Excerpt: Savage Blooms by S. T. Gibson
S. T. Gibson, the queen of erotic fantasy romance, returns with this ravishingly dark trilogy of gothic manors, faery magic, and forbidden desires set in the foreboding Highlands of Scotland.
“A drizzly, moody, and lustrously carnal rendition of a storybook tale, Savage Blooms is the holy grail for lovers of dark academia and faery magic alike. By the time I got to the epilogue, I was ready to bite into the pages like they were made of faery fruit, just so I’d never have to leave.” —Sierra Simone, author of Priest
“A darkly decadent descent into desire. A masterful exploration of faerie bargains, ancestral burdens, and power struggles woven between the pages of a thrilling tale you can’t help but be swept up in.” —Hazel McBride, author of A Fate Forged in Fire
Read the first three chapters of Savage Blooms, on sale October 7th below!
PROLOGUE
The land had been lying in wait for half a century by the time the young man arrived. Half a century of dormancy, of the deep, dark sleep of ancient things.
The moment he stepped out of the rental car in his battered hiking boots, a shudder went through the earth. The hares felt it, rippling through the long grass. The finches felt it, rattling the tips of the narrowest tree branches. Even the tiniest wildflowers felt it, coursing up through their trembling roots.
Beneath the earth, an old magic stirred.
He was tall, fair, and quick to smile. There was a girl with him, stoutly built with a bob of auburn curls. He beamed over his shoulder at her, golden and boyish in his goading.
As the young man – barely more than a boy, really – tightened the laces of his boots, the land rose up to meet him. Misty breezes caressed his scalp through his close-cropped blond hair, briars tugged insistently on his pant leg, and sedge grasses bowed beneath his feet like soldiers saluting their prince. He breathed in deep, filling his lungs with the scent of salt and primrose.
Earth, sea and sky ached to enfold him.
He turned his face up towards the clouds and closed his pale-lashed eyes against the sun. The light slanted across his curved mouth, his strong aquiline nose.
It had been so long. Years of waiting, of slow rot anxiously gnawing away at tangled roots.
The pair of companions chattered, in high spirits as they shared a swig of water from their communal flask. Though the land didn’t speak the garbled child-tongue of English, it knew what these two were after. There could only have been one destination, because the story had always been a circle, always a gyre turning in the sky, forever unfolding, forever beginning anew.
The young man strode out towards the cave, and the story began once again, with his name inked like blood on the first page.
CHAPTER ONE
Adam Lancaster was euphoric. Granted, they had been walking in circles across the rocky landscape for an hour already, and they had been forced to return to the car parked at the edge of the tiny village of Wyke to get their bearings, but Adam wasn’t deterred. His blood was singing in his veins from the sheer thrill of being here, in the right country, on the right patch of land. He had never been this close before, not in all his twenty-two years.
Nicola, however, was less enthused.
“I’m pretty sure we walked past every single house in the village,” she said, blowing a wind-tossed curl out of her face with a huff. “And none of them match that address. Are you positive this is the place?”
“Completely,” Adam replied, leaning against the compact silver Volvo they had rented at the airport. He produced the letter from his breast pocket, where it had been pressed against his heart, skin-warmed and secure beneath his fleece vest. The paper was soft to the touch, every sharp corner worn smooth with age and handling.
The return address was well known to Adam: it was the brick split-level in a Michigan suburb where his grandfather had lived right up until his death Adam’s junior year of college. That had been the year Adam dropped out, mostly because he had acquired enough graphic design skills to freelance without having to flush more money down the drain on tuition, but also because his grandfather’s death had been a blow he hadn’t expected. It had shaken apart something inside Adam that hadn’t quite come back together again.
The recipient address was the mystery he had come to Scotland to solve. It was made out to Arabella Kirkfoyle, and the post code matched Wyke, a town hugging the rocky coast of the south-west Highlands. But there was no house number on the envelope, and no road listed. There was just one word, written out in Adam’s grandfather’s heavy but neat script: Craigmar.
Adam may never have heard of Arabella, and he may never have heard of Wyke, but he recognized Craigmar from his grandfather’s bedtime stories. Adam had hounded his grandfather with his bottomless appetite for tales of far-flung adventures. His recalcitrant grandfather had been perpetually grumpy except around Adam, who he spoiled with stories. When Adam had been an awkward, lanky preteen on the cusp of finally grasping the queerness that was already getting him bullied by the other boys, his grandfather would take him on long hikes around Lake Michigan and tell him stories of enchanted fjords and haunted Bavarian forests and always, Craigmar.
Craigmar wasn’t just a house, his grandfather would whisper late at night when Adam should have been asleep but was instead wide awake tending the campfire. It was a living place, an ancient stately home ripe with the promise of magic.
At this point, Adam didn’t care if half the bedtime stories were made up, or even if all of them were. He was grown now, less interested in enchantment than he was in geology and civic history. He just wanted to feel close to his grandfather again, to close the circle of love and mutual understanding that had been broken when his grandfather had his stroke.
“We must have missed it,” Adam said. “We should try again.”
“There’s only one road in and out of town. And we just walked the length of it, all two miles. I know this is important to you, and I really want to help you find the right house, but can’t we stop at the pub first for a a pint or something? Maybe someone inside can give us directions.”
Adam leaned a little further over the car’s hood, tapping against the metal as he thought. He brought himself closer to Nicola’s height as he did so, giving in to that unconscious slouch he had developed in his teen years when he shot up to six feet tall in one summer. Nicola was roughly the size of a thimble compared to Adam, which was to say, five foot three.
“What if they don’t want us poking around?” he asked, feigning concern. Everyone they had met on their travels had been more than willing to help them interpret road signs or find milk for their tea at the hostel. If Adam was being honest, he wasn’t worried about encountering an unfriendly face. He was worried about having to share this private obsession with Craigmar with anyone at all except Nicola, his very best friend.
“What are they gonna do, run us off with pitchforks?” Nicola snorted. “Burn us in a straw effigy? I doubt it.”
“That’s dark, Nikki.”
Nicola beamed, one of those sunny smiles that inspired countless men and women to throw themselves at her feet back home in the States. It had also been very popular with the locals since arriving in Edinburgh and spending the night partying in the Old Town before getting up early to travel to Wyke. She had been collecting phone numbers like souvenirs at every stop on the road since.
