To Love a Highlander Read online

  “I have.” Her tone held all the confidence of a woman well-loved and encouraged to share her views. “We both have.”

  That she spoke for the earl had Sinclair tightening his jaw, his dark eyes turning cold.

  He said nothing.

  The Wolf let go of his sword hilt and drew a large Highland dirk from beneath his belt. “Lady Mirabelle,” he kept his gaze on Sir John as he addressed her. “Did Sir John distress you in any way?”

  “No.” Mirabelle gave the only answer she could, the memory of Sorley’s wicked smile, his touch, giving her no other choice. “I did see a cat running along the arcade. Sir John appeared just after.”

  “So he didn’t assist you when you tripped?” Lady Mariota touched her arm again, the gesture allowing her to insert herself between Mirabelle and Sir John.

  Mirabelle hesitated, glancing toward the chapel. “Everything happened so quickly. Then you and the earl arrived.”

  “Sinclair.” The Wolf looked down at the dirk in his hands and began using its tip to carefully clean his fingernails. “Did you know that no man leaves my Badenoch territory alive if he is known to have insulted a lady? My wild hills and moorlands are a great distance from my brother’s hall.” His gaze snapped up then, his light blue eyes revealing his swelling rage. “Court manners and niceties have little use there. A strong hand is aye needed in such a bleak, godforsaken place, so full of stone and peat bogs, howling wind and no mercies.

  “Men know better than to rile me.” He kept working at his nails with the dirk tip, his soft Highland voice low. Those who knew well him would have turned and fled, because the deceptively gentle tone was his deadliest. “If a man’s honor means nothing to him, we help him find it by dressing him in his finest mail and armor and tossing him into the loch. Imagine! Most such offenders sink from the weight of their sins before they can swim ashore. If they do, and they’re still reeking of guilt, we set fire to their feet and see how fast they can stamp out the flames.” He raised his voice then, speaking with relish. “Did you know such malefactors burn brighter than any balefire? That they do, I say you!”

  “I have done no wrong, my lord.” Sinclair shifted, but held the earl’s gaze. “The lady is unharmed and—”

  “Other times, if we’ve no mind to watch them dance,” the Wolf went on as if Sir John hadn’t spoken, “such varlets have found themselves trussed and roasting o’er a spit. Or”—he lifted the dirk, examining its blade—“we simply hang them, letting their carcasses dangle and rot. The sight warns all that I do not look kindly on the mistreating of women.”

  “To be sure, my lord.” Sir John nodded.

  “See that you remember.” Alexander Stewart inclined his head as well and then sheathed his dirk. “Dinnae give me cause to warn you again. Badenoch may lie many miles from here, but it is no’ so far as the moon.”

  “Indeed, my lord.” Sir John bowed low. His relief was palpable when the Wolf waved him away, toward the rain-drenched courtyard.

  He left quickly, disappearing into the mist before the earl even lowered his arm.

  “Well done, Alex.” Lady Mariota smiled and touched her lover’s broad, tartan-clad back.

  “I have ne’er liked that bastard.” The Wolf turned around, his handsome face softening when he saw his mistress’s smile. “ ’Fore God, I’d love to ken how he stays in my brother’s good graces, oily as he is. If Robert would spend even a fortnight in the north, he’d soon learn which men can be trusted and who seeks only to fatten his own purse. And”—he glanced at Mirabelle, his face darkening again—“which men ought to have the root of their evil twisted right off them.”

  “Alex!” Lady Mariota gave him a look of reproach.

  But her eyes twinkled, especially when the Wolf wrapped an arm around her, pulling her close.

  “I aye speak the truth, lass, as well you ken.” An exceptionally tall man, he bent his head to her brow. “And you, lady”—he straightened and looked at Mirabelle—“should have a care when traipsing about the courtyard of an e’en, bold Highland lassie or nae.”

  “I shall, my lord.” Mirabelle bobbed a curtsy.

