by Allie Mackay
doon.
Many of them wore that expression for the entire two-week duration of their Scotland holiday, telling anyone who’d listen that this is where they belonged. Even those without Scottish roots declared often and enthusiastically that they’d always dreamed of the Highlands.
Heather ran in their veins, they’d swear. Only half-jokingly, they’d claim that if you cut them, they’d bleed tartan. They were also quick to assert that bottled peat smoke would fly off the shelves in the States, proving irresistible to a public hungry for all things Scottish. Tins of Highland mist would do even better. As for kilts and the famed accent, the comments didn’t bear recalling. Or that every castle, glen, or hill was some tourist’s ancestral home, calling them back to Scotland. The pull, as they called such yearning, gripped them powerfully, giving them no peace until they bought a plane ticket and flew to Glasgow.
When they did, they felt complete.
Graeme stifled a snort of annoyance.
Like his fellow countrymen, he’d heard such proclamations often enough.
Loving Scotland was epidemic and those suffering the ailment were incurable. They also knew countless ways to express their passion. Any moment he expected Kendra to join their ranks, perhaps pressing a hand to her breast or gasping a few oohs and ahs.
Not that she struck him as a hopeless Scotophile on the usual coming-home pilgrimage.
But she did appreciate Pennard.
He blew out a breath, glad for the cold sea wind in his face.
Kendra’s interest in the spectacular coastline let him hope that she hadn’t paid too much attention to his talk and complaints about Ramsay. Or the dread relic he wished didn’t exist.
He’d spoken as if it was bit of fabled fluff, good for a fireside tale on a cold and dark winter night, but nothing real enough to impact the modern world.
Too bad it wasn’t so.
What mattered was that a strong swell was running and a brisk wind blew from the west. In a few moments, they’d round the thickest bulk of Grath Point, and Kendra would see his seals. The creatures he monitored and protected. Looking out for them gave his many-yeared existence meaning. And—he shot another hopefully casual look at Kendra as they left the wider waters and headed closer to shore—soon she’d also spot the dark silhouette of Castle Grath etched against the scudding clouds, just appearing above the crags.
Somewhere deep inside him, something pinched and squeezed, an old pain he usually kept at bay. Not this morning. Now the ache stabbed with a vengeance, cruelly reminding him of what once was and could never again be.
He frowned, took a deep, steadying breath.
How he would’ve loved to show Kendra his home in another time and place.
Back in the days when Grath’s walls were whole and strong, the roofs intact, and roaring hearth fires, tapestried rooms, and good food and ale ensured the comfort of all within. Years when every stone would’ve been clean, well swept, and polished, rather than how they were now—crumbling to dust and covered with grass and nettles.
Grath was now an empty, windswept place full of echoes and shadows.
And—Graeme tightened his hands on the boat’s wheel—he wished he’d taken Kendra to see the seals at Fraserburgh Harbor rather than risk bringing her anywhere near Grath Point and his memories.
He was vulnerable here.
It wasn’t a state he enjoyed.
His blood pumped, but not in a good way. The past leapt on him from every tide-washed rock, each dark, wet-glistening fissure in the crag seeming to watch him with reproachful eyes. Everything here reminded him of those who’d gone before him and whom he wouldn’t see again until his own seven hundred years and a day had passed.
Though if all went to plan—his plan, no one else’s—he wouldn’t meet his loved ones then, either. He didn’t intend to leave the required heir. His obstinacy would damn him, but he didn’t care. To his way of looking at things, he was cursed already.
So he’d vanish quietly, taking his legacy with him.
He’d be the last MacGrath.
That was the epitaph he desired.
And he had another seventy-five years to wait until the words could be carved into his headstone. So he pushed the thought from his mind and glanced again at his fetching passenger, surprised to see that she’d turned away from the cliffs.
