Chapter 1 #2
From here, she could see for miles around the castle. The turret had been added to the original castle structure in the twelfth century. Most people considered it an ill-advised addition, jutting as it did like a scolding finger into the sky.
It was an ugly old thing, to be sure, but she loved it despite its oddities. Or perhaps because of them. She could never quite make up her mind. Whatever the case, there was no denying it was the turret that distinguished her castle from every other castle on the Isle of Skye.
Awkward or not, Castle Cairncross was famous for its turret.
Or perhaps infamous was a better word. Yes, infamous was a more apt description these days, but it did her no good at all to dwell on it.
It was much better not to think of it at all.
As for the strange noise, it had disappeared as suddenly as it arrived. She scanned the wood, then the narrow pathway to the village that wound behind the old stables, but all was silent, and the front drive, the wood, and the pathway were deserted.
Had she imagined the voices, or drifted off to sleep, and dreamed—
No! There it was again, a man’s voice. A single male voice on its own wasn’t cause for alarm, not since Lord Ballantyne had come to Dunvegan. If there’d been only one deep voice, she would have assumed he and Catriona had returned from their errand in the village.
But there were two male voices—a deep, cold one and a second one, warmer and with a hint of amusement.
Whoever they were, they were close. Too close.
She braced her arms on the ledge and leaned as far over the edge of the wall as she dared, and … oh, dear God, there they were, right below her!
Two men, both strangers.
She was no connoisseur of the male form, but they were much larger than the usual sort of man—big, strapping fellows with broad shoulders and massive hands.
The man on the left with the dark hair was a veritable giant, and he looked …
well, it was difficult to tell from here, but his mouth seemed to be turned down in a scowl as dark as midnight itself.
There could only be one reason they were strolling boldly up her drive as if they had every right to be there, coming closer to the front door with every step.
Oh, no. No, no, no. Not now. Not again.
She stumbled backward, away from the wall, her heart pounding in her chest. No good ever came of strange men approaching Castle Cairncross, especially men who could snap a lady’s neck with a mere twitch of their fingers.
What was she meant to do? There was no one nearby, not a single person to warn.
Two men she’d never seen before were a heartbeat away from her front door.
And she was here alone.
* * *
“So, this is Castle Cairncross.” Callum paused several paces from the top of the drive and took in the massive, iron-studded front door. “It’s exactly what I expected.”
A hulking abomination of dark gray stone topped with a turret that looked to be an instant away from crumbling into Loch Dunvegan.
Neat rows of windows dominated the facade, but there wasn’t a flicker of life behind them.
They were dark, blank, unblinking, a dozen suspicious eyes scrutinizing every poor fool that made the mistake of approaching the front door.
“The seat of Rory MacLeod, in all its dubious glory.” Keir squinted up at the weather-beaten front door. “Grim old pile, isn’t it?”
“Grim enough. If I’d been MacLeod, I’d have let it tumble into the sea long ago, and good riddance. Seems a fitting end to such an infamous place.”
“It’s not the castle itself that’s infamous.” Keir frowned as he took in the lopsided turret. “It’s the inhabitants.”
“It’s both.” It wasn’t a kind assessment, but whatever slender thread of kindness he’d been clinging to had disintegrated in the downpour they’d encountered in Strathcarron this morning.
“MacLeod was a notorious smuggler, and his three daughters are witches. It doesn’t get any more infamous than that. ”
“Witches.” Keir snorted out a laugh. “There’s no such thing as witches. Don’t tell me you believe all the wild rumors about the MacLeod sisters.”
“There’s a grain of truth to every rumor.”
“And all but that one grain is nearly always a load of bollocks.” Keir gave him a cheerful slap on the back.
Cheerful, for God’s sake.
A man couldn’t be expected to be cheerful with icy water dripping down the back of his neck and his boots squelching with every step, but Keir tended to remain jovial no matter what miseries befell him.
It was bloody irritating, was what it was.
The dousing they’d endured should have been more than enough to knock the smile off the man’s face. Highland downpours were a misery of a thing, especially in the fall, but even that resounding soaking had been no match for Keir’s good humor.
Callum didn’t suffer from the same affliction. He’d always been an impatient, sour-tempered fellow, and he didn’t see any reason to stop now. “Ballantyne better have a damned good reason for dragging us all the way up here,” he grumbled, as they resumed their trek up the graveled drive to the door.
Ballantyne’s summons couldn’t have come at a worse time.
He had no business traipsing about on the Isle of Skye, hundreds of miles away from his clan, his boots overflowing with rainwater, but whatever trouble Ballantyne had gotten himself into this time must be dire.
He never would have called them here otherwise.
Perhaps he’d been bewitched. If ever there was a man apt to fall victim to a bewitching, it was Ballantyne.
“I daresay he does.” Keir gave a careless shrug.
