Free The Presence by Heather Graham

places as this castle—smaller castles, family homesteads, not the great walled almost-cities-within-cities such as the fortified castles at Edinburgh and Stirling. They could be found, and some of them poor, indeed, much smaller than many a manor house. And naturally, in a far sadder state of being.
    He stared up at the stone bastion, beautiful against the sky this morning. There was not a drop of rain in sight, not a single cloud. Ah, yes! This was the stuff of postcards, coffee-table books and calendars, the kind of thing American tourists just had to capture in a million and five digital pictures!
    So far—though they all claimed to be in the bad times together, just as they were in the good—they were all secretly blaming Toni. For she had been the one to find the property on the Internet. She had been the one to write to the post box. And she had been the one to receive the agreement, bring it to her lawyer and then pass it on to all of them.
    So, yes…they were blaming Toni. But pretty soon they’d be looking at him.
    After all, he was Scottish, born and bred. He’d seen the advertisements in Glasgow, and had told Toni that it looked fitting for their purpose.
    â€œShite!” he muttered aloud.
    He looked to the forest. Hell, he’d actually neverknown what they called the damned place. They should understand that. Most Americans had never seen their own Grand Canyon. Why should he be supposed to know about every nook and cranny of Scotland?
    Hopefully they would continue blaming Toni, his American cousin. His kin. With her wonder and exuberance, she had convinced them that they could do it. He could remember first meeting her, how pleased she had been to meet a Fraser, an actual—if slightly distant—member of her father’s family. He’d been bowled over by her. Indeed, he’d found her gorgeous, stimulating, though she’d rather quickly squelched any thoughts of more than a brother-sister relationship between them.
    It wasn’t as if he didn’t have enough blokes for friends in Glasgow, but she and her American group had been a breath of fresh air. In Glasgow, it was too easy to get into the old work by day, live for the pub at night mentality. The Americans had nothing on the Scots when it came to alcoholism and drug addiction. The working class was the working class, and therein lay the pub, the delights of escape, drugs—wine, women and song.
    And though Toni might not want a hot roll in the old hay with him, she trusted him. Liked him. Relied on him.
    He smiled grimly. Oh, aye! Americans, God bless them, just loved to look back to the old homeland. Give them an accent and they were putty.
    He stared at the forest again, a sense of deep unease stirring in him. He never had known the damned name of the place, and that was a fact.
    The forest was still as dark as a witch’s teat in the glory of dawn. Dense, deep, remote. And he realizedthat he was just standing there, staring into it. Time had passed, and he hadn’t moved. He’d been mesmerized.
    It was an effort to draw himself away, to shake the sudden fear that seized him. It was almost as if he had to physically tear himself away from the darkness, as if the trees had reached out, gripped him…and held him tight.
    â€œFooking ass!” he railed against himself as he turned and hurried back to the castle.
    Â 
    Jonathan Tavish sat at his breakfast table, morosely stirring the sugar in his tea.
    His home might be old by some standards—built around 1910—and it might have a certain thatched-roof, quaint charm. But it sure as hell wasn’t any castle.
    Through the window, he could see the MacNiall holding, just as he had seen it all of his life. A dilapidated pile of stone, he told himself.
    But it wasn’t. It was the castle, no matter what else. It was Bruce MacNiall’s holding, because he was the MacNiall, and in this little neck of the world, that would always