The Ravenscraig Legacy Collection: A World of Magical Highland Romance

by Allie Mackay

  But having Margo underfoot, mooning around and waxing poetic about the Scottish Highlands, wasn’t on Mindy’s agenda for this trip.

  Everyone knew the Scots thought Americans were a bit overly dotty about Scotland. Just as it was well-known that the quaintly-termed Highland telegraph was alive and working better than ever, even in the age-of-the-Internet times.

  Margo would have everyone in the Isles thinking they’d both gone around the bend. The gossip would spread like a fire on the moor. They’d be branded as certifiable, which might even leak back to Global, hurting Mindy’s chances of returning to her flying career.

  Airlines took a narrow view of anything that even fringed on unbalanced.

  “Actually...” Something in the way Margo drew out the word made Mindy’s ears perk. “It’s funny you’re staying in a suite named after the Hebrides.” She lowered her voice. “I did some research on Barra and the other Western Isles and” – she paused to catch her breath – “I’m sure I’ve been there before! That’s the real reason I want to go. I’m certain I lived there in a past life.”

  Mindy did her best not to groan. “You’ve always said Scotland has a piece of your heart and soul.”

  She hoped Margo would leave it at that.

  Of course, she didn’t. “I know, but” – Margo’s voice turned dreamy – “now I know where in Scotland I lived. It was the Hebrides. I’m sure I spent many lifetimes there. My karma is tied very strongly to those Isles. Madame Zelda-”

  “Madame Zelda is a quack.” Mindy jumped up and started pacing.

  This was awful.

  Her sister on a ghost-busting binge was one thing. Having her announce she was a reincarnated Highland lassie was something else entirely.

  It was nuts.

  “Madame Zelda did a reading for me,” Margo gushed on. “She confirmed everything I told her. She’s certain I’m fated to make this trip. But if you’d rather I didn’t?”

  “No, no!” Mindy bit her tongue to keep from reminding Margo that if she’d revealed her dreams to the fortune teller, of course, Madame Zelda would say they’d come true.

  Hoping to change the subject, she glanced around the dimly lit room. Her gaze fell on a large gift bag bearing the tartan-ribboned thistle design of One Cairn Village. The package sat on an old-fashioned trunk at the foot of the bed. Mindy hurried there now, snatching up the bag and pulling out a gorgeous length of tweed, purchased for Margo in Innes’s tea and gift shop.

  “Of course, you must come.” Mindy hugged the tweed to her, wishing Margo could see it now. “I picked up some stunning tweed for you this afternoon. It’s-”

  “Tweed?” Margo’s voice rose with excitement. Her Highland past lives took a backseat to style. “You bought genuine Scottish tweed for me?”

  “I did.” Mindy smiled, glad she’d splurged. “It was made right here at Ravenscraig Castle, where I’m staying. It’s called Kiss o’ Heather and is all purply-mauve with a touch of pink. You’ll love it.”

  “I already do.” Margo paused. “Is there enough to make a skirt?”

  “There is.” Mindy returned to the sofa. “That’s what I thought you could do with it.”

  “O-o-oh!” Margo sounded like she might jump through the phone. “I can’t wait to see it. Thank you and- … oh, here come more customers.

  “Gotta go!” She hung up just as Ye Olde Pagan Times’ wind chime began to tinkle.

  Mindy stared at the dead phone. She rubbed her eyes, feeling as if she’d been caught up by a cyclone. Margo on a Scotland roll could exhaust anyone. Mindy just wished she hadn’t gone on about the woo-woo stuff.

  Past lives in Scotland were too close to Scottish ghosts and Highland spooks – or bogles, as she’d learned the locals call them – easily led to other strange entities.

  Paint the devil on the wall and he appears was a saying she took very much to heart.

  Especially now with the wind shrieking round the eaves and making weird whooshing noises in the chimney. It didn’t help that the night sky – what little of it she could see through the window – no longer looked cold and gray, but was now cold and black.

  Pitch black. The kind of darkness she was sure couldn’t be found on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

  Thanks to her sister, she now imagined that inky emptiness teeming with all kinds of dangers. If ghosts existed – even back home in New Hope – then who knew what creatures roamed Scotland’s hills after nightfall?

