Tall, Dark and Kilted (35 page)

“Heigh-ho!” He grinned, grabbing Hardwick’s arms. “Say me you caught my ghosties!”

“Aye—indeed!” Hardwick smiled back, distracted.

Cilla always breakfasted with the residents. He knew her days better than his own.

Mac shook his arms. “Did you toast their feet on a wee bit o’ dry sticks and bracken?”

“Nae.” Hardwick brushed at his sleeve when Mac released him. “But swords and dirks were drawn.”

“Were they in Viking costumes?” Violet Manyweathers slid a told-you-so look at the colonel. “Caught red-handed?”

“That and more, my lady. Not only—”

Hardwick caught a shadow shift outside and thought it might be Cilla walking on the terrace. But it was only the sun nipping behind a cloud.

He turned back to Violet. “Not only were the miscreants garbed in stolen Up-Helly-Aa trappings, they were looting a longhouse they’ve excavated in a hidden corner of Mac’s peat fields.”

Mac’s eyes rounded. “Faugh!
A longhouse?
” He flashed a glance at his wife. “Why, my moors have enough strewn rubble from ruined longhouses to re-pave half o’ Inverness! The stones are from the houses of the Clearances. ’Tis the same all o’er Sutherland—”

Hardwick cleared his throat. “This isn’t a Clearance-era longhouse. It’s a Viking longhouse, fairly well preserved, and”—he couldn’t keep his lips from twitching—“filled with what just might be the richest hoard of Celtic- and Viking-age treasure to e’er be found in Britain.”

Mac’s jaw dropped.
“Treasure?”

Birdie launched herself at him, nearly knocking him down in her excitement. “Mac! We’re saved! Dunroamin is secure!”

Colonel Darling yanked a hankie from his pocket and loudly blew his nose. “I say! Who would have thought it?”

Violet began to cry.

Hardwick swallowed, his throat too tight for words. He stepped back, struggling against the ridiculous urge to throw his arms around every soul in the room and hug them tight, glorying in their triumph.

A victory that would be perfect if only Cilla shared it.

He glanced at the windows again, hoping he’d been mistaken about the sun shadow. But he hadn’t erred. The terrace was empty.

“Looks like I won’t have to cane my way past drip buckets much longer!” Flora Duthie’s twittering voice rose from a corner table.

Hardwick turned back to the room.

The tiny woman sniffed. “Is it really a great treasure?”

Hardwick nodded. “The greatest I’ve ever seen.”

Save the sapphire of my lady’s eyes.

His heart squeezed, and he cleared his throat again. “You’ll be wanting to call in your constabulary,” he said to Mac, his chest tightening at the telltale glistening on the laird’s face. “Perhaps contact Erlend Eggertson in Lerwick. He’ll help make arrangements to get the Up-Helly-Aa costumes back to Shetland.”

“And the ghosties?” Mac swiped his sleeve across his cheeks. “Are they still out on the moor? They’ll no’ be getting away?”

“Ach, they’ll be going nowhere.” Hardwick grinned. “My friend Bran and his lads are guarding them. We stripped them naked as a bairn’s bottom. If they run, they’ll be doing so in all their shameful glory.”

“Jumping haggis!” Mac hooted and punched Hardwick in the arm. “I knew I liked you! You really are a man after my own heart!”

Hardwick’s own heart pinched. Unbidden came the image of the Dark One’s inner sanctum and the root-dragons with their glittering black-scaled backs and swishing tails, their fiery red eyes and fetid, sulfurous breath. He imagined Cilla in their clutches, the gaggle of hell hags cackling with glee as the root-dragons pulled her into their lair.

He blinked and the vision faded, the bright morning light pouring into the conservatory making such a notion more than absurd.

Even though he knew it could happen.

A cold chill rushed up his spine. The conservatory seemed to fade around him, Mac’s guffaws and the chatter of the residents dimming in his ears. He clenched his fists, fighting the dread building beneath his ribs.

Mac thrust his arms in the air and danced a little jig, laughing.

And
he
was being a loon.

Even so, he grabbed Mac’s arm as soon as he stopped twirling. “Where’s Cilla?”

“Eh?” Mac grinned and swatted at his kilt. “Ach, she’s just for sleeping in,” he panted. “She’ll be down anon.”

