In His Wildest Dreams

by Marie Treanor

  “Don’t be troubled.”

  “I’m not,” Izzy said aloud. “I’m fine.” Maybe the sound of her own voice would jerk her brain back to normality, especially when her darting gaze found no one. Just an empty room full of equipment she didn’t understand. Was that it? Some kind of trick? Were the TV people creating their own ghost?

  Surely, there was something there… She blinked, peering closer. Between her and the tall bookcase, it was if random atoms were forming into a shape. A woman’s shape. Izzy’s mouth went dry. She was hallucinating.

  “It will pass, child.” The voice sounded sad. “We are strong and can always overcome.”

  “Overcome what?” Izzy whispered. She could make out a face now, a woman’s fine features, a gentle, encouraging smile, and then the vision faded and disappeared.

  Slowly, Izzy closed her gaping mouth, raised her duster hand to her forehead and dropped it again. “What the—” Am I actually insane?

  No. It was a trick. It had to be. Well, she’d say nothing. And even if they’d caught her on camera, they couldn’t use it.

  Deliberately, she got on with her cleaning, as if nothing had happened. And yet, at the back of her mind lurked the uneasy suspicion that something had.

  No one came into the room to confirm or deny anything. She left, none the wiser.

  It seemed to be a day of baffling encounters. Before she even reached the primary school, a car pulled up beside her, and Harry stuck his head out of the window. Did he never work anymore?

  “Just the lady I hoped to see,” he said smiling.

  “Running late as usual,” she said by way of warning that she couldn’t stop and chat.

  “I won’t keep you,” he assured her. “Just wondered… I’ve got two tickets for a charity dinner dance in Oban on Friday—forgot all about them, to be honest! I don’t suppose you’d care to come with me?”

  “Oh, thanks, Harry, but I can’t.”

  “Louise is desperate to look after Jack for an evening.”

  Izzy laughed. She probably was, but that wasn’t the point. What the hell was the point? Suddenly, it seemed obvious to her that the only reason she was so upset over Glenn Brody—to the point, possibly, of imagining the appearance of comforting ghosts in his library—was that she didn’t have a life. She had to do more than hide, or it was all pointless.

  A surge of confused defiance flowed through her, aimed at Ray and Brody and anyone else who’d ever hurt her. And the ghost—whoever or whatever she was—had been damned right. She was strong.

  “I’ll talk to Louise and let you know. Thanks for thinking of me, Harry!” And she grinned and ran on toward the school playground. She almost felt like one of the kids with a treat.

  As they sometimes did, Izzy and Jack called in on Louise and her parents on the way home. The old people loved to see Jack, even if Mr. Grieve didn’t have much clue who he was and Mrs. Grieve couldn’t hear a word he said. And Jack was always happy to play up to them for the attention.

  “Harry’s just asked me to some dinner dance in Oban on Friday.”

  “Really?” Louise marvelled.

  “I gathered it wouldn’t be news to you!”

  “Well, no, he did ask me—just between ourselves—if I’d be willing to babysit that night. Because, of course, you’ll have to stay over. It’s too far to drive home so late, even if one of you stays stone-cold sober. I said I would if you asked me to.”

  “Could you really manage Jack as well? What if you have an emergency here?”

  “I’ll get Morag to come round too.”

  “Tell you what, then. You do this for me, and I’ll return the favour and watch over your mum and dad some time.”

  “Done,” Louise said immediately.

  Stupidly enough, she’d read Jack his bedtime story and put his light out before it occurred to her that the ghost of Ardknocken House was supposed to be Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary, by all accounts, had spoken with a French accent. The voice in Glenn Brody’s library had been definitely British—slightly Scottish, in fact, in a soft, pleasant kind of way.

  Izzy went to the bookcase in the living room and found the booklet on Ardknocken House that she’d borrowed from the library. Then she made herself a cup of coffee and curled up on the sofa with the little book.

