Connor
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CONNOR
The Ghosts of Culloden Moor (No. 20)
By L.L. Muir
AMAZON KDP EDITION
PUBLISHED BY
Lesli Muir Lytle
www.llmuir.weebly.com
Connor © 2016 L.Lytle
The Ghosts of Culloden Moor Series © 2015 L.Lytle
All rights reserved
DEDICATION
To my readers…
who wait patiently,
only because they have no alternative.
Thank you so much for hanging in
and hanging on!
And thank you to those
who take the time to drop me a line
and let me know
you’re out there, waiting.
BOOKS IN THE SERIES
The Ghosts of Culloden Moor
by L.L. Muir
1. The Gathering
2. Lachlan
3. Jamie
4. Payton
5. Gareth (Diane Darcy)
6. Fraser
7. Rabby
8. Duncan (Jo Jones)
9. Aiden (Diane Darcy)
10. Macbeth
11. Adam (Cathie MacRae)
12. Dougal
13. Kennedy
14. Liam (Diane Darcy)
15. Gerard
16. Malcolm (Cathie MacRae)
17. Cade (Diane Darcy)
18. Watson
19. Iain (Melissa Mayhue)
20. Connor
21. MacLeod (Cathie MacRae)
You’ll find more books by L.L. Muir
on the books page.
A NOTE ABOUT THE GHOSTS
The Gathering should be read first to understand what’s going on between the Muir Witch and these Highland warriors from 1746.
The names of Culloden’s 79 are historically accurate in that we have used only the clan or surnames of those who actually died on that fateful day. The given names have been changed out of respect for those brave men and their descendants. If a ghost happens to share the entire name of a fallen warrior, it is purely accidental.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION
BOOKS IN THE SERIES
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
EPILOGUE
CONNOR
CHAPTER ONE
Bridie Manor, Hedby, England, 1812
After a knock on the door, the footman stepped back inside the morning room where the curtains had been opened in vain, the clouds preventing the slimmest ray of light from warming the pale yellow room. Standing beside the window where she’d been searching for a break in the weather, Mercy’s chest constricted when she gave her attention to the young man. His head bowed over his fidgeting hands and he cowered, his shoulders hunched as if in pain.
She needn’t ask, but she did. “I assume it is dead then?”
The dark head nodded. The motion might as well have been pounding a stake into her heart.
“Thank you, Peter. You may go.”
The footman hesitated, bowed again, and slipped back out the door.
Mercy Kellaway returned her attention to the window, to the thick copse of oak trees that blocked her view of her brother’s grave. It was no use—despite the late summer drizzle and the mud, she had to see for herself.
~
Though the rains had ceased, a belligerent breeze blew the moisture from the trees across Mercy’s face and bare hands. It forced the icy drips and drops through the black lace of her sleeves and sent a chill into her blood. It was far too cold for September, but then again, she’d found little warmth all the long summer, what with Denny gone. No matter what she’d worn, she felt as cold as the heavy stone they’d placed on his grave.
Finally, the sun made an appearance when she stepped out of the wood and into the clearing where Denny’s grave marker stood tall like the arm of a sundial, casting a shadow, telling the time while pointing around the clearing—the empty clearing, but for the skinny trunk of a leafless tree.
The shadow fell to the north and west. Midmorning already. At noon, it would lay due north. She knew from experience.
Sometimes Mercy forgot the time altogether, and it was the shadow that would remind her that mortal hours had passed. So she would bid Denny adieu and trek back into the world of the living, sure she had no place in it, but determined to carry on. Giving up was not in her nature.
She could have sworn it hadn’t been in Denny’s either.
Wet leaves matted the side of the granite and dutifully, Mercy wiped them away. A small branch lay at the base of the stone like an offering—so much like an offering, she left it. If it remained until the morrow, she would remove it then.
“Look, Denny. God has left you a little something.”
The branch looked much more robust than the seven-foot sapling planted behind the grave, and she moved around for a closer look at the pathetic tree. At the base of it, even the grass had turned a bit yellow.
“Beg pardon, milady.” The gardener stepped out of the trees. He must have been close on her heels, but the wind had prevented her from hearing anything but rustling leaves.
“Good morning, Jonathan.”
“Peter told me about the tree. Such a pity to lose that too.” He tried to hide his shovel behind his back.
“Do not worry,” she told him. “I merely wanted to see for myself, but if it is dead, you may as well remove it.”
The man nodded and strode to the dry and lifeless trunk that meant the end to her plans. She’d intended to make a garden of sorts around her brother’s grave, so that when she was forced to live elsewhere, there would still be something lively and cheerful nearby. Since Denny’s suicide prevented his being interred in the churchyard, he’d have no one looking after his grave, no one placing flowers on any graves nearby, for no one else would be buried there. A garden had been a cheerful solution, but one by one, the little plants had withered and died. A rare thing in England where the rain was plentiful and the summer sun made everything else thrive.
