Tall, Dark and Kilted (18 page)

Cilla looked down, toying with her food. “Maybe he’ll know something about the Eggertsons?”

“Could be.” Aunt Birdie took a bite of baked beans. “He’s rumored to have extensive knowledge of the clans, so he might well know of other names.”

“I wonder if he would know anything about a place called Seagrave or”—Cilla drew a breath, then rushed on—“a medieval family named de Studley?”

“You could certainly ask him.” Aunt Birdie smiled, her deep blue eyes crinkling at the corners. “Seagrave rings a faint bell. I believe it’s a ruin on the east coast, south of Aberdeen. Rather like the touristy Dunnot-tar, but left wild, totally untouched except by time.”

“What about the de Studleys?”

Aunt Birdie shook her head. “I can’t say that I’ve heard of them, my dear. Sorry.”

. . . Can’t say that I’ve heard of them.

The words hit Hardwick like a kick in the shins.

He winced and stepped deeper into the shadows near the door. To be sure, Birdie MacGhee had never heard of his family. He’d left no issue, and those who’d remained and could have, though not directly cursed, met their own untimely ends until the line was no more.

Even Seagrave, mighty holding that it’d been, had suffered. Other families came and went, tearing down towers or adding wings until, ultimately, they, too, disappeared into the mists of time.

Leaving Seagrave to crumble into the sea, stone by stone, until the curse ran its course. A sorry state and the very reason he had no business standing here, deliberately letting
her
think he’d gone.

Souls who insisted on peeking beneath rocks were bound to discover things they didn’t want to see.

Or hear.

Yet he couldn’t leave.

She drew him like a lodestone. And try as he might, he couldn’t blank his mind to the image of her tilting her head back for his kiss, her face going all soft and dreamy and her lips just beginning to part. A brief glimpse of the tip of her tongue to tantalize and en-flame him.

He clenched his hands, squeezing them tight when she shifted on her chair, causing her jacket to gape slightly, allowing him a splendid view of her full, round breasts and hardened, thrusting nipples.

A sweet temptation he had no business ogling, not that he could tear his gaze away. Nor did it help that she was looking right at him, her eyes earnest and her brows drawn together. Almost as if she saw him despite the cloaking shield he’d willed around himself.

There were, he knew, some souls who could see ghosts always, regardless of a ghost’s honest attempts at remaining unseen.

Or, he strongly suspected, times when the pull between two souls was so powerful that the veils separating time and place just ceased to exist.

Sure that was the way of it, his heart started a slow, hard beating. A rush of warmth swept him, filling him with a deep longing that had nothing to do with her nipples, much as he burned to get his hands and mouth on them.

He frowned, almost willing himself wholly visible until her gaze shifted past him to the windows and the direction of Castle Varrich. She stared out at the ruin, but her mind was clearly turned inward.

Hardwick’s body tensed and he narrowed his eyes on her, waiting. Seven hundred years of womanizing let him know that she was about to make some important pronouncement.

“Aunt Birdie . . .” She returned her attention to her aunt, her tone proving him right. “There was another reason I wanted us to eat here before going back to Dunroamin. I need to talk to you alone.”

Hardwick’s ears perked.

Chivalry forgotten, he sidled nearer.

“About Grant?” One of Birdie MacGhee’s brows arched ever so slightly. “You know you have my sympathies.”

“It isn’t Grant.” A pink tinge stained Cilla’s cheeks. “I really am over him. Truth is, looking back, I can’t imagine what I ever saw in him.”

A jolt of triumph shot through Hardwick.

He edged closer. So near that her clean, fresh scent swirled up to tempt him. Nae, to bewitch him, because for one crazy-mad moment he forgot he was a ghost! His lips started to curve in a slow, seductive smile. The kind designed to melt a woman’s knees and make her all hot and achy inside. But then he remembered his
situation
and frowned instead.

As if she knew her power over him and meant to plague him even more, she leaned forward and her shoulder brushed lightly against him.

He froze, not daring to move as the warmth of her touch spiraled through him. Not just warm but golden and prickly, it spread like honey fire, flaming his blood. A fierce longing gripped him, and for two pins he would’ve grabbed her, yanking her to her feet and into his arms. He’d steal her breath with hot, furious kisses and free her breasts, letting his hands slide over them, kneading and plumping.

