Catch Me If You Can (6 page)

Even if Taggart had put it in writing, it was quite likely that without her presence, his sons could easily initiate some sort of legal maneuver to get out of the obligation entirely. After all, none of them still lived in the Hollow, and if they had no emotional tie to their only parent, it was doubtful they’d feel strongly about those ancestors who had come before him, much less the land they’d built their heritage on. On American or Scot soil.

Which left her with very few options.

A cold gust of wind blew in off the loch, making her tuck her arms more tightly around her waist. She hoped the storm held off a bit longer. She had an article that needed polishing and printing, so she could leave first thing in the morning for the three-hour drive to Durnish, to keep the appointment she’d made earlier, on the chance the bank didn’t come through. Her meeting was with Doug Wentworth, a land agent. Not that she was going to sell so much as a tuft of Sinclair soil, but she had to be realistic. If it got to the point where
th
e bank was going to come and take it all away, she might have to reconsider that stance. Of course, she had no idea if there wou
ld be a buyer, or what the prop
erty would even be worth, as it was mostly farmland and she had a hard enough time leasing it to cr
ofters as it was. But a smart g
irl understood her options. She looked
across the loch at the gloom that was quickly deepening the gray skies, and wished she felt wiser.

Ducking back inside, she took one look at the bed and the tousle of linens piled on it, and kept on walking. Maybe Wentworth would see her early, she thought, snagging her keys from the bed and her mobile from the floor before shoving both into her pockets. She’d make Durnish by nightfall, and see him first thing in the morning and be back in time to still get the article done and make her deadline.

She pulled her mobile back out and punched up the number of a friend of hers from university who lived just outside Durnish. If she was lucky, Val wouldn’t mind her bunking out on her sofa for the night. It was the perfect plan, really, since she certainly didn’t fancy being alone in her own bed tonight. She and Valerie didn’t keep in touch often, but her former dorm mate was always good for a few ales and some laughs at the local pub.

With the ringing phone pressed to her ear, she threw a few things together and grabbed her files. Pleased with her plan, she headed out. This way she’d be back before the storm hit. Which was a good thing, because she had a busy agenda planned for tomorrow.

She’d finish her article, go over her notes for the next one and get the proposal out for the one after that. Then spend the remainder of her day figuring out her options for Ballantrae, maybe formulating a letter to Taggart’s sons depending on how her meeting with D
oug went. After which she’d settl
e in for a nice cozy evening while th
e storm raged outside. A bottl
e of wine, maybe some cheese, a good book. And there would be a nice fire to keep her warm.

After all, she had plenty of bed linens that needed burning.

Chapter 5

T
ag downshifted and switched the windshield wipers to a faster speed as he began pushing the little rental uphill again. He’d landed in Glasgow just after eleven
a.m.
local time, which
was
the wee hours of the morning by his internal clock. By all rights he should have been bleary-eyed and exhausted. Any hope he’d had of sleeping his way across the Atlantic had been abandoned pretty early on. He’d tried, but
as
the other passengers around him had dozed, he’d been fidgety and edgy and unable to settle down. So he’d pulled out Maur
a Sinclair’s letters and read th
em over again.

Jace had ribbed him about developing some masochistic crush on his dad’s pen pal. Tag had taken it in stride, but privately he thought Jace might not be that far off. He was undeniably curious. What kind of woman signs her heritage over to a complete stranger? A desperate one, of course. In rereading the letters, reading between the lines, he could only surmise that it had been Maura who’d come to his father for help. How else could he have known about the place? No matter how much the man had changed in his later years, Tag simply could not see him tracing back his much-reviled ancestry and hunting up this place. Of course, he couldn’t imagine him buying it either, so who the hell knew what was going on.

But though Tag might not know much about Ballantrae, he knew e
nough from her letters to under
stand that it was directly connected to the origins of Rogues Hollow, and the three men who had founded it: Teague Morgan, Iain Sinclair, and Dougal Ramsay. He could only gather she was somehow tied to Iain. Which meant this was every bit as much her heritage, however loosely, as it was his.

And somehow, some way, she managed to con Taggart Morgan into single-handedly saving the rundown remains of their entwined family history, complete with dwindling tenant farms and a village struggling to stay alive. The cynic in him said that she’d just been looking for a patsy, a sugar daddy of sorts. Her correspondence painted a different picture, of course. Her dedication to preserving this part of her heritage appeared absolute, but she made it clear she wasn’t just looking for a handout. She wanted Taggart to feel the same bond to the place she did, even at the expense of giving up whatever legal right she might have had to it.

