Much Ado In the Moonlight (48 page)

“You’ll have some after this is over.”

She went back to brooding in the library.

By the time the afternoon, and her fledgling patience, had worn very thin, she put herself out of everyones misery and went for a walk. She was going to go to the castle, but she found herself continuing on past it. The sun was setting and the air was still.

Well, except for that dry rain that cropped up, but she was in England; she expected no less.

By the time she had cursed her way to Granny’s picnic spot and farther, she realized she was not alone.

Connor stood on the edge of the fairy ring.

She came to a teetering halt, then turned and prepared to tiptoe away.

“Victoria.”

She took a deep breath, then turned back around to face him. “Yes?”

“Does your brother speak the truth?”

There was no denying it now. She took another deep breath. She was going to be hyperventilating soon if this kind of thing didn’t stop. “Yes.”

He looked at the fairy ring for a very long time, then looked at her.

She wondered if she would forget that moment, either.

There stood a proud, undeniably gorgeous Highland laird, in clothes that were just a little too small, holding his enormous sword like a walking stick, looking at her as if he thought looking long enough would reveal all her secrets, making a decision that would affect them both forever.

And then he took his own deep breath and stepped away from the ring in the grass.

He came to a halt in front of her. “I have dreams,” he said quietly.

“Do you?”

“Dreams of another life.”

She nodded, shaking. “Interesting.”

He considered. “They may be of my life as a ghost.”

“It’s possible.”

He looked at her searchingly. “Did I know you?”

“You did.”

“Did I love you?”

She had to gather courage to answer that. “You said you did.”

“Did I ask you to rescue me from death?”

Ah, there was the rub. “Your forbade me.”

He looked at her in surprise, then his expression lightened. “Aye, that sounds like me.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I think you wanted to kill me at first, too,” she offered. “You know, when you were a . . .”

“Did I?” he mused. “I daresay, not.” He put his sword over his shoulder and took her hand. “I must walk,” he said easily. “If I do not walk, I will drop to my knees and weep.”

“Oh,” she managed.

“I will not go home now,” he announced. He looked at her briefly. “But I will later.”

“Of course,” she said gamely.

He walked with her back to the inn, then paused at the front door. “There are several people I wish to question about this whole ghostly business, which I most definitely do not believe.”

“Sure,” she said with a nod. “Make a list. I’ll see they show up.”

He looked at her searchingly for quite some time before he spoke. “Do
you
believe, Victoria?”

She took an equal amount of time to answer. “I lived a little of it with you, my laird. I can’t not believe.”

He was silent for several minutes, then he grunted. “I want the lads from the castle first.”

“Do you want to interview them down here or terrorize them up there?”

He frowned at her. “Jesting in this matter is not appreciated.”

Well, it beat the hell out of weeping. Victoria put on a businesslike look. “You might have more success getting them to show up if you made the concession of setting up your audience chamber in the bailey. Then you could come down here and question the inn’s ghosts.”

“The inn is haunted, as well?”

“Haven’t I told you that already?”

“I dismissed it as the ramblings of a madwoman, but now I see I was too hasty. Very well. Tomorrow at first light we will away to the castle, then return here for supper and more questions for these lads at the inn. Three of them, are there?”

“There are.”

He paused. “Did you tell me that?”

Poor man. Victoria smiled sadly. “I didn’t.”

He took a deep breath. “Supper. I daresay I’m losing my wits due to lack of strength. I will be fully myself afterward, I assure you.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

But as she led him into the inn, she wondered if she dared expect anything more.

Connor
sat in the inner bailey of Thorpewold castle and thought that if this had been the state of his reputed afterlife, ’twas no wonder he’d been so foul. He looked at Victoria, who sat on the stage and swung her legs back and forth. She yawned hugely, realized he was observing her, then smiled weakly.

He frowned. So, he was not the only one having trouble listening to these goings on with any seriousness.

Aye, my laird, I did ken ye from centuries past. From before the ’45, actually
.

The ’45? Connor had little liking for those numbers, but he hadn’t pressed the man on what they meant. He would ask Victoria about them later.

Routing out
and
pesky
in the same breath were always good, but Connor had been afforded little time to truly enjoy them. Instead, he’d listened, open-mouthed, to the horrors he had perpetrated, apparently, upon hapless mortals whilst he was, reputedly, a disembodied spirit.

Horrors, he had to admit, that were masterfully executed.

Even if he did say so himself.

Sword fights, loud
boos
, ghostly wails, headlessness, armlessness, blood spurting, goo oozing, entrails trailing . . . aye, the tales he had listened to that morn were indeed something.

And all the while, Victoria McKinnon had either sat upon that stage and listened with raised eyebrows or paced about, fighting a smile.

Was it possible that it was true?

And then a man sauntered up to him, dressed in velvets, with enough lace at his wrists and neck to leave a gaggle of Highland lassies drooling for a fortnight. Connor gaped at him in astonishment.

“Roderick St. Claire,” the man said with a low bow.

“So I see,” Connor said, wide-eyed.

“We’ve played cards together on more than one occasion,” the shade continued. “I have many tales to tell you, old man, when you would care to tear a pheasant together and break open a bottle of claret. Of course,” he smiled faintly, “you can indulge. I’ll just pretend.”

“Old man?” Connor repeated. “Old man?”

“A term of respect,” Victoria called helpfully.

Connor looked at Roderick St. Claire and wondered why it was he felt such a strong urge to run the man through. He frowned. “You irritate me.”

“I have for decades.”

Connor rubbed the space between his eyes. “Decades?”

“I came to Thorpewold after my untimely demise during Queen Victoria’s rule.”

