The Highlander's Haunted Kiss

As she watched the shape in the rowan trees, the outline of the man seemed to become more distinct. Brighter, somehow.

“But surely now you can see—” Her breath caught at the width of the man’s shoulders. He seemed to glow like a vision—

A vision?

The glow faded again and the stranger disappeared in the darkness as if he’d never been there at all. Instead she was left with Edward staring at her, his gray brow furrowed. Dear heaven, had she imagined the warrior?

Perhaps her doomed marriage had inspired her fanciful mind to dream of a more interesting male option. For despite her status as a widow, she remained a maid untouched thanks to her husband’s advanced years and poor health.

“We are all worried about you,” Edward continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “The last weeks have been trying—”

“I’m sorry.” She turned her attention back to the doors to the old Scots stronghold, banishing thoughts of virile warriors. “I have led you on a long journey, but we will find our beds soon. I think Invergale will be very suitable with a bit of cleaning.”

Her thoughts were scattered, thanks to the strange sighting. She would not mention the man again. She thought her servants were loyal to her, but she could not afford idle gossip about her character, either. Her father would use any leverage he could find to convince her to wed again.

“It is not too late to find shelter elsewhere,” Edward continued, brushing a few leaves from Lily’s shoulder. “There was an inn at the foothills of the mountains. I can-”

“Nay.” She shuddered, remembering the gossip and tea and utter boredom of London. At least in New York she’d had moments of unsupervised freedom. Once abroad, she’d been chaperoned within an inch of her life. “I am eager to see my new home. And I had no illusions we would live like royalty here.”

That was part of the allure of the Highlands. The adventure. The romance of the moors. But as the night wind moaned another eerie cry, the breeze wet with the water from the nearby loch, Lily had to admit she had not envisioned anything quite this rustic. Nor had she imagined brawny Highland men darting about the trees, just out of sight of her servants.

The memory made her shiver with an odd sort of longing even as she told herself she would do well to forget about her mysterious Highland warrior.

* * *

High above Invergale, on a mountainside he knew as well as his own face, Iain Darroch peered down at the keep that had been in his family since the twelfth century. A trail of tiny lights winked through the trees surrounding the tower, illuminating the overgrown path to the entrance.

The cheeky lass had let herself in.

Who the devil was she that she would dare to advance on his lands without his leave?

Urging his horse closer to the cliff face, he squinted through moonlight that turned the red hills to shades of gray. He had not thought much of the small traveling party when he’d seen the lightweight carriage struggling up a mountain road. The legends surrounding Invergale invited the curious, after all. But the young woman who alighted from the conveyance obviously wanted to do more than visit the place of legend.

She had wrestled with the doors of his tower stronghold like a raiding thief in petticoats. Worse still, the lass had seen him. That in itself would have made her unusual.

But taken with the fact that she took up residence within the walls of his fortress, Iain had an urgent need to discover everything there was to know about this lace-wrapped enemy.

Speaking softly to his horse, he guided the animal down toward Loch an Eilein, where his tower stood watch in the night. This trespasser would not be the first outsider he had driven off in his years as guardian to these lands. And although the thought of a woman in his bedchamber caused old ghosts to drift over his skin, Iain could not deny that he had a few ideas about how to unsettle a female guest.

He’d had so little company these past years. Would it be wrong of him to savor the chase for a few hours with this one intruder? After all, the woman could go on to a normal life somewhere else once she left the Highlands. For Iain Darroch, his lonely duty to watch over these lands would only continue.

Not just for another year or two.

Forever.

Chapter Two

The woman in his bed was a restless sleeper.

Two nights after he’d first spotted her, Iain watched the lady intruder wrestle with creamy white linens in the tower chamber that had long belonged to him. Firelight flickered in the hearth to cast an orange glow over her. He’d stirred the logs to life moments before, his leather boots soundless on the worn stone floor while the intruder continued her fitful slumber.

Did she toss and turn because she sensed his presence? She had proven far more aware of him than most mortals, catching sight of him when her companions had not. Still, he did not think she’d heard him enter the room. Highlanders knew how to hunt, stalking their prey alone rather than riding out with twenty horses and hounds the way the foolish Brit gentry preferred. Now, Iain made himself comfortable on a huge wooden chest at the foot of her bed to observe the brazen lass up close.

