The Storyteller: A Highland Romance (Ghosts of Culloden Moor Book 45) Read online

  The Storyteller

  From USA TODAY Bestselling author Terri Brisbin …

  Struan Cameron has spent the last 270 years trapped between life and death on the battlefield of Culloden Moor. His role as the Storyteller has kept many of the other ghosts from going mad. But now, the powerful Muir witch has offered him the chance to see an end to his time on the moor and he plans to take it. He is given up to two days - back as a man of flesh and blood -- to perform some task for the witch that will earn him a chance for revenge or release. With the touch of her hand, the witch sends him … to Maine.

  Fiona Masters has lost everyone important to her in a terrible accident that she believes was her fault. Mired in pain and grief, she decides she cannot live another day and plans to take her own life. With all the arrangements made and the gun in hand, she is stopped by a tall, handsome, sexy Scottish warrior who bellows at her in Gaelic! Believing she is caught up in a situation like 'A CHRISTMAS CAROL' and its ghosts of past, present and future, Fee allows this Highlander into her life, knowing there's nothing he can do to change her mind or make her want to live … Or can he?

  Two strangers who have suffered similar loss and grief find that they do have some comfort to offer, but at the end of two days, will either of them be alive?

  (Please read THE GATHERING first - it sets up the series and has valuable bits for readers beginning this series!)

  Contents

  About The Storyteller * Prologue * Chapter One * Chapter Two * Chapter Three * Chapter Four * Chapter Five * Chapter Six * Chapter Seven * Chapter Eight * Chapter Nine * Chapter Ten * Epilogue * Excerpt from A Traitor’s Heart

  About the Author * Other books by Terri Brisbin

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Struan Cameron looked out on Drummossie Moor and saw nothing but the mist swirling before him. Only with great effort could he begin to pick out the others there in the thick, white fog. He let out a breath that did not move the mist around him. He had not had an effect on the world since that day, the sixteenth of April in the year of our Lord seventeen hundred and forty-six. The day he fell in battle. The day he and the others here died.

  They were fewer now than that day or the next when the seventy-nine spirits rose on the battlefield. Soncerae, the young but powerful Muir witch, had begun calling them to her and sending them off … somewhere. None had returned and Struan wondered when his time would come and how she chose those she summoned.

  Mayhap he should fear her, fear her power, fear whatever was to come? Oh, aye, she’d tried to explain it to them before she began, but he knew not yet if he would seek his vengeance on the Bonnie Prince as she’d offered or not. Struan did not doubt that God Almighty would forgive them if they sought to punish the man for the willful destruction his actions and desires had brought to Scotland and the clans here in the Highlands. Facing their final judgment now, more than two hundred and fifty years after their deaths, made him consider what his choice would be.

  As he watched one and then another approach the lass and disappear, he knew it was a different sort of thing from the way he could fade away. That happened sometimes when, after telling his stories to the others, he lost the ability or strength to stay here on this field of tremendous loss and injustice and he would just let go. ‘Twas never for long. ‘Twas never completely in his control. One moment he was there and the next … well, he was not.

  After some time, Struan would wake or come to awareness in the same position and place where he’d died, in the middle of the moor where the fighting had been the worst. His right arm, his sword arm, sliced off by an English soldier, lay separated from his body on the ground next to him. The only good thing was that just as this form in which he existed lacked form and substance, it also lacked the ability to feel pain.

  Now, the mist scattered as young Soni walked over the moor toward him. Struan stood to meet her and watched as her expression softened. She reached out to him, her cloak flowing around her slight body. The bright green ring of power that surrounded her ebbed and flowed with each step she took.

  “Struan Cameron, ‘tis yer turn,” she said softly. “If ye succeed, the choice will be yers.”

  A nervousness he’d not felt in centuries filled him as he rose to his full height and nodded. A tension tugged on him, pulling him closer to the lass.

  “Ye have up to two days, Struan,” she said softly. “Two days to prove ye are worthy for the reward awaiting ye.”

  Struan frowned at her. “Reward? I just want an end to this,” he said. He swept his arm out to point across the moor. “All of this.” The endless suffering of those souls trapped here—neither truly dead and not alive.

  “And ye shall have that and a chance to face the man responsible for this, if ye are worthy.” She lifted her hand and motioned toward the moor. Then, she turned her gaze back to him. “Are ye ready then, Storyteller?” Soni reached out her hand to touch his. He’d watched her touch some of the others before, but only the one called seventy-nine had seemed to feel it. Struan had never himself.

  “Do ye ken where I go?” he asked. His voice was nothing more than a whisper across the eerie silence that settled over the moor.

  “Aye, Struan, I do.” The lass smiled then and he felt the fear drift away. “Just remember to tell yer stories and I think all will be well.”

  “My stories?”

  Struan passed the time—the endless days and nights spent here since the fateful battle, now called Culloden—telling stories he’d heard while growing up in his village and stories of glorious battles and even of the days leading up to the one that killed him. He even told the tale of that day which, he kenned now, would end the kind of life they’d all known here in the Highlands of Scotland. The stories he told, however, did not usually end in that tragic and true way.

