The Curse of Clan Ross

by L. L. Muir

  The urge to vomit overwhelmed him.

  The image of that last night, guarding the tomb alone, came back clearly with little to see before him but a moonlit glen.

  "Dear God, don't let her be dead.” Montgomery's whisper dissolved in the air as he flew down the stairs to the dungeons below the keep, his kilt flapping against thighs that could not move fast enough, thighs that had weakened from a fortnight without much food. A stomach alternately filling with worry and hope had little time to grumble.

  When had the steps multiplied in number?

  "Idiot, idiot, idiot," he spat at each step.

  He'd only been buying time when he'd bargained with the priests to allow Isobelle another means of execution. Surely, if he'd given it a bit more thought, he could have come up with something better than burying her alive. But The Judges had jumped on the idea, no doubt thrilled to have a witch tortured thusly.

  Unfortunately, digging a tunnel to rescue his sister had also occurred to The Kirk men, for they ordered the tomb to be placed upon stone. His insistence that the tomb be erected in the Great Hall led them all to believe Montgomery Ross was mad—including Montgomery Ross.

  Invincible fool, to think picking through solid rock would be quick work. How he loathed his arrogance now.

  Slower then, with no light to guide him, he slid himself along through the tunnels, hands spread wide before him to feel the gaps in the walls, his eyes straining for the hint of light around a door.

  Nearly an hour had passed since the last bit of pounding had ceased. They had to have her out by now, but no one had come. He had stood, hands pressed to the tomb wall, waiting for the vibrations to begin again, torn between going below and keeping the guards away lest the sounds resume and their deed be discovered. How easy it was to hold them at bay while he gave voice to frustrations.

  A foul stench reached out and stung his nose. Vomit.

  If it was Isobelle’s, she lived. If it was from Ewan or Ossian...

  “Dear God, strike me now if I’ve killed our Isobelle.”

  Tears poured down his face in thick trails, stinging the cheeks still smeared with the mud from the tomb. Morna would not recognize him. Would to God he would never have to face her again if Isobelle’s blood was on his hands as Morna believed it already to be.

  Lost in fear, he nearly passed the lit doorway before realizing it. Then suddenly, his arms were too heavy to lift. Pushing the door open was the last thing he could bring himself to do.

  Two voices murmured beyond the door, both male. The light broadened around the edge as it slowly swung open to reveal Isobelle’s form draped over the arms of Ossian. Her arms dangled limp and pale, her neck a slender stretch of white as her head hung back. Her red hair brushed the dirt without even a pulse to stir it.

  “She lives, Monty.” Ewan grasped his arm and led him inside before pushing the panel of wood closed once more. “She willna be dancin’ a jig for a wee while, mind ye. But she does live.”

  Monty plopped down on a barrel, still not convinced, still staring at his sister as if it were his last chance to do so. And perhaps it was.

  “She was sick?”

  “As would ye be, if ye poured that much whisky down yer gullet.”

  The second man’s head came up, his smile stretched an unnatural distance across his face.

  “Oh, hello Monty. When’d ye get here?” The man’s eyes blinked ever so slowly.

  “Ossian? Ye’re drunk!”

  Ewan laughed quietly and slapped his laird’s shoulder, upsetting Monty’s balance on the barrel momentarily.

  “As are we all, yer lairdship.” Ewan slid down the wall and landed with a thump. “It’s always been the quickest way to silence yer sister, aye?”

  Drunk, not dead. He’d jump for joy if he thought his legs were anywhere in the room. They felt as if they still wobbled through the tunnels, not yet caught up to him.

  He’d not killed his sister. Put her through Hell? Certainly. Made her wish she were dead? Probably. But he’d never hear about it; she would be gone before she’d have a chance to berate him. He’d have no last smile from her, but he’d hear no further curses. A fair bargain, then.

  “But how are going to get her out of here with the two of ye drunk? I can let none else ken what goes on here and she must go tonight.” Monty caught his fingers in his tangled hair and gave up trying to tame it, dropping his arm in defeat. “I’m sorry to see ye go, Ossian, but I’ll rest easy knowing ye’ll stay at her side until she’s settled.”