“Another woman on the English throne?”

“I fear, old chap, that it’s all too true.”

Connor rubbed his hands over his face. “I think I must have a few moments to think.”

Roderick made him a low, flourishy bow better suited to a player on stage, then disappeared.

Connor jumped, in spite of himself. Would he ever accustom himself to this appearing and disappearing these shades did? He suspected not. He dismissed the rest of the garrison with a sharp movement of his hand. They vanished with alacrity. He sighed, stood, and went over to Victoria.

“I am hearing these tales and finding them difficult to believe,” he said bluntly.

“I imagine you are,” she agreed.

He paused and considered. “I see no reason why these lads would perjure themselves.”

She smiled sadly. “I can’t, either.”

He grunted, then nodded to her before he took himself off to investigate the nooks and crannies of Thorpewold Castle proper. He walked to the one wall that seemed to be the least crumbling of all the walls. To his left was a quite well-preserved tower. Connor approached, but the closer he came, the more dread he felt.

He stood at the bottom and looked up the steps. There was evil there. He wasn’t certain what had happened, but it was not of his making, and he had no desire to investigate. He turned away and walked along the wall to the far tower.

It was newly reconstructed. He admired the lower floor, with Victoria’s theater equipment still contained therein. He could remember the day—and it hadn’t been all that long ago—when the place had been nothing but a shell. But, by the saints, that Thomas McKinnon had been a royal pain in the arse, hammering and banging at all hours, day in and . . . day . . .

Out.

Connor looked at the tower and wondered how in the hell he knew that.

He turned to see how Victoria was viewing his lunacy. She was sitting on the stage still, but she was looking toward the gates, no doubt leaving him privacy to descend into madness. He looked at the corner tower again, shivered once, then moved away before he had any more incomprehensible reactions.

He roamed over the castle, scaling what steps he dared and leaving alone the ones he didn’t. He walked through what was left of the great hall. He stepped into the garden, which was now nothing more than a grassy field. He knew it had not always been so. He could see it as a garden full of flowers and a training field full of men with swords. He watched monks coming and making offerings of plants to a woman he was most startled to recognize.

Iolanthe MacLeod.

But why would they have done that? And when?

Connor leaned on his hand against the wall and let things wash over him. He couldn’t call them memories. He wasn’t sure what to name them, but he knew he could not call them lies.

Mayhem, terror, decapitations. And that had just been his activities with other men in the keep. But those lads popped their heads right back atop their shoulders and brushed aside killing wounds as if they had been mere stings.

He would have suspected his reign of terror was merely happy recollections of his time as laird of the clan MacDougal, but two things stopped him. One, he hadn’t been drenched by the dry Scottish rain; and two, he hadn’t been cold.

Odd.

He pushed away from the wall and strode back into the bailey. He looked for Victoria, then nodded sharply at her. She lifted one eyebrow at him, but hopped off the stage just the same. She joined him at the gates and trotted alongside him as he strode away from the castle and its uncomfortable revelations.

He shook his head as he walked. Was it possible? That he had been a specter for several centuries, privy to ghostly counsels, tormenting hapless mortals simply because he could?

He considered the last. Perhaps he had been irritated at his ghostly state. And given that it would have been the Frenchman to plunge him into such a state, mayhap he had good reason to be other than his normally sunny self.

Aye, ’twas possible.

But he simply could not wrap his poor, weary mind around the thought that perhaps he had indeed been a shade for centuries.

If that was so, why was he alive now?

He was alive because Victoria McKinnon had braved medieval Scotland to tell him things he never would have known on his own.

“Who do you want to see down at the inn?” she asked, interrupting his thoughts.

He sighed. “I’ve no desire to see anyone else, but I daresay I must.”

She nodded and walked alongside him without saying anything else for some time. Connor studied her surreptitiously. Had she truly learned Gaelic to save his life? But why? Surely there was little to recommend him here in her Future. In the past, aye, perhaps there was a bit. He was laird there, laird of a fierce and honorable clan. It had at least meant something to Morag, though for considerably less honorable reasons.

He grieved afresh for his children.

But not for the life he had left behind.

That surprised him, though the longer he thought about it, the more it rang true. What life was there to go back to? If the Frenchman had ended his life in truth, his clan would be no worse off than they were now. His cousin was quick witted enough to lead the clan in Connor’s absence. Indeed, hadn’t he instructed Cormac to do just that? Connor had assumed his absence would not be more than a day or two.

Now, he wondered.

He wondered about a great many things, actually.

Was it possible? Could he have lived centuries as a ghost, haunting the castle behind him, wreaking havoc upon those who dared enter and doing his damndest to make everyone who knew him as miserable as he?

He paused in midstep.

It sounded quite a bit like him in life, actually.

“Connor?”

Connor looked at the woman next to him, who had stopped as well and was looking up at him in faint consternation. Now, here was a wench for you. Handsome, fearless, red-haired, with a temper to match. She reacted to his frowns with a mere lifting of one eyebrow, as if she thought them interesting, but not too worrying. She treated his demands lightly. She honored his requests when she apparently thought them worth the effort. She only yawned when he bellowed.

Aye, what was not to like about a wench such as she?

“’Tis naught,” he said. “Lead on, MacDuff.”

“Lay on,” she corrected, then walked away.

He frowned and caught up with her in a pair of strides. “Aye, I suppose it is. Isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“It feels a familiar phrase.”

“It’s a phrase from Shakespeare. From the Scottish play.”

He looked down at the ground as they walked. “The Scottish play? That is the name of it?”

“No, but you never say the name of it unless you’re acting in it. It’s bad luck.”