Chapter One
Callum heard thewailing before he saw the manor. The sound of it sliced through the damp Highland fog like the sharp blade of a knife. A woman’s cry born of sorrow and desperation.
He shortened his reins, turning his mount in a circle of prancing hooves and harsh snorts on the edge of the infamous Blackmoore Cliffs. Renowned for their stunning beauty…and the tortured maiden who had thrown herself off them to escape an unwanted marriage to a cruel master.
His horse’s ears lifted then flattened as his hide trembled and he tossed his head, straining against the bit that bound him.
“Aye,” Callum murmured, laying a soothing hand upon the beast’s lathered shoulder. “I hear her, tae.”
While he couldn’t discern the ghostly maiden’s words, her melody was as haunting as the fog slowly rolling across the moor. The damned woman sang of love and loss, hurt and heartache. All things that Callum knew nothing about, and if he had his way, he’d never learn.
He wasn’t after a wife, or a mistress, or even a lover. Having had two of the three, he’d no intention of making a trifecta of it. Especially given his family’s less than favorable history where women and wives were concerned.
The Campbell Curse, or so it had been cleverly coined a few years back. Some spoke of it with dread, others with amusement. Callum found himself somewhere in the middle. Not to say he even believed in curses, but if he did, he’d believe inthisone.
The specifics were a bit hazy, like a whisky left to ferment too long. Something about every Campbell son being doomed to repeat the sins of their father. And what a father they had.
A hale and hearty man, Lord Robert Campbell III was renowned for his love of a good drink and his long list of wives.
Six, at last count.
Or maybe it was seven now.
Callum had stopped keeping track a while ago.
Some of the poor lasses had died in childbirth, including his own mother. Others had run away. More than one had been conveniently forgotten, which made Callum’s sire a bigamist as well as a proud libertine.
“Why?” Callum remembered asking him once. “Why do ye keep getting married?”
“Because I’m in love with love,” Robert had replied. “But love isna in love with me.”
Robert Campbell IV, heir apparent and general pain in the arse, was already on wife number three after divorcing the first two. A taboo act, unless your surname was Campbell and then it was merely considered an accepted practice.
Only Lachlan, the second eldest, had somehow managed to break the curse and find happiness these ten years past with a lovely English lady. They had two wee bairns between them, and another on the way. Due by Christmas, or so his brother’s letter had said, along with an invitation to join them for the holiday at Campbell Castle.
Callum had been pleased to read that he’d soon have a new niece or nephew, but remained undecided as to whether he’d ring in the New Year surrounded by family. Not that he didn’t enjoy being an uncle. Rather, his presence depended largely on if he made it through the next fortnight. Survival was never guaranteed when a person was brave, or foolish, enough to venture along the Blackmoore Cliffs, to say nothing of Blackmoore Castle itself.
Gnarled and twisted as an old tree, the stone castle sprang from the rocky overhang as if it had been planted there by some nefarious Celtic god long ago. And who knew, maybe it had. There were certainly more outlandish stories than that to be told when one was weaving a tale about the home of the Black Bride; the damned maiden who had dashed herself on the rocks below and taken to haunting these cliffs long after the sea had worn her bones to sand.
When Callum was a lad, his nanny had used her as a warning to keep him in bed.
“Feet under the covers,” she’d said in her dry, crackly voice, “lest the Black Bride comes hunting and snatches off yer toes!”
When he was older, he’d sipped ale in a crowded pub and listened while otherwise sane, rational men told of hearing singing and seeing a lone figure standing on the edge of the bluffs.
“Hair as black as pitch,” Tommy MacDougal had shared. “With emeralds where her eyes ought to be. Beware the Black Bride, me lads. She’s looking for a groom tae join her in a watery grave!”
To Callum’s way of thinking, if the Black Bride was looking for anything, it was some bloody peace and quiet. Why else remain out here in the middle of nowhere with only the crashing waves for company? But those who put faith in such stories didn’t want logic. They wanted to be frightened. And in the frightening, feel a thrill that was otherwise lacking in their boring, mundane lives. A thrill that was obviously missing inhislife, or he wouldn’t be here, risking life and limb to honor a favor for a friend. Not that he was afraid of the Black Bride. Or even believed that she existed. But the cliffs were real enough, and far more dangerous than he remembered from when he and Lachlan had snuck out here on a perilous boyhood adventure.
“Steady,” he murmured to his horse. “Steady on, we’re nearly there.”
The gelding skittered sideways, hooves sliding on rocks stained white from salt. He was a dependable, stalwart mount, which was why Callum had chosen him for this particular venture. But ’twas often said that animals could sense what people could not, and if there really was a ghostly figure out there in all that swirling mist, then Finnegan saw her…and he was ready to bolt back to the village from whence they’d come.
“Enough,” Callum said firmly, his annoyance growing as he gathered the reins and gave his gelding a hard but necessary check. There was no fence or border to save them if they got too close to the edge, and fear licked beneath the irritation when he made the mistake of casting his gaze to the tumultuous waves below.
Crivvens. What thehellwas he doing? When his best mate, John, had asked him to retrieve the signet ring he’d lost while drunkenly carousing with a group of traveling performers that had wanted to see Blackmoore Castle with their own eyes, he’d thought nothing of it. But maybe he should have paid more attention to the way John’s face had drained of all color when he had recounted what had happened that night to make him forget his most priceless possession. Or the icy strength with which he’d grabbed Callum’s arm as he told it.
“Ye dinna have tae do this,” John had said hoarsely. “I’ll get another ring.”
