His Lass Wears Tartan (19 page)

With gangly legs and wagging tail, Diva leaped up, standing on her back legs, her front legs seemingly unsupported in midair, licking sloppily into the empty space behind Baillie.

 “Bruce,” Rogue whispered from the other side of the circle. Uncle Kai never allowed the dog to kiss him; it had to be Bruce. But no one was there. Tears glistened in her eyes. “No ...” She seemed frozen in midsentence.

“Uh, that gorgeous love of your life is invisible?” Rafael asked, the color draining from her face.

T-Cup squealed, “Like Lord Kai? He’s a ghost?” She fanned her face. “Oh my sequins. Our own
Romeo and Juliet
.” She grabbed a lace handkerchief from under the neckline of her dress as tears began to fall. “How sad; my heart is breaking.”

Rogue watched Baillie and Lady Nell stare at Gillian as he leaned over, whispering in her ear.

“So, tell me, what are your feelings toward this local charmer you say looks like Thor’s twin brother, eh? Are we talking frivolous rendezvous in the hay, or are you serious about this guy?”

Her face, feeling cold as alabaster, fluttered and flushed into a deep, heated crimson. Her mouth opened but nothing came out.

“What are you up to over there, Gillian?” Baillie demanded.

All heads turned to his side of the circle.

Gillian’s mouth pulled into a Cheshire cat grin. “Not to be disrespectful, but the young lady has gone into shock. I merely asked if she loved the young delivery man or just enjoyed him as a boy toy.” Rogue gasped, hearing the words out loud. “I believe our young niece’s response proves my answer as affirmative.”

Rogue wrenched her hand to shake loose from Gillian, but he held firm a moment longer before letting go. “How dare you bring up ... you have no respect for me ... at a time like this ...” Rogue spit out words but could not complete a sentence.

Baillie cleared her throat. “According to Kai, the feeling of love is beyond mutual from the young man, Rogue.”

The girls squealed in chorus. “I’m telling you, just like
Romeo and Juliet
, girlfriend.” Rafael snapped her fingers.

“I said it first. It’s so tragically romantic.”

Gillian gazed gently at Rogue. “I knew Rogue had lost her heart. She just wouldn’t admit it to herself and needed a little nudge.”

Rogue burst into sobs, covering her face with her hands. T-Cup jumped from her chair and wrapped her arms around her thin, shaking shoulders.

“Don’t be cruel, Gillian. Her boyfriend is a ghost.”

“What?” Baillie snapped. Gillian looked up across the table.

“What is it, Lord Kai?” Lady Nell asked. She nodded and repeated for him, “Bruce has left Kai’s side for his true love. He stands beside her now.”

Gillian demanded the floor. “As I mentioned to Lady Nell earlier, not knowing all the gruesome details—mind you, I have zero psychic ability—I’d asked her to concoct a love spell. A potion or process, should it be needed, to clear any frustrating block of reality between two lovers.”

Lady Nell opened a drawstring satchel made from dark purple velvet and pulled out a thin, dark blue bottle with a cork stopper. “Rogue, I need you to swallow the entire contents for me. I warn you, the taste is bitter, but the results should be sweet.”

Rogue watched the bottle pass among the circle of people. She wished she could feel Bruce near her, feel something, a vibration, anything, but the room seemed empty around her.
Bruce, can you hear me? Can you hear my thoughts?
How did this happen? He couldn’t be dead. That wasn’t fair.

Holding the bottle with a trembling hand, she wiggled the cork from the mouth of the bottle and, looking around at everyone, closed her eyes and drank the potion. She handed the empty bottle to T-Cup with a grimace and sat silently. The group didn’t move or speak, waiting with her.

“Well?” Rafael asked, painted fingernails splayed at her neck.

She blinked then looked at an empty area to the side of T-Cup with widening eyes.
“Bruce? Is that you?” The name on her lips sounded like the coo of a mourning dove.

T-Cup practically tripped over her four-inch heels backing away from Rogue. “Girl, you look possessed.” She made a jerky sign of the cross with her right hand, scrambling back to her spot in the circle.

Lady Nell leaned back in her chair, smiling. “Rogue, please tell us, is Bruce able to talk to you?”

“Rogue, can ya truly hear me? Ah, I’ve missed you so much. I wish you could feel me hugging you to the moon, touching your face. I kept saying I have to go home, I have to see Rogue. I saw my da, Rogue, and my mam. That’s when I knew, but I fought them, I argued so. I told them over and over it’s not fair when I love you so much. I wanted to come back to you.”