But then a shadow fell across the room, the brief darkening reminding him of the futility of such desires.

Even so, he reached to touch a finger to her cheek, savoring its silky-smooth softness, knowing she’d think it was the wind.

She blinked in response, her breath catching audibly.

“Grant was jerk,” she said then, speaking to her aunt but looking right at him. “He wasn’t even a good kisser. Actually, he was a bad one.”

Hardwick’s heart soared.

All ears now, he flicked his wrist and conjured a three-legged stool to sit on, plunking it down a good—safe—two tables away from hers.

He dropped onto it, waiting.

“Well?” Her aunt was looking at her, too. “What did you want to talk about?”

“Ghosts.” She cleared her throat. “I want to talk about ghosts.”

Her aunt didn’t bat an eye. “A-ha!” She smiled. “So you ran into Gudrid the Viking maid up at the ruin? I rather hoped she’d show herself to you.”

Hardwick sat forward, eager for her reply.

“No-o-o, I didn’t see her.” She sounded distracted. “What I really wanted to know was”—she paused, her fork poised over her baked beans—“if Uncle Mac had been a ghost when you met him, would you still have fallen in love with him?”

“What—?” Her aunt’s eyes widened.

“Don’t make me repeat it, please.” She set down her fork, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I feel silly enough already. Just imagine Uncle Mac had been a ghost. Not a Casper-like ghost, but real-seeming. Like”—she bit her lip, clearly searching for words—“a flesh-and-blood man. A really gorgeous and sexy man, too.”

Hardwick grinned.

She was talking about him. He knew it as sure as Bran of Barra’s beard was red.

Her aunt angled her head, studying her through narrowed eyes. “A ghost? Your Uncle Mac?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “What would you have done?”

“Well . . .” Birdie MacGhee gazed out the window, appearing to consider. Then her face brightened. Turning back to her niece, she slapped the table with her hand, silver armbands jingling. “I’d have jumped his bones, my dear,” she laughed. “No pun intended.”

“Aunt Birdie!” Cilla felt her face flame. “I was serious.”

“So am I.” Aunt Birdie sat back in her chair, nursing her soda water. “I was much younger than you when I met your uncle. And
very
romantic.” She winked. “I’m quite sure I would have fallen for him, yes.”

“Despite the impossibility of it?” Cilla remained skeptical.

“The
impossibility
of it—the romance—would have spurred me on.” A dreamy look entered Aunt Birdie’s eyes. “Remember, I’m the one your mother says is ‘out with the fairies.’ I would have hoped to find a spell or whatnot to make things work out for us.”

“I think you mean that.”

“I do.”

Looking wholly in her element, Aunt Birdie lifted an arm and examined the bangles on her wrist. “I’ll prove it to you,” she said, fingering one of them. “Once, well before I met Mac, I stayed in a lovely castle hotel near Edinburgh. Dalhousie Castle, now a luxurious tourist resort, yet preserved as one of the finest thirteenth-century strongholds you’ll find in all broad Scotland.”

Cilla felt a flutter in her belly, knew her aunt had more to tell. “What happened?”

“Ah, well—” Aunt Birdie laughed, sat straighter in her chair. “I was given the hotel’s de Ramseia suite in the oldest part of the castle, a wonderfully re-created medieval bedchamber deep in the castle’s vaulted basement.”

“You saw a ghost there?” Cilla pounced on the possibility.

Aunt Birdie’s gaze went past her. “Let’s just say that Dalhousie’s five-hundred-year-old well was in my room. And”—she looked back at Cilla—“it gave me certain ideas.”

“Like what?”

Aunt Birdie studied her arm bangles again. “The well,” she began, speaking slowly, “was in a corner of the room. For safety’s sake, it’d been fitted with a clear glass covering and an iron grill, but little spotlights shone into the shaft. You could look right down into it, clear to the bottom, where the water winked back up at you.”

“You loved it.” Cilla knew her aunt.

“More than that, it fascinated me.” Aunt Birdie’s voice went soft, distant. “Highlighted as the well was, combined with the room’s period furnishings, made it more than easy to lie awake at night and imagine a dashing warrior knight climbing up out of the shaft to ravish me!”

Cilla smiled. “But one didn’t.”

