Wyndham

by L. L. Muir

  “Feckin’ impossible,” she whispered again. “Something is very wrong with me.” And she had to get it sorted!

  Though she’d tried hundreds of times, she’d never been able to call up Wyn’s image anywhere but Culloden. Not on the shore, where she went to paint on the 15th of every month. Not in the quiet of her own wee house when she’d needed so desperately to see him clearly. But if he was a real live bloke, she could invite him over and finally do what she’d been desperate to do...

  Maybe it wasn’t such a coincidence. Maybe she just had it backwards. This bloke might have come first, and she’d just fashioned her muse after him. She very well could have seen him that first day, and her subconscious could have copied that face for her imaginary Highlander.

  Nah. Couldn’t be. She would have remembered.

  Many was the time she’d passed a fine specimen on a walking path and turned around to follow him, hoping for a few glimpses to commit to paper later. The shape of a Neanderthal brow, the angle of a nose, the spacing of a pair of sexy eyes. But after she’d drawn them, each face was easily remembered, as permanent as a photograph, including the location in most cases. So why not this time?

  His was the most important face of all, and she’d forgotten it? Not bloody likely.

  Although… Had she noticed this man during that first visit in the summer, she might have imagined what he would look like as a soldier on that doomed field of battle. Considering the resulting obsession, was it possible she could have forgotten the seed from which it had sprouted?

  Seven months before…

  August first. A warm clear day, but she didn’t trust it. With layers of clothing topped with a windjammer jacket and her owl scarf, she set off for a good spot on the coast, overlooking the North Sea. Just another bi-weekly mental health day. But on her way to Nairn, she passed a sign for Culloden’s battlefield. Her imagination jumped into overdrive, and before she reached the next turnoff, she’d already decided that a Jacobite Highlander would be a much more exciting subject than another seascape.

  She took the next slip-road and eventually ended up on the battlefield where she found an empty bench to sit on. She began a new string of rituals. Face the sun. Deep breath. Open her sketch pad, fish out a new stub of charcoal, drop a pastel in her shirt pocket, then warm up by drawing the first bit of growth that caught her eye. And while she committed the strange shoot of moss to paper, she whispered an invitation to any Highland spirit who might be listening.

  “Guan yersel. Dinnae be shy.”

  Once she’d sketched the bright green bit sprouting out of its twisted nest, she was warmed up and ready for a challenge. She took another deep breath and imagined that a pure handsome rogue from the eighteenth century had answered her summons.

  She could almost see him standing there with his hands on his hips, his bonnet cocked to one side, waiting for his next instructions.

  “Kneel down so I can get a better look at yer face,” she said, and her muse had obliged.

  She imagined him speaking. “Ye can see me all right, then?” She’d laughed when her mind was able to twist those words with a heavy brogue.

  “I’ll name ye—”

  “Wynham McLeish.”

  “Naw. Something more—”

  “The name will have to do, woman. For Wyndham I am.”

  She experimented with an egg-shape for his head, decided where the lines would intersect for his profile—a vertical line from the center of his brow to his chin, a horizontal one angled down slightly, that would place his eyes and cross the vertical at the bridge of his nose. His head would be turned slightly to the left.

  He peeked over the edge of the giant sketchpad. “Ye’ve made me bald!”

  She laughed again. “Just getting the angle of yer bones right, yeah? But there will be no peeking until I’m finished.”

  He nodded and eased back again. The good thing about imaginary muses was that she wouldn’t need to worry how long he could hold his pose, how long before that bare knee could no longer stand to kneel on the asphalt. He wouldn’t groan or make little noises to let her know he was uncomfortable.

  His eyebrows were tricky. She’d drawn them three times that first day and still hadn’t gotten them right…

  The memory flew away, leaving Bronagh staring at the sketch, the dozens of tiny lines around his eyes. The individual hairs of the eyebrows. Now that she’d seen the owner of that face, she couldn’t unsee him. For half the year, she’d been so impressed with her imagination. But now she knew better. It wasn’t thin air she’d summoned him from—it was a flesh and blood Scotsman only her subconscious remembered.

