Nicholas raised one dark brow. “I think I’ve just been insulted.”
“Soundly.”
“For that, the price just doubled, Lady Draycott.”
He looked handsome but tired. She almost regretted acceding to his friend’s request to look in on Hope O’Hara to be sure she was safe. Ian was one of Nicholas’s oldest friends, and he very seldom asked favors, so Nicholas had agreed immediately. Unfortunately, it had meant leaving their beautiful abbey at their favorite time of year.
Somehow the season wouldn’t seem right until they got home, Kacey thought. At Christmas the abbey always seemed at its most beautiful. She missed the murmur of the moat and the church bells ringing over the gentle downs. She missed their own bed with the casement windows overlooking the moat.
She slid her hands around Nicholas’s neck and pulled him closer. “Maybe we’ll have to negotiate terms, my lord,” she whispered.
“Maybe,” he said huskily. With unerring skill he found his target on her left rib and left her gasping on the verge of noisy laughter.
“Stop that,” she hissed, vainly trying to wiggle free. “You’ll wake Genevieve any second. And I still say there’s something funny about that man.”
“Forget about Ronan MacLeod. You’re under direct attack, my dear, and a real Englishman never stops when he’s ahead.” Nicholas pulled the quilt over their heads and tugged her against his chest. “But I might consider it. With the right inducement, of course.”
The quilt stirred and then settled. Then there was only the soft echo of laughter, the rustle of fabric and the low hiss of the fire.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
MACLEOD FINISHED HIS nightly inspection with his usual silent concentration. At first the locking mechanisms of the inn had been completely foreign to him, but with time he had come to understand the inner workings of spring latches and dead-bolt locks. Now snow swirled around him as he checked each door and window in turn, part of a nightly ritual he had never mentioned to Hope.
Satisfied that there were no signs of intruders and all entrances were secure, he stood staring at Glenbrae House. It still felt like his home. He knew each scar and imperfection and had spent hours repairing those that he could manage. He felt a wave of possessive pride as he watched the high thatched roof grow white beneath falling snow. The tiny mullioned windows were dark now, and smoke rose in a thin plume from the highest chimney.
All was silent. In the dead of night, his worries and dramas suddenly seemed of little importance.
At the sound of low drumming, he tensed. Horses at the run, he thought, or an army on the move. He turned, already in search of his bow and quiver.
Then he saw the lights flashing high above.
Neither horses nor an army, MacLeod realized. Only these outlandish ships that skimmed the air with the help of metal wings. Airplanes, Hope called them.
Infernal pests, MacLeod called them.
Frowning, he forced his body to relax. The plane lights winked out and silence returned, broken only by the hiss of the wind.
As he stared at the darkened house, MacLeod wondered how the villagers fared back in his own time. Did they set out torches and fine wax candles to welcome in the holiday? Were gifts of fruits and sweet almond paste offered among friends while the muddy streets rang to the tunes of traveling minstrels?
And did they miss their grave lord, so newly returned from the sands of the East? Or were they relieved to be rid of the King’s Wolf?
By honor, they would have found him unrecognizable in jeans and black leather jacket. MacLeod both looked and felt entirely different from the man who had ridden out of the storm. He laughed more. He took the time to listen, to ask questions, and found endless excitement in the gadgets and mechanical ingenuity of this age.
Even his language had changed. He was no longer the king’s man, no longer Glenbrae’s dour seigneur, so he was free to speak and act as he chose. He had even grown comfortable with jeans and their accursed zippers.
MacLeod would have enjoyed the changes more if he knew how much time remained for him to share with Hope. He had actually ridden back to the cliffs two weeks earlier, searching for whatever force had swept him here into this time. But he found only stones and dirt, no glistening portals or magic ring of stones.
Meanwhile, the written sources he had found in the house had offered no answers. By their accounts, the King’s Wolf had come and gone at will. Despite his restlessness, Glenbrae Village had prospered and an abbey had been built, along with a small school. But of his death, there was no mention.
