by L. L. Muir
He shook his head dramatically. “I beg yer pardon? How do you know what Assa Kennedy fears when even she doesn’t ken it?”
She waved an impatient hand. “We have friends who are Rosses. We’ve been watching out for you, you might say.”
He forced the words out, in case any of it was true. “Thank you.”
Lorraine rolled her eyes at him. “Soni told us Nessa was afraid you’d reject her. That all your kindness had been an act.”
“An act!”
“And if you thought you were stuck for eternity on the moor,” Loretta chimed in, “with a man who didn’t love you, who thought you were probably a spy—”
“You wouldn’t want to give him a chance to break your heart,” Lorraine finished.
Gerard grunted. Hadn’t he been harboring the same hurt, thinking Assa hadn’t truly cared for him either?
“I beg ye. Take me to her. I must have her forgiveness before Soni finds me.” He gnawed on his lips for a moment or two. “I dinna suppose ye could give the lass a phone call and ask her to hold off…”
Loretta shook her head. “Phone died after I asked her to hurry.”
“Then we must hurry!”
She took the pan from the stove and set it into the sink instead of whacking him on the head with it, as he expected. “Get the keys, Lorraine!”
~
She hadn’t been pretending.
The words repeated in Gerard’s head a dozen times, and all the while, the fresh rent in his heart began to close. He was glad no one could see his face while he sat in the rear seat of the wee red auto since he was grinning like an idiot.
Lorraine, in the passenger’s seat, mumbled something.
“What’s that?” He leaned closer to hear her better.
“I just said it’s a pity you came to your senses too late.”
He leaned farther over the back of the seat and pointed to the cut on his brow. “Weel, it took a wee bit more violence to clarify my memories, aye? And lucky I am ye’ve this fine car to take me back to Assa.”
Lorraine gave a delicate snort. “Oh, it’s a fine car now?”
He nodded and grinned. “A real beauty. Like the pair of ye.”
She patted her sister’s arm. “Best drive quickly, Loretta, so the manure doesn’t have time to pile up.”
They turned onto the main road in no time, and thankfully, with so sign of Soncerae. In less than five minutes, they came upon the Hazelnut sign and his heart nearly leapt from his chest at the sight of it.
“Not long now,” he told the poor, abused organ.
The drive up to the house seemed interminable, and when they arrived, the cousin’s lorry was parked outside with the three cousins lined up alongside it. Their arms were folded and a familial scowl darkened all their foreheads.
Gerard jumped out and headed for the door, prepared to knock each man on his arse who tried to stop him. But they tried nothing of the sort. They merely stood and glared while he pounded on the door.
The Muirs sat anxiously in the car, no doubt unwilling to show the others they were still in their robes and slippers. They glanced between himself and the cousins as if they were intently watching a tennis match.
No one answered the door, so Gerard pounded again. “Assa!”
“She’s not here, bampot,” said the big blond. “She’s gone.”
“Gone where?” He had to find her before Soni found him!
“Forget her,” the man said. “Ye had yer chance, and ye left her.”
“What,” said Hughie, “ye think she had all the time in the world, did ye?”
The man clamped his lips shut after a sharp look from Ian.
Gerard’s heart fell. He’d never stopped to think how much time she’d been given. If she’d been around for two weeks, in human form, he supposed Soni’s rules no longer applied to her. And he still didn’t know how her family had been preserved along with her. “Tell me what ye mean!”
Hughie shook his head and looked away.
“Jacky took her to Culloden,” Jamie said quickly, ignoring his brothers’ gasps. “She woke with a strong need to see the place. So he took her.”
“Culloden?” If the sisters drove him back to the battlefield, they were bound to run into Soni along the way. But he would simply have to pray that the wee witch would listen to reason and take pity on a fool.