  “Aye, well.” The Wolf jerked his chin toward the hall. The vigorous strains of pipes and fiddle were just beginning to drift out into the night. “I am riding north at first light. I dinnae care to be away from my hills o’er long, nor does my lady.” He pulled Lady Mariota even closer to him, dropped another kiss on her shining hair. “We’re celebrating our departure in the hall. Will you join us?”

  “I…” Mirabelle would’ve loved to do so.

  But what she really wanted was another long, hot bath. She felt a powerful need to scrub her flesh until all trace of Sir John’s hands on her was well and truly washed away. Her skin crawled from his touch and despite the bravura she clung to so fiercely, her heart hadn’t stopped thundering. Worse, his narrow, sharp-featured face lingered in her mind. His slickly combed hair, black as a raven’s wing and smelling of heavy spices, the salacious curve of his lips and his hooded eyes, so capable of making her feel as if icy fingers clamped around her heart, squeezing.

  She’d rather think of Sorley, even if he had mightily annoyed her.

  Mirabelle glanced again at the chapel and drew her cloak against the cold.

  “She is tired, Alex.” Lady Mariota slipped from her lover’s grasp and reached for Mirabelle’s hand, tucking it in her arm. “Let us see her safely to the women’s quarters and then leave her be for the night.”

  “Is that your wish, my lady?” The Wolf looked at Mirabelle.

  “I would like to retire, aye.” Mirabelle nodded.

  “So be it!” The Wolf smiled and slapped his thigh. “I am no’ one to argue with a lady.”

  And so the King’s brother and his mistress led Mirabelle through the misty dark, past the hall’s open door and the revelry within, to a far corner of the courtyard where a torchlit archway marked the entrance to the stair tower to the castle’s guest quarters.

  They left her, promising to send up a bath, and she went to stand before her room’s small fire, stretching her hands to its flames as she waited. The Wolf had been kind. One word from her and he’d have dealt with Sinclair, she knew. He’d have served the noble with his own brand of Highland justice.

  She’d said nothing.

  Now she released a long sigh, heightened awareness of a very different sort blossoming inside her as the fire’s heat warmed her.

  How far gone was she in her attraction to Sorley that she’d forgo a means to be rid of Sinclair just so that she could hold on to her one chance to enjoy a night in Sorley’s arms?

  That was the way of it.

  And it was a truth that had the potential to be very damaging.

  What folly that she didn’t care.

  Mirabelle also didn’t notice the faint glimmer of pink rippling the air near the room’s fine four-poster bed. In that, she wasn’t alone, for no one had seen the fine trace of a woman in rose who’d followed her and the King’s brother and his lady across the bailey and up the tower stair.

  It was better so.

  Stirling Castle’s pink lady appreciated her privacy.

  Indeed, she considered the ability to remain unseen when desired one of the most appealing advantages of ghostdom.

  A disadvantage was being privy to things that were none of one’s business.

  For a soul with little to do but drift and flutter about walls that had once echoed with her footsteps, her laughter and, at times, her sorrows, any such glimpses into the lives of those yet mortal could prove an irresistible attraction. Much as she wished that wasn’t so.

  It had hurt her heart to see the extravagantly dressed courtier accost the young Highland maid.

  Hadn’t she suffered the same such unwanted attentions after her beloved husband had been killed in a raid on the castle? It’d been so many years ago, nearly a hundred by mortal reckoning, when the English had come to storm Stirling’s gate. Her husband had fought valiantly. He’d fallen w
ith sword in hand, a stalwart to his last breath. A knight of much honor and no small wealth, he’d left her a young widow seen by many as a prize.

  When she declined the offers of those eager to claim her—and through her, her late husband’s legacy—hadn’t some men turned to fouler methods in their hope of trapping her into wedlock?

  Unlike the braw Wolf of Badenoch, no man of Stirling had sallied forth to spare her such indignities.

  To be fair, those were troubled times in Scotland.

  With England’s hated Edward I claiming the stronghold and overrunning its proud walls with his own garrison of Sassenach knights and fighting men, she’d had little recourse but to fend for herself.

  It hadn’t been easy.