“Oh, come on, they could do much worse,” she said, as though this would make him feel any better. “If this was the Iron Age they would slit our throats and dump us in a peat bog as a human sacrifice. But if we’re polite, I’m sure we’ll escape with our lives and maybe even directions too. Lead the way.”
Nicola gestured across the road to the pub three doors down, a charming red-shuttered stone building with a painted sign that read ‘The Hound and Grouse’. Adam’s stomach growled, betraying his lofty commitments to his pilgrimage.
“All right, we’ll grab a beer and a snack and some directions,” he said, striding across the street. Nicola followed him, just like always. Ever since they had befriended each other their freshman year of college, she had been content to let him take the leaps of faith. Whether it was downing a shot at a Greek life mixer, diving off a tall rock into the cold waters of Lake Michigan, or traipsing across Scotland with nothing to guide him but bedtime stories and a single letter, Adam always went first.
He pretended it was because he was brave, but it was really only because having Nicola at his side made him courageous enough to try anything, at least once.
The pleasantly dim light inside the pub came from low lamps on the tables and the fireplace near the back, which made the long wooden bar gleam. It was barely 3 p.m., and at this time of day there weren’t many patrons sitting down for a drink. One elderly couple enjoyed a platter of sausages together in the corner, lost in their reminiscing, and some roughscrabble farmer-types filled out crossword puzzles and chatted about overdue spring rains at one end of the bar. A dark-haired young man nursed a porter by himself at the other end.
The proprietor nodded as they walked up to the bar. He was Adam’s platonic ideal of a bartender: in his fifties, heavily tattooed, and with a no-nonsense air that implied he had seen the best and the worst of people and was unaffected by any of it.
Nicola ordered a local red ale, delighted to be able to sample a regional brew, and Adam ordered what he was familiar with, a Stella Artois.
“A bag of cheese and onion crisps as well, please,” Nicola said. “Also, we’ve got a question that maybe you could help us with?”
“Fire away,” the bartender said as he filled Nicola’s glass.
Adam leaned across the bar and lowered his voice slightly, as if there was anyone here who might care enough to eavesdrop on him.
“I’m trying to get in touch with a family friend. She might not live here anymore, but maybe she’s got relatives that do? We went looking for her house but couldn’t find it.”
The bartender set down a bottled Stella in front of Adam, and Adam’s hand brought it to his lips automatically. He was parched, he realized. He had been so excited he hadn’t really noticed he was getting dehydrated, or that he hadn’t eaten anything all day besides cereal and three dried apricots at the hostel in Edinburgh.
“What’s the address?” the bartender asked.
“I don’t have a house number or a street.”
“Then what’s her family name? I’ve lived here my whole life; if she’s a local girl I might know her folks.”
“Kirkfoyle,” Adam said, breezy as you please, like he hadn’t been lying awake at night for the last month turning that name over in his head like a riddle.
The bartender nodded sagely, as though this too was something he had seen countless times. A foreign seeker stumbling into his bar looking for some scrap of forgotten family history buried beneath the village cobblestones.
“Well, that’s your problem there. The Kirkfoyles don’t live in town. They own the town. You must be looking for Eileen.”
Having tossed out this titbit, the bartender turned from Adam, good deed done, and began wiping down the bar. Adam’s brain struggled to process this information. The idea that his grandfather could have been in touch with someone who owned a whole town was exciting, but it didn’t answer his question of where the Kirkfoyles lived, and he had never heard of any Eileen.
“The woman I’m looking for is named Arabella,” Adam said. “Not Eileen.”
The bartender stopped mid-wipe, then gave Adam the strangest look, like he had just broken some kind of prehistoric societal taboo. Like Adam had eaten human flesh or taken his sister for a wife or touched a dead body with his bare hands.
“Arabella doesn’t live around here anymore,” was all the bartender said, and then he disappeared into the back room.
Adam slumped down into his barstool, the first feelings of defeat creeping in. He had known there was a chance that Arabella had moved, or even died. Still, he had held the hope of meeting her close to his chest, like an exotic plant smuggled in through customs beneath his jacket.
“You’re looking for Craigmar,” a baritone brogue put in from nowhere, making Adam’s blood sing in his veins. He had never heard anyone but his grandfather speak that name.
He turned and took a second look at the man at the end of the bar, who had drained his porter and was now looking at Adam intently. He probably wasn’t that much older than Adam, but he was clearly closer to thirty than twenty, having already crossed that great quarter-life gulf. He wore a green cable-knit sweater and he had overgrown chestnut curls of hair and a frowning, full mouth.
“The house on the hill,” the stranger went on. “It’s the Kirkfoyle estate.”
“Estate?” Nicola chirped, intrigued as a sparrow who had just spotted a feeder full of seed. “Hi, by the way. I’m Nicola Fairweather.”
“Finley Buchanan,” the stranger put in, flicking a glance her way. His eyes softened slightly, catching the light of the fire. Adam saw they were not indeed brown but very dark hazel.
“Adam Lancaster,” Adam said, sticking out his hand for a shake. Finley stood and reached over the bar, his grip surprisingly strong. He was shorter than Adam – most people were – but he had the callouses and sturdy build of someone who worked with their hands. “Do you know how to get to that estate? Craigmar?’
“I certainly do,” Finley said, tossing down enough cash to cover his tab as well as Adam and Nicola’s. “It’s a few miles down the road. Single-track, but it’ll get you there. I’m headed there myself; you two could follow me so you don’t get lost.”
“You’re headed there too?” Nicola said, already scooping up her bag. Adam wasn’t exactly sure about this; following a friendly stranger down a single-track road to a mysterious estate seemed like a great way to get serial killed, chopped into little pieces and scattered through the woods.
“Why?” Adam asked, suspicion in his voice.
Finley gave him a once-over, as though Adam was the interloper who had yet to earn his trust. Then he gave a very small smile, just enough to tug at the dimple tucked into his cheek, and swung his car keys once around his finger.
“Because I live there, and because my lunch break’s over. You’re welcome to come with me, or to stay here. But I suggest you decide fast, before the rain starts coming down any harder.”
Adam opened his mouth to point out that it wasn’t raining, then paused to hear the drizzle on the rooftop that was slowly building to a steady patter.