  Although it was dry prose as Morag had warned, the facts were interesting, particularly the claim that there was a letter predating Mary Queen of Scots that mentioned a ghostly appearance. According to this, the ghost was a different Mary, the wife of a fifteenth-century laird called James MacLeod.

  Izzy sat up straighter on the sofa. Now this was interesting. She could imagine the “ghost” she’d spoken to in the library being Mary MacLeod rather than Mary Stuart. Had the television company known about her and faked her presence to get a reaction on camera? Or was the ghost real?

  Suddenly, Izzy wanted to know more, and urgently. The trouble was, she didn’t dare bring herself to Fiona’s notice in order to find out.

  Chapter Seven

  The television people were swarming when Izzy arrived at the house next day.

  “They packing up?” she asked Chrissy hopefully as she dropped her bag and coat in the office as usual.

  “On the contrary, they’re almost orgasming with excitement. Apparently, there’s been a sighting. And they want to talk to you.”

  Izzy spun to face her. “Me?” she said in dismay. “What on earth for?”

  “Don’t get your knickers in a twist,” Chrissy advised. “It’ll be off-camera, and they know Glenn’ll kick their arses if they step out of line. Metaphorically speaking,” she added hastily, in case, presumably, Izzy misunderstood. “Away and get it over with.”

  Izzy dragged her feet as she climbed the stairs toward the library. The whole house seemed full of unaccustomed noise and voices. And it wasn’t just the techies. The big guns awaited her too. The producer and Fiona Marr herself stood up as soon as she entered the room. Beyond them, slouching on the sofa by the window, was Glenn Brody.

  Shit. Now her heart really did do summersaults.

  “Izzy,” Fiona greeted her with a friendly smile. “Thanks for coming to talk to us when you’re so busy.”

  “No worries.” She didn’t look at Glenn, although her treacherous body heated and tingled in reaction to his presence. “What can I do for you?”

  “Well, we’d like to show you something,” the producer said. “Over here.” He led the way across the room to the far side of the big table, where a monitor stood facing three chairs. It brought her closer to Glenn, but still she didn’t look at him.

  Fiona waved her to one of the seats. “We know you don’t like cameras, but this one was set to record at any motion or minor change in temperature, and it caught this.”

  She clicked the mouse, and the screensaver vanished. In its place was a shot of the library bookcase in the far corner, and herself polishing the desk in front of it, vigorously enough to wear a hole in it.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to disrupt anything. I understood it was okay to clean.” Although she hadn’t understood they’d left the cameras on. How did that marry with Glenn’s insistence on prior written permission?

  “No, no, just watch,” the producer insisted.

  And all of sudden, the Izzy on the monitor straightened from the table and stared around the whole room. Then her voice came clear as a bell: “I’m not. I’m fine.”

  Oh double shit!

  On the monitor, she was peering harder at the bookshelf. “Overcome what?” she asked in little more than a whisper. Her hand came up, almost covering her face with the yellow duster, and then she dropped it before her voice said shakily, “What the…?”

  Fiona clicked and froze the image. “Could you tell us what you saw there? Who you were talking to?”

  “No one,” Izzy said. “I w
as talking to myself, I’m afraid. I had a lot on my mind.”

  On the sofa, Glenn stirred. Fiona and the producer—Jeremy?—both cast him quick, almost flickering glances.

  Jeremy said smoothly, “Obviously that’s none of our business. What concerns us is this, over here.” Taking the mouse from Fiona, he wound the video back a moment and pointed to the monitor with one finger, just touching the grainy bookcase. “Can you see that? A sort of a blob.”

  Izzy looked closer. There was a very faint blob, little more than a shapeless discolouration, except you could see through it to the books on the shelf.

  “This is where you seem to be speaking to,” Jeremy said. “Did you see someone, something there?”

  Izzy thought about it. She’d no real reason to keep anything to herself. And she had, besides, her own suspicions that the TV people had supplied the ghostly voice and apparition with just the purpose of getting a reaction like hers. For the first time, she glanced at Glenn, who wasn’t watching her but Jeremy and Fiona.