  She’d gladly shed her earthly mantle when a bowl of spoiled eel soup took her life. In truth, with the wisdom of the crossed-over soul, she now knew the soup had been poisoned. Tainted by those who saw her demise as the fastest means to lay hands on her husband’s lands and title, the coffers of treasure folk believed he’d brought back with him from the Crusades and journeys to distant lands.

  Rosalind, for that was her name, knew better.

  Her husband’s greatest treasure was the goodness of his heart and his valor and unflagging loyalty, the love he showered on her every waking moment of their much too short life together. His glory hadn’t been in gold, but in his kindness to others, especially those less fortunate. He’d used his influence to protect them. He’d been the best of men and she’d missed him fiercely.

  Since then she roamed alone, glimpsed only when she wished someone to see her.

  Or by those who were gifted to observe more with their hearts than their eyes.

  The flame-haired maid, Lady Mirabelle, was such a soul.

  Rosalind had known the moment the lass spotted her floating along the arcade.

  It’d been long since anyone had seen her, even though she was about always.

  The pity was that so many travails and heartaches awaited the lass. Knowing suchlike was another pesky part of being a bogle.

  All manner of wisdom came to ghosts, the onslaught of knowing a terrible nuisance, especially in great crowds such as filled the castle hall and other such places where many men gathered. Rosalind suspected she was more susceptible than most bogles, for she’d had a measure of such talent in life. Now she need only flit past someone to sense that person’s destined path.

  Lady Mirabelle’s journey wasn’t a bright one.

  But she couldn’t see its end, which gave her hope and spoke for the girl’s strength. For while all things were indeed writ in stone, a living soul still had the choice to ignore fate and keep walking.

  And Rosalind was sure Lady Mirabelle was a walker, a strong and proud lass who’d not let the winds of destiny buffet her.

  Rosalind wished she’d been as bold.

  At least, she’d had manners and still did.

  For that reason, she begin to shimmer as fast as she could, allowing the lovely pink haze that surrounded her to lose its glow as she slipped ever deeper into the shadowy world she now called her home.

  Lady Mirabelle was undressing, preparing for the steaming, herb-scented bath castle servants had just prepared for her. Rosalind didn’t wish to intrude on the maid’s well-deserved privacy.

  Not that the girl’s bared flesh or the intimacies of a bath embarrassed her.

  But she’d caught a snippet of thought from the girl’s troubled mind and deemed it best to leave her alone to dwell on the problem.

  Rosalind smiled as she faded into nothingness.

  “How to please a man of insatiable desires” truly wasn’t a hardship.

  Rosalind was sure such matters would come naturally to the girl.

  She decided to watch her from afar, eager to see the man she so fervently wished to entice. If the gods were kind, and she knew they could be for some, the young man would be worthy of her.

  She already knew the girl was a treasure beyond telling, and that her life would touch many.

  Dashing a tear from her cheek, for such as she could cry when deeply moved, Rosalind cast one last look at the maid, catching her just as she lowered herself into the fragrant water of her bath.

  Then the dark mists of her own realm spun faster, claiming her as they always did. And if anyone had noticed a faint glow of pink in the bedchamber’s deepest corner, it was no longer there.

  Although some might sense what remained behind…

  A blessing of love.

  Chapter Nine

  Lady Mirabelle was a bad influence.

  Sorley scowled darkly as he nipped around behind the chapel. Because of her, he preferred the longer, more circuitous route to the castle tower that held his privy quarters. He didn’t care to cut across the courtyard. The shorter, more direct path no longer suited him. Not after being with a certain flame-haired minx in the candlelit confines of the chapel. She’d melted against him, returning his kiss and setting him ablaze with her passion.

  Now he needed air, the night’s chill damp to cool the fire inside him.

  She made him burn that hotly.

  Her voice alone roused him. Soft and honeyed, each lilting word stirred him like an intimate caress. In truth, as pleasing as it was to listen to her, she didn’t need her enchanting Highland accent to render him witless. She could do that simply by standing near him, silent. In her presence, everything else ceased to exist, no longer mattering because he only thought of her. Having a woman affect him so powerfully was a new and discomfiting experience.

  He didn’t like it.

  Nor did he care for the increasing surety that she was a female unlike any other.

