Highlander in Her Dreams (3 page)

“I'll make it up to them,” Kira exclaimed, her heart soaring. “I'll never be late getting back to the bus again, and I promise not to ask for extra time in the bookshops.”

“Just have a care.” He looked at her, his brow still furrowed. “Wrath is an odd place, true as I'm here. I'd ne'er forgive myself if harm came to you.”

Then he was gone, striding away and herding his charges into the bus as if he needed a speedy departure to keep him from changing his mind.

A distinct possibility, she was sure.

So she didn't release her breath until the big blue and white Highland Coach Tours bus rumbled away, finally disappearing around a bend in the road.

Alone at last, she allowed herself one doubtful glance at the nearest sheep pats, certain they'd suddenly increased in size and number. But she steeled herself as quickly, putting back her shoulders and lifting her chin. Making ready for the long march across the grassy field to get to the ruins.

Ahead of her was an unhurried world of hills, clouds, and mist.

Mist?

She blinked. She'd heard how quickly Highland weather could change, but this was ridiculous.

She blinked again, but the mist remained.

The day had definitely darkened, turning just a shade uninviting.

She peered over her shoulder, scanning the road behind her, but the sky in that direction stretched as clear and bright blue as before. Cozy-looking threads of smoke still rose from the chimney of a croft house not far from where the bus had parked, and if the sea glittered any more brilliantly, she'd need sunglasses.

Only Castle Wrath had fallen into shadow, its eerie silhouette silent against waters now the color of cold, dark slate.

She took a deep breath and kept her chin lifted. Already, sea mist was dampening her cheeks, and the chill wetness in the air made the day smell peaty and old.

No, not old.

Ancient
.

She started forward, refusing to be unsettled. She liked ancient, and this was just the kind of atmosphere she'd come to Scotland to see.

So why were her palms getting clammy? Her nerves starting to go all jittery and her mouth bone-dry?

She frowned. Bedwells weren't known for being fainthearts.

But
bone
hadn't been a very wise word choice.

It summoned Wee Hughie's tales about wailing, foot-stomping ghosts, but she pushed his words from her mind, choosing instead to dwell on the other images he'd conjured. Namely those of the great and powerful MacDonald chieftains, preferring to think of them as they'd been in their glory days rather than as they might be now, skulking about in the ruined shell of their onetime stronghold, bemoaning the passing centuries, their ancient battle cries lost on the wind.

Thinking that she could use a battle cry of her own, she marched on, looking out for sheep pats and huddling deeper into her jacket.

Scudding mists blew across her vision, and the pounding of the waves grew louder with each forward step. She could still see Castle Wrath looming on the far side of the high, three-sided promontory, but the rocky spit of land leading out to it was proving more narrow and steep than she'd judged.

Kira's heart began to pound. She quickened her pace, her excitement cresting when she caught her first glimpse of Wrath Bay and the deep grooves scoring the smooth, flat rocks of its surf-beaten shore.

Just as Wee Hughie MacSporran had said.

Then she was there, the heart of the ruins opening up before her. All thought of the medieval landing beach and its ancient keel marks vanished from her mind.

A labyrinth of tall rough-hewn walls, uneven ground, and tumbled stone, the ruins stopped her heart. The remains of the curtain walls clung to the cliff edges, windswept and dangerous, but what really caught her eye was the top half of an imposing medieval gateway.

Still bearing traces of a beautifully incised Celtic design, the gateway raged up out of the rubble, its grass-grown arch framing the sea and the jagged black rocks of the nearby island she knew to be Wrath Isle.

Without doubt, she'd never seen a wilder, more romantic place. A onetime Norse fortalice. Vikings once walked and caroused here.

Real live
Vikings
.

Big, brawny men shouting praise to Thor and Odin as they raised brimming drinking horns and gnawed on huge ribs of fire-roasted beef.

Kira drew a deep breath, trying hard not to pinch herself.

Especially when she thought about the Norsemen's successors. Wee Hughie MacSporran's Celtic warrior chieftains, the kind of larger-than-life heroes she could only dream about.

Bold and virile men who could only belong to a place like this.

A place of myth and legend.

Looking around, she was sure of it.

Shifting curtains of mist swirled everywhere, drifting low across the overgrown grass and fallen masonry, softening the edges and making it seem as if she were seeing the world through a translucent silken veil.

And what a world it was.

The constant roar of the sea and the loud
whooshing
of the wind were fitting, too, giving the place an otherworldly feel she would never have experienced on a clear, sun-bright day.

She set down her lunch packet and stepped into the sheltering lee of a wall, not quite ready to spoil the moment.

Nor was she reckless.

Rough bent grass and fallen stones weren't the only things littering the ground that must've once been the castle's inner bailey. Winking at her from a wild tangle of nettles and bramble bushes, deep crevices opened darkly into the earth. Silent abysses of blackness that could only be the underground passages, stairwells, and vaults she'd been warned about.

Almost tasting her need to explore those abysses, she took a deep breath, drinking in chill air ripe with the tang of the sea and damp stone. She felt an irresistible shimmer of excitement she couldn't quite put her finger on.

She pressed her hands against the stones, splaying her fingers across their cold and gritty surface, not at all surprised to sense a faint vibration humming somewhere deep inside them.

She felt a distant thrumming real enough to send a chill through her and even lead her to imagine the sounds of loud masculine laughter and song. The sharp blasts of a trumpeter's fanfare. Barking dogs and a series of thin, high-pitched squeals.

Excited
feminine
squeals.