Fresh tears rolled down Rogue’s flushed cheeks as a shiver moved her. “Yes, I hear you. Shh, it’s all right, you’re here now.” She stared into the open space next to her. “I canna see you, but I hear ya voice.”

Gillian’s face took on a satisfactory grin. “Well, shall we rearrange ourselves a bit so the two lovebirds stay connected? We do need information from Romeo here.”

“Romeo?” Bruce started. “Geez, I guess so, aye, Rogue? What a mess this is. But I’m here now, and I’ll never leave your side.”

Putney blew her nose with a honk into a wrinkled handkerchief, wiped her eyes, and stuffed it back into her pocket. “Miss Rogue, come sit here.” Her reddened fingers let go of Baillie’s grasp.

It took a minute for the circle to rearrange and connect again. Lady Nell asked Lord Kai to take one of Bruce’s hands.

“Rogue, ya Uncle Kai is challenging that I’m a bit weak in my grip. And dinna I learn the ways of a
Hielander
?”

Rogue said, “Uncle Kai, that’s not nice.”

“We don’t carry sabers and jousting sticks in this century, sir.” Rogue broke into a laugh at Bruce’s comeback.

Lady Nell laughed. “I apologize to the rest of you, they’re snapping at each other. Settle down, both of you. This is highly unusual for all of us.”

“Kai, don’t pick on him, he won’t bite, you big lug. Keep a strong connection.” Baillie growled.

Rogue turned her head and followed the circle around the room. It seemed to include Baillie’s hand to Lord Kai, to Bruce, though all she saw was an open space, then to herself, to Putney and then the girls, with Gillian completing the energy holding Lady Nell’s other hand.
We do look rather like nervous characters out of an Agatha Christie book at this point. Maybe she’d call it
Murder at the Castle
.

“First, I need you two to drop my hands for a moment, please.” Lady Nell picked up the purple satchel from her lap and placed it in a carpetbag at her feet. She dug in the open compartment and pulled out various crystals. The facets glistened in the soft candlelight, bouncing flecks of dazzling colored rays around the room. “Does this help, Rogue?”

Looking at her once empty hand, she started crying again. The rough tanned fingers materialized vaguely inside her own. Her eyes followed in an upward motion to the kilted man she’d been missing these past few days next to her. “I see him, Lady Nell, not fully, but like watery. I can truly see him. Still in your kilt, aye?”

The girls swooned.

Nodding, Lady Nell rotated some of the stones until she was satisfied. She again took hold of Gillian and Baillie’s hands. “Let the questioning begin.”

“Well, that hardly did much good.” Gillian stretched his tight muscles before yanking open the drapes. “Too bad the lad couldn’t remember more of what happened that evening.”

Putney flicked on the lights, patting her damp face with a handkerchief.

With the séance broken, Rogue lost her connection to Bruce. Once Gillian and her aunt had let go of Lady Nell, Bruce vanished right before her eyes. A guttural sound escaped from her lips. She wasn’t ready for him to be snatched away from her. One minute he was holding her hand, gallant and heart-stoppingly gorgeous in his kilt, trying to answer everyone’s questions, and the next he was gone.
He can’t be dead, he can’t be.
She threw herself on a nearby couch, sobbing into her hands. Rafael and T-Cup curled up on either side of her.

“Is there nothing more we can do, Lady Nell?” T-Cup pleaded, jumping off the couch. “Look at her. We have to do more.” Rogue lifted her head and saw tears roll down T’s makeup. “Rogue, when was the last time you saw your Romeo, uh, Bruce?”

She dabbed at her nose. “The other night, right after dinner. We’d been out in the stables, uh, talking. Remember, it was the night I came to talk to you, Auntie.”

She smiled. “Oh, yes, he didn’t show up for the morning delivery, and then we discovered Mr. Leatherton’s death. That whole time period got crazy quickly. And Jonathan immediately started pointing fingers at Bruce.”

“Couldn’t we try to use Rogue’s memories to backtrack a little? Then maybe your psychic powers could tap into Bruce’s memory and lead us the rest of the way. I believe in you, Lady Nell.” T-Cup clapped her hands together, bouncing on her toes. “We can’t give up on true love now.”

Holding the back of her chair with one hand and waving a fan vigorously in the other, Lady Nell studied the group, then focused directly at Rogue. “It will be a difficult process, T-Cup, and I can’t guarantee any answers. What do the rest of you say, especially Rogue?”

