by Allie Mackay
“She was worried about him and wanting to help.” The idea squeezed Cilla’s heart. “Not being able to have her own babe, she tried to nurture other ones.”
“That’s what we believe, just.” Honoria peered back up the way they’d come, her gaze on the shadows at the top of the stairs. “She only ever showed herself if a child of the house fell seriously ill. Once the danger passed, she’d leave. Your uncle was the last child reared at Dunroamin. Now, with the residents all being of a certain age, we suspect she’s found her peace.”
“Or she’s moved on to look after little ones elsewhere?” Cilla’s voice hitched on the words.
Margaret MacDonald’s story put a different spin on ghosts.
She sympathized with the heartbroken serving girl.
“I hope she’s well, wherever she is.”
“Ach, she’ll be feeling better than me with my knees e’er aching from traipsing up and down these stairs.” Honoria dusted her jacket sleeve, all business again. “Come now, and we’ll sit you down in front of the library fire and you’ll have a cup of tea to warm you.”
“That’d be nice,” Cilla lied, certain she’d soon need the loo again if she had to drink more tea.
What she needed was a hot shower and bed.
But when she opened the library door a few moments later, rather than book-lined walls and tables spread for tea, it was a teetering assortment of all manner of containers that greeted her.
Plastic buckets, old pitchers and jugs, and even seed trays and empty tin cans filled the doorway, each unlikely item crammed so tightly together she couldn’t see anything but darkness beyond the towering pile.
“Yikes!” She jumped when a broken-handled casserole pot rolled off its perch and tumbled forward, nearly conking her on the head before it bounced onto the carpeted floor with a dull thud. “What’s all this?”
“Not the library.” The housekeeper was right behind her. “That’s the closet where we keep buckets and whatnot to catch the drips from the roof.”
“The roof leaks?” Cilla couldn’t believe it.
“Aye, it does.” Honoria snatched up the casserole pot. “Only in the worst rainstorms, but then the plink-plinkety-plonks of the dripping water is so loud that a body can’t hear itself think.”
“Aunt Birdie and Uncle Mac didn’t mention-”
“There’ll be much they haven’t told you about the goings-on at Dunroamin, but” – the housekeeper caught her eye – “you’ll be hearing it soon enough.”
“Aunt Birdie said there are difficulties.” Cilla stepped aside as the older woman thrust the casserole pot back into the chaos and shut the closet door. “Do you think someone deliberately messed with the roof?”
“Age and wear damaged the roof and naught else.” Honoria started down the corridor again. “Though I can tell you that your aunt and uncle meant to have the roof repaired some while ago and would have done if business hadn’t taken such a bad turn.”
“Oh, dear.” Cilla hurried after her, hot shower and bed forgotten. “Water drips can be devastating to an old house like this.”
“Exactly.” Honoria didn’t break stride. “That’s just what we suspect certain bodies are hoping.”
“Who would want to hurt Uncle Mac and Aunt Birdie?”
“Someone up to no good.” The housekeeper’s voice was sharp. “One thing is sure as I’m standing here” - she stopped before a magnificent carved oak door, a hand on the latch – “it isn’t ghosties what’s causing the furor.”
Cilla blinked. “Ghosties?”
Behind her, she thought she heard a rustle of wool. Kilted wool – she knew the sound well - coming closer as if to listen in on their conversation.
Unfazed, the housekeeper sniffed.
“Aye, ghosties, if one was of a mind to accept such twaddle.”
“I thought you believed in them?”
“Ach, and I do right enough.” Her tone rang with conviction. “But there are ghosties and ghosties. I’ll no’ be buying that a gaggle of them want to scare away Dunroamin’s paying residents.”
Leaning close, she pinned Cilla with a stare. “I don’t just work here, see you? I live and breathe this house. I know every creaking floorboard, every groan in the woodwork, each sticking window, and which shutters rattle in the night wind.”
She straightened, her hand still on the door latch. “I also know Dunroamin’s ghosts. The bogles we have here, such as poor Margaret MacDonald, love Dunroamin and would never seek to frighten folk.”
