My Heart's in the Highlands (32 page)

“That doesn’t seem right,” Mikah told him with a puzzled frown.
  “Hero’s father was a little off.  Most people thought he was mad.”

“Like father, like daughter?”

Mikah nudged him irritably.  “But it doesn’t fit.  What else does it say?”

“
‘The marquis was succeeded by his cousin, Daphne Kennedy, who in the wake of her brother’s disgrace, lived quietly at Cuilean until her death in 1913.  The title then went to a great nephew of hers, but the costs to maintain the property were so high that in the next generation, the castle was closed,’
” Kris finished the paragraph aloud.

“I don’t know, Kris,” Mikah
said, worrying her lip between her teeth doubtfully.  “Lived quietly until her death?  I can’t see the Daphne Kennedy I knew doing anything quietly.  She practically radiated crazy.  What if I’m wrong?”

“And history is always dead-on accurate,” Kris scoffed.
  Though there was doubt still lingering at the corner of his mind just because it was all so incredible, Kris was inclined to believe Mikah.  As she pointed out, it was all right there, names and events that she knew, people she remembered.  There was no chance that it was all a coincidence.  So what then?

“Go
ogle the Marquis of Ayr,” Mikah said suddenly.

“Think there will be a picture of your man?” Kris said teasingly as they watched the results pop up.
   Wikipedia was at the top, and though Mikah normally didn’t go there for information, she reached over and brought it up. 

“That’s him?” Kris said skeptically.
  “That is not at all what I pictured.”

“No, that’s not him,”
Mikah said with rolling eyes as she reached across once more and scrolled down.  “That’s the first marquis.”  In addition to that one there was one of Robert Conagham, but none of Ian. 

“Guess they didn’t have time to do one before he died,” Kris said softly.

“So you believe me then?”

“Mostly,” he allowed.
  “It’s a hard pill to swallow.”

“I know.”

Kris got up and went to the kitchen to pour himself more wine, taking a healthy swig.  He turned to return to the couch and thought better of it, retrieving the bottle and carrying it with him.  “So you dreamed of people and places that are real and can describe it accurately right down to the paint chipping on the bedroom wall, so to speak.”

“
People and places that I’ve never known or seen,” she added.  “It’s not like I had a coffee table book on the place.”

“And Lord knows
, you’ve had dozens,” he quipped, dropping down beside her once more.  “So what does all this mean?”

“I don’t know,” Mikah confessed.
  “I’m just glad to know that I wasn’t entirely delusional.”

“Partially delusional is all right then?”
  Kris asked, staring at the computer once more, trying to wrap his mind around it all.  “You know what Glo would say about all this, don’t you?”  Gloria was one of their New Age friends who worshipped the Dalai Lama and was thinking of converting to Buddhism, causing her Catholic parents fits.

“She’d say it wasn’t a dream at all,” Mikah said
, and after a moment’s reflection added, “She’d say it was a past life.  I thought so too at one point when I first got there, but I’ve never been a believer.  The idea was so far gone, I thought I’d be saner being crazy.”

“Most major religions adhere to the idea of reincarnation, you know,” Kris pointed out.

Mikah laughed. “Yeah, but everyone is always like Joan of Arc in their past lives.  Or Queen Elizabeth or Ghandi.  No one is ever just a woman who …”

“Who what?”

“Falls in love,” Mikah finished sadly, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees to bury her face in her hands.

Kris rubbed Mikah’s back in slow, comforting circles.
  “Why didn’t you ever say it like that before?  You talked about this guy but you made it sound like it was just a fling.”

“I was afraid I would sound even crazier,” Mikah said,
picking up Kris’s glass and taking a long sip.  “You already thought I was losing it.”

“
Had lost it, Mikes,” he corrected.  “There was no question about you being only in the process.  So what’s he like?”

“Oh, Kris,” Mikah sighed, leaning back and curling into the crook of his arm.
  “He was … incredible.  Just incredible.  All that with a bag of chips.”

