A bluidy windbag!
A gust of chill air blasted in through the windows as if to prove it. The pub door flew open and slammed shut with a loud bang.
“Oh, dear.” Aunt Birdie placed a hand to her breast. She glanced first at the door, then the windows. “It would seem a storm is brewing.”
Indeed, my lady.
Aunt Birdie’s face went suspiciously noncommittal.
Cilla’s heart pounded wildly. Her nipples almost hurt. Now she knew he was here. A snort and two comments—all delivered in that buttery-rich burr—was more than enough proof.
His tone and the nature of his comments revealed he didn’t like the Scottish author, the entrepreneur, as Aunt Birdie called the man.
Cilla wanted to know why.
With luck, talking about the author would keep her grounded if Hardwick’s sexy voice rolled past her ears again. It didn’t matter what he said, not even that he sounded really annoyed. It was the way he said things, his Scottish accent, that curled her toes and sent a flash flood of heat tingling across her tender parts.
“So-o-o”—she tried to keep her own voice level—“why does Wee Hughie have a busload of Aussies trailing after him?”
“Did you not see the placard outside, next to the hotel door?” Aunt Birdie looked surprised. “It has
HIRE A HIGHLANDER scrawled in blue across the top. I can’t believe you missed it.”
“If I’d seen the name Wee Hughie I would’ve noticed. And HIRE A HIGHLANDER would’ve stopped me in my tracks.” Cilla curled her fingers around her pint of Stella Artois lager, squeezing lightly.
She needed focus.
Aunt Birdie didn’t need to know that her mind had been so occupied on her tramp down the hill that she’d marched straight past the hotel. She’d only discovered her mistake when the little whitewashed croft houses she’d been passing grew sparser, the fields between larger, and the sheep in the fields more plentiful.
She’d been walking blind.
Worrying about the devil at her window that hadn’t been a mask and fretting about Hardwick.
Especially Hardwick.
Thinking about him still, she looked at her aunt. “What does a poster have to do with Wee Hughie’s groupies? I don’t see the connection.”
Aunt Birdie laughed. “Think again, dear. The poster shows why they’re with him. Wee Hughie MacSporran runs Heritage Tours. Guiding, some call it. Anyone can sign on, and he then escorts them around the Highlands, regaling them with tales along the way.”
“Oh.” Cilla nodded, not really caring.
She was too busy concentrating on willing her nipples to de-pucker.
She couldn’t prove it, but she’d swear he was staring right at them. Maybe even using ghostly magic to make her imagine slick, hot tongue swirls circling first one, then the other nipple.
That’s what it felt like, anyway.
She frowned and reached for a pretzel, determined to ignore the sensation.
“Wee Hughie’s done an Australian book tour or two,” her aunt was saying. “These women are fans. Apparently, they sign on for a Highland tour with him every summer.”
Cilla blinked. “What?”
Aunt Birdie made a gesture. “You’ll soon meet Wee Hughie yourself. He’s scheduled to speak in Dunroamin’s library next weekend.”
Another gust of icy wind swept in through the windows, this time lifting a small stack of coasters off the bar and sending them cartwheeling through the air.
The barkeep returned then, pushing in through a door behind the bar. He carried their order on a tray, jacket potatoes with cheese and baked beans. Coming straight to their table, he plunked down the plates with an apologetic smile. Then he scurried, unasked, to refresh their drinks, his young face flushed from hurrying.
“Sorry you had to wait.” Quick as lightning, he turned away, scooping up the scattered coasters on his hasty retreat to the bar. “There’s an event in the An Garbh this e’en,” he tossed over his shoulder before disappearing through the door he’d used to enter the pub. “Keeping us right busy they are, just!”
“Goodness.” Aunt Birdie looked after him, then put down her glass of soda water and went to the bar. A few books and a little pile of flyers were displayed there. Taking one of each, she returned to the table. “Here. These will give you an idea of who Wee Hughie is.”