Adam had never been afraid of a little rain, and he certainly wasn’t afraid of a little adventure. He could handle himself, just like he always did, and he hadn’t come all the way out here to give up mere miles from the prize. Besides, with Nicola at his side, what couldn’t he do?
“All right,” Adam said, taking one more bracing swig of his beer. “After you.”
CHAPTER TWO
Adam dutifully followed behind Finley’s banged-up Volkswagen in the rental car, trundling slower and slower as the road narrowed and the rain came down with more dogged determination. It was astonishing how quickly the sky could open up out here. Finley hadn’t been lying about the single-track road, it was hardly wide enough for one car, unpaved and uneven, and Adam saw no other way to accommodate the comings and goings of other motorists than to pull entirely off the road.
“How far do you think it is?” Nicola asked, peering to see through the rain. Adam was following so close behind Finley that he could see the way the other man tapped rhythmically at the steering wheel with his thumb, how he glanced up into the rear-view from time to time to make sure they were still following.
“No telling,” Adam said. He had searched for Craigmar endlessly in the last few months, but the house wasn’t listed on any public maps, and when it appeared in sparse newspaper articles, no address or photos were included. It was likely the owner didn’t want Craigmar to be found, which wasn’t totally unheard of as far as misanthropic wealthy families went.
It would be nearly impossible to find, his grandfather had told him once, what felt like eons ago. Adam had been ten years old, begging for one more story and up way past his bedtime. But if anyone could do it, it would be you.
“We’ve been driving for fifteen minutes,” Nicola said, peering out the window as gorse bushes and scrubby trees rolled past. “Is that what ‘a few miles down the road’ means to a Scot?”
She nibbled her lip, a surefire sign she was nervous.
“Are you all right with this?” Adam asked. “If you start to feel weird, we can always leave.”
“I’d rather deal with whatever’s out in the hills than watch you pout the whole flight back to America because you didn’t find what you were looking for,” Nicola said, swiping on a bit of chapstick and fluffing her bangs in the passenger mirror. “Besides, the weirdo in the Volkswagen is hot.”
“A hot guy can still bury you under his floorboards,” Adam said. “And he’s not hot enough to be worth dying for.”
Nicola snorted. “Sure, like you don’t have eyes. Anyway, you’re my travel guide, remember? I go wherever you go.”
Adam’s heart clenched. He had spent as much of his college tenure as possible studying abroad or, at the very least, partying abroad on school holidays. He had somehow been to five countries in two years, funded entirely by scholarships or his total willingness to live on rice and beans so he could afford drop-of-a-hat plane tickets. Nicola was relying on his traveling expertise to steer them in the right direction, and he didn’t want to frighten her by worrying.
Suddenly, Finley turned left, disappearing behind an overgrown hedge dotted with bloody berries. Adam swerved to follow, swearing under his breath, and then Nicola let out an awestruck gasp.
A huge structure loomed above them at the end of a gravel drive, three stories of wind-lashed gray stone. Every white-framed window in the mammoth structure was dark, and the multiple chimneys atop the peaked roofline were heavily shadowed by the cloud-shrouded sun. The house was situated at the peak of a rolling hill, and as Adam pulled to a stop outside the large wooden front door, he saw that it overlooked a long, cleared grazing green dotted with sheep. The green stretched all the way to the hazy ocean coast at what, in that moment, truly felt like the edge of the world.
Adam stepped out of the car, struck silent by the grandeur of the landscape. Twisted trees edged up against the grazing lawn, as though the wilderness was straining to spill onto the cleared land and re-wild it by force. Even in the haze of rain, Adam could see that the estate must sprawl for acres and acres.
Somehow, it was bigger and more beautiful than even his feverish child’s brain had imagined.
Nicola’s boots crunched in the gravel as she pulled her hood up against the rain and peered up to see the tip-top of the house, which seemed to pierce the sky with its Gothic peaks. Some of the masonry had started to crumble, the hedges and flowering plants that lined the drive were scraggly, and the ironwork plate over the door that read Craigmar was corroded with age, but it was all still undeniably beautiful.
“Lovely old behemoth, isn’t she?” Finley asked, striding over with his hands tucked in his pockets. “Let’s get indoors before you catch cold. The lord of the manor will be happy to see you both, I’d wager. We don’t get many guests all the way out here.”
“Lord of the manor?” Adam echoed, falling into step behind Finley. He was aware that things like lords existed, especially out in the Scottish countryside, but it still felt like something better suited to one of Nicola’s storybooks.
“Don’t worry,” Finley said, tossing Adam a grin over his shoulder as he approached the massive oak door. “She barely bites.”
Before Adam had any time to figure out what that meant, a huge, waterlogged deerhound appeared from behind a hedge, trotting towards Nicola with alarming speed. It let out a curious whine, its red tongue lolling out between gleaming teeth, and Nicola stumbled back a few paces.
“Smoo!” Finley said. “Who let you free? You’re absolutely soaked.”
“She’s afraid of dogs,” Adam said quickly as he stepped between Nicola and the hound. Its coat was the same gray color as a clotted storm cloud. The dog reared up on its hind legs in excitement and Adam, astonished by its size, stumbled back a few paces too. “Send it away.”
“Down,” Finley barked, with such authority that Adam almost obeyed himself. “Down, now! You should be ashamed of yourself, jumping on guests. Go on back to the house. And no tearing up the garden in this rain, you hear me?”
The dog shook its head, jangling its heavy leather collar and splattering Adam’s jeans with mud, then trotted off with a spring in its step.
“Sorry about him,” Finley said, shoving open the front door. “He’s just a big dumb baby, but I thought I raised him better than that. Come inside and warm your bones.”
Finley strolled through a wood-paneled antechamber that was as big as Adam’s apartment back home, his shoes trailing damp prints over flagstones that turned to hardwood as they approached the grand staircase. Adam marveled at the feat of woodworking, like a twisting mahogany dragon that curved in on itself to create a landing before stretching into the darkness above. The space was not opulently decorated, and might even have been considered rustic by McMansion standards, but every detail Adam could see, from the mother-of-pearl inlaid coffee table to the gigantic oil landscape paintings hung on the walls, belied money so old most people probably forgot where it originally came from. There were landscape paintings missing from the walls, however, and open spaces on mantles where intricate clocks or jewelry boxes might have previously been displayed, suggesting that even the wealthiest old families needed to buoy themselves through hard times with selling off treasures.