Eventually, he would chase her away. For now, he wanted to take her measure. Brown hair the color of a fawn’s coat spread out over the pillow where she lay, the tresses escaping from a white linen nightcap that was half-crushed from the weight of the hair it should have restrained. He guessed the silky brown mass would be just past her shoulders when she stood, the ends curling in soft waves. Her face was narrow, with pale skin and thick dark eyebrows. Her pink bow of a mouth seemed the most classically pretty feature. Dark lashes fluttered uneasily against high cheekbones as she sighed and murmured unhappily in her sleep.

Here lay a great beauty. Even if he hadn’t been without a woman for too long to reckon, he would have thought her lovely. Beneath the covers, her body curved generously in all the right places. She did not possess the long, lean frame that other women coveted in her era. But men from any time period would appreciate the lush sensuality of the feminine form that wriggled between the sheets, so close he could reach out and touch her. Iain did not dare to look his fill, lest he develop too much heated interest.

Rising from the trunk, he walked stiffly about the chamber to weigh his options for learning more about her. He would not let his clan accuse him of doing his job poorly. Why would a lady wealthy enough to travel with servants and sleep in fine linens make her home in a deteriorating ruin?

Drumming his fingers against the window’s ledge, he pondered how to obtain the answers he needed.

Until the woman screamed.

The blood-curdling shriek tore straight through him. The sound set his teeth on edge and made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He turned to see the maiden clutching her sheets in a white-knuckled grip.

In her other hand, she gripped a small blade.

The intruding lass obviously saw him clear as day. Not as a fleeting shadow in a corner, the way some had perceived him over the years. But as a living, breathing man. Her eyes locked on his, in fact. The revelation blindsided him. Not until that moment had he dared admit to himself that was really why he’d entered her chamber—to discover how keen her gaze was for his presence.

“Hush, lass,” Iain urged her, unsettled to the core by this new realization. “I mean you no harm. Do not wail at me like a banshee in my own home.”

Abruptly, she ceased her shouting. She lifted her blade high, her hand trembling so that he feared more for her than him.

“I beg your pardon, sir?” Breathless from the howl she’d set up, she gasped between words, eyes wide and her fingers dancing nervously on the hilt of a blade that would do him little harm unless she got close enough to aim it very, very well.

The white linen nightcap clung to her neck by a thin ribbon, sagging over one shoulder like a wilted flower. Her eyes, he noticed, were a honey-gold that shone bright in the firelight.

“Be careful, lass,” he warned her, holding his hands up to assure her he meant no harm. “The blade is sharp and your grip is uneasy.”

“Get out,” she hissed at him, her face as pale as the lightweight gown she wore for sleep.

“Let us talk reasonably,” he urged, studying her critically now that she was on her feet. Her night rail covered her from chin to toe, the stiff fabric hiding far too much for his liking. “You are far more the intruder than I.”

“You’re mad.” She pressed her back to the wall behind her, although he noticed that arguing with her made her spine straighten a bit.

“Yet I’m not the one making myself at home in someone else’s bed, so you’ve hardly a right to screech at me with orders to leave.”

“Explain yourself at once,” she demanded, tilting her nose in the air like a highborn queen instead of some runaway lass in a dusty and forgotten keep. “Before my servants arrive to attend me and escort you out the front gates.”

“Your servants are too exhausted from their labor to hear you.” He’d seen the trio asleep in the great hall, each laying claim to a corner of the only other room with a hearth fire.

He kept his voice low and even, his hands loose in front of him where she could see them. While he was always happy to strike fear into the hearts of men, he had not meant to cause her such distress. Especially not when he needed to coax answers from this mysterious maid.

“My husband is… due back in the keep at any moment.” She shifted her feet on the bed to stay upright, the soft pillows making for awkward footing. Her bare toes curled against snowy linens. “He will call you out for this offense.”

“If you had a husband, lady, I would hope for your sake he would be the sort who would kill me dead rather than call me anything.” He knew there was no husband due to return home. He had seen no sign of such a man from the moment of her arrival. “In truth, ‘tis your man who should feel the point of my blade for leaving his lady alone and unprotected in a remote Highland keep. But I suspect there will be none such arriving any time soon.”

“There is,” she insisted, her feminine voice a sweet pleasure to his ears. “Depend on it.”