“Sounds tasty.”

Mikah laughed, but it ended with another sigh.  “I never knew it could be like that.  That’s why I convinced myself that it was only a dream.  No one is that perfect.  He was beautiful, kind, and funny.”

“And a marquis,” Kris pointed out.
  “Isn’t that like being a prince or something?”

“A step down from a duke.”

“Nice.”

Mikah sat there for a while longer
, sharing the rest of the wine with Kris until the bottle was empty.  She thought about everything, starting at the beginning.  So, while she was hovering between life and death, she had peeked into a past life.  Though it felt as if it were all being experienced in real time to Mikah, it had all really been a memory crammed into the minute when Mikah had basically died herself. 

Dr
edging everything that she had ever heard about past lives from her memory, she and Kris talked it out while Googling what they could on the subject.  Déjà vu moments were said to be glimpses into our past selves, reminding us of things we had seen or done in past lives.  That was why Mikah had always favored Scotland, why she had felt so familiar with it when she was there.

Hero
had also died before her time and in a violent manner.  One site theorized that those past lives that were the most turbulent and emotional were often the ones people would remember.  Given the way it had ended, Kris could clearly see how it would have "haunted" Mikah over the course of her life.

Then they found a website on past life regression, talking about how people might be hypnotized back into their previous lives.
  “One often visits a past life to repair a wrong, to set their path right,” Kris read aloud.

“But I didn’t chang
e anything!  Ian died.  I died,” Mikah whispered softly.  “I’ve lost him.”

A part of Kris wanted to point out that she hadn’t lost him, that it hadn’t been her life
,  but he could see that her pain was real, that, reality or not, Mikah loved this guy.  Rationality in a situation like this wasn’t the play of a true friend.  “So maybe you should do this past life regression thing.”

Mikah shook her head
with a shudder.  “I want him back, but I don’t want him for a day or a memory.  I already have those.  So, I’m not crazy.”

“Not certifiable.”

Punching her friend lightly on the arm, Mikah cracked a smile.  “So what now?”

“You’re going to go to this auction.”

“What for?”

“To see it for yourself.
  To take some satisfaction in the fact that it is a real place.  To pick up a souvenir or two,” Kris shrugged.  “Do what you've got to do, but honey, when it’s over you need to put all this behind you and move on.  You need to make your own life and stop living someone else’s.”

“Ouch,” Mikah winced.
  “Thanks.”

“That’s what friends are for
, and to prove how good a friend I am, I’m going to come with you.”

“I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

“Who’s asking?”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Dùn Cuilean, Scotland

December 2012

“Nice place,” Kris whispered as their cab dropped them off in the courtyard drive at the north side of the castle.
  “Wonder what the heating bill is every month.”

“Probably a little
more than your apartment,” Mikah told him as they entered Cuilean through the entry hall to find a small area that was now staged as a check-in area. 

A jovial Scottish woman named Mary greeted them and asked for their names and credit card
.  “I see you requested the Lady’s Chamber,” Mary said as she typed their information into the computer.  “Are you sure you still want it?”

Mikah did.
  When she had found out that the renamed marchioness’s chamber was available, she had jumped at the chance to stay in her—or Hero’s—rooms once again.  “Why?”

“We are
expecting a crush this weekend with the auction,” Mary said.  “There are a couple other rooms available that would be less … well, out of the way of our tours and the hallway traffic.”

“
Oh, no, that’s all right.”  Mikah took the key and turned away, pushing Kris toward a connecting door that led to the armory.

“Don’t you need directions to your room?” the clerk called.

“Nope, I’m good!”

“Pushy much?” Kris complained as Mikah pushed him into the armory.  His brows shot to his hairline as he took in the thousands of firearms and weapons that were displayed in patterns on all four walls of the room and on the ceiling as well.  “Wow, I wonder who’s for dinner?”