“The lord’s a bit eccentric, fair warning.” Finley sloughed off his coat and hung it on an iron hook, then held out his hand for Adam and Nicola’s jackets. “No need to stand on ceremony, however. Just mind your manners and your host will be more than happy to tell you about Arabella, I’m sure.”
Nicola shot Adam a wary look, but Adam just gave her shoulder a squeeze and kept walking. Being invited right in was strange, sure, but rich people were weird, and Scotland had a different hospitality culture than America did, and most importantly, this may be the only opportunity he ever had to get his answers. Finley seemed relatively harmless, and Adam could probably fight him off if he needed to. Hell, Nicola probably could if she needed to. She was short, but she had a low center of gravity and she fought very, very dirty.
The pair followed Finley down a dim hallway, past a small parlor and into the home’s formal library. A merry fire, tantalizing despite the somewhat unsettling circumstances, blazed in a walk-in fireplace flanked by carvings of leaping hares. The room was painted sage green and paneled in dark wood, trimmed with wallpaper bearing tiny white flowers and vines. One wall had been turned into a gallery of framed photographs and little postcards, and there were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining the opposite wall. A well-loved cognac leather couch beckoned, along with a bar cart topped with a sweating bucket of ice and a decanter of brown liquor.
A woman stood gazing into the fireplace, sipping from a cut-crystal glass.
“Finley,” she said in a throaty alto, not bothering to turn to face any of them, “who have you found?”
“Friends, I hope,” Finley said. “This is Adam and Nicola, sir. They were down at the pub asking about Arabella.”
At that, the woman turned around, a strange gleam in her dark eyes. She was wearing jodhpurs, and a green tweed vest over a white blouse and riding boots. Her thick hair was crow-black, offsetting her pale skin, and she wore it half-up, half-down in a practical style.
“That’s the lord?” Nicola whispered to Adam. “She looks like a grad student.”
The lord didn’t look like any grad student Adam had ever encountered, but he had majored in graphic design, and Nicola had a degree in literature, which tended to attract a much more theatrical type of person.
“Arabella?” the lord echoed, taking her time while giving Adam a once-over. It didn’t feel quite like being sized up or quite like being leered at, both of which would have at least been familiar. It felt more like she was committing every detail of him to memory, which was somehow more discomfiting. “Do you mean Arabella Kirkfoyle?”
“Yes,” Adam said, relief rushing through him. He had half convinced himself there was no one left alive who might remember that name. No one to answer his questions, and no one to give him closure. “I know this may sound strange, but I’m here on a sort of… pilgrimage? My grandfather was very important to me, and he died last year, but I actually don’t know that much about his life. I know he spent his younger years traveling, and he used to tell me stories about this place. Craigmar, I mean. But I never knew where in Scotland it was. Recently, I found this…”
Adam reached inside his vest and retrieved the letter. It never left his person during the day, and he slept with it within arm’s reach at night.
“It’s a letter from my grandfather, addressed to this house, made out to Arabella Kirkfoyle. I thought if she were still living here, she might be able to tell me more about who my grandfather was.”
Adam swallowed hard, embarrassment rising in his cheeks. He felt as though he had shared far too many intimate details, but also that he hadn’t shared enough for his story to make sense.
“You came all the way out here for that?” the lord asked. “Quite the quest.”
“I guess I, uh, don’t have a lot else going on at the moment.”
The lord of the manor walked right up to Adam, enveloping him with the scent of peaty whisky and her iris perfume. She wore a somewhat worse for wear clan badge pinned to her chest, displaying her family’s emblem and motto. It was a leaping hare encircled with iron into which the words “vivere militare est” were carved.
“May I?” she asked, holding her hand out for the letter. Adam wanted to deny her – this was one of the only clues to his grandfather’s life that Adam had left – but she spoke with such effortless command. Like she was asking Adam to hand her one of her own possessions that he had simply been tasked with minding. And she looked right at him with those black eyes, blacker than any eyes Adam had ever seen, never once wavering.
“It’s very delicate,” he said, trying to find the courage to tell her no.
“Precious things often are,” she said, the whisper of a smile touching her lips. Between the day-drinking and the jodhpurs and the antiquated formal title, Adam had assumed she was much older than him. But now, up close, he saw that she was thirty at the oldest, perhaps not even that. She and Finley might have been siblings, if it weren’t for their obvious difference in social station and the way the lord’s complexion, alarmingly pale and latticed with thin blue veins, clashed with Finley’s healthy, olive-toned skin. “I just want to take a look. I’ll give it right back, I promise.”
Adam took a deep breath, then placed the letter into her waiting palm.
The lord made a humming sound in her throat, like she was very pleased with him indeed. Adam’s stomach tightened, with arousal or with some other more fearful kind of anticipation. It was hard to say.
“Please have a seat, both of you,” she said, sweeping a hand towards the couch. “Would you like a drink? You must be hungry from the road. I can have Finley heat up the venison pie from last night, or tea and scones if you want something lighter?”
“Oh no,” Adam said. “We’re all right—”
“Tea and scones sound fab,” Nicola said, plopping down on the couch. She didn’t look exactly at ease, but she was good at making herself at home in strange situations. Finley slipped from the room and Adam sat down next to Nicola, eyeing a collection of very old and very complicated-looking board games stacked tidily in the middle of the coffee table.
“How did you come into possession of this?” the lord asked, unfolding the letter and holding it up to the firelight. Adam’s heart leapt into his throat, but she didn’t toss the note into the flames, just studied the script with a curious furrow between her brows. “Did someone give it to you?”
“Yeah,” Adam said. “Whenever my mom finds something of my grandfather’s, she passes it on to me. I figured no one else would be interested in it.”
“Oh, I’m very interested,” the lord said, flipping the paper over as though confirming its veracity. And then, in a curious lilt that sounded to Adam like stories woven by a fireside, she read the letter aloud.
My Arabella,
It’s spring here in Michigan, and I’ve never seen sunlight so bright. It hits Lake Huron like a mirror, and fills your eyes with stars. The people in this part of the country are very friendly, and respect hard work and honesty. I think I might stay here, at least for a little while.
