Draycott Everlasting Read online

  Praise for works by

  CHRISTINA SKYE

  TO CATCH A THIEF

  “Fast-paced action, vivid detail, a touch of the paranormal, and hot lovemaking will please readers of adventure romance, while fans of Skye’s Draycott Abbey and Code Name series will enjoy this clever union of the two.”

  —Booklist

  CODE NAME: BIKINI

  “A fun, antic read.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Fast-paced action, flashes of humor, and futuristic flavor typify this romantic action-adventure. Fans of the Code Name series will enjoy this delicious addition.”

  —Kristin Ramsdell, Library Journal

  CODE NAME: BLONDIE

  “Romantic thrills and adventure from the expert.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “Skye is terrific at writing fast-paced adventure romances…a tantalizing addition to the compelling Code Name series.”

  —Booklist

  CODE NAME: BABY

  “Thrilling…fans should eagerly await the next in the series.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  THE DRAYCOTT LEGACY

  “Christina Skye’s delightfully haunting Draycott Abbey tales…pass the test of time, as they remain some of the better romantic fantasies available.”

  —Harriet Klausner

  Also available from

  CHRISTINA SKYE

  and HQN Books

  CODE NAME

  Code Name: Bikini

  Code Name: Blondie

  Code Name: Baby

  DRAYCOTT ABBEY

  To Catch a Thief

  Draycott Eternal

  The Draycott Legacy

  And coming in December 2009

  Bound by Dreams

  CHRISTINA SKYE

  DRAYCOTT EVERLASTING

  CONTENTS

  CHRISTMAS KNIGHT

  PART ONE

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  MOONRISE

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Christmas Knight

  PART ONE

  The Wish

  Fire at morning,

  fire in rain.

  PROLOGUE

  Glenbrae House

  Glenbrae, Scotland

  Early summer

  HOPE O’HARA CLENCHED her fists to keep from trembling.

  Scotland. Brooding and magical.

  Green hills rippled before her, densely wooded above a pristine loch. Sunlight cast a glow over sharp slopes, chasing away wisps of early morning mist.

  High hills full of legends and ghosts.

  A tremor raced through her, swift and sharp. Suddenly Hope had the sense that something rare and momentous was about to happen, something meant only for her to see and share.

  Sunlight shifted.

  Mist swayed.

  Since her eighteenth birthday her uncle had urged her to visit this green glen. Hope was sorry her visit had come only after his death. There had always been some delay or prior commitment. And then it had been too late.

  Her eyes blurred for a moment as she remembered her uncle’s noisy laughter and interminable bad jokes. During a book research trip Dermot O’Hara had fallen in love with Glenbrae, assuring Hope that she would, too. How right he had been. She only wished he were here to share it with her now.

  No regrets, girl. His booming voice seemed to sweep out of the shadows to comfort her. Get on with living.

  When Hope saw the rugged tower house that loomed beyond the banks of the loch, her pulse tripped. Against all logic or explanation, each stone felt familiar. Just as before, she had the sudden sense that time was reaching out to her, offering all its mysteries.

  If only she were brave enough to take them.

  A beam of Highland sunshine peeked through the racing mist, burning over the tarnished letters on the front door.

  Glenbrae House.

  So beautiful. But why was it somehow…familiar?

  A chipped flagstone path ran past the first early roses, an explosion of pink, peach and fuchsia. Below the thatched roof, sunbeams lit hundreds of fragile leaded-glass panels. It was like a dozen other old buildings Hope had seen since coming to Scotland two weeks before. All had been full of broody atmosphere tinged with magic.

  But Glenbrae House was different. Personal, almost. She felt as if she were at home.

  As if in a trance, Hope walked closer, feeling her heart race. The original house was thirteenth century, the estate agent now waiting in the car had explained, a traditional Scottish tower structure built for a local branch of the MacLeod clan. When the family fortunes had declined in the last century, a band of pre-Raphaelites had bought the property and turned the lower floors into painting studios.

  They had felt the magic, too. Hope had seen some of their luminous illustrations of Glenbrae’s weathered gray walls exploding with summer roses. Warriors rode through the deep woods, and faeries seemed to peek from beneath green bowers.

  Legends lay everywhere. Magic touched every shadow.

  In silence the house called to her.

  How could she resist?

  She brushed back a vine and pushed open the front door, half expecting to see ghostly figures drift past her shoulder. But her footsteps echoed through the empty rooms. Only dusty motes danced over the scuffed wood floors.

  Lonely, the house seemed to whisper. So lonely.

  But it took little imagination for Hope to envision bolder days when hardened travelers in heavy kilts gathered by open fires that blazed in the great hall. Here battles were plotted and history planned. Even the smoke on the stones whispered to her, holding cherished fragments of Scotland’s stormy past.