They were deeply indented now, a steep, dark shoreline full of caves, narrow entrances to hidden coves, and secret glimpses of pristine, inaccessible beaches. Huge seas and white water made approaching the coast here a tricky endeavor, but he knew every rock and channel. Even when rain and darkness thickened the air, he could find a way ashore. And this day was glorious, with clear autumn light shining on the water and letting the spray sparkle.
It was a sight to stir the blood.
Yet…
He frowned. An uneasy sensation at the back of his neck warned that something wasn’t right.
Kendra’s gaze remained fixed on the horizon. Long lines of huge rollers could be seen there, their crests flashing white in the morning sun. They seemed to fascinate her.
“The North Sea aye has such rollers.” Graeme watched her carefully. “You’d be hard-pressed to find rougher seas anywhere. These are unpredictably violent waters, the currents fatal if you’re no’ careful.”
“M’hmmm.” She didn’t even blink.
And the look on her face was the same as at the Laughing Gull when she’d thought she’d glimpsed a ghostly fleet of herring boats.
Graeme shoved back his hair, ran a hand across his nape. Instinct told him he wouldn’t like her answer if he asked what had caught her eye.
He didn’t think it was the breakers.
Looking away from her, he shot a glance at the cliffs. Broad, flat ledges of glistening black rock garnished the foot of the bluff and sheltered them from the worst of the wind.
They were almost at Grath Point.
Being here was sheer torment, yet he returned again and again.
“I can see these waters are treacherous. Wild seas, full of danger, exacting a high toll on those who seek to know her.” Kendra turned to face him then, her face clear again, her eyes bright. “Yet you love it here, the fine, deep harbor and the immense blue of the sea. Whether glassy and calm or sullen gray and rough, you live to be out here.”
“Aye, I do.” Graeme had never spoken more true words. Grath, Pennard, Balmedie—this entire coast was his life, literally.
“You’ll soon see one of the reasons.” He slowed the boat, wondering if she’d notice the colorful sea tangle waving in the current, the gleaming rock pools winking at them from along the proud, curving edge of Grath Point. “My seals’ main haul-out site is just ahead.”
Her gaze went upward instead of forward. The shell of Grath’s ruinous tower was just coming into view, and it was there she’d focused her attention.
When she looked back at him, her blue eyes shone. “You didn’t tell me you were a laird.”
She might as well have kicked him in the gut.
“I’m not.” His denial was a half-truth. As the last of his line, he didn’t laird it over anyone.
He did hold the title.
She peered up again at the crumbling tower, the empty windows now coming into better view, each horrid opening like black, sightless eyes.
Graeme tried not to shudder.
She looked enchanted.
“I know you are.” Her tone left no room for argument. “A laird, I mean.” She angled her head, studying him. “Iain showed me the photo of the ruin last night. He also told me about Janet.”
“Iain talks too much.” Graeme made a silent note to tell the innkeeper to mind his own business. “And poor Janet should never have climbed up to Grath every day, and so doggedly.” He purposely didn’t comment on Kendra’s remark about the old picture at the inn. “No good came of her vigils. Her husband didn’t even die at sea. She wasted time and energy, putting herself in peril just
to watch his boat return each e’en. It was all for naught. Poor Dod suffered a heart attack right in front of her workplace.”
If he’d hoped to shock her, he’d failed. To his annoyance, she looked intrigued, even leaning forward to hang on his every word.
Not that he felt like divulging anything else.
“Was it near the red phone box?” Her question took him by surprise.
It was the last thing he’d expected.
He frowned, rubbed the back of his neck. He could almost feel the collar of his sweater tightening.
She pressed, getting that odd look on her face again. “Is that where her husband died?”
“No’ quite.” Graeme remembered the night well. “Dod died in the road. He’d meant to collect Janet, for they aye enjoyed a stroll along the waterfront after she finished work. Dod keeled over before he made it halfway across the road. He was beyond help, dead instantly.”
“I see…” She nodded, reached to smooth her hair off her face. “Janet’s had a rough time.”
“She’s no’ been the same since, that’s true.” Graeme slanted a look down at the dancing tangle, not wanting to speak of death.