  “Aye, Storyteller,” Soni said with a nod. “Someone needs to hear yer story now.”

  He puzzled on her words only moments before she reached out across those final inches to him. He could not feel her touch, but something, some kind of sensation, traveled through the form he held.

  Then, without warning, everything and everyone around him disappeared and he only knew he was no longer on Drummossie Moor.

  Chapter One

  November, 2015

  Southern Coast of Maine, near Serenity Harbor

  The tears fell unbidden but not unexpectedly. Fiona Masters did not brush them away as she glanced around the living room of the large cabin once more. Her life had been lived here, with her family and friends, and so it seemed somehow right that it should end here, too.

  Photos of her family spread around the room reminded her of those happy times. Times she had no idea would end when or how they did. Times when she believed in happily-ever-after. Times when she thought she would have years or decades with those she loved.

  Pulling in a ragged breath and letting it go, Fee memorized the smiles and the faces of her parents, her sister and brother, her ex-fiancé even, before turning and walking out. The crispness of the cool autumn morning here on the coast of Maine was a balm to her soul, but it was too little and much, much too late.

  The tightness that stiffened the muscles in her leg reminded her with every step away she took.

  The thick scars that still painfully crisscrossed her hand as she clutched the walking stick reminded her. The way she tucked her head down and away as she walked was another. Scarred, empty and weary of struggling, Fee had returned here to end her li
fe and end the pain and shame and suffering of the last three years.

  Fee followed the steep path up to the cliffside, having a care to take her time and watch her steps. The three years of physical therapy had not restored the strength and agility damaged by the injuries to her leg. Fee touched her coat and felt the outline of the gun there.

  It had taken weeks of practice to learn to control the gun with her right hand. The scar tissue and damage to the muscles in her left, her dominant hand, made it impossible to curl her fingers around the trigger. So, after depending on her left hand all her life, Fee would have to take this final action using her right one.

  After what seemed a long time, she struggled across the final paces to the edge of the ocean. The Atlantic was in fine form this morning, tossing waves against the impervious Maine coast where it met the bay. Finally reaching the top, Fee eased her way to the very edge and stood there, staring out at the relentless ocean.

  Not long ago, standing here like this would have refreshed and energized her. It had been her habit to watch the movement of the water, to try to count the countless whitecaps as the winds pushed the water to batter the rocks below. Now though, even after several minutes of staring out across to the eastern horizon, the emptiness in her did not fill.

  Fee understood that that emotional void would never be full. Too much loss, too much tragedy and too much damage had emptied her and left her unable to face a life such as it was. She slipped her hand inside that pocket again and touched the gun that would see her out of physical pain forever. Pain was a good thing, her counselor had told her. It spoke of something other than relentless emptiness and that, the counselor assured her, meant she could heal.

  Well, that counselor was wrong.

  Fee glanced below to the rocks at the base of the cliff. Those were her ‘plan b’ if for some reason the gun didn’t work or her aim was off. Flinging the walking stick on which she depended away, she slid her fingers around the gun and pulled it from her pocket. It was loaded—she’d done that before leaving her parents’ cabin—so all she needed to do was place it against her and pull that trigger.

  Lifting it to her head, Fee cocked the trigger and touched the short barrel to the base of her neck. Then, remembering what she’d read, she moved it under her jaw, aiming it differently. Expecting to feel fear or trepidation or doubt, yet all she felt was … nothing. Balancing with the sun and wind and sea at her back, Fee closed her eyes and swallowed, tightening her finger on the trigger.

  “Are ye daft, lass?” A loud, furious voice stopped her finger and made her open her eyes. A large man strode toward her, his long strides covering the ground at an amazing pace. “Give that over now!” he yelled.

  Surprised by his arrival, his size and his speed, Fee pulled the trigger of the Ruger. Unfortunately for her, the continued shouting in some foreign language and the sight of him startled her and her aim was off. Unfortunately for him, she shot him in the arm. She wobbled at the edge of the cliff, watching as he barely slowed in his approach.

  The blooming red on the sleeve of his shirt drew her attention then. She’d always had a problem with the sight of blood and this growing stain triggered that automatic reaction in her. Her stomach churned and acid flushed up into her mouth. Her body reacted before her mind could fully understand the situation and Fiona fell into the blackness.

  A blackness she hoped would be the end of things.

  Struan did not allow the shock and pain to slow him. The lass who’d shot him now tumbled down in a faint and, in another moment, she would pitch headlong over the cliffside on which she stood. As her eyes fluttered up and closed, he ran, crossing the final yards to her, and grabbed hold of her coat. The gun in her hand clattered on the rocks at her feet as he scooped her up into his arms and carried her away from the edge. Laying her on a grassy patch of ground, he took his first true look at the lass.

  The rise and fall of her chest told him she lived and breathed—a good sign that. Though there were scars on her hands that spoke of previous injuries, there were no marks of more recent ones. Content that she would wake soon, Struan stood and grabbed his arm. His burning, pain-filled arm.