Of course, that might have been a ploy to make sure he didn’t renege on the deal and sell it off to someone else. Someone who might not be as keen on letting her stick around. After all, she had a pretty sweet deal going. She’d figured out a way to keep the roof over her head she’d lived under all her life, without being responsible for the financial obligation of maintaining it. All she had to do, basically, was house sit and oversee the occasional work crew.

Not that he had any right to judge, seeing as his father had barely been cold in the ground before he’d just signed over his share of his own heritage, thereby
freeing him from any responsibility whatsoever to its upkeeping and maintenance. Hell, he didn’t even have to house sit.

But as cynical an edge as he’d tried to maintain while reading her letters, he’d still ended up feeling as if he’d formed an odd sort of personal attachment to her. The way she related the stories about life in Ballantrae, from the difficulties leasing out the land to farmers, to the struggles of the villagers trying to keep their businesses afloat despite the steady dwindling of the local population, had given him a different sort of insight. A portrait that was quite intimate in a different way.

As his plane had circled the airport, he’d found himself wondering as he had that first night, why they’d chosen posted letters versus the more commonly accepted e-mails. His father had a computer, but, curious, he’d checked, and there was no correspondence to or from Maura there. Perhaps she didn’t have access to e-mail. So why not call? International calls weren’t so expensive these days. But a glance at the last few phone bills hadn’t turned up any overseas phone charges either. The cherrywood box and file from Mick were the sum total of his father’s connection to his Scotland property. And Maura.

The sun had long since set as Tag climbed further up the next mountain. The thrumming sound on the roof of the car softened, then disappeared completely as the rain that fell in the valleys changed over to the snow that capped the Grampian peaks. He slowed on the curves, and tightened his grip on the wheel as he renewed his focus on the road ahead. He probably should have stayed in the city for the day, acclimated himself to the time change and headed out in the morning. But he’d still been edgy and restless upon arriving, and had decided to just get in the car, buy a map, and head out, figuring he’d stop when he got too tired to keep driving.

Which, he realized now, he should have done a while back when he’d passed through Durnish, the last town he’d passed through that could actually be called such. But it was too far back to turn around now. He’d managed his way out of Glasgow well enough, and by the time he’d hit the more rural, single-track roads, he was comfortable enough driving on the left, going through the occasional roundabout. But now, hours later, climbing into the mountains, his shoulders and neck were tightening up from the strain of peering through the fogged windshield; he was still struggling to master using a stick shift with his left hand rather than his right. And the weather was growing worse by the minute.

To top it off, he hadn’t passed by so much as a barn, much less a town, in over an hour. There were dots and town names on the map he’d bought in the airport, but he’d quickly learned that just because a town had a name, that didn’t necessarily correspond to there being any visible signs of actual civilization there.

Unless of course you counted the sheep.

Initially, despite the bleak weather, he’d enjoyed his view of the countryside as he’d left Glasgow and Stirling behind. If he weren’t so distracted by what lay ahead, he might have stopped and done some wandering. He’d only worked briefly on that first dig, which had been in Wales, but he’d been so confused then, about what he really wanted, why he was really there, that he hadn’t done much more than show up on site before the opening had come on the dig in Peru. He’d jumped on it, and never looked back.

He knew the countryside was rife with the detritus of its heritage, from the small cairns that dotted the roadside, to the occasional sign directing tourists t
o this battlefield or that castl
e. Under different circumstances, he’d have been immediately captivated by the possibilities of w
hat lay out there, waiting to be discovered. Once up
on
a time, he had been fascinated by the history surrounding the beginnings of this country. Specifically the Piets, with their mystical beli
efs, rife with mixed interpreta
tions and controversy. His mind would have been spinning, lost in imagining those who had walked this very land before him, wondering about their beliefs, their rites and rituals. What they had done, who they had loved, how they had died, what mark they’d left behind.

He didn’t need a shrink to explain to him why he’d fled that dig site in Wales, or why he’d focused his skills and talents half a globe away. He knew that coming here would unearth a wealth of memories he’d just as soon leave buried. But maybe it was time to do exactly that, to deal with his own demons once and for all, put his father’s legacy to rest, and maybe allow himself to look beyond the immediate past of the Morgan clan to that of their distant ancestors. Who knows, he might even enjoy it.

If he could ever find a place to get out of this damn cold weather.

He cranked up the heater and flexed his shoulders, working the kink out of his neck. He supposed he had Maura to thank for this epiphany, or at least the actions he’d taken because of it. He smiled briefly, wondering how she would feel if she knew about the impact she was having on the life of a man she’d never met. And since he’d alerted no one on this side of the pond of his impending arrival, she couldn’t possibly know that was about to change.

