The Highlander's Haunted Kiss. Joanne Rock
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Scotland, 1890
Lillian Desalles has no business trespassing in Iain Darroch’s family stronghold. By rights, the American beauty shouldn’t even be able to see him. Cursed to wander the Highlands for all time, Iain appears to other mortals as a specter. Yet to Lily, he’s every inch a man. And the desires that have been dormant for over a century come crashing back to life at her touch.
Lily needs to claim her late husband’s Scottish property if she’s to have any chance of independence. Invergale keep is rugged and rough but breathtaking—as is the warrior protecting it. And loving the Highlander may free him at last…or doom her to share his fate forever.
Secrets of the Darroch Clan
The Highlander’s Haunted Kiss
Joanne Rock
The Victorian period did not lack for ghost stories. In fact, some call it the Golden Age of the Ghost Story. I have always loved Henry James’s Turn of the Screw, where a would-be governess takes a position watching over the children of a wealthy eccentric and faces ghostly occurrences at every turn. So it was with great joy that I sat down to write my own Victorian-era tale of the supernatural. As a longtime medieval fan, I couldn’t resist making my paranormal heroes from a fierce clan of Highlanders.
Enter the Darroch brothers. They are guarding ancient secrets in an old, enchanted forest, secrets that Lillian Desalles shouldn’t know. But after facing the rigors of London society and a ruthless American father, Lillian takes in her stride an encounter with a ghostly Highlander. Especially one as appealing as Iain Darroch.
I hope you enjoy the stories in Secrets of the Darroch Clan. Prepare for some sexy romances with just a touch of shivery haunting!
Happy reading!
Table of Contents
Book #1 Secrets of the Darroch Clan
THE HIGHLANDER’S HAUNTED KISS
The Legend
In the most remote hills of Am Monadh, Scotland’s ancient Grampian Mountains, the forests keep secrets from bygone days. Shifting mists hide murky lochs while winding rivers can lead hapless travelers in circles. Here, a legend lingers from the earliest of times, a tale passed down among the hardy souls who carve out a living in this unforgiving land.
It is whispered that the veil between worlds grows thin in those lush glens and dense forests where progress does not tread. And on a quiet day, if one wanders onto the wrong path, the mountain mists can lure a person into the land of the Sidhe, the magical fey folk of the Celtic lands who exist in a time outside our own.
Untouched by the passing years, these Otherworldly beings live in an invisible realm alongside us, but they are sometimes perceived out of the corner of an eye—a movement in the trees, a flash of color in the bushes. Occasionally, one of these lovely immortals is glimpsed as if in a dream, so impossibly compelling that most men won’t believe the vision could be real. Very rarely, a mortal can be lured into the timeless lands for the entertainment of the mystical beings that live there, only to be cast back into the real world years later, where their old existence never feels as magical as it did in those enchanted green hills.
Every now and then, a determined mortal tries to cling to that fey world by refusing to leave. One stubborn Highlander named Fergus Darroch even went so far as to kidnap a particular Sidhe female who captured his heart. But down that path lay madness. Or, in the case of the Darroch descendants, the curse of eternal wandering.
This is the story of one such time-walker cursed by the Sidhe.
Chapter One
Scotland, 1890
Lillian Desalles, the former Viscountess Broadville, had run away twice in her life.
The first instance occurred in New York when she was still Lily Rothmore, a headstrong American heiress who mistakenly thought she had some say in her life. At ten years old, she protested against the firing of her favorite drawing master by packing up the sweetbreads from teatime, dressing in a stolen groom’s livery and hiding out among the bushes in Central Park. No one had noticed her disappearance for hours, and by the time they did, her father was so furious to have his evening cigar interrupted, he’d retaliated by dismissing Lily’s governess and the groom.
Guilt plagued her after that incident, so Lily had tried to be a dutiful daughter, even going so far as to marry the Viscount Broadville, a man older than her father. The marriage had been a farce with an aging, impotent man left to consummate the union. But it left her with a modest parcel of land in the remote Highlands when the Viscount died a fortnight after they spoke their vows.
Lily now made the crumbling tower at Invergale the destination of her second attempt to run away. She had no choice but to risk her father’s wrath this time, lest she find herself bound forever to another man who wanted only an alliance with her wealth.
“My lady? Shall I bring a lantern?” a worried voice called from the road where a lightweight carriage rested with her maids, a footman and a Highland guide she’d paid to show them the way to the lands. “Or perhaps we should return to the inn until someone can escort us properly?”
“No, thank you, Glenda.” The maid had been protesting this trip since they’d been five minutes outside of London. “I can see. There is a side entrance here.” Lily’s eyes had already adjusted to the moonlight.
Invergale loomed, a forbidding stone tower bracketed by two wings on either side and perched on Loch an Eilein. Any corners of the structure had worn away due to moss slowly devouring the ancient medieval stronghold. Arrow slits loomed like dark caverns in the facade, hinting at the keep’s days as a fortress. Cold wind whipped around what was left of crenellated parapets, creating an eerie whistle and wail, an unearthly warning to trespassers.
Or so it felt to Lily as she tugged at a vine over the side entrance, since the main doors had been curiously bolted from within. Shivering in the traveling cloak that covered her widow’s weeds, she took a step back to inspect her work and her foot sank in a soft spot along the bank of the loch. Frigid, murky water soaked her slipper and weighed down her skirt.
“For pity’s sake,” she murmured, plucking her toes from the muck. Apparently, the loch washed close to the castle walls here.
Snap.
A noise from the forest made her pause. She peered over her shoulder toward a thick stand of trees in the opposite direction from where the carriage sat.
A shadow darted between the gnarled trunks of the rowan trees. A man. She could see broad shoulders in the moonlight.
Who trespassed here? Had she been followed? She had hoped her removal from London would put the matter of her marriage out of her father’s mind for a bit longer. Her heartbeat quickened as the shadow stood utterly still.
“Sir?” she called out, her lips gone dry with new fear.
“Lady Lily?”