Last night, I dreamed of Craigmar, at Easter this time. I miss your mother’s lamb roast, and the bonfires your father built, but most of all I miss going on morning hikes through the hills with you. I wonder if I’ll ever dream of anywhere else.
I hope you’re keeping well, and I hope these letters aren’t inappropriate. But I suspect that you read them and that they make you smile, even if you don’t write back.
Yours always, Robbie
Adam had read the letter dozens of times, but hearing it in someone else’s voice made a lump form in his throat. He would go weeks without crying over his grandfather, and then it would hit him all at once. He stared into the fire, willing the heat to dry his eyes before anyone noticed he was getting misty.
“Thank you for sharing that with me,” the lord said, handing the letter back to Adam. She squeezed his shoulder before she moved away, an unexpected jolt of human warmth that startled him out of his grief. “I realized I never introduced myself. I’m Eileen Kirkfoyle. Arabella’s granddaughter. This is my land, and the fellow who was good enough to give you directions to the house is my groundskeeper.”
Adam’s shoulder burned where Eileen had touched him. It hadn’t escaped his notice that his grandfather’s letter could have been a love letter, and if Arabella had been anything like Eileen, Adam could understand the appeal of Kirkfoyle women.
“Pleasure to meet you,” Adam said, and he really meant that.
“I’m afraid I don’t know much about my grandmother. She died before I was born. But I’ve lived here all my life, and my family keeps thorough hereditary records, so I still may be able to help you.” Eileen sat in the chair opposite Adam and Nicola, leaning forward with her elbows propped on the knees of her spread legs. There was something masculine in the way she carried herself, like a country gentleman trapped in the body of a lithe girl. “I’m always happy to learn more about my ancestors, or any of their friends. It seems like your grandfather and my grandmother were very good friends indeed.”
Finley appeared with a wooden tray laden with a pot of steaming breakfast tea, three china cups so well used the paint had started to wear away, a plate of fluffy halved scones, a jar of raspberry jam and a dish of clotted cream. Adam wondered idly if Eileen had any staff outside of Finley, but then hunger took over and he became distracted by getting as much scone inside his empty stomach as quickly as possible without eating like he had been raised in a barn.
“Adam’s playing it cool,” Nicola said, her pink tongue darting out to lap a bit of jam from her thumb. “But coming out here is all he’s been able to talk about for months. We’re very grateful for your hospitality and your willingness to chat with us. It’s exciting, to finally be at Craigmar.”
“You’re a very good girlfriend, traipsing all the way out here with your man,” Eileen said, smiling behind a sip of tea. “If I were you I would have made him leave me back at the hotel.”
“Oh, I’m not his girlfriend,” Nicola said, a blush blooming across her nose. She was always quick to correct anyone who thought they were together, which happened more often than Adam would have liked. It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought about getting with Nicola – he had thought about it an embarrassing amount, actually, when they were out together, or when they were apart, or when he was alone in bed at night – it was that getting with Nicola was out of the question. She was gorgeous, sure, and they were good friends, but they were a bad personality match in the long term. So Adam had never spoiled anything with a short-sighted hookup. “I’m just a friend along for the ride.”
“Suit yourself,” Eileen said, as though she didn’t believe Nicola at all.
Nicola looked affronted at these fighting words. Adam knew from experience that Nicola would box the ears of a frat guy who got too handsy, or yank the hair of a bitchy girl at a bar, and he hated to see what she would do to landed gentry.
“Nicola’s been a godsend,” Adam said, stepping in to diffuse the situation. “And she studies Scottish folklore—”
“As a hobby,” Nicola put in.
“You finished a whole medieval literature degree,” Adam corrected, refusing to let her downplay her intelligence. “Anyway, this kind of thing is very up her alley so I’m glad she came with me.”
“What a lovely turn of events,” Eileen said. “So, how may I be of assistance?”
“Any information you might have about my grandfather would be great. You never heard anyone in your family talk about a Robert Lancaster, did you?”
“I can’t say I did. Was he a guest of the family, perhaps? Or brought on the grounds to do some kind of contract work?”
“I’m not sure,” Adam admitted. “He never mentioned why he was here, or why he left. He just talked about it like it was something out of a book, like Avalon or something. It was special to him, I guess. He wanted to come back, there at the end, but he was too sick to travel. I promised him I would go see it for him instead.”
“Finley, you’ve lived here as long as I have,” Eileen said. “Does this ring any bells?”
“No, sir,” Finley said, hardly glancing at her. He was chewing on his thumbnail like something was agitating him, like he would rather be anywhere else but here. “I just manage the grounds. The comings and goings of the house have never been my family’s business.”
“When would your grandfather have been at Craigmar?” Eileen went on.
“I’m not sure about that either,” Adam said, face heating as he began to realize just how unprepared he was for this conversation. Had it been stupid, coming all the way out here with nothing but a story, a name, and hope? Was he wasting Eileen’s time? “Decades ago.”
“There aren’t many of us left alive who remember that long ago,” Eileen said cryptically. “I’m barely twenty-seven. So’s Finley.”
Before Adam could press further, a deafening thunderclap boomed above the house, making everyone jump. Finley strode over to the window to glare outside, no doubt gauging how much rainfall they were in for and how that might affect his job, but Eileen just slapped her hand over her heart and laughed.
“It’s coming down awfully hard,” Finley said, shooting a pointed look to Eileen. There was a half beat of quiet, as though they were silently conferring.
“How hard?” Eileen asked.
“See for yourself.”
Eileen went to the window and began to make a tsking sound. Adam, who felt this boded ill, joined Eileen at the floor-to-ceiling window, along with Nicola.
It wasn’t raining outside; it was absolutely pouring. Adam had waited for cabs in Berlin rain, and he had hiked through Icelandic blizzards, so he felt quite confident there wasn’t much weather could throw at him that he couldn’t handle. But this was a gray, cold rain, lashing against the house in sheets.
“Is that your car outside?” Eileen asked.
“Yeah,” Nicola said. “It’s a rental.”
“It’s not exactly built for mud,” Eileen said. “That road you took to get here gets washed out during heavy rains. I’m not sure it’s safe for you to drive.”
“How long is the rain supposed to last?” Adam asked.