MacLeod stared into the darkness, cut off from his own time as surely as the cliffs, lost behind a curtain of snow. Beneath the fir tree his manger was rapidly filling up with snow. He raised each figure, shook off the snow, then restored each one to its rough home. There was an ache in his chest when he stood up, remembering Hope’s happiness at his gift.
She called his carving therapy, treatment for some deep mental trauma. He had seen enough television to know there was even more war here than in his own time. Any soldier would be expected to have scars.
MacLeod chose to let her believe what she liked about his past. He couldn’t change her mind. He didn’t want to change a single thing about her. He remembered her laughter and how the snow dusted her lashes. She was magnificent and impossible and he loved her beyond all limits or permission. If the Draycotts hadn’t arrived when they did, he would have had her, there in the snow, and honor be damned.
Cursing himself for a blind fool, he shoved his hands deep into his pockets. His knee ached slightly, but he welcomed the pain. It reminded him who he was and where he truly belonged. His past could not be erased with the sweep of a hand. He must never allow himself to become comfortable in this world, since he could be pulled away from it at any instant with no warning and no chance to explain.
Though it was selfish, he made a wish in that gentle night while the wind hissed through the fir needles. He asked that Hope remember him when he was gone. It would have to suffice, for he himself would have nothing else but memories of her when he returned to his own time.
MacLeod heard a sound from the darkness where a white shape hurtled over the trees. A snowy owl soared over the glen, on the hunt for its dinner.
As he started for the house, a shadow moved against the snow. Gray and calm, a cat padded over the white drifts, leaving the same prints that MacLeod had seen earlier.
“Where do you come from, my friend?” the Scotsman asked, bending to smooth the gray fur. Purring, the great cat brushed against MacLeod’s knee.
“Lost, are you?”
The purring grew.
“Good Lord, the man thinks you’re lost, Gideon.” The words rumbled out of empty space.
MacLeod spun around, staring into solid darkness. “Who walks there?”
Low laughter played around his head. Diamonds glinted against cuffs of white lace and sleeves of blackest velvet.
How came a stranger to saunter out of the night amid the first hard snow of the season? And why was the cut of his jacket so strange?
MacLeod scowled at the new arrival. “How have you come here?”
The visitor blinked. “Is he addressing us, Gideon?”
“Of course I am. You, at any rate. I don’t make a habit of conversing with animals.”
The lace cuffs danced as the traveler strode over the snow. “You can see me?”
“Well enough. Do you take me to be blind?”
“As blind as most mortals. You truly see me?”
MacLeod glared. “I begin to wish I did not.”
“A joke. He jokes with us, Gideon. Describe my garments, man.”
“Lace of white and black above it. A very odd sort of dress.”
“How is it possible?” The man in black rubbed his jaw. “Not drunk, are you?”
MacLeod answered with his stoniest glare.
“Ah, I begin to understand.” The man’s eyes hardened. “Dead, are you? Still not comfortable with the idea?”
“Nay, but you soon may be.”
The visitor broke into delighted laughter. “He threatens me, Gideon. A rare jest and no mistake. Behold me, the ghost of Draycott Abbey two hundred years dead, and the man threatens me with death.”
The cat stared up through the snow, his keen eyes unblinking.
“What manner of lie is this?” MacLeod hissed. “You are no more a ghost than I am. Did you come for Hope? Are you the foul toad who locked us in that shed?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”
“Give me answers or I will sweep that accursed smile from your lips.”
The visitor stroked his lace, smiling lazily. “Do try it, my dear boy.”
MacLeod’s eyes glinted as he lunged. His hands opened, aiming for the elegant jabot at the man’s throat. But nothing impeded his movement. There was no resistance of any sort beyond the chill sweep of the wind.
“What joke is this?” MacLeod hissed as his fingers closed on dead air.
“No joke. As you see, I am entirely beyond the threats of you or any other mortal.”
MacLeod made a tentative pass with one hand, only to watch his fist slide through the perfectly cut velvet. “You must be a trick of the television devices of this accursed century.”
