Everlastin' Book 1

by Mickee Madden

  Beth lowered her arms to her sides, clenching and unclenching her hands. “You're dead, remember? Besides, darlin', I thought I was your happiness. More blarney?”

  Twelve gazes volleyed to Lachlan's corner, but he was too livid to pay them any heed. “Enough, womon! Get down from tha' table, lest I haul you down maself and lay you cross ma knee!”

  In response, Beth knelt in front of a startled woman. “You're Viola Cooke, aren't you?”

  The woman's pale eyes widened as she bobbed her head.

  “I'm Beth.”

  “Hel...lo.”

  Beth smiled. “Do you like my dress?” Standing, she gracefully lifted the skirt, turned in place, and asked the group collectively, “Does it make me look like a bloody spook?”

  While two men smiled up at her—one without a tooth in his mouth—most of the others at the table shook their heads. One elderly woman gave a shrug and squinted to have a better look at the gown.

  “He doesn't like this gown,” Beth sighed, gazing with mock despair at Lachlan. “And he doesn't believe women should have a mind of their own.”

  To Lachlan's stark dismay, the group fixed deadpan looks on him. Someone in the room clucked in disapproval.

  Viola was obviously dumbstruck by the whole turn of events. And to make matters worse, Lachlan had fully materialized without realizing it.

  “Tha' Ingliss swine put you up to this!” he fumed. He attempted to approach the table, but his legs got caught up in the chains and he slapped the floor the length of his body. He was up on his feet like a shot, his furious scowl savaging his features. “Come down here!” he demanded, clumsily shucking out of the chains until he was free of them all. “I want to have a word wi' you...in private.”

  “You're upsetting our guests, darling,” Beth drawled, poised like the belle of a ball atop the table. “Now stop acting like an ass.”

  “Ass!” he squealed in sheer exasperation. He offered a simpering look of apology to those about the table. “The transition has affected her mind,” he rushed to say. “Ma poor love—”

  “Lachlan, stick it in your ear.”

  The frustrated laird's eyes rolled up to issue her a warning, but Beth went on, “Ladies and gentlemen, I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you to end your meeting. His lordship—”

  “Dammit to hell, Beth!”

  Lachlan's roar sent the group scrambling from their chairs. Viola remained behind while the others hastened to the hall door. When she looked up, it was to see the new mistress of the house looking kindly down at her.

  “I am sorry, Miss Cooke. Perhaps another time.”

  After a single nod, Viola Cooke left the room and discreetly closed the door behind her. Now that they were alone, Lachlan slammed his fist on the table.

  “You had to do it! You just had to do it! Why, Beth? I told you it was business!”

  “Am I or am I not the mistress of this house?”

  “Aye, but shrewishness is no' necessarily a condition o' tha' position!”

  Beth sat on the table then slipped to the floor and stood on her bare feet. Lachlan's anger permeated the air between them, crackling as if owning of life. She faced him, her own turbulent emotions shielded by an outer calm.

  “I'm leaving.”

  “Leavin' again, you say? to sulk?”

  She searched his ruggedly handsome face for a long moment. What she was about to say would hurt him, but she had come to realize this was the only way to penetrate his stubbornness. “I'm passing on, Lachlan. With or without you.”

  Painful sensations gripped her. Lachlan looked as if she had just slid a batter knife slowly into his heart. “I can't talk to you. I can't reason with you.”

  “The Ingliss.”

  His flatly-spoken words brought a tinge of anger to her cheeks. “Why do you always blame everything on them? I'm leaving because it sickens me to live with a man motivated by hatred! We don't belong here, Lachlan. Roan was right about one thing: this world belongs to the living!”

  “I love you.”

  The words welled tears in Beth's eyes. His tone and bearing were lifeless. “No. I don't believe you do, Lachlan. I conveniently died here for you, but I don't think we would have gone beyond testing the chemistry between us under normal circumstances. You've lived without compassion too long. You use something akin to it when you want something.”

  “Stop,” Lachlan murmured, leaning against the table as his legs weakened beneath him. “You dinna mean wha' ye’re sayin'.”

