Page 12 of Laird of Twilight
The moan sounded again, eldritch, ending on a shrill note that shivered down his neck. Again the dog howled, and a second one barked. James looked around the dim foyer. “What in blazes,” he muttered. “Halloo!”
No answer. The arrival of Struan House’s viscount was not particularly promising. Ghostly shrieks, baying dogs, and here he stood alone and ungreeted, drenched by a chill September rain. If the work awaiting him here proceeded smoothly, he told himself, he would only be here a few weeks.
Once again, and too often of late, he wondered if he would see Elspeth MacArthur while he was here. She had mentioned that her family home was in the glen, and try as he might, he had not forgotten her. She lingered in his thoughts, even his dreams.
The memory of a few simple kisses haunted him, as did her sparkling, seductive eyes. He recalled the taste of her lips under his own, the feel of her in his arms—but he had not fallen in love like a damn fool, not at all. Yet the memories were persistent and distracting.
Nor had Sir Walter helped the matter. “Miss MacArthur is an intriguing young lady. When you go to Struan House, seek out her out. Find that one, James.”
Well, here he was at Struan House, come for other matters and little time to visit Kilcrennan, wherever it was. Drawing off his gloves, he crammed them into a pocket, brushed the rain from his coat shoulders, removed his hat and shook the moisture from it. Too damned much rain lately, he thought.
Eyes gray as rain—his mind did it again, made that little leap when his thoughts were not on the girl. He was obsessed. He disliked it.
“Halloo the house!” he called. Nothing.
Perhaps he should find her, he thought, to ask what mad spell she had put on him, and why she had pulled that ruse on his friend Scott. He was not satisfied in that matter. The poet was the one obsessed with finding her—not James. There. Although seeing her in ordinary circumstances, when she was not done up like a fairy princess, might dissolve his own damnable obsession.
“Halloo!” He turned in the foyer. Floored in slate and lined in dark wood paneling, it had a wide stairway along one wall and a huge marble fireplace on the other. Above the mantel, the heads of stags were in stark contrast to the angels carved in the fireplace surround. The walls were hung with antique weapons as well as small paintings of landscapes and dog portraits.
All of it looked familiar, racing back to him now. He had not been here since childhood. He thought of the beasts howling upon his arrival today and remembered stories of ghosts and monstrous creatures when he had been here as a boy. He had almost forgotten how spooky Struan House could seem. He had visited a few times when younger, but he now he was an adult, a thorough skeptic, a calm and unruffled man who allowed nothing to make him anxious. Not even this place.
“Anyone here?” he called again, his voice echoing.
He walked forward, and a bloodcurdling shriek sounded, lifting the fine hairs along his neck. He spun around. What the devil was going on here?
Fatigue did not help his patience. Three days ago, he had started out for Stirling and beyond by landau, entering the foothills of the Highlands to stop at an inn at Callander, where the roads were good. After a night’s rest, he dispatched his driver back to Edinburgh. He spent a solitary day walking the sunny hills in the countryside, finding interesting formations of mica schist, which answered to the bite of the small hammer he had carried with him. He made notes on his finds and that night had a quiet dinner, enjoying the Highland atmosphere more than he would have admitted. Next morning, MacKimmie, Struan House’s ghillie, had arrived to fetch him in an old but serviceable carriage pulled by a pair of sturdy bays.
Angus MacKimmie had aged some, but he had always been a grizzled, bearded fellow—it even seemed he still wore the same ancient and rumpled red kilt and a threadbare brown jacket and bonnet that James remembered seeing as a boy. The man had offered to carry James’s satchel into the house, but James had released him to tending the horses. When no butler appeared, James had let himself in the door.
The echoing foyer was even gloomier in the silvery sheen of rain through tall windows. “Where the devil is everyone,” he muttered.
In the shadows beyond the staircase, a door creaked, and a huge gray wolfhound padded toward him on rangy legs. It gave a throaty woof, then approached to sniff the newcomer. James patted the dog’s head. “Not only fairies and eerie screeches, but fairy hounds too, hey?”
The dog pushed his head under James’s hand to ask for more petting. The eerie sound echoed again, miserable and faint, and the hound whimpered. A creaking floor, a madwoman trapped somewhere?
“‘Kirk-Alloway is drawing nigh...where ghaists and houlets nightly cry,’” he murmured, quoting Burns as he rubbed the dog’s ears. Though he enjoyed poetry and ballads, he never recited verses or sang in the company of others. The dog, though, would not judge him for a sentimental bent.
He was about to take his case upstairs and go in search of his rooms when the front door opened behind him, and Angus MacKimmie stepped inside. “Still here, sir?” He picked up James’s leather case. “Upstairs I’ll be taking this, then. You must make yourself heard here. My wife is a bit deaf these days.Mrs. MacKimmie!” he thundered as he went up the stairs, booted feet pounding. “Mary MacKimmie, where are thee!”
The door beyond the stairs opened again, and a woman came down the hall followed by two terriers, one black and one white. Stocky and middle-aged, the woman wore a plain dark dress, her gray hair wisping beneath a translucent white cap. “Oh, sir! Lord Struan, is it! I’m Mary MacKimmie, if you do remember me,” she said, dropping a slight curtsey.
“Of course I remember. Good to see you, Mrs. MacKimmie.”
“Welcome to Struan House. I hope you did not wait long. I was in the kitchen. I’m that surprised to find you here so early in the day—”
“MacKimmie!” thundered the ghillie above stairs.
“Down here, ye loon!” she called, and turned back to James. “He’s a wee bit deaf these days. So you’ve seen Mr. MacKimmie. And these are the dogs. They were not with us when ye were here as a lad. Osgar,” she said, patting the wolfhound, “is a big lad but gentle. The terriers are Taran—the black one—and Nellie. They’re good wee pups, though do they see a fox or a rabbit they’ll be gone after it.”
As she spoke, the shriek came yet again, and a sharp chill with it, as if an outside door blew open. James turned, wondering. Osgar howled plaintively, and the terriers made low, gruff barks. Mrs. MacKimmie glanced calmly upward, smiling.
“We expected you later today, with the roads so muddy from the rains. Though Mr. MacKimmie drives like the de’il sometimes, to be sure.”
“An interesting ride indeed. Mrs. MacKimmie, I must ask—what is that sound?”
“That? It’s our banshee, of course. She’s glad to see the new laird.” She smiled.
“When I was here as a boy, I never heard—a banshee sound.”
