Duncan's Rose

by Safi, Suzannah

  Back Cover

  Miranda Blair, a writer about mysterious death cases, is investigating the death of a child, Marcas Wardlaw, which triggers strange visions that draw her to Wardlaw Castle in Scotland. In her visions, she is Rose, lover of Duncan, who, centuries earlier, was burned alive. Now inextricably drawn to the modern-day Wardlaw family, Miranda is shocked to discover that the family nephew, Mac, carries a secret from the past, he recognizes her as Rose and vows revenge.

  As she unravels the family secrets of the Wardlaw clan, Miranda must find the answer to her own past to fulfill her destiny in love, or she’s doomed to repeat history.

  DUNCAN’S ROSE

  SUZANNAH SAFI

  MuseitHOT, division of

  MuseItUp Publishing

  www.museituppublishing.com

  Chapter One

  Frigid wind tugged at Miranda’s hair and whistled past her ears as she turned her head, searching for the pilot she hired to take her to Fairman Island. It was much colder than she expected. When she’d arrived the night before, she’d put the chill down to the drizzling rain, as well as her own feelings of anxiety and apprehension. This morning, despite a reasonably good night’s rest and a bowl of Scottish porridge for breakfast, she couldn’t brush aside the temperature with any excuse about her nerves, although her stomach still clenched with uncertainty. It was still colder than the arctic here.

  The heat wave predicted to sail over all of the UK throughout August hadn’t made it here to the village of Gott. Miranda glanced at the airport, a single building in the middle of the green valley. It was still early, only eight in the morning. She stepped into the warmth of the airport‘s small office and turned left to the reception area.

  “Good morning, where can I find Mr. Fredrick Adair?”

  “Hi, Miss. You were supposed to leave yesterday, you know,” the blond receptionist announced.

  “Yes, I was late last night. I don’t know if he’s willing to take me today...”

  “Well, the weather has changed since yesterday and a storm is about to hit us. If he agrees to go up there today, it will be his own risk.” The receptionist twisted her lips.

  “I know. I’m hoping we can avoid the storm.” Miranda gazed around her. The place was empty of any other travelers.

  “Well, he’s in the back where the planes are parked, but he’ll tell you there’ll be no flying for at least two days. Good luck.”

  Oh God, two days! No, she couldn’t afford to wait that long. She would lose her appointment with Mr. Wardlaw.

  Miranda rushed from the office to the back of the building. She turned her thoughts back to the cozy lounge of the bed and breakfast where she’d spent the night. The room reminded her of hers at her parents’ house back in New York when she was younger; it had the same pink theme and flowers in ceramic vases, just the way her mother liked them. The bed, though small, fit her comfortably. Regret crept over her now for leaving the warm feeling she enjoyed for at least one night in that room.

  Part of her unwillingness to separate from familiar things was the knowledge that, in the next few hours, she would be stepping into a totally unknown territory: Fairman island.

  While it wasn’t far, her destination made her anxious. The island itself didn’t bother her; but what she would find there set her heart pounding.

  Her doctor had given her pills for anxiety—without them, she would go haywire. “Oh God, my pills! I forgot them,” she whispered in despair.

  She searched her handbag with trembling fingers, confirming her foolish mistake. Okay, I was not going to panic, and I’m not getting one of those visions. But she did panic. Who was she kidding? Miranda was going to the core of her problem, the mansion, without the one thing that had helped her cope. She sat on one of her bags, head bend between her legs breathing in…breathing out.

  Just calm down, Miranda.

  She would be okay. Yes, she would. Just continue with the breathing rhythm…in…out.

  Recalling her doctor’s words, “You’re the only one who can stop your anxiety. It’s all in the human’s mind. Control is a weapon. Is your weapon in your grip, Miranda?” he had asked, and now, she nodded in agreement, complete understanding of his words, dawning on her. She gathered her strength and the you-can-do-it attitude, then took one more deep breath, shaking off her weakness and fear like a dog shedding water off his fur coat, and off she went looking for the pilot.