Cilla set down the fork she’d been about to plunge into her baked potato and picked up the book. The title, Royal Roots, jumped out at her. Several inches tall, the words blazed across the top of the book in bright gold letters. A subtitle, A Highlander’s Guide to Discovering Illustrious Forebears, followed in smaller lettering. The rest of the cover showed a tall, rather corpulent Highlander posing in front of the famous Bannockburn statue of Robert the Bruce.
The flyer announced a series of “Meet Your Ancestors” tea-and-talk events to be held at the Bettyhill Museum, the Loch Croispol Bookshop and Restaurant in Balnakeil, and—no surprise—Dunroamin Castle Residential Care Home.
Humph.
The snort came so close to Cilla’s ear she would’ve sworn he was leaning over her shoulder. But before she could glance around, the main pub door opened and closed again, this time falling shut with a quiet click.
An almost imperceptible little snick that sounded oddly final.
Cilla frowned. The book and the flyer felt suddenly cold beneath her fingers.
She set them down, not missing that the chill wind had stopped gusting through the window. The whole feel of the air shifted and changed. That last humph and the closing of the door clinched it. If Hardwick had been there, perhaps watching her from the menu table, he’d now left.
Which had a silver lining—she could finally bring up the subject she’d been dying to discuss.
And Wee Hughie MacSporran seemed a perfect way to ease into it.
“What’s a ‘Meet Your Ancestors’ tea?” She pitched her voice casually. “Does Wee Hughie introduce a parade of ghostly forebears during his presentations?”
Aunt Birdie almost choked on a bit of baked potato. “Oh!” She dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. “That would be interesting, my dear. The man claims direct descent from Robert Bruce and just about every other notable in Scottish history. It’d be quite a roll call of luminaries if he summoned them all to his lectures.”
“So what does he do?” Cilla hoped her aunt didn’t see her nervousness.
“He tells tales about them.” Aunt Birdie waved an airy hand. “He’ll surely regale us with anecdotes from his famed ancestors and then do a question-and-answer round. Supposedly, he can spin a yarn about your own family history if you challenge him with a Scottish surname.”
Cilla looked down, toying with her food. “Maybe he’ll know something about the Eggertsons?”
“Could be.” Aunt Birdie took a bite of baked beans. “He’s rumored to have extensive knowledge of the clans, so he might well know of other names.”
“I wonder if he would know anything about a place called Seagrave or”—Cilla drew a breath, then rushed on—“a medieval family named de Studley?”
“You could certainly ask him.” Aunt Birdie smiled, her deep blue eyes crinkling at the corners. “Seagrave rings a faint bell. I believe it’s a ruin on the east coast, south of Aberdeen. Rather like the touristy Dunnot-tar, but left wild, totally untouched except by time.”
“What about the de Studleys?”
Aunt Birdie shook her head. “I can’t say that I’ve heard of them, my dear. Sorry.”
. . . Can’t say that I’ve heard of them.
The words hit Hardwick like a kick in the shins.
He winced and stepped deeper into the shadows near the door. To be sure, Birdie MacGhee had never heard of his family. He’d left no issue, and those who’d remained and could have, though not directly cursed, met their own untimely ends until the line was no more.
Even Seagrave, mighty holding that it’d been, had suffered. Other families came and went, tearing down towers or add
ing wings until, ultimately, they, too, disappeared into the mists of time.
Leaving Seagrave to crumble into the sea, stone by stone, until the curse ran its course. A sorry state and the very reason he had no business standing here, deliberately letting her think he’d gone.
Souls who insisted on peeking beneath rocks were bound to discover things they didn’t want to see.
Or hear.
Yet he couldn’t leave.
She drew him like a lodestone. And try as he might, he couldn’t blank his mind to the image of her tilting her head back for his kiss, her face going all soft and dreamy and her lips just beginning to part. A brief glimpse of the tip of her tongue to tantalize and en-flame him.
He clenched his hands, squeezing them tight when she shifted on her chair, causing her jacket to gape slightly, allowing him a splendid view of her full, round breasts and hardened, thrusting nipples.
A sweet temptation he had no business ogling, not that he could tear his gaze away. Nor did it help that she was looking right at him, her eyes earnest and her brows drawn together. Almost as if she saw him despite the cloaking shield he’d willed around himself.
