“Do you need help inside? Or can I get Lamb for you?”
Emmie shook her head. “I—I just need to sit down, I think.”
“You’re not diabetic, are you? A low blood sugar? You look as pale as a sheet and you’re sweating.”
“No, it’s nothing like that. I don’t know what happened, really.”
Ewan breathed deeply, and glanced up at the sky. “Sometimes it just happens. You’re fine one minute, then the next you feel like you’ve been hit by a lorry. If you haven’t bounced back in an hour or so, make sure you tell Lamb. I’d feel better if he knew you were poorly.”
“I will. I promise. Tell the others I’m sorry.”
Ewan snorted. “Adam and Deano? They don’t deserve it.”
He waited while she went inside. She thanked him once again before closing the door. His concern for her well-being caused the corners of his eyes to crinkle, but he raised a hand in farewell and let her go.
Safe behind the walls of Tullybrae House, Emmie climbed the main staircase on heavy legs, and hauled herself to the servants’ stairs. But once she reached them, her legs would climb no further. Instead, she sank pitifully onto the first stair, leaned back against the wall, and pulled her knees to her chest.
Burying her face in her arms, she lost the fight against a torrent of tears—tears which she could not account for. They consumed her. The anguish she’d first felt upon touching that kilt pin squeezed her heart until she thought it would stop. Great, heaving sobs poured out of her into the empty air. She tried to staunch them; she didn’t want Lamb to hear. But it was no use. Her nose ran, her mascara tracked down her cheeks, and her face turned a bright shade of crimson. It was ugly, angry crying. Helpless grief.
The more she cried, the more her sobs echoed back to her. They bounced off the walls in stereo, coming back in unsynchronized rhythm. Her own voice…
Wait… not her own voice.
Not an echo.
Emmie sniffled, and quieted. The sobbing quieted, too.
Rubbing her eyes into focus, she scanned the second floor landing. There was no one there. Yet, she felt certain that someone was there, in the stairwell with her. Closer to the door.
She peered. Squinted. Strained. Tried to make sense of the discrepancy between what she saw, and what she felt. The longer she stared, the more the air by the door began to shift. To shimmer, like heat rising from pavement.
Then slowly, the shifting, shimmering air took on the vague outline of a person.
It was not a definite outline. She could not see a face, or even discern if it was man or woman. It felt like a man, though. The same male presence she’d felt that day when the camera crew had come for the first time.
She watched the shimmering air, amazed. And it watched her.
It saw her. He saw her.
For a long time she sat motionless, staring at the entity in the corner as it stared back at her. But unlike before, she didn’t feel that same invasive fear, didn’t feel threatened.
She felt at peace.
Later that night, as she lay in her bed staring at the ceiling, Emmie thought about what happened in the stairwell. Thought about what it felt like.
It felt like comfort, like she was understood. The anguish which had overwhelmed her when she touched the kilt pin hadn’t been her own. It had come from him. But when she’d received it, his grief had mingled with her own, grief that had been pent up inside for years which she hadn’t allowed herself to acknowledge. It converged and changed.
And when it poured out of her… somehow, he’d felt it, too.
Whoever he was.
THE HIGHLANDER. HE had noticed her that day in the stairwell. He’d become aware of her, knew of her existence. And he was curious.
From that day on, Emmie was rarely alone. There was always that vague knowledge that he was hovering somewhere nearby. When she was in the nursery, working on her laptop, he would be in the hall outside the door. At breakfast, lunch and dinner, the back of her neck would tingle with the sensation of his presence. When she went up to bed for the night, he lingered at the top of the staircase, and when she came down again in the morning, he was still there, waiting for her.
She wasn’t sure what to make of his near-constant presence. It might have annoyed her, but for the fact that she got the distinct impression he was trying not to bother her. He was trying, in his curiosity, to fly under her radar, so to speak. It was oddly endearing.
