by Lynn Kurland
Thomas looked to his right and gasped. Nothing but dirt and stone. He looked back at the woman. She brushed her hands off on her gown.
But she said nothing.
Thomas could scarcely put two words together. He gestured helplessly toward the former garden.
She merely looked at him.
"But," he managed, "it was so ... so incredible."
She still didn't offer any comment. The only thing that he found even marginally reassuring was that she wasn't weeping anymore. Maybe she wasn't wearing an exactly welcoming look, but she wasn't weeping, and he'd take that any day. He held out his flowers.
Well, weeds.
"I'm sorry," he said.
She didn't move.
He tried again. "I'm very sorry."
"About what?"
"About what I said the other day."
"Yesterday?"
"Yes. Yesterday. I went too far."
"Did you?"
He wondered if she was torturing him on purpose. "Yes," he said firmly. "I did. And I'm sorry."
She looked at him appraisingly. "Are you?"
He suppressed a sigh. "Do you always answer a question with another question?"
She looked down at her hands thoughtfully. "It gives away fewer answers that way, I suppose."
"I'll give you that," he said. He held out his flowers again. "This is my peace offering. It doesn't compare ..." He gestured toward the dirt and rocks. "But it's the best I could do."
She stared at the flowers for several moments, then looked up at him. "Thank you."
He waited. And he waited a bit more, but she made no move to take his flowers.
"They're yours," he said finally.
"Aye, I understood that."
He wondered if he could survive a year living in the same place with this woman without her wearing what patience he had down to nothing. He smiled briefly.
"You're supposed to take them."
"And how is it you suggest I do that?" she asked, looking at him solemnly. "With hands that cannot hold them? With arms that have not the strength to lift them?"
Thomas found, for the second time in as many days, that he had absolutely nothing to say. Obviously, there were some things he was going to have to figure out. But he'd never had dealings with a ghost before, so he could hardly be blamed for a few faux pas. With any luck, by the time he'd figured it out, he wouldn't have completely destroyed any possibility of a relationship with her.
He set the flowers down on the bench next to her, finding himself very relieved that the bench was actually of a temporal nature.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I didn't think."
She folded her hands in her lap and leaned her head back against the wall. Thomas wanted to believe that she had almost smiled, but that was probably wishful thinking. He cleared his throat.
"Could I sit next to you?"
She shrugged. "If you like."
Damn, there went his palms again. How was it possible that a grown man of thirty-four very well-lived years could be such a geek around a woman who wasn't even real?
But she looked real.
And since sitting seemed preferable to falling, and he suspected that if he thought about his present circumstances any longer he would probably fall down from the complete improbability of them, he sat.
He stared out over the dirt. He burned with questions he hardly dared ask. But a coward he wasn't, so he plunged ahead.
"Will you tell me your name?" he asked.
She looked him full in the face. The full force of her gaze made him light-headed.
"My name is mine," she said quietly.
Fair enough. He tried another tack.
"Where were you born?"
"You're determined enough, aren't you?"
"What do you think?"
She sighed and looked away. "I was born in the Highlands. My sire was Malcolm MacLeod, my mother Moira Mac-Donnell. The year of my birth was 1358. Does that satisfy you?"
"No, but it's a start." In reality, he could hardly believe he'd gotten that much out of her. He wondered how much more she would talk if he got her to do something besides sit and parry questions with him. "Would you show me your castle?"
"My castle?" she asked with pursed lips. "I thought 'twas your castle."
"Your payment came at far greater cost than mine."
She considered, then looked at him. "Why will you see it? So you can decide where 'tis best to first wield your implements of destruction?"
He shook his head. "I won't do anything you don't want."
"Is that so?"
"It is."
"And if I want nothing done at all?"
Well, she had him there. Damn. He'd have to be very careful what kind of mouthy promises he made in the future. He took a deep breath. "I'll have to do something with at least a part of it. I need a place to live."
"The inn looks passing comfortable to me."
This was not going as well as he'd planned. He took another deep breath. Hell, at this rate, he was going to be hyperventilating before long.
"I don't want to live at the inn."
She shifted on the bench to look at him fully. "Why did you buy this keep?"
There was no answer but the honest one.
"I was compelled," he answered.
"By what?"
"I have no idea."
She looked at him searchingly. "In truth? You had no reason at all in mind?"
