by Tarah Scott
Scenes from another world, her father would have enthused with a dreamy smile. A forgotten simplicity sadly set aside in favor of today’s hectic lifestyle.
Celtic whimsy, she called it, catching herself before she, too, succumbed to Brigadoon fever.
“How did you know who I am?” She sought neutral ground, a safe place far from such foolish notions and how they could set a vulnerable heart to thinking.
Dreaming.
“I could have been anyone.” She nodded at a young woman leaning against the harbor rail not far from where they stood, an over-stuffed rucksack at her feet. “Her, for instance.”
Malcolm’s eyes lit with merriment. “Not a chance, Mara McDougall.” He dismissed the possibility with a toss of his bright head. “That one doesn’t have the look, see you?”
“The look?” Mara blinked. “I don’t think I know what you mean.”
“Och, nae?” Malcolm peered at her, his expression saying so much more than the two oh-so-Scottish words. “I mean the look I saw on you when you gazed at the pier, out toward the Isles.”
Mara’s face heated. “So?”
“So?” Malcolm the Red lifted a brow. “You belong here, Mara McDougall,” he said simply, his wonderful burr daring her to claim otherwise.
And, heaven help her, but her mouth suddenly felt way too dry, her tongue too clumsy, for her to form even the weakest denial.
Not as foolish as she felt standing on the pavement looking at him with an awestruck stare.
Ben suffered no such inhibitions. Still snuffling around the Highlander’s leg’s, the dog used a tongue-lolling grin and a few energetic tail swipes to convey his enthusiasm.
Malcolm smiled and produced something edible from a pocket, much to Ben’s tail-thumping delight.
“Aye, it’s the pull that came over you when you looked at the Hebrides just now,” he told her, something in his eyes making her almost believe it. “No true Scot, no matter where he was born, can come here and not feel it.”
And she did feel it.
Or felt something.
Something indefinable and just a tiny bit daunting.
An uncomfortable awareness that things she’d winced at in her father’s plaid-hung, thistle-bordered house, like the doorbell playing ‘Scotland the Brave,’ didn’t seem so outlandish here in this little Highland town with its scores of soft-voiced, red-haired men and the surrounding hills rising so clear against a blue summer sky.
The young Highlander was watching her again, and closely, but before she could open her mouth to speak, he flashed another of his full-of-charm smiles and picked up her suitcase, hefting it easily under his arm.
“Come, I’m after getting you out to Ravenscraig. They’ll have a nice fire waiting on you, and tea,” he promised, already heading for a small car parked a distance down the curb.
“There’s something you should know,” he announced a short while later as they turned north onto the coastal road. “The good folk at Ravenscraig might seem a bit-”
“A bit what?” Mara snapped to attention, shot him a quick, wary glance.
She’d been staring out the window at the ghostly wisps of mist drifting down the sides of the hills and thinking about sitting in a comfortable, wing-backed chair before a crackling fire in the hall, sipping a good lager or stout, Ben curled on a rug at her feet.
Maybe even a tartan rug.
But the thought failed to bring the chuckle it would have any other time for something about the young Highlander’s tone gave her the distinct impression he’d been about to say the people at Ravenscraig were odd.
Suppressing a shiver, she gave him her most encouraging smile. But the moment had passed. He didn’t seem willing to divulge more, his concentration now focused on the winding thread of road and the numerous lambs and their mothers who seemed determined to stray onto the asphalt.
Mara resisted the urge to question him, choosing instead to smooth the wrinkles in her skirt. Feeling better already, she pushed her hair back over her shoulder and returned her attention to the mist-hung hills.
As anyone from Philadelphia would know, there was much to be said for curbing one’s curiosity.
Suicidal sheep and a castle staff that were a bit something, indeed.
Besides, whatever eccentricities might await her at Ravenscraig, she had the feeling she’d soon discover them.
Whether she wanted to or not.
***
Ravenscraig Castle.
Alex ground his teeth on the name, half surprised his glowers didn’t singe the bluidy walls. Truth be told, he found himself with a fearsome urge to do more than scorch the wretched castle’s stonework. Much more, as his rising gorge and the tightened muscles in his jaw indicated.
