by Bess McBride
FERGUS
The Ghosts of Culloden Moor (No. 33)
Bess McBride
KINDLE EDITION
PUBLISHED BY
Bess McBride
Fergus
© 2017 Bess McBride
The Ghosts of Culloden Moor series
© 2015 Lesli Muir Lytle
All Rights Reserved
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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Cover art by Kelli Ann Morgan at Inspire Creative Services
Contact information: [email protected]
Published in the United States of America
Dedication
For those who love ghosts and Highlanders!
For my own Fergusons,
And for Lesli
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Books in the Series
A Note about the Series
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Epilogue
Books by Bess McBride
About the Author
BOOKS IN THE SERIES
*The Ghosts of Culloden Moor
1. The Gathering
2. Lachlan
3. Jamie
4. Payton
5. Gareth
6. Fraser
7. Rabby
8. Duncan
9. Aiden
10. Macbeth
11. Adam
12. Dougal
13. Kennedy
14. Liam
15. Gerard
16. Malcolm
18. Watson
19. Iain
20. Connor
21. MacLeod
22. Murdoch
23. Brodrick
24. The Bugler
25. Kenrick
26. Patrick
27. Finlay
28. Hamish
29. Rory
30. MacBean
31. Tristan
32. Niall
33. Fergus
(more on the way)
A NOTE ABOUT THE SERIES
Although the individual stories of Culloden’s 79 need not be read in strict order, The Gathering should definitely be read first to understand what’s going on between the Muir Witch and these Highland warriors from 1746. The Reckoning, Number 79’s story, will finish the series.
The names of Culloden’s 79 are historically accurate in that we have used only the clan or surnames of those who actually died on that fateful day. The given names have been changed out of respect for those brave men and their descendants. If a ghost happens to share the entire name of a fallen warrior, it is purely accidental.
Chapter One
Fergus looked over his shoulder. No one stepped forward, and he had done with biding his time. He was ready to go wherever the wee witch wanted to send him. It couldna be less tedious than watching the grass grow on the moor year after year—green, then brown, then green again. Aye, the sheep were a piece of fun to watch, but even those creatures tired of the eternal dreariness.
“Lass, ye may wave yer hands about and send me where ye wish. I am fair weary of waiting for what is to come.”
As he strode out of the darkness and into the glow of the white fire, Soni bestowed her bonny smile upon him. The green mist that was her ancestors swirled around her in a circle, moving, chanting, protecting her.
“Fergus,” she said, speaking his name with a burr of affection, the likes of which he had no heard for many a year.
“Aye, Fergus,” he said with a catch in his breath. “That is my name, nay? Fergus...” He struggled for a moment. His surname. What was it?
“Fergus Ferguson,” she purred. “It isna hard to remember, no for me. Are ye ready then, laddie?”
For a lass of sixteen, she spoke to grown men like himself without fear, but Soni wasna an ordinary young lass. She had powers that he didna understand, but which were verra mighty indeed. He had watched as many of his fellow ghosties had vanished from the moor with no more than a wave of Soni’s wee hands. He only hoped that they did indeed prove themselves and moved on to their promised rewards and an end to their eternal wandering.
“Aye, I have dithered long enough,” Fergus said. “Send me where ye will, Soni. I am no afraid.”
Truth be told, Fergus was afraid, but he wasna about to let the other lads ken such.
“Go then, Fergus! Make yer brethren proud. Remember, one brave act. That is what ye must do to earn yer boon and eternal peace.”
The white fire blazed, and Soni raised a hand in farewell. Fergus dragged in a gulp of air and held it. His chest pounded as a circle of wind whipped around his body. He closed his eyes and let the storm take him away.
To Fergus’s surprise though, the wind, instead of carrying him away into the sky, died down within moments, and he found himself on his knees in a patch of moist green grass at the base of one of the many memorial stones that dotted the moor, a triangular-shaped bit of rock that read “Clans Macgillivray, Maclean, Machlachlan and Atholl Highlanders.”
Fergus was no a stranger to the stone, for his body lay beneath it. He had seen it many a time over the years, its familiarity a hint that he had no traveled far.
Drumossie Moor. Culloden Moor, they now called it. Fergus scanned the surrounding heath. The ground was peaceful, untrampled and barren of blood.
He closed his eyes, grief twisting a knife in his chest. Still on the moor, he was clearly destined never to leave the cursed place. Soni had sent him no place except perhaps to the following morn, for the sun appeared high overhead in the sky.
