Page 21 of The Women of Wild Hill

“Why are you dressed like a man?” her father demanded. He was wearing his best suit, she noticed. That was never a good sign.

“We are expecting a guest. Go put on something respectable.”

When her father didn’t answer, she knew something was on the verge of going horribly wrong. “Don’t tell me you invited the American?”

Her father despised all the silly Americans with Scottish names who returned to their ancestral lands to roam the moors and trawl the lochs in search of some long-lost heritage. They all went home with kilts and sporrans. The richest of them left with fancy new wives.

Angus Campbell had been introduced to Sadie’s father by a wealthy neighbor.

He was six years older than Sadie and heir to a sizable fortune.

From the very first moment he’d stepped through the castle’s door, he’d been smitten with the girl.

She, on the other hand, had made it clear she had no plans to marry.

But then as now, men like Angus Campbell didn’t see any need to take no for an answer.

He’d stalked Sadie like a hart, following her on her daily excursions and popping up where he wasn’t wanted.

One afternoon, when a storm rolled over the land, he’d spied on her as she stripped out of her clothes and danced in the rain.

She’d planned to make him pay for that crime, but she hadn’t yet found the chance.

Still waiting for an answer from her father, Sadie pulled her boots off the table and leaned forward. “Tell me. What does it matter what I wear today?”

His silence was answer enough. She could have murdered him.

“You’re planning to sell me to Angus Campbell like a fattened hog, aren’t you?”

Her father glanced over at Malcolm, who seemed to be expecting a response as well.

Then he slammed his fist on the table, rattling the already chipped dishes.

“Look around you! We can’t live another year like this.

Do you want to see the castle torn down?

You would see your beloved ghosts without a home?

Angus Campbell has promised to pay for repairs. All he wants in return is you.”

“This was my mother’s castle,” Sadie reminded him. “It should be mine, not yours.”

Sadie stood up and marched out of the room. She heard someone come after her. Assuming it was her father, she reared around to confront him when she reached the main hall. But it wasn’t her father. It was Malcolm.

“What do you want?” Angry and humiliated, she dragged her sleeve over her eyes as she spoke.

The man who answered bore little resemblance to the quiet and mysterious guest who’d long lurked in the background. “Do you know why I’m here?” Malcolm asked. “Have the ghosts told you?”

It was a simple enough question, but one Sadie was surprised to find herself unable to answer. “No,” she admitted.

Malcolm had always been there. He was part of the scenery.

When she was little and her grief-stricken father drank himself senseless, Malcolm was there to look after her and make sure she was fed.

The day Sadie got lost on the moors, it was Malcolm who happened upon her and carried her home on his horse.

The night she jumped from the balcony, convinced she could fly, Malcolm was there to set her broken leg.

He’d been by Sadie’s side her entire life, and only now could she truly see him.

He was a compact man, his handsome features offset by a serious countenance.

This was no boarder or hanger-on. The man she saw in front of her had a purpose and a mission.

And in that moment, Sadie saw herself clearly as well.

She’d long been a girl with her head stuck up her arse. The time had come for all that to end.

“You’re here because of me, aren’t you?” she asked.

“The day your mother found she was with child, she had two visions. In the first vision, she saw herself dying in childbirth. The second vision showed you as the head of a family with powers unlike any the world has seen. It was very early in her pregnancy. Your mother could have chosen her life over yours, but she didn’t.

After her prophesy came to pass, your aunt in Edinburgh sent me here to watch over you until you were able to fend for yourself. ”

“Why would my aunt send a man to look after a little girl? Why not a maid?” It didn’t make sense.

“Men have powers in this world that are denied to women. Until the scales are balanced, the Old One’s male disciples are called upon to offer our protection.”

Sadie’s spirits immediately began to rise. “Does that mean you will help me now? I can’t marry that horrid American.”

“I serve your family, and I will do whatever you ask of me,” Malcolm told her. “But it is my duty to remind you that your mother’s most important advisers still reside in this castle. Perhaps you might do well to consult them?”

“Yes!” Sadie readily agreed. “I will go see the sisters now.”

THE SISTERS LURKED IN THE dungeon where they’d been imprisoned before their trial in 1597, almost three hundred years earlier.