He began pacing, his hands curled into hard fists. That his bed should find its way to the lair of his enemies was more than even his benighted soul should have to bear.
His bed landing in a chamber assigned to her, a fouler fate than he deserved.
Dangerous, too, because just the thought of her, of how his gaze had traveled over her sleeping nakedness, delving her every fragrant secret and, gods preserve him, finding himself bestirred by her, was enough to curdle his wits.
He’d suffered trials enough when the bed had rested, dismantled and forgotten, in a dank room in one of Edinburgh’s stinking tenements. Sakes, he’d lost count of the centuries he’d spent in that hellhole.
Just remembering sent a shiver through him.
What blessed relief it’d been to awaken and find himself in airier surrounds not too long ago.
Even if Dimbleby’s had been on English soil.
At least the occasional shaft of sunlight had seeped in through the grimed windows. And the visitors who’d sometimes ooh and ahh over his bed had proved far more agreeable time-passers than the gutter rats and damp he’d shared his days with in Edinburgh.
But this - he seized a fistful of one of the silk wall tapestries and shook it – landing here, was insult enough to vex a saint.
It was a vile deed calling for immediate retaliation, and he knew exactly who would be the recipient of his wrath. Eager to loose his fury on her, he clutched the tapestry, the urge to wield the cutting edge of his blade on its exquisite threads nigh overwhelming him.
Indeed, he was so tempted, his fingers itched!
He’d known the witch-woman lusted after his bed, but he hadn’t expected her to taunt him by having it returned to the scene of his betrayal.
But she had, and just thinking about her perfidy made his ears burn and his hand reach for his dirk.
He harrumphed just as quickly, though, and thrust the jeweled blade back under his belt. Keeping his wits had seen him through many troublous times, and any knight worth his spurs knew hotheadedness was naught but a quick path to misery. So he quashed his vexation and resumed his pacing, a slow smile curving his lips.
A wicked smile, tempered with a small measure of satisfaction.
After all, the long wait for her arrival had afforded him ample time to devise numerous and delightful ways to spoil her pleasure in his bed.
Soon she would be there.
He could smell her.
She had the scent of spring about her. A fresh and light fragrance beguiling enough to make a man believe he was rolling with her in a flower meadow. Her smooth, naked flesh kissed the sun, and his hungry, devouring lips.
He could well imagine such pleasure.
Not that it mattered. She could bathe in the bewitching scent for all he cared. Its seductive powers would prove useless on him.
He would remain unaffected, stronger than he’d been in London. To that end, he scowled fiercely, squelching all thoughts about lush, warm curves or soft, hot breath whispering across bared female skin.
Raising his arms above his head, Alex set his jaw and cracked his knuckles, steeling himself.
Aye, her arrival was imminent.
And the moment night fell and she sought the comforts of his bed, he would tr
eat her to an appropriate welcome.
One she’d not forget for the rest of her days.
***
Ceud Mìle Fàilte!
‘A Hundred Thousand Welcomes!’ proclaimed a large banner stretched across the entrance to Ravenscraig’s gatehouse. A warm-hearted Gaelic hello, fastened with a flourish to the raised portcullis, its unexpected appearance making Mara’s breath catch and her heart thunder.
She stared at the sign, surprise and delight whirling inside her. A giddy blend of emotions promptly followed by a hot rush of self-consciousness when Malcolm gave her a quick smile and slowed the car to a snail’s pace.
Not that she would have missed the flapping streamer.
With its bright blue lettering, each word at least a foot tall, the greeting quite caught her eye. And the closer they came to it, the huge block letters staring right at her, the more difficult she found it to breathe.
Speaking was out of the question.
“They’ve been in fine fettle about your arrival for days,” Malcolm declared, saving her the trouble as they passed beneath the banner and through the tunnel-like interior of the gatehouse. “True as I breathe, they’ll be gathered in front of the castle, waiting.”
