Mia Marlowe (21 page)

“Who is the weeping woman?” Lucinda asked.

“That’s a tale for another time, though I believe milord has an inkling of her true name,”
Farquhar said.

Alexander frowned at him. How could he know who she was? He’d never seen her face in any of the dreams.

“Can it be lifted?” Alex interrupted.

Mr. Farquhar gave him a sad smile.
“Aye. We have hope that it may. But it might be more difficult than ye think.”

“Will ye bear me company, milord? I’ll show ye as much as I may.”
Farquhar moved toward Alexander. When Alex nodded, the old ghost laid a spectral hand on his arm and led him toward the looking glass.
“Dinna become separated from me and all will be well.”

Farquhar held his other hand in front of them and his fingertips sank into the mirror as if it were malleable as water. “Alex.” A whisper was all Lucinda could manage. Her feet were rooted to the spot. Her husband and the ghost passed through the silvered glass, leaving only a few ripples in the mirror in their wake.

“No!” Shock gave her additional strength. She tore herself from her place by Farquhar’s desk and ran to the mirror. When she touched it, the glass didn’t give a bit.

“Alexander,” she wailed and drew back her fist to strike it. Mr. Lyttle grasped her hand, stopping her before her blow could connect.

“With respect, milady, I wouldna do that. No’ only will ye have seven years bad luck, ye’ll close this portal forever and they willna be able to come back here.”

That logic rang true in her mind and she stepped away from the looking glass, lowering her hand. “My friend Brodie said he used the paths behind the mirrors to come here, but he’s a ghost. Alexander is a mortal man. How can he travel them?”

“On his own, he couldna, no more than ye or I can. That’s why his lordship needs to stay with Mr. Farquhar,” Lyttle said. “Dinna fear, milady. Farquhar willna let any evil befall Lord Bonniebroch. We need him too much.”

“But where have they gone?”

“That I canna say, but I know where we must go.” He squinted in the direction of the setting sun. “The supper is laid by now. Everyone waits for ye. Will ye no’ be pleased to serve as a chatelaine ought and signal that all may eat their Christmas supper?”

She’d never felt less like celebrating. Lucinda looked once more at the mirror, wishing with all her heart that Alex would step back through it. There was nothing she could do but act as the lady of the castle ought and carry on in her laird’s absence. She wanted to believe the butler when he said Farquhar would keep Alexander safe. They needed him too much, he’d said.

Didn’t Lyttle know she needed Alex too?

What the folk of Bonniebroch might need him
for
gave her pause. Her association with Brodie had taught her that ghosts were wont to play fast and loose with the facts. Farquhar had probably told the truth so far as it went. However, he was likely leaving a good bit unsaid.

When Mr. Farquhar brought Alexander back—and he would! He simply must!—she resolved to tell her husband everything about Brodie MacIver. Then she’d demand her ghost appear to share what he’d learned about Bonniebroch since he began haunting its gray walls. Perhaps between the three of them they’d be able to puzzle out what Farquhar wasn’t telling.

“Lead on, Mr. Lyttle,” she said with a sinking heart. “Christmas supper willna wait.”

 

 

Alexander had never been so cold in his life. The hairs in his nostrils froze with every breath. Frigid air bit his cheeks and made his fingers and feet go numb, but he kept a grip on Farquhar’s bony arm. The ghost felt as substantial as a live person in this realm beyond the mirror. Together, Alex and the old steward floated along a corridor-like tube that was alive with light. They seemed to be moving quickly, judging from the pulsing, nearly transparent walls surrounding them, but Alexander’s hair didn’t ruffle and his jacket didn’t flap.

He tried moving his feet, but his body wouldn’t respond. He couldn’t even blink. It was as if he were a statue.

Darkness pressed around them. Beyond the narrow beam on which they traveled, Alex saw other small lights in his peripheral vision, flashing and zipping in myriad directions. He wondered if they represented other travelers in this odd place, but all he could make out were shimmering spots.

Then suddenly, he and Farquhar sank into a gelatinous mass that both slowed and warmed them. In a blink, Alex found himself stumbling out of a large pane of silvered glass, finally able to move again. His grip around Farquhar’s arm closed suddenly on nothing but vapor, as the ghost’s form lost the solidity he’d had a moment ago. Alex kept his feet while he came to a shuddering stop and brushed a layer of frost off his lapel and eyebrows.