“That’s understandable.” She looked sympathetic.
“She needs to get on with her life.”
“Sometimes it isn’t that easy.”
“Nothing ever has been in these parts.” Graeme knew that well.
For centuries, here little had changed. Men went to sea, seeking their well-guarded fishing grounds and spending their time on land baiting lines, filling trawl tubs, or preparing lobster traps, all for the next day’s haul. Their wives worked even harder, raising large families, darning socks and knitting sweaters, baking bread and cooking meals. In their spare time, they picked berries or dug clams. And throughout their toil, they kept one eye on the sea, always worrying, hoping their men would return safely.
In more recent years, the good fisher folk of Pennard also fretted about tourists. Since the success of the cult film The Herring Fisher, they arrived each summer with the regularity of herring shoals. They’d crowd the tiny village as they went about snapping pictures, paying for boat trips, booking rooms at the inn, and filling the salt air with their twangy American accents.
Pennard needed them.
Too bad their affection for the little fishing village also brought its doom. Scotland’s Past wouldn’t have glanced at Pennard if they didn’t see its popularity as a milkable cash cow.
Graeme frowned, his jaw setting so tight he wondered he didn’t crack a tooth.
He also didn’t care to discuss Dod’s passing. He’d liked the man. Just as he’d got on well with Dod’s parents and grandparents and their parents before them. That they were no longer here reminded him of how fragile such relationships are. How unwise he’d been to bring Kendra to a place with the power to strip his defenses.
Yet there was no turning back now.
A large, curving tumble of rocks under the cliffs marked the deep, steep-sided cove that was the seals’ haul-out site. On such a fine day, they’d be all over the stony little beach. Graeme just hoped Kendra wouldn’t notice the inlet’s other notable attraction.
Not many people would.
And he was so smitten with her—and eager to spend the day in her company—that he’d overlooked what she’d told him about her occupation.
As a landscape historian, she might well spot the hand-cut shape of some of the broken rocks piled at one end of the tiny cove. Or notice that the unobtrusive half arch set high into the bluff on that side of the beach wasn’t a natural part of the cliff, but the remains of a gatehouse that once guarded Graeme’s home.
She already knew Castle Grath loomed above them.
With luck, she wouldn’t realize how easily they could reach the ruins.
If one was willing to climb and didn’t suffer a fear of heights. As long as one kept a good toehold on the right rocks and possessed a secure and firm hand grip, it was possible. A willingness to get wet and dirty didn’t hurt, either. Kendra’s profession indicated she’d scramble up the broken, weather-worn steps with enthusiasm.
So Graeme had only one hope.
That she’d find the seals so enchanting, she wouldn’t see anything else.
Not too far from Graeme’s Sea Wyfe, but at a carefully calculated distance behind the shoulder of the crags, a smaller boat bobbed and pitched in the strong-running swell. Dark blue in color and bearing the stenciled name Fenris in white letters on her bow and again across her stern, the boat was outfitted with a powerful engine. Her speed and stealth made up for her lack in size.
Such things mattered to the man at the tiller.
The boat was called after the Viking god Fenris the wolf, believed to be the son of Loki the trickster. Like his better-known father, Fenris the wolf boasted a reputation as a troublemaker in Asgard, the Norse heaven. The Fenris served a similar purpose: stirring mayhem.
Sometimes worse.
If someone needed to find themselves wedged between limpet-crusted rocks beneath a little-visited, inaccessible cliff, their naked body battered by the tide, Fenris the boat escorted them there.
Whenever such dark deeds were necessary, Gavin Ramsay knew the fast little boat would do him well. The hurling seas did the rest, always dependable. As were the lobsters and seabirds, ever ready to disperse of what remained after a good slamming and crashing by the waves.
Gavin scarce needed to exert himself. And that was as well, because he was a vain man. He much preferred using his darker talents to dirtying his hands and risking scars if a foe put up a struggle.
