Chapter 23
Patrick
walked briskly into the kitchen and made straight for breakfast. He’d overslept and that bothered him.
He’d had troubling dreams and that bothered him as well.
His mind was made up. Dreams about loss and desperately searching for something he couldn’t quite find and the utter despair that had come with it—aye, it was nothing he wanted any more part of.
It had nothing to do with Madelyn. It had nothing to do with his feelings for Madelyn.
It had been a sour stomach coupled with Gilbert stress.
When Madelyn woke, he would help her pack, take her to London, put her on the plane, and the tale would be finished.
He could do nothing else.
He looked around him. The kitchen was empty. No family. Cold breakfast. He opened the door and looked out into the garage. Both cars were there. He went back to the back door and peered out.
“Looking for me?”
He almost cracked his head on the door frame, he whipped around so fast. He rubbed at the spot that he’d almost damaged, then glared at his cousin.
“Actually, I wasn’t, but you’ll do. Where’s Madelyn?”
“She went for a walk.” Ian looked at him blandly. “Abrupt end to her vacation, wouldn’t you agree?”
“It was time for her to go.”
“McGhee is mad, Pat. He’ll disappear, in time.”
Patrick turned and faced his cousin. “And just how will that come about, Ian? Will he simply drop into a hole in the ground and vanish?”
Ian was silent for several moments. “It could happen,” he said with a very small smile.
Patrick snorted.
“It could,” Ian insisted. “You would know. We both would know.”
“That is far in the past.”
“Mayhap it should become more in the present for you,” Ian said.
“And how would that sit with our fine Hamish Fergusson? He’d have my head.”
“What could he prove? That you’d pushed Gilbert onto a particular piece of ground, and he’d fallen back through time into the seventeenth century? Into the Middle Ages?”
Patrick turned away. “I cannot hear this today,” he said, wishing he could stick his fingers in his ears. “Not today. I must find her, take her to London, and let her be about her own business.”
“And what if her business is with you?”
Patrick ignored the question and applied himself to investigating the depths of Ian’s cupboard. Stale biscuits not even Alexander would tolerate fell out into his hands. He shrugged, opened the package further, and began to eat. He looked at Ian.
“Anything else to ask?”
“The question still stands.”
“I don’t care to answer it. Any more advice? Any more calls to change my mind about her?”
Ian leaned back against the counter. “I don’t think changing your mind about her is really what’s at issue here, is it?”
“By the saints,” Patrick said in disgust, “you’ve been loitering in Jamie’s study.”
Ian smiled. “And become potential fodder for his experiments? Surely you jest.” He folded his arms across his chest. “What would you do if there were no Gilbert McGhee to make your life hell?”
Wed Madelyn
was almost out of his mouth before he could stop it. He turned away from the thought. “My mind is made up.”
Ian sighed. “So I see. Very well, then. Will you go fetch her, or allow her a little more peace?”
Patrick considered. The thought of just sitting and waiting was more than he could bear. “I’ll go to my house,” he decided. “Stack a few rocks. Continue Madelyn’s work in the garden.”
He heard the patter of little feet coming down the stairs. Ah, nay, not the family. He couldn’t stomach the thought of having to speak to them this morning. Jane wouldn’t say anything, but she would think him a fool.
“I’d best go,” he said quickly.
“Coward.”
He glared at his cousin. “I’d repay you for that, but I haven’t the time.” He turned to go.
“Pat?”
He turn back unwillingly and waited.
“You are a MacLeod,” Ian said, “and we do not run.”
“Ian, I cannot kill him.”
“There are ways to ruin a man without killing him.”
Patrick looked at his cousin. “Does that make me any better than he?”
“It would give you your love.”
Briefly, the thought of Madelyn whispered across his soul, like a gentle breeze, a breeze full of springtime.
“She is not my love,” he lied. He turned and walked away before he had to face any more uncomfortable things. He grabbed his coat out of the closet and left the house. He walked quickly to his house. By the time he’d gotten there, his coat was off and he was far warmer than he’d counted on being.
He stood at the gate to his garden and looked out over the disaster. A disaster except for the large patch that Madelyn had cleared the day before. It actually looked as if something could, with enough care, grow there quite well.
He tried to ignore the relevance of that observation to his own life.
He rolled up his sleeves and set to work. And, as he should have expected, it began immediately to rain.
He worked until he was thoroughly soaked, then surrendered and went inside. He called Ian, made certain Madelyn hadn’t come back, then went into his gathering room and contemplated a fire. He had a pair of hours yet before they needed to leave.