  But maybe he remembered. Maybe he could remind her where she’d first seen him!

  Her heart got a little excited about what it would mean to have a living breathing version of her muse around, but she ignored it. This was about saving her sanity, not snogging.

  She scanned the end of the hall, but he was long gone. If she hurried, she might be able to catch him before he drove off, so she downed her coffee and stuffed a biscuit into her mouth while she shuffled the sheets back inside the box and latched it shut. There would be no sketching today.

  With a look, she got the barista’s attention, pointed to her box on the table, then waited for the girl’s nod—a sign that her things would be watched over—before she took off.

  The way Bronagh figured it, she had every right to be angry. She’d put her very job on the line to keep her monthly appointment with her muse. And now she was wasting precious time tracking down a stranger—in a feckin’ blizzard—chitterin’ her way to the car park for no good reason when she should be refilling her cuppa and summoning her Highlander.

  And just why hadn’t Wyndham appeared yet? Did he need a bleedin’ invitation?

  After rounding the edge of the building, she stopped and scanned the car park. No more than a dozen cars in all. No movement but the wind blowing sidewards. No one arriving, no one leaving. No one sitting in a car waiting for the weather to take a breath.

  A blast of pure Baltic air drilled into her right ear and that was it. She ignored her overly hopeful heart, turned back, and prayed the mysterious Scot was still inside somewhere. She wasn’t going to risk pneumonia just to get a good look at his eyebrows…and ask if she were memorable enough to have left an impression on him the previous summer.

  She hurried through the doors and all but ran around the corner to keep the draft from following her. She ducked to the left, into the gift shop. None too casually, she hurried around the central display to make sure he wasn’t hidden in some corner.

  Two other options. The toilet or the battle tour. She certainly couldn’t go into the gentlemen’s loo, but if he was in there, he could get away while she searched the display halls. And if she watched the loo too long, she would miss him going out the door past the weapons room.

  While she dallied, the worker in the bright costume exited the gent’s, whistling.

  “James!” She hurried over to him. “Sorry. He said yer name was James.”

  “So it is. How can I help?”

  “I’m looking for yer—emm, our—friend.”

  He beamed, pleased she’d acknowledged the big bloke. “Went into displays. Hasnae come out yet, that I know.”

  “Would ye mind going to the weapons room to stop him leavin’?”

  He rubbed his hands together, nodding. “And ye’ll go flush him out?”

  “Yeah. I have a pass.”

  James tipped his cap and set off, no doubt eager for some excitement on a day too harsh for most tourists.

  Bronagh hurried past displays and story boards searching for the big guy. She finally found him in the battle immersion theatre sitting on his rump against one wall, with the battle raging on above his head. With his elbows out to the sides, he held his fingers over his eyes and his thumbs in his ears like a child who believed he was trapped in the midst of the fight. His shoulders jumped when the cannons fired, but as she got closer, she rea
lized the puffy blue coat was jerking at every noise.

  She’d been through the room half a dozen times since moving to Inverness, and she’d seen plenty of folk reduced to tears. It was common to see men hurry through, except in larger groups, when they scowled and tried to look tough about it all. But she’d never seen this man’s reaction before.

  She needed to get his attention, but she didn’t know his name. The battle was so loud, he wouldn’t hear much in any case. So she used the name that came to mind. “Mr. McLeish!” He didn’t hear her. “Oy! Wyndham!” Then she laughed, knowing he wouldn’t answer to it either.

  His fingers fell away. He blinked and looked up, then squinted between her and the fight playing out on the stretch of wall between them. No one else was in the room.

  “I’m chuffed to have found ye,” she shouted. “Thought ye might have gone out into the weather!” She shook her head. “Let’s go!” She offered her hand and he took it, though he barely pulled on it as he stood. She pointed to the exit, then led the way out.