He also enjoyed the stunned realization on their faces when they grasped that they couldn’t escape their fate. He reveled in their shock and horror.
This morn was such a time.
MacGrath, the seal-loving bastard, had played right into his hands. It scarce mattered if the American was his long-lost girlfriend or not. And Gavin had his doubts that she was. No man, not even MacGrath, would let a woman he loved stray far from his arms.
And if that man knew—as he was sure MacGrath did—that she possessed strong psychic powers, her energy field almost blinding to those able to see such things, such a man would deserve to lose her.
Yet MacGrath, who regrettably wielded his own brand of magic, didn’t seem troubled enough to keep her secure at his own cottage.
He let her sleep at the Laughing Gull.
And that told Gavin all he needed to know.
Their bond, whatever it was, could be broken. And once he had the chit in his own arms, she’d forget the seal man. Gavin shoved back his hair, dashing water from his face when the Fenris took a bow full of spray. Ever a man to embrace danger, he didn’t mind the rough seas.
Soon he’d enjoy a very different challenge.
A shapely, easily besotted one he meant to have naked in his bed and writhing beneath him before this day’s sun sank behind the hills.
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth and he felt a most enjoyable twitching at his loins, as well. An insistent stirring he looked forward to indulging later this evening. He knew how to pleasure women.
American women were especially easy to please.
They melted at a flash of plaid, a hot-eyed wink and a smile, or a wee hint that one was descended from Robert the Bruce.
Gavin’s lips twitched again at the thought of his forebears.
Not quite in the Bruce’s league, they were far more powerful in their own right.
Even so, he’d stick with his charm and Scottish accent to seduce the American.
Graeme MacGrath wasn’t the only Scot able to turn on a burr. Nor—Gavin ran his fingers through his hair again—was the seal man as good-looking as he was. Kendra Chase wouldn’t be able to resist him.
And if his other skills were as sharp as he believed, she’d soon welcome his attentions. At the very least, she’d need comforting.
After that…
Gavin braced
himself as the Fenris plunged into another steep trough, dousing him anew. He didn’t care about getting wet, only even.
Destroying MacGrath was his plan.
Once he’d accomplished that, everything else would fall into place.
“You’d best hold tight now.” Graeme’s tone made Kendra’s senses sharpen. “The currents are tricky here and it’ll be a bit rough before we’re around the rocks and into the shelter of the cove.”
“I can tell.” Kendra did as he suggested, gripping the side of the boat with one hand and using her other to hold on to the seat.
A bit rough was an understatement.
Submerged rocks fringed the cove’s narrow opening and the sea churned there, the waves breaking up and swirling in all directions after crashing into the jagged skerries. Kendra looked about in excitement, her blood pumping as the Sea Wyfe pitched and tossed. She didn’t doubt the boat’s sea worthiness, or Graeme’s skill at handling her.
She could feel the air around them come alive.
This was more than a popular gathering spot for seals. Grath Point held a vital pulse she could almost hear humming inside the sheer rock cliffs. The place possessed an intense power. Everything was sharply defined, clear, and vibrant. The sea, wind, and sky struck her as almost crystalline.
It could’ve been a dream landscape.
The quality was similar.
She flashed a glance at Graeme. Surreal vista or not, she wasn’t going to think about dreams right now. Not after the one she’d had of Graeme in her room the night before. Just remembering sent a sensual warmth rushing through her entire body, even now.
And it’d only been a dream.
Yet…
The sensations it had stirred in her were as real as if he had actually been in her room.
In an attempt to distract herself, she thought back to the spectral herring fleet. She would swear she’d also seen the ghostly ships out near the horizon only a short while ago. Their sails had caught her eye, flashing white in the morning sun. But then she’d squinted while Graeme had been talking to her about the huge seas, and when she looked again, that was just what she saw: long, white-crested rollers moving slowly toward the shore.
Nothing else stirred except the spray hissing down the sides of Graeme’s Sea Wyfe and the seabirds circling above the boat.