Everlastin' Book 1 (31 page)

Hiding a grimace at the
accusation in Beth's tone, Lachlan gave an airy shrug. “I asked.
She's a kind womon.”

“Does she know I'm....” Beth
rolled her eyes as she mentally fumbled for the right words. “One
of the 'vibrant inhabitants' now?”

“Weel, no' exactly. I dinna
want you exposed to the public, so to say.”

“Meaning what?”

“Ah, darlin', I hear yer
temper simmerin' beneath the calm o' yer stance. The meanin' be,
I'm Scotland's maist notorious ghost. Ma name's in books all around
the world.”

“You're saying that if I do
decide to stay, I'm to be your secret lover?”

Lachlan frowned. He didn't
like Beth's breathy tone, or the vibes she was sending out. “Tis
for yer own good. Would you really care to have strangers gawkin'
at you?”

He saw the rigidness in her
body slacken, and he smiled with satisfaction. It was seldom he won
a point with her—

A tingling sensation began
in his toes and swiftly coursed through his body as all his beloved
treasures in the room soundlessly rose in the air. Beth's eyes were
calm, but the floating objects told another story. The air about
her was crackling with something akin to hostility.

“Darlin'....” He laughed
unsteadily. “No' ma treasures again.”

“Oh? And why
not?”

He laughed again, low and
choked with emotion. “You have a cruel streak in you,
womon.”

“I'm just thinking of what's
best for you.”

“For me, you say?” Phantom
perspiration broke out on his brow. “Darlin', I prefer yer temper
on the fore. This...calm o' yers is scarin' the hell ou' o' me. Now
please, lass, carefully return ma treasures to their places and
stop tormentin' me wi' the threat o' their demise.”

“Tormenting is a mighty
strong word,” Beth sighed in mock sorrow.

Lachlan's features grew
sicklier. “Wha' have I done? At least tell me tha'
much!”

“I'm not a child, Lachlan.
I'm a woman with a mind of my own. I understand your chauvinism
stems from your upbringing in the wrong century—”

“Is tha' an insult to me or
ma century?”

“If I were to smash all your
treasures to free you from your material obsession, would you be
upset?”

A deadpan look came down
over Lachlan's features. “I'd blow me a rooftop.”

“Then stop making decisions
for me.”

To Lachlan's relief, the
artifacts settled back in their places. A long sigh escaped him.
He'd certainly gotten that message, although he would have been
happier had she simply stated her feelings.

“Weel....” He gave Beth a
wink. “Now tha' we've the hardships behind us, there's a nice warm
bed waitin' for us, and a fire in the hearth to warm our
bones.”

He held out his hand to Beth
but lowered it as she stood silently watching him.

“Beth...darlin'. I've been
patient, have I no'?”

“You'll have to be patient a
while longer.”

“Give me one bloody good
reason—”

“I'm not in the
mood.”

“A little gentle
persuasion—”

“I have a lot of thinking to
do.”

“You've had
months!”

“I need more time,” she said
quietly, and started toward the door to the main hall.

“Beth!” He waited until she
had stopped and looked at him. “I do love you.”

“I know you do. And I love
you.”

“Then wha's the
problem?”

Beth looked longingly in
the direction of the door to the hall. It would be so simple to
walk—or
pop
—away
and leave this discussion for another day. But when she looked
again at Lachlan, she realized the extent of his despair over not
understanding her continued emotional distance with him.

For him it was a simple
matter: He loved her. She loved him. The bed was
upstairs.

But before she could commit
herself to eternity with him, they had one last hurdle to
surpass.

“Your bitterness toward the
Inglisses.”

“Darlin', tis no' a subject
we'll ever agree on. Let it be. You canna change how I feel abou'
those people.”

Despite her determination
not to break down in front of him, tears swiftly brimmed her eyes.
“And there lies the problem.”

“Tis none o' yer
business—”

“It most certainly is! I
feel your hate and bitterness as if it were a part of me, Lachlan.
It's like having a cancer eat away at me. Our...
link
...does not permit me to shut out
your emotions.”

“Beth—”

“No! No platitudes,
please.

“Look, Lachlan, I’m sorry
for all the hurtful things I said about believing you were drugging
me and...well, everything. I wish you and Carlene would have told
me about my condition, and at least had given me the option to see
a doctor here.”

“Beth,” he
moaned.

“I understand, Lachlan. When
Carlene and David came to get me, I finally understood everything.
I’m not throwing out blame, Lachlan. Even if I hadn’t died, I’m not
sure I really could have left you or this house behind.
Okay?”

“Ye’re no’ angry wi’
me?”

Beth sighed, and massaged
her throat for a moment.

“No I’m not.”

“Then why...?”

“My mother became angry and
bitter after my father died, and angrier and more bitter after she
became ill. For all those years, Lachlan, I felt like I would never
escape the gloom those emotions cast over my life.

“Until I came here, I don’t
recall ever raising my voice or losing my temper, and
certainly
never
hitting anyone. Your anger and rage far exceed what my mother
experienced. It was hard enough existing in the same house with
her. I wasn’t linked to
her,
Lachlan.”

“I know wha’ ye’re sayin’,”
he said in a small voice.

“Do you? Until you can
resolve your anger with the Ingliss clan, I'm going to put as much
distance between us as possible. It's the only way I can dim the
emotional transmissions I'm getting from you. It's the only way I
can bear this quasi-existence.”

Lachlan stood as still as a
statue, misery lending him an air of stark
vulnerability.

“I'm sorry,” Beth said in an
aching whisper. “I don't like hurting you.”

“But you do it so weel.” His
attempt to come across as flippant fell short, and he quickly
turned away to hide his mounting pain from her inspection. “Och, go
away, Beth. Do wha’ever makes you happy. I'll never kiss up to an
Ingliss, but I will be here waitin' for you when you come to yer
senses.”

