He paused for a moment to watch fog waltz through the clearing. Broad and long, the clearing was as lush as a meadow in the summer, a surprising splash of tall grass and wildflowers. Now the vegetation was brown and shrouded with snow. There were springs hidden in the rocks beyond him and caves in the mountainside. He had explored the caves as a teenager. At sixteen he had considered moving into one when his father, stern under the best circumstances, had discovered that all the tomato plants in the hotel glasshouse had withered and died because Duncan had neglected to water them.
As he stared into the distance, remembering the man he had buried today, something moved at the edge of his field of vision. He narrowed his eyes and searched for the source. Not far away rowan trees twisted in the rising wind, and just beyond them thick clumps of hazel and beech swayed restlessly. He peered into the darkness behind the dancing silhouettes, but little else was visible.
He had already started back down the path when a piercing whistle stopped him. He faced the trees again, but the whistle was nothing more than the wind, at most a warning that night was falling fast and he should hurry back to the bus. He started forward again, when something brought him up short. He turned for one last look. There was a noticeable change in the elements surrounding him. The whistle expanded into a shriek, almost a howl, and the remaining light seemed to fade away. The wind, which he had blamed for the whistling, died completely. Even the trees were still.
But something moved behind them.
He stepped forward, squinting into the darkness. “Hello? Is anyone there?” he shouted. There was no answer.
“Hello?” he shouted louder.
There were animals in these mountains, sheep and the occasional fox or wild dog. But Duncan didn’t expect to see any four-legged beasts. Whatever he had glimpsed was taller and two-legged. Either he was imagining things, or another human being was out there.
He hesitated. If someone was there, that person wanted to be left alone or he would have answered. Perhaps a farmer from one of the surrounding properties was looking for a stray sheep. Duncan wasn’t sure that he had the legal right to be on this path, which probably cut across privately owned lands. His knowledge of Scottish property laws was as foggy as the meadow. But whether he had the right to be here or not, he didn’t have the right to disturb the property owner.
He had convinced himself to leave, but he still didn’t move. Like his father, he had never been a man who acted on feelings, but something kept him rooted to the spot. Annoyed with himself, he shouted once more. “Hello?”
No one answered, at least not in the way he had expected. There wasn’t any movement now, but a shaft of light illuminated the spot where he thought he’d seen someone. It was too early in the evening for the moon, too late for the sun. He stepped forward, intrigued. The light was finely focused and intense. He’d never seen anything quite like it, but he wasn’t frightened. The day was dying, and the fog was thickening. There were a billion possible combinations of twilight and mist and mountain air currents. He was witnessing one.
He balanced his need to get back to the road with his need to explore a little further. Shrugging, he picked his way across the clearing. The trees were farther than he’d thought, and the light glowed brighter. As he drew closer he noticed that it had a peculiar greenish tint. The color was odd enough, but odder still was the shape. It was a narrow beam, the width of a small tree or a person. Channeled through a leafless canopy of branches, it was as concentrated as a laser.
No one was nearby. Duncan wondered if he had mistaken the light for a person. Perhaps it had played a trick on his eyes. His hands and feet were growing colder, and he began to lose his enthusiasm. His goal was just ahead, but there seemed to be little point in walking the final fifty yards. Then he heard the shriek again.
He began to run. There were no more thoughts of farmers searching for lost sheep or interesting shafts of light. As he charged through the trees, he could see the ground where the light was centered. A man lay on his back, his eyes closed.
Duncan fell to his knees and patted the man’s cheeks. “Hey, you there. Can you hear me?”
The man was short and dark, well-padded with fat but not dressed for the elements. An empty whiskey bottle lay on the ground beside him. Duncan shook his shoulders. “Can you understand me?”
“I doubt he’ll be understanding anything for a good while.”
Duncan’s head snapped up. At the edge of the light, just in the shadows, stood a figure wrapped in a long, hooded cloak. “Where in God’s name did you come from?” he demanded. “And just how long have you been standing there?”
“Long enough to be glad you came along.”
The voice was a woman’s, soft and as delicate as sea foam. Duncan squinted into the darkness, and as if to give him a better view, she glided forward. Her cloak billowed around her, yards and yards of wool that looked as soft as her voice.
“Do you know this man?” Duncan asked. “And do you know what in the hell he’s doing here?”
“By the look of him, I’d say he’s freezing to death.”
“I had that part figured out.”
“His name’s Geordie Smith. And I think he’s in this state fair often.”
It was too dark to get a good look at her. Her hood was drawn around her face, hiding everything but a glimpse of nose, an impression of eyes. He could just make out even white teeth gnawing her bottom lip in concern. He looked back down at the man on the ground. “Well, right now it doesn’t matter how often he gets this way, just whether he’s going to survive this particular binge or not.”
“He’ll survive. Now that you’re here, he’ll be all right.”
As if to prove her words, the man’s eyelids fluttered open, and he began to moan. Duncan bent closer. The man she’d called Geordie smelled like a distillery.
The moan changed to barely audible words. “Who’s there?”
“My name’s Duncan Sinclair. What in the hell are you doing out here by yourself?”
