Kendra blushed as the woman bent to retrieve yesterday’s clothes from the floor. Cavanaugh and Jane ought to be doing that—not that she and Trick should have left their garments on the floor in the first place. What could Mrs. Ross be thinking?
But apparently she was still thinking about the stairwell. “Other ghosts,” she clarified, shaking out Trick’s discarded kilt. “One in particular, a young servant girl who was said to have borne an illegitimate Duncraven son in this room some two hundred years past. Potential threats to the title, they were, and both swiftly put to the sword by an anonymous knight.”
Kendra swallowed. “Anonymous?”
“Well, you cannot very well tell who’s in a suit of armor now, aye? But legend says it was Lord Duncraven himself. A heartless man, to hear the tales.” She smoothed the folded tartan over one arm. “The girl still wanders the spiral staircase, searching for her bairn. Some say they’ve seen her in this room, watching at the foot of the bed where a cradle may have once rested,” she added, laying the blue-and-green fabric right where Kendra imagined the poor murdered girl might gaze. “Don’t you worry now, lass. She doesn’t do any harm.”
Was it the ill-fated servant girl she’d heard, then? Kendra wondered. Or had Mrs. Ross invented this story to cover her own wanderings? Or had Annag or Duncan been trodding the winding stone stairs?
Or had it only been the storm, mixed with her own imagination?
Her musings were interrupted when Mrs. Ross bustled over to Trick. “Wake up, lazybones.” She thwacked him with her dust cloth. “Lord Niall is waiting.”
Forty-Nine
HALFWAYdownstairs, Trick’s feet dragged to a halt on the second floor landing. “Bide a moment.”
On the step below him, Kendra turned and looked up, tightening Mrs. Ross’s shawl across the bodice of her lemon gown. “Niall is waiting to take us to the treasure chests.”
“Then he’ll wait.” She looked so pretty this morning, all cheerful yellow against the dingy stone staircase, her mouth slightly swollen from his morning kisses. He bent down to give her another one, wishing he could take her back to bed. Their lips clung for a long, sweet minute before he straightened with a sigh and stepped from the turret, crossing the sitting room to knock on the master bedchamber door.
“Enter,” came a muffled voice.
A voice not unlike his own? Trick hesitated, his hand on the latch.
“Did you not want to go inside?” Kendra asked.
He took a deep breath and pushed open the door. Beyond it, Hamish sat against the sturdy oak headboard, his long, skinny legs looking like stilts beneath the coverlet. Trick gazed at him, a question burning inside him—a question only Hamish could answer.
But he couldn’t seem to make himself cross the threshold, nor could he force the question past his lips.
Kendra had no such compunctions. She pushed past him and hurried over to Hamish, grasping the old man’s hand. “Goodness.” With a flounce of her English skirts, she seated herself at his bedside, a bright ray of sunshine in the gloomy room. “Rhona’s vile green drink really worked magic, didn’t it?”
Indeed, Hamish was munching on breakfast and looking much better. Younger. Trick was surprised to realize he wasn’t such an old man, after all.
“Aye, I expect it did work magic,” Hamish agreed. “But although she left a supply, I haven’t been able to force myself to drink more.” He made a face. “She’ll be at me like a screaming banshee when she sees how much remains. Maybe I can prevail upon you to bury it somewhere?”
Kendra laughed. “Where is Rhona, anyway?”
Hamish shrugged. “I’m mending, aye, and she has her own life to attend to. There are people here to help me should I need it.” His mouth curved in a smile very like Niall’s—and his own, Trick grudgingly admitted. “To tell you the honest truth, it’s been pleasant to spend a wee bit of time alone. A man gets cranky with people always fussing all over him.”
“I’m sure he does,” Kendra said, slanting a glance at Trick. She rose and went to open the shutters, letting morning light flood the room.
Hamish’s gaze shifted to the open doorway, and his forehead creased in a frown. “Come in, lad, will you?”
Trick did so, slowly, still gazing at the man that Kendra insisted was his father.
“Have a seat,” Hamish said.
He didn’t. The question fought to get out.
The older man blinked. “It’s uncanny how much you look like Niall. I used to catch your mother staring at him with a sad, faraway look in her eyes.”
The same sad, faraway look that Hamish was giving him now. A look Trick suspected was on his own face.
At last, the words tumbled forth.
“Niall and I, we look so alike because…because we have the same father, don’t we?”