He banged on the roof of the car and opened the door. “Culloden, ladies.” Then he climbed in the back and prayed he could reach Assa before he was sent on to Hell. For surely, if he wasn’t able to look into her eyes, just one more time, and beg her forgiveness, Hell awaited him no matter how much worth God placed on his soul.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
As luck would have it, Loretta Muir was no doddering driver. Unfortunately, she proved incapable of driving slowly at all, as if bobbies were on her tail, and her with a dead body in the trunk of her car. Her sister only made things worse. Lorraine produced a comb and hairspray and arranged the hair on both their heads while her sister struggled to drive between the lines.
Gerard closed his eyes and tried to ignore the dangers coming at him from both sides of the road, but his stomach rebelled and he was forced to witness it all.
A man on a bicycle drove off into a field, in fear for his life. A jogger and her dog pressed themselves up against a low rock wall when the nose of the vehicle turned their way. And the manner in which Loretta giggled afterward convinced him she’d done it a’ purpose, not because her sister yanked on a clump of her hair.
By the time Inverness was in the rear window and they were headed north to the battlefield, the car was filled with an abominable cloud of hairspray that made Gerard wished he was a ghost again so he needn’t breathe the stuff.
Out of desperation, he discovered how to open the window and pulled a clean, cool breath into his lungs. He was certain another ten seconds and he would have lost consciousness. How the women were able to breathe normally was a mystery, not to mention how Loretta could see well enough out the window to drive.
“Oh, that’s much better,” she said, as the swirling air cleaned out the rest of the car.
“Copper!” Lorraine barked, and the pair of them sat straight and alert in their seats as they passed a police car parked at a crossroads.
At the sound of the siren starting after them, Gerard began plotting how he might run the rest of the way to Culloden without the officer thinking he was fleeing from a crime. But Loretta raised a hand, wiggled her fingers like she was bidding someone farewell, and the siren suddenly stopped.
Gerard twisted in his seat in time to see the police car turning around in the road to head in the opposite direction.
He chuckled. “I often wonder if this is all just a dream brought about by my need to keep my memories clear.”
Lorraine looked over her shoulder. “Why is that?”
“Because ye two cannot have the powers to do what I believe ye have done.”
The sisters laughed, then Loretta shook her head. “Not us, laddie. It’s our brother who holds the power of an entire generation of Muirs in his hands. All we can do is read a thought or two, see a glimpse of the future now and again, and make things appear a bit cheerier than they might truly be.”
Her sister put an elbow to her ribs and she glowered.
“Don’t be confessing our sins, sister,” said Lorraine.
“This brother of yers?”
“You’ve met Wickham, dear.”
That surprised him. “But he’s a young man—” He thought best not to finish that comment, but Loretta just laughed.
“Well, if we’re a hundred this year,” she said, “that puts him at eighty-one, if you’re counting.”
Lorraine elbowed her again.
Loretta harrumphed. “It’s not as if he’s much longer for this world, is it?”
The truth of her words struck him in the chest. “She’s right,” he said. “My mind has been on other things.” He forced a smile to his lips. “But at lea
st I won’t have to inhale anymore hairspray, aye?”
His stomach rolled over when they passed a sign pointing to the battlefield, and he could feel his bones stirring, as if they’d sensed they were near their final resting place—like a horse turned for home. Of course, any number of things might happen once he placed his foot upon the grounds again. Soni had said, in the beginning, that they wouldn’t be returning after their quests were over. And there he was, failing her again.
“Be at ease.” Lorraine gave him a wink. “Ye’re still entirely mortal, Ross.”
He wasn’t so sure. He’d remembered his hand passing through Jamie on the hillside…
They pulled up the drive and as the battlefield and the memorial cairn came into view, Gerard was struck by how deserted the place appeared. A few folks wandered in and out of the Great Visitor’s Center, and three small groups wandered down to the Jacobite front lines, but the remainder of Culloden’s 79 were gone! “And only in a day,” he whispered.