"I had no reason that makes sense. It came up for sale, and I bought it without having seen it, without knowing anything about it. My sister sent me a picture, but I'd already dreamed of it before I saw it." He looked at her and smiled. "I climb mountains. I make money with other people's money. I never thought to own a castle."
"I see," she said thoughtfully.
"But I have no regrets about it," he said quickly.
"Don't you?" she asked, looking up at him with a half smile. "The MacDougal doesn't give you pause? Your friends with the songs outside the gates don't deter you?"
"I can ignore what's outside in favor of what's inside."
"Do you expect me to keep the garden blossoming for you, then?"
He shook his head with a smile. "I wasn't talking about the garden."
She looked vaguely perplexed, then her eyes widened and she looked at him in surprise. Then she stood up abruptly.
"I'll show you the keep," she said, walking away.
Thomas was no expert when it came to women. He'd spent years being baffled by his sisters. Even his mother made him shake his head now and then. That he was bewildered by this woman shouldn't have come as that big a surprise. Whatever he'd said had apparently sent her running. Maybe he should can the compliments until he was sure how they would be received. It was a good thought, one he'd consider later, after the tour.
"This was where they have, at times, kept horses, a garden, a poor wooden chapel, and the mews," she said, waving at the area to her left.
"Would you rather it be a garden?" he asked, but she had already turned and walked purposefully away.
"I'll show you the great hall," she said over her shoulder.
All right, so conversation would have to wait. He followed her under the arch in the gate and toward the great hall. There was a cluster of Scots loitering nearby. He looked at them and smiled. Several of them scowled in return, but a handful looked at him with what might have approximated pleasant expressions. At least Connor MacDougal wasn't there, brandishing a sword.
Thomas followed his guide obediently. Her explanations were limited to brief namings without elaboration.
First came the great hall, with its missing roof, then the alcoves built into the outer walls where men had, he supposed, first stored arrows, then munitions for use in keeping an enemy at bay. She showed him where the garrison hall had been at one time, then the kitchen with its modern marvel of a cistern to store clean rainwater for use in cooking. The well was still there, too, covered over but apparently not polluted.
There was a very large tower in one corner of the outer wall. Thomas stepped inside and looked up three stories to the still sound stone roof. He could see where the wooden floors had been, with niches in the walls to use for scaffolding. There were hearths with flues. The second floor was accessible from the parapet, and he could see where a set of stairs on the outside of the tower led one up to the third and final floor.
It was by far the largest and most usable space he'd seen so far. And it had a very pleasant feel to it. He looked to his right and saw his companion staring off into the distance. He clasped his hands behind his back in what he hoped was a nonthreatening pose.
"I really won't do anything if you're completely opposed to it," he began slowly, "but if you don't mind, I think I'd like to start here."
She sighed. "I suspected this might suit you."
"Would that bother you?"
She shook her head. "Nay. Nothing untoward ever happened here."
Thomas stepped back out into the sunshine and looked at the one corner of the keep where they had not been.
And a chill went through him.
"I will not go there," she said.
Thomas looked at her and felt the answer to his unasked question resonate in his soul. That was where she had lost her life. Hadn't she said as much the day before? It was also, oddly enough, the only part of the castle in perfect condition. It was as if that section of the keep had been sealed against the ravages of time.
"Have you never been back inside?" he asked quietly.
She shook her head.
"I imagine he's dead by now, don't you?"
She looked at him bleakly. "Does it matter?"
Well, he wasn't about to tell her how to deal with her past, which was apparently very much the present for her. He smiled grimly.
"I'll see how bad it is."
"I don't want to know."
"I understand."
But he also knew he had to see for himself, so he walked across the courtyard. He spent a brief moment considering the fact that his unwilling hostess had spent the better part of the morning showing him around her castle. She easily could have told him to take a hike. That she hadn't, and that she was even speaking to him in brief sentences, was significant.
He came to a halt in front of the guard tower. Now that he was standing in front of it, he could completely understand why his guide hadn't wanted to come. There was something exceptionally unpleasant about the vibes he was getting from the place in front of him.
Well, standing there uncertainly wouldn't dispel any uneasiness he had, so he took a deep breath and stepped through the dark doorway. And as he made his way up stairs that were impossibly small and incredibly claustrophobic, the déjà vu that overwhelmed him was staggering.