Geordie struggled to sit up. Duncan helped him into position. It took a great heave, then an arm around Geordie’s shoulders for a moment to steady him. Geordie grew paler.
“Are you all right?” Duncan asked.
“Of course I’m no’ all right. I’m dead.”
“Do I look like an angel?”
“There’s no use in ye sparing me feelings. I’m dead.”
Duncan sat back on his heels. “Not yet. But you might have been if you’d stayed on the ground all night. What are you doing here? Or are you too drunk to remember?”
Geordie looked insulted at the question. “Och, I’ll have ye know I’m no’ a drunk. I’m…a poet, a bard.”
“Well, that explains it.”
“I’m here for ins…ins…”
Duncan waved away Geordie’s twin attempts at explanation and dignity. “Can you walk?”
Geordie considered.
Duncan was afraid Geordie might ponder the question all night. “Let’s get you to your feet and see.”
“I’m still thinking…I’m dead.”
“You’ll just wish you were tomorrow.”
“Then if I’m no’ dead…” He narrowed his eyes. “Just who was the lady in green?”
Duncan looked up. He wanted to find out the answer himself. He hadn’t thought to ask the woman’s name or what she was doing on the mountainside. But now the place where she’d been standing was unoccupied. He leaned forward and peered into the darkness, but there was no sign that anyone had ever been there.
Duncan wanted to be back at the hotel in front of a good fire. His patience and sympathy with Highlanders were abating. The woman hadn’t even stayed to be sure that Geordie was going to be all right, and the evidence that Geordie had brought this state on himself was lying on the ground at his feet. “Look, man, you’re still drunk, and your body temperature’s probably dropped a few degrees. Don’t waste my time talking. Just see if you can get to your feet. We’ve got to get you so
meplace where you can warm up.”
“It was a lady I saw. In green. All in green.” Geordie put his face in his hands. “If she was no’ an angel…”
“She wasn’t,” Duncan assured him.
“Och, then she was a ghost.”
“What?”
Geordie began to cry, big sloppy tears that threatened to freeze on his cheeks. His shoulders shook. “She saved me. I’ve been saved by a ferlie.”
“I saved you.”
“No. She brought ye here.”
“Look, there was a woman here, but she left as soon as she saw I could take care of things. She was just an ordinary human. That’s all. There’s no such thing as a ghost. And if you don’t get moving, Geordie whoever-you-are, there won’t be any such thing as you, either.”
With Duncan’s help, Geordie managed to get to his feet. He staggered a few yards, his elbow firmly in Duncan’s grasp. “She told me to lie down, the ferlie did. She said I’d be safe.”
“The only thing worse than a ghost is a ghost who gives bad advice.”
“Yer no’ from the Highlands,” Geordie said. He lifted his head and held it high, even though his chin wobbled badly. “Ye…can no’ understand.”
“Oh, I’m from here, all right. And I’m afraid I understand all too well.”
Geordie shivered and fell silent. Duncan wanted nothing more than to leave the little man in the clearing, but he knew that by the time a search party from Druidheachd came back for him, Geordie would be a ghost or an angel himself. He stripped off his jacket and placed it around Geordie’s shoulders. The wind cut through his wool sweater, but unlike Geordie, he was in no danger of dying of exposure. They trudged on. To Geordie’s credit, he struggled to keep pace.
“Can you make it back out to the road?” Duncan asked, when they had crossed the clearing and were near the path again.
“Oh, aye. With yer help, I’ll make it just fine. She promised I’d be safe.”
It had been a day unlike any other in his life. Duncan’s patience snapped. “You’re drunk, man. And you were passed out on the ground because you were too drunk to stand! I don’t want to hear anything more about ghosts.”
Geordie stopped moving. He pulled his elbow from Duncan’s grasp and turned in the direction they’d come. “Dressed in green, she was, with a face like an angel.”
“Come on.” Duncan took Geordie’s arm. At this rate it would be very late when they got to the bus—if they got there at all. “Don’t worry about anything now except walking.”
“She’s there still.”
“Sure she is.”
“She’s there.” Geordie pointed.
Duncan looked up. The pale green light was no longer focused. It had diffused into soft, gentle curves. His breath caught. For a moment, just the fraction of a moment, the light appeared to take on the shape of a woman. Then it dissolved into the darkness. Somewhere out of sight a dog began to howl.
“Farewell, lady,” Geordie said softly. “And thanks to ye.”
At that moment, all the reasons why Duncan could never be happy in Druidheachd were absolutely clear to him.
“What is it ye say they call ye?” Geordie asked.
Duncan jerked the little man back onto the path, and Geordie came willingly. “Duncan Sinclair.”
“Yer not Donald Sinclair’s son? One of the wee laddies born at midnight?”
“That’s right.”
“And will ye be staying in Druidheachd now that yer father’s passed on?”
Duncan could feel his jaw clamp tight, but there was only one answer he could give. “I will. God help me, but I don’t seem to have been given a choice.”
CHAPTER 2
A month later Duncan looked out on the sheets of rain sweeping Druidheachd’s High Street. Spring had arrived officially, but the days were still chill and gray.