“You see?” Lorraine chuckled. “I told you you’re still mortal. That’s why you can’t see them. And why they’ll take little notice of you.”
He looked again. Still nothing. But what was more—there was no sign of Assa!
They pulled into a stall in the car park. “She’s probably inside,” one of the sisters suggested, as if she’d read his thought.
Inside?
Few of his comrades ever went inside. Every imaginable reminder of their defeat was within those walls. And a blood-curdling battle room awaited any brave enough to live through the slaughter again. But witnessing the original had been bad enough to keep them all away.
Only the bravest went inside.
And if Assa was inside, that delicate butterfly wing shielding her from her memories would not last long.
Assa, who could no longer bear the slightest bit of violence…
He bolted toward the doors, gave no thought to running inside the gauntlet of horror—and was stopped by a hand on his chest.
“Ye’ll have to pay an entrance fee, sir.” The security officer acted as if he’d never seen Gerard before in his life, when he’d been walking past the man nearly every day for six years.
“Allen,” Gerard said. “Let me pass or I’ll tell Anita what ye keep beneath the seat, in the out-of-service buggy, aye?”
The man’s face contorted in a mixture of horror and confusion. Gerard took advantage and pushed past him. He hurried up the aisles that held placards and trinkets along each wall. He glanced away from a targe here, a dagger there. The sight of a bayonet nearly emptied his stomach, and he suddenly realized why Assa had an aversion to violence. She’d witnessed too much of it already, whether or not she remembered the details.
Mortals were ill-equipped for such trauma.
“Assa,” he reminded himself. “Find Assa.”
He had to stop for a deep breath before he was able to push the door open to the battle room. A man stood in the center with his arms wrapped around a woman’s shoulders while they both took in the sight of 40 minutes of 360 degrees of horror, consolidated into five minutes of reenactment.
Gerard kept his eyes away from the walls where the moving pictures were projected. No one else in the room. Get out!
He followed the course through to the weapons room where a large table laid out the history of the place in miniature. A man lectured a small mob of school children on what went wrong during the battle, when, in truth, it was what happened before the battle that doomed them all.
Not inside. She’s not inside!
Unless the lass was in the loo, where he dared not look for her, she wasn’t in the building. And why had he seen nothing of Jacky?
When he stumbled out the doors and took a deep breath, he realized the air-conditioned interior had been as toxic to him as a cloud of hairspray. But he was all right. He was out. And Assa hadn’t been cowering in a corner somewhere, paralyzed by the violence not only on display, but hiding in her mind.
He glanced toward the corner and found the Muir sisters just coming from the car park. Unfortunately, between them, walked one of the dearest and dreaded women in his life—Soncerae.
He stepped out onto the grass and strode in the opposite direction. He heard his name, but didn’t know if one of the women was calling out to him, or just talking about him, so he kept going.
South, and to the left a bit, he headed for the blue flag that marked the far right flank of the Jacobite line. There, Gerard had once delivered a message to Lord John Murray from Alasdair MacMhaighstir Alasdair, leader of the Clanranald regiment, not long before the first shot signaled the start of battle. Unlike his ghostie years, to walk upon that ground again, in human form, filled his stomach with fresh remorse. But he had no time for that.
From there, he turned right onto the path that led down the Jacobite line. And to his relief, the lovely head of red hair, for which he’d always kept an eye out, lingered at the Cameron memorial.
It was where 79, Simon McLaren often sat, and Gerard laughed to himself, imagining the man sitting there now, while his Assa blocked his view of the rise beyond.
Her head snapped to the side, and after she saw Gerard, she bolted—just as his Kennedy had done a thousand times, her copper mane bouncing behind her instead of that damnable cap.
Powerless to resist such a lure, Gerard took off after her, determined to feel the touch of her lips…one last time.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Wait! Assa, wait!” Gerard shot out after the lass, knowing from experience that she would keep running, and in circles if necessary, until he finally gave up and let her be. But he wasn’t going to give up this time. They were both mortal for the moment, and he was fairly certain he could outlast her.
