Amanda Scott by Reivers Bride

whom he was about to enter a contract was a bad man. Armadale had punished
     her for her impertinence and ignored her to his cost. After that, although he was as likely to tell her to mind her place
     and to pretend to ignore her opinions, he took greater care and occasionally even sought out her estimation of people who
     had approached him.
    That experience and others like it assured her that she could trust Sir Christopher. Without a qualm, she dismissed his warning
     that she should not.
    “There, you see,” Catriona said, pleased with the progress of her plan. “She trusts him, although I cannot think why she should
     when she does not know him.”
    Fergus wriggled beside her in the thick mane of Anne’s mount, looking anything but pleased or comfortable. “He is a good man,
     is he not?”
    “Aye, but how would she know?”
    “She has a gift, o’ course.”
    “I have heard that some tribes bestow such gifts upon their charges,” she said, remembering that Claud had told her as much.
    “I’m thinking ye’re no from around here,” he said grimly.
    “Of course I am not,” Catriona replied. “Do I
look
as if I were from here?”
    “Nay, for ye’re even more beautiful than the women o’ me own tribe, so I’m thinking ye must be a pixie from one o’ the hill
     tribes. I ha’ never seen one afore, but I’m told they be the only lasses more beautiful than ours.”
    “Well, I have not met anyone like you before either,” Catriona said.
    “Aye, well, although we bestow gifts, we dinna do things like ye just did,” he said righteously. “Ye canna go about these
     parts interfering in mortal business.”
    “But we have a duty to look after them.”
    “Aye, sure, but only in small ways,” he said. “Banishing nightmares when they threaten, soothing harsh feelings, easing worries,
     and such like things.”
    “But that cannot be all you do,” Catriona said. “Your aura seems so powerful, not like that of a brownie or a dobby with no
     power to speak of. What fortunate tribe can boast of having you as its member?”
    “I be an Ellyl,” he said, preening himself. “Me tribe’s called the Ellyllon.”
    “I fear I have never heard of them,” she admitted. “What manner of folk are they exactly?”
    “They be the Forgetful People is what they be,” Maggie Malloch snapped, materializing between them in a puff of mist.
    “Maggie,” Fergus exclaimed. “What be ye a-doing here?”
    “I ha’ business here,” she said. “If it concerns ye, Fergus Fishbait, I’m that sorry. Form yourself properly, so the wench
     doesna take the notion that ye always go about half baked, or fear that ye’ll fade away altogether.”
    Clearly startled, Fergus looked down at himself. “Och, I forgot!” he exclaimed. snapping into a solid form at once. “I were
     that stunned by what ye were doing that I forgot tae finish producing m’self.”
    “But how can you stop halfway?” Catriona asked.
    “Never mind that,” Maggie said, giving her a stern look. “What did ye do tae stun the man so?”
    Catriona smiled. “I merely arranged for my lad to meet the cousin of his betrothed. that’s all. With luck, and if Fergus Fishbait
     can stop arguing with me at every turn and trying to prevent—”
    “But we’re no tae interfere wi’ them,” he protested. “That be the rule!”
    “Dinna heed him, lass,’ Maggie advised. “Likely, he’ll forget about it soon. Ye’ve heard o’ the Holy Grail?”
    Catriona blinked at what seemed to be a non sequitur. “Aye,” she said doubtfully. “That is, I don’t remember what it was exactly,
     but did it not go missing centuries ago?”
    “It did, because it were in the charge o’ the Ellyllon,” Maggie said with a severe look at Fergus. “They were tae keep it
     safe, and they swore they hid it in a perfect place. But when time came tae let the mortals find it again, the Ellyllon couldna
     produce it, and so they ha’ been called the Forgetful People ever