“What am I going to do?” she said, more to herself than to Tomas.
“They’re looking for you. Call out to them.”
“How do you know if you can’t see them?”
“I can hear them sometimes, and there is another, not like you, but I see her— she’s like a shade. She mourns you.”
“Rose,” Gillian whispered.
She filled her lungs and screamed for help. But her screams were useless—the strong wind stole the words from her mouth and sent them away.
Her chest and throat burned with every labored breath. She clutched her arm to her side. It was broken. She must have landed on it. She tried not to panic but couldn’t help thinking she would die on this ledge, from starvation and exposure. The eagles would feast on her.
She screamed again, tears making mud of the grit on her cheeks.
Tomas watched her sadly. “I had hoped to save you from this.”
“Why do you want to save me?”
“It’s been so long since I’ve had someone to talk to. And if you die . . . you probably won’t stay here. Most don’t.”
“Are there others like you here?”
Tomas nodded. “I canna talk to some of them . . . they dinna see me anymore than the live ones do.”
She thought of Aileen in her cleaning and drinking circuit, oblivious to anything but that single moment in time.
She looked upward, straining to hear the voices Tomas claimed he heard calling for her, but all she heard was the rush of wind and call of eagles. She had to keep talking, or she would go mad. Her throat was raw from screaming, and the pain in her arm made her weak and sick.
“I saw another ghost, on the cliff. A woman. I think it was the late countess, Catriona. Can you see her?”
“Not really, my lady, though I felt her and caught brief snatches of her.” He sighed. “I wish I could speak to her.”
He seemed a very lonely fellow.
“Can you not leave?” Gillian asked. “Can you not go to heaven?”
His eyebrows drooped. “I dinna know how. I dinna know if I’m meant to.”
The wind whistled as it gusted over the ledge. An enormous nest was a few feet away. The soft, downy brown feathers lifted on the breeze and spun out into the air.
Gillian’s stomach rebelled from the pain in her arm.Her head whirled, gray crowding the edges of her vision.
“I’m going to lie down a bit,” Gillian said, her voice a bare whisper, and she slid down until her cheek pressed into the grit of the ledge.
18
Nicholas’s anxiety and frustration mounted as he followed Broc to another dead end. The dog picked up Gillian’s scent all over the castle, but it was rapidly becoming clear that he followed old trails. Nicholas tried to get the dog out to the garden, but Broc didn’t want to go. Finally he found a length of rope and looped it around Broc’s neck. The dog resisted at first, then caught Gillian’s scent and dragged Nicholas.
At the open gate to the garden, Sir Philip Kilpatrick and his wife were in conversation with Evan. Annoyance and frustration lowered Nicholas’s shoulders; he narrowed his eyes. He did not have time for this. They turned at his approach. God only knew what Evan had told them. Nicholas continued past them until the dog decided it wanted to go back inside and abruptly changed direction. Nicholas leaned over and picked the hound up. It was a large dog, at least seven stone, but it lay in his arms like a puppy, tonguelolling. The Kilpatricks only stared at him, wide-eyed.
Nicholas was almost to the postern door when the tapping of light steps on the flagstone path followed him. “What are you doing with that dog?” Isobel stopped in front of him, blocking his way, her red-gold hair a halo in the bright sunlight.
“Put the dog down,” Sir Philip said in a tone meant to soothe a madman. “I’m not sure what he did, but—”
Nicholas whirled around, looking at Philip incredulously. “What do you think I’m going to do? Throw him over the side?”
“Well . . .” Philip’s brows drew together in confusion, his gaze darting to his wife. “Isobel, come away from him.” When Isobel had moved a safe distance away from Nicholas, he continued, “Why don’t you come inside and tell me what happened, aye?”
