by Tarah Scott
Looking sure of it, he glanced at the other tour-goers, some already filing back into the bus. “I cannae see anyone in this group wanting to picnic here.”
“I didn’t mean the others.” Kira seized her chance. “I was thinking just me. And not here, along the roadway,” she added, casting a wistful look out toward Castle Wrath. “I’d like to spend an hour or two out at the ruins. Eat my lunch there and do a bit of exploring.”
She looked back at the bus driver, giving him her most hopeful smile. “It would be the highlight of my trip. Something special that I’d cherish forever.”
The driver stared at her for a few moments, then began rubbing his chin with the back of his hand. He said nothing, but the look he was giving her wasn’t encouraging.
“You could pick me up on the way back to Portree.” Kira rushed the words before he could say no. “Two hours is all I ask. More if you’d need the time to come for me. I wouldn’t mind the wait.”
“That ruin really is haunted,” he warned her. “Wee Hughie wasn’t lying. Strange things have been known to happen there. The place is right dangerous, too. It’s no’ one of those fancy historical sites run by the National Trust.”
He turned piercing blue eyes on her. “Everything at Wrath stands as it was, untouched by man all down the centuries. Och, nae, you cannae go there. The cliff is riddled with underground tunnels, stairwells and rooms, much of it already crumbled into the sea.”
“Oh, please,” Kira pleaded, feeling as if the ancient stones were actually calling to her. “I’ll be careful, I promise.”
The bus driver set his jaw and Kira’s heart plummeted when he glanced at his watch. “Come, lass. Think with your head, no’ your heart. We’ll tour Dunvegan Castle in the morning, before we leave for Inverness. You’ll like Dunvegan much better. It’s furnished and has a gift shop-”
“Which is why Castle Wrath is so special.” Kira’s throat began to thicken with her need to reach the ruins. “It’s not overrun with tourists. It hasn’t been spoiled.” She paused to draw a breath. “My parents worked overtime for a year to give me this trip and I can’t imagine ever getting back. Visiting Scotland again doesn’t figure in my budget.”
The driver grunted. Then he nudged at a cluster of heather roots, his hesitation giving her hope.
“I’ve ne’er had anything happen to anyone on my tours.” He looked at her, a troubled frown knitting his brow. “One false step out there and you’d find yourself in some underground chamber, maybe even standing at the very wall of the cliff, the earth opening away at your feet and falling straight down to the sea.”
“Nothing will happen to me.” Kira lifted her chin, tightening her grip on the lunch packet. “There were abandoned coal mines near my grandparents’ house. I know to be careful around such dangers,” she said, omitting that her grandparents would have skinned her alive had she ventured near any of the mines.
“Besides,” she spoke with confidence, “anyone used to walking around downtown Philly can poke around Scottish castle ruins.”
“Ach, well.” The driver gave a resigned sigh. “I still dinnae like it. No’ at all.”
Kira smiled. “I won’t give you cause to be sorry.”
“I’d have to double back to fetch you,” he said, rubbing his chin again. “It’s a straight shot from Kilt Rock south to Portree. The others might not like-”
“I’ll make it up to them,” Kira exclaimed, her heart soaring. “I’ll never be late getting back to the bus again, and I promise not to ask for extra time in the bookshops.”
“Just have a care.” He looked at her, his brow still furrowed. “Wrath is an odd place, true as I’m here. I’d ne’er forgive myself if harm came to you.”
Then he was gone, striding away and herding his charges into the bus as if he needed a speedy departure to keep him from changing his mind.
A distinct possibility, she was sure.
So she didn’t release her breath until the big blue and white Highland Coach Tours bus rumbled away, disappearing at last around a bend in the road.
Alone at last, she allowed herself one doubtful glance at the nearest sheep pats, certain they’d suddenly increased in size and number. But she steeled herself as quickly, putting back her shoulders and lifting her chin. Making ready for the long march across the grassy field to get to the ruins.
The truth of it was, close as she was to Castle Wrath, nothing was going to keep her away.
