The Kiss at Midnight

by Sue-Ellen Welfonder

  “Because you are a woman,” her aunt reminded her. “It is a man’s world and ever shall be.”

  “Not if women refuse to be yoked.”

  “There are other ways to achieve one’s goals. I believe my second option will please you. It will certainly allow you to fulfil a few of your dreams.”

  “How?”

  “Through sea travel.”

  Ophelia’s eyes rounded. “Sea travel?”

  Her aunt nodded. “I joined your uncle for lunch at the harbor recently and overheard a discussion concerning the dearth of suitable companions for wives journeying to join their husbands overseas. Men employed on the Continent, mostly. Apparently, many wives aren’t keen on braving the high seas and appreciate company.”

  Ophelia frowned. She knew where her aunt was heading.

  “Such women probably have children,” she said, sure of it. “They will want a seafaring nanny more than anything.”

  “That could well be so.” Her aunt didn’t deny it. “Another woman at hand would be welcome if the rigors of sea travel made a young mother ill.”

  “I do not want to care for another woman’s children.” The very idea was a stab through her heart. “Not on land, nor on sea. Besides, what if I came down with seasickness?”

  “Think of your dreams.” Her aunt tried to persuade her. “You would have adventures, see so much more than Aberdeen. Strange lands and different customs, perhaps even a few of those ghosts that so interest you.”

  Ophelia considered, almost tempted.

  But the truth was she’d had an adventure once – and it’d ended in disaster.

  She couldn’t risk another.

  Pressing a hand to her breast, she recalled the repeated thrusts of the rogue’s ‘wiggle.’ She didn’t finish the thought, knowing where it would lead…

  To wicked musings that went beyond the memory of his kiss, his bold and wonderful tongue. How she craved its plundering even now. Her good sense might rebel, but her body had wakened, her womanly needs, so long in frozen slumber were now restless. Needy, yearning, and dangerous.

  And if Greyson Merrick, a rakish stranger, could fire her blood so quickly…

  Spending time with the children of others would ignite a different kind of need – one that would rip open old wounds and make her bleed all over again.

  Straightening, she spoke as purposefully as she dared. “I do not care for either plan,” she said, holding her aunt’s gaze. “Neither one is for me.”

  “I’m afraid I must press you to choose.” Her aunt’s pity was clear. “Your uncle will make a decision for you if you dally too long.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you?”

  “Of course.” Ophelia fingered her ruined shawl and wondered when its magic had faded. Like as not, when she’d made the mistake of wanting to catch a glimpse of phantom lovers.

  Now…

  She drew a deep breath. “I can wed a Dudding. Or I can become a seafaring governess.”

  “That is the way of it, yes.” Her aunt went to the door. “You have two weeks to decide.”

  “A fortnight?” Ophelia blinked. “That isn’t very long.”

  Her aunt turned, her hand already on the latch. “It is when your uncle plans to visit his Inverness cousins. While there, he also intends to call on an old friend. A most aged man, and a widower. Irwin has indicated he’d like to settle you on his friend – the man is a great landowner and quite wealthy.”

  Ophelia felt herself blanche. “He’d marry me to a doddard?”

  “A rich one, yes. Irwin was quite fond of your parents, you know. Whether you believe it or not, he feels an obligation to see you secure in life, and content.”

  “So I have three choices?” Ophelia’s head was beginning to ache.

  “Four, actually,” her aunt said, looking unhappy. “We can go on as ever. But sooner or later you will push your uncle too far and his patience will snap. If that happens, he could set you before the door and there would be little I could do about it.”

  “I see.” Ophelia did.

  She was doomed.

  So she waited until her aunt left, and then she sank onto the edge of her bed. Lifting her hands, she pressed her fingers to her temples and exhaled a long breath.

  Aunt Sarah had it wrong.

  She didn’t have two weeks to decide. She had a fortnight to escape.

  If only she knew where to run.

  Chapter 3

  Gannet House, Tullie village, several days later…

  “Folk be talking, sir.” The familiar voice came from right behind Greyson. “Didn’t even hear me come in, did you?”