A strange smell, a mix of old blood and offal, burning pitch and rusting iron, surrounded him. It was the stench of ancient misery. A single torch lit the dank chamber. The mirror he and Farquhar had come through occupied the center of the room, suspended from the high ceiling by a pair of long chains. The looking glass was so veined with dark spots Alexander’s reflection wavered in disjointed chunks.

“Aye, ’tis old beyond reckoning. A wonder it still works, is it no’?”
Farquhar said. Alex suspected his steward was a mind-reader as well as a ghost.

“Are we still in Bonniebroch Castle?” Alex asked.

Farquhar nodded.
“Ye might come here by the secret tunnel from your chamber, but the path through the mirrors is quicker and we’ve nae time to waste.”

“This is the dungeon, then.” Moldering leather straps attached to iron rings jutted from the gray stone and a gibbet hung in one corner. “I trust there aren’t many inmates,” he added as an afterthought, hoping to lighten the mood.

There were three barred cells giving off the larger chamber where the mirror was. One appeared to be empty. At first Alex thought the next one was as well, but then he noticed a black shape against the back wall. If it hadn’t moved he’d never have seen it. The darkness gathered itself into the form of a man and moved toward the bars. A sudden flash of brilliant light sprang from the bars and the shape slunk back into the corner.

“Settle, then,”
Farquhar told it gruffly.
“Yer time isna come yet.”

“What is it?”

The shape glowed like a glossy piece of obsidian at Farquhar’s words.

“Why is he held here?” As Alexander stepped nearer to the bars, unbridled contempt rolled over him. The shape of Morgan MacRath seethed with hatred, directed at everything and nothing.

The shape seemed to shrink a bit, but Alex wasn’t disposed to pity it. Anything so filled with rage was due a healthy wariness, but no empathy.

“So if the curse is lifted, what happens to the people of Bonniebroch?”

“They become unstuck. They’ll grow and age naturally from that day forth and eventually die as God intended folk should.”
Farquhar joined him near MacRath’s cell.
“Now they’re like insects trapped in amber, frozen in time. Believe me, there’s no’ a soul in the castle as doesna long for a normal life and a normal death at the end of it.”

“And what about Mr. MacRath?”

The dark shape rose and swelled to twice its size and then deflated like a child’s balloon.

“And if the curse isn’t broken?” Alex asked.

“Then Morgan MacRath will be strong enough to take corporeal form again. He’ll be loose and abroad in the world to wreak whatever mischief his wicked soul chooses.”
Farquhar’s narrow shoulders slumped.
“And the people of Bonniebroch who’ve been unchanging as stone all these years will finally become stone. They’ll turn to statues where they stand when the chapel bell rings midnight on Twelfth Night.”

Alex turned away from MacRath’s cell. “How do we end this?”

“Very well. What must I do?”

Farquhar raised his hands before himself in a defensive gesture even though Alexander had made no threatening move against him. He only felt like wringing the ghost’s scrawny neck. Evidently, Farquhar was as sensitive to intent as action.

Alexander snorted. “Oh, good. No pressure.” He strode toward the remaining cell. “Who’s in this—”

He stopped to listen. Very softly, on the thinnest edge of sound, the sobbing began. “The weeping woman. Why is she being held here?”

“Who is she?”

The woman stood in deep shadow at the rear of the cell. Then she turned and walked toward the open door. The shade stopped at the threshold. She was dressed all in black with the broad panniers of a generation ago extending the width of her hips so that she’d have to turn sideways should she decide to pass through the opening. He’d never seen her so clearly in his dreams. She’d always presented as a diaphanous shape that seemed to vanish when he came too close.

Her sleeves were festooned with furbelows and her petticoat was thick with obsidian ruffles. Her hat was large enough for a stuffed black pigeon to blend in almost unnoticed among all the other frufurrah. Reams of veils trailed over her shoulders and down her back. One swath of black netting was caught up so it obscured the bottom half of her face. Only her eyes were visible above it.

Storm-gray eyes that were mirror images of his.

