky, glowering brother. The words were familiar, and he recognized them with a shock of misplaced amusement. She was singing one of Ophelia’s mad songs from Hamlet.
    He was more than conversant with Shakespeare. What his mother missed most, after not being able to look into the faces of her bairns, was the joy of reading. He gave that to her, reading anything she wished, from Shakespeare and Byron and Bobbie Burns to racy French novels that made her blush and laugh with pleasure. He knew Hamlet very well.
    And then her eyes met his, across the room, and her voice faltered in shock. “You wear your rue with a difference, lady,” he murmured.
    And then the shock disappeared. “The selkie!” she cried, an enchanting smile wreathing her face as she started toward him. “You’ve come to take me to the sea.”

Chapter 3
     
    “ You’re daft, woman,” Angus said angrily. “There’s no such thing as a selkie.”
    “ So that’s who you are,” Torquil murmured at the same time, eyeing Malcolm with an arrested expression. “I’d forgotten about our so-called supernatural visitor. Remiss of me. Ailie, love, aren’t you going to greet your cousin?”
    Ailie didn’t even glance his way, skirting the bullish figure of her brother to come up to Malcolm. He could see deliberate wildness in her blue, blue eyes, and found himself thinking irrelevantly of bluebonnets on a hillside,