“Sadly, no.” Aunt Birdie shook her head. “But”—she winked—“had such a gallant appeared, ghostly or otherwise, you can bet I would have considered his appearance a gift of the cosmos and taken full advantage!”

“You know . . . I think I believe you.”

“You better.” Aunt Birdie reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “Despite your uncle’s blustering, there are things in this world that just can’t be explained. That doesn’t mean for an instant that they aren’t real. And remember”—her eyes started twinkling again—“this is—”

“Scotland,” Cilla finished for her, “a magical land where such things just might happen.”

“And do.”

“Oh, Aunt Birdie, I—” a sudden burst of wind shook the nearby windows, splattering rain against the glass and through the opening, onto the edge of their table.

“Goodness me!” Aunt Birdie leapt to her feet and carried her chair around to Cilla’s side. “We’d best finish up and be on our way,” she added, reaching for her plate. “I hadn’t realized the weather was turning so quickly.”

“I saw storm clouds earlier but forgot about them.” Cilla spoke a half-truth.

He’d
taken her mind off all else.

And now, with the increasing wind moaning around the eaves of the pub and rain pelting the walls, the magic moment had passed.

She’d have to wait for another opportunity to tell Aunt Birdie about her sexy ghost.

Her aunt might be receptive, but her mind was no longer on some romantic castle hotel and its medieval well. Now she was thinking about the long drive back to Dunroamin in the rainy dark and on slick, wet roads.

Slick, wet roads made more hazardous by sheets of drifting mist.

“I can’t believe it’s so dark out there.” Cilla glanced at the windows. Light from the hotel shone out into the road, but otherwise the world had turned a deep, thundery gray. “I thought—”

“It will pass.” Aunt Birdie sounded confident. “As soon as the storm blows over, the night sky will be as shining bright as always this time of year.”

“Should we wait then? Maybe—”

A movement outside the window caught Cilla’s eye and she snapped her mouth shut, blinked several times. She might be wrong—the sword and his shield were missing—but unless her eyes were fooling her,
he
stood outlined against the overcast night.

Seemingly oblivious to the rain and whirling mist, he leaned against the wall near the hotel entrance, his arms folded and his feet crossed at the ankles.

He was clearly waiting for someone.

And she had a good idea who.

Her breath snagged and her heart started racing. Then she nearly jumped out of her skin when Aunt Birdie placed a hand on her shoulder. She hadn’t even noticed her getting up.

“I think it’s time.” Her aunt smiled down at her.

Cilla’s jaw almost slipped. But then she realized her aunt only meant the drive home. “Out with the fairies” or not, Aunt Birdie wasn’t a mind reader.

“Well?” Aunt Birdie stepped back, hitched the strap of her bag onto her shoulder. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.” Cilla pushed to her feet before her knees could start knocking.

She
was
ready.

Aunt Birdie was right. Scotland was a magical place.

And some of that magic was about to happen to her.

She could just feel it.

Chapter 9

“You’re slipping again, my friend.”

Bran of Barra stood on the strip of pavement outside the Ben Loyal Hotel and winked broadly at Hardwick. Then he whipped out his sword and, with a bit of a flourish, jabbed at the empty space where Hardwick’s own sword—and his shield—should have been.

“You’ve once again manifested without your best pieces.” He sheathed his blade and planted balled fists on his hips. “The lassie’s addled your wits!”

Hardwick frowned at him. “My best pieces are here, right enough.”

All of them
, he added. Naturally, to himself.

For Bran’s benefit, he held up his hands and wriggled his fingers. Instantly, his trusty shield and brand appeared. “They are here if I need them.”

He refrained from commenting on his wits. They did seem to be in a questionable state of late. Leaning back against the wall, he vanquished his sword and shield. Then he assumed the most casual stance he could muster.

He also damned his luck that he’d sifted himself out of the pub only to reappear in nearly the very same spot and instant that his Hebridean friend chose to manifest his great hunkering self.

The collision of their foreheads had been formidable.

Most annoying of all, the impact hadn’t seemed to faze the bearded lout at all.

His own head was splitting.

So much so that if the knave didn’t stop grinning at him, he’d be sore pressed to challenge him to a bit of swordplay on the edge of the nearest cliff edge. A plunge down a five-hundred-foot rock face and into the cold, dark sea would dampen even a wild Isle-man’s humor.