  “I've had plenty of time to think this through,” she choked. “It's no good between us.”

  “Tis the Inglisses you side wi'! Ever since tha' mon came to this house, you've been growin' more and more distant wi' me!”

  “No.” Beth's body began to shimmer then fade. “It's the darkness in you separating us, Lachlan. You allow it to keep you chained to an existence that goes against the laws of nature. I won't share in this bondage. I'm sorry, but sometimes we have to hurt the one we love, to save them from themselves.”

  “Beth—”

  Lachlan stared with stark anguish at the emptiness where Beth had stood moments before. He refused to accept that she was really gone—had passed beyond the grayness to a plane of existence out of his reach.

  They were more than lovers! She had to know she was his life!

  His despondent eyes searched the shadowy stillness of the room. Loneliness returned ten-fold upon him, suffocating him as it closed in tighter and tighter, as if to squeeze him out of existence.

  She was hiding from him again, but she would return. Between now and then, he would have to come to understand what exactly it was she expected of him. But right now a fire was twisting in his gut, and there was only one way to relieve himself of its tormenting presence.

  * * *

  He appeared in the carriage house on a gust of wind, startling Roan as he was about to stretch out on a cot in the corner of the room. When Roan saw him standing several yards away, hatred a very real mask on his livid face, Roan plucked up a blanket from the cot and swung it over his thermals to help ward off the cold of his temporary quarters.

  “Ever hear o' knockin'?” Roan asked.

  “Wha' did you say to Beth?”

  Roan didn't answer right away. When he did, his words came out on a sigh of irritability. “When, old mon? I've spoken to the lady a number o' times.”

  “This eve.”

  “Aye, we spoke at the graves.”

  “Abou' wha'?”

  Roan scowled. “It was a private conversation, Baird.”

  “Private, you say? I wouldna have been part o' tha' wee talk now, would I?”

  “Some,” Roan admitted begrudgingly. His feet were numb from the cold emanating from the cement floor. “Wha' is this abou'? Or are you simply in the mood to harass someone?”

  “She's gone, Ingliss,” Lachlan said through clenched teeth. “And I want to know wha' stirred her up this eve!”

  “Wha' do you mean 'gone'?”

  “Some place I canna sense her!”

  Roan was genuinely perplexed. Beth had sworn earlier she would never leave Lachlan. What had happened since to change her mind?

  Roan stiffened defensively when Lachlan closed the distance between them. He read rage in the ghost's eyes, but he was also sure he read desperation, and it touched him.

  “Wha' was said!”

  “She mostly defended you,” Roan said, his brow furrowed in thought. “Are you sure she's really...gone?”

  Placing his hands on his hips, Lachlan clipped, “Why would she have cause to defend me, I wonder?”

  “Och, mon, she wanted one o' us to see reason.”

  “And?”

  “No' a thin'— Wait.” Roan drew the blanket about him more tightly. “She asked if you'd paid me.”

  It seemed incredible, but Lachlan's face grew more taut.

  “You told her I let you know abou' the jewels.”

  “Aye.”

  Roan swallowed. He was vi
olently shivering, but he realized it was not all from the cold. It was an emotional response to the anguish emanating from his enemy. “Wha' I said was no' in harsh words. I thought yer ploy amusin' and childish.”

  “You lyin' snake-in-the-grass!”

  “I'm no thief, Baird. And I've never known a good enough reason to lie abou' anythin'. If she has gone on, it's yer doin', no' mine!”

  “Ye're fired, Ingliss.”

  “Tha' truly breaks ma heart.”

  The air about Lachlan crackled with electricity. “I've a mind to cram yer sarcasm down yer miserable throat. Dinna ever come back here. You'll no' like wha'll be waitin' for you.”

  Lachlan turned and lethargically began to walk from the carriage house. Roan watched him, emotions warring within him. He was certain Beth had not been angry when he'd last seen her-disappointed, maybe.

  What had happened in the last hour to make her change her mind about Lachlan?

  Sinking onto the cot, he scratched his nose with a blanket-covered finger.

  “Why do you care?” he muttered. “Baird will follow her.”

  He looked in the direction the laird had gone.