  She walked toward the small plane, pulling her luggage behind her. Fortunately, she’d brought her warm clothes with her from New York, and this morning she’d layered herself with a vest, a shirt, and a woolen sweater. She also left her cashmere jacket in her handbag, just in case the weather got worse.

  She spotted a man standing on a ladder cleaning the windshield of a plane. The private jet had a bad paint job; the rusted corners overwhelmed the faded blue color. One of the landing gears was crooked slightly, leaning to the right, or was it her imagination building on her anxiety. The tall man turned his gaze to her. His gray short hair was disheveled and spots of black grease smeared his wrinkled face.

  “Hi there, are you Mr. Adair?” If that was him, and this was the plane she’d rented to fly to Fairman Island, then this trip might be her end. She swallowed the hard lump in her throat, there was no other choice. I am not comfortable flying in that thing. But I’m going to have to risk it. My strong weapon is in my hand.

  “Who’s askin?’” the old man drawled in a thick Scottish accent.

  “I’m Miranda.”

  “Oh, the gal who wanted t’go ta the island.’” He stepped down the small ladder, cleaned his palm with a piece of cloth, and offered his hand. Reluctantly, she shook the tip of his greasy fingers.

  “Yes, that’s me, all the way from New York,” she said, and added a soft smile. “Are we set to go?”

  “Aye, Miss, but the weather.” He paused and pointed at the gray sky. “Look at the dark clouds comin’ our direction. It’s not safe to travel today, Maybe in two days.” The old man returned to cleaning his old plane. She grabbed her handkerchief and wiped the grease from her hand.

  “No, Mr. Adair, you don’t understand. I am a day late.” She didn’t like the nervous edge of her voice.

  “Calm down, Lassie. All I want is your safety and mine.”

  “I really appreciate your honesty, but I do need to be on that island today.” Miranda sighed. “We had an agreement, for which I’ve paid in advance.”

  “Aye, you did, and after the storm, I’ll take ya.” He placed his hands on his sides, scowling at her.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, her way to rein in her irritation, panic, and despair. Finally, she opened them. “Fine. If you can’t leave today, then I’ll find someone else.” She stretched a hand out. “Can I have the advance back, please?”

  “I’ve spent it.” He turned and climbed the ladder, his attention back to a dirty spot on the plane.

  Miranda placed her hands on her hips. “How can anyone spend one thousand dollars in one day? Especially here?”

  He blinked. “Oh, liquor, women, and—”

  “I don’t want to know,” she said. Those dreadful tentacles of anxiety crept toward her chest and squeezed her heart. This was not reducing her panic attack. “I think I’m going to shout my lungs out,” she murmured, and bit her tongue when he turned his face toward her.

  He looking at the place around them, then chuckled. “Go ‘head, Miss. Do you see anyone in this area? It’s all yours. Scream your lungs out and see if I care,” he said in English as clear as pure water.

  This was going to be difficult. She was being unfair to the old man, probably because of her shaking nerves.

  She needed to borrow some of the cold from the air and cool her anger. Securing her sweater tightl
y around her, she said, “I apologize for my behavior, Sir. It’s just…the person I’m meeting was insistent about my being on time, or he won’t see me. I couldn’t help arriving late last night, and having to travel today instead of yesterday. But I can’t wait any longer, or my hard work for two years will go to waste.”

  When the pilot didn’t respond, she continued, “Besides, I was planning to give a thank-you bonus for your trouble…maybe five hundred dollars more?” With no other option available at hand, she hoped he would take her offer, she continued her convincing, “According to the weather broadcast this morning, they did expect a storm, but only late afternoon. We would be able to avoid it if we hurry.” The first sign of surrender came in the form of a frown and a twist of the old man’s lips. The hesitant look on his face assured her that he couldn’t resist the free bonus she offered.

  “All right.” He stepped off the ladder. “Get yourself inside. We may still have a chance to beat the storm.” The old man mumbled few more words, but she couldn’t understand them and was probably better off not knowing. He marched to the front of the plane in long, stiff steps, gathered his equipments, and stored them inside a cabinet in the plane’s garage.