Certainly not sheep pats.
She had eyes and would just watch where she stepped.
Besides, the many ewes and lambs gamboling everywhere were cute. Some even turned to stare at her as she started forward, their bleated greetings so different from the street noises of Aldan, Pennsylvania.
So perfect in this unhurried world of hills, cloud and mist.
Mist?
She blinked. She’d heard how quickly Highland weather could change, but this was ridiculous.
She blinked again, but the mist remained.
The day had definitely darkened, turning just a shade uninviting.
She peered over her shoulder, scanning the road behind her but the sky in that direction stretched as clear and bright blue as before. Cozy-looking threads of peat smoke still rose from the chimney of a croft house not far from where the bus had parked, and if the sea glittered any more brilliantly, she’d need sunglasses.
Only Castle Wrath had fallen into shadow, its eerie silhouette silent against waters now the color of cold, dark slate. Low gray clouds swept in from the sea, their swift approach heralded by the crashing of the breakers on the rocks beneath the cliffs.
She took a deep breath and kept her chin lifted. Already, sea mist was dampening her cheeks, and the chill wetness in the air made the day smell peaty and old.
No, not old.
Ancient.
She started forward, refusing to be unsettled. She liked ancient and this was just the kind of atmosphere she’d come to Scotland to see.
So why were her palms getting clammy? Her nerves starting to go all jittery and her mouth bone-dry?
She frowned. Bedwells weren’t known for being faint-hearts.
But bone hadn’t been a very wise word choice.
It summoned Wee Hughie’s tales about wailing, foot-stomping ghosts, but she pushed his words from her mind, opting instead to dwell on the other images he’d conjured. Namely those of the great and powerful MacDonald chieftains, preferring to think of them as they’d been in their glory days rather than as they might be now, skulking about in the ruined shell of their one-time stronghold, bemoaning the passing centuries, their ancient war slogans lost on the wind.
Thinking she could use a battle cry of her own, she marched on, looking out for sheep pats and huddling deeper into her jacket.
Scudding mists blew across her vision and the pounding of the waves grew louder with each forward step. She could still see Castle Wrath looming on the far side of the high, three-sided promontory, but the rocky spit of land leading out to it was proving more narrow and steep than she’d judged.
Not that she didn’t have a good head for heights.
She did.
She just hadn’t expected to make the trek hunched near double against gale-force winds. She’d wanted to picnic at Castle Wrath, not be blown from its cliffs. So she simply kept hunching and plunged on. There was no point in going back. The Highland Coach Tours bus wouldn’t return for at least two hours. Besides, she was almost there.
The nearest wall of the ruin was already rising up out of the mist, its age-darkened stones seeming to beckon.
Kira’s pulse began to race. She walked faster, her excitement cresting when she caught her first glimpse of Wrath Bay and the deep grooves scoring the smooth flat rocks of its surf-beaten shore.
Just as Wee Hughie MacSporran had said.
Then she was there, the ruins opening up before her. Her breath caught, all thought of the medieval landing beach and its ancient keel marks vanishing from her mind.
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Even the nippy air and howling wind no longer mattered.
Castle Wrath was perfect.
A labyrinth of tall rough-hewn walls, uneven ground, and tumbled stone, the ruins stopped her heart. The remains of the curtain walls clung to the cliff edges, windswept and dangerous, but what really drew her eye was the top half of an imposing medieval gateway.
Still bearing traces of a beautifully incised Celtic design, the gateway raged up out of the rubble, its grass-grown arch framing the sea and the jagged black rocks of the nearby island she knew to be Wrath Isle.
Kira froze, certain she’d shatter the magic if she dared even breathe. She’d never seen a wilder, more romantic place. A one-time Norse fortalice, Vikings once walked and caroused here.
Real live Vikings.
Big brawny men shouting praise to Thor and Odin as they raised brimming mead horns and gnawed on huge ribs of fire-roasted beef.
She drew a deep breath, trying hard not to pinch herself.