Cilla wasn’t so sure about that, but before she could voice an opinion, the housekeeper swung open the library door and three things leapt at her, chasing Honoria and her bogles from her mind.
One, she’d never seen so much plaid.
Though the requisite mahogany bookcases lined the walls and the handsome fire surround gleamed in the expected black marble and the usual ancestral portraits held pride of place throughout the large room, a palette of tartanware covered every other inch of available space.
Heavy velvet drapes styled the windows in a sett of deep red squares and stripes. Instead of the customary Persian carpets, richly-patterned plaid rugs leant warmth to the wide-planked polished floor, while tartan wallpaper peeked from between the bookshelves, gilded picture frames, and occasional molting stag heads.
Even the scattered sofas and wing chairs welcomed in various-shaded tartan dress, some offering the additional comfort of several folded plaid blankets and stout tartan-covered ottomans.
In short, the library bulged plaid.
Cilla blinked, the colorful array almost hurting her eyes.
The housekeeper, clearly immune, strode past her into the candlelit room. Looking wholly in her element, she made straight for a long tartan-draped table near a wall of tall mullioned windows.
Spread for tea with generous servings of oatcakes and cheeses, cakes and chocolate-dipped biscuits, and large silver platters of salmon and thin-sliced roast beef, it wasn’t the tartan tablecloth that took Cilla by surprise – not after seeing the room - but the two multi-armed candelabrums illuminating the tea goods.
Real wax tapers burned in the wall scones, as well, and a quick glance around showed no modern lighting at all.
Today’s world treads easy at Dunroamin and our residents appreciate feeling embraced by earlier times.
Aunt Birdie’s words – spoken years ago in Yardley – rushed back to Cilla now. Dunroamin really was like a living history museum; a place where those who loved old things could take refuge.
Only the dear old things she’d expected to find crowding the library listening to Uncle Mac’s afternoon tea talk by the fireside, proved so scarce in number they could be counted on one hand.
And that was the second thing that surprised her upon entering the room.
The third, and most alarming, was Uncle Mac himself.
Larger than life as he was, he couldn’t be missed and Cilla spotted him right away, despite the dimness of the shadowy, candlelit room.
As expected, he strode to and fro before a crackling hearth fire, his pipe in one hand and a glittering crystal dram glass in the other.
He was definitely holding court, emphasizing each booming word with a grand flourish of his smoke-trailing pipe. His reflection in the huge gilt mirror above the mantelpiece gave the illusion that two Uncle Macs paced there, kilt-swinging, red-faced, and agitated.
Cilla froze.
She lifted a hand to her breast and shook her head.
Then she blinked and knuckled her eyes, but she hadn’t been mistaken.
Uncle Mac – a man who defined merriment - was furious.
And he was ranting about ghosts.
Viking ghosts.
Chapter Four
“Vikings, my eye!”
Mac MacGhee stabbed the air with his pipe. “I dinnae care who says they saw a ghostly band of horn-helmeted Norsemen slinking past my peat banks, I say they saw bog mist!”
Cilla stared at him, too surprised to st
ep out of the shadows near the door.
She did press a hand to her cheek. She needed it there to keep her jaw from dropping.
She’d never seen her uncle so upset.
That he was, stood beyond question. His ruddy face glowed apple red, and he’d swelled his great barrel chest like an enraged Highland bull.
“If not bog mist” – he glared at his audience from behind a cloud of cherry-scented smoke - “then sea haar.”
“Here, here.” A dapper looking gentleman with a bald pate and a trim silver mustache puffed at his own pipe and nodded enthusiastic agreement.
Uncle Mac swung toward him. “Next they’ll be seeing mermaids swimming in the Kyle!”
“Jolly right.” Silver mustache shifted in an over-stuffed plaid chair and crossed his legs, revealing heavy hill-walking boots that struck an odd contrast to his neat gray suit. “Mist or moon glow, I say they also took a dram too many before they went to bed.”
“Pah!” A tiny white-haired woman seared him with a stare. “I know what I saw and I’ll not have either of you say me otherwise.”
An equally petite woman caning her way to the well-laden tea table took her side. “Just because neither of you saw them doesn’t mean they weren’t there.”