  She’d already seen a dog that could have been a werewolf!

  Stop right now, Menlove. You are not going down that road.

  Shivering, she puffed her bangs off her forehead and snatched another book off the side table. Better to read about someone’s ancestral beanstalk than worrying about Celtic beasties that might – or might not – be prowling through the woods beneath her window.

  Determined to bore herself with Wee Hughie’s genealogical wanderings, she glanced down at the book in her hand. It was another volume of the author’s A Highlander’s series. But this one was titled Hearthside Tales: A Highlander’s Look at Scottish Myth and Legend.

  A bad artist’s rendering of Nessie graced the cover.

  “Ack!” Mindy dropped the book as if it’d been a hot potato.

  She was not going to read about the very creatures she was trying to put from her mind. What she needed was a good hot shower or a long soak in the luxurious marble whirlpool. There was nothing better than modern day niceties to banish things that go bump in the night.

  But the instant she stood, the wind dropped and the room went eerily quiet.

  Even the air felt different, turning thick and heavy.

  “Pah! It’s nerves, Menlove, pure nerves,” she muttered, starting across the room.

  She didn’t make it halfway to the bathroom before a piercing howl stopped her cold. Heart racing, she clapped a hand to her breast, listening as the sound ended on a haunting, high-pitched wail.

  It was the kind of mournful tone Margo would call otherworldly.

  Mindy was sure it was a hybrid owl.

  Certain she wouldn’t get any sleep until she knew, she went to the window, peering through the glass until her eyes adjusted to the darkness.

  When they did, she could make out one or two pinpricks of light from One Cairn Village on the other side of the wood. Closer to her own lodgings, the Victorian Lodge Coach House, she spotted several large outcroppings of rock. Nothing stirred except the mist drifting through the trees.

  Mindy breathed a sigh of relief.

  Even if she hadn’t seen the owl, everything looked as it should. Until something huge and dark loped past directly beneath her.

  “Gah!” She jumped and the creature stopped, swinging round to stare up at her with glowing amber eyes.

  It was the wolf-dog from the gatehouse.

  He, rather than a mutant owl, must’ve made the bloodcurdling howl. And – her heart stopped as she stared back at him, unable to look away– she now knew why he’d given her such goose bumps.

  She knew him.

  Or, rather, she remembered him.

  He was Gibbie.

  Bran of Barra’s ghost dog that she’d seen the night the Hebridean chieftain had appeared right in front of her in the Folly’s kitchen.

  Then, as now, the two were inseparable.

  Both watched her from near the edge of the wood. Gibbie stood where he’d swung around to stare at her, and his master was right beside him, where he’d manifested out of thin air, appearing in the wink of an eye.

  Mindy twitched back the curtain to get a better look. It was frightfully dark and a thin autumn rain was just beginning to fall. Droplets were splattering the window glass, running down the panes. She could be mistaken.

  But she wasn’t.

  Bran of Barra was down there.

  The glint of his coppery red hair shone in the moonlight and his plaid whipped around him, caught by the wind just starting to gust again. Shadows cast across his face made it difficult to
see his expression, but she could feel both anger and passion radiating off him.

  He was certainly staring at her.

  Every instinct told her to draw back from the window. Or at least step behind the curtains, shielding herself from his bold, assessing stare.

  But she couldn’t look away.

  Bran of Barra and his dog stepped closer. So near, she could see raindrops glistening on his hair and shoulders. He reached down to stroke the dogs ears, but his gaze never left her face.

  He watched her with a look that made her insides quiver.

  It wasn’t the kind of look modern day men gave women. It was the kind of piercing, oh-so-uncompromisingly male perusal that only bold, take-charge men of times past fixed on a woman when they wished to seduce and unsettle.

  And it was working.

  Ghostly or not, his strength wove a sensuous spell around her. And the way he sometimes let his gaze drop to her lips, as if contemplating how best to plunder them, well, those heated looks filled her with tingly anticipation. She could feel her entire body flaming.