The lass was fast, however, and she was nearly to the car park again before he finally caught up with her. No doubt sixty ghosts had been roused from their thoughts to watch the spectacle, but he didn’t care. He had to speak with her before Soni snatched him away.
“Assa, forgive me!” He clamped his hand around her upper arm and dragged her to a stop. She struggled to loosen his grip, but couldn’t. And while she gasped for breath, she kept her face away from him.
“No need, lass. I’ve seen yer face. I ken who ye are. No more need to hide from me.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, but he suspected she was lying. The chase had been too familiar. She’d known just what she was doing.”
“Assa, my love. Forgive me.”
“Forgiven,” she said, still not facing him. “Now let me go.”
“Nay, lass. I need real forgiveness before I’m taken away.”
Her head snapped around again. “What do ye mean?”
“I’ve only a few more minutes on this earth. I would have yer forgiveness before I go, or I swear I shall never know peace.”
She took the smallest step toward him. “Who says ye must go?”
“I do.” Soni stood near the large stone wall lining the walkway. The pavement at her feet was a checkerboard of stones honoring those who had donated to keep the battlefield intact. She toed the stone inscribed with the name of the actor, Gerard Butler, as if reminding him that it was his time to go.
But she kept her hands in the pockets of her black robe and made no movement toward him.
Gerard gave the wee witch a smile and a wink of thanks. To Assa, he said, “Do ye remember yer promise to me, on the Kessock Ferry?”
She shook her head, frowning. “Kessock Ferry?”
He reached out and pushed a lock of hair away from her forehead, wishing he could do the same to that butterfly wing. “Aye,” he said. “Ye offered me forgiveness and I asked ye to keep it for me. That I’d need a whole pocketful, and you should hold onto it until I asked for it.”
She smiled at the sentiment, surely, and not from actual memory.
“I told ye to hold onto it like a pebble in yer pocket, and I gave ye a wee pebble for a reminder.”
Assa’s eyes widened and s
he dug into the pocket of her denims. “A white pebble?” And to his complete joy, she produced the same rock he’d once carried in his sporran for good luck.
“The very same.”
She held it out to him.
He shook his head. “Doona give it unless ye mean it, lass. A grant of forgiveness. And perhaps give me a wee kiss so I believe it’s real.”
She bit her lip and said nothing while she turned the stone in her fingers.
“I love ye, Assa, or Nessa, whomever ye choose to be. No matter how old ye grow, no matter how wrinkled, like an ancient woman I met at a bus stop. And I’ll wait for ye, no matter how long, in the next life. And if I must wait for yer forgiveness, so be it.”
He swallowed the lump forming in his throat. This was farewell. Again. Just as he’d left her at Dunvegan. Just as she’d left him from Culloden two weeks before. Only this time, he knew who he was leaving.
Assa pulled his hand open and firmly pressed the stone into it, closed his fingers over it, and lifted up on her toes to press her lips to his. “Forgiven,” she said clearly, and kissed him again.
He wouldn’t have been surprised if it took a security guard and three Muir witches to pull them apart again. He was home. He was loved. He held the entire world in his arms, and only death itself could take it away from him again.
Somewhere in the distance, a lass cleared her throat. Then waited a wee while before doing so a second time. If he hadn’t been out of breath, he would have ignored her forever. Damn his mortal body anyway.
He spared Soni a frown.
“I realize what I promised, Gerard Ross.” Soni wouldn’t meet his gaze. “But something happened, ye see, and I can no longer send ye on to Heaven.”
It was a blow, but he understood. No doubt he’d committed all manner of blasphemies since he’d fallen on the moor that day in 1746, and before.
Soni noted his disappointment, and shook her head quickly. “What I mean is…someone made a sacrifice on yer behalf, nearly two weeks past, actually—”