“I don’t know why you’re so put out. Don’t you have the least bit of curiosity about the MacLeod sisters?
I’m looking forward to meeting the young ladies at the heart of such spectacular rumors.
It isn’t every day a man has the chance to meet a witch. ”
Witches, of all ridiculous things. “You just said there’s no such thing as witches.”
Keir shrugged. “There are plenty of people in Scotland who insist otherwise. Not me, mind you, but plenty of others.”
“All that proves is that Scotland is awash in superstitious fools.”
The MacLeod sisters were something, yes—the fantastical rumors about them were proof of that much—but he’d wager his last penny that witchery had nothing to do with it. No doubt they were the usual, run-of-the-mill charlatans, but perhaps with better acting skills.
“They’re not witches. They’re just three troublesome chits with nothing better to do with their time than play at—”
“Callum.” Keir laid a hand on his arm, halting him on their way up the drive, and nodded toward the front door. “Look.”
He glanced up, his steps slowing.
A young lady was standing in the open doorway at the castle’s entrance. She’d appeared out of nowhere, as if born of the air itself, just like …
Well, like a witch. “Where the devil did she come from?”
“The castle, I presume.” Keir came to a stop beside him. “She must be one of the sisters.”
She was dressed in a dark green gown with a bulky dark blue cloak thrown over the top of it, the rough linen nearly drowning her, and she had a long, reddish-gold braid hanging down her back. “She looks like a housemaid.”
Keir shook his head. “I don’t think so. Ballantyne said the sisters live here alone.”
Whoever she was, she was watching them approach, her small frame rigid and her brow furrowed with … was that dread?
“What’s the matter with her? Why is she looking at us like that?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. She must know who we are, mustn’t she? Ballantyne would have told them we were coming.”
One would think so, but that wasn’t a welcome expression on her face, or even a curious one. No, she was gaping at them with such abject horror he glanced behind them, expecting to encounter something awful, indeed.
A fire-breathing dragon, perhaps, or a mob of pitchfork-wielding villagers? There was no love lost between the MacLeod sisters and the villagers of Dunvegan, according to Ballantyne.
But there was nothing behind them. The drive was deserted.
“She doesn’t look as if she’s expecting us,” Keir murmured. “I don’t like to frighten her. Perhaps we’d better wait for Ballantyne to appear and make the introductions.”
Where was Ballantyne? Shouldn’t he be here to meet them?
They waited, locked in a strange sort of stand-off with the red-headed girl, who’d made no move to go back inside, or meet them on the drive. She appeared to be frozen, one slender hand resting on the door-frame, her face as pale as death.
The three of them stood there, none of them moving, and eyed each other over the empty expanse of the drive between them.
Waiting was the proper thing to do—the gentlemanly thing—but he wasn’t inclined to stand about in his wet boots while this bedraggled-looking chit mustered up the courage to squeak out a greeting.
“Enough. I’m going ahead.” If the girl fell into a hysterical swoon, then so be it.
“Callum, wait.”
But he didn’t wait. He strode forward, his eyes on the girl, who was shrinking back with every step he took toward her, her thin shoulders hunching.
When he was a dozen paces from the front door he opened his mouth to offer a greeting, but before he could get a word out, an unholy shriek shattered the silence.
It was a battle cry. Not the first he’d ever heard. Clan Ross had been in their fair share of skirmishes with neighboring clans. It was bloodcurdling enough, and fairly trembling with rage, but the voice was much higher than one would expect, with a shrill edge to it.
It was a woman’s voice, but it wasn’t the girl in the doorway who’d uttered it. She was still frozen where she stood, one trembling hand over her mouth, her wide eyes dark smudges in her pale face.
Beside him, Keir was shouting something, but before he could decipher it, or even stir a step, something crashed into him, nearly knocking him down. It wasn’t heavy, but before he could react it scrambled up his back and wrapped an arm around his neck.
“What the devil?” He tried to throw it—her—off, but she clung like a burr.
“No. Don’t move, Callum.” Keir’s voice had gone quiet, but there was a thread of urgency in it that made Callum freeze where he stood.
That was when he felt it.
The cold press of a blade against the vulnerable stretch of skin just below his jaw, where his pulse beat, and blood rushed through his carotid artery.
“We don’t care for strangers here at Castle Cairncross,” a voice said near his ear. If there’d been a tremor in it, he might have made another attempt to toss her to the ground, but it was calm, matter-of-fact. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“We don’t mean you any harm.” Keir held up his hands. “We were invited to—”
“I didn’t invite you. You’ve made a mistake, coming here.” The blade moved against his flesh then, just the tiniest shift in the angle, but it was enough.
A trickle of warm blood slid down his neck.
Then, as if the spill of his blood wasn’t warning enough, she added, “A fatal mistake.”