Page 28 of Tempted
Her apparition began to fade, then was gone.
“Damaris!” he called urgently, but he knew it was quite pointless. She would never acknowledge his presence.
Old Meg the Gypsy, however, said, “Who is there? What do you want?”
“I’m Alexander Douglas! Can ye see me? Can ye hear me?” he demanded.
The old woman stood up and put out a gnarled hand, feeling the texture of the air about her.
“Ye canna see or hear me, but ye can sense me, can’t you? God, if only I could communicate with ye. Damaris is ma wife. I didna kill her! Come with me—I’ll show ye her portrait.”
Old Meg’s eyes swept around the hall searching for something. She did not quite know what she sought. She closed her eyes and let her other senses, including her sixth sense, have full rein. She circled the hall slowly, her shrewd eyes missing very little. She paused beside Mad Malcolm. He brandished his stick. “Filthy Gypsy—away wi’ ye!”
Old Meg recoiled, not at his words but at the evil she felt surrounding him. Something from the long-dead past stirred in her memory. She’d had an unwitting hand in a poisoning here at Douglas. At the time she had put it from her mind—she had no reason to waste her pity on a Kennedy. She had a nodding acquaintance with evil. She’d been exchanging poison for obscene amounts of silver for years. She lived by the Gypsy code of “no guilt.”
Colin Douglas refilled Malcolm’s drinking horn and cast Meg a helpless apologetic look, then he tapped his fingers to his temple in the age-old sign that conveyed madness. Meg stalked off. She was in a mood to prowl about a bit. Alexander stood at her shoulder at the bottom of the staircase. He tried to “will” her up the steps but learned that her willpower was every bit as strong as his own. Discouraged, he withdrew up the staircase. Old Meg followed
Alexander halted outside his wife’s chamber. Ever since his death, he had never entered, never violated her sanctuary. Meg, it seemed, had no such scruples. Her gnarled hand turned the doorknob, and she went inside and stood transfixed before the painting of Damaris.
Alexander said, “The portrait-limner did a credible job, but she was beautiful on the inside as well.”
“Get out!”
Alexander whirled about, joy radiating from him like the rays of the sun. “Damaris—ye can see me. Fifteen years ye’ve looked through me, but I never gave up!”
“Fifteen years should have conveyed how I feel, you pigheaded spawn of the Devil!”
His eyes shone with happiness. “Yer angry wi’ me.”
“Angry? There’s the understatement of the century! I hate you, I loathe you, I detest you, I abhor you!”
“I love ye, Damaris,” he declared.
“I curse you!” she vowed, then vanished.
Old Meg reached up her fingers to touch the girl in the portrait. She could feel the very air in this chamber was charged with emotions, all conflicting. The memory came back clearly now. So this was the Kennedy girl who had wed a Douglas—an explosive, deadly combination. Both clans were insufferably blood-proud.
“Don’t touch that portrait, or all hell will break loose,” ordered a deep voice of authority.
Old Meg turned to see an angry Ram Douglas. Zara hovered in the corridor, assuming Meg had been caught stealing.
“A double murder will leave its imprint until justice prevails,” Meg said.
“‘Twas a murder-suicide. They got justice. The bitch was unfaithful. Alex Douglas killed himself before the Kennedys could get their vengeful hands on him. Get downstairs before I hang ye fer theft.”
Her lip curled with contempt. As if it were yesterday, she recalled selling the poison to this man who stood before her so arrogantly. He had been a wild and willful youth of only about sixteen, but shortly thereafter Lord Alexander Douglas lay dead and the Black Ram was the new lord and master. “Have a care for yourself, Ramsay Douglas. Visitants from the other side have such power, they could strike you down for the lies you perpetrate.”
Ram laughed derisively. “Go on, call up the dead—command them to materialize. Yer supernatural powers underwhelm me, old woman!”
“I claim no supernatural power, but I do have the second sight.” Her eyes flickered beyond the door toward Zara. “Debauch yourself while there’s darkness left. ‘Tis the last time you’ll be permitted to waste your seed.”
Her implication was marriage or death, and he wasn’t sure he didn’t prefer the latter “If yer hinting at my being leg shackled, yer second sight is playing tricks on ye, old woman. ‘Tis yer own shackles ye can see when I lock ye up. Begone from this place, while ye’ve breath left in yer body.”
Meg’s eyelids covered the windows of her soul. It was not politic to threaten this man. He would not cavil at one more murder.
Chapter 10
Ram Douglas could not close his eyes even long after he’d sated himself. Zara slept beside him, curled into a ball like a sleek cat replete with a fortnight’s ration of cream inside her. He smiled grimly into the darkness. The mere hint of a suggestion of marriage had robbed him of sleep. Deny it as much as he liked, the truth was he was a coward with no guts for marriage.
