by Allie Mackay
Mindy Menlove lived in a mausoleum.
A thick-walled medieval castle full of gloom and shadows with just the right dash of Tudor and Gothic to curdle the blood of anyone bold enough to pass through its massive iron-studded door.
Once within, the adventure continued with a maze of dark passageways and rooms crammed to bursting with rich tapestries and heavy, age-blackened furniture. Dust motes thrived, often spinning eerily in the light that spilled through tall, stone-mullioned windows. Some doors squeaked delightfully, and certain floorboards were known for giving the most delicious creaks. Huge carved-stone fireplaces still held lingering traces of the atmosphere-charged scent of peat- and heather-tinged smoke. Or so it was claimed by visitors with noses sensitive to such things.
Few were the modern disfigurements.
Yet the castle did boast hot water, heat, and electricity. Not to mention cable TV and high-speed Internet. MacNeil’s Folly was also within the delivery area of the nearest pizza shop. And the daily paper arrived without fail on the steps each morning.
These luxuries were made possible because the ancient pile no longer stood in its original location somewhere on a bleak and windswept Hebridean isle, but on the crest of a thickly wooded hill not far from the quaint and pleasant antiquing mecca of New Hope, Pennsylvania.
Even so, the castle was a haven for hermits.
A recluse’s dream.
Only trouble was that Mindy had an entirely different idea of paradise.
White sand, palm trees, and sunshine came to mind. Soft fragrant breezes and—joy of joys—no need to ever dress warm again. A trace of cocoa butter tanning lotion and mai tais sipped at sunset.
A tropical sunset.
Almost there—in her mind, anyway—Mindy imagined the castle’s drafty drawing room falling away from her. Bit by bit, everything receded. The plaid carpet and each piece of clunky, carved-oak furniture, and even the heavy, dark blue curtains.
She took a step closer to the window and drew a deep breath. Closing her eyes, she inhaled not the damp scent of cold Bucks County rain and wet, dripping pinewoods, but the heady perfume of frangipani and orchids.
And, because it was her dream, a whiff of fresh-ground Kona coffee.
“You should never have dated a passenger.”
“Agggh!” Mindy jumped, almost dropping the mint chocolate wafer she’d been about to pop into her mouth. She’d forgotten she wasn’t alone.
All thoughts of Hawaii vanished like a pricked balloon.
Whirling around, she returned the wafer to a delicate bone china plate on a tea tray and sent a pointed look across the room at her sister, Margo, her elder by all of one year.
“What of your watercooler romance with Mr. Computer Geek last year?” Mindy wiped her fingers on a napkin and then frowned when she only smeared the melted chocolate, making an even greater mess. “If I recall, he left you after less than six weeks.”
“We parted amicably.” Margo peered at her from a high wingback chair near the hearth. “Nor was it a watercooler affair. He only came by when the computers at Ye Olde Pagan Times went on the blink. And”—she leaned forward, her eyes narrowing in a way Mindy knew to dread—“neither did I move in with him. I didn’t even love him.”
Mindy bit the inside of her cheek to keep from snorting.
It wouldn’t do to remind her sister that she’d sung a different tune last summer. As she did with every new Romeo that crossed her path, whether he chanced into the New Age shop where Margo worked, or she just stumbled into him on the street.
Margo Menlove was walking flypaper and men were the flies.
They just couldn’t resist her.
Not that Mindy minded.
Especially not when she was supposed to be mourning an unfaithful fiancé who’d choked to death on a fish bone during an intimate dinner with a Las Vegas showgirl.
A fiancé she now knew had no intention of marrying her, had used her, and—much to her amazement—had left her his family’s displaced Scottish castle and a tidy sum of money to go along with it.
Generosity born of guilt, she was sure.
The naked pole dancer from Vegas hadn’t been Hunter MacNeil’s only mistress. She’d spotted at least three other possibles at the funeral.
They rose before her mind’s eye, each one sleazier than the other. Frowning, Mindy tried to banish them by scrubbing harder at the chocolate smears on her fingers. But even though their faces faded, her every indrawn breath suddenly felt like jagged ice shards cutting into tender places she should never have exposed.
She shuddered.
Margo noticed. “Don’t tell me you still care about the bastard?” She leaned forward, bristling. “He used you as a front! His lawyers all but told us he only needed you to meet the terms of his late parents’ will. That they’d worried about his excesses and made arrangements for him to lose everything unless he became a bulwark of the community, supporting their charities and marrying a good, decent girl!”