  Roan Ingliss didn't want to believe that something he said had sent the woman on. For some inexplicable reason, Lachlan's anguish touched him—deeply disturbed him. The man had been dead for one-hundred-forty-nine years! But Roan had responded to him as he would have to any man in such misery.

  Closing his mind off from the turmoil of his thoughts, he stretched out on the cot and waited for sleep to deliver him from his conscience.

  Chapter 13

  Winter thoroughly blanketed the land. From Lachlan's vantage point, a stark white world glistened beneath opulent moonlight. Downy snow swirled about the tower, swept up upon the minute tides of energy he was unknowingly frittering away. Loneliness had driven him to seek visual solace. Since dawn that morning, he had remained atop the tower, watching the day play upon the land he so dearly cherished. But he knew, inexorably, he would be drawn back into the house. In the blink of an eye, he would find himself staring up at Beth's portrait, and the terrible emptiness he'd known the past weeks would again seize every part of him.

  The torment of her absence shadowed him, walked abreast with his ever-deepening frustration. If only he had one more chance to talk to her. One more chance to understand what she expected of him.

  His grudge was part of the package. He certainly didn't love her less because of her temper.

  His attention became drawn to a pair of weaving lights a short distance from his private access road. Although he'd never ridden in a motor carriage, he could well imagine how treacherous were the icy avenues. As the lights drew closer, he leaned over one of the crenellations and tried to focus better on the vehicle. Then, as if in slow motion, he saw the lights come up onto his property. The vehicle slid rightward, and he straightened up. A sickening, echoing crash was followed by the blare of a horn.

  He froze in disbelief, but the incessant trumpeting from the vehicle prompted him to react. Vaporizing, he glided through the air then materialized at the roadside by the accident scene. The vehicle had gone off the drive and plunged down a steep embankment. The front of it now was bent around a massive oak. Although the engine was no longer running, the horn continued to ravage the otherwise stillness of the night. Steam rose from the beneath the accordioned hood.

  Lachlan sucked in a sharp breath as a small face became visible in the rear window angled up at him. Scrambling down the embankment, he was beside the car when two other visages pressed against the rear side window.

  Children.

  Fear lanced him when he attempted to open the door and his hand passed through the metal. A cry of outrage rose in his throat, but he quelled it in fear he would frighten the children more than they were already. He could hear their little fists pounding on the glass, hear their cries.

  The horn shrilled on, adding to his disoriented state.

  He forced his attention to the slumped figure at the steering wheel.

  An unconscious woman.

  Passing his arms through the vehicle door, he made a futile attempt to right her in the seat. Self-recrimination pounded down on him. He had wasted his precious energies feeling sorry for himself!

  One of the children began to scream.

  Mindless that his transparency was the cause, he leaned into the vehicle. He desperately wanted to console the poor little tykes, but he was in no condition to help whatsoever. Then the largest of the boys shoved open the far door. To Lachlan's further consternation, the children fled out of the vehicle and began to run toward the road beyond the privacy trees.

  Moving with the swiftness of lightning, Lachlan tried everything within his power to herd the children away from the road. He called upon the wind through his will, conjured up lightning to crisscross their path, but the headstrong, frightened children, led by the hand by the eldest of the three, defied the warnings.

  As if his mounting terror for their safety was not enough, he spied lights coming down the road.

  Lachlan hovered, his brain afire, unaware that he appeared to be a greenish, brilliant haze to the driver fastly approaching. The children were forging on, nearly to the road. Lachlan looked from them to the car...back to them. Frustration unmercifully knifed him. If he didn't find a way soon to stop those children....

  At first he thought his vision was playing a cruel joke on him. The vehicle owning of the lights was rolling to a stop a few feet away. Lachlan could do nothing but watch as a man climbed out of the driver's side. The children ran through the laird and into the road.

  “Stop them!” Lachlan called, trying in vain to solidify himself.

  The man in the road seemed at first stunned then, to Lachlan's great relief, he corralled the youngsters in his arms. Lachlan was about to move in closer when the man's head turned in his direction. The moonlight lit upon the man's features.

