Boats, Moats, & Root Beer Floats

CHAPTER ONE

LINDY

Half of my holiday home crumbled into itself. Winton Castle’s ruin stood stark against the mist that hid Inverie, the most remote town in the Scottish Highlands, from sight. Or at least, so my printed tour guide proclaimed as I clung to the rail of the Knoydart Western Isles Ferry that chugged across Loch Nevis.

Muggy air adhered salt to my skin in a way that told me I would never quite be free of it despite the frigid bite to the wind that whipped white caps across the water’s surface. The castle perched on an outcrop just offset from the town as though it wasn’t quite included on the peaceful shores of the waterway literally named for heaven. Instead, the foreboding, ancient structure nestled into the rugged, romantic landscape, a semi-ruin, if such a thing could be coined.

Either way, the castle’s bleak facade looked like the perfect place for a not-quite starving artist to secure her runaway muse for the silly season post a long overdue break from heartache.

My muse, because mine deserted me sometime around March and deigned not to return, leaving me with a studio of blank canvases in southern California and an increasingly fracturing mind.

Hence the trip halfway around the world to a place where even cars had to travel across the loch on the ferry to reach the small town. I’d be walking up to the castle and, though a fitness regime wasn’t part of my holiday outline, determination featured heavily.

A Christmas castle holiday was for me.

The brisk wind whipped up around me fast transforming into a gale as I hummed a Christmas carol that only a tone deaf sailor would recognize. The ferry’s pilot, who only reluctantly let the annoying American woman who wouldn’t take no for an answer out onto the bow of his boat in weather that would ruffle the most stubborn gerbil, waved from inside his glassed box. Retreating from the only fresh air on the vessel with a modicum of grace, I headed back inside, and waited my turn to alight the boat.

One point six miles from the town, bearing my luggage which seemed inordinately heavy at the kilometer mark according to the jaunty sign that proclaimed I only had two of the wee things to go, walking up the hill to the castle seemed less like a healthy option and more like my personal idea of hell.

Puffing, panting and certain I left at least one bodily organ and possibly a lung back on the gritty roadway that led up to the crag overlooking the loch I stopped at the castle’s sign that read WITNOT CASTLE . Lips pursed, I held up my guide side by side in numbed fingers. My phone confirmed the blunder. They all clearly stated WINTON CASTLE.

Ghost of Christmas Present, you better not be screwing with me.

Eyes scrunched shut and praying I hadn’t walked the last three mil—kilometers for no good reason, and that I wouldn’t have to traverse them again with all my art supplies tucked beneath my arms—I took that last step into the castle yard and stopped.

No thunder crashed. No lightning cracked against the crumbling stone structure that looked a whole lot crumblier up close. My holiday was not, in fact, doomed, no matter how it felt from this angle.

I was determined to enjoy my castle Christmas holiday. Maybe even with a sprinkling of snow if I could wrangle it.

“Hello, the haunted house,” I called, yanking my suitcase to the bottom of the paler-than-slate gray step, and stamped a boot on its unyielding surface for emphasis. “Miss Bettina Bromridge. Please tell me you’re at home.”

Mind, the castle was as big as they came, as far as castles went. If Bettina, the host I paid in advance for my stay at WITNOT —my blunders were adding up fast without transport in sight—was in residence as agreed, she could be anywhere in the stone building or grounds. Those likely extended well beyond my vocal range. I could yell at the top of my lungs, and she still wouldn’t hear me.

Nor would the town, though I assumed there were a few busybodies who might drive up later.

I hoped.

“Bettina? I’m coming in?” I warned, giving the door an experimental push.

The solid wood was the only thing I could see that looked remotely decent, but it creaked on needy hinges as it swung inward.

That’s not creepy or cliche at all.

“Bettina?” I called again, fully expecting a cow to answer me.

Somewhere along the hall, something tinkled.

“Not cool, ghostie,” I muttered.

Another tinkle that sounds too close to an answer for my liking.

Damnit, if this kept up, I'd need to find the loo and fast, stuff Bettina and her ghost’s hospitality. My practiced Brit I picked up at Heathrow came in handy as it overrode my natural Californian.

A final almighty haul, and my suitcase made it over the threshold like an ungainly bride on her wedding night. A drunken one, too, as the handle unraveled in my palm. The sides chose that moment to split as the entire contents of my art-inspired holiday centered around the concept of What is Beauty in the Scottish Highlands fell apart at the literal seams before my eyes. A lone wheel popped off the case and trundled its way along the gloomy hall, squeaking with each rotation until it fell sadly on its side halfway to its incomplete destination.

The epitome of my life right there.

My phone chose that moment to ring as a pair of my lacy panties floated around my ankles in an abrasive gust that slammed the heavy wooden door shut at my back. The death knell reverberated throughout the castle’s decrepit skeleton in a shudder that wracked the entire building until I was certain my life would end in a pile of gray, unidentifiable rubble.

When no such occurrence happened, I blinked at the dimly lit hall, and crouched like an automaton, collecting my things and stuffing them into the remnants of my case. The thing refused to go back into its original shape, and I gave it up as a bad job as my phone buzzed dramatically.