A woman’s voice sounded behind him. “There’s a lovely fire in the sitting room, dearie, and a pot of tea to warm you. Come away from the window now, and forget your troubles.”
Duncan unwillingly faced Frances Gunn, the hotel’s cook. She was apple-cheeked and white-haired, a storybook-perfect granny with a lap wide enough for half a dozen children and a smile wide enough to let them all know they were welcome. “I’d forgotten how gray it can be on a spring evening, and how cold,” he said.
“Aye, gray it can be. But in Druidheachd, spring’s the time of year when good friends become better ones.”
Duncan turned back toward the street and didn’t respond. He had friends here, the only two people in the world besides April and his sister, Fiona, who really mattered to him. Iain Ross and Andrew MacDougall had drawn him to the Highlands as much as a need to put thousands of miles between his daughter and Los Angeles. But there was little else of value for him in Druidheachd, a village so backward that the eighteenth century seemed to beckon from the future.
“You will no’ be having that tea?” Frances asked.
“No. Thank you, Frances, but I’ve got to tuck April in bed. I promised I’d read her a story.”
“She does look forward to your time together.”
“So do I.”
“She likes it here, you know. She feels like she belongs. And you belong, Duncan. You always have.”
He wasn’t cruel enough to contradict warm-hearted Fran-ces Gunn. He managed a smile and was rewarded with one of Frances’s own. He waited until the click of sensible shoes against the granite floor died away before he gave up his view of the street for that of the interior of the building that was the only thing of value—however dubious—that he owned in the world.
The Sinclair Hotel was gray like the street in front of it, and nearly as cold, despite a fuel bill that threatened daily to put him out of business. One room faded into another, austere, colorless rooms with threadbare furniture and tattered carpets. Little had changed since his childhood. He imagined that in the eighteenth century the hotel had sprung to life in exactly this form. One moment there had been a narrow parcel of barren land facing what passed for a street; the next moment the Sinclair Hotel, shabby and weather-beaten, had risen intact from the stone buried deep inside the earth.
Duncan had taken his first steps here, read his first halting sentence. He had played hide-and-seek in these narrow halls, but those moments of laughter and friendship seemed to have left no mark. Now he couldn’t imagine anyone laughing within the confines of these three-feet-thick walls.
“Daddy?”
Duncan looked up to the top of the stairwell rising to the second floor. A small, thin figure was perched on the top step, her chin resting in her hands. He felt a familiar mixture of love and regret.
He pointed a finger at her. “I thought you were in bed. I was just coming up.”
“I was in bed, but I got so lonely.”
“I know what you’re doing. You’re just looking for an excuse to stay up a little longer.”
“It’s not a very big excuse.”
“Just big enough to keep you out of bed.” He started toward her. “And look at you. You’re not even wearing a robe, as cold as it is.”
“I’m not cold. I only get cold when I’m all alone in my room.”
Duncan had painted his daughter’s room a sunny yellow and added flowered curtains, comforter and pillows. There was a small heater in the corner to steal the ever-present chill from the air, and shelves of toys to steal the chill from her small heart. But nothing he’d done for her could possibly be enough.
At the top of the stairs he presented her with his back, and she obligingly climbed on board for a ride to the apartment at the hall’s end. She was lighter than a thick Highland fog. When he deposited her on the rumpled comforter in the middle of her bed, he hardly noticed the absence of her weight.
Duncan sat on the edge as she slid under the covers. “Now listen, Springtime. You know I’m never far away. I’m always somewhere in the hotel when you’re sleeping, and I come up to check on you often. You’ve got the intercom right beside yo
ur bed if you need me, and if I have to go out, I always have someone come up here to stay with you.”
She gave him a tremulous smile. “I just get scared sometimes.”
“I know you do. But you’ll see. I’ll never leave you alone.”
Solemn gray eyes exactly like his own stared back at him. He knew what she was thinking. He took her hand and kissed it, then stuck it back under the covers. As he did, his fingers brushed something cool and solid. “Did you pick out a book already?” he asked.
Her eyes grew larger. “No.”
He felt resistance when he tried to tug the book from under the covers. She was obviously doing her best to prevent it. He lifted a brow in question.
“I want the one about the beaver pond,” she said.
He almost gave in, but something about her expression warned him that there was more here than she was acknowledging. “Let me see what you have there first.”
“It’s just a book.”
“April…”
She looked away and relaxed her grip. He pulled the book from under the covers and read the title. “Duncan and the Fairies?” He flipped through the pages. The book was small and beautifully illustrated. Golden haired fairies garbed in gauzy green nearly danced off the pages. Even without reading the text, he could see that his poor namesake Duncan, a clumsy-looking lout, was no match for them. “Where did you get this? Did someone in the hotel give it to you?”
“No.”
He waited.
“Will you read me the book about the beavers now?”
“I’d like to know who gave you this.”
She still didn’t look at him. “Mara.”
“Mara? Who’s Mara?”
“Just a lady.”
Had the mysterious Mara been just any lady, Duncan knew that April would have chatted on and on about her. But obviously Mara was already someone special, and therefore not to be discussed. April had learned early to keep the things that really mattered close to her heart. “Where did you meet her?” he probed.
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