He rubbed his face angrily, but then he stilled, noting with surprise the warmth of his hands, his skin. He studied his fingers, now unaccountably clean given they’d been covered in his own blood the last time he’d paid them any mind.
A glance at his shirt showed it to be uncommonly clean, hardly tattered, the fatal bayonet wound to his belly gone. The blue and green colors of his kilt ran true, mirroring the colors of Scotland.
Fergus touched his face again. Aye, it felt braw—warm, clean, his whiskers short and trimmed. He closed his eyes again and lifted his face to the sun, taking in the rare heat as it peeped through the clouds. A smile broke the stiff muscles of his face, and he nodded.
Weel, even if Soni
had done naethin else worth waiting for, she had given him life again, if only for a day or two. His bargain was to do a good, brave deed, and he would honor that agreement.
Suddenly, a woman’s shrill voice broke the silence of the graves. Cross she was, from the sounds of her shouting.
“You’ll be sorry about how you’re treating me when I die. But there won’t be anything you can do about it then! It will be too late! You don’t want these regrets!”
Fergus looked up to see an angry young woman, garbed in trews and a coat, standing with her fists clenched. With tears streaming down her face, she stared at the retreating back of yet another woman who marched away across the moor toward the visitors’ center.
The woman who had moments before ranted like a banshee dropped to her knees, burying her face in her hands. Her silent sobbing, no like the dramatic bawling his sisters had enjoyed, tugged at his heartstrings. Had the poor woman said she was dying?
Fergus rose and approached, crouching before her and patting her gently on her shoulder, as he had many times with his sisters.
“There, there, lass. Fret not. Did ye have an argument with yer companion?”
The woman jerked at his touch, and he pulled back. Her eyes fell to his kilt, or more truthfully, his loins. Fergus tucked the folds properly between his legs and spoke again, this time keeping his hands to himself. He had enjoyed the brief sensation of touching a living human, but he had frightened her.
“It canna be all that bad, lass, truly. Ye will make up, nay?”
She stared at him as if he were an apparition, and rightly so. Fergus was a ghost. Somehow, she must have kent such. Soni knew. It was no stretch then to think that the woman kenned the same.
He wondered if he looked a sight. He hadna seen a mirror in 270 years. Could be that he was a wee bit peaked, mayhap needed a shave, a comb.
“Who are you?” she asked, her tears subsiding as she stared at him wide eyed.
“Fergus Ferguson, at yer service, madam. I am sent here to do a brave deed, a good deed, mayhap to help someone. It may as well be you. How may I be of service?”
“Fergus Ferguson?” A small smile played at the corner of the young lass’s lips.
“Aye, that is how I am known.”
The smile on her lips spread to show bright-white teeth. It was then that Fergus noticed the velvet of her brown eyes. Her cheeks shone like bright-red apples. Her hair, tied at the back of her head, hung down to her shoulders in a brown tail that reminded him of his favorite pony.
“There! Ye are better already! What a bonny smile.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Where did you come from?”
“Here...and there.” Fergus didna care to frighten the lass with stories of ghosties and such.
“Here and there? Which is it? You’re from Scotland, right? I can hear your accent. Are you from around here? Inverness?”
“Nay, no Inverness. My home is in Dunkeld in Perth.”
“Do you always wear a kilt?”
“Aye, I dooo. I dinna care to be bound up in trews, ye ken?”
A small chuckle escaped her lips, and Fergus felt he was well on his way to doing his good deed.
“I do ken,” she said.
“Now, what was all the palaver about wi’ yer lady companion? I dinna normally involve myself in the bickerings of womenfolk, ye ken, but I have some time on my hands and am in the mood to do good.”
The lass’s face fell, and Fergus regretted his words.
“That’s my sister, Sarah,” she said. “I brought her on this trip because she’s always wanted to see Scotland, and she couldn’t afford it, but she’s been treating me like crap.”
“Crap, ye say.”
“Sorry. You know, like garbage, not very well.”
She wiped at the remaining tears at her face.
“I dinna care to reveal that I eavesdropped upon yer words, but as ye were shouting, I couldna help but overhear ye speak of dying. I ken a thing or two about dying. Are ye ailing, lass? Ye look so braw.”
She took her bottom lip in her teeth and closed her eyes. Her chest moved as if she drew in a deep breath. Fergus, having served as his sisters’ confidant, kenned he should wait until the lass was ready to speak.
He scanned the moor again with his living eyes. Different from that fateful day in 1746, yet the same.