In all the nights when his dreams were invaded by her sobbing, she’d never spoken to him. In a broken voice, the woman said the first intelligible word he’d ever heard from her.

It was his name.

“Take me away from this place, Farquhar,” Alexander said quietly. He barely contained the tremble that threatened to take him.

“She has no side. She chose to leave.” The old keening ache in his chest throbbed afresh. The bitter venom his father had injected into Alex over the years coursed hotly through his veins. “Turns out she taught me well because that’s what I choose, too. Now either take me back through the mirror or point me to the stairs leading up to my chamber.”

“Now, damn it. Am I laird of this place or not?”

“The stairs are over there, milord,”
Farquhar said with a sigh and extended a spectral arm.
“Mind how you go.”

Alexander stalked toward the steps and started climbing. He had to stop halfway up to cover his ears. The farther away he was, the louder her sobs seemed to grow.

It wasn’t fair. Wasn’t it bad enough that he had to face her weeping in his sleep? Hearing her in the waking world made him doubt his sanity.

Well, that was fitting. Madness was all he might expect to inherit from his mad mother.

Lucinda pushed her food around her plate until the rest of the company was served. The Great Hall fairly buzzed with excitement. The fact that conversations stopped abruptly as she passed made her strain all the more to overhear them.

“Mr. Farquhar has taken him . . .”

“Does anyone know what the first task . . .”

“Wouldna it be wondrous if . . .”

Snippets of gossip about their laird’s absence in relation to the Bonniebroch curse sparked through the assembly with the unfocused energy of heat lightning.

’Tis fine for them to be stirred up over what Alex is doing, but I wonder how the other ladies here would feel if it was
their
husband popping through a mirror with an old ghost,
Lucinda thought crossly.

As soon as she was decently able, she rose and admonished the others to continue their Christmas feast. Mr. Lyttle lit her to the laird’s chamber. She dismissed him at the door, telling him not to send a maid to help her to bed.

Lucinda wanted to remain dressed, ready to accompany Alexander if Mr. Farquhar decided to take him on another trip through any more looking glasses. Her heart lurched when she saw Alex in the darkened sitting room, his still form lit only by the fire in the grate. She hurried to him and knelt by his side.

Wordlessly, he pulled her up and settled her on his lap, but continued to stare into the flames as if mesmerized by them.

First things first.
Aunt Hester had always told her the best thing a woman can do for a man who has a problem is to tend to his basic needs while he sorted the rest out for himself.

“Ye missed supper. Shall I ring for a tray?”

He shook his head. Perhaps the problem was more than he could sort out on his own.

“Alexander, what happened?” She kissed his neck and nuzzled his earlobe.

“My world is upside down, that’s what,” he said softly as he stroked her arm absently. “This sort of thing would never happen in England, you know. I suppose it’s because we don’t regularly consort with ghosts and curses are only the stuff of faery tales.”

Lucinda wished he’d look at her. It’d reassure her to see his soul shining behind his eyes. “Brodie would say that’s because there’s more magic in one foot of Scottish earth than in all the land south of Hadrian’s Wall.”

“He’d probably also say it was time I learned to listen to my wife. You were right. The weeping woman
is
my mother.”

“You’ve seen her?”

“Aye,” he said, not bothering to correct the Scottish-ism that slipped through his lips this time. “She’s set up housekeeping in a cozy little cell in the dungeon.”

“The dungeon? Whatever she may have done, you canna mean to keep her there.” Lucinda tried to sidle off his lap, but he held her fast.

“I’m not. She keeps herself there when she’s not bedeviling my dreams.” He shook his head. “Doing penance, I expect.”

“Oh, Alex. I dinna know much about these unearthly things, but somehow, ye must release her.”

“Since you have your very own pet ghost, you must know something about it. Certainly more than me. Where does your Brodie MacIver stay?”

“Pretty much wherever he wants. However, he’s been verra good about giving us privacy when we are alone.”

“Thank God for small favors.” He finally met her gaze and she saw his eyes were clear, if still distracted by his trip through the mirror.

She brushed his lips with hers and he answered her by claiming her mouth in a bruising kiss. She melted into him. He held her so tightly, she had difficulty drawing breath, but she wouldn’t complain. She wanted to be close to this man, so close their souls would mingle and stay mixed together forever. For several glorious minutes, neither of them thought about ghosts or curses or anything beyond the wonder of a shared breath.