“I am no hoax cast by a television camera. I am a ghost. A famous ghost.” Adrian Draycott drew himself up to his full, imposing height. “The guardian ghost of Draycott Abbey, to be precise.”
“I’ve heard of Draycott Abbey. In his time, its seigneur was a clever man and his lands were well run. I rode beside him once on the Crusade.” MacLeod laughed darkly. “But you are naught but a weak image.”
“An image, am I?” Around Adrian’s head, snow whirled in angry eddies. Shadows gathered, clinging to his body as he wavered, then abruptly disappeared. “What do you think now, Highlander?” His voice boomed from the whirling snow.
MacLeod was unimpressed. He had seen too many astonishing sights to be convinced by the image of a single disappearing male body. “I think that I’ve seen better illusions on the evening news.” A sense of strangeness gripped him that he could speak of such things with ease and acceptance after four short weeks. Clearly he had changed more than he’d realized.
The visitor winked back into solid shape. “I’m no trick,” Adrian thundered. “Furthermore, you are not supposed to be able to see me! No one can.”
“For a television figure, you are remarkably repetitive. You must be an infomercial.” MacLeod shook his head and turned away. “I am going inside to get warm.”
“You cannot go. I refuse to have it.”
MacLeod kept walking.
“Gideon, you try something.”
Tail twitching, the cat cut off MacLeod’s progress. Pressing against his boot, he uttered a low, liquid call.
MacLeod’s skin prickled. Who was this incomprehensible figure with his feline companion? Suddenly he recalled how Lord Draycott’s daughter had stared anxiously into the snow. “Gideon? Is that your name? Do you know Miss Vee?”
The cat went very still, his great eyes ablaze.
“What do you know of the Draycott child?” Adrian demanded.
“Be quiet or you will wake the whole house,” MacLeod muttered.
“Bah! No one can hear me except Gideon, much to my regret.” Adrian’s dark eyes sharpened. “And now you, of course. But you spoke with the child when she arrived?”
“I did. She sleeps inside, with her toy bear next to her.” He glanced down at the cat. “She believes that Gideon protects her.”
The figure in black smiled gravely. “She might well be right. But he does not work alone.” The guardian ghost of Draycott Abbey rubbed his hard jaw. “You are certain you are not dead? A lost soul caught between life and death here on earth?”
MacLeod watched the cat pad delicately through the snow and curl up beside the rough manger. “Perhaps I am. If being tossed seven centuries from my own time makes me dead, then so I am.”
“Now you truly begin to interest me.” Adrian smoothed his elegant cuffs, frowning. “And your name would be…MacLeod. Ronan MacLeod,” he pronounced triumphantly. “I knew a MacLeod once. He could sing a tune to squeeze a man’s heart in two. Even better with a sword. I remember a noisy inn near Edinburgh where we found two women who—”
The cat meowed loudly.
“You are correct, Gideon. Pray forgive my digression.” The abbey ghost tapped his jaw thoughtfully. “But what holds you in this quiet glen, Highlander?”
At MacLeod’s feet the cat stirred.
“Them? I forbid you to say their name, Gideon. They are the bane of my existence.”
The cat’s tail twitched.
“You say the Wishwell sisters have done this thing?” He strode to MacLeod, glaring. “Well, man, is what Gideon says true? Have those three crones been at their magicking again, despite all my warnings?”
“I’m not certain I like your tone,” MacLeod said. “And it is only a fool who speaks ill of the sidhe.”
“Folderol,” Adrian snapped. “They are meddlers whose spells invariably go awry. Why did they capture you in their net?”
“To protect someone they hold dear.”
“Ah. A woman.” Adrian nodded as if the whole mystery had suddenly become clear. “Cherchez la femme. But there is no problem in that, my boy. My enchantments do not go awry, so I will simply send you back.” He steepled his fingers in concentration. “What place, what time?”
“Same place, but the year is 1298.”
