bedchamber when he slept to throw open the shutters, nigh blinding him. Or expecting him to eat pig's swill they called gruel and believe such a sorry excuse for victuals would replenish his strength.
His strength, a goat's arse!
He hooted his scorn, sending a last glance at the iron-bound coffers. Saints, he would've smiled were he not so concerned about bogles. But he was, so he let the bed curtains fall shut again and frowned into his pillow. Truth was, a whole teetering tower of strongboxes wouldn't keep out a ghost. But the three heavy chests he'd managed to pile on top of each other at the door did prove he hadn't lost his muscle.
That he knew the coffers' contents without peeking inside showed his wits were still with him as well.
If Alan - fox-brained - Mor possessed even half his own cunning, the lout would know the Fairmaiden grazing ground was more than enough to satisfy him. That, and the flap-tongued fool's precious wee lassie. And thinking about her brought a smile to his tired, angst-fraught heart, so he snuggled more deeply into his bedcovers, certain that, for once, his sleep would prove untroubled.
Regrettably, instead of dreaming about sitting before the fire, his feet up and a bouncing, red-cheeked grandson on his lap, it was the sound of water that invaded his sleep.
Swift, swirling water plunging wildly over tumbled rocks. A churning cauldron of froth and spume, its thunderous roar echoed inside the confines of Munro's curtained bed.
A refuge no longer framed by the dark oak of his great bed's canopy but the wind-tossed branches of the skeletal birches rimming the Rough Waters. The dread Garbh Uisge.
The cataract-filled gorge where his sons had lost their lives. Sons he could see now, their broken bodies shooting over the rapids, their death cries carried on the wind. Some of them already bobbed lifelessly in deeper, more quiet pools near the gorge's end.
But others still suffered, their battered bodies crashing against the rocks, their flailing arms splashing him with icy, deadly water.
Munro groaned in his sleep, his fingers digging into the bedcovers as his heart began to race. Sweat beaded his forehead, damping his pillow. The tangled sheets and plaiding of his bed.
Mist and spray surrounded him, its chill wetness making him shiver and quake. And then the rushing water surged across him, carrying him ever closer to his sons' reaching arms. The facedown, floating bodies of the ones already claimed by their watery fates.
"No-o-o!" Munro cried, his eyes snapping open.
He pulled in a great gulp of air, noticing at once the pool of water he'd been wallowing in.
How wet he was.
And that someone had ripped open the bed curtains.
"Of a mercy!" He sat up, dashing his streaming wet hair from his eyes. He swiped a hand across his water-speckled beard, peering into the gloom and shadows. Sodden or nay, he wasn't about to throw off the covers. Only a spirit could've brought the Garbh Uisge into his room and experience warned him he'd soon see that ghost.
And he did, recognizing Neill despite the dripping wet cloak he wore, the dark cowl pulled low over his white, hollow-eyed face.
An accusing face, filled with recrimination.
"You did this," his eldest son decried, pointing at him. "You and your insatiable greed."
Munro scrabbled backward on the bed. "Begone, I beg you!" he wailed, his teeth chattering. "I had naught to do with - "
"Aye, you did naught. But you could have repaired the bridge." Neill backed into the shadows, his tall form already beginning to waver and fade. "Now it is too late."
And then the shadows closed around him just as the rushing waters of Munro's fearing dream had swirled around and over him, pulling him ever deeper into the horrors he couldn't flee even in sleep.
Trembling uncontrollably, he somehow crawled from his bed and tapped his way across the chamber, making for his chair. Hard-backed and sturdy as befitted a Highland laird's dignity, the chair was anything but comfortable. But with a dry plaid draped around him and another spread over his knees, it would suffice as a resting place until his bedding dried. Loud as he'd roared at Morag the last time she'd poked her grizzled head around his door, she wouldn't be coming abovestairs to see to his comforts for a while. A good long while, like as not. And his pride kept him from calling out for her. So he dropped down onto his chair, tucked himself into his plaids as best he