“Until tomorrow afternoon,” Finley replied, with the wisdom of someone who knew his way around a farmer’s almanac.
“Tomorrow?” Nicola repeated, voice tight. “It can’t be that bad, right?”
“I’ve flipped one car and bogged another down in mud on that road when it comes down like this,” Finley said, glancing over at Nicola. If Adam wasn’t mistaken, he was standing a little closer to Nicola than was strictly necessary. “Doesn’t matter how steady you are behind the wheel, the spring rains have a mind of their own.”
“You picked a hell of a time to come to the Highlands,” Eileen said. “We’ll have two beds turned down for you, of course. Happy to have you until the rain stops. That will give us more time to get to know each other and chat ancestry anyway, won’t it?”
“Oh, no,” Adam began, loath to impose, “we can’t—”
“You’d let us stay here, in this beautiful house with you?” Nicola said, and oh no, her eyes were soft with wonder. Adam could never deny her anything when she looked like that, enraptured by the mere beauty of being alive. “You just met us.”
“I’m willing to wager that two American tourists aren’t going to throttle me in my sleep, but if you get murder on your mind, remember I keep a rifle in my room.”
Finley let out an exasperated sound, and Adam expected Eileen to chastise her employee for that, or at least to give him a look of disapproval. Instead, she barely noticed.
“It’s no trouble at all, really,” she went on. “This house was built for hosting guests, but it’s just me here now, most days. A bit of company might not be so terrible.”
She gave Adam a warm smile, perhaps a bit more warm than was strictly necessary, her gaze flicking over his body for one hot instant before she looked back out the window.
She was hard to deny, Adam would give her that.
“Thank you,” he said, surrendering to this strange turn of fate. He had been dreaming of Craigmar since he was a boy, and now that he was here, he wasn’t keen on leaving. At least not until he had explored every nook, walked through every room, drank down every drop of history in this place. If Eileen was willing to allow that, it was all the permission he needed. It wasn’t as if they had anywhere else to be. There was the flight to catch back home eventually, yes, but Adam had left most of their itinerary open for side wanderings and unexpected day trips and hopefully, a deep and meaningful engagement with this place his grandfather had left to Adam like an inheritace.
Adam shot a glance to Nicola, who bounced on the balls of her feet in pleasure. She looked totally enraptured by Eileen and the private world of decaying opulence she commanded.
“Finley will show you to your rooms,” Eileen said, already drifting away as though this lavish display of generosity was nothing to her, like it was all in a day’s work. “Probably a good idea to get some of your things from the car as well. Take your time settling in. I’m not going anywhere.”
“We really appreciate it,” Nicola said. “If there’s any way we can pay you back, or help out—”
Eileen made a sound as though Nicola was being preposterous. “Absolutely not. This is hospitality, and it’s my pleasure. Finley?”
“On it,” Finley said, and then, as though he had forgotten himself. “Sir.”
Finley gestured towards the door, bidding Adam lead the way. Adam exited the library, followed closely by Nicola pressed up against his back, but he couldn’t help take one last look behind him at the grand room. He barely caught sight of the groundskeeper grasping the lord’s wrist, rough fingers leaving indentations on the milky flesh.
So quickly, and so faintly that Adam might have been imagining it, he heard Finley say in a low, urgent voice,
“Isla.”
The lord looked to her hired help with fire burning in her eyes. Then, she wrenched her wrist free.
This broke the strange, tense spell. The groundskeeper stalked off after Adam and Nicola, leaving the lord alone in her library.
“This way,” Finley said, voice a little rough.
Adam and Nicola dutifully followed him up a flight of mahogany stairs and down a twisting series of corridors that Adam probably couldn’t find his way along with a map and the light of day on his side.
“That’ll be Nicola’s room,” Finley said, stopping short in a carpeted hallway and pointing out a bedroom. “Adam, your room will be right at the end of the hall. I figured after roughing it on the road you two might like your own space.”
Adam wanted to argue. He and Nicola always slept in mixed-gender hostel rooms when they traveled, but that wasn’t quite the same thing as sharing a private room, and certainly not a private bed. He wasn’t sure how to complain about being separated from Nicola directly, so instead he said, “Can we have a few minutes to chat and get our bearings? Happy to be shown to my room after that.”
“Sure,” Finley said, unbothered. “See you downstairs when you’re ready.”
With that, he was gone, and Adam followed Nicola into her room.
The guest bedroom was small but cozy, featuring a four-poster bed decorated with carved roses, and a small fireplace in the corner. The wallpaper was covered in delicate green vines and tiny pink flowers, giving the room the air of a country garden.
“Can you believe this?” Nicola asked, in the same tone of voice she used to gossip about who was sleeping with who on the intramural volleyball team. “God, this house! It’s got to be what, eighteen fifties? Built on older foundations, I bet. And did you see how many books were in that library?”
“It’s gorgeous,” Adam conceded. “But I don’t love being stuck here.”
“You don’t love being stuck anywhere,” Nicola said, tossing herself down on the bed. “But it’s only for the night.”
“I just wasn’t expecting any of this, and we’re pretty isolated out here. I don’t even think I have cell service. I can’t help feeling like we’re putting Eileen out.”
“She’s just a lonely eccentric with too much time on her hands, and we’re free in-house entertainment. She said it herself: there’s no one out here but her and Finley. Now him I like.”
“I don’t trust your judgment when it comes to the people you like, no offense.”
“Am I not allowed to like people now?”
“Of course you are,” Adam said, covering for himself quickly. He had no right to be jealous over Nicola. At the end of the day, she wasn’t his. He had made sure of that, time and time again. It was easier that way. Less painful. “I’m just saying, make sure the guy isn’t going to go all Ted Bundy on you before you jump his bones.”
“You let me have my harmless groundskeeper fantasy and I’ll let you keep looking at the hot aristocrat like you want her to step on you with her riding boots,” Nicola shot back with a grin.
“I do not want her to step on me,” Adam said, bristling. The kick of his pulse at the mention of Eileen told a different story. “And did you hear the way they talked? So weird. Every other sentence is like something out of a storybook, like they actually haven’t spoken to modern people in ages. She’s worse than he is, but still. Let’s just play it safe out here, okay? If you get any weird vibes, come find me.”