  Smithers.

  Greyson stopped staring down into Tullie Gorge and turned to face his disapproving manservant. “How could anyone hear you when you creep about like a wraith?” Greyson tempered the words with a smile. “You surprised me yet again.”

  The truth was, the house’s ‘great hall’ echoed with so many sounds, an old man’s footsteps were easily lost beneath the creaks and groans of ancient wood and wailing wind.

  “Humph.” Smithers shook his gray-tufted head. “An elephant could run in here and you wouldn’t notice. No’ these days, obsessed as you with that fool bit of cloth.”

  “I am no’ obsessed.”

  “What are you then?” The old man frowned at the piece of silver silk in Greyson’s hand. “Word about town is that this old pile of stone and ghosts has maddened you.”

  “If there are ghosts, they’ll have a reason and are welcome.” Greyson placed the silk on the work table that held his morning tea and the tools he’d been using to pry rotting panels off the vast room’s walls.

  Greyson suspected the wooden sections were Arbuckle Priddy’s attempts to hide the murals he’d painted – exceptional work that made the room look like the great hall of a medieval castle.

  “As long as the spirits do not disturb my night’s rest and leave Wiggle in peace, they have a home here.” He glanced at his pet squirrel, currently more a blur of red fur as the wee beastie dashed about the room, seeking out nuts he’d stashed here and there. “As for gossip, when did I care what the gentry think of me?”

  Smithers – a fellow animal lover even if he wouldn’t admit it - pulled a nut from a pouch at his belt and tossed it to Wiggle before answering.

  “It be more than the fancy folk.” He dusted his hands and frowned at Greyson. “I cannae even go to market without being asked if you’re still pounding on doors in every alley around thon great Mither Kirk, along Union Street, and even around the harbor. Pestering good souls is what you’re doing, and about a maid that doesnae exist.”

  “She was real.” Greyson had no doubt.

  He’d kissed her, hadn’t he?

  He’d held her lush, pliant warmth against him, feeling the thunder of her heart through the layers of their clothes. She’d quickened his pulse, firing his blood, and – the gods help him – she’d stolen his heart, though he still wasn’t sure how she’d managed that. No other lass had ever done so.

  And these days…

  Well, he took care to harness his emotions. He wanted nothing to do with lassies and all the accompanying nuisances that came along with them.

  “She was real,” Smithers repeated Greyson’s words. “Everyone in Aberdeen thinks otherwise.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Think she was a faerie, they do.” Smithers leaned toward him. “It was Samhain Eve.”

  “Aye.” Greyson remembered only too well. “A night of enchantment.”

  “Pah!” His manservant straightened. “‘Tis witchery what’s about then. She was of the fey and she spelled you. That be the way of it. Folk be saying that when you cannae find her, you’ll head up into the hills and stumble across her faery knoll. And then-”

  “I’ll ne’er be seen again, eh?” Greyson finished for him. “Well…” He paused to reach down and rub Wiggle’s head when the squirrel hopped onto his foot, perching there. “Nae worries, old f
riend. There’s too much work to do with this house and Wiggle needs me. I’ll no’ be disappearing anywhere.”

  Smithers shook his head. “You will no’ have any say in it if the faery folk want you.”

  “Then there’s no cause for alarm, is there?” Greyson picked up his hammer, turning it to remove yet another nail from the wood panel he’d been working on. “What will happen, will happen.”

  “‘Tis no’ a laughing matter, sir.”

  “I didnae say it was.”

  The whole affair was earnest and he wouldn’t rest until he’d found the woman.

  She was anything but a faery.

  She was the lass he couldn’t put from his mind.

  An hour later, Greyson lifted the last section of wood from the great hall’s rear wall, his pulse now quickening for a different reason than why he was so determined to knock on every door in Aberdeen until he found the lass from St. Nicholas.

  He’d been right…

  Arbuckle Priddy had painted a row of tall, arch-topped windows across the far side of the room. And now that he’d removed the covering the artist secured over his work, he could see that the result was even more impressive than he’d dared to hope.

