The Return of Black Douglas by Elaine Coffman Read Free Book Online

talking to the greatest warrior in Scottish history. “Are we still in Scotland, and if so, where?”
    “Aye, ye are in Scotland, on the Isle of Mull.”
    “And you brought us here for a reason?”
    “Aye,” he said with a nod. “As bidden.”
    “But we didn’t.” Bidden? A nice, Middle English word, she thought, but not often used in the present time. “Ah, you mean because I cried back at St. Bride’s when we visited your crypt?”
    “Aye, yer tears reached out across the centuries to summon me. I might have been a mighty knight in the service of my king, but a woman’s tears were ere my undoing.”
    Isobella could well believe that, but she didn’t get to think upon it further, due to Elisabeth’s persistent rib jabbing, which she ignored. How could she explain that this was truly the archaeological opportunity of a lifetime? Instead of digging through ruins for answers, she had her own personal history book in the flesh, so to speak.
    There he stood, a bona fide knight-errant, right out of medieval Scotland’s romantic past and wearing the clothes of his knighthood: chausses and a mail tunic called a hauberk and a light blue tunic, belted low about the hips. He was a handsome man, not overly tall by twenty-first century standards, but tall for the fourteenth-century male, slender with well-developed muscles, dark blue eyes, and hair of the blackest black. The legendary Black Douglas was a medieval heartbreaker if she had ever seen one.
    It was all so terribly romantic, at least to Isobella, and she thought it divine good fortune that she was there. For a moment, her mind wandered off to think about what her contemporaries would give for an opportunity like this. Her sister, on the other hand, could not be charmed if Jude Law and Orlando Bloom were standing in front of them, with Patrick Dempsey and Johnny Depp as backup.
    Elisabeth suddenly found her voice. “Are you really the Black Douglas? No, never mind. Don’t answer that. It isn’t possible,” she said, her tone one of pure disbelief. “You cannot be a ghost because ghosts don’t exist.” She put her hand to her forehead and looked around, as if searching for help. “I don’t believe this is happening. It’s impossible. When people die, they stay dead.”
    “And yet I am here. Do ye have a better explanation?”
    “All right, if you are a ghost, then undo this mischief. Take us back to our car.”
    Isobella took a deep breath and glanced tentatively around the narrow glen. The level stretch of ground rose to a slope at one end, rocky and choked with boulders, before dropping away to a ravine or gorge, or whatever they called it in these parts, for she could see the dark brown ridge of a mountain rising some distance beyond it. The rest of the glen was lined with a thin stand of larch trees and a thick tangle of briars that gradually thinned behind them to reveal an open moor.
    “Thank you for this little excursion to Mull, but we really need to go now. We must find a town to rent another car. We are flying home in a few days and have many places to see, but Mull isn’t one of them.”
    “We have no cars, buses, or airplanes.”
    Slack-jawed, the twins stared at each other and then at him. Elisabeth threw up her arms in exasperation. “So send us to Beloyn so we can get our car.”
    “I canna do that today,” Douglas said.
    “You mean we have to wait until tomorrow?” Isobella asked.
    Douglas shrugged. “’Twill be no different tomorrow.”
    “Then when can we go back?” Elisabeth asked.
    “Who knows? Mayhap never. Mayhap when the spirit moves me.”
    “What kind of answer is that?”
    “Never mind that,” Elisabeth said, turning back to the Black Douglas. “I did not ask to come here. Why did you bring me? Isobella put her hand on your effigy, not I! You had no right to drag me along.”
    “’Tis no fault of mine that ye managed to stick like a leech to yer sister and now ye are here.”
    “Stick like a… listen, you