She bit her bottom lip as all eyes turned toward her. She wiped the dampness from her eyes and stared at her lap. That night in the stables had been special, private, and the very next morning, Jonathan ran around shooting his mouth off about how Bruce killed Mr. Leatherton and how he probably robbed the old man and ran off. An anger welled up from the depths of her being, something stunk. That black-hearted jerk probably murdered the old man himself. “I’m in, let’s do it.”

Gillian jerked the drapes closed again. “It’s on. Everyone back to your places. Putney, hit the lights, please.”

A rush of chairs and rustle of skirt fabrics brought the circle back together again in their same places.

Rogue reached out, her breathing a bit fast, anxious, nervous as a hand, worn and hard from manual labor, slid into hers. Familiar fingers that had grazed her naked skin, gently tracing lines from her neck to her stomach. She’d know his hand anywhere. As soon as Bruce touched Rogue’s hand, a completeness coursed through her, vanquishing the aloneness in her heart.

“I’m right here. I missed you,” he whispered in her ear.

Lady Nell again took deep breaths, closing her eyes and lowering her head. The only sound for the moment was her breathing.

“Rogue, if you’ll begin, tell me about the last time you saw Bruce, and then Bruce, focus on her words, put yourself in the scene while I’m going to try to tap into your thoughts” Lady Nell’s voice was even, monotone.

“I’d been drinking quite a bit of wine that night during dinner,” she started.

Bruce scoffed, “Rogue, ya were inna rough way for sure.”

She felt a heat flush up her face. “Don’t tease me.” The girls let out uneasy giggles. “I’d been enduring an endless dinner with Jonathan and the writers. Wine was my only defense from that clod.”

With a sigh, Rafael said, “You have to at least nibble a little protein when you’re drinking, something to balance the alcohol. We’ve discussed this many times.”

“Sorry, Rafael, my mind blanked. Ugh, the man not only looked like he’d stepped out of some history book but I’m sure he believed in his own fantasy. What did you call his style of dress, Aunt Baillie?”

“A Civil War reenactment costume.”

“How quaint,” noted Gillian.

“He smothered me with attention of the miserable, oily kind. He wouldn’t let me talk to any of the others at the table.”

T-Cup squeaked, “And your Romeo swooped in and rescued you from the evil Gaston.”

“Who’s Gaston?” Putney asked.

“Just a Disney reference to a very great-looking but bad guy,” Gillian broke in. Thank God for Uncle or T-Cup would have gone into a thirty-minute description being the Disney trivia master.

“I do remember walking with ya outside to help clear ya addled head,” Bruce added. “Ya were a wee bit tipsy.”

Lady Nell smiled. “Now that’s better, Bruce. Concentrate, try to go back to what happened. No one has seen you since leaving the castle that night. Rogue, pick up the story. Remember, not everyone can hear Bruce, so you have to repeat anything he says.”

“We, uh, we walked to the stable where it was a bit warmer,” Rogue stuttered, dropping her head on her chest. She released a deep sigh. “Bruce remembers we uh, spent quite a bit of time in the stable. Alone.”

Gillian snorted. “Well, seems we missed out on something juicy.”

Twitters from the girls broke out. Gillian made a sharp tsk noise. “Needless to say, we can each use our imaginations during their time in the stable without forcing Rogue to detail their activities. What happened next?”

Rogue cleared her throat. “I wanted to stay in the stable until he drove away, so as not to look suspicious. Where else do I go when I disappear from the castle? Right?” The girls bobbed their heads. “He wouldn’t hear of it and walked me back to the kitchen door. We kissed on the bridge, and that was the last time I saw you.” She leaned her head on Bruce’s arm.

Silence filled the room, and anticipation mounted as Lady Nell’s breathing became harsh, rapid.

“I see the fight, Bruce,” she whispered. She took a deep breath. “A fight at the truck, an ambush from the trees. Bruce is slammed against the side of the vehicle, and his face is punched multiple times before Bruce has any chance to defend himself. Before he’s knocked unconscious, his face is in the mud and sees a pointed-toe boot kicking into his throat.

“The slim man shoves Bruce in the back of the van.” Lady Nell’s breathing became labored; strain crossed her face. “The man’s dark hair is tied back. He’s wearing a black coat that comes to his knees, and boots, tall leather boots.”

“Jonathan,” Baillie and Rogue said together.

Lady Nell let the name waver in the room. “It starts raining as the truck drives away, but not to the main road. No, it’s heading away from the castle ... he’s, he’s driving toward the moors.”

Everyone in the circle held his or her breath, leaning forward.