  “Thank you so much,” she called after him. She rushed to the steps, climbed inside the old plane and sat on the back seat, dropping her two light pieces of luggage beside her on the floor. She gazed around the tight space. The leather seat was torn in several spots and taped in others. Wires crept from random holes to tangle along the ceiling of the plane. She felt a moment’s fear that the plane wouldn’t be able to complete the flight, but she pushed it aside. There was no other option.

  Mr. Adair climbed into the plane and started the engine, which roared like a mad lion in the jungle. “You ready, Miss?”

  Not really.

  “Are you sure the plane is in good enough condition to weather the storm, if it hit us?” She had to ask, although she knew if she showed even slight discomfort, he would be happy to change his mind.

  “Aye, don’t worry, Miss. ’Tis my babe. We faced too many ta count storms, and we survived ’em. Lit’s fly this li’l.”

  “Aye, Cap’n.” She tried copying his Scottish accent; her attempt failed, he snorted.

  “Put on yer seat belt,” he called over the engine’s roaring. “It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.”

  The things she had to do for her book, Miranda thought. Her actions amazed her. They amazed her mother, too. Oh God, her mother. She’d forgotten to call before she left the inn, and her cell phone didn’t have a signal on Gott village. Maybe it would work on Fairman Island.

  The plane began to move and its gargle-like sound deafened her ears. The whole plane vibrated; the motion shook her, including her queasy stomach. Miranda held tightly to her seat with one hand and covered her mouth with the other, fearing a scream would escape her lips. The plane sped ahead on the tarmac, and in few moments, it pulled upward, leaving the safety of Earth and her shaking heart with it.

  “The flight will take forty-fife minutes. Hopefully, we won’t face that black beast.” He pointed to the dark clouds in the distance. “Now listen to me. If we do face the storm, you must do as I say, you ’ear?” he warned.

  “Y…yes,” she said, wide-eyed. Maybe she had been foolish in insisting to fly today, but it was too late to change her mind.

  “Good. God help us,” Adair said.

  Amen.

  She tried to convince herself that a few vibrations couldn’t hurt. She had flown before on smaller airplanes, not as bad as this one, perhaps, but heck, it was all the same. To fly meant hanging in the air under God’s mercy.

  “So, Miss, you’re a writer?” the pilot shouted over his shoulder.

  Finally, a subject that could relax her. “Yes, I am. I write about unsolved mysterious cases. I try to get facts that might not have been discovered at the time an incident happened. I work mostly on old cases, sometimes twenty or even fifty years old.”

  “How interestin’. It sounds challengin’ ta me, I teel ya.”

  “Yes, I know, but so far I have been successful in resolving all mysterious deaths.”

  Thunder rumbled in the distance and a white flash struck the ground with a hollow boom. Suddenly, the cloud they were flying through burst its belly, and the plane was covered with streaming rain. Visibility was impossible as the dark gathered the plane in its forceful palm; it was like entering the gate of Hell. Miranda inhaled and counted to ten, as her doctor had told her to do if she ever began to feel any of her visions or the anxiety that always attacked next. On this occasion, it should work as well. One…two…three. Her gaze spotted the left wing of the plane as a flash of lightning struck. Four…five… She raised an eyebrow. “W…What is that?” she yelled, her voice fading in the combined roaring of the thunder and the engine.

  “What?”

  “There’s something around the left wing,” she said, pointing. How in God’s name had she not seen this when she climbed in? Then she remembered she’d seen only the right side of the plane. God help me.

  “Oh that. No worries, Miss, it’s well secured with screws. The tape was only to mark the area that required my attention. I’ve fixed it with strong screws to hold it in its place. I just forgot to peel the tape off.”

  Miranda held her breath, then resumed counting. One…two…hell, it’s not working!