Then again, it would likely take a pair of hours to get the bloody fire going.
He threw on a log, lit it, and watched the wood smoke like a green tree. He sat down on a stool and stared gloomily—as best he could through the thick smoke—into the feeble flames.
It was likely the smoke that kept him from noticing that he wasn’t alone.
He sat bolt upright and gaped at the vision that had appeared next to him.
There was a chair there where none had been a moment before.
The chair was, by most modern standards, quite austere.
But considering the lack of furniture in the room, Patrick found the high-backed, seventeenth-century chair to be quite luxurious.
And as for the very well-dressed gentleman lounging against a large, finely embroidered pillow? He was luxuriously appointed as well.
Patrick continued to gape.
“Shut yer mouth, ye wee fool,” grumbled the older man. He put his pipe back into his mouth and chewed on it.
Patrick shut his mouth with a snap and tried to breathe normally.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t seen a ghost or two in his day.
His niece—by way of the same convoluted tree Roddy perched in—had an entire garrison of specters at her command.
There was also that ghostly piper who seemed to find the hill behind his house to his liking.
But those shades were either at Iolanthe’s house or on the hill behind his house.
They weren’t in his living room.
He stared at the ghost, who seemed to have brought not only his own furniture but his valet as well. The servant set a silver tray with decanter and glass on a table near his master’s elbow.
“Who are you?” Patrick asked. “If I’m allowed to ask.”
“Archibald,” the shade answered.
“The Glum,” offered his valet.
“Have my reasons for that,” said Archibald, rather glumly. He looked at Patrick. “First Lord of Benmore.”
Patrick could hardly believe his eyes or his ears. “Well,” he said. “How lovely.”
Archibald fixed him with a steely glance. “Aye, it would be if ye could see yer way clear to be about yer duty of carrying on the line—now that ye have me title and all.”
“Carrying on the line?” Patrick echoed.
“Why else would I be here?”
“Why indeed,” Patrick managed.
“Now, be about it, man, and quickly. Where is the wench anyway?”
“The wench?”
“The Colonist. Ye are going to wed with her, aye?”
“Well,” Patrick stalled. “Actually, nay. I told her I’m sending her home this eve.”
“Nay!” Archibald exclaimed, looking quite horrified. “What’d ye go and do a bloody idiotic thing such as that for?”
“I’m having a few personal—”
Archibald swore. Quite inventively, truth be told. “The line, boy!” he bellowed. “Ye’ve a duty to the line!”
Patrick hated to dash the man’s hopes, but he had to. “I’m a MacLeod,” he said apologetically. “I don’t have anything to do with your line.”
“Why, ye wee silly fool,” Archibald spluttered, “have ye never taken a peep up yer family tree? Or down it, in your case?”
Patrick opened his mouth to ask how Archibald seemed to know so much about him, but didn’t have a chance.
“My sweet ma was a MacLeod, wed to an Englishman, don’t ye ken. It started off a right dodgy business—thanks to a few pesky in-laws—but it turned out to be quite a love match. So ye see, my line is yer line. And ye’d best be about seein’ it preserved.”
“And ye’ll do something about the dreadful state of disrepair in my home,” commanded a voice that would have terrified even the staunchest of servants.
Archibald slunk down in his chair and puffed furiously on his pipe.
Patrick watched in complete astonishment as a woman in quite possibly the flounciest, most jewel- and lace-encrusted gown he’d ever clapped eyes on appeared. Her hair alone was a good three feet high. She snapped her fingers at the Glum’s valet.
“Chair.”
He provided one immediately. It was literally overflowing with tapestry pillows.
Patrick stood. It seemed the thing to do.
The woman sat, then waved him down imperiously.
He sank down onto his stool, feeling quite like a servant.
“My wife,” Archibald mumbled. “Dorcas.”
Dorcas fixed Patrick with a steely glance. “I’ve been waiting,” and she said that in a way that implied she’d been waiting far too long, “for you to see to the condition of my home.”
“Ah ...”
“Use the gold buried in the garden, for pity’s sake,” she said in exasperation. “Under the compost heap. If you possessed the least interest in restoring the garden, you would have found it by now. And you with your affinity for plants,” she added in disgust. “Inexcusable.”
“But your descendants—” Patrick began hopefully.
“Fools. Not a green thumb in the lot.” She looked at him narrowly. “Go fetch Miss Phillips, wed her, then be on with the business of seeing to my house.” She lifted her skirts off the floor with a look of extreme distaste. “I grow weary of haunting a stable.”