There were, he knew, some souls who could see ghosts always, regardless of a ghost’s honest attempts at remaining unseen.
Or, he strongly suspected, times when the pull between two souls was so powerful that the veils separating time and place just ceased to exist.
Sure that was the way of it, his heart started a slow, hard beating. A rush of warmth swept him, filling him with a deep longing that had nothing to do with her nipples, much as he burned to get his hands and mouth on them.
He frowned, almost willing himself wholly visible until her gaze shifted past him to the windows and the direction of Castle Varrich. She stared out at the ruin, but her mind was clearly turned inward.
Hardwick’s body tensed and he narrowed his eyes on her, waiting. Seven hundred years of womanizing let him know that she was about to make some important pronouncement.
“Aunt Birdie . . .” She returned her attention to her aunt, her tone proving him right. “There was another reason I wanted us to eat here before going back to Dunroamin. I need to talk to you alone.”
Hardwick’s ears perked.
Chivalry forgotten, he sidled nearer.
“About Grant?” One of Birdie MacGhee’s brows arched ever so slightly. “You know you have my sympathies.”
“It isn’t Grant.” A pink tinge stained Cilla’s cheeks. “I really am over him. Truth is, looking back, I can’t imagine what I ever saw in him.”
A jolt of triumph shot through Hardwick.
He edged closer. So near that her clean, fresh scent swirled up to tempt him. Nae, to bewitch him, because for one crazy-mad moment he forgot he was a ghost! His lips started to curve in a slow, seductive smile. The kind designed to melt a woman’s knees and make her all hot and achy inside. But then he remembered his situation and frowned instead.
As if she knew her power over him and meant to plague him even more, she leaned forward and her shoulder brushed lightly against him.
He froze, not daring to move as the warmth of her touch spiraled through him. Not just warm but golden and prickly, it spread like honey fire, flaming his blood. A fierce longing gripped him, and for two pins he would’ve grabbed her, yanking her to her feet and into his arms. He’d steal her breath with hot, furious kisses and free her breasts, letting his hands slide over them, kneading and plumping.
But then a shadow fell across the room, the brief darkening reminding him of the futility of such desires.
Even so, he reached to touch a finger to her cheek, savoring its silky-smooth softness, knowing she’d think it was the wind.
She blinked in response, her breath catching audibly.
“Grant was jerk,” she said then, speaking to her aunt but looking right at him. “He wasn’t even a good kisser. Actually, he was a bad one.”
Hardwick’s heart soared.
All ears now, he flicked his wrist and conjured a three-legged stool to sit on, plunking it down a good—safe—two tables away from hers.
He dropped onto it, waiting.
“Well?” Her aunt was looking at her, too. “What did you want to talk about?”
“Ghosts.” She cleared her throat. “I want to talk about ghosts.”
Her aunt didn’t bat an eye. “A-ha!” She smiled. “So you ran into Gudrid the Viking maid up at the ruin? I rather hoped she’d show herself to you.”
Hardwick sat forward, eager for her reply.
“No-o-o, I didn’t see her.” She sounded distracted. “What I really wanted to know was”—she paused, her fork poised over her baked beans—“if Uncle Mac had been a ghost when you met him, would you still have fallen in love with him?”
“What—?” Her aunt’s eyes widened.
“Don’t make me repeat it, please.” She set down her fork, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I feel silly enough already. Just imagine Uncle Mac had been a ghost. Not a Casper-like ghost, but real-seeming. Like”—she bit her lip, clearly searching for words—“a flesh-and-blood man. A really gorgeous and sexy man, too.”
Hardwick grinned.
She was talking about him. He knew it as sure as Bran of Barra’s beard was red.
Her aunt angled her head, studying her through narrowed eyes. “A ghost? Your Uncle Mac?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “What would you have done?”
“Well . . .” Birdie MacGhee gazed out the window, appearing to consider. Then her face brightened. Turning back to her niece, she slapped the table with her hand, silver armbands jingling. “I’d have jumped his bones, my dear,” she laughed. “No pun intended.”