  Even though Mr. Adair kept banking the plane further to the north, the wind took them to the east. As the clouds moved closer, so did the lightning. The clouds also got higher, and they seemed to be closing in on them. At one point, a whole layer of cloud lit up and produced a chain of lightning that stretched toward the ground. That caused a new worry. The lightning could reach for the plane the same way!

  Maybe it was time to have happy thoughts. Her doctor recommended a few techniques to calm down; it was time to use them. Paying for all those sessions had to have some reward, didn’t it? She would try another method; relaxing her face, neck, and body muscles. Good, now she would breathe deeply, inhale and exhale…

  She opened one eye and looked out the window at the disappearing ground below them. Another inhale, and exhale….

  For the next few minutes, they wove through the clouds, banking to the right, then banking to the left. The lightning surrounded them. Rain speckled the surface of the plane.

  Inhale…exhale…muscles relaxed… When the lightning flashed again, she shoved the jacket in her hand over the window to avoid looking at it.

  Her heart pounding, she decided to think about a loved one. Miranda closed her eyes. Oh, Mother, I miss you already. Her mother’s face came rushing to her memory; her round face, soft, loving eyes, her warm, caring smile. Miranda remembered the aroma of her delicious cooking, and her stomach growled.

  Then suddenly, Miranda’s body snapped backward as Mr. Adair gave the plane full throttle. He pitched the plane up and went into a steep climb. Despite her anxiety, she opened her eyes. What was he was trying to avoid? Was there danger ahead? Something worse than this nightmare?

  “Miss…It seems we have ta...” He paused as if to control the fear in his voice. Of course, her mind filled in the words before he could even get any more out: “make an emergency landing in the storm.” Unfortunately, that was exactly what he confirmed a minute later. “We are almost there an’ we have ta land. It’s gonna be hard. Hold on.”

  Hard? Hold on? Like hard, we are going to die, or hard, we are going to have few scratches?

  They flew in darkness now, lightning flashing, turbulence rocking the plane. It felt as if they flew in a big circle to nowhere. She wondered what it would be like on final approach and how close they were to the island. They still had to deal with this monster between them and the ground before they could walk away…if they did walk away.

  They dropped down through the storm. The plane rocked from side to side and the rain swept sideways. When Miranda’s handbag crashed into her leg, she grabbed it and pulled it closer to her chest. It contained her b
eloved computer. She was not going to die—no, not now. She thought about the people who love her: her mother, her friends…well, she had few friends, and most of them had grown distant as they married and had children, too busy with their own lives. She was like an outsider to them now, still single. She didn’t have a boyfriend, or even a dog or a cat to care for.

  Jack had been her boyfriend for five years when he decided to leave. He couldn’t handle her job as a writer, he’d said. He hated the long hours she spent working on the computer, the interviews she had to do, and her traveling all the time. In their last fight before he left, he’d yelled that her career made him feel neglected, as if he’d been pushed aside for her other interests. This would have been fair if Miranda hadn’t driven herself half-insane trying to make their relationship work. He forgot her efforts to compensate him for her long hours of work by cooking, dressing up for him, or by attempting to fit into his family by visiting his mother, more often than he did actually.

  One night he’d called her a frigid woman, without an ounce of emotion. Miranda shook her head: with Jack everything boiled down to being her mistake. The nerve he’d displayed with his accusations! She wondered if she should have mentioned that she’d initiated their lovemaking every time. Frigid, indeed!

  Please!

  Okay, thinking of people who loved her didn’t calm her, but anger was doing a good job. Anger keeps your fear away, and she was pissed like hell now at a boyfriend who had left two years ago. She burst out laughing.

  “Are you okay, Lassie?” the pilot asked. “Don’t worry. We’ll get through; don’t lose control of yourself.”

  “Shhh, I’m in my zone, trying to be angry instead of scared.”

  “Oh well, whatever works, Lassie.”

  She watched out the window as they rocked their way through the void. How easy it must be to slam into the side of a mountain in total darkness, never knowing what was ahead. Thank goodness there were no mountains on Fairman Island. She wondered if fog gathered on the ground.