The Presence (2 page)

Bruce MacNiall kept walking down, talking to Ryan as easily as if they were friends meeting at a horse show. “Good eye,” he commented. “The mare was a cross between an American Thoroughbred and one of our own stallions. He is something. He's got the strength of a Belgian, the grace of an Arab and the dignity of a Thoroughbred.”

“Majestic,” Ryan agreed.

Toni and Gina stared at one another, then followed MacNiall's path down the stairs. The men were both standing at the stallion's head, admiring the length of his neck and the wide set of his very large eyes.

“Excuse me, but we have a problem here,” Toni reminded them.

“Yeah, what's up?” Ryan said. He flashed a smile. “Has Toni's invention come to life? I'm Ryan, by the way. Ryan Browne. Gina's husband.”

“Pleasure, but I'm afraid that I've been very much alive and well for quite some time,” MacNiall said, staring at Toni. She seemed to be the one capable of really drawing his wrath.

Ryan cast his brown gaze toward Toni worriedly. “Didn't the rental company tell us that the family had died out?”

“They did,” Toni said.

“They lied,” MacNiall informed them. He stared
straight at Toni. “Either that or you're lying.” His words didn't seem to include the others, only her. “And you are all trespassing. Which you should know, because it's obvious that you've gotten hold of family history
and
local lore and rumor.”

“I did not lie!” she protested indignantly.

“Well then, you ‘imagined' an incredible facsimile of the truth,” he said.

She shook her head. “I knew that a family named MacNiall had owned the place, but that was it. Bruce is a common enough Scottish name. Since we have been working our butts off here, we didn't really get a chance to question the community on the past!”

“Six-three, pitch-black hair, gray eyes…like the devil's own,” Gina murmured, staring at the man, then looking at Toni.

“I swear, I made it all up!” Toni said irritably.

“We do have documents,” Ryan said.

Toni bit her lip. Ryan's approach might work better than her own.

“All right, look, maybe you have some kind of documents—an agreement, a lease, whatever. The point is—” he paused to stare at Toni “—no matter what you have, I'm afraid that you've been taken in. Unfortunately, it does seem to be something that happens to Americans now and then. They believe in the almighty Internet, and don't really research what they're doing. This is Europe.”

He was beyond irritating. Toni looked at Gina. “Imagine that. This is Europe.”

“You've been taken, and that's that,” MacNiall said flatly to her. “In American? Screwed, Miss Fraser.”

Toni stared at the man without blinking, feeling her
facial muscles grow tense. “Gina, perhaps you could show the nice man our documents.”

“Oh, yes! Of course!” Gina turned and went flying down the hallway.

MacNiall shook his head, looking at her.

“We put so much into this—years of saving!” Ryan said with dismay.

MacNiall wasn't budging. “I'm sorry,” he said flatly.

“Everything,” Ryan murmured.

“Wait a minute, we have to find out the truth here. There's no reason we should vacate simply on this man's say-so,” Toni stated. “He's claiming that we have no right to be here, but how do we know that he really has a right to be here?” The man had called her a liar. She stared straight at him and smiled sweetly. “There are a lot of penniless gentry running around Europe, as we all know. Maybe
Laird
MacNiall is unaware that government powers have taken control of the property because of nonpayment of taxes or the like?” she suggested.

For a moment, she could well imagine the man strangling her in truth. He did, however, control his temper. His eyes scorned her to the core as he said, “I assure you, that is not the case.”

Gina came running back down the hallway, their lease agreement and licenses in hand.

“Look, Mr. MacNiall…
Laird
MacNiall.”

Papers fluttered. They all started scooping them up, including MacNiall.

MacNiall righted and studied the documents, shaking his head. “I grant you, they look good. And your licenses and permits appear to be in order. You simply
haven't any right to this place because you were taken in by fraud. I'm very sorry about that, but—”

“Bruce?” A sudden shout came from down the stairs. “Everything all right?”

