Bran snorted.
“You already went once,” Saor pressed. “Another peek won’t matter now.”
Bran glared at him. “I’m needed here.”
“Och, aye.” Saor stretched out a hand to rub Gibbie’s ears when the dog joined them. “There isn’t another bluidy soul amongst us able to use a wee bit o’ ghostly trickery to maintain the good life we enjoy here.”
Gibbie sat and barked, clearly in agreement.
Bran scrubbed his hands over his face and ignored both of them.
It
was
a poor excuse.
But he couldn’t risk the damage to his heart if he returned and had to suffer discovering that his beloved home had indeed faded from memory.
As for seeing Mindy again . . .
Bran glanced at the Heartbreaker’s pommel stone and then away. Praise God the charmed crystal hadn’t chosen this moment to blaze blue and torment him with jabs of white-hot pain to his side.
But he was struck with sudden inspiration.
“Oho—I’ve an idea!” He grabbed Saor’s arm, gripping tight. “You can sift yourself to modern Barra. Have a wander about, and see if the lassie was telling tall tales or if she really did have my stones sent back here!”
“Me?” Saor’s bluster left him. “I cannae—”
Gibbie barked again and looked up at Saor with an adoring doggy grin, his tail swishing back and forth across the wet cobbles.
“Bah!” Bran released him and stood back, pleased. “You just praised your own skills, man. Even Gibbie”—he jerked a look at the dog—“knows you’re just the one to find out the truth for us.”
“I meant to say I cannae sift myself anywhere just now.” Saor cleared his throat, threw a glance at the darkened keep. “I told Serafina I’d join her—”
Bran laughed. “You’ve been out here with me too long for her to have waited. That one’s hotter than a glowing coal snatched off the fire. She’ll be warming someone else’s bed about now and well you know it.”
Saor’s scowl said he did.
He began to pace. “I’ll no’ stay long, mind. Only a quick peek and I’m out o’ there. Thon modern time is too crowded and loud for my liking.”
Pausing to swipe a raindrop from his brow, he glanced at Bran. “Have you e’er seen or heard”—he shuddered—“those things they call leaf blowers?”
“You’ll find Barra still as the grave.”
“Fie, man.” Saor whipped about to glare at him. “If you’re so sure nothing’s there, why ask me to go?”
“Because I am Barra and can.” Bran thrust his chin, unbending.
It wasn’t often he pulled chiefly superiority.
“And because”—he turned away, not wanting Saor to see his expression soften—“you are the only one I know will tell me true.”
He’d lost his other trusted friends to Americans!
Feeling a sudden pang of loss, he clasped his hands behind his back and waited for Saor to argue. He kept his gaze fixed on the bay, where gusting wind was sending up spray from the choppy, whitecapped waves.
Behind him, all was silent.
Bran’s conscience began to twitch and squirm. The Barra MacNeils might be, well,
the Barra MacNeils
, but as chief of the MacSwains, Saor claimed a long and proud bloodline of his own. Bran shifted and let out a long breath. He shouldn’t have lairded it over his friend.
Wishing to make amends, Bran turned, but Saor was already gone.
The bailey was dark and empty.
Only Gibbie remained.
And his tail was wagging, his excited gaze fixed on a spot of nothingness that still crackled with the
air shimmers
left by Saor’s swift departure.
“So he went, eh, Gibbie?” Bran didn’t bother to say where.
The dog knew.
And since the beast—who Bran suspected was as intuitive as any Highland seer—didn’t appear troubled, he hoped his friend would return with good tidings.
Bran refused to consider anything else.
But when the waiting stretched into what seemed an eternity, he began to have some doubt. Saor wasn’t a MacNeil, but he loved Barra and Bran’s tower with the fullness of his heart.
He was a MacNeil in spirit.
And as such, he’d be as troubled as Bran to see their well-loved bit of home reduced to nothing more than an echo in the dark.
Saor would return at once.
Unless . . .
“Odin’s balls!” Bran’s pulse leapt. Were he a lesser man, he would shake all over. As it was, he clapped one hand to his plaid-draped chest and clenched the other into a tight, painful fist.
There could be only one reason for Saor’s tardiness.