“Margo—”
“Don’t ‘Margo’ me. I was there and heard it all.” Margo gripped the armrests of her chair until her knuckles whitened. “What I can’t believe is that you didn’t see through him in the first place.”
Mindy gave up trying to get rid of the chocolate. “You’d have fallen for him, too,” she snapped, scrunching the napkin in her hand. “If he’d—”
“What?” Margo shot to her feet. “If I were a flight attendant working first class and he’d sat in the last row—wearing a wink and a smile—and with his kilt oh-so-conveniently snagged in his seat belt?”
“It wasn’t like that….” Mindy let the words trail off.
It had been like that and she was the greatest fool in the world for not seeing through his ploy.
But his dimpled smile had charmed her and he’d blushed, actually blushed, when she’d bent down to help him with the seat belt buckle and her fingers accidentally brushed a very naked part of him.
When the buckle sprang free and his kilt flipped up, revealing that nakedness, he’d appeared so embarrassed that accepting his dinner invitation seemed the least she could do to make him feel better.
He’d also been incredibly good-looking and had a way with words, even if he hadn’t had a Scottish burr. He could look at a woman and make her feel as if no other female in the world existed, and topping it all, he’d had a great sense of humor. And, besides, what girl with red blood in her veins could resist a man in a kilt?
What wasn’t to love?
Everything, she knew now.
Furious at herself, Mindy slid a glance at the hearth fire. A portrait of one of his ancestors hung there, claiming pride of place above the black marble mantel. An early MacNeil chieftain, or so Hunter had claimed, calling the man Bran of Barra, his was the only ancestral portrait in the castle that didn’t give Mindy the willies.
A big brawny man in full Highland regalia and with a shock of wild, auburn hair and a gorgeous red beard, he didn’t have the fierce-eyed glower worn by the other clan chieftains whose portraits lined the castle’s long gallery. His portrait—the very same one—hung there, too. It was his mirth-filled face that she always sought when she was convinced that the gazes of the other chieftains followed her every move.
Bran of Barra’s twinkling blue gaze looked elsewhere, somewhere inside his portrait that she couldn’t see. Yet she’d always felt that whatever held his attention, if he’d been aware of her ill ease, he’d turn her way. His eyes would twinkle even more and he’d say something bold and outrageous, guaranteed to make her smile. He’d been that sort of man, she just knew it.
Mindy took a breath.
She couldn’t help but compare Hunter with his rough-and-ready ancestor. Where Hunter would have chided her for her fears, Bran of Barra would’ve banished them.
Silly or not, he made her feel safe. Only by keeping her eyes on him could she flit through the endless, dark-paneled gallery with
out breaking out in goose bumps.
Sadly, his roguish smile now reminded her of Hunter’s.
Scowling again, she turned away from the portrait and curled her hands into tight fists. How fitting that Hunter had also dashed her only means of reaching the upper floors of the castle without having a heebie-jeebies attack.
“You can get back at him, you know.” Margo stepped in front of her, a conspiratorial glint in her eye. “Have you thought about turning the castle into an esoteric center? I know the customers at Ye Olde Pagan Times would love to hold sessions here. Fussy as Hunter always was about image, he’d turn in his grave.”
Mindy stared at her. “Didn’t you hear what I said earlier? I’m selling the castle. I want nothing more than to get as far away from here as—”
“But you can’t!” Margo grabbed her arm, squeezing tight. “The castle’s haunted. I told you, I got an orb on a photo I took in the long gallery yesterday. Three orbs if we count the two faint ones.”
“Orbs are specks of dust.” Mindy tried not to roll her eyes. “Everyone knows that.”
Margo sniffed. “There are orbs and orbs. What I got on film was spirit energy. I’m telling you”—she let go of Mindy’s arm and tossed back her chin-length blond hair, a style and color both sisters shared—“you can put this place on the paranormal map. People will come from all around the country to ghost hunt and—”
“Oh, no, they won’t.” Mindy flopped down on a chair, her head beginning to pound. “There aren’t any ghosts here. Hunter was sure of that and so am I. And”—she aimed her best my-decision-is-final look at her sister—“the only place I’m putting this miserable old pile is on the market.”
“But that’s crazy.” Margo sounded scandalized. “Owning a haunted castle is the chance of a lifetime.”