The new voice came from the entryway. Toni saw that the village law had arrived in the form of Constable Jonathan Tavish. They'd met briefly in town. He was a pleasant man in his early thirties, with sandy hair and a beautiful voice. His
R'
s rolled almost hypnotically when he spoke. Though he hadn't mentioned that there was a living descendant of the once great lairds, he had seemed to view their arrival and their plans with worry and skepticism.

Her heart began to sink, and yet, inside, a voice was insisting,
No! This just can't be!

“Everything is just fine, Jon,” Bruce said, eyes coolly set upon Toni once again. “But perhaps you could assure these
nice
people that I am indeed the owner of the property.”

“The Laird MacNiall,” Tavish told them solemnly. “Owns the castle, half the village and the good Laird above us all knows just what else.”

Toni stared at the man incredulously. Now her heart seemed to thump straight downward into the pit of her stomach. The stunned confusion remained, and once again her temper soared.

Toni suddenly found herself furious with the constable. How could the man have let them all do this without saying a word if there might have been a problem? “Constable Tavish, if this is all true, sir, you might have informed us that there was a living MacNiall who rightfully owned the property and wasn't known to rent
it out!” Toni said, trying very hard to keep her voice level.

The constable looked at her, grimacing ruefully. “If I've added to your confusion and distress, lass, I am, in deed, sorry. You never suggested to me that you weren't aware that Laird MacNiall existed. And until I saw Bruce, I couldn't be certain that he hadn't rented the property…though I definitely found it a surprise that he might have done so,” Tavish said.

A crack of lightning showed them that Tavish had not come alone. Behind him was Eban Douglas, a man who had introduced himself as the jack-of-all-trades for the place. They'd explained that they'd put just about everything they had into the rent on the castle and for the repair materials. He'd seemed very pleased, but then again, he always seemed pleased. He was a small, wizened man with tufts of white hair on his skeletal face. Gina referred to him as Igor, and was convinced that he might have made a fortune in life performing as Riff-Raff for the
Rocky Horror Picture Show.

He'd actually talked to them a great deal. At times, he'd appeared to help. And never once—in any way, shape or form—had he mentioned that there was a Laird MacNiall who still owned the place.

Despite that—and his rather creepy appearance—he had certainly seemed decent enough. Toni had seen him working about the grounds and had assumed that he was paid by the agency that had rented the castle to them.

A shopkeeper in town had told them that he lived in a little carriage house just beyond the hill in back, a piece of landscape created by the fact that the moat that had surrounded the castle no longer existed.

“You, Eban!” Toni said. “Why didn't
you
tell us about Laird MacNiall?” she demanded.

“Y'didna ask,” Eban told her, then grimaced. “I didna know myself—perhap His Lairdship had decided such folks as yerselves might ha been good fer the old place.” He shrugged. “After all, y'were doin' a fine job of settin' 'er ta rights, that y'were!”

“Well, thank you for that acknowledgment, at least! I think we've been really good for it,” Toni said, feeling her jaw clench.

“Ah, then, back to the buses!”

David, who had apparently been charming the guests in the massive kitchen, came bursting back into the hallway, the large group of tourists behind him.

“Now, now!” David said as his group began to splinter. “The buses are waiting!” But he had lost control, and their guests began to mingle before leaving, stopping by Toni, Gina, Ryan and Bruce. The four of them, including Bruce MacNiall, received glowing compliments for their performances.

“Oh, it was great!” a woman named Milly—from Chicago, if Toni remembered correctly—cooed to Bruce MacNiall. “I mean, it was all just so wonderful. And then you on this magnificent beast here—pure magic! Thank you so very much. I'll never, ever, forget this trip to Scotland. What a dream fulfilled it has been!”

“Thank you, dear,” Kevin said, quickly sweeping up behind her to draw her away.

“I loved it!” Milly said.

“Buses are waiting!” Kevin said cheerfully. “Mustn't hold them up!”

“Really!” Milly called to Bruce MacNiall as she was ushered out.

He had the grace to slightly incline his head to her. “I'm delighted that you're enjoying Scotland,” he said.

The crowd moved on, passing by the constable and Eban, the tourists chatting and boisterous as they moved out to the courtyard, ready to board their buses.