“Obviously,” Nicola said with a sigh. “But this is what you wanted, isn’t it? Answers with a side of adventure?”
“I guess so,” Adam said, trying not to smile. He knew he should be more wary about this (stranger danger and all) but it was hard not to feel like the universe’s favorite son right now. It was so tempting to give in to the sense of fatedness that had wrapped around him the moment he laid eyes on the house.
“This might be it, Adam,” Nicola said, sobering slightly. She knew better than anyone what this trip meant to him. After all, she had been the one who picked up the phone early that Sunday morning his grandfather died. “I want this to be it, for you.”
“Thanks, Nikki. At any rate, we should get back down there before they start thinking we’re up here stealing their silver or whatever.” He turned to go, pausing at the doorway. Sincerity was sometimes hard for him, certainly harder than laughter and a good time, but somehow he managed it. “I’m happy it’s you with me out here. Seriously.”
“It’s true, I’m pretty great,” Nicola said, smoothing her sweater like a proud peacock as she strode past him into the hallway. “Now come on. I want more tea.”
CHAPTER THREE
By the time Adam and Nicola had retrieved their bags from the car and changed into clothes that weren’t rumply and musty from the road, it was past five, and Nicola’s stomach was grumbling. The granola bar she had put away at the hostel that morning was gone, and so were the scones from tea, so Finley heated up that venison pie after all. It tasted rich and dark and perfectly gamey, with a pastry crust so flaky Nicola wanted to paint it and capture its beauty. When Finley passed her a plate in the library where they had all agreed to take dinner informally, his warm thumb brushed the delicate skin of her inner wrist.
Nicola expected Adam and Eileen to lose themselves in theorizing about their intersecting family histories over dinner, but Eileen didn’t seem in any rush to get down to business. She made casual conversation instead, absolutely delighted with every new detail about Adam’s graphic design business and running club, or about Nicola’s work as a florist’s assistant who spent her nights writing yet-to-be-published fantasy books for children. Eileen didn’t even eat that much, just sipped a fresh glass of whisky while she listened, rapt, to the mundane details of Nicola and Adam’s lives.
Finley had taken his dinner with them, but stood by the sideboard while he ate, as though allergic to getting too comfortable. He kept finding excuses to linger, polishing the grandfather clock or clearing dishes, and he didn’t say much, but he certainly listened. Nicola caught his eyes on her more than once, and she caught herself admiring the outline of his strong forearms and the painfully romantic curls of his hair more than that.
She wondered if it would be poor form to hit on her host’s only staff member. She wondered if Finley might like to be hit on.
It wasn’t that she was totally incorrigible when it came to her freewheeling desires, it was just she liked meeting new people a lot, and that flirtation (and sometimes even a friendly hookup) was her favorite way to get to know them.
But now, with the sun setting outside behind storm clouds that refused to dissipate, Eileen turned at last to the matter at hand. Her picked-at venison pie sat forgotten on the coffee table as she nestled her chin in her palm in thought.
“What exactly did your grandfather tell you was out here, anyway?” she asked Adam. “Anything interesting besides old masonry and sheep?”
“It’s going to sound stupid,” Adam said, studiously putting away the last of his pie. Adam might be skinny, but he sure could eat.
“Try me.”
Adam set his plate down and gathered himself.
“The story changed every time. He said it was the final resting place of knights, that there was all sorts of treasure buried beneath the house, that it was a gathering place for witches… Just stuff to help a kid fall asleep. But he did seem to think that there was something special about this place, like it had some sort of weird energy.”
“I can certainly attest that Craigmar is weird,” Eileen said, tucking her feet underneath her in the armchair. She was curled up like a cat, boots forgotten by the fireplace.
“How so?” Nicola asked. She always had an affinity for strange stories, ever since she was a little girl scaring her foster siblings with creepypasta recitations. It didn’t matter if it was ghosts or demons, faeries or aliens, angels or headless horsemen, Nicola loved it all. The older the tale, the better.
“I won’t bore you with specifics, and I’m afraid most of the stories aren’t very happy,” Eileen said, treating Nicola to her undivided attention. It was a bit intoxicating, like a full snifter of brandy on an empty stomach. Eileen really was beautiful, in a way that felt brutal and unforgiving and yet effortlessly chic. “I was happy growing up here, but it’s true that many Kirkfoyles have faced hardship within these walls, and some have even died at Craigmar. This region used to be lousy with Kirkfoyles, but now I’m the last of my line. My own parents drowned in a boating accident just offshore when I was sixteen.”
“Gosh, I’m sorry,” Nicola said, heart constricting. She couldn’t imagine losing every family member you had since she had never known her mother or father to begin with, but she certainly knew what it felt like to be alone in the world.
“That’s life for you,” Eileen said, unbothered. “But that reminds me. Adam, I want to show you something.”
Eileen rose to pull a large clothbound book from one of the shelves, then slotted it into a stand atop the massive oak desk by the window. Nicola had barely noticed it before, but now she saw clearly that it was the sort of desk that stayed in a family for generations, the place where land treaties and marriage contracts and death certificates had probably all been signed.
Eileen turned the pages of the book with delicate pinches between her nails, which were painted with pearlescent lacquer.
“Come over here,” she said in that rich voice that left no room for argument.
Both Adam and Nicola rose immediately, and shot surreptitious looks at each other as they approached the desk. Somehow, without ever raising her voice or making a single demand at all, Eileen had them both on short little leashes already.
Finley watched intently from the fireplace, no longer pretending he hadn’t been eavesdropping.
Nicola stepped closer to squint at the pages of the book, close enough that she could feel both Adam and Eileen’s body heat as they leaned in with her.
Eileen spread her fingers across a list of names rendered in ancient calligraphy.
“These are my family records. All the offshoots of the Kirkfoyle clan, small but proud though we be. Here’s my father, and his father’s father. And here I am.”
Eileen pointed at her name. Eileen Elizabeth Kirkfoyle, born twenty-seven years ago, not a sibling to speak of. Only five years older than Nicola, and in control of a title and land.
“And this,” Eileen said, flipping back a few pages to tap at a name, “is my grandmother.”
“Arabella was an only child too?” Nicola asked.
A shadow passed over Eileen’s face.
“Yes. We don’t birth many children in my family. The women tend to experience… complications.”