It made no sense.
Jonathan knelt and touched the yellowing grass, but said nothing.
“I assume it is the same malady that took the rest of the plants?”
The man looked up sharply and glanced to the north. “Yes, mum. Same evil that killed the rest has done its nasty work here.” His eyes widened. He tucked his lips into his mouth and dropped his attention back to the grass.
Mercy looked to the north as well and her stomach lurched, then tightened. Father Gray, the priest for the entire area of Hedby, stood just outside the ruins of the old chapel, staring at her. After an unnervingly long moment, he extended his hand and made the sign of the cross.
Was he blessing her? Praying for Denny, once his favorite?
But no. He quickly crossed himself as if he had simply been trying to protect himself from evil. A motion meant to hurt her, she was sure, so she grinned at him to prove he’d failed.
Or had he?
The man finally turned away and headed up the rise that would lead him back to Hedby, his robes flapping around
his legs like black flames eating at the base of a tall pillar.
Mercy looked at Jonathan to see if the gardener might show any of the revulsion she felt, but the man was bent to his task as if he’d never noticed the priest in the first place. When she looked back at the ridge and found no trace of him, she wondered if she’d simply imagined it. And the possibility unnerved her enough to speak.
“Jonathan?”
“Milady?”
“You saw Father Gray just now, did you not?”
“Mmm.” He nodded and looked down again, but his cap didn’t disguise his expression fast enough. He was just as upset by the priest as she was, even though he hadn’t witnessed the insult. But suddenly, she realized what the gardener had been trying to tell her.
“Jonathan?”
“Yes, milady?”
“The soil is not poisoned here, is it? It is not the ground that is evil…”
“No, miss. The grass grows just fine, doesn’t it?”
She looked all around the clearing as she’d done a hundred times before. And just as before, there wasn’t so much as a dry blade of grass except for those at the base of the poor tree. And nothing but her own plants had died there since Denny had been buried in the spring.
“So he poisoned the flowers, the shrubberies. And now, the crabapple tree.”
Jonathan shrugged, non-committed, then crossed himself.
She understood. A priest held enough power over a man’s soul that none dared speak ill of him. As it was, the gardener looked a bit green and he had yet to say anything damning.
“Never fear, Jonathan. He can’t punish you for what he is.”
The man’s eyes widened and he pulled the tree up out of the ground with ease, the dead roots offering no resistance. It was a surprise the thing hadn’t surrendered in the storm. “I’ll just dispose of this, then, shall I?”
Mercy nodded and waved him away. But a heartbeat later, she had a thought. “Just a moment, Jonathan.”
The man stopped, but kept one toe pointed toward the trail that would take him back to the house.
“Father Gray spends an unusual amount of time at the old church, does he not?”
“Yes, mum. It is a peaceful place. Of course he says a prayer for your family and ancestors buried in the yard.”
She smiled and bit back the comment that not all her family had been allowed to join the others. “But the old church is part of the estate, and he has no claim to it.”
“Just so, miss.”
“Well, then. Since I cannot make a garden for my brother, I shall simply have to arrange for something less…vulnerable…to poison.”
“Miss?”
“When you get back to the house, please send Mr. Gunnison to me.” Mr. Gunnison had a much stronger back than Jonathan, and half a dozen strong lads at his beck and call.
Mercy fairly danced around the clearing while she waited. The heartbreak she’d suffered for the little tree was forgotten, for she now understood it was neither her failure nor her brother’s sins that had killed it. Though she’d never indulged in the kind of superstition that plagued the people of Hedby, she hadn’t been able to ignore the possibility that Father Gray’s admonitions might have some basis in truth. But no longer. She would never again see the priest as anything more than a man, and a malevolent one at that.
Though it didn’t seem possible, Denny had been gone for five months already so her period of mourning was nearing its end. However, it wasn’t a sense of joy that made her keen to shed her black wardrobe. Rather, she was eager to serve justice to the one man responsible for her brother’s death.
But first, she would make Father Gray regret his condemnation of her brother…and the spiteful poisoning of the would-be garden…
~
Mercy’s first order of business was to have Father Gray notified that, for the foreseeable future, he was no longer welcome on the estate. She then had Gunnison post a man at the end of the road to keep the priest from coming over the rise to see what she was up to. Thus freed from the cruel man’s interference, she gave the order for Mr. Gunnison’s workers to take apart what was left of the old church.
From the servants’ reactions, she surmised that they frowned upon the defacing of a building so ancient and sacred to her forefathers. But her forefathers were gone, and until her cousin, Thomas, came to claim his entitled property, she was the last surviving member of her family, and as such, she could do what she liked with the ruins. And if she remembered Thomas clearly, he wasn’t the sort of man who could be bothered to reassemble the old church when he couldn’t yet be bothered to come inspect his new estate.
