Love Everlastin' Book 3

by Mickee Madden

  He climbed onto the roof of the turret, his unwavering gaze watching her as though he expected her to fling herself over the crenellated wall at any given moment.

  "Deliah!"

  She didn't seem to hear him. Fear mingled with his burgeoning anger. He reached out to take her arm, but withdrew as if burned when a voice filled his mind.

  Blue, I understand. I understand now! Tis wonderful! Tis so magical! Oh, Blue! If only we all could share a dance in this!

  Deliah's voice, he realized, and swayed with the shock it dealt him. Collecting himself, he harshly gripped her arm and jerked her to a stop.

  Time came to a breath-robbing stop. He found himself staring into sparkling blue eyes so filled with wonder, he told himself he had to be dreaming again. Against the bluish tinge of her cold skin, her cheeks were red and her lips the color of dark pink coral. Snowflakes whitened her dark eyebrows and eyelashes and most of the outer layer of her hair.

  "Are you daft?" he cried, giving her a sound shake.

  From the corner of his left eye he spied the bathrobe and nightgown she'd been wearing. Releasing her, he hastily snatched them up and gave them a shake to cast off the snow.

  "Get dressed!" he barked then glanced down at her feet. "Where are the socks?"

  She held the clothing balled against her, staring at him as if questioning the reason behind his shortness with her.

  Winston glanced about him, but couldn't see the socks anywhere. "Dammit woman, where are they?"

  Furious, he looked at her and released a gasp of disbelief that she hadn't begun to don the clothing. He yanked the robe back and flung it across his shoulder, then, shivering from both the cold and his frustration with her, impatiently helped her into the nightgown. Something caught his notice as he tugged it down over her. Something he'd seen before but, like now, his brain couldn't accept, couldn't even begin to digest.

  From above, an echoing rumble was heard.

  He decided the robe could wait until they were off the tower. Again gripping her upper arm with more force than was necessary, he nudged her toward the opening in the floor. She resisted. Gone was her elation. The rumbling came again, and she lifted a troubled gaze to the greyness above them.

  "Deliah!" he barked, causing her to jump. "Get below!"

  She again looked upward then met his gaze for a pregnant-filled moment before finally taking the first step into the room below. Winston retained his hold until she was standing on the fourth landing. Tossing the bathrobe into her face, he closed the roof door and jumped down the remaining steps to stand in front of her. She held the robe in her arms, cradling it against her chest. Violent shudders coursed through her, and her eyes held a pained expression his anger refused to acknowledge. She remained still when he took the robe and brusquely toweled her with it. The rumbling grew louder, seeming to come down through the roof now. An impression tried to worm its way into Winston's consciousness, but he was too angry to deal with anything except the exasperating woman in front of him.

  "You're worse than a child," he scolded.

  Taking her by the hand, he led her down the stairs and eventually into the second floor hall of the house. He kept the lead, pulling her behind him as if she were a recalcitrant child and he the parent bent on retaining his anger long enough to impress upon her the seriousness of her actions.

  Laura and Roan were waiting at her open bedroom door. Winston marched her past them to the bed, where he finally released her, pulled the top quilt off the mattress and impatiently wrapped it around her still shivering form. She regarded him with the innocence of a small girl, which only infuriated him all the more. He turned to face Roan and Laura. They stood a few feet away, both seeming at a loss as to what to do next.

  "I refuse to hold maself responsible for her anymore," Winston said testily, high color in his cheeks. "She hasn't an adult thought in her brain! I need to get to a phone and call the police. They'll have to figure ou' wha' to do wi' her."

  Deliah placed a hand on Winston's arm but he angrily jerked away and glared at her.

  "I better light a fire," Roan said abstractedly, and went to the hearth.

  "Should I make her some tea?" asked Laura, a sympathetic look leveled on the younger woman.

  "I guess." Winston briefly massaged the back of his neck. To Laura, he asked, "Where is the nearest phone?"

  "In town."

  His stomach churned with dread. He loved to walk, but the town was a fair hike as it was, let alone what it would take to reach it in this weather.

  Rumbling then a crack of what sounded like thunder, gave everyone a start, except Deliah. Her gaze lifted to the ceiling. After a moment, she murmured, "Too soon. Too soon."

