“My lord…please stay with me.”
Her eyes were large and pleading. “Allow me to be your wife at long last.”
A chill gripped him. It was bone deep and unlike any cold he’d ever experienced. Inside his chest, his heart thumped hard and then there was a long pause before the next beat.
And then an even longer time before the next beat.
“Brigitta?” Diarmuid asked incredulously.
She smiled again. Sweetly. Welcoming. “At last, you are here with me.”
His heart was between beats. The chill grew cold enough to freeze the organ.
Something hit him hard. His heart contracted, pumping blood through his body. Diarmuid felt the warmth of that blood hitting the chill inside him like two opposing forces on a battlefield.
“My lord…please do not leave me alone…” Brigitta employed him.
But she melted into the background, the music fading away to blackness.
*
“Diarmuid!” Errol shovedhis hand into his son’s chest to force his heart to beat.
“Laird, ye can nae force his heart to beat!”
Several of the Keith retainers pulled the laird away from his fallen son.
“We need the priest,” someone muttered.
“Nae!” Errol declared. “I will not have a priest near him. Bring the Healer!”
“Only a mortal bride can lure him away from Brigitta.”
Aodh had spoken in a bare whisper. Diarmuid jerked as though the old man had shouted. Lying out on the bridal bed with its rotten bedding and thick coat of dust, Diarmuid’s fingers twitched, and he muttered as if he was talking to someone on the other side of the veil.
In that moment, Errol caught a hint of beeswax in the air. A quick look at the table revealed dried candles coated in decades of dust. They were still there in tarnished silver candle holders, exactly where Brigitta had placed them in the hope of her bridegroom coming to her.
Errol looked at Aodh, desperation etched into his face. “Tell me, Aodh…what do I do to save my son’s life?”
Aodh looked at the chair across from the bed as if he was seeing something or someone who wasn’t there. It took a moment for him to look at the laird.
“Find a bride of warm flesh and blood to tempt Diarmuid away from Brigitta. If she fails, he will join Brigitta in an eternity of being a spirit haunting this land.”
Chapter Three
“Ye have mycommand,” Errol insisted. “Get me a bride. Now.”
His captain Brom hesitated.
“There are plenty of girls in the village,” Errol grunted. “I have seen them tripping over themselves to get to my son. Here is their opportunity. It will be a true wedding. I’ll keep the union solid if the girl does her part.”
“And if the girl fails?” Brom asked pointedly. “Will she be free to return to her family?”
Errol narrowed his eyes. “It is all or naught! This is a battle. Only the winner will profit.”
Brom frowned. He stepped closer. “Are ye sure about that, Laird? If I take one of the village girls and she fails…the clan could retaliate against ye if ye are harsh with one of our own.”
Errol didn’t like Brom’s words, but he clamped his mouth shut because he recognized the truth in his captain’s logic. But he clenched his fingers into fists, his jaw set hard with determination. “I must have a girl who will fight as though her life depends on it. I can do no less for my son.”