  Romantic as artists are, Priddy had chosen to depict the hall not in its medieval glory, but it all the splendor of such a hall’s centuries-long decline. The windows on one end gave tantalizing glimpses of an imagined wing of the castle, showing swaths of mist curling round crumbling turrets and a stretch of age-worn crenellated walling. At the opposite side, one could behold a night-bound sea, the water glistening black and glossed by the moon. Clearly, Priddy wished the viewer to feel as if they stood in the great hall of an ancient clifftop stronghold.

  He’d succeeded.

  Awed, Greyson strode into the middle of the room and turned in a slow circle. His admiration grew with each new detail that caught his eye.

  The far corner held a darkened archway that begged exploration. Or, rather, it would if real. The massive hearth offered a roaring log fire, letting whimsical minds wonder what weary wayfarer might’ve crept inside the empty hall and lit a blaze for warmth? Not far from the fire, a great, shaggy hound was silhouetted against the flames. Greyson suspected the beast was the artist’s beloved Jericho. The dog whose nails he sometimes heard tap-tapping about, just as he also caught the phantom dog’s howls echoing in the stairwell.

  In a nod to atmosphere, Priddy added a few real-looking torches here and there on all four walls. These didn’t burn too brightly, but did cast shadows across the floor. Aged wood planking painted to look strewn with rushes. Greyson had scattered the odd woolen rug to chase the cold, but otherwise, he’d left the painted floor as Priddy intended. He enjoyed entering the room and feeling as if he’d stepped back in time.

  The artist truly had been a master.

  The shame was only that he’d been appreciated too late.

  A tragedy he shared with Greyson’s father, though he could not claim the skill of Arbuckle Priddy.

  Even so, Greyson’s work in restoring the house to its original glory had roots in giving meaning to his father’s wasted talent and the life he’d thrown away for the sake of his art.

  Sometimes Greyson even wondered if his father and Priddy hadn’t led him to Gannet House, their spirits floating along behind him and shooing him down the path with their see-through hands. Two ghostly artists hoping to have him come across the house, purchase it, and set things right?

  His long-suffering, down-to-earth mother would have rolled her eyes at such whimsy.

  His father would have nodded and smiled, saying, Aye, laddie, that is the way of it.

  Greyson didn’t know what he believed.

  But he had his suspicions.

  Behind him, footsteps on the painted floor, proved as so often, that Smithers had no problem with inserting himself into times he surely knew Greyson wished to be alone.

  Secretly more fond of the old man than he’d ever admit, Greyson fought back a frown and turned.

  “There will be no more talk of faeries.”

  “Faeries?” A tiny old woman came forward, her frizzled white hair catching the afternoon light slanting through the room’s real windows. Wizened as she was, and dressed in a black cloak, she could have been one of the long-ago ‘good wives’ who’d fared so poorly in 16th century Scotland.

  But her blue gaze was bright, and she was smiling.

  If anything unusual set her apart, that fell to her footwear for her long black skirts swished as she walked. The motion revealed that her old-fashioned black boots were tied with red plaid laces. Something about them tugged on a memory, but Greyson couldn’t place it, startled as he was by her arrival.

  Either way, she definitely qualified as a crone.

  She’d certainly robbed his tongue.

  Rarely did he find himself speechless. But she’d stopped in the center of his ‘great hall,’ and given her remarkable appearance and that Priddy’s huge painted hearth loomed almost squarely behind her, it was easy to imagine she might be one of his creations, come out of the wall art to greet him.

  He could only stare at her, though he was aware of nape prickles. A few chills also slipped down his spine.

  “Lady…” He found his voice, but the word hung between them. He couldn’t say more.

  “Och, I am no’ so fancy. Devorgilla will do.”

  “Devorgilla, then,” Greyson spoke her name, the chills at the back of his neck increasing.

  “Aye, that be me.” She actually cackled, her gaze now lighting about the room. “This hall should be crowded,” she declared, returning her attention to him. “Filled with rowdy men of steel and, to lead them, a fierce and big-bearded Highland chieftain of old. Someone like the now-legendary Duncan MacKenzie, the Black Stag of Kintail back in the 14th century.

