Charmed by His Love (26 page)

“Why?”

“Because not believing is an exercise in futility, as the magic goes about its business whether ye think it exists or not. And if ye don’t believe, then why even get out of bed in the morning? Or make plans for tomorrow? Or want, or hope, or dream, or even
try
? Magic is what powers life, Peg. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to take our next breaths.”

“Olivia called your family … charmed. She said all you MacKeage men live to ripe old ages but that you look and act years younger.”

“Aye, to our women’s dismay, we can be real bastards like that sometimes.”

That got him a tentative smile, and then she looked away. “Olivia called the magic benevolent, with the power to overcome … bad things.”

“That would be the business part of it, lass; the power of right over might.” He grinned. “Although might does come in handy on occasion.”

“Olivia also said you MacKeages are rather old-fashioned.”

“Olivia seems to be saying a lot of things to you about my family; any particular reason why?”

“Because friends look out for each other.” She gave him a sad smile. “And because she’s worried that I’m going to die a lonely old widow like she thought she was going to before she met Mac.” She shook her head. “Are you aware they knew
each other only a few weeks before they got married? Olivia was just going along, minding her business, waiting for her in-laws to sell Inglenook so she could buy it when Mac suddenly appeared as if out of thin air, and the next thing I know she’s asking me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding—that Mac gave her only six days to plan.”

“The man does seem to make things happen whenever he appears out of thin air,” Duncan said, wondering what Peg would think if she knew how true that was. He gestured at the mountain they were sitting on. “He certainly didn’t waste any time getting the resort started. He called me on the Wednesday before his wedding and asked if I could start the road the following Monday.”

“Why you?”

Yes, why him? “Well, I believe there’s a distant … ancestry between the husband of one of my cousins and the Oceanuses.” He shrugged. “I guess Mac wanted to keep it in the family. So we’re good on the magic? You’ve decided ye believe it exists?”

Her pretty little nose lifted just enough that she had to look down it to see him—although he noticed she was also fighting a smile. “I’ve decided I’ll believe it exists when I see this powerful, benevolent magic in action.”

He straightened in surprise. “But ye just did, lass.”

“When?”

“When I returned
four
children back to ye safe and sound.” He scrubbed his face with his hands, then peeked through his fingers at her. “Because I hope ye know that herding chickens is easier than keeping track of your tribe when they’re focused on catching fish.”

Her eyes widened in mock horror even as her lips twitched again. “Did you end up having to draw your sword?”

He dropped his hands to show her his scowl. “Eventually.”

The
mock
went out of her horror. “You threatened my babies?”

“I never said a word. I merely drew my sword when they continued to wander in different directions and proceeded to slice a couple of small fir trees off at their stumps with single blows.” He let his smile finally escape with his chuckle. “Ye should have seen your
babies
, Peg. The bloodthirsty little heathens
came running so fast that Isabel didn’t even realize she was clutching her angleworm to her chest.”

He saw Peg blow out a sigh, and her lips finally made it to a full-blown smile. “Maybe the real magic is that they brought
you
back safe and sound. You do have a tendency to limp down the mountain every time you come up here with Mac.”

He arched a brow. “Is there anything you and Olivia don’t tell each other?”

Peg batted her eyelashes at him, and Duncan saw exactly where Isabel had learned that little trick. “She didn’t tell me which of you won the manly duels.”

Duncan snorted and rubbed his face again to hide his smile. “I did.”

“You did not,” she said with a gasp.

He dropped his hands to glare at her. “Feeling pretty brave, are ye, thinking I won’t kiss you in front of your children? What makes you so certain I didn’t win?”

Her face flushed and she scrambled to her feet. “It’s time to eat.”

“Peg,” he said quietly as she headed down the ledge, making her stop and look at him. “The day will come that ye don’t have them to hide behind.”

“No, actually, it won’t, because the twins and I are stuck together like glue.”

He canted his head, studying her. “Ye forgot I told you the magic goes about its business whether ye believe in it or not. And Peg?”

Up went that pretty nose in the air again.

“Someone who believes holds the advantage over anyone who doesn’t.”

“And … and you believe?”

“I was born believing, lass.”

Whereas figuring out how to make Peg believe was probably going to be the death of him, Duncan realized as he watched her silently turn and walk away, her hands balling into fists as she shoved them in her pockets. Only problem being that in doing so, he’d likely be damning himself to hell for manipulating the magic for no other reason than to prove that he was bigger and stronger than a curse, and a hell of a lot harder to kill than William Thompson.

Duncan had just reached the mouth of the fiord when the mother of all whales suddenly breached in front of the small boat he’d rented from Ezra. He grabbed the gunwale and cut the motor as the whale slapped back into the water, the force of the splash creating a wave that nearly capsized him. It resurfaced close enough that he could have touched the behemoth as it began swimming alongside the boat, keeping pace even when he opened the motor to full throttle again.

Duncan cut diagonally toward land when he was halfway up the twelve-mile-long waterway and started looking for a place to go ashore. The whale disappeared only to resurface on the other side of him and gently bump the bow. Not wanting to argue with the beast, he continued down the fiord another few miles before the whale surfaced on his left side and nudged the bow toward land.

Guessing it didn’t get any plainer than that, Duncan slowed back to an idle and scanned the shore until the moonlight revealed the small beach spilling out of the dense evergreens growing all the way down to the high tide line. He turned toward it and shut off the engine to let the boat drift in eerie silence until it scraped onto the gravel, and glanced over his shoulder in time to see the whale slip back below the surface.

“Thanks for scaring ten years off my life, you big bastard,” he muttered as he walked to the front of the boat and stepped onto the beach—only to have a surge of energy shoot through him with enough force to knock him on his ass, causing him to hit his head on the bow on his way down.

