“Have Ah ever told ya that yer completely brilliant?”

Scott grinned over at me, hsi entire face lighting up. “Is that so now? And just what, pray tell, makes me so brilliant?”

I slid into Scott’s outstretched arms and turned my face up towards him. “Well Ah was thinkin’ somethin’ along the lines of this trip. A nice, romantic holiday. Just the two of us. Sounds like pure brilliance ta me.”

“Then you, my dear, are very easy to please.”

Pretending to be offended, I smacked Scott on the arm and pulled away. Ignoring him completely, I began walking down the street. As I had expected, Scott caught up with me almost immediately and wrapped his arms about my shoulders. We walked side by side through the streets of Inverness, glancing inside shop windows as we made our way back to the bed and breakfast we were staying at.

It was odd walking through streets and actually seeing people mill about without a care in teh world. Having spent the past six years practically on the front lines in France this was a welcomed change. This was also our honeymoon so the quaint solitude of the place was a relief. It seemed a little odd to be taking our honeymoon after we had already been married for seven years, but the war had prevented us from taking one earlier.

The war had been over for nearly a year but Scott and I were just beginning to get things back in order. In a few weeks, we would return to America and Scott would take up teaching at a private school in Westchester, New York. Scott was thrilled to be going back to what he loved, but for me it was a daunting experience. Having spent so long in a field hostpial I was sure taht I would have some difficulty adjusting to the life of a normal person who doesn’t have to worry about being blown up in their sleep.

“Are you sure that you don’t want to come with me to the Reverend’s house?” Scott asked as he opened the door to the bed and breakfast for me.

As I brushed past him, I patted his stomach lightly. “That’s quite all right, Scooter. Ah’m sure ya’ll have fun talkin’ about genological charts without me.”

“But it’ll be truly fascinating,” Scott tried again, pushing a few stray strands of my hair behind my ear. “And you’ll be so bored here, Marie.”

I shifted my hips slightly, leaning in closwer to him. “Well see, Ah was gonna go upstairs an’ have a nice, warm bath. Then Ah’ll get a big fire going in our room to chase away all the rainy cold and make us a wonderful oasis of warmth. So try not to take too long or else Ah might get bored and start without ya.”

“You are an evil woman, Mrs. Randall,” Scott murmured as I slid out of his arms and stayed towards the main staircase in th eold house that was our temporary home.

“I’ll see ya later, Mr. Randall,” I said lightly as I turned and continued on to the second floor.

“I love you, Marie!” Scott called after me.

Glancing over my shoulder, I flashed Scott a bright smile. “Ah love ya too, sugah!”

Then Scott was gone and I was left on my own in teh extensive house with only the exxcentric old lady who owned it. She was a sweet thing who reminded me of my own grandmother who had died when I was a little girl. My parents had died in a car acciden tthat same year leaving me a virtual orphan until someone managed to track down my Uncle Boris. Uncle Boris was an archeologist who had travelled the world and was now forced to take me with him. He hadn’t seemed to mind, though. On the contrary, he had taken great joy in having someone to share his love of the past with.

It had been on one of those trips eight years ago that I had met a young history studen named Scott Randall. When she had first met him he had been covered in mud from head to foor in mud while helping with an excavation of a nearly unknown settlement along the banks of the Nile. I had been seventeen when we met and just over a year later we had been married. Scott was twenty-three at the time and while Uncle Boris was a little iffy about it all, Scott had won him over instantly with his love of history. To win my Uncle Boris over all you needed to do is praise the innovation of the Egyption engineers and he would love you forever.

The fact that we had been hopelessly in love with eacho ther had definitely been an advantage when we had been separated a week later by the outbreak of war in Europe. Scott had enlisted almost immediately and soon after I was training to be a nurse with the Red Cross. In the six years that followed Scott and I had seen each other for barely two weeks, if that. We had both changed so much in the time that we had been apart, but our love had remained constant through it all.

This trip to the highlands of Scotland was our attempt to recapture the carefree love we had enperienced when we had first met. And it was like old times with Scott disappearing for hours on end in his quest to discover his family’s long history. Right now his attention was focused on a man by the name of Victor Randall who had died at the battle of Cullodun in 1745 fight for the English. He was some great war hero and Scott was positively fascinated by him. I, on th eother hand, got headaches from those confusing genological charts Scott spent so much time studying.

So while Scott ventured off to enjoy th epleasures of the mind, I enjoyed in the greatest of all pleasures. A warm bubble bath. They were, by far, the thing I had missed the most while I was serving as a nurse in Europe. Even more than I missed Scott.

“A man will never be worth a warm bath,” I murmured to myself as I sunk into the heated depths of the ancient tub which was probably as old as the house. “Anyone who thinks otherwise should be shot.”