  He’d aye believed one lass was good as the next, especially once they were naked in his arms, writhing beneath him in the throes of carnal ecstasy. At such times, he couldn’t much tell a difference. He took care to tumble only jaded court women and the saucy tavern lasses at the Red Lion, females who enjoyed the glories of the flesh with the same gusto he did. He also kept watch over them even after he’d lost interest in their favor, aye ready to lend support if ever his seed bore fruit. He was not his father.

  He didn’t despoil innocents.

  He’d also come to suspect he was incapable of appreciating a woman for more than the hot, silken delights nestled betwixt her thighs.

  Yet he knew from their kiss that Mirabelle’s loving would sear him to the soul. She’d do more than slake his desire and deplete him. She’d leave him with a fierce longing to claim her again and again. She’d consume him with the need to sink into her sleek, heated womanliness as often as possible. He’d crave her always.

  If he were fool enough to touch her.

  Which he wasn’t.

  Still, she was a disruptive, disconcerting distraction. A bane he didn’t need in his well-ordered and most enjoyable life. Even the brief time he’d spent with her in the chapel had given him a raging ache in the head. Elsewhere, too, though he was trying to ignore that particular pounding.

  Nor did he appreciate how easily her silly blether about castle ghosts was influencing him.

  God’s bones, she was turning him daft!

  Sure of it, he stopped before the low stone wall of the chapel’s once-pagan burial ground and pulled a hand down over his face. Pink ladies, bog beasties, headless pipers, Highland bogles, and who-knew-what-all she believed roamed and moaned about Scotland’s fair countryside.

  He was having none of it.

  Yet…

  He had seen something.

  And what better place for a Scottish ghost to float through the mist than among the tilting, moss-grown gravestones of an ancient Celtic sacred site?

  Although the two white-glowing orbs he’d spotted hadn’t exactly glided eerily along as he’d have expected such spirits to do.

  They’d bobbed up and down, appearing and then disappearing in the darkest corner of the age-old burial ground. It was an uncanny spot, dreary, cold, and full of shadow, even on the brightest summer day
.

  Some folk swore it was a thin place, a spot where the veil between the spiritual and earthly worlds stretched transparent, allowing a communion between the realms of the living and the dead.

  Sorley believed that as much as he trusted the moon would fall from the heavens.

  Even so, he felt his body tense, his gaze narrow. Especially when the two glowing orbs surfaced again, gleaming through the swirling mist. As before, they rose and fell in ghostly rhythm, perhaps paying homage to a broken grave slab not far from where they kept appearing.

  “Saints, Maria, and Joseph!” He borrowed an oath said to have been the favorite of a great Highland chieftain he’d always admired, Duncan MacKenzie, the Black Stag of Kintail. Curious, he stepped over the low stone wall, so worn and crumbled it scarce resembled one. Then he headed for the mysterious bobbing orbs.

  It was rough going.

  While the holy chapel basked in the King’s favor, the interior sumptuous and in excellent repair, the wee bit of ground that held hoary pagan graves didn’t enjoy such care. If the truth were known, it was hard to find someone brave enough to tend a spot of ground many believed was still ruled by the old gods. Folk feared the long-buried Celtic dead might rise and take vengeance on the living Scots who now worshipped another God on their sacred land.

  Sorley harbored no such worries.

  He took care not to step in a rabbit hole or worse. He didn’t want to plunge to his waist in the wormy earth of a collapsed gravesite. Grass and nettles grew thickly between the slanting and tumbled tombstones. He wouldn’t know he’d stepped wrongly until he’d done so.

  O-o-oh…

  The thready, high-pitched cry came from nowhere and everywhere, echoing through the mist. Piercing enough to have been a banshee, the wail froze Sorley where he stood. He wouldn’t wager on it, but he was fairly sure the mist distorted the sound, making it seem to ripple the air.

  He also suspected one of the strange white-glowing orbs had issued the blood-chilling call.

  It was a possibility he didn’t like at all.

  But if he didn’t confront the ghosts, seeing for himself if they were or weren’t real, he wouldn’t sleep that night.