“Yes, it is.” Mindy sat back and folded her arms. “It’s my chance to go back to the airlines and move to Hawaii. I can invest the money from the sale of the castle and what Hunter left me and live off my flight attendant salary. It’d be no trouble at all to commute from Oahu or even Maui. And best of all”—she felt wonderfully free at the thought—“I doubt there are many Scotsmen in Hawaii. They can’t take the heat.
“The Scots thrive on cold and rain and mist.” Mindy lifted her chin, well aware her words wouldn’t sit well with her Scotophile sister. “You did know that the hottest-selling clothing article in Scotland is thermal underwear?”
“You’re not thinking clearly.” Margo picked up her purse and moved to the door. “I’ll come back in the morning after you’ve had a good night’s sleep. We’ll talk then.”
“Only if you’re ready to help me find the right real estate agent,” Mindy called after her sister’s retreating back. “I’ve already spoken with a few.”
And each one had sounded more than eager to list MacNeil’s Folly.
Mindy smiled and reached for the mint chocolate wafer she’d almost eaten earlier. Then she helped herself to another and another until the little bone china plate was empty. Chocolate was good for the soul.
And there weren’t any ghostly souls spooking about the castle.
Not disguised as orbs or otherwise.
Her sister was crazy.
And she was going to Hawaii.
But first she needed some sleep. Margo was right about that. Regrettably, when she left the drawing room, she found the rest of the castle filled with a thin, drifting haze. Cold and silvery, thready wisps of it gathered in the corridors and snaked past the tall, Gothic window arches. An illusion that surely had everything to do with the night’s full moon just breaking through the fast-moving rain clouds and nothing at all to do with the orbs that her sister claimed were darting around the long gallery.
Or so she thought until she neared that dreaded room and caught the unmistakable strains of a bagpipe. A haunting old Gaelic air that stopped the instant she neared the gallery’s open door.
A door she always took care to keep closed.
Mindy’s stomach dropped and her knees started to tremble. But when she heard footsteps on the long gallery’s polished wood floorboards and the low murmur of many men’s voices, she got mad and strode forward.
It wouldn’t surprise her if Margo and her crazy New Age friends were playing a trick on her.
A notion she had to discard the minute she reached the threshold and looked into the angry faces of Hunter’s Highland chieftain ancestors. There could be no doubt that it was them because with the exception of Bran of Barra’s portrait at the far end of the long room, the ferocious-looking clansmen’s large gold-gilt portrait frames were empty.
She also recognized them.
And this time they weren’t just following her with their oil-on-canvas eyes.
They were in the room. And they were glaring at her.
Glaring, and floating her way.
Some even brandished swords.
“Oh my God!” Mindy’s eyes rounded and she clapped a hand to her cheek.
Heart thundering, she tried to slam the door and run, but a handful of the scowling clansmen were quicker. Before she could blink, they surrounded her, their huge kilted bodies blocking her escape.
Kilted, plaid-draped bodies she could see through!
Mindy felt the floor dip beneath her feet as they swept closer, their frowns black as night and their eyes glinting furiously in the moonlight. Soon, she feared, she might be sick. She wished she could faint.
Her sister wasn’t the crazy one.
She was.
Or else she was about to meet a gaggle of real live ghosts.
And since the latter seemed unlikely, she’d just lost her marbles. She took a deep breath and lifted her chin, peering back at them as if they weren’t a pack of wild-eyed, see-through Highlanders.
Then she folded her arms and waited calmly. It was a trick she’d learned in airline training.
How to keep cool at all times.
She just hoped they couldn’t tell she was faking.
She was sure she didn’t want to know what would happen if they guessed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Allie Mackay is the alter ego of Sue-Ellen Welfonder, a USA Today bestselling author who writes Scottish medieval romances. Her twenty-year airline career allowed her to see the world, but it was always to Scotland that she returned. Now a full-time writer, she admits that she much prefers wielding a pen to pushing tea and coffee. She spent fifteen years living in Europe and used that time to explore as many castle ruins, medieval abbeys, and stone circles as possible. Anything ancient, crumbling, or lichened caught her eye. She makes frequent visits to Scotland, insisting they are a necessity, as each trip gives her inspiration for new books.
Proud of her own Hebridean ancestry, she belongs to two clan societies and never misses a chance to attend Highland Games. In addition to Scotland, her greatest passions are medieval history, the paranormal, and dogs. She rarely watches television, loves haggis, and writes at a 450-year-old desk that once stood in a Bavarian castle.
Readers can visit her at: www.alliemackay.com.