Page 31 of Wed to the Highlander (Impromptu Brides #2)

The lady in white floated ahead, turning left then right, down the tapestry hall.

Lightning slashed the sky as Maggie reached the end and the high windows.

She looked down the long hallway to the carved door with the runes, now standing open.

It led to the north wing. To the place where the air felt colder.

Where whispers and weeping clung to the stone. Where Anne had plunged to her death.

Willing to face down ghostly apparitions and the devil himself to save her son, Maggie dashed forward. At the threshold, she skidded to a stop. The floor was wet, the boards cracked and warped, some missing. Had it deteriorated so much in a year, or was her memory mistaken?

Duncan’s warning echoed; The roof leaks like a sieve, rotting the floor .

A thunderous boom shook the stone walls. When it faded, she heard crying.

Jamie.

Only seven weeks old, but she knew her baby’s cry.

She inched forward, keeping close to the walls, praying they were sturdier. She passed the dusty drawing room, dark as the storm raged. At the end of the hall, she followed the cries up a narrow staircase, taking the steps two at a time. Her lungs burned. She couldn’t see—until lightning flashed.

This level was worse. Much of the floor had collapsed, leaving a gaping hole.

Isla stood at the edge. Her hair was wild, her dress soaked and plastered to her body, eyes shining with something beyond reason.

Maggie ached for her baby, wailing and squirming in her arms.

“Give him to me,” she pleaded, stepping forward. “Please. He’s just a baby.”

Isla retreated, backing onto a timber spread across the void.

Maggie’s heart leapt into her throat. They were three stories up, and there was no telling what lay in the blackness. Splintered boards? Jagged stone? If Isla fell or dropped Jamie, his tiny body wouldn’t survive.

“He’s Duncan’s son too,” she said, trying a different sort of plea.

That made something inside her snap.

“He should have been mine!” she shrieked. “You bewitched him. We were to be wed—until you came with your wicked womb and cursed sassenach ways!”

Maggie crept closer, heart pounding. “I didn’t steal him,” she said, hands outstretched. “Your betrothal ended years ago, before I ever came to High Glen.”

“You can’t have my bairn!” she screamed, clutching Jamie tighter. “I’ll protect him from your evil!”

Her baby wailed, his cries shrill against the storm, and all Maggie could do was look on helplessly.

Isla took another step. The beam shifted.

“Please,” Maggie implored. “If you fall, he won’t survive. I know you don’t want to hurt him.”

Rain streamed down. Thunder cracked overhead.

“Better dead than with you, sassenach witch,” she hissed, completely unreasonable.

Boots pounded. Duncan’s voice rang out, hoarse with panic, “Maggie. Where are you?”

She didn’t dare look away. “Here! On the third floor! Isla has Jamie!”

The woman continued moving backward—taking Maggie’s precious child farther into danger.

If pleading and reason didn’t work, she’d offer her what she wanted.

“You don’t want my baby. You want one of your own,” Maggie said, voice steady despite the tremor in her limbs. “That can still happen, with Duncan.”

Isla’s wild eyes met hers. “Why should I believe anything you say? You bewitched him.”

“But he can be yours again if I’m gone. Give me Jamie, and I’ll leave. I’ll never return. You’ll have what you always wanted—what was rightfully yours. Duncan. The castle. The title.”

“You’d leave High Glen?”

“I swear it,” Maggie said, inching closer. “You’ll be the Lady of MacPherson Castle. No one will stand in your way.”

Jamie’s cries grew louder, his tiny body trembling.

Lightning flashed—and Maggie saw Duncan behind Isla, silently stepping onto the beam. But beneath his weight, the timber groaned.

Isla spun toward him and teetered.

Maggie clapped both hands over her mouth in silent horror.

“Don’t move,” Duncan ordered. “The board is unstable. You’ll both fall.”

“You came for me. I knew you didn’t love her,” Isla breathed, lost in her delusion.

“We’ll go somewhere dry and talk,” he said, voice cajoling. “Give me the bairn and come to me, where it’s safe.”

She stepped toward him. Her foot slipped, and she teetered, Jamie tumbling from her arms.

“No!” Maggie screamed as she dove, skidding across the wet floor, arms outstretched. Her fingers closed around Jamie tiny ankle just as Isla dropped, her scream echoing in the void, wood splintering and crashing below.

