Page 88 of Single Desire
“Maura! We’ll have a ladder in just a moment.” He turned away. “Hurry!” she heard him shout.
The ladder was lowered. Maura was shaking with cold so badly that she could scarcely grasp the rungs.
“Hold on, love! I’m coming down.”
Moments later a strong arm warm and hard about her waist, she held on tight as Alec ascended the ladder. At the top, several men helped her out of the well.
Someone dragged a blanket over her shoulders. Maura gripped the edges as Alec wrapped her in his arms. Above her head he raged and swore. “I’ll have this place bricked up again. Tomorrow, by God—”
“Alec! Alec!” She drew back so she could see him, her brow furrowed. “You knew, didn’t you? You knew I’d fallen into the well.” She shook her head in wonderment. “How? How did you know?”
“I will tell you, sweet, but first we must get you back to the hall and see you—”
“Alec, no. I am fine, truly. Just—tell me now!”
He pulled her to the bench. “You were right, Irish. You were right all along.”
“About what?” Maura had a very good idea what he was about to say. Precisely how she knew, she couldn’t say…
“The Black Scotsman,” Alec told her. “The Black Scotsman is—was—James McBride. And the Circle of Light—he stole it. From McDonough lands. Your lands.”
Her lips parted. “You believe me?” she whispered.
“Oh, aye. I believe you.” His features grim, he told her how he had stood beneath the portrait of James McBride. How, compelled by some strange force, he’d studied it, and how that same force lured him to the room depicted in the portrait.
How he’d found the diary—and what revelations it held.
How James wrote that the Circle had burned him, scarred his hand.
“So that’s why he wore the glove in the portrait,” she murmured.
“So it would seem. Within days of stealing the Circle, his wife died in a fall down the stairs. One of his sons was swept away in the cove, which is probably where James sailed from. And his daughter…she fell into the well and drowned. That’s how I knew where you were, Maura. I can’t say why or how, but I knew.” Alec’s voice grew rough with emotion.
“James wrote that he buried the Circle within sight of Gleneden, in a place where neither he nor anyone else could lay hands on it again. He believed it held such power over him that he could never truly part with it.”
“So it’s not inside the hall,” she said slowly, “but within sight of it.”
“Yes. But the landscape has surely changed in two hundred years. It could be anywhere.” His eyes darkened. “And I will see that the wishing well is bricked up again. Why, this well is surely cursed! My mother always loved it, as did my grandmother—and you. But this place is damned. My mother planted roses here many times, but they always shriveled up and died. My father laughed at her. He told her his mother and grandmother had the very same notion—to plant roses here—but they always died. Nothing will grow here.”
Maura bit back a smile. She wasn’t about to admit that she, too, would have loved to plant roses here—
All at once her smile wavered.
Alec noticed the odd expression on her face. “What’s wrong?” he asked quickly.
She shook her head. Her mind was churning.
“Maura? Why do you look like that?” Alec’s expression changed. “You think the Circle is buried here near the well?”
“Not near the well.” She took a breath. “In the well.” She threw off the blanket and looked over at the wishing well, where two stable lads were pulling up the ladder. Her voice rang out clearly. “Leave it, please! And will one of you fetch a shovel?”
“A shovel?” Alec was on his feet. “Sweet, that will have to wait. The water in the well—”
He broke off. Standing at the well, Maura glanced at him, her brows upraised, a finger pointing down.
He sighed, prepared to indulge her, given her ordeal. He moved to her side, glanced over the side of the well—
And froze.