Reaching the table, she began helping herself to a generous serving of roast beef and boiled potatoes. “Only the other night, I heard whooping out over the moors. Shouts, they were, and in no language of this day!”
“You heard geese.” Uncle Mac glowered at her.
She waved the serving fork at him. “I heard Vikings! I’d recognize their yells anywhere,” she declared, jutting her chin. “I’m of Norse descent, after all.”
Uncle Mac snorted.
Show me a Highlander who isn’t, Cilla thought she heard him grumble beneath his breath.
The first old dear – the white-haired one - leaned forward then. “Leo saw them, too,” she announced, stroking the little black-and-tan dachshund curled on her lap. “He growled at them out my window.”
“Hah!” Silver mustache slapped his thigh. “Like as not, your fool bird was sitting on the ledge.”
“Leo doesn’t growl at Gregor.” The tiny woman sat back in her chair, looking smug. “Only you.”
A flurry of coughs and titters rippled through the library.
“Enough!” Uncle Mac tossed down his whisky and sent a warning look to the other residents.
Silver mustache and the tiny woman exchanged challenging glares.
“Becalm yourselves.” Honoria stepped between them, bearing cups of tea and a plate of chocolate biscuits. “Whatever was seen, we’ll soon get to the bottom of it.”
It was then that Cilla saw the shield.
Round, studded, and looking suspiciously familiar, it appeared to hover in the shadows near one of the Jacobean window bays.
She sucked in her breath when it settled on a cushioned window seat, perfectly upright as if someone had propped it against the leaded panes.
Propped, or held it.
Her heart began to thump and she started to back out of the room, but a swirl of her aunt’s exotic perfume enfolded her, announcing Aunt Birdie’s arrival just as she appeared at Cilla’s side.
Across the room, silver mustache pointed the stem of his pipe at the housekeeper. “I say it’d serve better if you passed around digestive biscuits rather than chocolate ones.”
He slid a narrow-eyed look at the white-haired woman sitting near him. “I’ve some chewable tablets in my room if that should fail.”
“I do not suffer from indigestion.” The woman purposely bit into a chocolate-coated biscuit. “Though” – she dabbed at her mouth with a linen napkin – “you could easily give it to me.”
“Maybe I should just slip up to my room.” Cilla spoke low, her gaze on the shield.
“Oh, don’t mind them.” Aunt Birdie clearly didn’t see the medieval targe. “Those two always bicker.”
“Even so-” Cilla jumped when the shield moved.
Only a few inches, but still…
It’d slid sideways as if someone pushed it out of the way to sit down.
She swallowed.
Aunt Birdie’s eyes twinkled, her attention still on the two warring residents.
Happily oblivious to anything else, she hooked an elegantly manicured hand through Cilla’s arm.
“That’s Colonel Achilles Darling from Bibury in Gloucestershire - the northern Cotswolds – and Violet Manyweathers,” she confided, leaning close. “The colonel joined us after his wife’s death. Word is, his one great love was a Strathnaver lass from these parts. He never forgot her, or so the tale goes, so when he could, he came north to finally be near her.”
“Violet Manyweathers?”
Surely the two weren’t lovebirds.
“Oh, no.” Aunt Birdie shook her head. “The colonel’s long lost love died years ago. She’s buried nearby. Violet is local. She was born in Melness, the tiny crofting hamlet just down the road.”
Cilla nodded.
It was hard to concentrate knowing he sat in the window seat.
She glanced down, making certain that her top wasn’t clinging too tightly. It’d been bad enough to have her nipples pucker when he’d swept her with such a heated look in the stair tower.
Something told her then and there that he was a breast man and that was definitely where he’d fixed his gaze now.
She could feel it sliding over her. Dipping into the deep-shadowed swells of her cleavage and gliding round to caress and explore every other inch of her. No man had ever looked at her so boldly and his intense perusal sent a sweet, hot-pulsing thrill beating all through her.
It was a very pleasurable sensation.
Embarrassed, she tilted her chin and hoped her aunt would think the room’s chill was responsible for any visible shivers.