A flicker of anger glistened
in Beth's tear-filled eyes. She tried to speak but the words would
not leave her throat for several seconds.

“You love me, but it's a
conditional love, Lachlan.”

“Conditional?” he volleyed
bitterly, casting her a disparaging look. “Ask and I'd move heaven
and earth for you!”

“All I ask is that you free
your hatred of the Inglisses.”

“Never.”

A hand pressed over the
thudding remembrance of her phantom heart, Beth said in a trembling
tone, “You love me but your hatred of them takes precedence? I
refuse to experience it through you again!” She ran from the
room.

As soon as she was gone,
Lachlan furiously sliced the air with a hand. Unbeknown to him
until it was too late, a minute portion of his energy slipped from
his control. Two porcelain figurines to his left flew off their
shelves and crashed to the floor behind him. He solemnly stared at
the damaged pieces.

“Wait, she says. Wait, and
swallow ma hatred for tha' murderin' clan!”

Lifting a crystal dove in
his hand, he laconically tossed it behind him. He was walking
toward the same door Beth had used when the valuable piece
shattered on the coffee table. Muttering, “Obsessed with ma
treasures, ma bahookie,” he shuffled out of the parlor and into the
hall.

“And as for those
Inglisses
....”

* * *

Roan was sleeping fitfully
on his cousin's bed. Borgie was in St. Ives, England, visiting a
friend—hiding from the ghost was more accurate, but Roan couldn't
think his cousin such a terrible coward anymore, not after having
finally met the family's nemesis himself.

A window was open, letting
the chill of the night embrace his breathing passages. Two wool
blankets were pulled up to his ears, and his thermal-clad body
beneath was almost curled in a fetal position. He was dreaming of
an ugly confrontation with Lachlan in the tower. But he had the
upper hand. The razor- sharp tip of his sword was edging the laird
back toward the wall where he'd been interred.

A little more—

It felt as though liquid ice
had washed over him.

Bolting upright in the bed,
Roan made a scramble of throwing the covers aside. Gasping,
blustering, he shot from the bed and closed the window then,
hugging himself, danced from foot to foot on the cold, planked
floor while he tried to figure out what had happened to
him.

He was dry, but his skin
felt an icy sluice of water washing over him still, repeatedly,
until the terrible coldness began to coil about his
bones.

A nasty omnipresent laugh
filled the room.

With the realization that
the ghost was nearby, Roan felt the coldness lose its
integrity.

“Baird!” he whispered
through clenched teeth.

The laugh grew
louder.

“You uncarin' bastard! Aggie
needs her rest! Show a little respect for her age!”

The laughter cut to a
smothering silence. Furtively glancing about him, his hands rubbing
his arms for warmth, Roan took several hesitant steps toward the
center of the room. When Lachlan abruptly appeared, Roan nearly
fell back.

“Steady, now, laddie,”
Lachlan taunted. His large hands gave a firm squeeze to Roan's
shoulders.

Shucking off Lachlan's
touch, Roan padded to the foot of the bed and turned to glare at
his unwelcome visitor. “Wha' do you want?”

“Ta leave you wi' a word o'
warnin',” Lachlan said ominously. “Dinna ever try to pit ma womon
against me again.”

“You managed tha'
yerself.”

Lachlan calmly walked up to
the dresser mirror and lightly touched his fist to the cold
surface. Soundless, countless cracks spread throughout the
glass.

“Dinna try ma patience,
little mon. Watch yer own when Beth's around, and be careful o'
wha' you say to her.”

“Or wha',
old
mon?”

Lachlan's smile was
sardonic. “Ma guess is, you'll know soon enough.”

“Tell me somethin', Baird,”
Roan began all too nonchalantly. “Are you holdin' a grudge against
yer kin? I hear, Baird, yer brithers never took their noses ou' o'
their business journals long enough to search for you.”

Roan studied the ghost's
eerie frozen state. The dark eyes that had been slicing through him
moments before, were now devoid of expression. But Roan knew if he
looked long and deeply into those eyes, he would see the pain his
words had inflicted. “And those still alive,” he pressed on,
shutting out the compassion trying to surface in him, “consider you
a thing to be shunned, an embarrassment to the Baird
name.”

To Roan's disappointment,
Lachlan grinned. “Did you feel good stickin' me to the quick wi'
yer words abou' ma livin' clan, Roan-you-slime? Aye, you did.”
Lachlan tapped his right temple with two isolated fingers of his
right hand. “Tis a good feelin', aye? Tis how I feel every time I
make an Ingliss squirm.”

Lachlan slowly began to
fade. “And I'll be feelin' tha' kind o' good for a verra long
time.”

When Lachlan was no longer
visible, Roan released a long breath. He sank on the edge of the
bed and lowered his head then linked the fingers of his hands and
draped them over the back of his neck. His insides were queasy, his
nerves strung taut.

“I'll send you to hell,
Baird.”

At yer heels,
laughed a voice in his head.

The color drained completely
from his face when Roan realized it had been the ghost's voice he'd
heard within the supposed privacy of his mind.

Angrier than he'd ever been,
Roan buried himself beneath the covers on the bed and tried to push
all thought of Lachlan Baird from his mind.

* * *

Beth breached the haze of
the between-world's passageway and stepped into Lachlan's bedroom.
She took but a moment to metabolize the energies at her disposal
into a semblance of the woman she had been. There was no way for
her to judge how long she'd retired to the grayness. The surcease
had awarded her the tranquility she'd needed to sort through her
turbulent emotions. A calmer, somnolently-tempered woman stared at
the man who was sitting crosslegged on the foot of the bed, staring
dully into the fire glowing within the hearth.