Chapter 22
Castle Kincreag seemed an empty, cavernous labyrinth with Nicholas gone.
It had been nearly a fortnight since he’d left for Edinburgh to turn Catriona over to the king’s justice.
After the raid, Gillian’s sisters had returned to Kincreag, relieved to find her safe.
Sir Philip had lost some men, but thankfully he and Stephen had sustained only minor injuries.
Rose did not stay on, returning to Glen Laire and their father, but Sir Philip and Isobel were to remain at Kincreag until Nicholas returned.
Before leaving, Rose had lectured Gilchrist on how to care for Gillian’s arm properly. It was improving, but would be at least another week before she could take it out of the sling.
“Do you remember it now?” Isobel asked one afternoon as they strolled through the garden. “Mother’s death?” Isobel watched her, silver-green eyes anxious, fearful of what Gillian would say but unable to curb her curiosity any longer.
Gillian had spent so long avoiding the memory, both consciously and unconsciously, that it hadn’t immediately occurred to her to try to recall it.
But over the past few days she’d begun to think about it rather cautiously.
She cast her mind back to the day her mother had been lynched and burned, and her own frantic flight back up the mountain pass.
She’d fallen and had been lying on the ground crying. She’d seen the smoke, and even at ten years old she’d known what it meant, but her heart had refused to accept it. She’d felt a soft breeze across her cheek, almost a caress, and had looked up. “Mum?”
Her mother had stood beside her, smiling down at her. She’d shimmered and wavered in the sunlight, the mountainside visible through her body.
“I have to go now,” she’d said. “They’re at the light, calling to me. I’ll see you there. But not now.”
Gillian had cried for her mother not to leave her, but Lillian had turned away, her face glowing with wonder as she’d looked at something behind her.
Then she was gone. Gillian had been hysterical when she’d finally been found, babbling about her mother and ghosts.
Alan had taken his men and raced to her rescue.
But it had been too late; her mother was dead.
He’d not returned for weeks, intent on his fruitless hunt for the culprit.
Uncle Roderick had recovered Lillian’s ring and given it to Gillian—a remembrance.
Gillian’s finger twitched as she looked down at her bare hand. “I lost the ring.”
“The ring?”
“Mother’s ring, the one I always wore. I removed it on the ledge after I fell.”
Isobel took her hand and squeezed it. “It doesn’t matter. You have the true gift she gave you, and that’s more important than a piece of metal.”
“Aye, but it doesn’t explain why someone cursed me.
” After a long moment, Gillian reluctantly gave voice to what truly troubled her.
“Rose’s counter curse didn’t work. I made the connection while I lay on the cliff ledge.
When I removed the ring, the pain in my head disappeared and has not returned. It was the ring.”
“Someone cursed the ring?” Isobel breathed, eyes wide. “Who could have done that?”
Gillian shook her head. “I don’t know. Uncle Roderick brought it back for me . . . but who knows who had it before him?”
“We may never know now. But whoever cursed it thought you might be a threat because of what you see. How were they to know that you saw nothing but Mother moving on to her reward?”
“The light,” Gillian murmured. “The boy that dropped the ballast, he came to me after his death, when I’d taken the theriac.
He was looking at something just before he disappeared, just as Mother did.
They both looked so . . . radiant when they looked at it.
And the woman at the tree told me to go to the light. The light. Do you think it’s heaven?”
“It must be someplace important.”
“She said I had work to do.”
They walked in silence for a few minutes. Broc rustled around in the bushes, chasing after mice and snapping at dragonflies.
“Maybe,” Gillian said thoughtfully, “some ghosts don’t know about the light . . . and that’s why they’re still here?”
“Maybe so,” Isobel said. “Maybe that is your work.”
Later that day Gillian found Tomas in the west wing, sitting by the window in the solar. She’d seen him when she’d returned to the castle and had told him what had happened. It had upset him, and she’d not seen him since.
“You seem very unhappy, Tomas,” Gillian said, and he did.
He was a mournful figure, wrapped in his plaid and gazing dolefully out the window.
He’d been a handsome man. He’d died young, perhaps Gillian’s age.
He had startling green eyes and soft auburn hair.
And he’d been so kind to her. It saddened her that he was trapped here.
He shrugged. “I’m dead. I dinna think I’m supposed to be happy.”
“You said before that you don’t know how to move on to heaven, or if you’re meant to.”
Tomas nodded, looking back out the window morosely.
“Do you see a light?”
He looked at her sharply. “What about it?”
She leaned forward, a jolt of excitement surging through her. “You do see it!”
“Aye, but I dinna ken what it is . . . I did some verra bad things when I was alive . . . I . . . I’m afraid to go there.”
“You think it’s hell?”
He shrugged, then, after a moment, nodded.
“I don’t know what you did, Tomas, but I’ve seen other spirits pass on to the light, and they’re happy. I think it’s a good place. Their faces when they go are full of rapture.”
Tomas’s eyes filled with longing. He looked over his shoulder, at something Gillian couldn’t see. Then he turned back to her. “I dinna know . . . are ye sure?”
“Aye, I’m sure,” Gillian said softly. “My mother was a good woman who never did anyone harm. She went there.”
He looked so torn. She could see in his face that he wanted to believe her but was too afraid. “I dinna know,” he said again. He seemed less certain now.
“I think this must be your hell, Tomas. A shadow in your old life, one that no one can see or hear. And you’ve condemned yourself to it. Go on, it’s over now.”