Alex was the first to pull back.

“Before we get completely off the subject, will your ghost come when you call him?” he asked.

“Usually.” She laid her head on his shoulder and wished she could take the pain of seeing his mother’s shade from him. “Why do ye want Brodie?”

“It might be interesting to find out if I can see him.”

“Ye canna. Ye’ve been in his presence dozens of times. He even shared the coach with us and Aunt Hester all the way to Dalkeith and ye didna notice him once. Brodie was being fair obnoxious that day too, as I recall.”

“You’ll have to tell me what he says then.” Alex spit the next words out, which showed they cost him dear. “I need his help. Summon him.”

“Let me up, then. Even though we’re wed, he’s still a might possessive of me.” She slid off his lap. “Brodie MacIver!”

Almost instantly, the ghost came headfirst down the chimney and rolled onto the hearth rug with a laugh.
“Just sweepin’ out the soot for Father Christmas. Cromwell should have been boiled in pudding for banning the celebratin’ part o’ the holiday. I’ve always loved Christmas!”

“I thought you didna remember much from your natural life, Brodie.” Lucinda stared down at him. She glanced at Alex, but his bewildered frown told her he still couldn’t see her ghost.

“Mr. MacIver.” Alex stood and looked down at the hearth rug as Lucinda had, but by that time, Brodie had already floated up to the ceiling and was doing barrel rolls along the sturdy beams. “I’ve need of your help.”

“Keep a civil tongue in your head, and listen to the man, Brodie.” Lucinda tipped her chin so she could follow the ghost’s antics and show Alexander where he was now. “Go on, Alex.”

“There’s a female spirit in the castle. I need for you to speak to her and find out . . . well, whatever it is she wishes to say to me.”

“Because some things are hard to hear firsthand,” Lucinda explained. “Ye’d be serving as . . . as an ambassador of sorts. A mediator.”

“Please, Brodie, this is important,” Lucinda said.

“Don’t beg,” Alex interrupted. “If he’s unwilling, he’s not going to do it very well. I’ll figure out some other way.”

Brodie made a rude noise, the kind that made Lucinda grateful she couldn’t smell her ghost. Then she cocked her head and listened while Brodie whispered to her.

“He says he needs the spirit’s name.”

Alexander crossed his arms over his chest. “Why?”

“It’s how he’ll find her. Just as I used his name to call him, he’ll use her name to locate her. It’s their way.”

“Finding her is not a problem. Tell him she’s in the dungeon.”

“’Tis no’ so simple a thing. Apparently, if ghosts dinna ken each other’s names, they canna recognize each other. They slide by each other, like wind that ruffles a pile of leaves and passes on unheeding. He could look right into her cell and never see her, nor she him.” When Alex shot her a dubious scowl, she added, “Ye remember how Mr. Farquhar said he sensed a new presence in Bonniebroch so he laid out the book with Mr. Lyttle’s family tree to draw the other spirit out. Since he didna know Brodie’s name, that’s all he could do.”

Alex huffed out a noisy breath. “Very well. Her name is Finella MacGregor Mallory.”

“Finella,”
Brodie repeated, his tone suddenly thick with emotion.

Alexander’s head jerked toward the sound. “I heard that.”

Brodie suddenly shot through the floorboards at Alexander’s feet with a burst of white light, but Alex must not have seen it. He didn’t bat so much as an eyelash.

“He’s gone,” Lucinda said.

“Will he help me?”

“That I dinna ken, but he’s on his way to talk to your weeping woman. He was headed straight down.”

 

 

“Finella,”
Brodie chanted. Memories rushed back into him along with her name. The prettiest girl in ten parishes. Stolen kisses and furtive trysts when she’d sneak out of her brother’s house by night. Riding bareback with Brodie. Galloping on the heath. Wind in her unbound hair. Oh, the feel of her arms around his waist and her breasts pressed up against his back as they bounded through a burn in full spate. Her legs were wet....

More slices of the past slammed into his mind. He remembered a hated contractual marriage with an Englishman. Brodie tried to steal her away, but her brother Cormag MacGregor found them out. Brodie was arrested and Cormag locked Finella in the tower till her Englishman came and claimed her.