“Born in 1960, married in 1977, died 1981,” Adam read aloud. “She was only twenty-one.”
“Every family has its tragedies,” Eileen said, somewhat ominously. Adam might have been completely convinced of Eileen’s affectation, but Nicola had hung out with enough theatre majors to know when someone was putting on an air. Eileen’s dreary dramatics were a bit studied, a bit like what she thought might be expected of her. But maybe there was an honesty to that as well. “That’s all I know about her. My father never really talked about his mother. I’m sure you can understand why, seeing as she died suddenly when he was two. Arabella’s husband, my grandfather, didn’t last very long after she was gone. He was an out-of-town sort, not built for Craigmar. Died of a broken heart, they say. Pulmonary hypertension, I say.”
“Do you think it was your grandmother that invited my grandfather out here?”
“Probably,” Eileen said, flipping the book shut. “But we won’t know for certain unless we find evidence of him here. Lucky for you, my family has always had too much time on our hands. We keep meticulous records: genealogy, photographs, letters, guest books, all of it. You’re welcome to look through whatever you like tomorrow.”
Adam looked slightly winded. Even Nicola had to admit the offer seemed lavish.
“We don’t want to make you go through all those boxes,” she said. “Maybe you can point us towards a local library or something?”
“Kirkfoyles are private,” Eileen said with a sly smile that made Nicola feel melty inside in that scared-confused-sexy way she liked so much. It was like Eileen was the cat watching Nicola the songbird out the window, dreaming of devouring her whole. “You won’t find any of my family records in town.”
“What will it do for you?” Finley asked. It was one of the first things he had said since dinner, and when Nicola glanced back at him, he was giving Adam a strange, heavy look. “When you find what you’re looking for?”
Adam looked right back at him, weighing him up with that masculine appraisal that Nicola had come to learn meant two boys were about to fight, or aggressively shake hands, or, less frequently, disappear together into a dark back room at a party.
“I’ll know myself better,” Adam said. “And I’ll know my grandfather better, and maybe then I’ll be able to move on.”
It was one of the most honest things feckless, freewheeling Adam had said this whole trip. Finley stared him down for a moment more, then nodded and dropped his gaze as though in submission.
“This is an opportunity for both of us,” Eileen said, grasping Adam’s shoulder. “I never knew my grandmother, and you knew your grandfather so well you can’t let him go. We could discover so much about them, together. How lucky that you found your way to my doorstep.”
“It is,” Adam said, gazing at Eileen with a high color in his cheeks and light in his eyes. He looked more alive than Nicola had seen him since his grandfather died, which pricked at her just a bit. She might not be a mysterious rich weirdo who lived in a castle, but Adam was lucky to have found her, too.
“So it’s decided!” Eileen said with the brisk, single clap one might use to summon a hunting dog. “You’ll stay the night, and get some rest, and have a hot shower. Then tomorrow we’ll all get our hands dirty with a little research. Finley, you’ll help too.”
“There are fences that need mending,” Finley said, sullen. Was Nicola imagining it, or did he seem bothered by whatever electricity was crackling between Adam and Eileen too? “Bushes that need pruning. And I’ve got to feed the dogs.”
“Then go home and feed them tonight and come back tomorrow with a shining attitude,” Eileen said. “For now, I think we should all get a good night’s sleep. You’re probably exhausted from all this unexpected excitement.”
Nicola wanted to protest that it was still early in the night, that she could stay up for another hour of talking or another cup of tea or even a glass of Scotch, but now that she thought about it, she really was bushed. Adam, similarly, had a road-weary glaze in his eyes.
“You’re probably right,” he said. “You tired, Nikki?”
“Kind of,” she said, stifling a yawn.
“I’ll show you both back to your wing,” Finley said. “The house is confusing if you aren’t used to it. Lots of twists and turns.”
Adam and Nicola took their leave of Eileen, thanking her profusely for the umpteenth time, then followed Finley up a flight of stairs that seemed entirely different from the one they had taken earlier that day. It was as though the house had been designed to confuse visitors.
“This is you, Adam,” Finley said, stopping at his door. “Have a good night.”
“You too,” Adam said, then looked at Nicola awkwardly. Why was he suddenly acting like he didn’t know how to say goodnight to her, like they hadn’t done this every night on the trip so far?
“Sleep tight, don’t die,” she said, prompting him with their customary send-off.
“Sleep tight, don’t die,” he responded, then stole one more glance at Finley before shutting himself away in his room.
Finley gave a small smile once the door latched. The expression softened his face considerably, giving him a boyish quality. Tiny, weathered sun lines showed at the corner of his eyes, the only indication of his age.
For a minute, Nicola forgot how to speak.
“My room?” she managed, barely half a sentence.
“Around the corner and three doors down,” Finley said. “And a word to the wise: the manor can be disorienting at night. I suggest you stay in your room unless it’s an emergency.”
“Got it,” Nicola said, fully aware that this was the part in the conversation where she should say goodnight. She opened the door to her guest bedroom and Finley lingered a polite few feet away as though making sure she could operate the light switch. He was only three or four inches taller than her, just the way she liked best, and he smelled like pine and woodsmoke.
“Anything else?” she asked.
For a moment it appeared like he wanted to say something more. But then, he just nodded.
“No. Pleasant dreams.”
“You too,” Nicola said, feeling a bit deflated.
With that, Finley was gone, leaving Nicola alone in the darkened room.
In the resulting quiet, she could hear the manor creaking and settling, like a living, breathing thing.
For as long as Adam can remember, the legends passed down from his world-traveling grandfather have called him to a crumbling manor in the Highlands. His closest friend Nicola longs for the same adventure, as well as for Adam himself. She’ll follow him just about anywhere – even to the remote wilds of Scotland – if it pushes the pair to surrender to their shared attraction.
But when a storm strikes and strands them unexpectedly, Adam and Nicola find themselves at the mercy of the eccentric owner of the infamous house, Eileen, as well as her brooding groundskeeper, Finley.
Trapped by the weather, and bound by ancient faery magic, Nicola and Adam get more than they bargained for as they become entangled in Eileen and Finley’s world of mind games, deceit and forbidden desire. As ancestral sins are unearthed, Adam and Nicola will have to reckon with the spell Eileen and Finley have cast over them – and whether or not they even want to be free.