“But how-”
“How will they ken we’re almost there? Ah, well, I could say they’ve been standing round since daylight, but, truth is, every croft we’ve passed will have rung up to report our progress.” He slid a glance at her. “Did you know this is the first time the lady of the castle has been at Ravenscraig in over twenty years?”
Mara’s jaw slipped. “Lady Warfield didn’t visit?”
Malcolm shook his head. “Never came back save once or twice after she married. Lord Warfield didn’t much care for Scotland. Folk say he fussed he could ne’er get warm, and that he despised the mist.”
Mara scarce heard him, for they’d left the deepest part of the wood, and Ravenscraig Castle was coming into view through the trees.
Tall, parapeted, and more impressive than any likeness she’d ever seen, her ancestral home stood on the far side of a wide, emerald lawn, and its appearance presupposed everything she’d ever heard about the romance of medieval Scotland.
More startling still, the castle seemed perched on the edge of the world, the grounds ending abruptly behind with nothing beyond but a huge swath of endless blue sky.
“Oh-mi-gosh,” Mara gasped, staring.
Malcolm chuckled. “A bonnie sight, no?”
Mara glanced at him, a ridiculous sense of unreality snaking round her ribs and squeezing so tight, she wondered her heart had room to beat. She certainly couldn’t find words.
A nod was the best she could do.
Her father would have been much more eloquent, his eyes growing round as saucers. Just imagining his delight sent a flood of bittersweet warmth to join the constriction in her chest.
Nothing in her wildest dreams had prepared her.
She doubted anything could have.
And although her nerves were a bit frazzled, the dryness of her mouth and her skittering pulse assured her she wasn’t spinning fantasies.
Ravenscraig loomed solid as day before her, complete with two rounded towers flanking a massive iron-studded door, above which she could just make out the MacDougall coat of arms carved in stone.
Not a dark, scowling pile, forbidding and mysterious, but a turreted wonder of pink sandstone, where, true to Malcolm’s prediction, a knot of people stood waiting.
One of them, a bandy-legged old man in a kilt, came strutting forward the moment she stepped from the car. He made a grizzled appearance with his lined face and faded blue eyes, but his gaze was alert and his expression friendly.
“Hah! The lady herself – at long last,” he greeted her, his ringing voice softened by the same musical lilt as Malcolm’s. “Welcome to Ravenscraig. I am Murdoch MacEwen, house steward.”
Mara blinked, trying hard not to stare. But everything about him from his jaunty sporran to his gray-tufted brows made him look as if he’d just stepped away from a Victorian house party.
Or meant to escort her into one.
Incredulity tingling up and down her spine, she opened her mouth and closed it again before she could find her voice. “Thank you, Mr. MacEwen,” she managed, holding out her hand. “I’m so pleased-”
“Och, well, Murdoch will do fine.” He clasped her hand briefly before snatching up her bags. “I’ll just be taking these up to your room - you can meet the others meantime,” he added, his shoulders bowed by the weight of her luggage.
Her own shoulders aching from just looking at him, she reached to take back her suitcase, but he was already striding away, his crooked legs carrying him up the castle’s broad stone steps with surprising agility.
He disappeared into the darkness of the entry hall before she could even splutter a protest, and as soon as he did, the others came forward. A genial lot, croft-bred from the looks of them, their faces lit with warmth and goodness. And, true to Malcolm’s hint, they did seem a bit different.
But not in the way she’d feared.
She smiled her relief, her heart lightened as they gathered round. The first to reach her, Gordie, the one-armed gardener, beamed with goodwill but appeared too tongue-tied and abashed to say a word. Twin girls, housemaids by their pert white-aproned uniforms, bobbed their heads in welcoming unison.
“Good day to you, Miss McDougall,” the first twin said, and blushed to the roots of her carrot-red hair. “I’m Agnes, and she’s Ailsa.” She nodded at her sister, who, like the one-armed gardener, seemed to have lost her tongue.
“This is Innes.” Agnes turned to a tiny, white-haired woman hovering on the edge of the group. “Innes makes beeswax candles and herbal soaps for the tourist shops in Oban. We use them here, too, don’t we, Innes?”
