The Chieftain's Yule Bride - a Highland Christmas novella (Clan MacKrannan's Secret Traditions #10) (2 page)

Think. 
Where did she know him from?  In person... because it was more than his face she recognized, and that lock of black hair tumbling onto his forehead that made her want to reach up and smooth it back as if she'd done it many times.

She knew his height, the set of his rather broad shoulders, the way he stood legs astride and his thumbs casually tucked into his belt.  He lorded it over everyone as if it came naturally, and with none of that condescending air you got down south.  Even his kilt looked like he was born to wear it instead of putting it on for the tourists.

Thing was, she felt as if she knew him from a very long time ago yet her memory was of how he looked now, today,
not some younger version from a teenage party or a ceilidh.  Even imagining him wearing a regular suit in London or Edinburgh meant nothing.  No, she knew him as he was... and in a castle she hadn't even remembered existed until this week.  Scotland was full of the things, and more of them doing weddings than not.

She toured the bedroom of the suite with a professional eye, unable to stop herself doing so even when she wasn't at work.  Exquisitely done, far more appealing that any of the chic interior designs Zavier made his fortune from in hotels around the world. Here they'd made sure all the castle decor was in keeping with the building and its setting right on the seashore.

It was like stepping back in time the way they'd kept the antiques and the four-poster bed.  Not a piece of repro in sight, although the paintings in here were bound to be copies.  The ones in the public areas were the real thing, she'd swear, and many security cameras to prove it.  The electric sockets were the one anomaly, and even they were made of brass with filigree edgings.

Perfect.  All so,
so
perfectly done.  Its own identity instead of one more clone.  She picked up the castle's guidebook and flipped through, looking for the interior designer.  None.  A side-on photo which caught Mrs Seonaid MacKrannan holding a sheaf of fabric swatches up to a window, and one short paragraph about the timescale of the project.  Must be his mother.  Classy lady. 

Being in here made Freya cringe to think of how Zavier colluded with new owners in the ruination of some lovely old places.  They ended up all the same square lines, the same hues off different boring palettes and nothing to make them special except some screaming accent colors mixed exclusively for each chain of hotels.  You could be anywhere, and the only consolation was that they hadn't torn the building down and begun again with yet another box-shaped monstrosity with mirrored windows, and a token few trees in the car park to make it alive.

She worked as his right-hand man as if she adored his work as much as she adored him.  His passion for clean lines and glitz had long since left her cold but his passion for her was the sparkling thing which mattered.

Zavier Campbell was one hot property, full of an energy that swept her high in his wake.  She couldn't help but love drinking in his vitality each day, the laughter, the wild moods that went with his ginger hair, the fast and fevered joinings in their London docklands apartment and in every hotel they worked in.  He could be a bit rough with her sometimes in a temper, but that was such a small part of his character that she never minded.

Zavier was never calm.  Freya was seldom otherwise.

Even frantically busy, her inner stillness gave her the composure to diffuse customers' hysteria and bring peace to any dispute.  A creative man needed that in his life permanently, as he'd told her while slipping the surprise diamond ring onto her finger last week, and all the better that she was so gorgeous.

All very sudden and impulsive.  All very Zavier.  The only question he'd asked was where she'd like to get married.  Vegas?  Hawaii?  Nearer home... okay, how about the new spa hotel they'd done near Oxford with hot-tubs for their hundred guests?

That was when she'd insisted on a Scottish castle.  One she'd call
real,
not the bundle of lookalikes done out in buttermilk and maroon, and definitely not one with tartan carpeting. The Highlands weren't Zavier's thing. 
'Don't know, don't care'
he'd said when she asked him about the origins of his Campbell surname.  He hardly looked up from his phone the one time they'd visited her home near Inverness, trying to show Auntie Harper some futuristic furniture he was sure she'd like and Auntie saying she wouldn't give it house-room.

And here she was in the ideal castle, one that Auntie would just love to bits, and Freya's mind was far too much on its owner instead of on her wedding.  What did it matter if she'd seen Callum MacKrannan somewhere already?  He was hardly the kind of guy you'd miss in a crowd.  No, the future was plenty to care about.

Mrs Zavier Campbell...

Full partner in his company.  No children for a long time because there were so many contracts up for grabs in the Emirates, and he needed her at his side.

Travelling first-class round the world was an excitement she'd never thought to experience.  A move to London after she graduated changed all that.  No hardship for her to keep working.

Life was a whirl of airports and restaurants and fluffy hotel towels in constantly changing colors.  She loved it.  She loved Zavier.  And she could not get Callum MacKrannan out of her mind.

Callum could no' wait to ditch this prat onto Robbie and get back to his office.  Waving away a bunch of documents from his Assistant on the way through, he went straight to his smaller computer in the corner and hammered
Freya Harper
into the image search.  Photos of her with Campbell were in the sort of places he would never have seen in the passing – design magazines, award ceremonies, ribbon-cuttings at new hotels, and nearly all in foreign countries.