With her infant son dangling from her fingertips, she strained to lift him. But he was his father’s son, a big boy, closing in on a stone, and she didn’t have the strength.

She tried to back up, but the rotting floor beneath her creaked ominously.

“Hang on!” Duncan shouted. “I’m coming!”

“Hurry!” she cried, feeling him slipping.

Rain lashed down. Jamie wailed, his limbs flailing.

Duncan edged forward. “Hold on, Maggie!”

“I’m trying!”

A deafening crack split the air—not thunder but the timber beneath Duncan’s feet. He lunged for the edge just as the beam gave way.

He fell.

So did Jamie, slipping from her grasp.

Maggie screamed his name, but by some miracle, Duncan caught him midair.

Despair turned to joy then terror, as, in a flash of white, both Duncan and Jamie—her entire world—vanished into the hole.

Thunder drowned out her cries as she hung over the edge, peering into the blackness. It was fifteen feet to the next floor, almost fifty to the bottom. Sobbing, desperate to know what had happened and terrified to see, she waited for another flash.

When it came, she saw horror and hope. Isla’s twisted, lifeless body lay three stories below, broken on the stone.

And Duncan, with their baby cradled in one arm, dangled from a rope.

“Thank you, God. Oh, thank you,” she sobbed.

Hands on her shoulders had her screaming again.

“It’s Hamish, mistress. This floor could give way any minute. We must get ye out o’ here.”

She let him loop a rope around her and help her to her feet, but her eyes remained fixed on the void. The next flash revealed Lachlan, with several others on the far side, pulling Duncan up, inch by inch.

It seemed an eternity before she was back on stable ground.

They urged her down to the great hall. She didn’t want to leave without her husband and her son, but with Fiona’s assurance that Duncan would come through the rear entrance by way of the kitchen, she finally relented.

There was no consoling her, though. She paced the gathering room, blanket clutched tight around her shoulders, eyes fixed on the wide doorway.

Then she heard her baby’s cries.

When she saw Duncan walking toward her—soaked through to the skin, chilled but alive—she couldn’t reach him fast enough. She threw herself into his arms and clutched their son to her chest.

“It’s over,” he said, voice hoarse. “Isla will nae torment us again.”

Jamie whimpered, his tiny fists curling against her shoulder. Maggie kissed his damp curls, murmuring comfort.

“Come to the fire,” Duncan urged.

Someone had pulled up a chair beside the hearth, brought her towels, blankets, and a mug of steaming tea. The great hall was hushed—shock from the fire, which the rain had extinguished—and horror that Isla had returned, utterly unhinged.

Duncan stayed close, keeping a watchful eye on her and Jamie while speaking with his men. She heard him say he didn’t care what it cost or what the government wanted. The north wing and tower were coming down starting tomorrow.

“Even if I have tae tear it down myself,” he growled, “stone by stone and board by board.”

As she rocked Jamie gently, she rubbed his hair until it was dry and exchanged his damp swaddling for another. Her fingers brushed something tucked into the folds of his soft baby gown—a stick of some kind.

When she pulled it free and saw the sprig of white heather, she gasped.

It was the same charm left for her on her first night at High Glen, in the miniature she’d found in the north tower, that she’d discovered in her skirt pocket one day then carried for luck only to be misplaced during the chaos of motherhood.

Maggie buried her face in her son’s neck and inhaled his sweet scent. She wasn’t sure what forces had been at play tonight—God above, a ghostly guardian, or simply her husband’s keen foresight with a sturdy rope—but she whispered a heartfelt “thank you” to them all.

Hours later, when the castle had quieted , she found herself unable to sleep.

Images of what had nearly been, of what she had almost lost, returned to her, unbidden and relentless.

She stood at her bedroom window, rocking her sleeping baby in her arms, wondering if she would ever close her eyes again without seeing it.

She had moved the cradle into the bedchamber with her and Duncan, not trusting Jamie out of her sight.

Inside, she’d found another small bundle of white heather nestled atop his blanket.

She hadn’t put it there. But she was certain who had.

Anne MacPherson’s child had never been found. Perhaps, in saving Jamie, she had finally found peace.