Mindy hadn’t lied.
The air shifted then, a mere ripple quick as winking, and Saor appeared. “You heard rightly,” he announced. “Barra, this wee islet in the bay is mounded with stones. I gave them a good keek, and am sure they’re your own. And”—he grinned—“from what I saw of them, they’re looking no worse for centuries of wear.”
Bran stared at him. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe or speak. A wave of light- headedness gripped him and he heard the roar of blood in his ears.
He felt his chest tighten. “The tower’s stones . . .”
“And the ones from the walls and the chapel, the outbuildings, and the saints only know what else.” Saor rolled his shoulders. “There were that many piled hither and thither. I think I even saw the old stone bollard we used to moor our galleys.”
Bran’s heart squeezed. He’d stolen his first kiss next to that bollard.
As if Saor read his mind, he planted his hands on his hips and laughed. “Scarce recognized it, I did. Stone’s gone shiny as a bairn’s behind. Belike centuries of MacNeils used it, wearing it smooth with their mooring lines.”
“And did you see the lass who told me about the stones?” Bran had to know. “She’s a fetching wench. Sun-bright hair cut close to her chin and deep blue eyes. She’s”—he tried not to grimace—“an American.”
Saor’s brows lifted, but he shook his head. “I saw nothing but piles o’ stanes. And”—he frowned—“the blackness of a pit.”
“A pit?”
Bran blinked.
“Aye, so I said.” Saor’s eyes glinted in the darkness. “That’s why it took me so long. I manifested in the bottom of a great yawning void and thought I’d landed myself in the Dark One’s own torture chamber.
“I stood still for the longest time, no’ wanting to even sift myself away lest the stir in the air attract that one’s attention. But then”—his smile returned—“my eyes adjusted to the dimness and I saw where I was.”
“And where was that?”
“Deep inside the ruins of the ancient broch you built your stronghold upon.”
“What?”
Bran’s jaw slipped.
Saor clapped him on the shoulder. “Dinnae tell me you’ve forgotten? At the time, you’d said that if the Auld Ones who stayed on Barra when these isles were young deemed this islet a good place for their broch, you’d call it a meet site for a MacNeil castle.”
“I ken what I said”—Bran’s insides were beginning to quiver—“but that broch was underground even in our day. Part of it was our foundation and basement, the rest filled in with earth and rubble.”
“Well, it’s not filled in now.”
“But, why . . .”
Bran let the words trail away, not wanting to make the connection dancing on the fringes of his mind. Doing so would see him even more bound to a certain bonnie American, and his sense of self-preservation warred against deepening any possible ties to her.
“I’ll tell you what I think.” The excitement in Saor’s voice showed he didn’t share Bran’s hesitation. “Having seen what I did, it’s clear that someone, perhaps this
fetching wench
of yours, hasn’t just returned your tower’s stones simply to toss them onto the ground.
“Whoe’er is responsible means to rebuild the castle. And they’ve already started by digging the old foundation.” He grinned again. “That was the pit I landed in. The old broch ruin, waiting to support your restored tower, just as it did in the past.”
Bran swallowed. He was certain Saor was right.
It was the last thing he’d expected.
And the very idea was making his eyes burn with a blinding, stinging saltiness that had nothing to do with the spray-filled air and everything to do with an American he’d now have to find at the soonest and tender his thanks.
His sense of chivalry demanded it.
As did his position as chief.
In truth, such an encounter might be quite pleasurable. Indeed, the notion was becoming more so the longer he thought about it.
Feeling better already, even buoyant, he grabbed Saor’s elbow and pulled him across the bailey to the tower. “Come, my friends—” He glanced over his shoulder at Gibbie, trotting faithfully behind them. “It would seem we have some celebrating to do!”
He didn’t mention that he hoped a full belly and a good night’s sleep thereafter would help him prepare for his meeting with Mindy.
His seduction of her.
The thought came from nowhere.
But as he threw open the tower door and stood back to let Saor and Gibbie enter his keep, he knew he liked the idea very much.
It could happen.
He glanced down at the Heartbreaker, this time eyeing the crystal pommel stone without dread. Until he remembered one disturbing detail that put a most troubling pall on his burst of high spirits and optimism.
