Page 54 of Highlanders for the Holidays
Eleanore spoke softer yet as she began to fade away. “Unattended, love is like a flame, burning lower day by day.”
“Eleanore,” Hugh pleaded. She was barely visible now. He reached out, trying to catch her to him, but his hands fell away from her translucent form.
“You will know love when ’tis returned,” she said, her voice drifting away.
And then Hugh was kneeling in the cold dark corridor of his home, left wretchedly alone. His wife was gone. Stricken with grief, he rose quickly from his knees in the empty silence of his hall and bolted into the solar.
Despite that he had already blown it out, the candle on his desk sat burning still, smoke curling up toward the ceiling as the tallow burned dirty and low.
What day is this?
Hurrying to the desk, Hugh pulled the newly delivered parchment from his belt, unrolled it swiftly and peered down at the writing, drafted in the studied hand of a Godly man. Illumined by the candlelight, the text changed before his eyes, as though written by some unseen hand. It now read:
“In the name of the deceased, Baron Hugh FitzSimon, dead this twenty-second day of December in the year of our lord 1135…”
Was this a waking dream?
Behind Hugh, the hearth fire raged no longer, but there upon the floor laid the charred remains of his cloak. Proof that he was not mad. A sudden gust, like a ghostly sigh, lifted the ends of his gray mane and the candle on the desk flickered softly. Hugh hurriedly cupped his hands about the flame, protecting it from going out.
Before the fire burns low in the last hour of the last day before the winter solstice, you must change your heart, Hugh FitzSimon.
“Do not forsake me, Eleanore!”
He had so much to do, and so little time to do it!