Go sit on your mountain,
Mac had said,
and feel the power it wants to give you.
Hell, he’d
have
to sit, as he couldn’t seem to stand on it. He grabbed the bow and pulled himself back to his feet with a curse, fingering the bump on his temple as he wondered if the energy still humming through him might leave him permanently sunburned.

The whale breached again not a hundred yards offshore, and if Duncan wasn’t mistaken, he’d swear he heard laughter. He turned his back to it and set his hands on his hips as he gazed up at the black shadow looming into the night sky. “And you, you big bastard, nap time’s over, so wake the hell up.”

The gravel beneath his feet shifted and Duncan tried to catch the boat even as he lunged toward the trees, only to miss on both counts; the boat surged into the fiord as he sunk into frigid water clear up to his waist. “For the love of Christ,” he growled, slogging up into the woods, “you could at least have a goddamned sense of humor.”

He dropped down on a bed of moss and unclipped his cell phone off his belt, then pulled it out of the leather pouch and poured out the water as he eyed his boat now sitting forty yards offshore. He unlaced his boots, pulled them off, then poured out the water, and unzipped his jacket and shrugged it off. He then started unbuttoning his shirt with a sigh—only to stop midbutton when the boat suddenly lifted on the back of the whale and shot farther out to sea. He set his elbows on his knees and dropped his head in his hands with a muttered curse. For the love of God, he hadn’t grabbed his backpack and sword. He snapped his head up and jumped to his feet. “You dump that boat and I’m coming after you with a harpoon!”

The behemoth sunk below the surface to leave the boat floating in the middle of the fiord, the moonlight glistening off the motor as it rocked on the gentle swells. He heard quiet laughter again, this time coming from the woods behind him, and sat down on the moss then flopped back spread-eagle with a groan. He must have really pissed off the magic sometime in
his youth, because he still couldn’t come up with one good reason why he deserved this.

What in hell was so all-fired important about accepting a calling he didn’t even want, anyway? Like he’d told Mac, there were enough magic-makers running around Maine already; what did Providence care if he remained a mere mortal making his way through life one day at a time? Duncan snapped his eyes open when he realized the ground beneath him was slowly moving up and down even as he heard what sounded like … snoring. Well, hell; the mountain really was sleeping.

Then who—or what—had been laughing in the woods behind him?

Okay, he had two choices: He could build a fire to dry out his pants and boots and go find his
calling
, or he could lie here until he rotted. Neither choice held all that much appeal, but apparently just giving up wasn’t programmed into his DNA. He used a heartfelt groan to propel himself into a sitting position, pulled off his socks and wrung them out, then put them back on and reached for his boots—only to find just one. The cell phone was there along with its pouch, and one boot. And he was far enough away from the water that it couldn’t have fallen in.

Duncan quietly undid the sheath on his belt and slowly pulled out his knife as he stopped breathing to listen. Other than the soft snore of the mountain, he didn’t—

There, just over the knoll to his right, he heard what sounded like slobbering. He rolled to his hands and knees and silently crawled across the carpet of moss, lowering to his belly when he reached the tangled roots of a large cedar.

He slowly peeked over the top, then blinked to make sure the blow to his head hadn’t messed with his vision, because that sure as hell looked like a dog chewing on his missing boot. A puppy, actually; a gangly blond pup that definitely had some lab in the mix, about seven or eight months old. Which meant one of two things: Either Mac had given him a mountain that was already occupied, or the pup had become stranded here when the earthquake had created the fiord.

Then again, maybe his fall had knocked him out and the puppy fairy had paid him a visit while he’d been asleep. “Psst,” he whispered, causing the young dog to stop midchew, every
muscle in its scrawny body freezing except for its ears, which slid back to listen. “Hey, mutt, that boot’s only a month old.”

The pup reared up so fast, it somersaulted over backward with a yip of surprise, then bolted into the woods up the mountain, its tail tucked protectively between its legs. Duncan sighed and stood up to walk over and pick up his boot, brushing his hand over the teeth marks in the leather. The damn dog appeared to have been trying to eat it. He looked in the direction it had run off, wondering if it really might be stranded and nearly starved. He went back to his mossy spot above the sunken beach and dropped down to dress his feet, and then just sat staring at his boat. Dammit to hell; he had a change of clothes in his pack, and he really wanted his sword—although not enough to spend the night playing keep-away with a whale.

Duncan lay back on the moss again and closed his eyes and slowed his breathing, trying to bring the mountain’s heartbeat into rhythm with his—just like Ian had told him TarStone had done the night he’d claimed his own calling. Except his nephew had been given a tall, gnarly staff to control TarStone’s power, where he had … nothing. What in the name of God had Mac hidden over here? Hell, did his mountain even have a name? He wasn’t sure it had even existed before the earthquake, despite being covered with some pretty impressive old-growth timber. But then, Mac could have merely folded the existing earth when he’d split the land to form the fiord.

“Focus, MacKeage,” he muttered, closing his eyes again. “Feel where the energy is coming from.”

Wait. Ian had also had a mentor; a thieving, cantankerous old hermit by the name of Roger AuClair de Keage—who also happened to be the original MacKeage.

Then why was he stuck with zilch? No gnarly staff and no mentor—because Mac needed a little vacation to recover from turning an entire state on its ear—no instruction manual or treasure map or sage animal familiar to guide him, no … nothing. Just a goddamned sleeping mountain with no sense of humor. Didn’t Providence realize he could blow himself and half of Spellbound Falls to kingdom come messing with something he didn’t know anything about?