Just now, Aunt Birdie’s gaze was on Dunroamin’s residents. Smiling, she turned back to Cilla. “Violet Manyweathers-”
“Manyweathers doesn’t sound like a Strathnaver name.” Cilla jumped on the chance to get her mind off of Mr. Really-Wasn’t-There and his heated stares.
She also didn’t want to think of Margaret MacDonald. Dunroamin’s onetime nursery ghost whose sad plight, if true, implied that ghosts could have wholly legitimate reasons for walking among the living.
If her ghost had a valid reason for haunting Dunroamin, she was sure she didn’t want to know it. Hoping she looked no more than mildly curious, she tapped a finger to her chin and pretended to ponder.
“Are you sure Violet’s from around here?”
“Oh, yes.” Aunt Birdie glanced at the tiny woman. “She married an Englishman – Mr. Manyweathers of London – and, like the colonel, decided to come here when she found herself alone. She missed the far north and claims she never adjusted to London.”
“And Gregor?” Cilla already knew Leo the dachshund was Dunroamin’s resident mascot. “Violet’s bird?”
Aunt Birdie smiled. “He’s a great skua. Violet-”
“A great what?” Cilla’s eyes widened.
Now she did have something else to think about. She’d expected a canary or a parakeet.
“Great skua,” Aunt Birdie repeated. “They’re large brown predatory birds also known as bonxies.” Her gaze flicked to the colonel. “Violet found him abandoned with an injured wing when he was just a wee little thing. It was quite a sensation as bonxies usually nest in the moorlands of the Northern Isles. Violet nursed him back to health. She set him free in due time, but he decided to stay.”
“In her room?”
“Heavens, no.” Aunt Birdie’s eyes twinkled. “Gregor lives outside, though he doesn’t stray far. What he does do” – she leaned close to whisper in Cilla’s ear – “is make the colonel’s life miserable. That’s why he wears those heavy boots and a deerstalker hat.”
Cilla glanced at him, taking a closer look at the tweedy dual-rimmed cap with the telltale side flaps on a small table beside his chair.
“The bird dive bombs him?”
Aunt Birdie nodded. “He has, yes. That’s what bonxies do. They swoop down on anyone they view as a threat. Gregor” – she waved a hand as if to lighten the bird’s transgressions – “mostly just pecks at the colonel’s feet whenever he dares to go outside.”
Cilla laughed. She couldn’t help it. “That’s why the colonel and Violet don’t get along?”
“One reason, yes.” Aunt Birdie urged her forward. “The colonel can be difficult. He’s a bit particular. But come, meet everyone for yourself.”
Before Cilla let her aunt pull her out of the shadows, she slid a glance at the window bay.
There –she was sure - sat the only soul she really wanted to meet.
Well, the only one she’d wish to meet if he were really there.
But the shield was gone.
And if he was still sitting there – or standing for all she knew – she couldn’t see him.
Not even a dust mote stirred.
She did see the drifting mist outside. It was thinning, though, and pale evening sun now glinted off the tall, many-paned windows. Her ghost wasn’t anywhere in sight. Instead, prisms of light slanted across the polished oaken floor and scattered tartan rugs.
Through the windows, she caught glimpses of a paved terrace hemmed by an herbaceous border and a wide sweep of velvet-green lawn, the latter bounded by a dry-stone wall that looked to be smothered beneath a welter of climbing roses.
Beyond the wall, rough slopes of heather and rock-strewn moors rolled steadily away toward the majestic Ben Loyal, the empty hills sparse save scattered thickets of yellow-blooming whin and broom.
Cilla shivered.
She didn’t know about horn-helmeted Vikings, but regardless of Uncle Mac’s opinion, she could well imagine other kinds of ghosts choosing such a wild and lonely landscape as their favorite haunting ground.
Kilted ghosts, long disappeared from history, but still alive in the Celtic twilight.
Her heart began to thump.
She could almost see her hot-eyed Highlander ghost out there.
Proud, daring, and take-her-breath-away handsome, he’d stride the hills, ever ready to blood his sword in the name of clan and glory.