“Abusive, aren’t you?” I muttered, picking the call up.

“I beg your pardon?” A confused and distinct Scottish lilt muttered on the other end in a facade of politeness that only just came through.

“Oh, sorry. Traveling difficulties.” Not exactly a lie. “Is this Bettina?”

“Yes.” Relief coated the caller’s tone. “Did you find the castle? It’s the big stone building at the end of the loch,” she added helpfully, her brogue thickening with each word.

“I found it. I thought you were going to be here with the welcome pack?” I attempted to keep the accusation out of my voice, and failed miserably.

“Welcome pack is in the kitchen. End of the hall. Left, left, down the stairs, another two lefts and a right. And a left and a right. You’ll find it. Think of it as an orientation discovery tour,” Bettina said cheerfully. “I’m off for a trip into town for a few weeks and I’ll be back after the new year. There’s plenty of food in the pantry, eggs in the chicken run and the milk is out the back.”

“Milk is out the…why?” I asked, my stomach dropping.

“Oh, Buttercup is easy. Don’t you stress.” Bettina giggled.

“Buttercup. Like…a cow?”

“She’s a sweet little Highland coo. Loves a good chat. You just sit down and you’ll get the freshest milk you’ve ever had.”

I prefer mine straight from the source. The bottled sort.

Or a plastic carton.

“Right.” I cleared my throat. “And um, any other creatures I need to know about?”

“Ally might be about. Ignore him. He’s a fixture by now.”

“Okay then.”

“Yes. Merry Christmas and all. Oh, you’re the painter one, aren’t you? Easels are in the top of the tower, east wing. Door tends to stick. Be firm with it, don’t let the ol’ castle boss you around. Bye now!”

The call ended. I found myself staring at a blank phone, my unmentionables dancing around my ankles, and wondering why I had launched myself halfway around the world for an art trip that seemed doomed before it started.

And I sure as hell wasn’t milking a freaking coo .

Four rights, a left, another left and two sets of stairs that weren’t on Bettina’s list later, I was lost in castle hell. I had found a moat, unfilled, no alligators that six-year-old me would have been devastated to discover. The kitchen and rear of the castle was nowhere in sight.

I ardently hoped Buttercup didn’t require milking any time soon as not only was I not up to the task, but I hadn’t found the butt end of the castle yet. My decision to leave my ruined case at the—locked, I wasn’t that silly—front door weighed on me with each step. I considered retracing those steps but my confidence in locating that same entrance hall faded with each new corridor I turned down.

Finally, I found a stairwell that only went up .

“One choice, huh?” I stared into the gloomy—and gray—curved stone staircase that seemed as unadorned as the rest of the muted behemoth.

A once-three-candle, now-one-candle-candelabra rattled in its holder. I nodded to it.

“Agreed. Up we go.”

Speaking to inanimate objects had become a way of life for me years before. Paintbrushes, canvases, even potted plants became conversational companions, even if the chatter was a little one sided. A function of progressive ADHD, or so my childhood therapist assured me, though I suspected it was just something that artists often did when their psyche sank deep in a creative moment.

Not that I could claim any sort of creativeness as I entered the stairwell and started up. My thighs moaned after the first three dozen steps that wound tighter and closer, and screamed at the eighth dozen. I stopped counting after that, unwilling to become more demoralized. But I'd told the candelabra we were headed up, and I refused to return to that hallway without claiming my prize of achieving some destination for the day.

Not that I expected said candelabra to judge me on my life choices, though I might. Panting and grousing at the streak of stubbornness and more than a touch sweaty, I turned a corner and could have wept. An arched door covered in scars of an era long past stood before me.

Destination achieved.

I leaned against its hard surface and gave it a little pat. “Hi there,” I murmured, hope springing from an eternal well of the stuff I kept in reserve, if well buried.

Recalling what Bettina said about the easels hidden behind a sticky tower door and keen to find my nest for the next few weeks, all thought of the kitchen, cow, and my broken suitcase forgotten, I gripped the blackened handle, jammed my shoulder to the scarred surface and pushed with everything I had.

The door flung open on well-oiled hinges, not sticky in the least, letting me in on feet that stumbled and tripped over themselves. I surged into the center of the room, managed to hoist my lurching body upright and announced myself in grand fashion.

“Taa-daa!”

The words withered from my lips as I noted the other occupant in the room who turned from a dusty desk filled with books stacked in perfect, color coded towers in different hues of brown. Wavy hair was pushed back from his face as he peered at me over a pair of spectacles that could have come from the previous century or the one before that. Broad shoulders tightened beneath a brown tweed jacket that didn’t disguise his height he had folded into a narrow wooden chair that matched the color of his suit.

The perfect camouflage.

But the man I burst in on didn’t take half as long in his study of me as I did in him.

Hard hazel eyes narrowed as they fixed on me while I invaded his space in spectacular style. Arched lips too generous for his severe face tightened above a jawline made for a movie star.

And all rational thought left me the moment he spoke, his raspy voice left somewhere on a battlefield long ago.

“Who the hell are you?”

Always good to make a decent first impression.