Highlander in Her Bed (13 page)

Of course. How could it be otherwise?

Just like some nuts who believed in reincarnation, claimed to be Caesar or Cleopatra.

She bit back a hysterical laugh and glanced at the book on chivalry. He certainly looked the part. She'd give him that. If she were going to conjure up her own knight in shining armor, he would definitely be it.

Her breath still unsteady, she snatched up the book and clutched it to her heart. Much as she hated to admit it, if she tried really hard, she could go along with him pretending to be a knight.

Even tolerate his rudeness.

For a man as yummy as Hottie Scottie, there wasn't much she wouldn't do.

But she drew the line at him claiming to be a ghost.

She, Mara McDougall, late of South Philly, and, more recently, mistress of Ravenscraig Castle in Highland Scotland, wanted nothing to do with ghosts, real or imagined.

Not scary ones.

Not friendly ones.

And most assuredly not irresistibly sexy ones.

Chapter 6

Much later, Mara pushed away from the table and stretched, cricks and cramps plaguing her every move. She winced and rolled her shoulders, rubbed the back of her neck with stiff and aching fingers. Throbbing silence pulsed around her, the library's slightest stirs and whispers defeated by the stillness of the hour.

Even the crackle and hiss of the log fire had ceased around midnight, but a damp wind yet sighed past the windows. Scudding gray clouds, too, their drifting passage turning the night into a world of silver and shadows.

She shivered, swiveled round to peer into the room's deepest and emptiest corners. The ones behind her. There, where more than dust motes might shimmer in the quiet.

A quiet unnatural enough to make her bite her lip, narrow her eyes to better probe the darkness.

Her father had sworn that Scotland held magic. Dancing fairies and water kelpies, powers not of this world. All of that was there, he'd insist, alive and waiting, in the blue of hill, sea, and sky.

Don't doubt the very warp and weft of your heritage
. The familiar words filled her heart, so real she could almost feel him behind her, his age-spotted hands resting on her shoulders.
There isn't an inch of the Highlands not steeped in legend. Wonders can happen there
—
if only you open your heart
.

And she could almost believe it.

Or, at least, she was beginning to admit there was… something.

A beguiling magic spun of mist, heather, and romance.

The lure of ancient stones and Gaelic myth, captivating and seductive, ever-present in the blood, and set free to flame out of control whenever ancestral memories were stirred. Especially if you dared set foot on Scottish soil. Then there could be no going back, no denial of the call of home.

Or so Hugh McDougall claimed.

Not about to refute him at this uncanny hour, Mara sat up straighter, squared her shoulders against any possible forms of
unwelcome
Highland enchantments. Then she steeled herself to scan the library one more time.

"I know you're here," she blurted, shoving back her hair.

Indeed, she was so sure of it, her breath caught and her skin tingled.

She could
feel
him. Every hunky six-foot-four Highland inch of him.

But not there where silvery spills of moonlight poured through the tall, mullioned windows. Nor anywhere near the cluttered, well-lit table where she'd been working since lunchtime.

He was there all the same. Hovering in the shadows, stony faced and disapproving, his arrogance and irritation filling the darkness as he… spied on her.

She frowned, imagined she heard a low masculine chuckle.

"Show yourself," she demanded, rubbing the gooseflesh from her arms, ignoring the prickles on her nape.

But glare round as she might, nothing knightly glowered back at her.

Nor anything more Highlandy than the faded tartans hanging on the wall.

Certainly not hard green eyes, proud and challenging, their amazing depths as brooding as an angry sea one moment, alight with secret bemusement the next.

Even the bone-chilling cold seemed to have receded.

What remained was the mess she'd made.

That, and her growling stomach. Grimacing, she pressed a hand against her tummy, glad that no one but her and old Ben could hear its rumblings.

But she'd devoured the last of the parmesan oatcakes hours ago and she'd simply forgotten dinner.

It still waited for her on a cloth-covered rolling cart, untouched and cold beneath a gleaming silver dome.

Whatever it had been, she'd ignored it. And she didn't want it now. Exhaustion weighed heavier than hunger, but she didn't regret a single moment of her efforts.

Every ache and pain had been worth the toil. The chaos of emptied bookshelves and scattered documents. Even skipping her dinner and straining her eyes until the backs of her eyelids felt like sandpaper.

She'd found what she'd been looking for: verification of the existence of a certain medieval knight.

Sir Alexander Douglas truly had existed.

A lesser kinsman to the powerful Douglases of the south, he'd been bastard born to a Macdonald woman of Moidart in the West Highlands, growing up in the shadow of that clan's remote Castle Tioram, until he'd gone to spend his later youth in the service of his father's illustrious family.

Ravenscraig's books on medieval Scotland described him as a young man of energy, initiative, and charm, claiming that Clan Douglas welcomed him enthusiastically despite his lowly origins. By all accounts, he rose swiftly to knighthood, eventually joining his better-known cousin, the Good Sir James, in his fierce support of Robert Bruce.

