by Carmen Caine
“Then what say you to disappearing men?”
“What-” Her jaw slipped as he vanished right in front of her.
His words hung in the air.
Rich, deep, and buttery-smooth, they stayed behind to taunt her. Each one slid through her like sun-warmed Scottish honey, pooling low and tantalizing even as they chilled her to the bone. Worst of all, they left her with little choice but to accept that Mr. Really-Wasn’t-There genuinely wasn’t.
It would seem he was exactly what he claimed.
A ghost.
Chapter Three
She thought he was feeble-minded.
Hardwick glowered after her, trying hard not to notice the bounce of her full round breasts as she fled the wall-walk. He also ignored the agitated strides of her long, shapely legs. Above all, he pretended not to see the swing of her luscious, well-made bottom.
The kind of bottom he could do all kinds of things to – and would – under different circumstances.
As it was, a muscle twitched in his jaw and vexation, not lust, swept him. Even so, he watched her go, his fists clenching when she darted into the stair tower.
“Thor’s bluidy hammer.” He threw back his head and glared at the roiling clouds, the fast-moving sheets of mist racing across the battlements.
He could scarce breathe for ire.
In nearly a millennium of intimate encounters with the fairer sex, nary a one had ever insulted him so deeply. Most women – of the Otherworld, admittedly, but even those of her realm who’d seen him – swooned and went all weak-kneed at a mere glance from him.
If he flashed a smile, they were his.
Totally beguiled, they freely offered their charms, claiming he was braw and irresistible.
Cilla Swanner clearly felt otherwise.
Crazy, she’d called him.
Not that the word mattered. The meaning was the same. She held him for addled. And he didn’t like it at all.
Unfortunately, the thought of her tearing down the stair tower’s tight, winding steps sat even worse with him. He needn’t exactly traverse them to know how slick they were. Worn smooth by centuries of trudging, tromping feet, the slippery hollows of the stone steps could easily send her tumbling to her death if she tripped.
And she’d looked to be in a very trip-easy mood when she’d dashed through the parapet door. An assessment underscored by the echo of her hasty descent.
Hardwick shoved a hand through his hair and scowled as he listened.
He should amuse himself elsewhere.
Dunroamin boasted at least fifty rooms. Give or take a few, to be sure. A soul could lose hours in the disused wing alone, counting the rats, bats, and roosting doves dwelling there. Great swaths of cobwebs begged examination, several chambers held dust-covered piles of candlesticks and pewter plates, clumps of moth-eaten velvet drapes, and even bolts of ancient tartan. Best of all, some of the walls hosted such a battalion of mold and mildew, the musty damp was a sure guarantee she wouldn’t spend time there.
So there were possibilities.
Places where he could avoid her.
Too bad he’d grown accustomed to spending his days in the warmth and comfort of the castle’s cozier bits.
Either way, he did need to stop mooning over her. Nor was it wise to make his head ache worrying about her. That road led to folly.
It was nothing to him if she fell.
If anything, he’d be spared hearing unholy cackles on the wind. Without her around to tempt him, the hell hags wouldn’t have reason to chortle. He’d be free of the nuisance of trying to scare her away.
Something he wasn’t at all sure he could do.
Frightening women, after all, wasn’t his strong suit.
So why did the clatter of her hurrying feet grate on his nerves?
Sure he didn’t know – or want to – his scowl deepened when he blinked and realized he’d somehow materialized on the stair tower’s top landing.
He hadn’t meant to move from the parapet wall.
He certainly hadn’t planned to manifest again.
If she glanced back and saw him, she surely would take a nasty plunge.
A circular patch of hard, stone-flagged floor loomed at the bottom of the stair. He could make it out far below if he leaned forward and looked down. Just as he could see her bright head, her shining hair streaming behind her as she sped round the spiraling steps, racing ever downward.
Her shoe flying off her foot…
***
“Eeeee!” Cilla slipped, her right leg shooting out from under her in the same instant her loafer sailed into the air and went bouncing down the stairs.