Innes ignored the girl, focusing on Mara. “Mercy me, is it yourself?” She peered hard at Mara. “Are you for coming back to us, then, mo ghaoil? Without Lord Warfield?” she asked, the faraway sweetness of her smile explanation enough for the strange questions.
“It’s the Gaelic for my dear,” Agnes solved the other riddle, her voice dropping to a tactful whisper. “Innes lives in the past and forgets the present. She thinks you are-”
“Lady Warfield,” Mara finished for her, the awkward moment saved by the barking arrival of two Jack Russell Terriers, their excited circling and snuffling of Ben drawing all eyes.
“Dottie and Scottie,” Malcolm supplied the little dogs’ names, his face brightening when Ben thumped his tail and seemed to smile at the young terriers’ yappy attentions.
Mara smiled, too, her earlier jitters fading like mist beneath the morning sun. Ravenscraig’s staff were eccentric, some of them clearly peculiar, but so long as no one mentioned ghosts everything would be fine.
Or so she thought until a look almost verging on alarm suddenly crossed Malcolm’s face. “Where’s Prudentia?” he wanted to know, his gaze flitting over the little group.
At the mention of the name, Dottie and Scottie stopped racing around Ben, their perked ears and eager expressions indicating they knew Prudentia well, and liked her.
But of their two-legged companions, only Innes reacted.
She teetered.
And in a way that made Mara’s nape prickle. “Who is Prudentia?” she asked, certain she didn’t want to know.
“Prudentia MacIntyre, the cook,” Ailsa finally spoke, her voice edged with embarrassment. “She’s inside somewhere, feeling the atmosphere. She thinks Ravenscraig is full of ghosts and insists a new one arrived just the other day. She’s been nosing about ever since, trying to make contact with the poor soul.”
“Ghosts?” Mara’s stomach plummeted. “What kind-”
“No kind at all - save maybe rats, draughts, and hot-water pipes,” Murdoch boomed, re-joining the group. “Dinnae you worry, lassie. I’ve ne’er seen a bogle hereabouts, and I’ve been at Ravenscraig since I was a wee lad.”
With a sharp look at t
he others, he placed a hand on Mara’s elbow and propelled her up the castle steps. “Come away in now, and dinnae let these blethering fools bend your ears,” he said, leading her into the entrance hall.
A fine, dark-paneled passage, filled with old family portraits and tapestry hangings, and smelling faintly of wax furniture polish, chilled stone, and age.
“Prudentia fixed a fine tattie soup for you,” the steward was saying as he escorted through the dimness. “That’s potato soup if you didn’t know. After you’ve eaten, I’ll take you to your room. Your fine bed arrived a few days ago and has been made up nice and fresh.”
“Thank you, that sounds heavenly,” Mara agreed, her stomach growling in anticipation. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was.
She was also tired.
Far too weary to ponder the cook’s preoccupation with the supernatural, or her own unsettling notion of how easy an impressionable mind could imagine one of her tartan-wrapped, fierce-staring ancestors stepping down out of his portrait frame at the stroke of the midnight bell.
No, she wouldn’t think of such absurdness.
Besides, too much else claimed her interest.
Glancing round, she drew a quick breath, that strange tightness filling her chest again. No matter where she looked, Ravenscraig’s vastness swallowed her whole, its treasures seeming to wink at her as if they’d been waiting for this moment just to enchant and dazzle her.
Impressed indeed, she admired the standing suits of armor placed at intervals along the walls and gazed with awe at a collection of medieval swords and targes, promising herself she’d examine both the swords and shields more carefully later.
A spacious open staircase swept up into shadow at the rear of the passage, but rather than mount its age-smoothed steps, the steward turned left, leading her into what could only be the great hall.
But Mara froze on threshold, and gasped.
And not at the sweeping sea vista visible beyond a wall of tall, arched windows, nor at the beautiful painted beamed ceiling.
No, it was the strange-looking woman in the middle of the room who stole Mara’s breath.
Plump, frizzy-haired, and middle-aged, the woman looked more like she should be stirring the kettle in a gypsy camp than standing beside a dining table set for one in Ravenscraig’s quiet great hall.