“That old, are you?” Adrian clicked his tongue. “I’ll soon see your misery put at an end. All it requires is a bit of focus and an act of will for you to—”
MacLeod raised his hand sharply. “Nay.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’ll speak no words and make no enchantments. Not tonight.”
Adrian’s brow rose. “You wish to stay in this time? There may be penalties, you know.”
“I am not ready to return.” MacLeod’s eyes locked on the darkened window near the snow-covered roof. “Even if you could manage it.”
“You want revenge, do you?”
MacLeod shook his head. “No, not revenge.”
“Then you wish the woman to return with you?” Adrian touched his fingers to his chin. “It might be possible, with the right calculations. It would require Gideon’s help. I confess, I’ve never sent two back in time.”
MacLeod made a short, impatient sound. “No, she cannot go back with me.”
“I see,” Adrian said slowly. “Because you do not want her.”
“Because I do want her. But I want her as she is now, and Hope O’Hara would never survive in my age. Her light, her joy, all would be squeezed dry.”
“Perhaps you do your woman an injustice, Scotsman. She may be tougher than you know.”
Your woman. Were it his choice, it would be so. But seven centuries—and MacLeod’s violent past—stood between them, along with several dozen broken laws of nature. “The only injustice I do is to wish for things that cannot be,” MacLeod said grimly. “History and written books cannot be changed so easily. Meanwhile, the danger to her remains.”
“Danger? The three crones told you of this?”
MacLeod nodded.
White lace fluttered as Adrian paced back and forth before the trees. “If there’s danger to her, there is danger to the others, even to the child. This, I cannot tolerate.”
“What can you do?”
“More than you might guess.” Adrian’s eyes glittered. “But I can take no action until I sense clear intent, and there is none yet. Did the crones tell you more?”
“They said their vision was blocked. They could do no more.”
“Typical of them. No doubt they botched their preparations and turned some innocent rodent into a sack of potatoes.”
“You’ll not speak of them so,” MacLeod muttered, reaching for Adrian’s lapels. As before, his fingers slid right
through the perfectly cut velvet. “By all the saints, what am I doing out here in the snow arguing with some fragmented part of my imagination?”
“Imagination? I’m beyond your imagination, mortal. In my day I was the confidant of kings.”
“So was I,” MacLeod countered flatly.
“Men quaked before me and women vied to warm my bed.”
“Did it please you?”
“What has pleasure got to do with it?” Adrian thundered. “It was my due.”
“Answer my question, ghost.”
Adrian muttered angrily, his lace all awry. “Of course I enjoyed it. What mortal wouldn’t? There was power, endless days of it. I had gold and laughter and endless praise. Women of blinding beauty.” He stopped abruptly. “Yes, it was enough. For a while. Then I saw through the hollow laughter and the angry eyes. By then it was too late for changing.” He laughed bitterly. “No, I did not enjoy it. But if you tell anyone I said that, I will haunt you for five centuries, Ronan MacLeod. I have a reputation to consider, after all.”
“A dark one?”
“The very blackest. My legend is evil itself.” He stared deep into MacLeod’s eyes. “This is something that the King’s Wolf would understand well.”
MacLeod stiffened. “What do you know of that name?”
“Enough. Does she know of your black past?”
“She believes none of my stories.” MacLeod bent down to the little tin star, twisted sideways on a clump of fir needles. Gently he pulled it free. “Hope thinks I’m a wounded soldier.”
Adrian’s keen eyes narrowed. “Aren’t you?”
“Not the way she thinks. I’m from seven centuries in her past, wounded in battles she can only read about in books.”
“And you enjoyed it?”
MacLeod spun around, a vein hammering at his forehead. “You want to know if I enjoyed the killing? If I liked the screams and the dust?”
“Did you?”
One of MacLeod’s hands fisted around a fir bough. “It was…my duty.”
“Did you?”
“The King’s Wolf would enjoy such things. His legend was built on fear and revenge. They were his finest weapons.”
“And what of the man behind the legend? The man who wore the silver wolf at his shoulder and bled when it pricked him?”
Draycott Everlasting: Christmas KnightMoonrise Page 24