A regular search threw up her professional profile.  Executive for Zavier Campbell Design.  No biog of her on his site.  A full page about him.  That figured.  He went back to the general search to add
Inverness
and got nothing much except a blurry picture of her in the second row of a school hockey team.  Unmistakably her, though.

It had to be some ancestor in the old portrait... but did anyone ever look
that
identical to their long-deceased relatives?  Change Freya's modern garb for an old floaty frock and it was her exactly.  He would have sworn she even twisted her hair to the same side.  Or was his memory playing tricks?  The castle was vast and the portrait had been one of so many.  It was also many years since he could have seen it and yet it flared in his mind now as if plastered on every surface around him.

He logged into the secure part of the castle's system and called up the database of artworks.  With no clue on what the painting would have been named when it was catalogued, he scrolled through the inventory's many hundreds of thumbnail images and watched his clan's history and ancestors pass by.  Not there.  He scrolled back up slowly, sure he must have missed it.  Still not there.  He typed 'oval' into the search box for frames.  Absent from the fifty-plus.  He tried 'watercolor'.  How could it no' be listed as that...

"It's in the Vault."

"Christ, Robbie...
will you stop sneaking up like that!"  He hit the logout key with a thud and stood up.  "Show it to me."

"Tricky.  We'll need to consult with Tara, Kenzie and Gillian first."

Callum's heart was still banging above the norm, so far away had he been when disturbed, and more than a bit sheepish at what he'd been caught doing.  No' like him to get fazed at such a daft thing.  This one enigma of a lass was pervading him into madness.  Now Robbie was calling up the ancient ways of the clan, and neither of them had any excuse for taking time away from a castle filled with guests.

He'd make the time.  "Fetch them.  I want to see that painting before the day is out."

Never once did he consider any need to describe what he was looking for – or why.  A visit to the Vault would be enough reminder of the Traditions in the clan's past.  The castle and its lands belonged to his father the Chief, currently abroad with his mother enjoying their retirement.  The Vault was the domain of the Bard no matter who owned its walls and everything in it, and there was no' a MacKrannan in history ever questioned how their Bards came to
know
things.

Robbie had given him one of those weird looks earlier.  He got another one now, and a cheeky grin to go with it.

"The Turret of the East in ten minutes.  They're waiting for us there."

Oh aye?  Ten minutes was how long it would take to walk through the castle to get there, and it was even further from any of the entrances to the Vault.

This would no' be a matter quickly settled.  The venue alone told him that, clinched by Robbie's calling it the Turret of the East in the old way.

He had a call to make first.

"Sophie?  I'm sorry, I'm going to be tied up all weekend... just busy with guests..."

Wrong.  He didn't want to go to her house and he didn't want her coming here.  The guilt would have cut at him with any previous girlfriend.  Doctor Sophie Patterson was new.  He'd bedded her twice and was well impressed with her knowledge of anatomy, but they hadn't been going out for long, just enough for them both to know this was a bit of mutual fun and no' a forever thing.

Sophie was livid.  Unfairly so, considering she'd had to cancel for her own work plenty times.  The silence hung and the line went dead.

He found himself covering the distance between their brief conversation and the East Turret in far less than ten minutes, with Robbie struggling to keep up.     

Freya always spoke to the head honcho anywhere she went.  A networking thing.  A way to get the best service always.  A waste of breath even to try here.  They'd found that out when Robbie the Events Manager brought in Callum MacKrannan.  A tightly-run business this was, full of loyalty and backing each other up on every decision.  Or was it a height thing?  The higher up in the pecking order, the taller the man?  Robbie had been over six feet and his boss considerably more.

She strolled with Zavier through the estate over to the Brewery where the famed MacKrannan Honeymead was made.  It was an energetic young assistant who gave them a tour of the plant with its massive tanks and permeating bittersweet smell, and a man who looked like Santa Claus in a kilt who poured them half-pint tankards brimming full of the delicious Special Yule Brew.

"We're having our wedding here," said Freya, feeling a little lightheaded after one mere gulp of the stuff.  "Can we have a chat with your manager?"

"Ah... no, Miss.  In a meeting," he replied, taking off his spectacles and looking at her a little too enquiringly with his eyes all screwed up.

"Later, then.  When will he be free?"

"It's Tara MacKrannan, and I cannot say if she'll be back afore the morning."

Tara.  The chieftain's
wife? 
She had to find out.  "The chieftain's sister, is she?"

"No, his Beekeeper.  That's Tara's prime job.  Everything else here depends on it."  Said with a reverential smile that pushed out his florid cheeks and a mouth that closed very firmly afterwards.

Zavier sat up on his barstool and gave her an amused look when she persisted.  "But she'll be some relation?"

"No' really.  You'll be from up Inverness way yourself, Miss?"