  Winston looked at her in a state of incredulity. Laura's mouth gaped open. Roan stopped crumpling newspaper and hastened back to Laura's side.

  "She can talk," said Roan dazedly.

  Deliah's gaze lowered to Winston's ashen face and she shrugged deeper into the warmth of the quilt.

  "Wha' did you say?" asked Winston, anger returning some color to him. When she remained silent, he snapped, "Answer me!"

  "Too soon be wha' I said," she replied in a small tone, and shamefully downcast her eyes.

  "Tell me your little dance on the tower just returned your voice!" he shouted. "Tell me you just haven't been jerking our chains all this time!"

  Deliah glanced at the three as if searching for the chains Winston mentioned.

  "Winston—" Laura clamped her mouth shut when Winston furiously flagged a hand at her.

  "Tell me, Deliah!" he demanded.

  The only sound she made was a gulp.

  "Fine, lass," Winston fumed, his balled hands resting on his narrow hips. "Fine. I don't know who you are and, quite frankly, right now, I could give a flying fig how or why you showed up here. Wha' I do care abou' is washing ma hands o' you! You can play yer mind games wi' the police."

  "Ye canna take me from this house," she said, a note of panic in her tone.

  "The hell I can't!"

  "You're only scaring her," Laura chided Winston.

  Winston shot Laura an incredulous look. "Scaring her? Anyone who can dance naked in below freezing weather, has a hide o' steel!" His furious gaze retargeted Deliah's face. "Wha' are you really doing here? Are you a reporter?"

  "Oh, God," Roan moaned. "Tha's all we need."

  "I be Deliah, no' a reporter."

  Her quivering tone fell short of stirring any compassion in Winston. His eyes held such fury, it wounded her to look into them. She walked to the right side of the bed, overly conscious of the others' eyes watching her every move.

  "Stop lying to us!" Winston hissed, turning and gripping the cherry wood post at the foot of her bed. "You telling me you don't work for Jonathan Blussal?"

  "No," Deliah said with a shake of her head. "No, I dinna know anyone by tha' name!"

  "Oh come now, Deliah," Winston began with a mocking laugh. "Blussal is the senior editor at the Lowland Gazette."

  "No, I dinna know him!" she cried.

  Winston's features were livid. "I picked up your thoughts while you were dancing on the tower! I heard you think you wanted to dance wi' Blue in the snow. Blue sounds like a nickname to Blussal to me!"

  "Aye," agreed Roan.

  Clinging to Roan's arm, Laura nodded.

  "No!" Deliah sucked in a breath. She shuddered uncontrollably. "Blue be married to ma brither. I swear on the mighty oaks, I be no ither than Deliah, than wha' ye see afore you!"

  Again, shock rocked Winston on his feet. He suddenly realized where he'd heard her archaic use of “be” and “ye”.

  "You," he accused in a barely audible voice.

  She swallowed hard and nodded. "I couldna speak for fear ye would recognize ma voice, Winston. Aye, I be o' the garden place but no' a reporter."

  Thunder rumbled around them and her darting gaze searched the ceiling. Then she met Winston's vacant eyes and explained, "I told ye, ye could see me once ye touched me. Re
member?"

  He nodded stiltedly.

  "I was below, in wha' ye call the cellar, when ye tripped over the root. Touched me, ye did, and I be true to ma word."

  "Hold it!" Roan exclaimed almost comically. With a hand held up in a placating manner, he left Laura and stood alongside Winston. To say he looked beyond perplexed was a gross understatement. "Tell me, Winston, she's no' anither ghost."

  "I be Deliah," she said firmly, as if that should explain everything.

  "I met her in the fourth dimension the first night I spent in this house," Winston said dully.

  A blank expression spread across Roan's face. "Fourth dimension?" Blinking, he sent Laura a dazed look. "Now we have us a fourth dimension? How...wonderful." He met Winston's gaze and blinked. "So, she's no' a ghost?"

  "I don't know wha' she is," Winston grumbled, angrily regarding Deliah. "In her world, she tried to tell me she was the house."

  "Her world? This house? She thinks she is this house?"

  Sighing, Winston nodded.

  Another boom of thunder crashed around them.

  Laura fiercely hugged herself, her gaze searching the ceiling. "I better check on the boys."