She felt him like a tingling underneath her skin, one that never really went away, though it would fade if she wasn’t paying attention. It was a strange sensation. At times during the day, she would find herself stopping whatever she was doing, and assessing the energy, testing its strength or weakness to determine the Highlander’s proximity to her.
She wondered if he was aware she did this. She doubted it.
A Highlander he definitely was. How she was so certain, she couldn’t say, other than that she could just feel it. A skeptic would argue that she was in the Highlands of Scotland, and that it was a logical assumption—
Scratch that. A skeptic would declare that she was imagining things altogether.
Whoever he was, and whatever he wanted, Emmie found that much of her time was spent absorbed in the awareness of him. It was swiftly becoming a habit, like nail biting or hair twirling. There were times when she didn’t even realize she was doing it.
“Are you all right, Emmie?” Lamb asked her one morning.
She had taken a bite of toast, and had paused mid-chew to test out the prickle in her spine. The Highlander was in the corner of the kitchen, over by the old Victorian range. She was so intensely focused on him, on the way his presence moved and dissipated and converged again like fog, that she hadn’t realized she’d been staring into space with a piece of toast wedged into her cheek until Lamb’s question brought her around.
“Yeah. I—um,” she cleared her throat, slightly embarrassed. “Sorry. I spaced out there, didn’t I?” She laughed lightly, brushing it off as a momentary lapse.
Lamb was not fooled. He gazed at her, his pale eyes seeing through her sudden brightness.
“My mother says—well, she used to say—that no matter what may be bothering you, you’ll always feel better if you talk about it.”
Emmie searched the old man’s placid face. Did he know something? Was he, too, aware of the Highlander? She didn’t want to talk about him. The Highlander’s newfound interest in her seemed personal, somehow. Something she wanted to keep to herself. But she did want to know more about him, about what kept him here. It occurred to her that Lamb might be able to help her learn about him.
“That’s probably true,” she hedged. “Can I ask you, Lamb… do you know anything about the massacre that is said to have happened here?”
He wasn’t surprised by her question. He put down his fork, and folded his fingers together.
“The massacre, you say. Well, now. I’m no’ sure what the history books say. I suppose you’ve already checked it out on the Internet.”
“No, actually, I haven’t,” she admitted. “That’s probably where I should have started, huh?”
“I don’t mind telling you what I know, although I’m afraid it’s no’ much.”
“It’ll be a starting point, if nothing else.” She straightened on her stool, leaning forward and tucking her hands tightly between her thighs.
“As far as I know, the murders predate the house. It had nothing to do with anyone associated with Tullybrae. That is about the only thing I can say with any certainty.”
“So it was more than, what, three-hundred years ago?”
“Oh, at least.”
“Ewan said it was a clan dispute. Do you have any idea which clans they might have been?”
“Nay, sorry. As I said, I don’t know much. But I do know that there was a severe and unforgivable betrayal involved.”
“Betrayal,” she echoed, her eyes wide.
“Aye. Many men were murdered, sacrificed to facil
itate one man’s death. From what the servants used to say about him, this man was wronged.”
Wronged. The word stuck with Emmie, echoing in her ears all afternoon. Wronged. Wronged how? By whom? The Highlander was definitely involved in some way—if he wasn’t the one man whose death was so highly desired, then he was at least one of the sacrificed in the party of this centuries-old tale. She knew it because as soon as Lamb’s old lips uttered the word, the Highlander’s presence pulsed invisibly. As if he were silently telling her—Yes!
She didn’t know it then, but she would come to regret asking Lamb to tell what he knew. That one word—wronged—was like an infecting agent, a wet cloth full of germs swiped over an insignificant skin abrasion. It turned her curiosity from something inconvenient into a thing which she could not stop scratching at.
After breakfast that morning, she buried her nose in her laptop, searching for anything that might illuminate the supposed massacre. Her efforts yielded no results. Keyword searches, drilling down through embedded links, scholarly articles available through the various subscriptions she maintained—there was nothing other than a general history of the clans in the area.