If it was possible, I would have remained in the bathtub for the next two weeks. With or without Scott’s presence depending on my mood. However, the water was not so cooperative. Within twenty minutes the water was starting to cool down making my bath less than enjoyable.

Whimpering in protest, I pulled the stopper on the bath and rose from the tepid water. I reached automatically for my thick white robe which had been hanging over the heater. I shuddered with pleasure as the heat from the robe transfered to my skin. Of course, that heat wouldn’t last long so I bolted into the main room of our suite where a fire was already burning strongly, heating the room wonderfully.

I went straight to the vanity and began removing the countless pins that kept my hair up. Since I was a little girl, people have been commenting on the strangeness of my hair. Now it’s not overly curly or even some horrible colour. It was a deep, chocolate brown that Scott would spend hours running his fingers through. The oddity had to do with the bleached streaks of hair that made up my bangs. I had lived with the bleached streaks since the day my parents died. There’s isn’t much that I remember of that day. Only waking up in a hospital with a nurse looking down at me. The doctors said that the white streaks were the result of the shock I had undergone learning of my parents’ death.

That was in the past. While I couldn’t erase it, I intead chose to focus on my future with Scott. A wonderful future that entailed us living happily ever after.

Running a brush through my thick hair, I strolled towards the window, staring at the city below. It was a beautiful landscape that I would have been more than content living in for the rest of my life. Unfortunately Scott and I both had lives waiting for us back in New York. Scott teaching and me as a nurse at the local hospital. This would be the first time in my life that I would be living a domestic life. It would be a drastic change from the nomadic life I was used to, but a welcomed one.

“I just saw the strangest thing,” Scott said as he entered our room an hour later.

I looked up from the book I was reading and smiled at him. “An’ hello ta you too, sugah.”

“Oh, hello, sweetheart,” Scott said as he pulled off his jacket. He barely even glanced in my direction as he started for the window I was sitting in front of. “Did you meet any Scotsmen from this area during the war? Maybe treat someone?”

“Not that Ah know of,” I mumbled, setting my book down on a nearby table and stood up beside him. “Why do ya ask?”

Without turning away from the window, Scott reached out and wrapped an arm about his waist. “It was the strangest thing. I was coming back from the Reverend’s house and saw this man standing right across the street staring up at the window. He was looking right at you, sweetheart.”

“Well what did he look like?” I asked, deciding to humour him.

“He was big. At least over six feet tall and had this wild, dark hair. He looked like a boxer, very big through the shoulders,” Scott said as he opened the window and began looking both ways down the street. When he saw no one, he pulled his head back in and turned to look at me. “Are you sure you didn’t see anyone?”

I shook my head. “No. Ah was reading mah book.”

“You sure? A big guy in full Scottish reglia? The tartan had a lot of red in it,” Scott prompted, hoping to get a response out of me.

“How can ya even be sure that he was lookin’ at me?” I asked, taking up Scott’s abandoned vigil. “There’s a lot of houses around here.”

Scott let out a loud breath and plopped down into the chair I had abandoned a short while ago. “He was looking right at you, Marie. I saw it. I went right up next to him and looked where he was looking. It was at this window. Right at you.”

“It was probably nothin’, sugah,” I told Scott, hoping to placate him. I sat down on his lap and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. “Ya need ta relax, Scooter,” I murmured, resting my head on his shoulder.

“He looked so sad,” Scott said quietly a few moments later. “When he turned away he looked so sad. Like someone had ripped his heart out.”

“Maybe his wife died and he’s missing her,” I suggested, burrowing deeper into his arms. A sudden grin appeared on my face then that I couldn’t stop. “Or maybe he was a ghost.”

“I think he was,” Scott said, catching me completely off guard.

I lifted my head from his shoulder and smirked at him. “Ah was kiddin’, sugah.”

“His clothes didn’t move,” Scott told me, giving me a stern look. “When he turned away and walked past me his clothes didn’t move.... I couldn’t even feel him pass. We were standing so close that our shoulders should have bumped but we didn’t even touch. I think he really was a ghost.

All that I could do was stare at Scott. I was at a complete loss. There were many things in this world I believed in, but I wasn’t sure if ghosts was one of them. Especially not ones who were staring longingly at me.

It was kind of romantic, actually. While I remained snuggled in Scott’s arms, I envisioned the mysterious stranger as a lover of mine from a past life. Someone I had given my heart to completely and had lost due to some cruel twist of fate.

Of course, there was no way I could tell Scott that. This was our honeymoon and I couldn’t very well spend it fantasing about a past love from another life.

No matter how tempting it was.