Mikah laughed at that, thankful to feel some of the tension sliding away.
  She’d gotten a little shaken on the cab ride to the castle.  When they had passed under the arched aqueduct and Cuilean had come into view, Mikah had been disappointed to find that the wide lawns in front of the castle were not sporting the tidy English hedgerows she remembered.  The wide pool and fountain now sat alone on the lawns. 

There was also a huge wing attached to the south end of the castle that hadn’t been there before.
  At least that explained how the castle had been able to function as a hotel.  There had been only ten bedchambers before, if one counted the nursery.

Or had there been?

The differences between what she remembered and what she saw had confused Mikah almost to the point that she hadn’t wanted to stay at all.  Kris had had to pry her out of the cab. 

The armory, thankfully,
didn’t seem to have changed at all, restoring Mikah to her previous calm … or the closest she had been to it since her five drinks on the plane.  They walked through the library while Kris oohed and aahed over the room.

It had been strip
ped of most of its furnishings, though, leaving Mikah again hovering between the familiar and the alien.  Once they were in the Great Hall, though, Mikah sucked in her breath at the sight of the familiar oval staircase.  Slowly Mikah climbed, running her hand over the rail as she went.  She remembered dashing down those stairs with Ian and could almost hear the sound of an orchestrion playing.  She could hear his laughter echoing through the hall, see his ghostly form disappearing around the columns.

“You all right?” Kris whispered, taking her hand.

“Yes, but I’m so glad you’re here.”

He squeezed her hand as they reached the top
, and Mikah automatically turned right toward the marchioness’s chamber, the one they now called the Lady’s Chamber, but her feet slowed and Mikah instead walked into the Long Drawing Room, with the Picture Room straight ahead.  The walls were bare, stripped of the dozens of paintings she remembered.  Saddened, she turned to the left and went through the connecting door to the Blue Drawing Room.  There was but a quarter of the furniture there that Mikah remembered, but looking up she found the rondels as she remembered them, with the muses and their seductive smiles.

Feeling a bit better, Mikah
told Kris about lying on their backs to see them and pointed out the erotic nature of the paintings.  Laughing, they returned to the hall to go to their room, but on the other end of the landing Mikah could see the doors to the Round Drawing Room standing open as if they were calling to her.

Was it all just a coincidence?
  Or was it really a memory?  She couldn’t decide if she wanted to believe in this whole past life bullshit or not.  Then Mikah suddenly realized that there was one way to be certain.  One thing in this castle that would tell her whether she was truly the reincarnation of Hero Conagham or just a woman flirting with the edge of madness.

Purposefully, she led
Kris to her chamber door and inserted the key.  Turning the knob, she opened the door and felt a rush of feeling.  The sensation that she was home once more.  With so many parts of the castle stripped bare, this chamber had remained largely untouched.  Of course the linens and most of the upholstery weren't the same, but the furnishings were, and the colors were similar to those she remembered.

Dropping her bag on the bed, Hero slowly unwound her scarf and turned to the fireplace
, studying the little carvings of flora and fauna that covered the elaborate mantel.  If she were truly Hero, that little compartment would still be there … and if it wasn’t, Mikah knew she would have to accept all over again that it had all been nothing but a dream.

Running her hands over the flowers, Mikah shook her head
, recalling her first sight of Ian.  She remembered thinking that it had to have been a dream because there wasn’t a man on earth who looked like that.  There wasn’t a man on earth who could make her feel like that just by looking at her.

Mikah’s hand dropped to her side.
  Which way was worse?  Only dreaming of a moment with a perfect man, or knowing that you had had him and lost him forever?  Looking back at the bed, Mikah imagined Ian there,  his bronze skin contrasting with the white sheets, smiling at her as if the sun rose and set on her.  Blinking away the burn behind her eyelids, Mikah pinched her nose between her fingers to ward off the tears she knew were coming again.

