Page 27 of Wild Scottish Fortune

“Yes, but she’s very nice. She’s not great with details, and she doesn’t like a lot of direct questions, but she, I don’t know, guides me? Helps me?” I dug into my mac and cheese, my stomach grumbling after an active day of work.

“The Green Lady, also known as a glaistig, has a ton of different stories about her. It’s not unlikely that there are many ‘Green Ladies’ so to speak.” Agnes made air quotes with her fingers. “Some stories speak of her being threatening and leading travelers astray. Some speak of her as the Goddess of the Hunt and people would make offerings to her. Others say she is benevolent and looks after weary travelers. A few stories suggest she is even fae.”

“Fae?” I’d never considered that. She’d always struck me as exactly what she was—a ghost.

“Some, aye. That she was once mortal and cursed, hence the goat’s legs. It wouldn’t be uncommon to see such myths associated with the Fae. They have many curses and trickery in their stories.”

“She won’t tell me. I’ve asked.”

“So youcancommunicate with her?”

“I can. She does speak to me. But she’s very picky on what she wants to talk about. It’s not…I don’t know.” I shrugged. It wasn’t like we hung out for hours on end. She’d pop through and say something to guide me and then disappear.

“It wouldn’t be unusual if she positioned herself as a protector of sorts in your life, which is what it sounds like, right?” Agnes stabbed a piece of lettuce with her fork. “She often helps lost travelers find theirway.”

And if that didn’t describe me to a T.

A lost traveler in life, that is. But I was finally finding my way, wasn’t I? For the first time ever, things were falling into place for me, and my hard work was paying off. I was beginning to be cautiously optimistic that I’d actually clawed my way out of an uncertain past and was finally building a foundation for myself—a future that I could rely upon. And maybe some new friends to help make life less … lonely.

CHAPTER NINE

Orla

“Did you hear there are otters up by the Auld Mill?” Derrick, my head joiner, asked me as we measured for custom cabinetry to store the botanicals as Finlay had requested. Well, the cabinetry was more for the tools and smaller storage containers, as the botanicals themselves would be held in larger opaque containers to protect the ingredients. I was told they were stored before a maceration process that would extract the flavor to be added to the gin. Examples given to me were dried citrus peels, juniper berries, and grains of paradise. It sounded interesting, but my job wasn’t to figure out how to make the gin. I just needed to create the space for Munroe to succeed. Which meant I was more interested in—did this room need to be regulated for humidity?What type of electrical wiring needed to be run through here to heat or cool the space?Would I need an extractor fan to pull any moisture from the room? The precision required here wasn’t about the process of gin-making so much as keeping the ingredients in tip-top condition so Common Gin could create the best product possible.

Humidity and temperature control were everything—not too warm, not too cold, not too dry, and not too moist.

The botanicals needed a stable environment.

Much like myself, I realized, as I studied the small window in the storage room and wondered if it would be a failure point for humidity control. I might need to create custom shutters for the window or perhaps seal it up entirely, just to make sure the space was safe.

“Yes, someone mentioned something about protected land,” I said, tuning back into the conversation. Derrick was well used to long pauses in a conversation with me while we worked, otherwise nothing would ever get done, and I made a mental note to talk to Finlay about the small window.

“They want to make a visitor center of sorts. For the otters.” Derrick grunted as he got down on his knees and pried at a corner of the floor, testing the wood.

“That’ll be grand, won’t it?” Any talk of animal rescues piqued my interest, and while I didn’t know much about otters, the pictures of them I’d seen holding hands—wait, paws—were pretty cute.

“Running into some problems though.” Derrick grunted again, shifting on his knees, and dropped his reading glasses onto his nose. He was in his early sixties, not likely to retire anytime soon, and I was lucky to have him on my crew. Not only was he protective of me,having two daughters of his own, but he was a master joiner, and his craftsmanship showed it. I’d found him when I moved to the area, and he’d been happy to head up my team, as he’d just been leaving a partnership with a dissolving commercial construction group. Clarke Construction had kept him rooted in the area, and his wife was equally as happy to not have to move elsewhere for work.

“Is that so? Such a shame.” I knew as well as anyone the holdups that came with renovations, from delays on materials to unreliable tradesmen.

“Haunted, I’m told.” Derrick didn’t look at me, but he paused, waiting for my reaction.

We never spoke of it, yet he knew, in some capacity, of my ability to see ghosts. During the second project he’d worked with me on, an extension on a house, the crew had been spooked by a supposed apparition of the ghost of a little girl. I’d stayed late that night, speaking to her, and had helped her to move on—clearing the energy in the house so we could proceed. What I hadn’t known was Derrick had come back for his wallet he’d left in his toolbox and had seen me talking to an empty room.

The next morning, he’d mentioned he’d returned to the house, and I’d frozen, unsure of what to do. Derrick had patted me on the shoulder.“Things are calmer in here now.”

That was it. He’d never mentioned it directly, and we’d moved on, the crew happy to work in a space not fraught with unseen tension. I’d worried, for weeks, that Derrick would gossip with the crew or share my secret, but he’d never once said a word.

Again, protective.

He was a good man and I understood what he was telling me now.

“Is that right?”

“Seems so. Loren Brae has a lot of such activity. But it’s holding up the project.”

“Is the visitor center a good thing? Maybe it’s better for the otters if nobody is there.” I had to consider the possibilities from both sides before I went and did something about it. Because I knew, in his own direct way, that Derrick was asking me to act.

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