  “Aye, Laird. I’m happy to do it.”

  “Monty?”

  “What is it, Ewan?” He turned to his friend, who was fast becoming one with the dirt floor.

  “Are ye no goin’ to have Morna wish her own sister to fare well, then?” With his head sinking to the side, his big blond cousin was picking clods of dirt and rock from his hair, missing the largest pieces every time he felt for more.

  “Nay, Ewan. Morna must never know. No one must ever hear how I’ve betrayed my own clan. Let them think I’ve failed my sisters instead.” He stood and reached for his rather pungent sister, kissing her dusty forehead before hoisting her onto his own lap. “The clan will see it all as doin’ me duty, and it will make me fearsome to my enemies, will it no?”

  “Aye, Laird.” Ossian tried to get to his feet, but gave up and started crawling to the door. “Until the faery comes.”

  Damn the man.

  “Be wary the drink does not make ye lose yer tongue, Ossian Ross.” Monty’s temper allowed him just enough control to keep his voice down. “There will be no faery, because my sister was not a witch to summon one. And any man to utter the word “faery” on Ross lands will no longer be a Ross.”

  As he waited for his friends to sober and complete Isobelle’s midnight escape, he murmured a thanks to God and then once more vowed to the devil that if a faery was sent to ruin his alliance, it would die before it took one breath of heathered air.

  Montgomery reined in his horse on the opposite side of the glen from Castle Ross. Few cottages held the glow of firelight at this late hour, and the long high windows of his hall were hardly discernable. His horse shifted restlessly, reminding him how close they were to home. But Montgomery knew all too well. His home had become his prison where none but a lonely widow would ever visit again.

  Excepting a faery he had vowed to kill.

  It was hard to imagine Castle Ross as the same home in which he’d been raised. There were ever and always messengers hurrying to his father with news of visitors. Monty was pressed to remember a day in his youth when the great hearth was not packed full of roasting meat and fire sizzling with the drippings, all in preparation for a visitor or two. Surely Scottish Hospitality was born of this place.

  Now he offered hospitality to his first guest in the past year, a faery or a madwoman wandering his empty hall like the ghost his clan imagined her to be. If she were to be his only visitor, however, he’d see she stayed as long as he could keep her.

  He’d unwittingly given himself a fortnight of relative privacy with her; a delicious way to torture himself. But when that time ended, what would he do? He’d vowed to kill her before she took her first breath-this faery of a woman with strange green boots and the blood of his enemy running treacherously through the same veins as that of his kin.

  But it was too late now. If he’d ignored that dream, that vow would have been fulfilled without his ken.

  He’d given her air. And light. And water. Could he take them from her again?

  Where would he send her when he finished with her? And just what was it he wanted to finish? Luring her to his bed? Or was she just a pleasant distraction until his friends and clan were allowed back into his home?

  If he sent her to the MacKays, would she just find more trouble, maybe even find herself tied to a stake? Would Ivar protect her?

  The image of her ending up in his old friend’s arms was not a possibility he could dare to imagine at the moment without turning a
bout and hunting his friend all the way to his treacherous lair. Actually, the image of her in anyone else’s arms did not sit well.

  Any woman can be replaced by another. Wasn’t he just wishing Ivar would realize that? Maybe, after he’d tired of the woman, Monty would believe it himself.

  The woman, not the faery. She was flesh and blood, not wing and spirit. He had not vowed to kill a woman.

  There. He felt better. His gorge had settled.

  She had come to bring Morna and Ivar together, but she was only a woman, and as such could be stopped. If she had been a faery, she may have had a chance against him. Just to be wary, however, he’d not leave her alone for a moment.

  Damn, but she’s alone now.

  He was just leaning forward, to urge his horse home when the muffling blanket of darkness was sliced by a bloody scream—a scream he feared had come from his own hearth. No woman in her right mind would have been capable of such an unholy wail, which meant...

  “Jillian!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Jilly finished telling the local Muir twins the history of her twenty-four years of life, leaving out nothing, including her frustrations with the other Muir twins. She was embarrassed by how little time it had taken.