But, if she had learned anything in her training all these years, it was to never discount any piece of information, no matter how unimportant it may at first seem. Emmie scribbled down everything she could find, recording details, possible leads, and points of interest which needed more research. By early afternoon, she abandoned the digital world in favour of Tullybrae’s library, which housed a sizeable collection of books on local history.
When Sophie found her a few hours later, the afternoon light was coming low and long through the window, and Emmie had just switched on the standing lamp by the cold, empty hearth.
“There you are,” Sophie exclaimed, stopping in front of the open doorway.
Emmie glanced up from her cross-legged position on the floor. A pile of books had accumulated there, forming a moat of pages around her.
“Oh, hey, Soph. What’s up?” The words were barely out of her mouth before her eyes were lowering back to her book.
Sophie came into the room. She sat down in front of Emmie and stuck her legs out straight, crossing them at the ankles.
“Everything okay with you?”
“Sure, why do you ask?”
A small, pale hand with short, chewed nails slid over the black-and-yellowing pages. Gently, the book was removed from Emmie’s grip.
Emmie looked up, chagrined. “Sorry. What did you say?”
“I asked if you’re okay. In general, I mean. You’ve been kind of out of it the last few days.”
“I have been a little distracted, haven’t I?”
“If that isn’t the understatement of the year, I’ll be buggered. Look: I may be a right stroppy mare sometimes, but I care about my friends—even Adam, but don’t be telling him that. You haven’t come out much to see us, and when we do see you, you look like you’re in space half the time. And Lamb says your appetite’s been falling off— You’re not up the duff, are you?”
“Pregnant?” Emmie balked. “God, no. Nothing like that.”
“Okay. Well I’m sure it’s none of my affair, and I can keep me nose out of where it don’t belong. Just promise me you’re really all right, and we’ll leave it at that.”
She looked into Sophie’s eyes. Really looked. What she found was concern that went deeper than the young woman’s brash, indelicate East-Ender exterior. Worry wrote itself on her face, creasing her slightly large brow and small, upturned nose.
Emmie wondered—she hadn’t been that bad, had she?
She thought back to how she’d been acting the last week or so. To be fair, the encounter with the kilt pin had been alarming at the time, but it had been an isolated incident. Nothing else struck her as unusual… Well, perhaps that one time Lamb had to practically shout her name at the doorway of the nursery to get her attention. And, okay, it might be accurate to claim she didn’t have much of an appetite lately. She was going to bed later, and was more high-strung than usual.
Suddenly Emmie felt ashamed. The crew outside had actively sought to keep her a part of their world, and Lamb’s concern for her well-being was so genuine. But how could she possibly tell them about the source of her distraction: the Highlander? He consumed more of her focus and energy than was good for her, she didn’t mind admitting. She couldn’t explain that to them in a way they’d understand.
And besides, she didn’t want to tell them. The Highlander was her secret. She didn’t want to share him—
It. She didn’t want to share it. The secret.
What was wrong with her?
“I promise, I’m fine.”
“Can you tell me what’s the matter? Just to ease my conscience?”
Emmie squinted, tipping her head to the side. “Nothing ‘the matter’ really. It’s just that… Well, here. Let me put it like this: Do you ever have a bug, or an itch for something, and you don’t know what it is but you can’t leave it alone?”
“You’re talking to an excavator, love. That’s my life. ‘C’mon, Soph. Just a little farther down. Just a bit more dirt, just another hour. There’s something down there.’”
“Bingo.”
Sophie changed positions, leaning back on her hands, and uncrossing her denim-clad ankles. It was then that Emmie noticed she’d had the presence of mind to remove her boots so that she would not track mud through the house. If only Adam and Dean were so thoughtful.
“Nice socks.”
Sophie flexed her feet, examining her mix-and-match novelty socks—Ralph the Dog and Doctor Teeth.
“Ta. Two of my favourite Muppets. They don’t get enough credit.”
“Fozzy Bear’s always been my favourite.”
They chuckled together. Sophie let her unguarded smile linger.
