A Bridge Through The Mist
By Denise A Agnew
Table of Contents
PREAMBLE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
GLOSSARY
POSTAMBLE
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NOTICE
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Bridge Through the Mist
Alenna placed her hand on Tynan's chest again, letting it linger there. He sucked in a quick breath.
"Dinna touch me like that."
"Why? It shouldn’t bother a cold, unfeeling man like you."
Maybe the statement verged on unfair. She knew somehow where this was going to end up. At least she hoped she would be right.
She was.
"Damn ye," he hissed.
Before she could react, he leaned into her, pressing his warm body against her. As his mouth covered hers she gathered a feeling of triumph to her. This was what she wanted. Lord help her, this is what she needed.
Tynan showing his feelings. Releasing his need and sweeping her into a sweetness she’d never found in another man’s arms.
Everything seemed to recede … the sounds of a horse whinnying in the stables, the laughter of children at play, the shout of a peddler selling his wares. All of it paled in significance beyond this drift in time. Everything stilled and hovered with a soft, giving ecstasy.
He fed on her mouth as if he wanted to kiss her into hating him. Instead the kiss fueled her feelings, and with equal fervor and anything but aversion she responded. If this was his punishment, she wanted more … and more … and more.
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Praise for Bridge Through the Mist
"Bridge Through the Mist by Denise A. Agnew, is a sweetly passionate, beautifully written tale of love that bridges time, heals two hurting hearts, and defeats evil with verve and style. A most satisfying journey through time."
Pauline B. Jones
I LOVE LUCI—WHEN I DON'T WANT TO KILL HER
A Starlight Writer Publications Release—June 2000
* * *
Bridge Through the Mist
by
Denise A. Agnew
StarryNight Books
Starlight Writer Publications
SWP
http://www.starpublications.com/
* * *
StarryNight Books are published by:
Starlight Writer Publications
A Division of Romance Foretold, Inc.
Suite 240
532 Old Marlton Pike
Marlton, NJ 08053
Copyright © 1999 by Denise A. Agnew
ISBN 1-929034-16-4
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced electronically or in any form, or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher and Author, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
No persons or places in this book are real. All situations, characters and concepts are the sole invention of the author.
Electronically published in the United States of America
* * *
Dedication
First of all, I dedicate this novel to my dear husband, Terry. Without his love and support, I’m sure this road would have been a lot longer and a lot tougher.
To my mom, dad, and sisters Gayle and Loretta …
thank you for always believing in me.
To my fabulous writing friends The Rebels and The Wild Ones, thank you for being the greatest friends a writer could ever have.
To my wonderful critique partners Lorraine Stephens, Susan Tatley and Tina Kitchens. I love you guys!
* * *
Credits:
Cover Artist ~ Mel White
Editor ~ Whitney Walters
Copy Editor ~ Susan Warren
Senior Editor of SWP ~ Lorraine Stephens
RATING: R
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CHAPTER 1
Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.
To Alenna Carstairs, the rasp of trowel over hard earth sounded like the proverbial nails over a blackboard. The scent of damp earth assailed her nostrils and for a moment nausea rolled through her. She stopped removing the earth, thin layer by thin layer. Unfortunately, the other archaeologists around her didn’t stop the repetitive motion.
Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.
As she straightened from her crouched position in the test pit, unease gathered tight in her throat. She took a deep breath and wondered if another panic attack would beset her any moment. Queasiness swept through her again in a wave. She pressed one hand to her stomach and willed it to stop rolling. Despite the chill in the air, perspiration broke out on her forehead.
A tremble of apprehension surged up her spine when she looked around the excavation. Thick, tall curtain walls seemed to hang over her like sentinels. Mellow light played over the stones giving the imposing structure the look of sandstone.
Since she’d first stepped into the castle two days ago, a vague discomfort had plagued her. Although she enjoyed participating in the dig, strange feelings assailed Alenna. She wasn’t certain why, but it disturbed her to be among old stones and ancient memories that whispered their secrets. She half expected the test pit to widen into a black hole and suck her into infinite space. Most of all, panicky feelings assaulted her when she worked in this part of the castle, near the Black Tower.
Nausea rolled in her stomach once again.
I wish to hell the earth would swallow me up now.
Great. Just what she needed. Barely a day left of excavation at MacAulay Castle and they’d be done.
Any minute she might have to run back to the van, leaving her friend Demi Arnold, Dr. Benedict, and the rest of the small archaeology group to finish the day’s work alone.
"You okay?" Demi asked, dropping her trowel on the ground.
Alenna smiled with effort. No sense in alarming Demi, who already hovered like an anxious mother hen. "I’m fine."