  "Agnes is wi' them," said Winston in a monotone. "There's a storm coming in all right, but it doesn't feel like anything I've experienced before."

  Deliah released a violent shudder and closed her eyes for a moment. "I couldna forestall the comin’ any longer."

  "The comin’?" Roan slapped his palms to his cheeks and walked around Winston. "I'll finish layin’ the fire."

  He stopped short, and Winston and Laura's heads shot around when a whoosh came from the hearth. A roaring fire engulfed the logs Roan had stacked on the firedog. Then the mesh screen eerily slid into place.

  "Wha' the—" Roan gasped, turning wide eyes on Deliah.

  The air in the room shifted and grew dense. Deliah tightly closed her eyes as if to shut something out, or to hold something inside her. She shuddered again. When her eyelids lifted, her irises were dull, her complexion pale.

  Then Deliah became flushed. A fine sheen of perspiration broke out on her face. "They be weakenin’ me. I can do no mair."

  The hairs on Winston's arm twitched against his skin. "Who's weakening you? Wha' are you talking abou'?"

  A blood-curdling scream boomed throughout the house. Laura ran into Roan's opened arms. Winston stiffened, his face the color of chalk as he tried to decipher the images bombarding his fevered brain. He started toward the door to the hall, but stopped in his tracks when an omnipresent groan crescendoed into another wail of such torment, his blood turned to ice.

  "Jesus, Mary and Joseph," Roan murmured, blessing himself.

  Deliah ran into the hall breaking the trio's stupor. Winston gripped her arm as soon as he caught up with her on the landing of the third floor. Roan and Laura followed at his heels. Agnes and the boys stood outside Alby's bedroom door. The boys beelined for the adults and huddled close while Agnes glided toward them, her gaze fearfully casting about.

  Everyone looked down the far end of the hallway when Deliah intensely fixed her gaze in that direction. Another wail came, not quite so loud but nonetheless disturbing.

  "Aggie, wha's goin’ on?" Roan asked in a whisper.

  "I don’t know." She jerked when she became aware of a presence within the house. "No. It can’t be," she murmured.

  Roan looked askance at his aunt. "Aggie, wha's wrong?"

  Deliah sidestepped closer to Winston and wrapped her arms about his middle. The quilt fell to the floor as she met his bewildered gaze, her own trying to convey that she wished she could have done everything differently. He was about to question her when a door at the far left of the hall banged open.

  A figure bounded from the master suite and ran toward them, at first appearing to be but a blur. When what turned out to be a man was nearly upon them, gasps detonated from the group.

  Electricity crackled in the air as the newcomer came to a jarring halt and cried, "Fegs, tis Beth! I think she's in labor!"

  Chapter 7

  Time and space existed in a small, confining bubble, left adrift in infinite grayness. At least, that was Winston's initial impression when he realized who the man was standing in front of him. He couldn't move. Couldn't speak. And he was conscious of the others suffering the same condition. It was as if a spell had been cast over them. Suspended in the bubble, where movement was impossible and sound couldn't be heard because of the lack of oxygen, they were all drifting into the unknown, a realm of such surrealism their minds couldn't begin to grasp what was happening to them.

  Another crescendoing, pitiful moan came. Then Lachlan Baird—ghost extraordinaire—bellowed, "Have you all gone daft? Ma Beth is in pain! Come alive!"

  "Stay wi' the lads," Winston heard Agnes say, and shortly realized she had spoken to Roan, who remained as still as a statue, staring at Lachlan through a face as pale as a marble statue.

  The boys' mouths were agape. It was the longest span of silence that had ever befallen them during their awake hours. When Roan suddenly fell on the floor on his butt, his gaze dazedly riveted on the former laird of Baird House, Kevin sat to his right, Kahl to his left, and Alby perched himself atop Roan's lap. The scene struck Winston funny, but he couldn't laugh. Not even a smile was able to strain past the taut muscles in his face.

  Then Deliah was tugging Winston along, trailing Laura, Agnes and Lachlan down the hall. For the life of him, Winston couldn't fathom how he was walking. He could barely feel his legs beneath him. His mind was trapped in a dimension somewhere between reality and make-believe, trapped on a roller coaster going at a head-reeling speed on a track that had no foreseeable end. When Deliah squeezed his hand, he looked down at her through glazed eyes. He knew they were glazed, because she looked fuzzy. Out of sorts. She didn't look real to him, but he could feel her solidity pressing against his side, and her fingers spastically opening and closing on his clasped hand.