Hardwick started to feel foolish until he caught the guarded look on Birdie’s face. When she slid a furtive glance at Honoria and that one promptly began rearranging her muesli packets, he knew something was wrong.

“What is it? Where is she?”

Mac slung an arm around his shoulders. “I told you, the lassie’s abed.”

“Nae.” Hardwick shook himself free. “I dinna think she is.”

The high color staining Birdie’s and Honoria’s faces said he’d guessed rightly.

He folded his arms. “Out with it, ladies. I know she isn’t here.”

He could feel her absence like a rip in his soul. “She went sightseeing.” Honoria broke first, chin high and lying out her ears.

“Where?” A muscle ticked in Hardwick’s jaw.

Birdie said nothing.

“If you know something”—Mac went to stand by her—“you’d best speak up.”

“Oh, posh!” Birdie waved a flustered hand. “She didn’t want anyone to know.”

“Know what?” Hardwick and Mac spoke together.

“She’s gone to Seagrave.” Birdie sounded defensive. “She went to Robbie and Roddie’s cottage last night, asking them to drive her. They left hours ago.”

“And why didn’t she ask me?” Mac’s brow crinkled.

“Perhaps she knew you’d tag along on her coat-tails?” Birdie smiled sweetly. “She has things to do there that she wishes to do alone.”

“Humph.” Mac frowned.

Hardwick’s blood chilled. When Birdie opened her mouth again to argue with her husband, he used the opportunity to slip from the room.

He couldn’t imagine why Cilla wanted to go to Seagrave, but whatever the reason, he didn’t like it.

It was also dangerous.

There were other reasons beside his memories that had kept him from returning to his old home. The ruin’s isolation, he’d been told, attracted unsavory souls.

Ghosts who used his home for revels and debauchery he didn’t want Cilla to stumble into.

“Hellfire and damnation!” He stormed out of Dunroamin’s heavy front door and scrunched his eyes against the blinding sunlight.

Where was soft Highland mist when a body needed it?

Scowling, he stomped down the broad stone steps, knowing there was only one thing he could do. He’d have to sift himself to Seagrave and fetch her.

He just hoped he wouldn’t be too late.

Chapter 17

’Tis a man’s work.

Cilla frowned remembering Hardwick’s words. Much as she loved him, she struggled against blowing out a bitter breath. She did take a deep, back-straightening one. That was what she needed, about to tackle some serious
women’s work
. Men didn’t do what she was going to attempt. When it came down to it, only women were so daring, so utterly bold and determined in chasing their dreams.

Her throat swelled and an annoying sting of prickling heat jabbed the backs of her eyes at the thought of
her
dream. Forget the tingles he gave her and the to-die-for tongue swirls. His deep, hungry kisses that drove her to madness, and even his rich Scottish burr. Something she doubted she’d tire of even if she lived a thousand years.

His slow, sexy smiles and the way his dark eyes went all hot and simmering when he looked at her.

She didn’t even need to think about his kilt.

All that was wonderful, but it was his heart and his soul that she really wanted, because her own would never be complete without him.

She suspected she’d known it the moment she’d seen him, and she wasn’t going to let him go now.

So she blinked back her tears before they could fall and swallowed the lump in her throat. Strength and courage was what she needed. There would be time for soppiness later, if her plan worked.

Refusing to accept otherwise, she pushed her hair back off her forehead and took another few brisk and confident steps.

Confidence was the key.

Only if she truly believed would she have a chance of breaking through seven hundred years and reaching the bard-wizard who’d cursed Hardwick. Villains always returned to the scene of their crimes, after all. Aunt Birdie had assured her that even if he hadn’t, enough residue of such a dramatic event would have seeped into Seagrave’s walls for her to make contact with the minstrel.

As long as she kept faith that she could.

But doing so wasn’t exactly easy. Already she’d covered half of the long grass-grown path that lead out to the imposing ruins of Hardwick’s former home. Her determination and—oddly enough—the occasional tossed-aside soda can or water bottle and the bicycle tracks on the path were the only things keeping her from turning around and following the little coastal road right back to the tiny fishing village of Cruden Bay, where Robbie and Roddie had dropped her.

Her rock-iron will to make contact with the bard and urge him to undo the spell wouldn’t let her turn back if her life depended on it.

And the litter and signs of cyclists assured her that the ruins weren’t as dangerous as they looked.

