Everlastin' Book 1 (2 page)

Lachlan straightened up, a
storm of emotions building again within his dark eyes. Then an
ecstatic sigh passed his lips.

“She's arrived,” he
murmured.

All color drained from
Carlene's face. The dam of her tears burst as she fled the room,
her sobs lingering behind. Lachlan stood as still as a statue. Eyes
closed amid an oddly rapt expression, he homed in on Beth's
image.

“Sweet Jesus, she's lovely,”
he moaned. “Ah, Beth, ma darlin’. At long last we meet.”

* * *

Beth Staples landed at
Preswick Airport after a grueling nine-and-a-half hour flight in
coach. Exhausted to the bone, her feet and ankles swollen, her
loafers tucked into her shoulder purse, she deplaned with less zeal
than most of the other passengers. Although she had to admit the
invite from Carlene to visit for a couple of weeks couldn't have
come at a better time, she wished she was feeling up to par. A mild
headache left her in apprehension of a larger one to
come.

Indifferent to her barefoot
status, she kept up with the hectic pace of the others traveling
the concourse. Thoughts of her best friend and all they had to
catch up on after eight long years, helped her to ignore the ache
in her back and legs.

After retrieving her luggage
and going through customs, she anxiously traveled the terminal
looking for Carlene. What she found instead was a portly little man
holding up a placard bearing her name.

Walking up to him, she
hesitantly said, “I'm Beth Staples.”

A flash of white teeth
beamed at her from between ruddy cheeks. Tucking the placard
beneath an arm, he pushed back a navy-plaid cap from his brow.
“From Washington, Miss?”

Running the back of a hand
across her moist brow, Beth made an absent attempt to brush the
riotous curls of her light brown hair back from her heart-shaped
face. “Yes.”

“Miss Cooke paid me to fetch
you, Miss.”

“I don't know anyone by the
name of Cooke.”

“Are you here to visit Kist
House?”

Beth smiled patiently. “Kist
House...?”

The old man grinned, his
eyes youthful, full of sparkle. Two curly locks of snow-white hair
rested on his creased brow. “Does the name Carlene mean anythin’ to
you?”

Perplexed, Beth gave a
single nod.

“Ah.” Without haste, the old
man pried the two suitcases from Beth's hands and started to turn
toward one set of the exit doors. “Then ye’re the right Beth
Staples. Miss Cooke said to mention the name o’ Carlene if you
seemed wary o’ me. Come along. We've a fair drive ahead o’
us.”

Humid heat greeted Beth as
she passed beyond the doors of the terminal. Yesterday, she'd left
behind a heat wave in Kennewick, Washington, expecting the drizzle
of Great Britain's rainy season as Carlene had described the
previous week.

“
Calum's ma name,” the old
man offered while loading Beth's luggage into the trunk of a blue
Volvo with a taxi sign on the roof. He opened the left front door
for her. When she was seated, he closed it and sprightly went
around to the driver's side. “Buckle up, Miss.”

A film of perspiration
coated Beth's lightly tanned skin. Her white jersey and pale blue
slacks clung to her. With the seatbelt secured, she laid her blue
jacket across her lap and placed her purse atop that. As the
vehicle left the multi-leveled parking lot, she removed her shoes
from the purse and snugged them back onto her feet.

“Comfortable,
Miss?”

“Yes, thank you. How far is
Crossmichael?”

“Abou' an hour's drive.
Don’t mind ma silence for a bit, Miss. The traffic here needs ma
full attention. You Yanks get frantic wi’ our motorways and
roundabou's. Don’t want to risk takin’ the wrong exit.”

By the time they had reached
Ayr on A79 and were heading southeast on A713, Beth's heart was in
her throat. The two-lane highway was narrow, winding and somewhat
of a rollercoaster in places, but fellow travelers were brazen and
swift in passing at every opportunity.

To give respite to her
nerves, she smiled wanly at the driver, and asked, “You do this for
a living?”

“I've been a cabbie near
twenty years. And I plan to drive till I've got one foot in the
grave.”