In a blink, she knew she was doomed.
Her life, such as it was, flashed before her.
Then the stair tower tilted and spun and she pitched forward into nothingness.
Down, down she fell until, with a great whoosh, she slammed into something hard as stone yet as yielding as if she’d landed in someone’s arms.
Powerful arms holding her crushed against a big, muscular body that felt suspiciously kilted.
Her eyes flew wide.
The back of her neck prickled.
“You!” She shifted in arms she couldn’t see, shivers rippling all through her.
“Aye, me.” The words hushed past her ear. Soft, burred, and unmistakably annoyed. “Fool that I am.”
She almost choked. She was the fool. Thinking she could run from a man who could make himself invisible. Instead she’d only tripped and plunged down the stairs, making herself look clumsy as well as unnerved by ghosts.
Phantoms.
She wriggled against his steely-banded hold, but her efforts only made him tighten his arms even more. Her mouth opened and closed several times, her protest snagging in her throat at the very real feel of his rock-hard chest.
Something she should not be noticing.
Furious that she did, she frowned.
“You’re a ghost.” She hoped saying the words would make him seem more ghostly, less knight in shining armor, all gleaming steel and bold, searing glances.
“Aye, that I am.” He laughed, not sounding Casperish at all.
“Then how can you-”
She broke off, feeling ridiculous. She was, after all, talking to thin air.
She swallowed. “Ghosts can’t catch people.”
“Is that so?” His scent, dark, spicy, and masculine, swirled around her. His Scottish accent, so rich and delectable, held a note of amusement. And even invisible, it was clear he’d lifted a mocking brow.
She could feel his hot gaze on her. A smoldering, intense kind of stare that made her wonder if one of his spectral powers was the ability to see through clothes. The deep rumble in his chest made it seem a distinct possibility.
Her breasts tightened on the thought and – heaven help her – great whirls of heat whipped through her, making her tingle everywhere. Something, perhaps the gold Celtic armband he wore, pressed into her side, and his scent, all clean wool and linen with a hint of sandalwood and man, persisted in doing funny things to her stomach.
Delicious flutters she had no business feeling in the arms of a man who wasn’t really there.
A man who, by his own admission, hadn’t really been there for nearly seven hundred years.
She shivered again, her mouth going drier. It didn’t matter that he took her breath away. That he had molten brown eyes, sleek black hair, and a voice sensual enough to send her into orgiastic bliss. Or even that he’d just saved her from certain death or, at the least, a few broken bones.
The cold, hard truth was…
He didn’t exist.
Not really, anyway.
And buttery-burred, dark eyed Highland sex God or not, that was enough to give any girl the willies.
“Put me down!” She tried to jerk free again. “Now.”
A snort answered her.
Then a swish of cool, silky hair slid across her cheek and she found herself clutched even tighter to his bro
ad, impossibly-sculpted chest as she floated – no, as he carried her – down the remaining steps and set her on her feet.
“Next time I will no’ use such care,” he warned, stepping away so quickly the air where he’d been snapped back around her, cold and empty.
He was gone.
Whether she’d seen him disappear or not was beside the point. She felt his absence as strongly as if someone had vacuumed the air from her lungs.
He’d simply poofed himself away.
And she was losing it.
Sure of it, she stooped to snatch up her shoe and jam it back onto her foot. Then she blew a strand of hair off her face and glared up at the tight turnpike stair rising so innocently into the shadows.
The stones of the curved walls looked ancient and were dark and sooty in places where telltale iron brackets had once held smoking rush torches. A cold, damp wind whistled in through a few narrow slit-windows, lending to the stair tower’s eerie ambiance.
Most telling of all, the worn stone steps had dips in their middle.
She stared at those grooves now, her pulse settling.
They were why she’d slipped.
She hadn’t floated down the stairs in the arms of a roguish, sinfully handsome, seven-hundred-year-old Highland warrior in a kilt.
Her foot had simply slid on one of the slick, ancient steps, causing her to stumble the rest of the way down in a jet-lagged, zero-sleep induced stupor.