  She drew in her breath and elected for honesty. They’d probably hate her for it, but right now she didn’t care. She said, “I thought I heard a voice, and then I saw something.” She shrugged. “Then I couldn’t believe my own eyes. To be honest, I thought you guys were probably playing some trick to give your programme some substance. Whatever I did or didn’t see, it was fleeting and definitely not solid. Like some kind of projection.”

  “A talking projection?” Jeremy said. “You did appear to be answering it.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I might just have been answering the thoughts in my own head. I realize that makes me sound like a lunatic—”

  “Of course not,” Fiona said. “We all have bad days. Izzy, may we please use this?”

  Izzy shook her head. “Use the blob, by all means. I have no ownership of the blob.”

  A faint hiss came from Glenn as if she’d amused him. She tried not to care.

  “Okay, fair enough,” Fiona said easily. “What about just your voice, though? It would make it so much more real for our viewers to have someone talking to the ghost. We’d show everything from your angle so you’d never be visible.”

  “Sorry, no,” she said firmly. “Not my voice either. However… Have you found out much about this ghost yet? I mean, could it be Mary, Queen of Scots?”

  “We can’t find any evidence of Mary ever being anywhere near here, even on her Highland tour,” Fiona replied. “She doesn’t seem to have had any connection to the place or the family who lived here. They seemed to keep a low profile at this period. Plus I was talking to an old lady in the village who claimed the ghost was older, that there’s a booklet somewhere proving it.”

  “A laird’s wife from the fifteenth century,” Izzy said. “I’ve got the booklet from the public library—I’ll lend you it, if you like. But it doesn’t prove anything, just claims the existence of some fifteenth-century letter that describes the ghost as Mary MacLeod.”

  “I’d like to see that,” Fiona said at once, her eyes narrowing with investigative interest.

  “I thought you would,” Izzy said, standing up. “It’s in my bag—I’ll bring it up to you.”

  “No, no, I’ll come and get it,” Fiona said at once, springing up with her.

  As she hurried from the room, Izzy was vaguely aware that Jeremy and Glenn had also risen. She heard the faint rumble of Glenn’s voice.

  “So have you worked here for long?” Fiona asked brightly as they walked downstairs.

  “No, not really,” Izzy said.

  “What’s it like to work for him?” Fiona jerked her head up toward the library.

  Izzy shrugged. “All right.” She answered distantly and shortly from habit, until it struck her that Fiona wasn’t actually interested in her. She was interested in Glenn—although whether as a journalist or as a woman was moot.

  “He’s kind of unexpected,” Fiona observed.

  “Because he isn’t running a crack house and knifing people?”

  Fiona gave a light laugh. “There’s that. I didn’t expect him to be such a polite host.”

  “I still wouldn’t piss him off,” Izzy said, thinking again of the video footage.

  “No,” Fiona agreed.

  Chrissy wasn’t in her office. Izzy found her bag, delved deep and came up with the booklet. “Page nineteen,” she said. “But it’s all interesting.”

  “Thanks,” Fiona said, taking it with a smile and walking smartly out of the room. At the door, she almost collided with Glenn coming in, and in the brief flurry of embarrassed dodging and apologising, her face flushed just a little pink. And she was definitely flirting with her eyelashes. As usual, Glenn didn’t say anything, but he didn’t look averse.

  Bastard, Izzy thought unreasonably.

  As she hung her bag back up on the hook, she realized he hadn’t left again as she’d imagined he would on discovering Chrissy’s absence. With a deep breath for courage, she turned to face him.

  To her surprise, he hefted a leather-bound book in her direction before laying it on Chrissy’s desk and opening it. Okay…

  “What’s that?” she asked, giving in.

  “From the library upstairs. Some of those books are bound manuscripts. No one seems to have noticed.”

  Izzy felt her eyes widen. “You mean the letter about Mary MacLeod’s ghost is there? Did you know that all the time?”

  “No. I can’t read what it says. But according to the reference in the booklet—we have one of those too—this is the one they were talking about.”