“Look, we’re heading back to the university to unload our finds, and then we’re off to Iain’s place. He’s having a party. Wanna come with?”
Emmie wavered. “Er… I don’t know. I’ve got a lot of work to do here, and I’m kinda tired—”
“Let me rephrase that,” Sophie interrupted. “We’re heading back to the university and then to a party, and you’re coming with, unless you can think of a damn good excuse that I buy. We clear?”
The young lady’s demands were met with a long-suffering look from Emmie. “Oh, all right. But just for you.”
Sophie beamed, flashing a set of slightly crooked teeth. “Brilliant. Right, then. You go get changed. Something casual. Dress down for once, yeah?”
Emmie glanced down to her trim black blazer and chic button-up white blouse. “Dress down?”
“When you’re hanging out with a bunch of archaeologists, clean jeans without rips in ’em are as good as formal wear.”
A half hour later, Emmie still had no excuse for why she needed to back out of being dragged along to Dr. Iain Northcott’s party. Out of time for a last-ditch attempt, she stood in front of the bathroom mirror, begrudgingly assessing her dressed-down ensemble. A fitted long-sleeve tee-shirt replaced the blazer and button-up, and she had traded her black slacks for a knee-length corduroy skirt, and brown suede slouch boots.
Her friends on the dig crew had already been to their hotel to change, and had returned in slightly better outfits than those in which they typically worked. It made Emmie feel hugely overdressed in comparison. Still, her attempt earned an appreciative once-over from Dean, followed by a slightly less subtle ogling from Adam.
“For God’s sake, Adam, give it a rest,” Ewan expostulated. Adam’s response was a boyish grin and a few deliberate chomps on his gum.
They piled into the Renault Kangoo with Ewan at the wheel. Emmie said nothing as the others began to chatter excitedly. She was too distracted by an unexpected lightening, almost as if a blanket had been pulled from her body. The Highlander, it seemed, would not be following her to Edinburgh. Or couldn’t, perhaps. She was struck by the sudden clarity of her thoughts, the sharpnes
s with which her mind focussed on things other than him. It was disconcerting, for she hadn’t realized how harnessed her mind had become. Dependent on his proximity, his mood.
The separation from him, though, was also disconcerting. She’d been warm under the blanket. Now that it had been removed, she felt the chill of being alone. Without him.
Him. The Highlander. A man she’d never met and never would meet. Not even a man—a spirit, a presence. A ghost. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to pay attention to her friends, to quell the uncomfortable churn in her belly.
The drive to Edinburgh should have taken more than two hours, but Ewan’s lead foot cut the commute almost in half. Other than five sets of white knuckles, the passengers arrived unscathed.
Historic cities never ceased to amaze Emmie, and Edinburgh was no exception. It was a city of juxtaposition: Its castle, seemingly carved into the crown of the ancient volcanic mountain, loomed over a blend of history and modern life that existed side-by-side. She wondered if, in times of quiet reflection, its inhabitants were as awed by the raw beauty of it as she was.
Ewan took them off the South Bridge road, and down a series of side streets that wound around the collection of buildings comprising the main campus of the university. Fittingly, the School of History, Classics and Archaeology was a stately building of yellow stone dating back to the latter years of the eighteenth century. It was housed in the William Robertson wing of the Old Medical School, and proudly displayed a statue of the aforementioned Robertson himself atop a rearing horse in its courtyard.
Having driven around the front for Emmie’s benefit, Ewan parked the car outside a rear entrance, where the team proceeded to disembark and unload the cardboard boxes with their carefully wrapped finds. There weren’t many. Adam, Dean and Ewan took the lot, leaving Famke, Sophie and Emmie to follow into the building.
“You look very nice tonight, Famke,” Emmie offered.
The tall, svelte Dutch woman accepted the compliment with quiet grace. She wore a tailored, tan-coloured button shirt, and slim-cut jeans. Her light brown hair had been straightened, and hung just below her shoulders.
The Ghosts of Tullybrae House Page 9