  “Wha' the hell is goin' on!” Roan bit out, doing his best to calm the boys even now trying to elude his hold.

  “A motor carriage went off ma drive,” Lachlan breathlessly explained, moving to within a foot of Roan. “There's an unconscious woman at the steerin' thin', Ingliss. I canna solidify enough to help her or these poor children.”

  “Lead me ta—”

  “Take yer carriage,” Lachlan advised. “You'll need it to get them to the house. I'll wait for you by the wreck.”

  Muttering beneath his breath, Roan managed to get the boys into the back seat of his Volvo. He grimaced at their shouts and wails as he drove cautiously to the access road and started up the incline. The vehicle slid on the ice, but he adeptly managed to keep control, even when one of the boys began to pound the back of his neck with a fist.

  “Calm down, laddies!” he ordered, bringing the car to a reluctant stop. He focused on Lachlan's dimming haze then turned to visually locate the oldest boy, who was sitting in the far corner, glaring at him. “Wha's yer name, lad?”

  The younger boys slunk in the seat beside their brother, who glared at the driver with undisguised animosity. Roan searched their pale, defiant expressions and sighed.

  “C'mon, laddies. We'll see how yer mither's doin'.”

  When Roan got out of the car, the boys refused to join him. And Roan was not about to trust them alone.

  “Do you see tha' ghost there?” he asked, leaning through the open door. “See the greenish mist, and how it looks like a mon? Weel, lads, he's a personal friend o' mine, and if you don't get yer butts ou' here this minute, I'll ask him to breathe his foul breath o' death on you.”

  The threat brought the boys scrambling out of the vehicle.

  “Whate'er works,” Roan muttered.

  To insure the boys would stay with him, he grabbed two by the coat collar with one hand, and the older boy by the arm with his other hand. He followed Lachlan down the embankment, slipping and sliding as the boys made every attempt to worm free. When he reached the car, he forced the boys to sit on the ground, and
gestured forcefully with a gloved hand.

  “Don't move, laddies!” Roan looked at Lachlan. “If they try to get away, breathe on them.” He gave the ghost a conspiratorial look. “Turn them to stone if necessary.”

  Amused by Roan’s tactics, Lachlan glanced down at the boys and made a fierce scowl. The children huddled together in the snow, staring wide-eyed at the terrible apparition hovering between them and the car.

  Roan checked the driver's pulse. Weak but steady. Unbuckling her seatbelt, he gingerly lifted her into his arms and withdrew her from the wreckage. “Yer mither's goin' to be all right,” he told the boys.

  “She's not our mother!” the oldest boy spat, while the youngest scrambled forward and sunk his teeth into the calf of Roan's right leg.

  Roan released a howl of pain. Lachlan instinctively reached for the boy, who, upon seeing the greenish glowing hands coming toward him, scooted back to his brothers.

  Lachlan straightened up and exchanged a harried look with Roan. Then Roan scowled down at the boys and said huskily, “Whoever she is, I need to get her to the house. Which means, you little monsters, I need for you to behave and do as ye're told. Now get yerselves up and follow me back to the car.”

  “I'm bein' pulled back to the grayness,” Lachlan whispered to Roan.

  “Dammit, mon, pull yerself together. I'm goin' to need a hand wi' this lot.”

  “Canna resist the pull,” Lachlan said as he faded into the night, leaving Roan to deal with three, frightened, obstinate children, and an unconscious woman.

  “Just ma bloody luck,” Roan grumbled as he cast the children a disparaging look. “The one bloody time I want him around, he vaporizes on me.”

  * * *

  It seemed an eternity before Lachlan was able to acquire the energy to solidify again. He had not wasted a moment's time trying to check in on his houseguests; he'd not allowed anything to sway him from focusing on the importance of being fully useful. He had thought a great deal about the Ingliss, which had served as a surprising buffer to the anguish of thinking about Beth. Roan Ingliss had arrived miraculously to compensate for Lachlan's inability to help the living. Whatever had brought the man back to the estate after Lachlan had dismissed him weeks ago, he was grateful. Serious injury could have befallen those children if the situation had been left in his hands.