  She hurried over to the desk and stood beside him. “Wow. We should probably wear gloves or something.”

  Glenn was right that the writing was pretty impenetrable. Beautiful, elegant, but bearing little resemblance to today’s letter formation. The date however, was clear enough.

  “Wow,” she said again with awe. “I can probably work this out, given time. I just need to get my eye in again.” She glanced up at him, and her thought vanished into thin air. He stood too close, his arm almost touching hers. In profile like this, with the unscarred side of his face visible, he looked younger, almost…refined, until he turned his head and those hard yet turbulent eyes captured hers.

  She couldn’t breathe. She had to stop this before she threw herself into his arms. Somehow, she said, “You should just give it to Fiona. If she can’t read it, she’ll have researchers who can.”

  Glenn closed the book and picked it up. “Okay.” And he walked out of the office. He’d taken her dismissal at face value. As he should. So why the hell did his departure make her so miserable?

  Only her refusal to be a wimp forced her through the door of Chrissy’s office that afternoon. She could hear Chrissy’s voice, determined and persuasive, and she knew it was Glenn who was on the receiving end. Chrissy wouldn’t have tried so hard with anyone else.

  Izzy walked in quietly, grabbed her coat and bag and turned to leave immediately without putting them on. But Chrissy foiled her swift getaway.

  “What do you think, Izzy?”

  “Me?” she said with mocking self-deprecation.

  “Yes, you,” Chrissy said. “You’re the nearest thing we have to a village connection. We’re going to have a wee gathering for the television guys on Thursday evening before they pack up and go on Friday. I was thinking we could give a general invitation to the village too, give everyone some wine and home baking, play them some music and let them spend their money on jewellery and stuff. Try and break the ice a bit. Show them what we do here.”

  “Why not?” Izzy said. “No harm in asking.”

  “That’s what I said. Glenn thinks there’s no point when we’re planning an open day in November.”

  Glenn, standing by the window and gazing outside, said nothing.

  Izzy considered. “Well, you’d probably get more v
isitors in November if a few of them had checked the place out in advance.”

  Glenn turned his head toward her. “Then you think anyone would actually come from the village?”

  “Oh yes. They’re very curious. Even the petition lot might come in the hope of finding something else to disapprove of. But if no one comes, you’ve lost nothing.”

  “Someone’ll come just to get Fiona Marr’s autograph,” Chrissy prophesied. She frowned. “What petition lot?”

  “Oh dear, didn’t you know?” Izzy hesitated, then: “There is a petition circulating, which asks you to shut this place down.” Although if they hadn’t delivered it, there probably weren’t enough signatures to be impressive.

  “Did you sign it?” Glenn asked.

  “No.” But she flushed all the same, because she’d considered it before she’d started working here. Because she hadn’t wanted Jack contaminated by a bunch of criminals and gangsters. Like Glenn. “People gossip here, but there’s a strong feeling of live and let live. Unless you piss them off, they’ll leave you alone.”

  “Well, I think it’s time we did more than just not piss them off,” Chrissy said roundly. “We’ve been too careful. Sure, we buy things in their shops, but we don’t sit down in the tearoom. We don’t drink in the village pub or go to the church coffee mornings, just so we don’t embarrass them. We could be better for their economy, especially after the New Year, and it’s time they took that on.”

  Glenn sighed. “All right. In for a penny,” he said without much enthusiasm. “Ask them.”

  While he strode off, Izzy struggled into her raincoat and backpack. When she saw him pass the window with the dog, she found herself asking, “Why is he so against it? Don’t you need publicity and cooperation to make this work?”

  “Yes.” Chrissy was watching him go too, her eyes softened. She had a real and genuine affection for Glenn that made Izzy ache. “But he knows there’s a lot of ill-feeling here about us, and between you and me, I think he’s afraid he has to thump someone for misbehaving.”

  And then he’d be back in prison, no doubt. “Is his temper really so uncertain?” she asked.