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Her heart was still pounding. She dragged a breath into her lungs, fought for composure. Wished for that stiff upper lip all Brits seemed to possess. Took a sip of her port, then grabbed her notebook.
Of course I do. Tawny and ruby aren’t my thing, I’m glad that’s what you have. It’s delicious.
He’d made a lucky guess on that one, she wasn’t sure she’d ever discussed port with him before. Of course, vintage was more expensive. She recognized that Memphis, while quite understated about his heritage, did enjoy the trappings that came with it.
She started to sit, then felt the strangest sensation down her back, accompanied by a draft of cool air across her shoulders. Her senses went on alert immediately. She’d been a cop long enough to recognize the feeling. They were being watched.
She angled her head to look behind her, assuming one of the servants had entered the room. There was no one there.
Her spine grew cold. She hadn’t imagined it. Had she?
She looked back to Memphis, who was whistling slightly as he poured himself another little bit of port. Topping off, her father always called it. He’d done that every time he’d poured a drink—taken a healthy swallow, then filled his glass again. Maybe she’d just had a little too much.
Memphis turned and caught her looking at him. Her face must have registered her distress.
“What’s wrong?” He crossed the room to her, set his glass on the table and sat on the sofa next to her. Took her hands in his. “Jesus, your hands are like ice. I told you this place was hard to heat.”
She pulled her right hand away.
I just had the strangest sensation that someone was watching us. One of the servants…?
Memphis leaned back, keeping her hands securely tucked in his. “Ah. Not the servants. No, in this part of the castle, that was probably the Lady in Red. She’s one of our more famous ghosts.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Taylor shivered. She didn’t believe in ghosts. But the thought that the feeling she’d just had was caused by the otherworld was all too real. She was still overwhelmingly chilly, and suddenly on edge. She pulled her hands from his, grabbed her notebook.
Don’t mock me. It’s not fu
Memphis waited a moment, then gently took her left hand back, rubbed it between his to warm them.
“I’m not mocking you, dearest. Dulsie Castle is haunted. Several times over.”
Please. It is not haunted. You’re just trying to scare me.
“Not at all. It is haunted, just like most of the castles in the Highlands. Battles were fought over these lands, brother against brother. Enemies tried to plunder the castles for their contents. Most were built on sorrow and death, vaults for the overlord’s treasures. With all that enmity, it’s not at all unusual to have multiple ghosts wandering about.”
Come on. That’s silly.
“Taylor, it’s not silly at all. People pay good money to stay at haunted castles. That’s why we opened the attics for Samhain. Let the public in, have a few delicious ghost stories at the ready. One of our best is the Lady in Red.”
Okay. I’ll bite. Tell me.
Memphis sat back into the cushions. “According to my family lore, she’s the ghost of Lady Isabella Bruce, a relation of good King Robert, sold as a child bride to Colin Highsmythe, the fourth Earl of Dulsie. He was forty-eight, widowed, with seven bairns, some of which were older than Isabella. She was fourteen, ripe as a peach, headstrong and unwilling to marry such a disgustingly old creature. She was overruled, of course. It was an advantageous match. Her father recovered most of the lands he’d lost to Longshanks—you’d know him as Edward the First—when Scotland and England were at war in the 1300s.”
He settled in closer to her, put his arm around her shoulder. They were touching now, rib to rib. She let him. She was still cold. And despite her interest in Memphis’s history, ghost stories weren’t her thing.
“She moved to the castle, and they married in a ceremony befitting a queen. Colin doted on her like she was a doll, buying her anything she wanted, throwing the most lavish of parties in her honor. He, being an honorable sort who disliked the idea of bedding a child, promised the girl they could wait until her sixteenth birthday.”
Taylor could see the woman-child, promised off, unwilling to devalue herself for the sake of her parents and their ever-amassing fortunes. She liked Isabella immediately.
“But the stupid girl played Colin for a fool. She had an affair with the youngest of the Highsmythe sons at the time, the dashing Oliver, and of course got with child. She hid it for as long as she could, but Colin eventually found out. He had Oliver killed, locked Isabella up in the tower above us for the rest of her confinement. When she had the baby, he took it away and murdered it as well. Then he bedded Isabella as many times as it took to plant his own seed in her belly.”
That’s hideous!
“Quite. As you can imagine, Isabella was terribly distraught. She’d lost her lover, her child by him, and all the freedom she’d been accustomed to, for Colin kept her in the tower and would allow her no visitors. She was subjected to what amounted to no more than rape on a regular basis. So she hatched a plan. She figured if she could get Colin out of the way, she could have everything back the way it was. She’d find a new lover to mend her broken heart, would dispose of the child she was carrying. She pla
Faeries?
“Oh, yes,” Memphis replied. “Faeries all over the land round here. The auld folk. You’re in the Scottish Highlands, remember. We live for myth.”
He brushed a stray hair back from her forehead, gently, then continued.
“Anyway, the lady Isabella kept back a knife from one of her meals, and when Colin came for his nightly assignation, she waited until he was in the throes of passion and stabbed him. Did a good job of it, too. He, mortally wounded, fought with her for the knife, managed to get it away from her and cut her throat, but he was too weak to injure her properly. He died; she lived. But the earl, ever prescient and distrustful of his child bride, had left strict instructions in his will that if anything were to happen to him before the child was born, the doctor was to take it by force from her womb.”
Held a grudge, did he?
“Oh, yes. We Highsmythes are known for it.” He said it lightly, or attempted to. She wondered who had been fool enough to cross Memphis in the past.
“The doctor kept Isabella alive long enough to give birth. She carried twins, two boys. It’s said she traced an O in blood on the forehead of the first one, who was named Oliver, after her lover, the child’s dead uncle. She died before naming the second, so the family took it upon themselves to call him Colin. As you can imagine, theirs was a contentious life.”
Memphis was staring into the fire now. “Young Oliver ended up with the title, oddly enough. Through battles and changes of allegiance and illnesses, the elder Colin’s sons from his first marriage died soon after their father. Isabella’s son, Oliver, firstborn of the twins, truly in the prime of his life, was legally heir.
“He banished his brother from the area, sent him to England, to Bristol, to the Highsmythe properties there. Where he would be well out of the way. Young Colin worked as a cleric, then rose in the Church’s esteem until eventually becoming a very powerful bishop. He made quite a name for himself.
“So the family was permanently split, half propagating in Southern England, the rest of us in the North. I’m directly descended from Isabella and Oliver the younger, by the way. And as such, the legend says that the first son, the Dulsie heir, is the only one who can see Isabella. She appears in the night to impart great wisdom, so we’re told.”