She was anything but afaery.
She was the lass he couldn’t put from hismind.
* * *
An hour later,Greyson lifted the last section of wood from the great hall’s rear wall, his pulse now quickening for a different reason than why he was so determined to knock on every door in Aberdeen until he found the lass from St.Nicholas.
He’d beenright…
Arbuckle Priddy had painted a row of tall, arch-topped windows across the far side of the room. And now that he’d removed the covering the artist secured over his work, he could see that the result was even more impressive than he’d dared tohope.
Romantic as artists are, Priddy had chosen to depict the hall not in its medieval glory, but it all the splendor of such a hall’s centuries-long decline. The windows on one end gave tantalizing glimpses of an imagined wing of the castle, showing swaths of mist curling round crumbling turrets and a stretch of age-worn crenellated walling. At the opposite side, one could behold a night-bound sea, the water glistening black and glossed by the moon. Clearly, Priddy wished the viewer to feel as if they stood in the great hall of an ancient clifftopstronghold.
He’dsucceeded.
Awed, Greyson strode into the middle of the room and turned in a slow circle. His admiration grew with each new detail that caught hiseye.
The far corner held a darkened archway that begged exploration. Or, rather, it would if real. The massive hearth offered a roaring log fire, letting whimsical minds wonder what weary wayfarer might’ve crept inside the empty hall and lit a blaze for warmth? Not far from the fire, a great, shaggy hound was silhouetted against the flames. Greyson suspected the beast was the artist’s beloved Jericho. The dog whose nails he sometimes heard tap-tapping about, just as he also caught the phantom dog’s howls echoing in thestairwell.
In a nod to atmosphere, Priddy added a few real-looking torches here and there on all four walls. These didn’t burn too brightly, but did cast shadows across the floor. Aged wood planking painted to look strewn with rushes. Greyson had scattered the odd woolen rug to chase the cold, but otherwise, he’d left the painted floor as Priddy intended. He enjoyed entering the room and feeling as if he’d stepped back intime.
The artist truly had been amaster.
The shame was only that he’d been appreciated toolate.
A tragedy he shared with Greyson’s father, though he could not claim the skill of ArbucklePriddy.
Even so, Greyson’s work in restoring the house to its original glory had roots in giving meaning to his father’s wasted talent and the life he’d thrown away for the sake of hisart.
Sometimes Greyson even wondered if his father and Priddy hadn’t led him to Gannet House, their spirits floating along behind him and shooing him down the path with their see-through hands. Two ghostly artists hoping to have him come across the house, purchase it, and set thingsright?
His long-suffering, down-to-earth mother would have rolled her eyes at suchwhimsy.
His father would have nodded and smiled, saying,Aye, laddie, that is the way ofit.
Greyson didn’t know what hebelieved.
But he had hissuspicions.
Behind him, footsteps on the painted floor, proved as so often, that Smithers had no problem with inserting himself into times he surely knew Greyson wished to bealone.
Secretly more fond of the old man than he’d ever admit, Greyson fought back a frown andturned.
“There will be no more talk offaeries.”
“Faeries?” A tiny old woman cameforward, her frizzled white hair catching the afternoon light slanting through the room’s real windows. Wizened as she was, and dressed in a black cloak, she could have been one of the long-ago ‘good wives’ who’d fared so poorly in 16thcenturyScotland.
But her blue gaze was bright, and she wassmiling.
If anything unusual set her apart, that fell to her footwear for her long black skirts swished as she walked. The motion revealed that her old-fashioned black boots were tied with red plaid laces. Something about them tugged on a memory, but Greyson couldn’t place it, startled as he was by herarrival.
Either way, she definitely qualified as acrone.
She’d certainly robbed histongue.
Rarely did he find himself speechless. But she’d stopped in the center of his ‘great hall,’ and given her remarkable appearance and that Priddy’s huge painted hearth loomed almost squarely behind her, it was easy to imagine she might be one of his creations, come out of the wall art to greethim.
He could only stare at her, though he was aware of nape prickles. A few chills also slipped down hisspine.
