Just as her husband had been.
“Ye shouldna have come,” she murmured to the handsome Scot with the red hair. “It isna safe. But I’ll do what I can tae get ye home tae yer family. Tae yer parents, if they’re still living. Tae yer siblings, if ye have any. And tae the bonny lass that I’m sure is waiting, as a man with a face like yers always has a lass or two tucked away somewhere.”
She began to sing while she cleaned the wound. A quiet, haunting tune that her mum had sung to her when she was a little girl. It was about a sailor who had gone out across the land in search of his beloved, while his beloved had scoured the sea. Lost in the music and the memories it invoked, she failed to notice when the stranger’s lashes flickered. But she certainly paid attention when he abruptly sat up and grabbed hold of her wrist, his nostrils flared and his eyes–deep, deep blue eyes–wild.
“Who the hell are ye?” he demanded roughly. “What the hell happened tae me?”
Mara winced when his grip turned bruising. Then her breath caught on a gasp. Filled with wonder, her gaze dropped to the golden fingers wrapped round her ivory skin before slowly rising to the stranger’s face.
“I can feel that,” she whispered in shock. “I–I can feelye.”
Confusion marred his brow before he dropped her wrist as if she’d burned him. “What are ye going on about? Who are ye? What am I doing here?”
Cradling her arm against her chest, Mara edged backwards and then rose to her feet, her mind racing.
Was this…
Could it be…
After all this time…
No, she ordered herself sharply.Dinna even think it.
Her heart was already hanging by a thread; the only link she had left tying her to the mortal world. If she severed it for the wrong man…if she severed it for the wrong man, then she’d truly become the monster that the cliffs wanted her to be.
Take a life, they crooned to her in the dark and the dim when the moon was high and the sea was restless.Take a life, and rest with us for all of eternity.
But she didn’t want to become aCaoineag. A weeper and foreteller of death, doomed to haunt the water by a castle while its fathers and sons engaged in war. Tormenting those left behind who prayed for their loved ones return even as theCaoineag’spiercing cries foretold of their demise.
When battles were raged across the Highlands and the ocean ran red with blood, Blackmoore Castle had its ownCaoineag. For centuries, she walked along the cliffs, trailing sorrow in her wake. That was before the clan that called the castle home was lost to time, and curtains of ivy covered the windows and drowned out the light.
TheCaoineagabandoned her post and went into the sea, dissolving to mist. And all was quiet, and all was dormant, and all was well…until decades later when an English lord and his young Scottish bride happened upon the castle on a bright, sun-drenched morning in the middle of summer.
Almost immediately, Mara had known that it was wrong. Despite the heat, goose pimples had dotted every inch of her flesh. She’d told Hugh that they needed to leave. That this place wasn’t for them. But as usual, he hadn’t listened…and in his arrogance, had damned them both.
Their presence at the castle dragged theCaoineagback from her peaceful watery slumber. Furious at being made to once again haunt the keep that she’d tried to leave behind, the wrathful spirit unleashed such a powerful wail that the force of it sent Mara and Hugh tumbling from the cliffs that he’d insisted they explore.
He was dashed on the rocks below. Killed instantly; a small mercy. But Mara…Mara was flung into the waves. And when she emerged, wet and trembling, she found that she’d become something else entirely.
Not completely mortal, not completelyCaoineag, but lost somewhere between the two. Until she took that final step…that final plunge…and not only forewarned of a death, but was the cause of it. Then her fate would be sealed, her humanity sacrificed, and she’d be forever cursed to roam Blackmoore Castle as theCaoineagbefore her had done.
Unless…
Biting her lip, she peered at the stranger from beneath her lashes. Although he wore modern clothing–straight brown trousers and a tweed jacket over a white linen shirt–it wasn’t a hardship to visualize him in aLéine croich, a belted tunic worn by warriors of old.
Her own dress was as it had been the day she was swept into the ocean. Never changing or showing signs of age, it was anearasaidin her clan’s colors of tartan gold and blue layered over a long-sleeved petticoat cinched at the waist with a gold buckle; a wedding present from her father.
She’d grown so tired of wearing the same garment day in and day out that she’d covered all the mirrors in the castle. There was no need to gaze upon her reflection to remind herself that she was in purgatory. She had only to look at the attire of the men who darkened her door to realize the world was not as she’d left it.
“Me name is Mara,” she said quietly. “Mara MacLea.”
She supposed that she ought to have used her husband’s surname and title, but they’d been married less than a fortnight, and his family had been against the union, as had her own. Truth be told, she hadn’t been overly fond of marrying an Englishman herself…but she’d been young, and impressionable, and fancied herself in love.
“MacLea?” The stranger’s eyes narrowed. “But there hasna been a MacLea this far north since the Battle of Culloden. Are ye sure it is that ye’re telling me the truth, lass?”
Mara stiffened at the thinly veiled accusation. “What reason would I have tae lie about me own name? ’Tis mine. I was born with it, and I intend tae keep it for as long as…” She wet her lips. “For as long as God deems willing. Who areye, might I be so bold as tae ask? Other than a trespasser and an intruder?”
The stranger surged to his feet, wobbled slightly, and then braced his legs apart with his hands fisted on his hips. “I’m Callum Campbell, and I’m not a bluidy intruder.”