  She shouldn’t think about his kisses.

  She did straighten her back, not wanting him to see how much he stirred her.

  He angled his head and she was sure his lips were twitching into a smile. But then he glanced at the dog and strode another few paces toward the coach house, his faithful companion at his side.

  Mindy stood frozen, trying to pretend he and his beast were nothing but a swirl of mist.

  Well, two swirls.

  In the darkness of night, many things could take on the shape of a man and a dog. Such an error was especially possible when those swirls were seen by someone beyond exhausted.

  It was just a pity that the dog’s luminous golden eyes and the bright blue sparks dancing around the pommel stone of Bran of Barra’s sword torpedoed her mist swirl theory.

  She doubted even Highland fog came in colors.

  Whitish gray was pretty much worldwide standard.

  Mindy swallowed. Her pulse raced and she could feel her nerves prickling. But when Bran of Barra took another determined step in her direction and she leapt backwards, tripping over Wee Hughie MacSporran’s book and landing with a painful thump on the polished floor, she got mad.

  She jumped up, glared at Wee Hughie’s book, and marched to the window. She whipped back the curtains, prepared to scowl down at the lout and tell him just where he and his wolf-dog could go.

  But in the short time it’d taken for her to fall and scramble to her feet, the heavens had opened. Just as Malcolm predicted, great sheets of rain were blowing across the clearing beneath her window. In fact, it was pouring so hard that she couldn’t even make out the pines that marked the edge of the wood.

  Somewhere thunder boomed and a jagged bolt of lightning flashed across the sky.

  Bran of Barra and Gibbie were gone.

  Frowning, Mindy opened the casement and leaned out. But the only thing to greet her was the gusting wind and rain. Bran and his beast really had vanished. And the instant she realized she’d called the ghost Bran, she closed the window so fast she almost cracked the glass.

  She was not going to get first-name personal with a man who wasn’t there.

  No matter how solid he might appear.

  Or how sexy.

  But despite her attempts to put him from her mind and go to bed in her best I–am-not-affected-by-him attitude, she found herself moving about the room, turning on lamps, overhead lights, and even the television. Not that it helped much to create a non-ghostly atmosphere with the ceiling lights recessed and muted and the table lamps designed to look like old-fashioned oil lamps.

  The TV wasn’t very soothing, either, as the only program that came on without snow and static was a 1950s black and white film in Gaelic.

  Mindy didn’t want to look too closely, but she strongly suspected it was Brigadoon.

  When Gene Kelly strode onto the screen, she was sure.

  “Not for me.” She grabbed the remote off the coffee table and clicked.

  The screen went black just as Bran of Barra appeared in front of her, his great shaggy dog at his heels and a grin on his face.

  “Gah!” Mindy jumped. The remote went flying from her fingers.

  Bran of Barra waited until it landed with a clack on the hardwood floor, and then planted his hands on his kilt-covered hips.

  “So-o-o, lass, we meet again.” He looked about the room, one brow arched, appraisingly. “I’m thinking it’s a pity you’re staying in these fine lodgings. Such comfort will soften you, it will. You’ll no’ find Barra as hospitable. ‘Tis a cold, windswept place where giant waves pound the cliffs and the gales are strong enough to blow you away in a wink. It won’t be at all to your liking.

  “If” – his gaze back snapped to her – “that’s where you’re heading.”

  Mindy suppressed the urge to laugh. If she weren’t so unsettled – which she knew was his point – she’d no doubt bust a gut. As it was, she tilted her head to one side and jammed her own hands on her hips.

  “Where I’m going is my own business.” She kept her voice cool, glad certain ghost-hunting, the star-is-psychic-and-speaks-with-the-Other-Side TV shows made it seem halfway normal to converse with him. “As for Barra, you needn’t bother trying to convince me I won’t like it. I already know that very well.”

  To her surprise, he blinked, looking almost offended.

  “Barra is the pearl of the Hebrides.” His chest swelled and his voice rang with pride. “Though I’ll own it’s possible that only a Barrach can fully appreciate the isle’s true worth and many splendors.”

  He folded his arms, eyeing her as if he expected agreement.