For all her good deeds and beauty, the American had one serious flaw.
She’d claimed she detested Barra.
Dimensions away, but closer than Bran would have believed, three souls who did love Barra stood outside the imposing Oban Ferry Terminal and eyed the arriving passengers with growing trepidation. It wasn’t as if they had much experience with Caledonian MacBrayne—affectionately known as CalMac—and their business of ferrying good folk here and yon throughout the whole of the Western Isles.
Geordie, Roderick, and Silvanus—being of an age when said waters were plied only by sleek birlinns and galleys, those magnificent greyhounds of the seas—were more than willing to leave the business of transporting moderns to those more at ease with such bustle.
CalMac was doing fine so far as they could tell.
But it was late afternoon and Mindy Menlove was booked on the soon-to-be-departing ferry to Barra.
Alarmingly, she had yet to arrive.
And that did concern the Long Gallery Threesome. “I told you both we shouldn’t have let her from our sight.” Silvanus glared at the other two ghosts from beneath angry brows. “If you’ll recall”—he puffed his chest—“I wanted to hie myself into her car. Just to make certain she didn’t lose her way, mind!”
“You’re the one who needs to mind.” Geordie raised his walking stick and shook it at him. “Last time you planted yourself inside her automo-
beel
, back at the Folly, she nearly drove off the road and into the trees!”
“She wasn’t expecting me, was all.” Silvanus put back his shoulders. “This time I’m sure she would have appreciated my assistance.”
“Pah-phooey!” Geordie lowered his cane and leaned on it. “You were e’er one to do as you pleased, having no care for the rest o’ us.”
“Quit your bellyaching, both of you.” Roderick stepped between them. “ ’Tis keeping an eye on the crowd we need to be a-doing, not fussing amongst ourselves. If you keep at it, we may miss her when she arrives.”
“If she does,” huffed Silvanus.
“She will.” Roderick folded his arms, his sharp gaze on the endless stream of ferry passengers. “See all these busy folk, eager to visit our own fair Barra! Warms the cockles, it does, eh?
“So many souls come from near and far.” He preened a bit, smoothing his plaid. “The lass will be here soon, too. I feel it in my bones.”
“My bones say she’s turned tail and run off to her
Haw-wah-ee
.” Silvanus began strutting back and forth in front of the ferry terminal’s glass-doored entrance. “It’s rained since she’s been here and she’s made it plain what she thinks of cold and mist.”
“But this is
Scottish
mist!” Roderick made a lofty gesture that took in the waterfront and the great hills encircling the town.
Highland mist was everywhere, rolling gently down the braes and hovering above the choppy water in the bay. Billowing curtains of it, soft and gray, drifted along the road, taking the sharp edges off modern buildings and damping the noise from cars and hurrying people.
Roderick hadn’t seen such mist in years and the sight almost overwhelmed him.
He cleared his throat and dashed at his eyes. “Dinnae tell me the lass willnae be enchanted by our Hameland. I do believe she already is.”
Silvanus hooted.
Geordie shook his head. “Herself is lost, I say you.” He lifted his walking stick again, this time pointing at the town. “Or have neither of you noticed how many roads be blocked with ‘Men Working’ and ‘Diversion’ signs? I may no’ be an expert in modern times, but even I know that a soul can get confused right quick if the path a body means to follow suddenly ups and goes another way!”
Silvanus and Roderick exchanged glances.
“All these other tourists found their way here.” Silvanus slid a look at the growing crowd. “If she means to catch the ferry, she’ll be on it. Not”—he stuck out his chin—“that I believe she wishes to be here!”
“Hah!” Geordie struck his most superior pose. “You’re both blind as bats! Yon folk aren’t tourists. They’re Highlanders and Islesmen, just like us. Several centuries removed, of course.”
“So they are.” Silvanus rubbed the back of his neck, frowning. “I wonder what they want on Barra.”
“And why shouldn’t they visit Barra?” Roderick shot him a dark look. “Can you name a fairer isle?”
“ ’Tis passing strange and you know it.” Silvanus glared at him. “Even in our day, the only folk who came to Barra were our own—”