  A good ten feet down the hallway, he stopped her and pointed to her hands. “Ye’ve left yer case!” He turned back, but she stopped him.

  “Left it in the café. It’s not going anywhere, yeah?”

  He nodded. His relief was obvious. As she led the way through the rest of the tour, she couldn’t help but smile, she was that touched that he would have gone back through the hell of the theatre battle to retrieve her things.

  Quite the gentleman, then.

  They reached the weapons room where the guns caught his attention. Bronagh waved her fingers at James, then made a face. She didn’t want the tall fella to know she’d called in the troops to find him.

  James bobbed his head and discreetly disappeared back into the heart of the building. Her new friend glanced over the miniature of the battle ground—a raised replica about the size of two billiard tables. He gave it a perfunctory shake of his head and strode to the window where he looked out over the snow-covered original.

  Happy to turn her back on the sadness that was Culloden’s past, Bronagh joined him at the glass, her shoulder just higher than his elbow. “I was worried ye’d gone out onto the battlefield in this weather. It’s dangerous enough just hiking out to the car park, let alone the field.” Nervous, she kept on. “Ye could slip and fall and before ye could get back on yer feet, in a flat minute, the North Wind could steal the warmth from your body and blow snow over ye. A great lump ye’d be for the groundskeepers to find in the spring.”

  He finally turned away from the window to look at her. “Too true. Nowhere to hide out there but beneath the ground.”

  She chuckled, turned, then settled her bum against the wall, just below the glass. “With the dead of Culloden? No, thanks.”

  He looked out at the field again and they stood in silence for a bit, facing opposite directions. A hush fell around them like snow settling into all the empty space it could find.

  Time for more than pleasantries, then.

  She half-heartedly cleared her throat. “I was worried I’d offended ye.”

  This time, when he looked at her, his warm smile chased all that awkwardness away. “Not offended. I worried I’d embarrassed ye. Art is such a personal matter. I should never have suggested—”

  “That’s just it, yeah? It took a few minutes to realize it, but I have drawn a face quite like yers. Loud James was right to recognize the similarities.”

  He stifled a laugh. “Loud James? Ye mean his voice or his costume?”

  She made a face while he laughed. “Well, his tartans dinnae match, do they?”

  He shook his head. “Shall we return to the café so ye can show me this familiar face?”

  “Aye. And maybe ye can help me make heads or tails of it. Ye see, I dinnae remember ever seeing ye before today. So ye can understand why I was taken aback by James’ suggestion.”

  “Certainly.” He pointed to their right and the narrow hallway where their loud friend had disappeared shortly before and gestured for her to go first.

  “James never gave me yer name,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Did he not?”

  At the end of the hall, she turned to face him and introduce herself properly, but he made a bee-line toward the mens’ toilet. “I’ll meet ye in the café momentarily!”

  “Fine,” she answered, but he was already gone.

  Chapter Seven

  Wyn discovered that denims were a bugger to unfasten when a man had an urgent need to piss. He was honestly shocked he hadn’t wet himself before he got things sorted and pointed in the right direction.

  A few moments later, with the most pressing matter seen to and his hands washed, he had to move on to the next dilemma—what name should he confess to? Bronagh knew his spirit form as Wyndham McLeish. But since she hadn’t recognized him as the same, he couldn’t claim to be her muse!

  Or could he?

  Too late, he realized his expectations for their first mortal face-to-face meeting were impossible. She wasn’t foolish enough to run into a stranger’s arms no matter how familiar he might appear. Even if he’d not been trimmed on his head and his chin, even if he’d been wearing his tartan, he shouldn’t have expected her to fling her arms wide and welcome him into her life.

  The transformation from ghost to mortal was too miraculous for anyone to countenance. What knew she of witches, of miraculous power? From all her mutterings, she thought him a figment of her imagination, not an actual spirit. Convincing her of ghosts would be difficult enough. But a ghost resurrected?

