Free Taken by the Laird by Margo Maguire

but the best in these parts.”
     
    The laird might think Glenloch’s ghost was not real, but Brianna had seen it. Or seen something. She’d felt no danger from that strange flickering light, and as she returned to the bedchamber given her by Laird Glenloch, she kept her gaze high, so she might catch sight of it once again. If only she could speak to it…she knew it was an irrational thought, but…perhaps the phantom might carry a message to her aunt Claire.
    She walked in on a housemaid who was doing up the bed. “Oh! Nearly done, miss,” said the girl with a quick curtsy. She was obviously nervous and hurrying to complete her task in order to leave as quickly as possible. “I’m Fiona. Mrs. Ramsay told me to give ye a few extra blankets.”
    “I appreciate it. But I can finish here, Fiona.”
    “Oh, thank ye, miss. What with the ghost and all, I doona favor being up here.”
    “The ghost has done you some evil, then?”
    Fiona shook her head. “Nay, I’ve ne’er even seen it. But I doona hold with bogles. Such creatures can do all sorts of harm. Can draw ye into their netherworld and trap ye—”
    “Has such a thing happened to anyone?”
    “Weel, perhaps some of the old laird’s visitors were caught in the ghost’s traps and followed it into the void,” Fiona said. “But we—from the village—we know better than to come up and stay here through the night.”
    Bree said naught. She’d spent one night in Castle Glenloch and felt no threat. On the contrary, she’d slept better than she had any night in the week sinceshe’d fled London, in spite of her encounter with Laird Glenloch.
    “Ronan brought ye plenty of peat, miss. Enough to stay warm through the night.”
    “Thank him for me please, Fiona,” said Brianna. “Don’t worry about building up the fire. I’ll stoke it so that you can go back downstairs.”
    The girl gave another quick curtsy and started to leave, but Brianna stopped her. “One thing…Where did Ronan find the shawl he brought me?”
    “In Lady Glenloch’s chamber at the far end of the gallery, just afore ye come to the north tower,” the maid replied from the doorway. “Her Ladyship’s things are right where she left them. Before she…” Fiona swallowed and wrapped her arms around herself. “Ach, ’tis a wonder she hasna joined Glenloch’s ghost, dyin’ as she did.”
    “How do you know she hasn’t?”
    “We doona,” Fiona said. A loud keening sound rang out above them, and Fiona gave out a terrified squeal. “ ’Tis her! The bogle!”
    “Fiona, ’tis the wind,” Brianna said, but the girl ran from the room, and Bree heard her speedy footsteps all the way down the hall and the staircase.
    It went silent in Bree’s bedchamber, but for the crackle of the fire that was burning low, and she wondered if the noise had truly been the wind or the apparition she’d seen the previous night.
    Or had she imagined it, as Laird Glenloch had hinted?
    She thought about Fiona’s words as well as the laird’s concern that there was only one ghost haunting Glenloch, despite his dismissal of what she’d seen. But Brianna knew that she had not been imagining things. There had truly been a vague form of flickering light in this very chamber. And it had signaled her to follow it.
    Brianna considered the possibility that Lady Glenloch’s spirit had joined the castle’s phantom. If the gossip was true, then Amelia Christie had been so terribly unhappy in her marriage that she’d ended her own life. Perhaps her sorrowful spirit now haunted Glenloch’s rooms and galleries alongside the ancient specter described by the laird.
    There was a distinctly brooding aspect to the castle. It appeared to Brianna that certain rooms had been restored and updated, and she had even found a modern water closet near the bedchamber Laird Glenloch had given her. But the rest was dark and derelict—a perfect setting to be haunted by Glenloch’s restless spirits.
    Bree laid a new brick on