There hadn’t been any sexy ghost.
Not in the stair tower or on the battlements.
Imagination wasn’t her middle name for nothing. Everyone knew the mind created all sorts of havoc when people were foolish enough to run around on empty with sand grit scratching their eyes. Anyone so far past the second-wind stage was bound to experience weirdness. Who could blame her if she’d seen fluttering cobwebs and turned them into plaids? Or heard the cold whistle of wind and imagined the purr of a smooth, whisky-deepened burr.
No, a soft, lilting burr not deep at all and that was calling her name.
Honoria the housekeeper.
Red-cheeked and with her great matronly bosom thrust forward like the bow of a tweed-draped ship, she came sailing around a corner just as Cilla straightened her clothes and stepped out of the stair tower.
“Ach, mo ghaoil, it’s yourself!” The older woman hurried forward, her sturdy rubber-soled shoes silent on the plaid carpet-runner. “We were nigh after having all the staff search for you-”
“Mo gale?” Cilla blinked. The grit in her eyes stung like sandpaper.
The housekeeper waved a hand. “It means ‘my dear,’ is all,” she said, taking Cilla’s arm and leading her in the exact opposite direction she’d meant to go. “We were quite fashed about you.”
“I got lost.” Cilla felt herself flush.
She shoved back her hair and tried to keep her voice light. “I couldn’t find the restrooms Aunt Birdie said were near the main staircase.”
She kept everything else to herself.
No way would she tell the no-nonsense woman about the sexy ghost.
Nor did she care to admit that a simple search for the so-called loo had taken her into a dimly lit passage where the shadows had slid around her, blotting the way forward and backward. Or that the corridor had reeked so strongly of candle grease, old stone, and dark oak paneling that she’d feared she’d stepped into some kind of time warp.
“Right enough, that’s where they are. The restrooms as you Yanks say. They’re behind the big stairs, just.” Honoria made a sympathetic clucking sound. “You’re not the first to lose your way looking for them.”
She leaned close, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial level. “That’s the trouble with these old piles, all put together in fits and starts down the centuries. If any one of the late, great builders meant to make it easy for a soul to find his way about, a hundred years later there comes his great-great-grandson adding on his own bits and pieces and spoiling the plan.”
“I like it.”
“Americans always do.” The housekeeper’s chest puffed. “And why not? Dunroamin isn’t your average country house surrounded by the prerequisite sweep of lawn and gardens. With the exception of a tea-room, seasonal tours, and a souvenir shop, we offer a little of everything.”
Looking proud, she rattled off the castle’s charms. “We have the oldest bits, the tower and parapets and even a dank undercroft for medieval buffs. Then there’s the Jacobean wing with its tall, south-facing bays for the stone-mullioned window enthusiast. And” – she winked – “we’ve more than enough Victorian gothic to please the soppiest romantics.”
Cilla glanced out a tall, arch-topped window they were passing, caught a glimpse of rolling moors and mist. “And you have Sutherland.”
“Nae, Sutherland has us.” Honoria gave her a look so serious she wouldn’t have dreamed of disagreeing. “We could travel across two oceans and as many continents and still the land would touch us, calling us home.”
“Duthchas.” Cilla’s heart wrapped around the word. “It’s the only Gaelic I know. Dooch-hus. Aunt Birdie taught it to me on one of her visits to Pennsylvania when I was little. She said it represents a Highlander’s deep sense of oneness with his land and culture.”
“No words can capture the feeling, mo ghaoil, but Duthchas comes close, aye.” The housekeeper’s expression softened. “Only when you’ve felt that love of the land pulsing here” – she clapped a hand to her breast – “can you truly understand a Highlander’s heart. Your aunt does. She wears the far north well.”
Something inside Cilla twisted.