Then Brodie was taken, bound and gagged, to a dank cellar. Finella was lost. He no longer cared what happened to him. He was dead inside already. The rest of him followed suit in time, though he couldn’t say how long the dying took. Days and weeks blurred together in unremitting misery.

Sorrow aged his soul before it flew free. But he couldn’t fly far. Anger chained him to earth. Other passions burned out, but seething rage remained. Little by little, his former life faded like a rose past its prime till all that was left was a wisp of what had been a sweet scent.

By the time a wee lassie crying in the dark pulled him out of his self-pitying stupor, Brodie had forgotten almost everything but his own name.

Now his first love’s name called him back to himself. Back to her.

 

 

Alex sank back into the chair and leaned forward to balance his elbows on his knees, head in his hands. “I’m going mad.”

“Nonsense.” Lucinda knelt before him and kissed him. “Ye’re the most sane person I know.”

“Sane people don’t send ghosts on errands. They don’t pop through looking glasses or agree to some benighted campaign to end a curse.”

“If it makes ye feel any better, ye’ve pleased your people here at Bonniebroch out of all knowing for it.” She covered his hands with her own, framing his face. Her touch was cool and soothing. “They seem to know something’s afoot and they’re right proud of ye.”

“Aye, they’re all odd enough, they’d be the sort as would warm to a mad laird.” He was sounding more Scottish by the moment, but he appreciated Lucinda for not pointing it out. He couldn’t seem to help it. “I dinna—don’t know what’s come over me. They always say these things don’t necessarily run in families, but I think . . . I think my mother’s madness is finally beginning to tell.”

“Ye’ve had a surprise this evening and no mistake. Several by my count.” She smoothed back a shock of hair that had fallen across his forehead and then pressed a kiss there. “If ye didna doubt yerself, I’d be more worried about ye. The fact that ye wonder about being mad tells me ye’re not.”

He snorted. “There’s a certain amount of sense there, but if the original premise is flawed, a thing can be logical and still be untrue. I could be quite rationally out of my mind.”

“Then it comes to this. If ye’re mad, I’ll just be mad right along with ye.”

He gathered her into his arms. In a world of shifting reality and ghoulies and ghosties, Lucinda was the only true thing he could count on at the moment. He longed to sink into her and draw the curtains closed on the rest of the world. It was more than lust, though he couldn’t deny he was far hungrier for her than for his missed supper. Lucinda was his touchstone, his lighthouse, his promise that somehow all the odd thoughts scrambling in his brain—thoughts that hadn’t been there a fortnight ago—still didn’t mean he was insane.

“I can keep going no matter what,” he whispered into her neck, “so long as you keep looking at me the way you do.”

Her eyes shining, she pulled back to meet his gaze. “And how is it I look at ye?”

He shook his head in wonderment. “As if I’m Hercules and Hannibal and William the Conqueror all rolled up in one.”

“For shame, Alexander.” She made a tsking noise. “Ye’re far better than that. None of them were Scottish, ye ken. Besides”—she sent him a sidelong glance—“ye know I always think of ye as ‘Your Much of a Muchness.’”

He threw back his head and laughed in spite of everything. His career in Lord Liverpool’s service was in tatters. His mother’s ghost hovered in the dungeon. He somehow had to figure out what was required of him to break the Bonniebroch curse without Farquhar’s help. And yet this woman could make him laugh.

He cupped the back of her head and pulled her toward him. He kissed her smiling lips, not nipping and teasing this time, but deeply. Honestly. His soul leaned toward hers. It was enough to simply feel her open under him, to welcome him.

Her hands moved over his head, his neck, his shoulders. His heart quickened along with his body. The strange sensation in his chest confused him. It was an ache and a warmth and an unsettled yearning.

He tried to thrust the idea away. After witnessing the wreck of his parents’ marriage, he’d never believed in love.

“A man should never place his heart in a woman’s keeping. She’ll only devour it like a she-spider,” his father had often complained with bitterness. The marquis had given his Scottish bride his name and his trust, but she hadn’t returned his gift. All Finella did was shame him by going mad and doing away with herself.