Chapter Eight
Angus’s ghost, transparent as a gauze curtain, stood staring out the window of the old tower, watching over the glen.
Georgiana could see the road through his broad back as it wound past this tower on the way to the new castle.
Well, it was hardly new. It was older than either of them, and they’d been dead for nearly twenty years, but it was newer than this place their ghosts inhabited.
“What are you watching for?” she asked.
He gave her a steely look from under his white brows. He’d grown from a winsome lad to a fine, handsome man. She would have liked to grow old with him. She felt the familiar bite of regret, and tilted her head to smile at him, imagining what that might have been like.
“Can a man not admire the view?” he asked, crusty at her interruption, obviously wary of her wistful smile.
“Yes, I suppose so,” she said mildly, and drifted nearer, letting him feel the weight of her presence. He shrugged, but didn’t move away.
“Something’s about to happen. I can feel it in my bones like I used to be able to feel a storm coming down from the hills,” he grumbled.
“Perhaps it’s here already. Devorguilla always was a scheming piece, and young Brodie MacNabb has arrived, all smiles and muscles, even if he hasn’t got the wit God gave a bonxie.
She’s up to something, or he is—something that will change Glenlorne forever. ” He looked at her like a fierce eagle.
As if he had bones. She suppressed a smile.
“Will it be as bad as Culloden? Glenlorne survived that, Angus.” Georgiana let her eyes roam over the width of his shoulders, the strength in the ghostly hands that clutched the windowsill. He turned to look at her, his gaze fierce.
“Aye, Glenlorne survived that, but this is different. My father divided his sons, put a few on each side, half Jacobite, half Royalist, just to be sure the MacNabbs would keep Glenlorne no matter who won.”
“And which side did you take?”
His scowl intensified. “How could I have chosen? I was a Scot, but—” He looked away his eyes roaming the glen, his shoulders hunched against the memory.
“But you were in love with an English girl, the daughter of an English lord,” she prodded, finishing his sentence.
“I wasn’t a coward. I would have fought with my brothers, but they didn’t give me the chance.
” He studied his hands. “The night we planned to run away together, they caught me, packing my things. They knew well enough where I was going. They knocked me senseless, threw me over a horse, and dragged me to the coast. They put me on the first outbound ship they found, not caring where it was headed, just so long as it took me away from you.”
“So that’s why you didn’t come,” she said softly, without blame, though she felt regret keenly enough. It was a familiar companion.
“Did you truly believe I’d abandoned you?”
She sighed, and the breeze stirred the stunted trees that had begun to grow up within the tower’s ruined walls. “They told me you had done exactly that, later. They said you’d come to your senses and run away rather than face a life with me.”
“Bastards!” he hissed. A flock of swallows fled in terror at his malevolence, streaking past Angus’s shade and out into the open sky. He flinched, though they could not harm him. “I suppose my brothers paid the price for it. All dead, or captured.”
“If you’d stayed, you would have died with them at Culloden Moor, and I would still have lost you,” Georgiana said softly. She drifted closer still. “Tell me where the ship took you. I’ve often imagined—”
But Angus was staring out the window at the road once again. “Dear God! I’m seeing a ghost!”
Georgiana looked down. A cart was trundling by, but the only ghost was the spinning veil of dust chasing the vehicle.
The young woman seated beside the driver was staring up at the tower, squinting in the sun, one hand clutching tight to her bonnet.
A long red curl fluttered loose in the breeze.
“ ’Tis you, gràdhach! What kind of sorcery—”
Georgiana laughed, and he turned to her in surprise.
She ignored him for a moment, kept her eyes fixed on the girl in the cart, felt pride and relief swell in her hollow breast. “It’s my granddaughter Caroline, here at last,” she said.
She gave Angus a dazzling smile as the cart rounded a curve of the road and disappeared over the lip of the valley, heading for the new castle.
Angus looked at her, stunned. “How did you manage—” he began, but she gave him a coquettish smile.
“You think she looks like me, do you?”
Angus shook himself and nodded, feeling foolish. “Aye. Same hair, same white skin. Is that the lass you intend for Alec?”
She grinned. “Yes. What do you think?”
He groaned. “Heaven help him. One look into those eyes and he’ll be a lost man. That’s a feeling I remember all too well!”
“If he ever gets here,” Georgiana said, her toes curling at Angus’s unwitting compliment.
“Aye,” he murmured, staring after the cart. “And he’d better get here soon.”