  When she said nothing, he set his lips in a hard line and flicked an invisible speck of lint from his plaid.

  He was peeved.

  His dog began shuffling around the room, sniffing at furniture. He passed close by her once, his cold nose bumping her hand and his plumed tail swishing a few times, as if they were friends.

  Mindy refused to be distracted.

  Nor would she admit that how people felt about animals was one of her measures of a person’s goodness. Bran’s devotion to his dog appealed to her strongly. That the dog loved him so much in return also said bundles.

  She’d withdrawn from more than one potential relationship because the man hadn’t liked animals. The way Bran of Barra’s whole expression softened when he looked at Gibbie made so much seem insignificant.

  Like his ghostly status. Even his name – MacNeil.

  But she didn’t want to fall for him.

  So she put back her shoulders, chin lifted. “Why are you following me? Why don’t you want me-” A fierce gust of wind rattled the windowpanes, cutting her off.

  Bran of Barra paid the screaming wind no heed.

  He did raise one auburn brow. “Want you, my lady?”

  “I meant” – Mindy ran a hand down the front of her sweater, sure it’d shrunk two sizes since he’d popped into the room – “why don’t want me on Barra? The other ghosts-”

  “The other ghosts are no longer your concern.” His mouth almost twitched into a smile. “I am.”

  “Every one of you is a problem for me.”

  “Nae, you err.” He set his hand on the hilt of his sword. Its crystal gem stone was glowing blue. “My friends have naught to do with this. You heard them in my hall. They only wish” – he glanced at the darkened window – “peace to enjoy their days and make merry as they will.

  “I warned you once that their passions are dangerous if roused. Now it is me you must be wary of.” He closed his fingers around his sword’s pommel stone, hiding the crystal. “If you visit my hall again.”

  “I’m not afraid of you.” Mindy felt her temper rise. “And I’m used to trouble.”

  “Ahhh, but I haven’t yet begun to make trouble for you, Mindy-lass. I promise you” – he spoke softly, his deep voice sending shivers all through her – “you’ll know when I d
o.”

  Mindy bit her lip, not doubting him.

  She took a step backward.

  Everything about him was too much like the braw Highland warriors she’d fantasized about in the years before Hunter. He could have been one of those to-die-for heroes, ripped off the pages of steamy historical romance novel. He was a thousand times more manly and rugged than the Scottish actors so many American women swore were sex gods on earth. His voice, that accent…

  The look he was giving her set her heart racing.

  Even more alarming, the room suddenly felt much smaller. Bran of Barra, already one of the tallest, most commandingly-built men she’d ever seen, now appeared even bigger. He seemed to grow in power and stature, a muscle-ripped bear of a man whose intense gaze was searing her.

  Mindy swallowed.

  She was quite sure there was no man like him anywhere. Not in her world or his, nor anyplace in between. He was a force of nature. And he was coming at her with slow, sure steps that made it hard to breathe.

  No, it was the heat in his eyes doing that.

  He meant to kiss her.

  “No-o-o!” She scooted around the sofa, putting its bulk between them.

  He laughed. “Och, lass, do you truly think you can escape me so easily?”

  On the words, he was right beside her. But rather than ravish her, he merely lifted a hand to brush his knuckles down her cheek. It was the lightest of touches, but it sent tingles rippling along her nerves, making her go hot and shivery all over.

  “It willnae be good if you go to Barra.” His gaze moved over her face, then dropped to her lips. “Stay away.” He lowered his head, kissing her so gently she could barely note the coolness of his lips before it was over.

  And – damn her – she wanted more!

  She felt herself trembling, and shame scalded her. She didn’t need this. Desiring a ghost, especially a Scottish one, was the last thing she wanted. Putting up a hand, she backed away and this time he didn’t follow.

  “You see, sweet” – he was suddenly across the room where his dog lay before the hearth – “the kind of problems you’ll bring on yourself if you act unwisely.”

  Mindy glared at him, angry.

  He had the gall to shrug. “Go home to your America and rest easy that you’ll no’ be missing much. There isn’t a stone left on Barra to see.”