Kira frowned and took her hands off the wall.

The sounds stopped at once.

Or, she admitted, she recognized them for what they'd been: the rushing of the wind and nothing else. Even if the tingles spilling through her said otherwise.

An odd prickling sensation she knew wouldn't stop until she'd peered into one of the earth-and-rubble-clogged gaps in Castle Wrath's bailey.

Her lunch forgotten, she considered her options. She wasn't about to march across the nettle-filled courtyard and risk plunging into some bottomless medieval pit, meeting an early grave. Or, at the very least, twisting an ankle and ruining the remainder of her trip. But the shell of one of Castle Wrath's great drum-towers stood slightly tilted to her left, a scant fifty feet away.

Best of all, in the shadow of the tower's hulk she could make out the remains of a stairwell. A dark, downward spiraling turnpike stair that filled her with such a sense of wonder she didn't realize she'd moved until she found herself hovering on its weathered threshold. An impenetrable blackness stared back at her, so deep that its dank, earthy-smelling chill lifted the fine hairs on her nape.

Something was down there.

Something more than nerves and imagination.

The sudden tightness in her chest and the cold hard knot forming in her belly assured her of it. As did the increasing dryness of her mouth and the racing of her pulse, the faint flickering torchlight filling the stairwell.

Flickering torchlight?

Kira's eyes flew wide, her jaw dropping. She grabbed the edges of the crumbling stairwell's doorway, holding tight, but there could be no mistake. The light was flaring brighter now, shining hotly and illuminating the cold stone walls and the impossibly medieval-looking Highland chieftain staring up at her from the bottom of the stairs, the vaulted hallows of his crowded, well-lit great hall looming behind him.

That it was
his
hall couldn't be questioned.

She'd bet her plane ticket back to Newark that a more lairdly man had never walked the earth. Nor a sexier one. A towering raven-haired giant, he was clad in rough-looking tartan and calfskin, and hung about with gleaming mail and bold Celtic jewelry. Power and sheer male animal magnetism rolled off him, stealing her breath and weakening her knees.

Making her question her sanity.

Perhaps someone on the bus tour had slipped something into her tepid breakfast tea.

Something that would make her hallucinate.

Imagine the hunky Highlander who couldn't really be there.

Just as she couldn't really be hearing the sounds of medieval merrymaking.

Feasting noises, she was sure. The same raucous male laughter and bursts of trumpet fanfares and song she'd heard earlier, the collective din of a celebrating throng—not that she cared.

A marching brass band could stomp past and blast her right off the cliff-top. As long as
he
stood glaring up at her, the world as Kira Bedwell had known and loved it ceased to exist.

And he
was
glaring.

Every gorgeous muscle-ripped inch of him.

He locked gazes with her, glowering at her as only a fierce, hot-eyed, broadsword-packing Highlander could do. A truth she hadn't known until this very moment, but one she would take with her to her grave.

If she lived that long.

The too-dishy-to-be-real Highlander might have a patent on sex appeal, but he was also armed to the teeth. A huge two-handed sword hung from a wide leather shoulder belt slung across his chest, and a glittering array of other equally wicked-looking medieval weapons peeked at her from beneath his voluminous tartan plaid. Not that he needed such a display of steel. O-o-oh, no. Such a man probably uprooted trees with one hand for exercise.

Big trees.

And at the moment, she felt incredibly treelike.

She swallowed hard, pressing her fingers more firmly against the stone edges of the door arch. Any further movement wasn't an option. Her legs had gone all rubbery, and even if she could have taken a step backward, away from the opening, she just knew he would charge up the stairs if she did.

Stairs that no longer looked worn and crumbling but new and unlittered, wholly free of fallen rubble and earth or the thick weeds that had clogged the top of the stairwell mere moments before.

She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. “This can't be happening,” she gasped, jerking her hands off the now-smooth edges of the door arch.

“Nay, it canna be,” the Highlander agreed, his voice a deep velvety burr as he angled his head at her, his gaze narrowing suspiciously. “Though I would know why it is!”

The words held a bold challenge, the suspicion in his eyes changing swiftly to something else.

Something darkly seductive and dangerous.

“Och, aye, I would hear the why of it.” He tossed back his hair, the look he was giving her almost a physical touch. “Nor am I one to no' welcome a comely lass into my hall—howe'er strange her raiments.”

“Raiments?” Kira blinked.

“Your hose, sweetness.” His gaze dropped to her legs, lingering there just long enough to make her squirm. “I've ne'er seen the like on a woman. No' that I'm complaining.”

Kira swallowed. “Y-you can't be…anything. You're not even there.”

“Ho! So you say?” He looked down at his plaid, flicking its edge. “If my plaid's real, than I vow I am, too. Nay, lass, 'tis
you
who canna be here.”

“You're a ghost.”

He laughed. “Since I haven't died yet, that's no' possible.”

“I was told anything is possible in Scotland and now I believe it!” Kira stared at him. “Whatever you are.”

He flashed a roguish grin and started forward, mounting the tight, winding steps with long, easy strides. “'Tis laird of this keep I am.” His deep burr filled the stairwell, rich, sonorous, and real as the chill bumps on her arms. “I'm also a man—as I can prove if you wish!”

Reaching her, he seized her shoulders, his grip strong and firm, warm even through the thickness of her jacket. He stepped close, so near that the hilt of his sword pressed into her hip. “Now, lass,” he said, his gaze scorching her, “tell me. Do I feel like a ghost?”

Kira sucked in a breath. “No, but—”