He stood and gave her a hesitant nod. And then he was gone.
It was another week before Nicholas returned.
When Gillian received word that he was sighted climbing the cliff road, she was beside herself with excitement.
He seemed larger than she remembered, tall and leanly muscled.
He wore black breeks and a dark leather doublet.
A plaid mantle was thrown carelessly over his broad shoulders.
He seemed a bit hesitant and shy when he dismounted in the courtyard.
Gillian ran to him, and he caught her up in his arms.
“I missed you,” he whispered into her hair. Then he stepped back. “Your arm is better?” He ran a gentle hand over it.
“It still hurts a bit, but I can use it. Rose showed me exercises that will strengthen it.”
“You do them, or I’ll tell her.”
Gillian grimaced at the thought of how her sister dealt with recalcitrant patients. Nicholas took her hand, gazing down at her warmly, and led her back into the castle. There was a strange bearded man traveling with him, dressed entirely in sober black. Gillian asked about him.
“Och, it’s a churchman I brought back to marry us tonight.”
Gillian smiled to herself but asked, “So it’s done?”
He didn’t say anything, and when she glanced up at him, his mouth was grim.
“Nicholas?” Gillian said, worried now.
He stopped and put his hands on her shoulders. “It’s done. She was executed. I stayed to make sure she was really dead this time.”
A great weight lifted from Gillian’s heart, and relief settled over her. “So it really is over.”
Nicholas looked around warily. “Unless she returns to haunt me.”
Gillian’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts.”
He took a deep breath, then put his arm around her and led her through the hall. “That was before.”
“Before what?”
“I told you Catriona tried to poison me, but I didn’t tell you how I knew the whisky was poisoned.”
“Aye, you did. The doll.”
He gave her a sideways look. “That’s not all.”
He led her into his chambers and shut the door. He seemed so uncertain, so unlike himself that Gillian was both bursting with curiosity and uneasy about what he wanted to say.
He licked his lips and took another deep breath, then he faced her and said, “I saw my son.”
Gillian sat on the bed. “You saw him.”
Nicholas nodded. His face was tight, his palms pressed together in front of him, “You were right. He put the doll in the whisky. He knew his mother was trying to kill me. He . . .” Nicholas briefly closed his eyes and swallowed hard.
Composed again, he continued, “He’s been watching over me all this time.
I would dream about him coming to my room at night to watch me sleep, except .
. . I think I knew in my heart he wasn’t a dream.
But to contemplate my own child . . . such a wee lad, haunting Kincreag .
. .” He shook his head and stared at the floor.
“I suppose it was just too much for me to bear.”
Gillian went to him and stroked a hand up his arm. “I don’t think he was haunting Kincreag. I think he was waiting.”
He looked up at her, confusion and hope marring his brow. “Waiting?”
“Aye, to protect you. And now that the danger is gone, I haven’t seen him at all.”
“You think he’s gone on to heaven?”
“Aye. I looked for him, to help him to the light, but he’s nowhere to be found. Even Tomas hasn’t seen him.”
Nicholas took a shuddering breath, hands braced on his hips, gaze again directed downward. He nodded. “Good,” he said, then nodded again, his throat working. “Good.”
He crossed to the cabinet against the wall and poured water into the basin. “Who’s Tomas?”
“Tomas Campbell . . . he was haunting Kincreag until recently. I meant to ask him how he died. . . . Nicholas? Are you all right?”
He’d been splashing water from the basin over his face while she talked, but had stopped, the water dripping down his dark skin and glistening in ebony whiskers. His eyes were wide with shock. “Did you say Tomas Campbell?”
“Aye. Did you know him?”
Nicholas swiped the water off his face with a towel and sat heavily on the bed. “Aye . . . I knew him.”
Gillian joined him. “What is it?”
He let out a loud breath. “Jesus, Gillian . . . Tomas Campbell was the carpenter . . . the one that Catriona brought with her when we wed . . . the one who built the dollhouse. The only one of her men I thought I killed.”
Gillian’s brows shot up.
“I found them together and beat him . . . he fell onto the dollhouse and crushed the side of it. But the wounds weren’t mortal. He was sore beat but alive. Then he just died two days later.”
“Catriona,” Gillian gasped, hands over her mouth. They sat in silence for a time, thinking about Tomas and Malcolm.
Then Nicholas took her hand and enclosed it in both of his. “There were so many . . . she had so many men ensnared, like a spider with her web. Do you know she poisoned five husbands? Their children, too. No one knows how many lovers and servants.”
Gillian shook her head slowly, her throat tight. “But why? Why would she kill them all? I guess I understand the husbands, to get their money, but why children and servants? It makes no sense.”
“I know not. Except . . . she enjoyed it. I saw that in her eyes when she thought I was dying. It gave her power, like some angel of death. She was truly evil.”
He cast a leery look around the room. “I wonder how many ghosts are here. Will Evan come back, think you? Are they vengeful in death?”
Gillian squeezed his hands. “I don’t believe they are. Tomas wasn’t vengeful.”
He slid her a wry look. “Did you exorcise him?”
“No, I just showed him the light.”
He raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“You don’t believe me?” she asked tartly and tried to stand.
He caught her about the waist and pulled her back onto the bed, his arms around her. “Oh, I believe you.” His mouth covered hers in a soft kiss as he lowered her back onto the bed. “After all, you showed me the light, too.”