  Strange, for the arm she’d shot had been gone for over two hundred years. Slashed off by an enemy’s sword during the battle, it had been the cause of his death. Now, it was there—flesh and blood once more. From the throbbing and bleeding, he guessed the ball had gone through or simply grazed him. Tearing off the sleeve, he found a flesh wound and used the fabric to dab at the blood.

  A moan from the lass brought him back to her side. Kneeling there, he slid his hand under her head to lift it when the hood she wore fell back, revealing her face to him. A web of scars covered her brow, her cheeks and down onto her jaw and neck. The thickened skin pulled on her eye, narrowing it. Only her mouth had been spared from whatever terrible injury had caused the rest.

  As he gazed at her perfect mouth, Struan could not ever remember seeing a lass with such injuries, though he’d seen many, many men with such wounds after battles and fights. The explosions of the cannons during Culloden would cause such damage as this and more.

  Her eyes fluttered then and he watched as she came back to herself and saw him. The color of them reminded him of the brilliant blue of the sky over him when he’d died that day so long ago. The instant she was aware of herself, she struggled to her knees and scuttled away, glancing around the area until her gaze fell on the weapon she’d held.

  It struck him in that moment.

  Her purpose.

  The reason she’d stood there on the cliff with a gun in her hand. He’d blessed himself before he could stop it. She met his gaze and turned away then, tears streaming down her cheeks in silence.

  Suicide.

  She’d meant to end her life.

  Struan understood too well the hopelessness of grief and pain to belittle or question her choice. In the years leading up to and after Culloden, he and each of the seventy-nine had struggled with it in some way. Having the knowledge of what had happened after that battle and watching the decades and centuries pass without their loved ones or the ability to pass on from their ghostly existence kindled the hard edge of desperation in their souls. If he was being honest, his stories had been a way to battle that darkness that sought to snuff out every bit of them that still existed. Still … The heart now beating in his chest hurt for her as she’d faced such a dire decision as that one.

  “What is yer name, lass?” he asked softly. Struan stood then and backed away a pace. At first her gaze remained on the gun, but he spoke again, finally gaining her attention. “What are ye called?”

  “Fiona … Fee,” she stuttered out. “My name is Fiona.”

  Struan took the few steps needed to reach her and held out his hand to her. “Struan Cameron, at yer service.”

  He’d used his right arm, the one that yet bled and he watched the scant bit of color in her face flee once more. Clearly the lass had no tolerance of blood. Turning away, he tore off his other sleeve and used it to quickly bandage his injury, wrapping it tightly to stanch the bleeding. When he turned back to her, he was surprised to find her standing.

  “I did not mean to hurt you,” she said, nodding at his injury. “The gun … it misfired … my bad hand …” The shadows in her eyes as she tucked her hand against her side to hide it bothered him. She was shamed by her actions and shamed, it seemed, by her appearance. And now, she sought to explain the terrible truth.

  “No bother, lass,” he said, shrugging and shaking his head at her. “I have been shot afore.” He shrugged again. “Several times.” Struan glanced down at his arm, the one that now throbbed in pain for the first time in more than two hundred years, and he smiled. “I didna expect it to sting so much.” He laughed then, feeling the very air as his chest expanded drawing in deep breaths. “I didna expect to feel any of this again.” Her brows gathered into a frown and he shook his head. “No bother.”

  “There are supp
lies at the cabin,” she said, looking off in the distance behind him. “It should be cleaned at least.” She gagged as she said the words, making it very clear that she would not be the one seeing to it.

  He scooped up the gun and held it, waiting for her to lead the way. Her hesitation made him understand that she meant him to go on without her. Did she mean to finish the deed then? Struan stepped aside and gave her the choice, but in his mind, it had to be a choice. He raised the hand holding the weapon out a bit, so she could take it if she so desired. He did not meet her gaze, giving her a chance to examine her own thoughts in that moment.

  He could not help but smile when she instead moved in front of him and led the way into the trees and down a path there without taking the gun from him. When she peeked over her shoulder to see if he followed, he tucked the gun in his belt, nodded at her and walked a pace behind her.

  “My grandmam shot all three of her husbands, ye ken,” he began. When she stopped and looked on him in horror, he continued the tale as they walked. “She had her reasons. Good ones, too, if ye ask me. The first one was a mean bastard …”

  Chapter Two

  She’d lost her mind. That was the only explanation for this. Oh, when the decision to kill herself entered her thoughts, Fee had feared for her sanity, but she’d never doubted that she understood her actions. Now? Well, she had to question herself thoroughly.

  As they walked slowly down the path back to the cabin, Struan Cameron spoke. His deep voice with that sexy Scottish accent was so easy to listen to, so she did. His story about his grandmother and her longstanding habit of shooting the men in her life was humorous and too funny to be true, but Fee appreciated the way he filled the uncomfortable silence.

  And she was grateful for the way, at some point in the walk, he’d held out his arm and she steadied herself using his strength. Too late, she remembered tossing the walking stick she used away. When she stumbled for the third time, he let out a loud sigh and scooped her up in his arms. She thought about arguing with him, that she could make it on her own, but he simply continued speaking about his grandmother and really didn’t give her the opportunity to say a word.