Tristan: A Highlander Romance (The Ghosts of Culloden Moor Book 31) Read online

  TRISTAN

  The Ghosts of Culloden Moor (No. 31)

  By L.L. Muir

  KINDLE EDITION

  PUBLISHED BY

  Lesli Muir Lytle

  www.llmuir.weebly.com

  Tristan © 2017 L.Lytle

  The Ghosts of Culloden Moor Series © 2015 L.Lytle

  All rights reserved

  Amazon KDP Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please purchase your own copy. The ebook contained herein constitutes a copyrighted work and may not be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, or stored in or introduced into an information storage and retrieval system in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the copyright owner, except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This ebook is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  To the Natalies in my life.

  You know who you are.

  And to all those

  who made it possible

  for the local convenience store,

  Maverik,

  to supply me with nugget ice…

  Bless you.

  BOOKS IN THE SERIES

  The Ghosts of Culloden Moor

  by L.L. Muir

  1. The Gathering

  2. Lachlan

  3. Jamie

  4. Payton

  5. Gareth (Diane Darcy)

  6. Fraser

  7. Rabby

  8. Duncan (Jo Jones)

  9. Aiden (Diane Darcy)

  10. Macbeth

  11. Adam (Cathie MacRae)

  12. Dougal

  13. Kennedy

  14. Liam (Diane Darcy)

  15. Gerard

  16. Malcolm (Cathie MacRae)

  18. Watson

  19. Iain (Melissa Mayhue)

  20. Connor

  21. MacLeod (Cathie MacRae)

  22. Murdoch (Diane Darcy)

  23. Brodrick

  24. The Bugler

  25. Kenrick (Diane Darcy)

  26. Patrick (Cathie MacRae)

  27. Finlay

  28. Hamish

  29. Rory (Jo Jones)

  30. McBean (Diane Darcy)

  31. Tristan

  32. Niall (Diane Darcy)

  You’ll find more books by L.L. Muir on the Current Books page.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  DEDICATION

  BOOKS IN THE SERIES

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CURRENT BOOKS by L.L. Muir

  Note from the author…

  About the Author

  TRISTAN

  (*If you prefer to read the short introduction to the series first, you can get it here.)

  CHAPTER ONE

  Edinburgh, current day

  The sun eased out of the clouds and focused its rare yellow rays on the rain-splashed cobblestones of the Royal Mile, but Audie Hayes would not be fooled again. She clung tight to her layers of thin jackets and refused to give up even the blue windbreaker, because the second she stripped it off, a cold breeze would swoop in and chill her to the bone.

  She knew. It had happened plenty of times in the past three weeks. If she didn’t know better, she would think the weather itself was watching and waiting. And sometimes it took all day for her bones to thaw out again. So, even if that outer plastic layer started melting like a candle, she wasn’t going to take it off until she was safely tucked inside a hotel room somewhere.

  Southern girls and northern ocean breezes were a match made in a very cold hell.

  Leaning back against the cool stone wall helped offset the temporary heat while she watched the little side road marked Cockburn Street. She’d been waiting for her friend to appear for the past ten minutes, after leaving her behind in a strange tea shop. If Natalie had been sidetracked again between there and the Royal Mile, Audie was going to kill her. Or worse yet, if she’d been lured through those heavy green curtains into the back of the teashop…

  It was the type of place other people might call creepy. Naturally, Natalie Harber loved it instantly. If Audie believed in supernatural senses, she might have called it creepy too, but she didn’t believe in anything she couldn’t prove. The teashop was simply too dark for her taste, and the thick curtains leading to the back might be hiding just about anything.

  Questionable. That’s what it was. And she really shouldn’t have left Nat alone there.

  A guy with a spiked mohawk lumbered up the street on the sidewalk in front of her. He had a set of bagpipes tucked under his arm and a smart-ass grin. He tilted his head and lifted his chin in a silent invitation to come along with him, but he didn’t slow down. She figured he was late for his next gig.

  “Audie!”

  Natalie’s voice cut across the wide road and relieved her guilt. Her massive head of curls were easy to spot—the perfect opposite of Audie’s straight ginger hair, just like Nat’s olive skin made her look pale in comparison.

  After they made eye contact, her friend dropped her waving arm and skipped sideways through the enthusiastic foot traffic. Half of the crowd was headed up the hill toward Edinburgh Castle while the weary-looking folks headed away from it.

  Audie caught sight of a white sack that was new, so she folded her arms and waited for Nat to reach her side of the street and confess. She’d made Audie promise not to let her buy anything else, or they’d never fit it all in their luggage for the flight home—yet another reason she shouldn’t have left her behind. But Nat had insisted that they meet up in ten minutes on the Royal Mile and shooed her out of the shop.