He rounded the peak bend and downshifted, gently riding the brakes as he began the winding crawl downhill. The snow was coming down so hard now, and the air so thick with damp fog and swirling flakes, his meager headlights barely penetrated the gloom enough to see the road. It was only a little after six in the evening,
but days were short here in the winter. It had been fully dark for some time now, made darker still by the storm. He squinted, looking for the marker. He should only be a few kilometers from the next dot on the map, which had been slightly bigger than the others, so he was holding out hope there was an actual town attached to it.

Calyth, he thought, recalling the sign some clicks back. He didn’t care what kind of accommodations were available. His usual digs included a heavy tarpaulin, a woven hammock, and some mosquito netting. So he wasn’t exactly picky. He just wanted to get some sleep, and if he was lucky, put some food in his belly. Hopefully by the time he got down off this mountain and into town, the current blizzard would change to rain again. Ballantrae looked to be only an hour or two beyond Calyth, so he could sleep in and still be there by noon.

And now that he’d committed himself to this course of action, a part of him wanted to see Ballantrae for the first time by daylight anyway. Plus he had no idea what kind of welcome he’d receive, in town or at the castle. Maybe it was just as well he found lodging outside Ballantrae altogether. For all he knew, he wouldn’t be staying on at the castle itself, despite the fact that he technically owned it now. A lot of that would depend on Ms. Sinclair. And what he might find out about the castle itself.

He was still undecided on exactly what he wanted to do about any of it. Whether he wanted to maintain the financial arrangement with her, or hire someone else, or for that matter get rid of the property altogether. He’d need to know a lot more before he made any final decisions. He’d read her letters and let himself get swept up in the emotion of it, the passion of discovery, which wasn’t unusual in his line of work. A vivid imagination was mandatory, an ability to see the people he was studying, visualize how they looked, walked, talked, interacted.

But that didn’t mean he wasn’t a scientist as well, careful to find out the facts, piece together the truths that he could prove. He shouldn’t have been so quick to head out, he knew that. He should have done some research first, on Ballantrae, and maybe Maura Sinclair herself. He should have even talked to Mick, find out what else he knew about the story behind this deal his father had struck with her. But he hadn’t wanted to do that. Mostly, he acknowledged, because he hadn’t wanted to risk giving himself enough time to talk himself out of doing this. Or question what might really be at the root of his curiosity.

He had no idea if they’d both feel comfortable staying under the same roof. No matter how big that roof might be. And he didn’t see himself striding in and kicking her out until further notice, either.

He didn’t know how long he expected to stay, but there was no denying his curiosity was growing the farther into the country he traveled. He recognized that steady thrum, stirring his blood. The one that generally meant digging would soon follow. Literally or figuratively. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but before leaving Virginia, he’d extended his leave from the dig in Chacchoben by another week or two. Just in case.

His mind drifted to tomorrow, to just how he’d approach Ballantrae. Best to go directly to the castle, rather than poke around town. Rural townships the world over had at least one co
mmonality: they all had a well-
established form of communication. The Internet had nothing on a small village when it came to spreading the latest news. And it would be best if Maura heard about his arrival directly from him.

He tried to imagine how she’d react to his surprise
visit, which was tricky given he had no idea what she looked like. His predictions had ranged from young, vibrant, with curly black hair and milkmaid skin, to older, with white hair cut in some no-nonsense fashion, matched with blue eyes that shone with the wisdom she’d gained from years of responsibility to the castle and dependent villagers. Perhaps a bit stooped in posture, but square of shoulder. It was probably somewhere in between.

He was jerked from his reverie when a dark object suddenly loomed large and unmoving through the swirl of snow, right in front of him.

“Shit!” He spun the steering wheel hard and swerved, barely avoiding a head-on collision with whatever the hell was currently blocking almost the entire narrow track. The back end of his car fishtailed dangerously. He fought hard to straighten it out, but traction was minimal and as soon as the rear tires slid off the pavement, the entire back end of the car was swallowed trunk deep into a snowbank.

He knew from the angle of the car that, even with a stick shift, he wasn’t driving out of this. Which meant getting out in this freezing blizzard to push, pull, or otherwise dig himself out. With what, he had no idea. It hadn’t occurred to him to buy a shovel before leaving the city. And if the car came with an emergency kit or flares, it was buried in the trunk, under a ton of snow. Not that there would likely be another traveler on the road this late at night, during a storm.

No, he was the only idiot trying that particular maneuver,
he thought, smacking the steering wheel with open palms. Which also meant that if he didn’t dig his way out, his sleeping quarters had just gotten a hell of a lot more cramped for the night. Compared to the small compact, a hammock would have been roomy.