Page 45 of Ghost of the Ton

She looked away, and he cursed himself.

“I-I cannot,” she replied. “We’re not intimately acquainted, and soon I’ll be—”

“I’d like ye to call me Hamish,” he said, lowering his voice. “If we’re not to be husband and wife, can we at least be friends? I’d like ye to leave here having made a friend. Or do ye have so many that ye’re in need of no more?”

“I’ve no friends here,” she said, her voice almost inaudible.

“Ye have one right here.”

“Perhaps.”

He smiled then gestured about the room. “Do ye know aught of the previous occupant?”

“Only what your mother told me. Old Mrs. MacLennan, she called her. I’m sorry that she died.”

“She’s still here,” he replied. “Everyone whose heart is in the Highlands lives on after they pass. We’re the sunbeams that warm the crops on a bright day, the breeze that sings through the trees, and”—he gestured to the view from the window—“Old Ma MacLennan was rumored to be a kelpie.”

“A what?”

“A sprite that takes many forms, for good or mischief—though knowing Ma MacLennan, it’ll be for good. I heard tales that she took on the sins of all the folk at Glenblath. Each night she entered the river to melt into the water. Ye could see her—the ripples of light when the moon was full. Then, as the first threads of dawn filled the sky, she rose from the water, taking human form once again, having cleansed herself of the sins of others.”

She fixed her gaze on him, her eyes wide with wonder, as if enthralled by the spell of his tale.

“How did she die? Had the burden of everyone’s sins become to great?”

“She simply passed due to old age,” he said. “She’d seen over eighty summers. She was ancient even when I were a bairn, bouncing me on her knee by that very fireplace, telling me tales of the spirits. Folk hereabouts called her a witch.”

His wife blinked and the spell was broken.

“Too many women are labeled as witches by men,” she said. “If we’re beautiful, men will call us vain and say that we use our beauty to cast spells on them. And if we’re not beautiful enough…” She sighed. “I understand my father’s regret that I wasn’t a boy. Reason tells me that the fault lies with the men who rule the world, who cannot accept a woman for what she is. But when has the world listened to reason?”

She wiped her hands on the cloth, then dropped it in the bucket.

“Do men not realize that if we were witches, we’d not waste our efforts turning men into newts? We’d cast a spell to render a cottage clean at the utterance of a few words, rather than a day’s toil.”

“In the absence of a spell,” Hamish said, “will a foolish man incapable of saying the right thing serve as an alternative?”

She lifted her eyebrows in inquiry.

“I’ll grant that we men sometimes lack the ability to wield our minds,” he continued, “but we can at least wield a broom. We’re to be friends, yes? In which case, permit me to help ye.” He grinned at her. “If ye’re amenable to calling me Hamish, that is.”

He unwrapped the pie and she lowered her gaze. Her tongue flicked out and ran across her lips, rendering them moist and glistening.

“Ye’ll not taste better in all the Highlands,” he said. “I fancy a bite myself, if ye’re willing to oblige.”

Her eyes flared for a moment and his cock twitched at the flicker of desire in them. Did she understand his meaning? Then she blinked and the desire disappeared. But the ghost of a smile remained on her lips as she gestured to the broom.

“If we’re to be on equal terms,” she said, “you must first earn your pie.”

He laughed again, and his soul let out a little sigh as her lips curved into a smile.

“I’ve not seen ye smile much, lass,” he said. “But I take the blame for that. I hope I’ll see ye smile many more times before ye leave us.”

Her smile slipped and he cursed himself once more. Why must he refer to their inevitable parting?

Then he checked himself.

Why did the notion of their parting bother him?