“Aunt Birdie!” Cilla felt her face flame. “I was serious.”
“So am I.” Aunt Birdie sat back in her chair, nursing her soda water. “I was much younger than you when I met your uncle. And very romantic.” She winked. “I’m quite sure I would have fallen for him, yes.”
“Despite the impossibility of it?” Cilla remained skeptical.
“The impossibility of it—the romance—would have spurred me on.” A dreamy look entered Aunt Birdie’s eyes. “Remember, I’m the one your mother says is ‘out with the fairies.’ I would have hoped to find a spell or whatnot to make things work out for us.”
“I think you mean that.”
“I do.”
Looking wholly in her element, Aunt Birdie lifted an arm and examined the bangles on her wrist. “I’ll prove it to you,” she said, fingering one of them. “Once, well before I met Mac, I stayed in a lovely castle hotel near Edinburgh. Dalhousie Castle, now a luxurious tourist resort, yet preserved as one of the finest thirteenth-century strongholds you’ll find in all broad Scotland.”
Cilla felt a flutter in her belly, knew her aunt had more to tell. “What happened?”
“Ah, well—” Aunt Birdie laughed, sat straighter in her chair. “I was given the hotel’s de Ramseia suite in the oldest part of the castle, a wonderfully re-created medieval bedchamber deep in the castle’s vaulted basement.”
“You saw a ghost there?” Cilla pounced on the possibility.
Aunt Birdie’s gaze went past her. “Let’s just say that Dalhousie’s five-hundred-year-old well was in my room. And”—she looked back at Cilla—“it gave me certain ideas.”
“Like what?”
Aunt Birdie studied her arm bangles again. “The well,” she began, speaking slowly, “was in a corner of the room. For safety’s sake, it’d been fitted with a clear glass covering and an iron grill, but little spotlights shone into the shaft. You could look right down into it, clear to the bottom, where the water winked back up at you.”
“You loved it.” Cilla knew her aunt.
“More than that, it fascinated me.” Aunt Birdie’s voice went soft, distant. “Highlighted as the well was, combined with the room’s period furnishings, made it more than easy to lie awake at night and imagine a dashing warrior knight climbing up out o
f the shaft to ravish me!”
Cilla smiled. “But one didn’t.”
“Sadly, no.” Aunt Birdie shook her head. “But”—she winked—“had such a gallant appeared, ghostly or otherwise, you can bet I would have considered his appearance a gift of the cosmos and taken full advantage!”
“You know . . . I think I believe you.”
“You better.” Aunt Birdie reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “Despite your uncle’s blustering, there are things in this world that just can’t be explained. That doesn’t mean for an instant that they aren’t real. And remember”—her eyes started twinkling again—“this is—”
“Scotland,” Cilla finished for her, “a magical land where such things just might happen.”
“And do.”
“Oh, Aunt Birdie, I—” a sudden burst of wind shook the nearby windows, splattering rain against the glass and through the opening, onto the edge of their table.
“Goodness me!” Aunt Birdie leapt to her feet and carried her chair around to Cilla’s side. “We’d best finish up and be on our way,” she added, reaching for her plate. “I hadn’t realized the weather was turning so quickly.”
“I saw storm clouds earlier but forgot about them.” Cilla spoke a half-truth.
He’d taken her mind off all else.
And now, with the increasing wind moaning around the eaves of the pub and rain pelting the walls, the magic moment had passed.
She’d have to wait for another opportunity to tell Aunt Birdie about her sexy ghost.
Her aunt might be receptive, but her mind was no longer on some romantic castle hotel and its medieval well. Now she was thinking about the long drive back to Dunroamin in the rainy dark and on slick, wet roads.
Slick, wet roads made more hazardous by sheets of drifting mist.
“I can’t believe it’s so dark out there.” Cilla glanced at the windows. Light from the hotel shone out into the road, but otherwise the world had turned a deep, thundery gray. “I thought—”
“It will pass.” Aunt Birdie sounded confident. “As soon as the storm blows over, the night sky will be as shining bright as always this time of year.”
Tall, Dark, and Kilted Page 14