  Mhairi and Margot had listened patiently, squeezing her hand when she’d found her grandmother’s behavior a bit too difficult to explain. Although the old woman had detested the Ross name and Scotland as a whole, she had given strange reasons for teaching Jilly to speak and understand Gaelic. “So ye can hear yer enemies plotting,” she’d argued. To teach her such a thing and then forbid her from ever setting foot in the country made even less sense when Jilly tried to explain it to the Medieval Muirs. But how grateful she was to be able to speak about and understand it now, after falling victim to the modern-day twins.

  “But how had she known?” She turned to her new friends. “How did she know what would happen to me?”

  “Mayhap she had also been a victim of the curse, lass.” Mhairi shook her head. “’Tis sad to think it will go on affecting so many generations.”

  “Or she could have taken a peek into the future.” Margot shot her sister a look that was pure conspiracy. “If some can go backward, Mhairi, can some not go forward?”

  “That, sister, is a discussion for another time. Poor Jillian has enough to fret over.” Mhairi patted Jillian’s head as older, veinier hands had done before.

  “That’s something I’m pretty worried about, actually.” Jilly leaned forward and plopped an elbow on the huge table, putting a little distance between her back and the heat of the freshly stirred fire. “I think getting Ivar and Morna into the future is what I am expected to do. In the future, Morna’s husband will already be dead and she’ll be free to marry Ivar. My problem is they say that Morna died of a broken heart. I have to make sure I help them before that happens, but Laird Ross won’t let me out of here. Can you help me?”

  “We’ll do what we can, Jillian, but we’re being watched.” Margot giggled. “Laird Ross’s man had a bit too much to drink—”

  “—and drank the wrong thing, of course,” Mhairi chimed in.

  “Oh, you two are definitely Muirs.” Jilly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  “Tell us about the others. Lorraine and Loretta?” Margot was squirming in her chair. “It’s nice to know the family will thrive, is it not, sister?”

  “They have nothing but secrets up their sleeves, never give a straight answer, and though they must be close to ninety years old, they act like they’re fourteen.” Jilly tried to think of something nice to say, but couldn’t. “Why would they meddle in a curse that had nothing to do with them?”

  The sisters looked at each other in that disturbingly familiar way, then turned back to her.

  “It was all our fault, ye see,” Margot confessed too cheerfully. “And we’ll make sure our family passes on the duty of seeing the prophecy through.”

  Funny how this conversation made Jilly feel like she was home again. Dear Lord, did she actually miss the Muirs?

  Hmph, how could she? They were sitting next to her, by the fire, recapping like a trio of ghost busters—or shade sniffers—after a busy day at the office.

  Jilly suspected there was another shoe scheduled to drop, as shoes tended to do around Muirs, so she braced herself.

  “Isobelle is not a witch.” Mhairi took a deep breath, a cleansing breath, like someone clearing her conscience.

  “Come again?” It was a very, very big shoe...and Jilly’s head felt like the bullseye. Her brain literally ached.

  “Isobelle is not a witch,” Mhairi repeated.

  Then just how had Jillian Rose MacKay gotten to the fifteenth century?

  “But we are,” they said in unison.

  The hall door flew open, banged against the wall once, then slammed shut.

  Standing there in the dance of shadows and firelight stood the fierce, wind-blown laird of Castle Ross. His chest heaved with exertion and Jilly took her lead from the sisters; she sat seemingly unruffled by his entrance, his physique, or the promise of retribution in his eyes.

  Power in numbers.

  But then again, the Muirs had an altogether different power, or so Mhairi had just confided. No wonder Montgomery had not been surprised when she’d asked about the Muir sisters. No wonder he’d wanted to deny how she had come to be here.

  “She’s right as rain in Scotland, Laird Ross,” said one sister.

  “Unharmed. Completely unharmed,” said the other.

  “No thanks to the two of ye, I’m sure.” He advanced, hands on his hips, eyes on Jilly.

  “Actually, they came to my rescue.” She might need a lot of supernatural help to do her good deed and get home again. Better to stay on their good side.