  Her friend’s smile faded when she noticed her expression. “What?”

  The bulky white bag had a drawing of a green door like the tea shop’s. Audie looked pointedly at the sack. “Looks like she was quite the saleswoman.”

  Nat grinned and swung the bag around behind her. “I have a proposition for you. If you don’t like it, I’ll show you what’s in the sack. If you do like it, then you have to wait a while before I show you what I bought us.”

  “Us?”

  Nat nodded. “I think it will lead us to the perfect souvenir.”

  Audie rolled her eyes and pushed away from the wall. “I need food, a cold drink, and a place to sit down while you proposition me. But you realize, don’t you, that if I am curious enough, I’ll veto your propo
sition just so I can see in the bag?”

  “I guess we’ll have to see.”

  They walked silently in the direction of Holyrood Palace for a while, then ducked down a narrow road to the right to follow an arrow on a sandwich sign. It was nearly three in the afternoon, so the lunch rush had left the place empty. They ordered food and sat down at a small bistro table that was thankfully inside. As predicted, the sun disappeared again and left the street in cool shadow.

  Nat opened a can of soda, poured some in a glass, and gestured to Audie’s body. “Aren’t you hot in all those coats?”

  Audie shook her head. “Jackets, not coats. And no.” She waived at Nat’s clothing. “You should talk. How many layers are you wearing?”

  Nat looked down at herself and started taking inventory but quickly gave up. With all her bohemian skirts and scarves, plus a few layers she’d purchased that morning, she silently conceded the argument.

  Audie sighed. “Okay. Spill the beans.”

  Nat’s eyes lit. “The woman in the tea shop is a witch, by the way.”

  Audie bit her lips together and waited.

  “You should have stayed. Then you’d believe me.” Nat made a choking noise. “Wait. What am I saying? Of course you wouldn’t believe me.” She took a long drink, then glanced at the counter where their food was being plated. “Scotland is wasted on the unbeliever.”

  “Um, last week, you said it was Paris that was wasted on the unbeliever.”

  Nat shrugged. “Well, it was.”

  “You think this whole trip has been wasted on me?”

  It was Nat’s turn to bite her lips together, but eventually, she reached across the small table, put her hand on Audie’s, and gave her a smile. “Of course not. There is no one I would rather travel with and you know it. And we’ve had a great time. I just wish you could appreciate some of the quirkier stuff—”

  “Like witches and fairy pools—”

  “Exactly.”

  Audie lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “I do appreciate them. I have fun listening to it all. I laugh, don’t I?”

  Nat’s eyes narrowed. “Usually at me.”

  “Well, see? It’s not wasted on me, just because I don’t...”

  “Believe.”

  “Yeah. That doesn’t mean it’s a waste.”

  Nat’s eyes lit up again as she reached down and patted the white sack leaning against her calf. “Well, I think I can change that.”

  Audie leaned back in her small metal chair and closed her eyes so Nat wouldn’t see them rolling. “You think you can make me a believer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of magic?”

  “Of magic.”

  A chill raced up Audie’s spine. It was the same reaction she’d had to stepping inside the tea shop, but she refused to believe it was a response to anything other than Natalie’s enthusiasm. Sadly, her friend seemed confident she could convince her of a supernatural world that ran parallel to the here and now. Audie just hoped that, when Natalie failed to win her over, the disappointment wouldn’t taint the memory of their terrific trip.

  “Don’t get your hopes up, Nat. You’ve known me long enough to know better.”

  Her friend nodded, but she still couldn’t hide her excitement.

  Audie sighed. “All right. Let’s hear this proposition.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  According to Tristan Bain’s mum, even as a wee bairn, he presumed it to be his duty in this world to displace every stone he came upon. From the time he could crawl across the ground, his destination was the nearest rock he might get his plump little hands on. No matter what its size, into his mouth it went for a taste. Most of them, naturally, were a disappointment, but he had to sample each one to be certain.

  It was a wonder Tristan had any teeth by the time he was four, and his mother often confessed he might have a dozen pebbles knocking about in his wame that may never make their way out. And to play his part, his father would lift him into the air and shake him, demanding that his son stop giggling so they might hear the rocks clattering inside his belly.

  As a lad, he was invited by many of his neighbors to have a look at their fields and if there were any stones that caught his fancy, he was welcome to them. So, he spent many an afternoon clearing those fields and piling their ordinary rocks along the edges, or using them to shore up a rock wall or two. He bit his tongue and played along, for he never knew when he might come across some remarkable stone worth adding to his secret collection.