“Yes, I’m sick,” the lass finally said. “I have cancer. I hate regrets, you know?”
Fergus nodded. He had so many of his own. He did not ken the word “cancer,” but he understood regret.
“Aye, lass.”
“So I don’t want her to have regrets. Our mom died when we were young. She was an alcoholic, died drinking, honestly. My sister was too young to understand, but I didn’t reconcile with my mother before she died. And now I have to live with that, with the longing to say goodbye to her, to tell her that I loved her, no matter what, even if I didn’t like her very much. I don’t want my sister to have those regrets if and when I die.”
Fergus stared at the lass, horrified. The “cancer” then sounded a fearsome thing that would take her life, and she so young.
“Lass, surely no. Ye dinna look near death. To be sure, ye look verra bonny.”
She raised a hand to her cheek.
“Thank you. I’ve got some time. I start treatment tomorrow as soon as we go home.”
“Treatment?”
“Chemicals and radiation and stuff, about six months of it.”
“And will this six months of such things make ye whole and sound again?”
“I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. It’s a fifty-fifty thing. You’ve never heard of chemotherapy and radiation? Really?”
“Auch, aye! Chemotherapy and radiation! To be sure. I have heard of these things now that ye say them again. Yer accent is difficult to follow.” Fergus had no notion of what she spoke, but he didna care to reveal such.
“So is yours, but it’s absolutely charming.”
“Oh, well, then. We should speak more. Where has yer sister, Sarah, got off to then? Shall I speak to her?”
“I’m sure she returned to the visitors’ center.”
“Och aye, the center. I have been there many a time.”
“I’ll bet you have,” she said, the playful smile returning to her face.
“Perhaps we should seek out yer sister and all of us have a chat about death and dying, regrets and loss.”
Fergus rose to his feet, his limbs aching from long-unused limbs. He held out a hand to the woman.
“Oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea. I only told you all that stuff because you were a stranger who I was never going to see again. You know...”
She allowed him to help her to a standing position.
“Nay, I dinna ken. I am here to do a good deed for someone, and I have chosen ye.”
“Yeah, no,” she said, wrinkling her nose in a pert way. “I appreciate it, really, but no. This is between my sister and me. She would hate it if she thought I had talked to a stranger about her. Not to mention, it’s kind of hard to take you seriously in that kilt. I mean, don’t get me wrong! You look wonderful in it, but it just won’t work out.”
Fergus looked down at his kilt, unsure of the lass’s meaning. Then he remembered.
“Ah! Ye mean because the British banned the wearing of the plaid, no? Do not fret over such. I have seen the occasional visitor to sport a tartan or two. It isna a problem any longer, to be sure.
“Take my hand, lass. Let us go see this sister of yers. If she is truly angry, then my deed could certainly be considered brave. What did ye say yer name was?” Fergus didna wait for permission but took her wee hand in his. If he was to do his honorable deed, he must take charge. The soft feel of her warm skin against his didna hurt either. Nay, surely she wasna ill.
“I didn’t,” she said, looking down at their entwined hands. “It’s Casey Cole.”
“Mistress Casey Cole,” he said, bending with a flourish. “It is a pleasure to meet ye
.”
Chapter Two
Casey allowed herself to be towed by the strange, kilted Scot across the moor toward the visitors’ center. What did it matter? It wasn’t the dark of night, and she was fairly sure she already had one foot in the grave. She threw a backward glance over the moor to where so many Scots and British lay. Was that her future? Were those her people? The dead?
“Come, lass. Look to the future, no the past,” Fergus said, as if he could read her mind. His calloused hand suggested that he worked hard for a living. She wondered if he was in construction.
Quaintly charming and heartbreakingly handsome, the redheaded bearded Scot with bright-blue eyes touched her in more than just a physical sense. She thought it would be lovely to have him at her bedside when she died.
Unfortunately, she just couldn’t stop thinking about death. It was as if she had skipped the upcoming months of treatment and moved right into planning for her certain demise. Maybe all people with cancer experienced the same sense of fatality, she didn’t know.
“Look,” she said breathlessly as Fergus kept up a brisk pace. “I really don’t think this is a good idea. Sarah is liable to storm off, and honestly, I’d be the one left to deal with her anger. We fly back tonight because I start treatment tomorrow. I’d rather not deal with her cold shoulder for the thirteen hours of traveling it will take us to get back to DC.”
She gave Fergus’s hand a decisive tug, and he turned. Thick reddish-brown eyebrows drew together, and she caught her breath under his sapphire-blue gaze.