After they were executed, they’d returned to the castle to ensure their descendants would not meet the same fate.

For three centuries, they’d dwelled in darkness, providing counsel to those who needed it.

Perhaps it was merely a coincidence, but during that time, no one in the family had been burned at the stake.

Sadie lit a torch and plunged down the narrow staircase that led to the bowels of the building.

The long, dark hallway at the bottom had ferried countless prisoners to their doom.

Mice scurried across the flagstones and spiders dangled from silken webs.

Sadie was halfway to the thick wooden door when she heard the sisters whispering to each other, speaking in the old language of the north.

“She’s coming!”

“She knows!”

“Oh dear, she’s very cross indeed!”

“At us or at fate for making her female?”

Sadie threw open the door. The three women in black cloaks were waiting for her in the center of the room, their hands hidden inside their sleeves and their hoods casting dark shadows across their faces.

The flame of Sadie’s torch flickered. They beckoned her forward and the stench of smoke grew stronger as they drew her into their circle.

Once, when she was little, Sadie had caught a brief glimpse of what was hidden under their hoods. She’d never been tempted to look again.

“If you knew my father was planning to sell me off, why didn’t you warn me?” Sadie confronted the sisters.

“Fate has come for you.”

“You must go to the New World.”

“It is what the Old One desires.”

“Much good will come of it. We see things you cannot.”

“There is no good worth having that foul man crawl on top of me,” Sadie argued. “His breath smells like pig slop.”

“Yes, but he will give you fine daughters. Then you can be rid of him.”

“You will have a home where your powers will grow.”

“You will see ghosts there.”

“Pfft.” Sadie waved that gift away with her hand. “I can already see you.”

“You will learn to summon storms.”

“A power I inherited from you three, I presume?” Sadie asked. “Isn’t that the one that got you all burned at the stake? Conjuring a tempest to destroy King James’s boat?”

“The tyrant escaped by the skin of his teeth.”

“Our kind wasn’t as strong in those days.”

“Your gifts will be far more potent.”

“Your descendants will be formidable women. Unlike any who’ve come before.”

“Do you believe in our family’s mission?”

“Certainly,” Sadie said, wishing she could just stay home and ride horses.

“Repeat it!” one of the witches cried, as though she’d read Sadie’s mind.

“What is the mission?”

“Topple tyrants. Balance the scales. Protect the earth. Avenge the wronged,” Sadie recited.

“Yes. That is the calling. Ours and yours, too.”

Sadie felt fate closing in on her. “But why must I marry Angus Campbell? He’s revolting.”

“That is your sacrifice. We must all offer one.”

“Sacrifice is how women like us have survived the centuries.”

“We give of ourselves so our descendants will flourish.”

“Why is it always us?” Sadie groused. “I don’t see men making many sacrifices.”

“And that is our advantage. It is why we prevail.”

SO SADIE DUNCAN TOOK ONE for the mission and married Angus Campbell, who’d always gotten everything he desired.

The sacrifice didn’t seem so fucking small the first time he pried her legs apart and climbed between them.

After five minutes being pinned beneath Angus, enduring his thrusts and beastly groans, Sadie was certain she’d been led astray.

She cursed her father, Malcolm, and all three ghost witches every hour of her journey across the ocean to America.

The newlywed couple were meant to live in the Campbell family’s Manhattan mansion.

They stayed in the city for all of forty-eight hours.

That was how long it took for the elder Mrs. Campbell to go from praising Sadie’s beauty to declaring the marriage an utter disaster.

Her son’s new bride, however pretty, had displayed an unfortunate penchant for wearing pants, smoking pipes, and saying whatever the hell came to her mind—no matter how obscene or offensive.

“I think you would both be happier at our country home,” Angus’s mother informed the couple as the servants packed up their things. “It’s been empty since my husband’s untimely death, which is a terrible shame. The grounds are lovely,” she added. “Room for horses if you like such things.”

“Wild Hill is infamously haunted,” Angus informed Sadie after they’d been all but shoved into a carriage.

“My mother claims they were run out of the mansion less than three days after they moved in. She’s convinced the fright was responsible for my father’s death the following year.

I do believe she is trying to scare you away. Not to worry, though. I have plans.”