  Ghosts, some would call them. But Hope had never feared ghosts. Since childhood she had walked with ghosts, and history had been her greatest love, along with the beautiful books that captured its legends. And right now she stood shivering, breath
less, drowning in history.

  Because every corner of Glenbrae House felt like home.

  The house seemed to shift and whisper, breaking the silence. Perhaps because she had become accustomed to the sounds of loneliness at an early age, she found herself listening to those low whispers. The shadows did not scare her, nor did the grime she saw.

  She had once been awkward and quiet. Even as a child she had been too grave to suit those her own age, and she still didn’t fit in. While others her age were busy lining up stock options, mutual funds and a collection of summer homes, Hope was still wandering. Six months in the Aegean and a season in Milan. Even a year spent teaching basic English in a lonely mountain village in western China.

  Always searching. Always looking for magic and the right place to put down roots.

  Now there was no family to hold her. Mother, father, uncle—Hope had lost them one by one. She only occasionally remembered her mother’s breathless laugh or her father’s slow smile. A boating accident had caught them during a summer storm on the Aegean the year that Hope turned thirteen. She had been convinced she could not survive, but she had, largely through the unswerving optimism of her boisterous uncle. Dermot O’Hara had soon become father and mother, guardian and friend. He had made her laugh and he had taught her to dream.

  And Hope dreamed now.

  Of sunny rooms and Christmas carols on a snowy night. Of a house that would soon become a home.

  Not that the job would be easy. Glenbrae House had stood empty for almost twenty years, and sunlight dappled the chipped, gouged floors. Marks of disrepair were everywhere.

  In the great hall, high, cantilevered beams bore tracks of soot from centuries of peat smoke. But instead of grime, Hope saw hard-eyed warriors who warmed their hands by the roaring flames.

  The great house whispered, teasing with ancient secrets. Outside, the wind rustled the hedges and shook the rose shrubs as springtime fragrance spilled through an open window, heady and rich. Around the loch, wildflowers dotted the hills and danced in the sun. It would be hard work to bring the grounds back to their pristine beauty, but Hope had never been afraid of hard work.

  Of other things, but not work.

  She stared out the window at the shifting silver water of the loch, feeling Glenbrae’s beauty seep into her weary, wounded soul.

  She had traveled long enough. Maybe here along the rocky banks of Loch Glenbrae in a fortified thirteenth-century stone tower house with eight-foot-thick walls and a roof that probably leaked, she could finally put down roots.

  With her uncle’s death had come a small legacy and the promise of more in the future. Hope knew he would like nothing more than for her to be settled here between the peaceful green hills.

  Above her head, a bar of sunlight swept the turret stair. Her breath caught as light brushed the dim outline of a painting worked over the plaster at the turn of the stairs. A warrior in flowing hauberk and chain mail glared down at her, pride and arrogance set in every angular feature.

  A MacLeod, no doubt. A warrior by the look of him. A man of duty and granite honor.

  With the changing light, he seemed to waver, an apparition from a Highland dawn.

  Somehow, he, too, seemed familiar.

  Hope told herself it was imagination, run amok after hours of travel over pitted roads. But the loch-gray eyes seemed to follow her movements, questioning her right to enter his shadowed domain.

  She stood rooted to the spot, fighting the challenge of that keen gaze.

  Even as her logic counseled her to flee, her heart stirred. She was crazy to be here, crazy to spin fantasies of belonging in a house at the edge of nowhere. The repairs alone would cost a fortune. But Hope felt linked with this house, as if she were no longer free to leave the beautiful old halls so much in need of tender hands and loving repair.

  She stretched trembling fingers to the dim painting, half expecting to feel warm skin and rigid muscle through the cold textures of plaster and paint.

  But there was no warmth, of course. No life behind the cold eyes.

  Yet still the painting held her.

  “Let me go,” she whispered.

  Around her the shadows moved. The room carried the echo softly.

  “Then at least give me your whole name. Which MacLeod are you?” Softly, her words swept the empty room.

  WhichMacLeodwhichMacLeodwhichMacLeod.

  A car horn blared outside. Hope shivered and turned toward the door.

  The agent had another house for sale on the far side of the valley. Something new and tidy, closer to the village and in need of little upkeep.

  Yes, that was the sensible thing. But she didn’t want to be sensible.

  Wind scurried over her shoulder, tugging at her hair. Threadbare lace curtains fluttered at a broken window.

  Then the front door slammed shut, closing her in, shuttering the room in darkness. With a gasp, Hope spun around. Light played over the figure above the staircase, where the keen, misty eyes glinted, filled with challenge—and just a hint of humor.

  “Very funny, tough guy. Just don’t think you’re going to scare me into leaving.”