  Impossible.

  Only those who had borne witness could begin to accept what had happened on the moor the day of the witch’s reckoning, when dozens of Highlanders had been resurrected, all at a go. It was still difficult to believe himself, though he currently stared at his mortal image in the wide mirror. He’d also witnessed dozens of individual risings since the last summer solstice, yet it was still hard to accept it had happened to him.

  The answer to his dilemma was clear. It would be kinder to keep Bronagh ignorant of otherworldly things. It would be cruel to complicate her life unnecessarily. In fact, it would be cruel to inject such complications into any woman’s life. Lord help him, what had he been thinking?

  With days to consider, and hours waiting for the lass to arrive, he should have thought of a better way to introduce himself. He should have been clever; he’d been clumsy. Then, after finding his foot in his mouth, he’d headed into the battle room to feel sorry for himself, for surely, he’d lost his chance of knowing her, as a man.

  But his lovely Irishwoman had taken pity on him and come to his rescue. And now he had yet another chance to make an impression. The quandary was this—what was best for the woman he cared so deeply for?

  Wyn stared into a coward’s eyes. With both hands, he ran his fingers through his clean hair, wishing there was more of it, wishing away the two pale streaks of white in his rather ginger beard.

  Too old for her. Easily too old.

  Though he appreciated what Soni, the witch, had done for him, he couldn’t help wishing himself back into spirit form so Bronagh would be eager to see him.

  He murmured a quick prayer for forgiveness and dug the mobile phone out of his pocket.

  The cold coming off the windows might have been more imagination than temperature, but Bronagh moved her kit back to her usual table and opened her case. There were a few sketches she wanted to tuck beneath the rest. The drawing of her muse’s sporran, for instance, wasn’t anything she wanted to show off. It’s not that the drawing was bad. It was just…personal. For nearly the entire day, the first of January, she’d stared at Wyndham McLeish’s crotch area and nearly blushed herself to death. And she’d probably end up blushing all over again if someone looked too long at the drawing.

  Especially if that someone looked a lot like the original model.

  She glanced at the clock on the wall. It was nearing twenty minutes since he’d gone into the loo. Had he fo
rgotten to come to the café? Or had he been embarrassed over how she’d found him? There was no reason to be ashamed. The battle scene was rough on anyone with a heart.

  If he was cursed with a big heart, was that so bad? It didn’t make him weak. To the contrary, only a man who didn’t mind what others thought of him would sit on the floor and allow himself to feel it all.

  Bronagh was out of her seat before she realized it and headed to the men’s loo to set the man straight. This time, she might have to brave her way inside…

  A bit of pale blue caught her eye. A familiar puffy coat moved off to the right. He was headed out the main entrance. No matter what his reason for ditching her, she couldn’t let him get away.

  “Wyn—” She caught herself. She didn’t know his actual name. But he turned anyway. “Sir, please. Stay. I promise not to keep ye long, yeah?” She shook her head for lack of a good excuse, but she didn’t have one that would make sense. “I know ye have no reason to stay, but stay anyway?”

  He smiled, sighed, then gave her a nod before stepping back inside.

  She was suddenly nervous, and for lack of something to say, she gestured back toward the café like she was a feckin’ tour guide. But he didn’t laugh. And he didn’t drag his feet. He seemed genuinely pleased she’d asked him to stay.

  As they neared the table, with her case and renderings laid out for all to see, she remembered she hadn’t found the sporran drawing. So she slid her bum into her chair and started searching again. He stood across the table with his hands behind his back, like he was waiting for permission to sit.

  She pointed at the chair in front of him. “Please.”

  He glanced at the other table near the window but said nothing about the move. As he sat, his mouth tugged to one side, though, as if that pleased him too. He waved the barista over—a blushing ginger with thick freckles who was quick to respond.