Soon thereafter, the well-loved bastard from an area of the Highlands so wild it was known as
Garbh chriochan
, or the Rough Bounds, carved himself a place in history by becoming one of the hero king's most trusted men.

So valued, the books revealed, that King Robert had indeed granted him Ravenscraig Castle. Along with the hand of Isobel MacDougall.

An honor bestowed on the knight in the distant year of 1307.

Mara drew a deep breath, resisted the urge to open the books and reread the entries. Not that there was a need. She already knew every line.

Each one fit Hottie Scottie's story.

Until the part about Sir Alexander Douglas journeying to claim the MacDougall holding. The arranged marriage to the beauteous Ravenscraig heiress.

Lady Isobel MacDougall.

Mara's ancestress.

With her, the golden-voiced Highlander's tale veered from the truth.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, the two words slipping past her lips before she'd even realized she regretted her findings.

Irrefutable revelations.

And damning.

Sir Alexander Douglas had been a rat.

A draught of cold air swept past her on the admittance, but she scarce noticed. Her head ached and her eyes burned with what could only be fatigue. An increasing weariness that blurred the jumble of books piled beside her laptop. She blinked and touched one of the older volumes, caressed the smooth, embossed leather of its cover.

When she curled her fingers around the book's spine, the silence around her thickened. A shattering quiet, broken only by the soughing wind, the splatter of rain against the window glass. Glancing that way, she caught a distant flicker of lightning, heard the muted rumble of faraway thunder.

An odd sense of urgency seized her, the eerie feeling of being watched from behind. This time she wasn't about to turn around.

Instead, she released an agitated sigh. "How was I to know what the books would say?" she grumbled, half convinced he'd hear her. "Is that why you're so angry? Because history's maligned you?"

A condemnation he'd apparently deserved.

The
real
Sir Alexander, she amended, fixing her gaze on a wide band of moonlight slanting across the carpet. A scoundrel of the first water, the lout had been anything but ambushed and killed by Colin MacDougall.

The historical facts brought a very different tale to light.

And it wasn't a heroic one.

Chroniclers of his day claimed that Sir Alexander stole the MacDougalls' most prized possession, a precious ruby-studded brooch they'd gleaned from Robert Bruce's own cloak.

A sacred reliquary, known as the Bloodstone of Dalriada, seized by chance during a struggle at Dalrigh.

More damning still, every book she'd found on the era painted Sir Alexander as not having a chivalrous bone in his body.

Fully without scruple, he'd left Lady Isobel at the altar. Not only absconding with Clan MacDougall's priceless heirloom, but shaming their most revered daughter.

Mara leaned back in her chair, listened to the increased hammering of the rain. The squally wind. She laced her fingers together and cracked her knuckles. No wonder the wretch vanished from history after such a coup.

Like as not, he'd used riches gained from the sale of the MacDougall heirloom to finance a comfortable life far from Scotland's shores.

The rogue!

And what an appropriate historical personage for Hottie Scottie to choose as his knightly alias—a blackguard bent on frightening her away from Ravenscraig.

A con artist who preyed on rich women and thought he could win her over with such an incredulous claim.

Mara shuddered, stroked Ben's ears when he stretched to his feet and shuffled over to her. He let out a contented old-dog groan and dropped his head on her knee, gazed at her with canine devotion. Unthinkable if ever
he
should turn such moon eyes on her.

Or any female.

With his stunning good looks and a burr that would melt a woman at twenty paces, he very well could've left a string of murdered heiresses from Land's End to John O'Groats!

Mara bristled.

She wasn't sure how he meant to go about deceiving
her
, but his plan wouldn't work.

She might be inexperienced at being an heiress, but One Cairn Avenue had been good for something. She knew how to take care of herself.

No matter how hard he might try to convince her he was the ghost of a medieval knight.

At least he wasn't claiming to be Robert Bruce himself, or, Mara's second favorite, the devilishly dashing Alexander Stewart, the infamous Wolf of Badenoch.

Though she suspected he had both men's way with the opposite sex!

"But we aren't that gullible, are we, sweet boy?" She leaned down to kiss Ben's scruffy head. Indeed, if she weren't so tired, she would have laughed out loud.

The schemer couldn't have chosen a worse method to use on her.

A ghost!

Wouldn't he be surprised to learn that she knew exactly what kind of two-faced character he'd chosen for his assumed identity?

That little tidbit should put an end to his harassment.

Once he knew she was on to him, he'd surely vanish as quickly as his long-dead namesake had done centuries ago.

Only this Alexander Douglas would leave empty-handed.

She glanced at the windows again, watched the moon appear between fast-moving clouds. Almost full, it cast a wide band of silver across the inky waters of the firth before it disappeared again.