Especially when she thought about the Norsemen’s successors. Wee Hughie MacSporran’s Celtic warrior chieftains, the kind of larger-than-life heroes she loved to dream about.
Bold and virile men who could only belong to a place like this.
A place of myth and legend.
Looking around, she was sure of it.
Shifting curtains of mist swirled everywhere, drifting low across the overgrown grass and fallen masonry, softening the edges and making it seem as if she were seeing the world through a translucent silken veil.
And what a world it was.
The constant roar of the sea and the loud whooshing of the wind were fitting, too, giving the place an otherworldly feel she would never have experienced on a clear, sun-bright day.
She set down her lunch packet and stepped into the sheltering lee of a wall, not quite ready to spoil the moment.
Nor was she reckless.
Rough bent grass and fallen stones weren’t the only things littering the ground that must’ve once been the castle’s inner bailey. Winking at her from a wild tangle of nettles and bramble bushes, deep crevices opened darkly into the earth. Silent abysses of blackness that could only be the underground passages, stairwells and vaults she’d been warned about.
Mysterious openings into nothingness.
Gaping black voids that were proving the greatest temptation she’d ever struggled to resist. Almost tasting her need to explore those abysses, she took a deep breath, drinking in chill air ripe with the tang of the sea and damp stone. She felt an irresistible shimmer of excitement she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
The fanciful notion that Castle Wrath’s once-pulsating heart still beat beneath the surface of its pitted, age-darkened stones.
She pressed her hands against a wall, splaying her fingers across the cold and gritty surface of the stones, not at all surprised to note a faint vibration humming somewhere deep inside them.
She felt a distant thrumming real enough to send a chill through her and even lead her to imagine bursts of loud masculine laughter and song. The sharp blasts of a trumpeter’s fanfare. Barking dogs and a series of thin, high-pitched squeals.
Excited feminine squeals.
Kira frowned and took her hands off the wall.
The sounds stopped at once.
Or, she admitted, she recognized them for what they’d been: the rushing of the wind and nothing else. Even if the tingles spilling all through her said otherwise.
An odd prickling sensation she knew wouldn’t stop until she’d peered into the one of the earth-and-rubble clogged gaps in Castle Wrath’s bailey.
Her lunch forgotten, she considered her options. She wasn’t about to march across the nettle-filled courtyard and risk plunging into some bottomless medieval pit, meeting an early grave. Or, at the very least, twisting an ankle and ruining the remainder of her trip. But the shell of one of Castle Wrath’s great drum-towers stood slightly tilted to her left, a scant fifty feet away.
Best of all, in the shadow of the tower’s hulk she could make out the remains of a stairwell. A dark, downward spiraling turnpike stair that filled her with such wonder she didn’t realize she’d moved until she found herself on its weathered threshold. Inky darkness stared back at her, an impenetrable blackness so deep its dank, earthy-smelling chill lifted the fine hairs on her nape.
Something was down there.
Something more than nerves and imagination.
The sudden tightness in her chest and the cold hard knot forming in her belly assured her of it. As did the increasing dryness of her mouth and the racing of her pulse, the faint flickering torchlight filling the stairwell.
Flickering torchlight?
Kira’s eyes flew wide, her jaw dropping. She grabbed the edges of the crumbling stairwell’s doorway, holding tight, but there could be no mistake. The light was flaring brighter now, shining hotly and illuminating the cold stone walls and the impossibly medieval-looking Highland chieftain staring up at her from the bottom of the stairs, the vaulted hallows of his crowded, well-lit great hall looming behind him.
That it was his hall couldn’t be questioned.
She’d bet her plane ticket back to Newark that a more lairdly man had never walked the earth. Nor a sexier one. A towering raven-haired giant, he was clad in rough-looking tartan-and calfskin, and hung about with gleaming mail and bold Celtic jewelry. Power and sheer male animal magnetism rolled off him, stealing her breath and weakening her knees.
Making her question her sanity.