Other people clearly came here.

Even so, she couldn’t stop a shiver. Seagrave wasn’t your archetypical Scottish cliff-top ruin, all tumbled walls and romance, wheeling seabirds and piles of mossy, indistinguishable rubble.

The ruins were in-your-face formidable. Bold, stark, and soaring, from this distance, anyway, they didn’t look crumbled at all. Only bleak and derelict with the roof missing and large black rectangles of emptiness indicating the onetime placement of doors and windows.

Cilla took another deep breath and adjusted the shoulder straps of her rucksack. Filled with her lunch and, more importantly, Aunt Birdie’s spirit-conjuring goods, the thing was starting to get heavy.

And something was watching her from Seagrave’s hollow, blank-staring windows.

Hoping it might be the minstrel, in the way of spirits perhaps already aware of her mission, she quickened her step and plunged on. Chin high, she veered off the muddy, grassy track and pushed through into the heart of the ruin. A long, roofless corridor with many doors opening off both sides stretched before her. Eerie, damp, and earthy-smelling, it was anything but inviting, but she strode along until she came to a wide-open space that once could only have been a courtyard.

Though choked with weeds and brambles, there were enough clumps of fallen stone to sit on. Huge, empty windows facing the sea let in the light, and, best of all, here in the sheltered walls of the bailey, she’d be free from prying eyes.

Here, too, she’d be somewhat protected from the cold wind racing in off the gray, white-capped North Sea. Heavy waves pounded Seagrave’s cliffs, the churning waters so different from the gentle, blue-swirling Kyle.

Passing by the fallen chunks of masonry—she’d learned all about stinging nettles at Castle Varrich—she went to one of the large, gaping windows and placed her rucksack on its broad stone ledge.

Another deep breath and a silent prayer, and she started setting up her minstrel-conjuring goods. Two white candles, each carefully set inside glass jars to block the wind. A genuine fourteenth-century oil lamp from the depths of Dunroamin’s unused wing. Tiny and rusted, the lamp was just the thing to evoke a sense of the past century, or so Aunt Birdie had promised.

A little bottle of frankincense essential oil served the same purpose. Heart thumping, Cilla hoisted herself onto the window ledge and then unscrewed the bottle’s cap, dribbling a few generous drops onto the stone.

For good measure, she touched a finger to the bottle’s opening and then dabbed a tiny bit of the oil on the tip of her nose.

Then she closed her eyes and tried to concentrate, imagining the bard as a small bent man, grizzled and gray, and carrying a lute.

Unfortunately, she only felt silly.

Her eyes snapped open and she frowned. Despite the two glass jars, the wind had managed to blow out her candles. Worse, she’d not thought to return her matches to the rucksack, and the little packet was now gone.

The wind had surely claimed them. Sweeping the matches off the window ledge and sending them right down onto the crashing waves of the North Sea.

Damn.

Aunt Birdie had insisted the white candles were crucial.

And now she couldn’t relight them.

Frustration tightened her chest. For a moment, her eyes stung again and her view of the tossing gray-and-white North Sea went blurry. But she blinked hard until the stinging heat receded and her vision cleared.

Crying never got anyone anywhere.

But fierce determination did, so she picked up the little medieval cruse lamp and held it so tight its rounded, bowl-like edge dug deep into her palm. Ignoring the discomfort, she concentrated again on her image of a wandering minstrel, willing the man to appear. Or, at least, to give her some kind of sign that he was present and willing to listen.

Nothing happened.

She breathed deep. Long, slow breaths designed to soak up the ancient scent of the frankincense. But all she inhaled was the tang of the sea and black, limpet-crusted boulders. Wet grass and a pungent waft of something she suspected was strongly related to the many lobster traps and fishing nets she’d seen at nearby Cruden Bay.

The frankincense couldn’t compete.

Instead of feeling transported, she again began to feel ridiculous.

The minstrel wasn’t here, wasn’t reachable, or just plain didn’t care.

Doomed before she’d even put her bard-conjuring tools into her bag. Knowing defeat when it stood before her, she sighed and opened her eyes.

“Oh, no!” She clapped a hand to her breast, mortified to discover that she
had
conjured someone.

A man.

Tall, clad in black, and handsome in a roguish sort of way, he stood across the bailey from her, leaning casually against the arch of one of the many empty door openings.