  “Laird,” he said.

  “What?”

  “He wants ye to call him ‘Laird’, lass.” Mhairi patted her hand and grinned.

  “Why?” Jilly looked him up and down as he came nearer. “I don’t belong to his clan.”

  “Ah.” Margot sighed. “But he wishes for it, I’m sure.”

  “Enough.” His glare held much less bite as he walked around to set one hip on the table next to Jilly’s elbow. He swung his lower leg and nudged her. “What is this about rescuing, Jillian?”

  “She prefers to be called Jilly, yer lairdship.”

  “She does not.” He sounded so sure of himself.

  “Aye, ‘tis a fact she’s just told us. Her grandmother called her Jilly Bean. It is a sweet endearment to her, Laird Ross.” Mhairi sounded as if she were about to giggle. Like Loretta.

  “She prefers for me to call her Jillian. Isn’t that right, Jillian?”

  There he went, making her name sound like a decadent chocolate pronounced with a French accent. She cleared her throat.

  “As matter of fact, I don’t mind it so much when he says it.”

  Good Lord, she was blushing, she could feel it. The fire warmed her bum, and her blush heated the rest of her. A walk outside was exactly what she needed before she went to bed.

  “Jillian can tell me of her rescue. Ye two will sneak yerselves home, do ye hear? I don’t ken how ye find yer way into my hall, but find yer way out of it. Without being seen. The way I rode in here, the entire clan will be watching from their windows.”

  “Oh?” Margot said. “And just what had ye making such a stir, Laird Ross?”

  He glared down at the woman, then shook his head when she continued to smile up at him.

  “I was on the other side of the glen when I heard her scream, Margot. I nearly killed my best horse to race here in the dark.”

  “It wasn’t just me screaming. Sir,” Jilly added when he scowled.

  “It was Sorcha Murray, as well,” Mhairi chirped, on the edge of laughter once more. “She came in here high and mighty as ye please, with ye safely away, of course. Calling out to Isobelle’s ghost, thanking her for scaring away all yer marriage prospects—”

  Mhairi�
�s long fingers couldn’t stifle her laughter, but Margot finished the telling.

  “Then she invited Isobelle to make herself scarce, if she didn’t mind, so ye would...uh, be free to...”

  “Nevermind,” Montgomery said.

  Margot looked relieved by the interruption. Mhairi smiled brighter in the dying light.

  Jilly closed her eyes, not wanting to understand. When she opened them, the sisters were gone. She looked to Laird Ross to see if he had noticed just how they’d left. He merely looked relieved, so apparently they hadn’t vanished into thin air, or stepped into the fully functioning fireplace.

  Monty’s impulse was to swing the lass up into his arms and show her just how pleased he was to find her safe, but he settled for nudging her with his swinging leg.

  “Ye may walk above, along the battlements if ye like.”

  Jillian bit her lip, then released it, frowning. “Alone?”

  “Nay. I’ll escort ye.”

  “Good. I mean, thank you.” She raised her chin. “That would be great.”`

  Was she afraid? For a certainty she was stubborn. Did he dare hope she was lonely?

  “Unless ye’d rather be on yer own, Jillian.” Monty shrugged and looked to the fire behind her. “If ye’re partial to solitude—”

  “No! No, I’m not. I mean, thanks, but that’s all right. You can tag along.” Her gaze fell to her fingers as they smoothed at a knot in the table’s surface. “Just in case...just in case I get lost or something.”

  Not for the first time, he supposed he should have fostered some border lads, to keep a better ken of the oddities of the English tongue. She wanted him along. He understood that. This tagging business might prove to be something pleasant, surely not something she would allow just any man to do.

  Now she was staring at his knee. Her hand twitched, as if she were tempted to touch it—as she’d touched his chest earlier. Did she want convincing he was real? Odd. Whenever she was out of his sight, he’d been hard pressed to believe the same of her.

  She snatched her hands back to her lap, the coward.

  His chest began to swell of its own accord, but he contained it, along with swelling in other parts of himself. She pretended indifference; he would as well.