  “Have ye heard of him?” She angled her head, her gaze sharpening as she peered at him. “He lairded it at Eilean Creag Castle no’ too far from Skye. Well-loved by his men, he was. And if his foes didnae like him, they did respect him. His like will ne’er walk the heather again. Such a pity.”

  “Nae, I am no’ aware of the man.” Greyson fought the urge to rub his fists against his eyes, half sure she’d no longer be there when he looked again. “I do know there were many great heroes back then.”

  “That be true.” The crone nodded sagely – almost as if she knew that from fact, and not from history books. “And I see you again dwell beneath an artist’s roof.”

  “Again?” Greyson angled his head, staring at her. A memory stirred, images from his childhood swimming up from the murk. “Devorgilla of Doon! You came to my parents’ home when I was a lad. My mother had a fever and you cured her.”

  “That could be.”

  “It was you.” He smiled, certain – even though he recalled her as an ancient. “But you were…” He didn’t finish, tact stopping him. “That was long ago,” he said instead.

  “I keep my age well, eh?” Her eyes twinkled. “The years cannae catch me, busy as I am traveling about, seeing to folk who need me.” She glanced around the room again, this time setting her hands on her hips. “‘Tis fitting you should land in such a place.”

  “Aye, well. I do feel as if I’ve stepped into another world when I enter this room. Archibald Priddy was a master painter, much more skilled than my father. Alas” – his smile faded – “both men died penniless.

  “Now tell me what brings you here?” Greyson glanced about for Smithers, but the old man was nowhere to be seen. “Did my manservant let you in?”

  “I might have seen him.” She went to the fire – the real one – and held her hands to the flames. “He was watching that wee squirrel of yours in the garden. He didn’t even glance my way, so I let myself in. You dinnae mind?”

  “Never.” Greyson didn’t ask how she knew Wiggle was a pet. He did smile, more memories rising. His father’s awe at her skill. How his parents had whispered of ‘great magic’ after she’d left their village
, his mother and others cured. “You are always welcome at my hearth,” he said, feeling humbled himself. “That will ever be so.”

  “Your da said the same.” She turned from the fire, again facing him. “But my services are rarely needed twice.”

  Greyson’s nape prickled again. “I have everything I need.”

  “Do ye?”

  “Aye.”

  “Then why am I here?” She looked amused, her words making no sense.

  Greyson frowned.

  She brushed at her skirts, then thrust out her foot and peered at her red plaid shoelaces. “I ne’er go where I’m no’ needed, laddie.”

  “Perhaps you called at the wrong house?”

  “You dinnae believe that.” She met his gaze, her eyes lighting again.

  Her red plaid laces glowed – or so Greyson thought until he looked more closely and decided otherwise.

  “So what is this about?” He went to the room’s lone table, a long, rough-planked table paired with equally rustic benches, the set rescued from the muddy bank of the Tullie Gorge.

  A chance find like so many others that had furnished the house.

  Aware that such wise women, healers, or whatever they wished to call themselves were accustomed used to lavish displays of hospitality, Greyson indicated the ale jug and platter of oatcakes Smithers had brought in a short while ago, grumbling that he should eat. “I’d offer you more, alas…”

  He shrugged. “What you see before you is all I have at hand just now.”

  “I came to see you.” The old woman poured herself a cup of ale and reached for an oatcake. “I’m no’ looking for a feast – only a receptive ear.”

  “I have that.” He did. But he also couldn’t shake the feeling she wanted more.

  Regrettably, he wasn’t in a position to help anyone.

  His days of solving the problems of others ended with the sinking of his ship, the Silver Thistle. Perhaps he was doing his part for the memory of unlucky artists such as his father and Arbuckle Priddy by restoring Priddy’s home. But he’d gained the house for a pittance and he did the work himself. Fortune helped now and then, such as when a flash flood deposited his possibly-medieval table and its benches on the sloping bank of the Tullie Gorge.