She loved Scotland, too, and had dreamed of coming here since childhood. She’d also loved Scotsmen, even founding the Mad for Plaid Club when she was sixteen. Sadly, her obsession with tartan-draped men had overridden every warning bell when Grant A. Hughes III waltzed into her life, claiming Scottish roots. When he’d arrived, kilted, to take her to a Highland Games on one of their early dates, her fate had been sealed.
Feeling heat inch up the back of her neck, she flicked a speck of lint off her sleeve.
Then she did her best not to frown.
The swell-headed lout hadn’t exactly ruined her enthusiasm for Scotland. But he’d made her wary of kilt-wearing, sporran-sporting Scotsmen.
“I know Aunt Birdie loves Sutherland,” she blurted, pushing Grant the weasel from her mind. “Whenever she’d visit, her eyes would light when she spoke of Uncle Mac’s home. She’d gush about its wild emptiness and what she called the vast stretches of sea, land, and sky. She said even the air was different. That it was magical, and that once you’d inhaled it, you’d be forever in its spell.”
“O-o-oh, aye, that’s the way of it.” Honoria nodded agreement. “You’ll lose your heart, too. Everyone does.”
Stepping close, she fixed Cilla with a shrewd stare. “Why do you think so many English incomers are for settling here?” She put back her shoulders, clearly warming to a favorite topic. “They come north, breathe our clean air and peat smoke, fall in love with our starry nights and quiet, even the days when our mist blows sideways and suddenly – or so they say – the city fumes and crush of London or Manchester or Liverpool is something they can’t bear anymore.”
The words spoken, she pressed her lips tight. As if those incomers were an entirely different kettle of fish than Aunt Birdie.
“Too bad they often feel differently when, come winter, they discover they need thermal underwear and learn that our weekly entertainment is Quiz Night at the Village Hall or a ceilidh over at Old Jock’s croft down by Talmine Bay.” Honoria’s chin lifted. “Fiddlers come from as far away as Lairg and Ullapool to play at Old Jock’s sessions. Yet-”
“Wait.” Cilla stopped before an oak-planked door studded with rusted iron. She was sure she’d passed through it earlier, certain it’d stood ajar.
Yet now it was bolted.
“I’d swear I came up here through that door.” She eyed the heavy-looking drawbar, the fine hairs on h
er nape lifting again. “It was open.”
“Och, it couldn’t have been.” The housekeeper shook her head. “That way leads to a house wing we never use, save for storage.” She reached to jiggle the iron latch, proving its secured state. “The door’s kept mostly locked since a fire swept parts of that wing in the 1930s. I’d be surprised if even your uncle could slide back the drawbar.”
“But-”
From somewhere came the sound of knuckles cracking. “Shall I-”
“Oh!” Cilla’s heart stopped.
The hot Scot filled her mind again. She was sure she’d heard his voice. Almost positive she caught a whiff of sandalwood and musk on the chill, dust-moted air.
Just when she’d convinced herself she’d imagined him.
She slid a glance over her shoulder, seeing nothing.
Naturally.
Her heart began to pound again, her hard-won cool crumbling.
Honoria remained unruffled. “Be glad the door is sealed,” she said, pressing her point. “That’s also the wing with the ghost room.”
“Ghost room?”
“So we call it now.” Honoria took her arm, pulling her down the passageway. “The room used to be a nursery.”
Cilla glanced back at the locked door.
She’d done so well putting the sexy ghost from her mind. Yet now she could almost see him standing beside the ancient door, flexing his fingers above the drawbar as if he meant to seize it any moment.
Pull it back and open the door – just to prove that he could.
She swallowed, her pulse leaping.
“Honoria….” She spoke before she lost nerve. “Is the ghost room haunted by a Highland warrior who wears a big sword and carries a round, medieval shield?”
“By glory, nae! More’s the pity.” The older woman tossed her a glance. “It’s not a braw lad but a poor serving lass. She hails from the days of Culloden if the tales be true.”
“The mid-1700s?” A chill slid down Cilla’s spine. “Uncle Mac swears there aren’t any ghosts at Dunroamin,” she argued, the comment causing an unexpected tightening in her chest. “I asked him.”