Perhaps someone on the bus tour had slipped something into her tepid breakfast tea.
Something that would make her hallucinate.
Imagine the hunky Highlander who couldn’t really be there.
Just as she couldn’t really be hearing the sounds of medieval merrymaking.
Feasting noises, she was sure. The same raucous male laughter and bursts of trumpet fanfares and song she’d heard earlier, the collective din of a celebrating throng. Not that she cared.
A marching brass band could stomp past and blast her right off the cliff-top, as long as he stood glaring up at her, the world as Kira Bedwell had known and loved it, ceased to exist.
Hunky was glaring.
Every gorgeous muscle-ripped inch of him.
He locked gazes with her, glowering as only a fierce, hot-eyed, sword-packing Highlander could do. A truth she hadn’t known until this very moment, but one she’d take with her to her grave.
If she lived that long.
The too-dishy-to-be-real Highlander might have a patent on sex appeal, but he was also armed to the teeth. A huge two-handed sword hung from a wide leather shoulder-belt slung across his chest and a glittering array of other equally wicked-looking medieval weapons peeked at her from beneath his plaid. Not that he needed a display of steel. Such a man probably uprooted trees with one hand for exercise.
Big trees.
And at the moment, she felt incredibly tree-like.
She swallowed hard, pressing her fingers more firmly against the stone edges of the door arch. Any further movement wasn’t an option. Her legs had gone all rubbery and even if she could take a step backward, away from the opening, she just knew he’d charge up the stairs if she did.
Steps that no longer looked worn and crumbling. They appeared new and unlittered, free of fallen rubble and earth or the weeds that had clogged the top of the stairwell mere moments before.
She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. “This can’t be happening,” she gasped, jerking her hands off the now-smooth edges of the door arch.
“Nae, it cannae be,” the Highlander agreed, his voice a deep velvety burr as he angled his head at her, his gaze narrowing. “Though I would know why it is!”
The words held a bold challenge, the suspicion in his eyes changing swiftly to something else.
Something darkly seductive and dangerous.
“Och, aye, I would hear the why of it.” He tossed back his hair, the look he was giving her almost a ph
ysical touch. “Nor am I one to no’ welcome a comely lass into my hall – howe’er strange her raiments.”
“Raiments?” Kira blinked.
“Your hose, sweetness.” His gaze dropped to her legs, lingering there just long enough to make her squirm. “I’ve ne’er seen the like on a woman. No’ that I’m complaining.”
Kira swallowed. “You can’t be anything. You’re not even there.”
“Ho! So you say?” He glanced down at his plaid, flicking its edge. “If my plaid’s real, than I vow I am, too. Nae, lass, ‘tis you who cannae be here.”
“You’re a ghost.”
He laughed. “Since I haven’t died yet, that’s no’ possible.”
“I was told anything is possible in Scotland and now I believe it.” Kira stared at him. “Whatever you are.”
He flashed a roguish grin and started forward, mounting the tight, winding steps with long, easy strides. “‘Tis laird of this keep, I am.” His deep burr filled the stairwell, rich, sonorous, and real as the chill bumps on her arms. “I’m also a man – as I can prove if you wish!”
Reaching her, he seized her shoulders, his grip strong and firm, warm even through the thickness of her jacket. He stepped close, so near that the hilt of his sword pressed into her hip. “Now, lass,” he said, his gaze scorching her, “tell me. Do I feel like a haint?”
Kira drew in a breath. “No, but-”
“Aye, right.” His mouth curved with a triumphant smile. “‘Tis you who is out of place, no’ me. Though I vow you dinnae feel like a ghost either.”
Then his smile went wicked, his eyes darkening as he pulled her tighter against him, lowering his head as if to give her a hard, bruising kiss. Instead, his lips only brushed hers lightly, just barely touching her before he disappeared into darkness.
Kira screamed, but only the wind and the crashing sea answered.
That, and the stair’s emptiness. The same total blackness, icy cold and dank-smelling, that she’d been staring into all along.
There could be no other explanation.