  Dimly he was conscious of voices. Heavily gauzed voices, and he was unable to make out what was being said.

  Another scream, one that pierced his soul with its depths of agony, rescued him. His senses awakened. He stared at a woman atop the bed and immediately recognized her. The curly light brown hair. Blue eyes and creamy complexion. She still wore the long white gown he'd seen her wearing in her ghostly form that fateful Christmas Eve.

  "Oh...God!" she cried, gripping the bed quilt so fiercely her fingers were white.

  Bloodless....

  Details crashed upon the shores of Winston's awareness. Beth Staples' pain-contorted face was coated in perspiration. Damp tendrils of hair clung to her brow, cheeks and neck. Her breathing was hoarse, labored. She was braced on her elbows, her raised knees parted. From Winston's vantage point by the wall near the head of the bed, he could see that her stomach was a mound beneath the gown. There was no disputing that she was pregnant. Pregnant and in the throes of hard labor.

  "Aggie...Aggie," Beth panted. "What's happening to me? God, it hurts!"

  The last she wailed, and Winston nearly ran from the room. He'd never witnessed a woman in labor, and swore he never would again. Laura and Aggie were on the opposite side of the bed, Aggie sitting and lifting Beth's gown over her knees. Bewilderment and panic masked Laura's face. Lachlan stood at the foot of the bed, his wide eyes fixed between Beth's legs. He looked about ready to faint, and nearly did when Agnes announced, "I see the head."

  "Winston." Deliah's authoritative tone drew his gaze to her face. "Take Lachlan away afore he drops," she ordered.

  Beth released a long, suffering groan and Winston felt his blood plummet into his feet. His stomach became queasy and the room pitched into a maddening spin.

  "Winston," Deliah said kindly, reaching up and brushing the backs of the fingers of her right hand down one of his cheeks. "Leave. Tis female matters here. Take Lachlan and leave, Winston. Now."

  "Laura, fetch me some hot water and clean towels," said Aggie. Her pale blue eyes ta
rgeted Winston after casting Lachlan a fleeting glance. "And for Pete's sake, get him ou' o' here!"

  Nodding like an automaton out of control, Winston shuffled to Lachlan Baird's side. "It's time we checked on Roan and the boys." But Lachlan stood, immersed in shock and deepening revulsion at the sight of a baby's head emerging between Beth's thighs.

  "Lachlan Ian Baird," Beth gritted out, "I'm going to castrate you!"

  A breath whooshed from the former laird and he jerked back. Next Winston knew, he and Lachlan were hastening down the hall in the direction of the other males in the house. Roan was on his feet, leaning against the wall as if his legs couldn't support him. The boys were quiet, the two older brothers blinking at Winston, while Alby's face split into a grin and his eyes sparkled in wonderment.

  When Winston and Lachlan came to a stop, the three-year-old stepped up to Lachlan, craned back his head to peer into Lachlan's face and breathed, "Lannie, you're back."

  Lachlan and Roan locked gazes, both looking as though the world had dropped from beneath them.

  "Lannie," Roan began, but another wail came from Beth, and the group in the hall cringed in unison.

  "I-I c-canna take hearin’ her in p-pain," Lachlan stammered, his gaze casting about like a madman seeking escape.

  "The library," Winston suggested. He, too, needed to escape Beth's cries and her panting, roaring breaths, which seemed to fill every molecule of the air surrounding him.

  Lachlan lifted Alby and absently positioned him on his right hip, then hurried down the staircase. The older brothers followed. Winston hung back, waiting for Roan, who took several seconds longer to push himself away from the wall and head down the stairs.

  Winston trailed behind, his thoughts in overdrive. He tried to concentrate on Deliah, but with the advent of the ghostly couple, the remaining mysteries behind the fourth dimension nymph seemed somehow trivial at the moment. At first recognition of Lachlan Baird, impressions had rushed at Winston. He still couldn't accept what his inner senses told him. Beth Staples was upstairs in the master suite, giving birth, and her dubious significant other was leading this all male party to the library, still carrying Alby on his hip.