Read Beyond Time (Highland Secret Series) for Free Online

turned immediately to face the place beside her where he had been. A sick feeling grew inside her as she was reminded that she was alone. Of course she was alone. She lived alone. That had been her choice. Sitting up, her eyes once more filled with tears as she looked at the portrait.
    “If you can’t be with me, why are you doing this to me? Please, just go away and let me live my life.”
    Grace jumped as a cold blast of wind howled at the window. It slammed against the frame and then the window burst open as another icy blast blew in. Shivering, she slid out of bed and closed the latch on the window.
    “Damn thing, you scared me half to death. How did you get open?”
    Glancing down at the radiator below the window, she bent and turned the thermostat up. The room was cold and she had seen a forecast in yesterday’s paper suggesting that the city was in for a severe cold spell.
    A thin dressing gown lay on the end of the bed; hardly practical for winter use but had been all she could fit in her suitcase at the time. Wrapping it around her she made the decision to spend the day clothes shopping. She wasn’t going to be much use to anyone if she caught her death of cold.
    The memory of her dream filled her mind as she recalled the glorious warmth and happiness she had felt with the protective arms of Robert Hamilton around her.
    “How beautiful it must be to feel loved,” she whispered to the portrait. “You were a lucky man to have had real love in your life, and your wife was a lucky lady to have you.”
     
    Sliding the photograph of her daughter into her purse and her book into her bag she wandered out of the hotel and into the cold winter wind and small flakes of snow falling gently from a miserable grey sky.
    Making the decision to buy some warm clothes had been a sensible one. It was still early and most of the shops hadn’t yet opened so Grace went in search of some breakfast.
    It was Sunday morning and wandering down Low Petergate, the sound of church bells drew her down an alley to the Thirteenth Century Holy Trinity churchyard. It seemed a morbid pastime but inscriptions on gravestones had always fascinated her. She wandered along the paths scanning the words on the stone slabs that marked the life and death of each body below.
    Her mind toyed with Harry’s theory. It was an odd one alright and she wondered why no one had ever come up with it before. Then again, she wasn’t exactly schooled in all things ghostly, so it was perfectly possible the idea was a popular one amongst enthusiasts.
    The words on the gravestone were faded and unclear but Grace was sure she had found it, what she had been subconsciously looking for – the headstone of Robert Hamilton. She could only make out the first two numbers of his year of death, ‘seventeen’... but that was definitely his name. The birth date was as clear as the day it had been carved, ‘In the year of Our Lord 1626’. A perfect match to what she already knew of him.
    “You lived a long life, Mr. Hamilton,” she said, scanning her eyes over the rest of the inscription.
    “Here lies Robert Hamilton, beloved husband of... ” Grace read it out loud but she stopped short as his wife’s name was unclear. She crouched down to get a better look but time had erased the words from the stone. A pang of sadness for the lady who lay beside her husband knotted in the pit of her stomach. How very tragic it seemed that this couple should have found love in life only to have its memory worn away with the passing of time.
    She ran her fingers gently over his name, wondering as she did what his life had been like. There was little doubt that he had loved his wife and she guessed that his wife must have loved him too. There was no denying it; Robert Hamilton had been a handsome man. The portrait in her room was testimony to that, but everything else she had been told about him was mostly conjecture. Yes, there were a few scant facts: that he had been a Cavalier, that