  The scent of roses filled the air, and Hope imagined how the house would look filled with candles and warmed with laughter. She knew from personal experience that there was no inn within thirty miles of Glenbrae. And she would have all these empty rooms…

  An inn. A period inn that clung defiantly to its history and authenticity. Tartans on the walls. Laughter amid shadows and crackling fires on a gusty night, a haven for weary travelers.

  Her breath caught. She rubbed the bank check in her pocket, the first installment of the legacy from her beloved uncle.

  Don’t talk to me about miracles, girl, Dermot O’Hara had always said. Go out and make your miracles happen all by yourself.

  Hope could work a miracle here. This ruined, beautiful house in a quiet corner of the Highlands was a place to make dreams and put down roots. And maybe here she would finally heal from the heartbreak of losing her family.

  Wind whispered down the high chimney, stirring the fine hairs at her neck. Almost like a greeting, Hope thought.

  She sent a saucy glance to the painting. The warrior’s eyes seemed to glint back at her, bright with challenge.

  Hope laughed softly, swept by a sudden illogical sense of adventure. “Better make some room, MacLeod. Looks like you’re going to have to share.”

  CHINTZ CURTAINS TWITCHED at the front window of a tiny cottage just beyond the loch. Three white-haired heads bobbed at the leaded panes.

  “I told you so! See how she’s following the path.” Perpetua Wishwell, the eldest of the three sisters, pointed over the glen. “Look, she’s going inside.”

  Her sister, Honoria, the middle sister and the plumpest of the three, gave a quick laugh. “She’s taken down the sales sign. She’s going to stay. I can almost feel it.”

  “She looks very nice.” Morwenna Wishwell gave a thoughtful frown. “American, do you think?”

  Honoria nodded briskly. “From a place called Chicago. I think she’s the one we’ve been waiting for.”

  Morwenna toyed with a silver pin of a cat staring up at a full moon. “It’s the correct planetary alignment. The moon in Libra—a very good time for establishing roots and turning a house into a home. What do you think, Perpetua?”

  The tallest of the three, Perpetua tapped one finger against her rather pointed chin. “She looks too slender. Too young. What if the house proves too much for her? The past hangs heavy there. And we all know that the thatched roof leaks terribly. She might not be up to this.”

  “She is,” Honoria said quietly.

  “What about the dilapidated kitchen? One sight of that stove would make a strong man run for cover. And we still don’t know her name.”

  “Hope O’Hara,” Honoria answered quickly.

  “Irish?”

  “Irish, German and Spanish,” her sister corrected. “Even some obscure Russian ancestor who settle
d in a place called Duluth.”

  “Never mind Duluth.” Perpetua frowned. “If you ask me, she’s too fragile to tackle the manor. One good wind will knock her down.”

  “Nonsense,” Honoria snapped. “I’ve done her chart. She belongs in the manor house. I did her transits after I got her birth date from that nice young man who was driving the loan car for the estate agent.”

  The shrill blast of a horn cut through the air.

  The sisters pressed closer to the window. Morwenna murmured a low, inaudible phrase and stroked the silver cat pin. “She is very vulnerable right now. She’s lost her uncle, I believe. And her parents, too. But there’s something else…something physical that troubles her deeply.”

  “What sort of trouble?” Honoria demanded.

  “I can’t see.”

  “Hmm. What she needs is a vacation,” Honoria said sagely.

  Morwenna’s eyes turned speculative. “What she needs is a man.”

  “A man?” Perpetua’s eyes narrowed, almost catlike.

  “A man of honor, of course. An ally and companion. Someone who doesn’t mind hard work. Restoring Glenbrae House is going to be a labor to task Hercules, believe me.”

  “Unfortunately, Hercules is unavailable at the moment.” Perpetua smiled faintly. “But hard work would mean nothing to the right man. A man who doesn’t know the softness of a woman’s laugh or the heat of her skin. A man who has been too long from home, too long on the move.”

  “You have someone in mind?” Honoria said eagerly.

  “Possibly.” Perpetua’s head tilted. Light gleamed over her snowy hair. “Yes, quite possibly the perfect man.”

  Morwenna sat up straighter as an image swept into her mind. “Not him. The man’s dead inside.”

  No answer.

  “Perpetua, you’re not listening to me. Ronan MacLeod is a soldier. Any woman in his life will be merely a night’s diversion.”

  “That might change,” Honoria said slowly. “With the right woman beside him. Someone to soften the past.”

  “It would take a ton of steel wool to soften his past.” Morwenna shook her head. “All he has known is war and loss since the first moment his father put a bow in his hand, cuffed him and told him to meet his mark or he’d see that the whole village went hungry that night.”

  A frown crossed Perpetua’s smooth brow. “A crude man, Angus MacLeod. Such a pity the mother died so young. But that changes nothing. Ronan MacLeod is the one.”