Page 7 of A Rogue in Twilight (The Whisky Rogues #2)

J ames heard the shriek as he stepped over the threshold of the foyer.

Unexpected and unnerving, the sound came from somewhere overhead.

Distantly in the large, drafty old house, a dog howled as if in answer.

He set down his leather satchel, straightened, and looked up.

Was the cry a creaking door, old floorboards, or hinges needing repair? There was work to be done, if so.

The moan sounded again, eldritch, ending on a shrill note that shivered down his neck. Again the dog howled, and a second one barked. James looked around the dim, quiet foyer. “What in blazes,” he muttered. “Hallooo!”

No answer. His entrance as Struan House’s viscount was not particularly promising. Ghostly shrieks, baying dogs, and no one at the door to greet him. He stood alone, drenched by a chill September rain. With luck, if the work awaiting him here proceeded smoothly, he’d need be here only a few weeks.

Once again, and often of late, he wondered if he would see Elspeth MacArthur while he was at Struan House. She had mentioned living in the glen, and try as he might, he had not forgotten her. She lingered in his thoughts, even in his dreams.

The memory of those simple kisses still haunted him, and so did her sparkling, seductive eyes.

He recalled the taste of her lips under his, the feel of her in his arms—but of course, he had not fallen in love like a damn fool.

Not at all. The memories were persistent though, and he was sometimes distracted with the desire to see her again.

Nor had Sir Walter helped the matter. “Miss MacArthur is an intriguing young lady. When you go to Struan House, seek her out. Find her, James. That is my advice.”

But he had come to Struan House for other reasons, with no time to visit Kilcrennan, wherever it was. Drawing off his gloves, he crammed them into a pocket, brushed the rain from his coat shoulders, removed his hat, and shook the moisture from it. Too damned much rain lately, he thought.

Eyes gray as rain—his mind did it again, made that little leap when his thoughts were not on the girl. He was obsessed. He disliked it.

“Halloo the house!” he called. Nothing.

Perhaps he should find her, he thought, and ask what mad spell she had put on him, and why she had pulled that silly ruse on his friend Scott.

He still was not satisfied in that matter.

The poet was the one obsessed with finding her—not James.

There. Seeing her in ordinary circumstances, when she was not done up like some sparkling fairy princess, would help dissolve his mind’s damnable obsession.

“Halloo!” The echoing foyer was spacious, floored in slate and lined in dark wood paneling, with a stairway along one wall balanced by a marble fireplace on the other, carved with angels and topped by mounted stag heads.

The walls were hung with antique weapons and small paintings of landscapes and portraits of dogs as well as people.

It was all familiar, racing back to him.

He had not been here since childhood. He thought of the beasts howling upon his arrival today and remembered enjoying stories of ghosts and monstrous creatures when he had been as a boy.

He had almost forgotten how spooky Struan House could seem.

He had visited a few times as a boy, but now he was a grown man, a thorough skeptic, a calm and unruffled soul who allowed nothing to make him anxious. Not even this place.

“Anyone here?” he called again, his voice echoing.

He walked forward as a bloodcurdling shriek sounded, lifting the fine hairs along his neck. He spun around. What the devil was that?

Fatigue did not help his calm or his patience.

Three days ago, he had headed north by landau, entering the foothills of the Highlands to stop at an inn at Callander; after a night’s rest, he dispatched his driver back to Edinburgh and spent a solitary day walking the sunny hills, finding interesting formations of mica schist, which answered to the bite of the small hammer he carried with him.

He made notes on his geological finds and had a quiet evening enjoying the peace and simple beauty of the Highlands, and wishing he could take time to do so more often.

Next morning, the ghillie from Struan House had arrived to fetch him in an old carriage pulled by a pair of sturdy bays.

Angus MacKimmie was a grizzled, bearded fellow in an ancient red kilt and a threadbare brown jacket and bonnet. When he had turned to the task of tending the horses, James had gone to the door. When no butler appeared, he had simply let himself inside.

“Where the devil is everyone,” he muttered now.

A door creaked in the shadows beyond the staircase, and a huge gray wolfhound padded toward him on rangy legs. Its throaty woof belied its age as the dog approached calmly to sniff the newcomer, as if not bothered to defend the house against a stranger. James patted the dog’s head.