Dr. Benedict straightened from his crouch by the pit and pulled off his gloves. "Well, I’m taking a break. My back is killing me. Why don’t we all head for the van and get something to drink. We’re almost done for today anyway. We can come back in twenty minutes and cover the site."
The eight other people in their group quickly agreed.
The thought of drinking or eating didn’t appeal to Alenna. "I’m going to stay and work."
Demi shook her short, grey curls. "You don’t look so good. Why don’t you take a break? I was about to."
"I’ll be fine."
Demi might as well be Alenna’s mother. Demi was twenty-five years Alenna’s senior and thin as a cat
o’nine tails. "It’s freezing out here. Maybe you should come back to the van. There’s a creepy crawly flu going around."
"Are you kidding? I love working on the dig," Alenna said. "Besides, the tourists are having a lot of fun watching us."
The National Trust wished to attract more tourists into the castle and they believed the small group of amateur and professional archaeologists, digging during the hours the castle was open, would be an attraction for the tourists. They had been right, but Alenna didn’t exactly agree with the idea. More often than not the tourists became a distraction, with their questions and incessant chatter. Luckily no tourists roamed this part of the castle at the moment.
Dr. Benedict twirled one end of his droopy white mustache and gestured to his crew. "Come on. Let’s take that break."
"I’ll be right there," Demi said as he trooped away.
Alenna noted the worried frown on Demi’s face. She knew her current state couldn’t be brushed aside like a flake of dandruff. She also knew Demi didn’t share her feelings of helplessness, apprehension, and panic. Maybe the therapist had a clue. Her panic attacks were the result of stress. Of refusing to realize she couldn’t control everything.
You have to learn to accept the things you can’t change.
Dr. Smythe’s words had done nothing to reassure her. The images she held of her fiancé in bed with another woman might never fade.
Initially, she’d wondered what had possessed her to venture from the sun of her home in Sierra Vista, Arizona, to the chill damp of the United Kingdom. Why not sunny Florida, or balmy Hawaii? She’d left the U.S. at the end of August to participate in a once in a lifetime archaeological expedition at MacAulay Castle, in the border country between Scotland and England. Now, several days later, she wondered if it had been a good idea to come here.
She might say it was to put extra distance between her and her ruined relationship with her lawyer fiancé. Or that after a breakdown, she needed a reason to clear the cobwebs and find a fresh perspective in a mind full of shadows and doubts.
But she didn’t want to admit anything. Hostility toward her fiancé raged raw in her blood, and her vacation hadn’t been designed to spend time brooding only in different surroundings.
After all, her biggest embarrassment had been the temper tantrum she’d had in front of the entire legal staff. The one time she’d blown up had secured her a fuchsia slip.
Not pink. Fuchsia. As if the startling color somehow signaled a greater transgression.
Alenna Carstairs doesn’t break down.
Weakness is a fault.
Her mother had told her so, her father had told her so, and her fiancé had told her so.
Yeah, right.
Dr. Smythe said her iron clad attempts to control her own life came from years of being manipulated and steered in a preset series of conditions. Parting with painful memories meant severing ties to the past. Severing the comforts of familiarity. Even if that familiarity came laced with deep-seated pain. Unlearning years of training would take time. But how long?
Marshaling a reservoir of strength, Alenna stood straight. She ran a hand through her damp hair. A splatter of rain brought her back from maudlin thoughts.
She shoved her hands in the pockets of her lightweight coat. A drop of rain dribbled down the back of her collar and trickled under her sweater and a layer of thermal underwear. September in Scotland could be damned cold.
Suddenly an image of her fiancé in bed with that woman sprang into her head like a demon from hell. Fiery, painful, and nightmarish.
"Bastard," she mumbled under her breath.
Demi gave her a startled look. "Someone woke on the wrong side of the bed this morning."
"Humph."
"Hang in there. We’re almost done for the day. Why don’t we take my camera and do a little tour of our own?"
Alenna grinned at her friend of ten years. Demi might be impulsive, but she was fun. And Alenna had discovered since the breakup with her fiancé that fun was something she didn’t always recognize, unless she was shoe horned into it directly.
"You’ve got a deal," Alenna said as Demi helped her climb out of the pit. Alenna yanked off her gloves and dropped them next to the pit. "Where do you want to start?"
"How about close to the dungeon? I hear people have seen spooks around there."
Alenna felt a strange dread cover her like a shroud.
She’d been in the dungeon before.
Wait. What a crazy idea.
"I’ve been in there before," Alenna said without stopping to think.