“You must have nerves of
steel. I thought Seattle was bad.”

Chuckling, Calum adjusted
the visor of his cap to just above his bushy eyebrows. “I don’t
usually go as far as all this, but Miss Cooke paid me handsomely to
fetch you.”

“She must be a friend of
Carlene's. Do you live in Crossmichael?”

“Castle Douglas.”

“You live in a
castle?”

Calum's laugh was smooth and
cheery. “Tis a burgh, Miss, but we do have a castle to boast o’.
Castle Threave—”

Calum winced as a small car
whizzed past his taxi, just missing the oncoming traffic by a
narrow margin.

“Where was I? Oh, Threave.
It's the remains o’ a keep...a war castle tha' sits on a grassy
island in the River Dee. “When the House o’ Stewart decided to
overthrow the Black Douglases in 1450, Threave was the last
stronghold to fall. King James II went wi' his army to overthrow
it, and brought wi' him a huge cannon called Mons Meg. Threave
withstood a two-month siege in the summer o’ 1455 then the garrison
surrendered. The Black Douglases were destroyed and their estates
were forfeited.”

Winking at Beth, he added,
“Memorized the tour speech, I did. Oh, Threave's no' fancy like
Culzean or Edinburgh, but it has a strong feelin’ o’ history abou'
it. Perhaps you'll get the chance to visit it durin’ yer
stay.”

“I hope so. That sign back
there? What does 'Give Way' mean?”

“Yield. Is this yer first
visit to Scotland?”

Beth sighed and dreamily
gazed out the window to her left. “Yes. It's certainly a beautiful
country.”

Green rolling landscape
stretched out in every direction. Now and then Calum pointed out
three-foot-high stone walls separating the properties, walls, he
explained, that had stood for centuries without benefit of mortar.
Sheep and cattle grazed in some sections. Tiny clusters of towns
dotted the land, more perfect than anything an artist could depict
in a painting. Wildflowers of every imaginable color grew in
sections along the roadsides. Occasionally, Beth saw a building
owning of a thatched roof.

“We're nearin’
Crossmichael.”

The cabbie's declaration
snapped Beth from her reverie and she cast the driver a look of
apology. “I'm afraid I wasn't much company, was I? Your scenery
bewitched me.”

“Yer words warm ma heart,
Miss. You know, the estate ye're goin’ to has quite a history
itself. Know any o’ it?”

“All Carlene told me was
that it was a Victorian mansion built in the early eighteen
forties.”

“Aye, a grand place it is.
I've been inside twice. Once when I was a young lad, and again some
years back when there were tours through the place. It's mentioned
in all the books on Scottish ghosts.”

“It's reputed to be
haunted?”

“Aye. The story goes, Lannie
Baird built it in 1843 then returned up north to search for a wife
to fill it wi' children. He married a seventeen-year-old Highland
girl named Tessa Aitkin. One month later, Lannie vanished. Tessa
was made to wait two years before Lannie was decreed dead. Right
efter, she married a young mon, Robert Ingliss, from her home
village, and they resided in Baird House till her death in
1904.

“After her death, her eldest
son took over the house. Robbie Ingliss was renovatin’ a portion o’
the tower when the body o’ Lannie Baird was discovered. It seems
someone drove a knife through the poor mon's heart before wallin’
him up.”

“How gruesome.”

“Och, aye, and since the
discovery, Baird House has been called Kist House. Kist in Scottish
means a chest or box or...
coffin.”

With a low, skeptical laugh,
Beth asked, “And does Lannie walk the halls at night?”

To her dismay, there was no
laughter in Calum's eyes when they turned her way. “The local folk
believe so. Kist House has had a string o’ renters over the years.
Some say old Lannie will never leave the place.”

Beth fell silent. She wanted
to laugh at the old man’s attempt to shake her up, but a voice
within her mind whispered that something in his words rang true.
But if the house was haunted, wouldn't Carlene have mentioned it
during their telephone conversations during the past few
months?

Unless Carlene didn't want
her to feel spooked.

Beth grinned at her
musings.