“Not just screeching banshees but fairy hounds too, hey?” James asked.

The dog pushed his head under his hand for more petting. Somewhere above, the eerie sound echoed again, miserable and faint. The hound whimpered. A creaking floor, a madwoman trapped somewhere?

“‘Kirk-Alloway is drawing nigh…where ghaists and houlets nightly cry,’” James murmured, quoting Burns as he rubbed the dog’s ears.

Then the front door opened behind him and Angus MacKimmie stepped inside.

“No one about, sir?” He picked up James’s leather case.

“Upstairs I’ll be taking this, then. You must make yourself heard in this place.

My wife is a bit deaf. Mrs. MacKimmie!” he thundered as he went up the stairs, boots pounding. “Mary MacKimmie, where are thee?”

The door beyond the stairs opened again, and a woman came down the hall followed by two terriers, one black and one white.

Stocky and middle-aged, the woman wore a plain dark dress, her gray hair wisping beneath a white cap.

“Oh, sir! Lord Struan, is it! I’m Mary MacKimmie,” she said, dropping a slight curtsey.

“Welcome to Struan House. I hope you did not wait long. I was in the kitchen. I’m that surprised to find you here so early in the day—”

“ MacKimmie! ” thundered the ghillie above stairs.

“I’m here, ye loon!” she yelled, and turned back to James.

“He’s a wee bit deaf. So you’ve met my husband, and these are the dogs.

Osgar,” she said, patting the wolfhound, “is a big lad but gentle and old now. The black one is Taran and the white one is Nellie. They’re good wee pups, though do they see a fox or a rabbit they’ll be gone after it and stay out until they feel like returning. ”

As she spoke, the shriek came yet again. James felt a sharp chill with it, as if an outside door blew open. Osgar howled plaintively and the terriers made low, gruff barks. Mrs MacKimmie glanced calmly upward, smiling.

“We expected you later today, with the roads so muddy from the rains. But MacKimmie drives like the de’il sometimes, to be sure.”

“An interesting ride indeed. Mrs. MacKimmie, I must ask. What is that sound?”

“Oh, that? It’s our banshee. She’s glad to see the new laird, I suppose.”

“I came to Struan as a boy, but never heard about a banshee.”

“You weren’t the new laird then, were you. That’s why. I’ll take you to your rooms.” She led the way up the stairs.

On the top landing, Angus MacKimmie met them. “So you’ve brought out our ban-sith with you, then.”

“Either that, or there are hinges or floorboards need repair,” James said. He spoke loudly enough that both MacKimmies might hear him.

“Aye, could be,” Mrs. MacKimmie said.

The upper corridor turned a corner at the far end, with several closed doors along cream-colored walls hung with paintings.

A worn Oriental carpet ran the length of the hall, with a table here, a bench there.

He had visited his grandparents here only a few times, for his guardian in boyhood, Lady Rankin, felt boys should be schooled and busy, not allowed to run about like Highland savages, so she had claimed.

He had rather wanted to run wild about the Highland hills. But that was long ago.

“It’s a very nice house,” he ventured.

“Aye, it is. I take care of repairs when I can, sir,” MacKimmie said. “I am your factor, caretaker, head groomsman and coachman, and your ghillie too, do you care to hunt or fish. Come find me for all of it.”

“I will, thank you. Struan House is quite impressive. A banshee is an old ghostly hag that prophecies death and disaster, is it not?”

“Some are,” Mary MacKimmie replied. “The Struan banshee is the sort that belongs to a house and a family. A fairy spirit who makes herself known over deaths, births and important things in the family. Today she marked the arrival of the laird, so she may go silent for a while.” She smiled.

“Unless you should marry and have a child, and so on.”

“A sort of weather glass for the family,” James said. “I thought fairies were pleasant, harmless wee sorts. Small wings, delicate beings perched on flowers and such.”

“There are many kinds of fairies in Scotland. You will learn more when you read Lady Struan’s pages. You came here to do that, I think?”

“I did,” he said.

Angus departed down the stairs, and the housekeeper led James to the laird’s rooms, which included a bedroom, sitting room, dressing room, and bathing room.

He walked past the large, carved bed with its embroidered hangings to look at the view from the windows of mountain crests against a vast, rainy sky.

“Handsome view. And excellent rooms,” he pronounced.