"What?"
"I think I’ve been in there before."
Demi wrinkled her nose. "You’ve never been in there. We haven’t had a chance to tour before today. Dr. Benedict has kept our noses to the grindstone."
"I’ve been in there. It’s a really creepy feeling."
Demi smiled. "Wait a minute. Miss Skeptical is getting goose bumps from this castle?"
Alenna made a face. "Just because I don’t believe in ghosts—"
"Okay, okay." Demi’s smile turned cocky. "I’ll make you a deal. I’ll bet you, while you’re excavating here, that you’ll see a ghost. If I’m wrong, I owe you five pounds. If you’re wrong, you owe me five pounds."
"It’s a deal."
They shook hands and smiled. Alenna knew there would be nothing to show evidence of ghosts and goblins. Quickly she strapped her fanny pack around her waist.
Demi moved toward the front of the castle, away from their excavation site. She angled her sophisticated camera to take a quick picture of a raven perched on one corner of a stone outcropping.
Alenna was vaguely aware of some tourists straggling by her. Their voices came as mere threads of sound, and she felt a strange, almost unworldly detachment from everything around her. Almost as if she was a specter herself.
"Alenna?"
She came back to awareness with a jarring snap.
"Alenna, are you sure you’re all right?" Demi asked, walking toward her. Concern etched Demi’s thin face.
Alenna forced herself to walk forward, placing one foot in front of the other as if dragging through molasses. "I’m great."
A raven cawed, startling Alenna, and as she looked for the bird, the watery sunlight disappeared under dense clouds. The resulting loss of light threw heavy shadows along the cobblestones beneath her feet, and the air instantly became colder.
"The ravens are keepers of the castle," Demi said as they looked at the wooden raven house perched inside the entrance to the courtyard. "They watched over the MacAulays when they lived here hundreds of years ago."
"Kind of like the ravens at The Tower of London," Alenna said.
"Shades of Edgar Allen Poe," Demi said as she snapped a picture of the raven house. She gave a delicate shiver.
Alenna felt a growing unease, as if history reeled back like a giant scene ready to play out in front of her.
Demi looked around the castle again. "I can imagine how horrible it must have been living here."
"It was awful," Alenna whispered, feeling a knot of unease tighten about her throat. She swallowed, trying to loosen the noose of nerves.
Damn it.
Not now. Not here in a public place.
A shiver of bone-deep cold wracked her as her stomach did a drunken lurch. She wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans as her pounding heart thudded in her ears with a maddening pulse.
She started down the cobblestone lane to her left. "I think I’ll stop in the tea shop and get coffee or something. They make a lot better cappuccino than Dr. Benedict. Why don’t you go on and explore?"
"Alenna—"
"I’ll meet up with you later, Demi."
Sure, she felt rude walking off, and she’d be the first to admit it wasn’t like her. ‘Unfailingly polite’ was her middle name. Physically wobbly and mentally perplexed, she didn’t want to embarrass herself by having a panic attack.
Alenna Carstairs never gives in to emotional displays.
From the time her mother had divorced her father when Alenna was twelve, Alenna had kept to the straight and narrow path. All her outside activities had remained: golf lessons, rock climbing, and when she was an adult, self-defense. Her mother’s divorce hadn’t made her waiver on the outside, no matter how much it hurt on the inside.
Sucking in deep breaths as Dr. Smythe had often advised, she managed to reduce the butterflies doing barrel rolls in her abdomen.
Once inside the tearoom, she could get warm and settle the odd turmoil in her mind and heart. Somehow, though, these thoughts rang as hollow as if she’d said them out loud and the echo had bounced among the castle walls.
Her heart. What a laugh. After her broken engagement she didn’t plan on letting any man in to her life for a very long, long time. What man would want a woman who might panic for no discernible reason?
Shaking off thoughts of her failed engagement, she walked on. Her steps made no sound. She glanced at the high walls around her, marveling at the stone’s resiliency, at the way it stood strong and immovable through centuries of turmoil and war. But there was more.
Like a bad scent, dark and thick as smoke, a lingering malaise stained the atmosphere and almost knocked her over with its stench. She shuddered, puzzled by her bizarre feelings.
She strolled onward until she noticed an archway in the wall. Curious, she decided to see where the doorway led. A cool blast of wind came from the opening, and she pulled the collar on her jacket higher around her neck. As she looked through the arch she saw an inner courtyard. A yeoman with a small group of seven people was giving a tour. She walked up to the group.
"During the early 1300’s this area was used for several different functions. A parade ground, for the occasional tournament, perhaps even for executions. Please follow me …"
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