The large square stones of the three crumbling walls were dismantled, and the pediment was carefully removed. Then, the lot of it was used to create four low walls around the clearing—if a garden wasn’t allowed to grow, then at least Denny could enjoy his new garden walls. She only hoped that her brother’s immortal spirit was laughing himself silly at her knocking over the bastard’s precious blocks.
After a very long week of overseeing the construction of the walls, Mercy left Mr. Gunnison to placing the rest of the pieces where he thought best. It was satisfaction enough to know that Father Gray would never have the means to remove the walls from their new home. He would have a hard time convincing Thomas of ordering it done after Mercy reminded her cousin of the summer the priest took a switch to him for cursing while Denny only received a stern head-shake for doing the same.
Justice.
It didn’t matter much to Mercy that the priest had treated her abominably all her life. Her nanny had explained that many men of God had no good use for women and were jealous of the men who did. And from that day forward, the frequent, biting insults from Father Gray had ceased to upset her, which only made him hate her all the more.
But Denny had been a different story altogether. Father Gray had treated him like the veritable Prince of Wales, bending his ear whenever he was able, tutoring, encouraging. But after they were grown, and the priest realized he would never be able to turn Denny against his sister, the man ceased his preferential treatment. And no matter how often Denny claimed otherwise, he had been hurt by it.
However, for the priest to deny him a proper burial was barbaric, in Mercy’s opinion. And now, adding insult to injury, the man had thwarted any attempts to make her brother’s final resting place less severe.
Well, his punishment would fit the crime beautifully. With sacred stones surrounding Denny, and the large graveyard left unattended, it would seem none of the ground to the north of Bridie Manor was more sanctified than the rest. And Mercy was satisfied.
A few days later, Mr. Gunnison sent word, asking that Mercy meet him in the clearing. With enough dread in her heart to make it difficult to breathe, she donned her riding boots and retraced her steps through the oak trees and fresh mud, trying not to notice how similar the morning was to that day she’d discovered the small tree had died.
But this time is different. This time I’m not wearing black.
Everything was different in the clearing too! In point of fact, she couldn’t see much of it.
The walls were higher than when she’d last seen them, the last of the stones making a notable difference. But the most impressive sight was the pediment straddling the gap in the front, reaching nearly to the outer walls, sitting as naturally as if it had been designed for that very spot hundreds of years before.
“A mausoleum al fresco, as it were.” Mr. Gunnison stood with hat in hand near the opening, his expression alternating between extreme pleasure and worry.
She wished to set his mind at ease immediately, but tears poured down her cheeks while she struggled to find her voice. “I… I…couldn’t be more pleased, Mr. Gunnison. Truly.”
The man’s eyes looked a bit wet as well as he stood back and watched her walk inside. “I would hope Master Denny would have liked it as well.”
“Oh!” Mercy was rendered speechless by the sight of the back wall. The aps
e had been recreated and enhanced by the row of four pilasters that seemingly supported it from beneath. And along the top of the side wall on the north, a full row of quatrefoil stones allowed the morning sunlight to fall upon the south wall like a gothic lattice. And all with Denny’s grave lying in the center like a monument to a brave Knight Templar.
Better in line with the Denny she’d loved all her life.
“I’m happy you were able to come before the sun rose much higher,” Gunnison said.
“If Denny were able, I’m sure he would be sitting in the apse, dangling his feet over the edge.” She could nearly imagine him doing just that, with a wide grin, swinging his feet back and forth while he waited to see the look on Father Gray’s face.
But that wasn’t right. Denny wouldn’t like to see the man infuriated. Even now, from his grave, he would still be hoping Father Gray would mourn his loss instead of mourning his sin.
It was Mercy who wanted to see the bastard’s face when he realized that she, a woman, had struck him where it caused real pain. But even though her brother might not have wished the man to be hurt, she was sure he could appreciate what she’d done his behalf. He might not have been buried in consecrated ground, but by Jove, his grave now resided inside a church!
In the end, it was all she could have hoped for, but waiting around to see the priest’s reaction seemed an unworthy thing to do. So she took one last look around, to appreciate all the little details Gunnison and his lads had seen to, then turned toward the opening. “Well done, Mr. Gunnison. Well done, indeed.”
The man fidgeted with his hat and tilted his head to one side. “How long would you like my boy to guard the road, milady?”
She shook her head. “Call him back. Father Gray is welcome to visit the old church all he wants…now.”
The state of her soul worried her briefly, considering what she’d done. So she paused and listened closely, wondering if she’d be able to feel it if her spirit were ailing. But she felt no remorse, no regret, no new damage to her heart.