Thayer, however, was now in the room.

“My cousin! He is a Scotsman!” Toni said. Her words sounded defensive, as though, because Thayer was a Scot, they couldn't possibly be in a mess here.

“A Scotsman, or an American of Scottish descent?” MacNiall queried.

“Glasgow, born and bred,” Thayer said, frowning. He stepped forward, offering a hand. “Thayer Fraser, sir. I've overheard just a bit of this. And I'm
really
sorry regarding this and my own confusion. We may well be at your mercy. Toni did the paperwork from the States after finding this rental through the Internet. The agreements went through a rental agency, a corporation. But we had a lawyer—and I saw the ads for the place myself, down in Glasgow.”

MacNiall shook his head. Toni once more felt a fierce irritation. Again, the men's club was meeting, and she and Gina were entirely ostracized. MacNiall was decent enough about horses, and give him a fellow Scotsman and he could almost resemble polite.

“There's definitely a problem, I'm afraid.”

“Aye, but they been good, Bruce, really good a fixen 'er up!” Eban announced suddenly.

“We really have put a lot of hard work into it,” Ryan said.

Apparently the tourists had been loaded back onto their buses. David and Kevin came back into the hall.
For a moment, they were all a tableau, at an impasse. David moved up awkwardly. “Laird MacNiall?” he murmured. “David Fulton, and my friend, Kevin Hart. We're only beginning to understand the gist of what went wrong, but, honestly, no group could have put more toil and loving effort into making improvements here. If you'll take some time and look around, you'll see what very real elbow grease has gone into our stay here.”

Then, to Toni's amazement, Bruce MacNiall uttered an oath beneath his breath, and made what to him must have been a very generous statement. “All right. It's Fri day night. Jon is here with us and can validate who I am, but the legal offices are in town and they won't be open again until Monday morning. Until then, I believe you'll have to stay.”

“We'll have to stay because we paid a great deal of money to be here, and we have legal documentation,” Toni said stubbornly.

Gina jabbed her with an elbow to the ribs. She winced, realizing that maybe she was pushing it. But she wasn't going to blindly believe this man, or even the local-yokel constable, when she had brought the agreement to an attorney, and he had read over the deal.

“We do have an attorney!” she murmured.

“Solicitor,” Thayer murmured to her softly. “We have
solicitors
here.”

“I get the feeling he knows what an attorney is,” Toni murmured back softly.

Jonathan Tavish cleared his throat. “Ladies and gentlemen, I'm truly sorry now that I didn't try to stop you. As I said, I didn't know for certain that Bruce hadn't decided to rent out the old ancestral place. But I am afraid that someone knew about the castle—and how
much Bruce traveled—and took you for a soaking.” He cleared his throat and looked at Bruce with an uncomfortable shrug.

“Should I take those papers now? Not much I can do on this till Monday, though. Law enforcement spends the weekends goin' after the dangerous fellows running around out there, I'm afraid. All the law offices are closed.”

“We'll keep the papers until Monday,” Toni said. Gina stared at her, but the papers were all that they had. She wasn't letting them out of their own keeping.

“Fine,” Tavish said. “When you come in Monday, bring all your papers.” He cleared his throat. “If you say that everything is in order for the night, Bruce, I'll be going.”

Bruce MacNiall inclined his head toward the constable, as if he weren't just the laird here, but world royalty. “Thanks, Jon,” he said. “Come Monday morning, we'll get these papers they're talking about into the hands of the proper authorities. Hopefully they'll be able to track down the frauds who soaked them for their money.”

“Hopefully,” Jonathan Tavish agreed. He gave a smile that seemed to offer some sympathy to the group. “Don't feel too badly. Won't be the first time Americans have been taken in. And it won't be the last. We'll see what we can do.”

“Thank you,” Thayer said.

Jonathan Tavish gave them all a nod.

“Good night!” Gina called cheerfully.

“And thank you,” Kevin added.

“I'll be movin' along, too, then, lest y'be needin' me,” Eban Douglas said, looking at Bruce MacNiall.