  Though his fascination with stones faded as he matured, Tristan’s eyes were already well-trained to scan the ground whenever he was left alone to bide his time. Even while resting with his back against a tree, waiting for the great battle to begin on the moor, he cleared his mind and allowed his attention to wander to the pebbles within reach.

  And after the battle…

  Well, after the battle—and that next day when he’d risen with 78 others to haunt Culloden—his well-trained eyes gave him an advantage over the others. Or perhaps it was not so much an advantage as it was…a curse.

  For Culloden’s 79, the laws of the world between one life and the next were quickly learned; if one’s mind was not occupied, one found himself returned to the spot of ground upon which he’d breathed and bled his last. It was by no means a resting place or proper grave, for they’d all been denied such luxury, being heaped into gaping maws in the ground and remembered by one collective stone or another. But their returning place, their deathbeds, became an undeniably familiar spot, and in time, the blood and gore faded to dark shades of gray.

  Tristan had perished on his back, staring up at the smoke-gray sky. So, when he closed his eyes and allowed his mind to clear completely, he was glad to be returned to that position, to wake again to clear vistas instead of face-down in the mud, or trapped where his body was buried—beneath soil made heavy with blood and rain, amongst a hundred pointed elbows.

  For Tristan, however, returning to his deathbed was a choice. Thanks to his absent-minded scanning of the ground beneath him, he had to put effort into clearing his mind completely. He never slipped away suddenly as the others sometimes did. He never faded out of sight while staring off at nothing. He had to intentionally close his eyes and cry peace.

  Thus, it was Tristan’s blessing and curse to find himself quite alone on the moor, more often than not.

  While he searched the dirt for stones, even absently, it kept him above ground, as it were. Vaguely alert, vaguely alone. Vaguely aware of each year as it marched past. It left him witness to nearly a hundred thousand days during which he could never interact with the living, nor drink deeply of a good night’s sleep.

  But there was more.

  Tristan felt quite singular, as if there was something about him that was not quite as ghostly as his brothers, as if he were a bit more alive, a smidge less dead. Less ghost, more man.

  And so it happened that, when Soni Muir came to announce she was sending them on to the next world, his heart cried out in denial, for he wasn’t quite as dead as the others! In fact, in his anguish, he’d nearly missed her next words, assuring them all that first, they would be brought back to life.

  Life! Once again, he would know certain life!

  It was difficult, to say the least, to keep his excitement to himself. Waiting for his turn to come up was like waiting another two and a half centuries to pass. So eager was he that he might have been the first to be reanimated had he stood nearer the grand fire when the wee witch began weaving her magic.

  Lachlan McLean, number 18, went first. After him, it seemed Soni had a particular order in which they would go. So he bit his tongue and bided his time.

  Five nights ago, however, his patience was rewarded.

  Soni snuffed out her white bonfire with the wave of her hand, bid them all a good night, and turned for the car park. Perhaps she’d felt his attention on her as she went, for she stopped and turned to face him. She winked with one of her large brown eyes, pointed to him, an
d mouthed two words.

  You. Next.

  It was cruel of her to leave, was it not? To give him such a promise only to make him wait? Then again, it gave him time…

  In the months since the Summer Solstice, Soncerae had come to raise her fire and collect a few ghostly volunteers at least once every sennight. But it was impossible to predict her return, for sometimes it took much longer. And once, she’d returned after only four days.

  Sometimes she would climb from her car looking as weary as an old woman. Other times, she was as carefree as a bairn with a lilt in her step. Tristan couldn’t help but wonder if the fates of the those who’d already left the moor played some role in her mood, if perhaps her sad days were due to the fact that she truly had sent some of his fellows on to the next life where she could never visit them again.

  Would she be sad, then, to exchange farewells with him?

  Since Soni’s car had last disappeared down the road, five nights came and went. And five long days. He’d counted. He’d watched each hour crawl by, determined to never let down his guard until she came again, never allow his attention to lapse, and thus, never again return to his deathbed.

  For five mornings, the employees of the Grand Visitor’s Center arrived bleary-eyed to work, then left, bleary-eyed, in the evenings. The automated lights came on five times to illuminate the security officers buzzing about as if the place was afire, then turned off again, just before dawn.

  Five times, the sun rose with absolute confidence that the world had held its breath waiting for its return. And all five times, the world pretended it had. Then a sixth new day finally arrived—possibly the last he would spend as a phantom.

  “Unlock the doors,” he whispered to the staff as they headed toward the building, unaware of the Highlander tossing pebbles into a puddle. “Everyone smile for the cameras. One. Last. Time.”