Jet lag.

She was exhausted and wired
at the same time. The idea of staying at a haunted house wasn't all
that unappealing.

The past eight years had
been trying ones for Beth, but she looked back on them without
regret or a sense of loss for the youthful times that had waned so
quickly. In a few days, she would be thirty years old. At the
moment, she felt much older.

But this vacation would soon
take care of that.

She and Carlene had shared
wonderful times together during high school and two-and-a-half
years at Washington State University. It was then that her adoptive
mother had taken ill, her weak heart rendering her an invalid.
There was nothing Beth could do but drop out of college and care
for the woman who had raised her. Jonathan Staples had died
unexpectedly of a stroke when Beth was nine, five years after the
loving couple had taken her in. Rita Staples had poured all of her
love into Beth's every waking day, striving to be both
parents.

It had been hard for Beth to
watch her mother languish away over the years, but she had never
allowed Rita to see her fears, or the premature grief that had
companioned her every night when she rested her head upon her bed
pillows. Rita Staples had passed away in her sleep two months
prior. Now it was time for Beth to apply the same determination to
getting her business degree and beginning her adult
life.

“Here we go. This is the
private road to the house.”

Beth silently took in her
surroundings. The road was narrow, bordered on each side in
segments with large rhododendron bushes, and tall blue bell
flowers. Evergreen forms and various bushes dotted the plump slopes
of the hillside to her left. Barely seen above these was a
crenelated structure. To her right, beyond a thicker foliage of
trees and shrubs, she glimpsed a cluster of homes situated along a
splendid blue loch.

As the cab climbed a
slightly steeper incline, Beth was awed by groupings of rose bushes
and white lilies, and of ivy draping several scattered,
lattice-work structures.

Then the house came into
full view.

Regarding the magnificent
building looming up a short distance away, her pulse quickened. Awe
lent a flattering tint to her cheeks. The cabbie pulled onto a
graveled area to the right of the house. As soon as the vehicle had
come to a full stop, she was out the door and staring up at the
brown stone structure, sheer wonder lighting up her features. To
add to the magic of the building and its plush greenery, peacocks
were scattered everywhere. Some were as still as statues and
watching her, others strutted their feather finery around the
building and parking area. Several looked down from the high peaks
of the mansion's multiple roof lines.

“Here you go, Miss.” Calum
placed Beth's luggage by her left foot. “I'm off, now. Was told no'
to hang ‘round.”

Getting into his cab, he
tooted his horn twice. “Enjoy your stay!” he called out the window,
then backed the car up, made a turn, and was driving away before
Beth raised her hand in a dilatory goodbye.

“Beth?”

Her eyes swung around to
light upon a familiar face. Beth smiled as she teasingly looked
over her dearest friend, who was still slim and stunning in a
two-piece, lightweight slack suit, her short, dark hair as chic as
ever. But her smile wavered when she noted something in Carlene's
eyes that belied the welcoming grin on her face. She couldn't
define what was trying to surface beyond the periphery of her mind,
nor could she understand why finally seeing Carlene after all these
years would cause a chill to worm up her spine.

Jet lag.

“Come here, you,” Beth
laughed, opening her arms.

They embraced and it was all
Beth could do not to jerk back. For a moment she thought a full
blown migraine was about to hit her, for a shocking coldness bled
into her bone. She decided it was merely exhaustion. She was tired
and a bit shaky. Guarding her disappointment when Carlene pulled
away and took the largest suitcase in hand, Beth absently massaged
the back of her stiff neck.

“Scat,” Carlene shooed
impatiently, flagging a hand at a peacock strutting her
way.

“Are they yours?”

“They're wild. They never
seem to wander from the grounds, though.”

Watching the bird head off
in the direction of the rhododendrons, Beth lifted the last
suitcase into a hand. As she began to follow Carlene across the
graveled ground leading to the front of the house, she happened to
notice to her right, set back from the main structure, a beautiful
carriage house. Then her gaze swung up to where, on the left side
of the mansion, a square-built tower extended above the highest
roof line.