Did it matter if he were real or only a dream?
  Either way, Ian was lost to her.  Either way, she had experienced a magical, intense love that was gone, either to the past or to her dreams.  Perhaps that was the worst part either way: now that she knew the story was over, now that she knew how it ended, the dreams had stopped.  She hadn’t dreamed of him again.

After a lifetime of seeing his face in her sleep, Mikah felt the loss of him even more.
  She had to know if it had been real at some point.  That the love of a lifetime had been real for someone, if not her.

“Nice room,” Kris said
, unaware of her thoughts, wandering around to take a peek into the dressing room.  “Nice bathroom.  I can’t wait to use that tub.”

He came back into the room to find Mikah at the fireplace.
  “Uh, what are you doing?”

“It won’t move.”
  Mikah twisted at the flowers in the combination with no success.  “They must have been painted over.”

“Well
, this place is hundreds of years old.”

Rolling her eyes, she turned and retrieved the room key
and desperately began to scrape away at the edges, but Kris stopped her.  “Whoa, there!  What are you doing?”

“There should
be a compartment hidden in the mantel,” Mikah said a little anxiously.  “If it’s there, we’ll know that it was all real.”

“I thought we already knew that
.”  Kris said, grabbing her hand again as Mikah tried to dig the key under one of the flowers.  “Let me do that before you hurt yourself.”

Mikah raised a brow.
  Kris was a bit taller than she, but he was wiry rather than muscular.  Still, she bowed mockingly and stepped aside.  “Please, do be a manly man and use your bulging muscles to do what this frail woman could not.”

“Very funny,” Kris frowned and looked at the fireplace.
  “What am I doing?”

“You need to turn that,” Mikah pointed
to the first flower.  “And that, and then you need to press that.”

“Very Indiana Jones.”
  Kris tried to turn the first one.  “There isn’t much to hold on to.”

“Well it wouldn’t be very secret if there was a handle on it,” Mikah shot back.

Her friend shot her a frown.  “Tell me why I’m here again?”

“Because you love me.”

“Oh, right.”  Kris turned back to the mantel and worked at the flower until suddenly it gave with a crack and rotated.  He stepped back with a relieved smile. “Thank God, I was beginning to doubt your sanity.  I hope they don’t fine us for this.”

“Next one,” Mikah said.

“Slave driver.”

Ten minutes later, Kris finally depressed the last button and the leafy door front unlatched with a small crack.

It had all been real!  Mikah was elated by the realization, then immediately crushed by it.  All that pain and loss because of the greed of one man.  Ian and Hero had experienced something that most people only dream of, and Mikah had shared it with them.  There was sorrow in her heart for their loss and she wondered if she had only made the whole situation worse for herself.

With a
sad sigh, Mikah turned away, but Kris’s curious “What’s this?” drew her back in time to see him pulling a dusty object from the compartment.

Hesitantly
, she reached out and took the little velvet bag, which almost crumbled beneath her touch.  Loosening the stiffened cord, she opened the bag and tilted it into her palm.  A ring slid into her hand, sparkling as if it had just been polished the night before.

Mikah
gasped, recognizing it immediately.  The warmth of love and dazed amazement she had felt when Ian had slipped it on her finger almost 150 years before spread through her.  “I can’t believe it’s still here,” she whispered as the sapphire winked up at her in recognition.

“Wow,” Kris said, taking the ring from her unresisting hand.
  “That is really something.”

A tear slipped down Mikah’s cheek.
  “Damn.”

Kris turned at the tone of her voice.
  “Ahh, geez, Mikes!  Come here!”

He opened his arms to her and Mikah went into them with a sob.
  Where was she supposed to go after this?  What on earth could possibly be out there waiting for her that could compare to that love?

“Ahh, Mikes,” Kris whispered
, kissing the top of her head.  “I’m sorry.”

“Would it be wrong to keep it?” she choked out between sobs.

“Of course not,” he assured her.  “It’s yours, isn’t it?”