He'd been up these steps before.
He felt as if the past had somehow layered itself over his present in such a way that it was he and an echo of himself that crept up the stairs together.
It was, on the whole, an extremely unsettling experience.
He stopped at the landing. There was a torch in a sconce there. He pulled a lighter from his pocket—he didn't smoke but he had been a Boy Scout and he was nothing if not prepared—and lit the thing. He was almost surprised that it caught.
He put his hand on the wood of the door and the two worlds of past and present shuddered together with an almost catastrophic collision.
He gasped as he pushed the door open. He couldn't breathe. He wondered if he might ever again suck air into his desperate lungs. He hunched over with his hand on his thigh, gulping in great breaths of air and trying to keep the torch aloft at the same time. It seemed forever before he managed to stand up straight. He leaned against the doorway and looked inside the guardroom.
And for an instant, he saw a man there with his sword bared, standing before a woman who refused to cower.
The woman he'd left standing in the bailey.
He blinked. And the vision was gone.
He walked into the tiny guardroom with its stone floor, ceiling, and walls. He jammed the torch into another sconce and walked to the window slit. As he stared out over the countryside, he felt the effects of the almost surreal events of the past ten minutes recede, leaving him weak. He put his hands on the walls on either side of the window and bowed his head. There was something going on, something far larger than him, something he had never expected.
Did she relive this every day that dawned? Was this what she lived with each one of those days?
" 'Tis a small place."
He turned around at the sound of her voice. She stood just inside the room, hovering on the edge of the light like a shadow. Thomas waited, perfectly still, as she took a step or two inside. She looked down at the floor for several minutes, then she looked up at him.
"I remember it being bigger."
He nodded carefully. "I think we do, with things that frighten us."
She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. "It was all for foolishness, you know. All for the sake of a secret that would have had no meaning to him."
"Your name?"
"Nay, the secret of my home."
"Your home has a secret?"
"Several of them, or so the tales go." She looked back down at the floor. "He wanted my name as well, but I wouldn't give him that either."
"What did your family call you?"
She was silent for quite a while, then she spoke. "My father called me girl. My half-brothers called me various things. Most of them not pleasant."
"What names?" he asked gently.
"Old woman," she said with a half shrug. "Heather-gel."
"Because of your eyes? The color?"
She looked up at him then. "Because they were fools," she said shortly, "and there was an abundance of the stuff surrounding our hall."
He walked across the chamber until he was standing in front of her. He looked down into her eyes and felt himself on the edge of knowing something. It was that damned intuition again, but it was only nagging at him, not providing him with answers.
He racked his brains for something that made sense. He considered the word woman in all the languages he knew. He spoke German and French, knew a smattering of Japanese, Italian, and Greek, could ask for the nearest bathroom in Russian and Dutch, and could haggle for a yak and a cup of Sherpa tea in Nepali.
None of that was helping him at the moment.
Heather. Violet. Lovely.
And then a word popped into his mind, a word he was certain he must have read somewhere in some obscure spot on some far-flung travel.
Violet.
Greek.
"Iolanthe," he said.
She couldn't have looked more surprised if he'd slapped her. Her mouth worked for several moments, but no sound came out.
"How did you ... how ... who told you ..."
He was so surprised—no, in reality, he wasn't surprised at all. Once her name had left his lips, he realized he'd always known it, just as he'd always known dozens of other impossible things. He looked at her helplessly. "No one told me," he said. "I just... knew."
She started to cry.
Damn.
"I'm sorry," he offered desperately. "I never meant... it's a lovely name—"
But she was gone.
"Please come back," he said earnestly. "I never meant to upset you!"
There was no answer.
"I won't tell anyone!"
There was only silence in response.
He closed his eyes briefly, then leaned back against the wall and opened his eyes. He looked around him and let the past and present swirl around him in dizzying eddies. He wanted to call out to her again, but he suspected it was futile. He had no sense of her being near.
And if she had any sense, she would be far away.
Well, perhaps he had once again done enough damage for the day. He looked at the torch and had no idea how to blow it out. Rubbing on the floor seemed like a good idea, so he did so until even the embers wer
e extinguished. Then he felt his way down the stairs, across the courtyard, and out the front gates. No Highlanders lingered at the barbican to heckle him. No protestors lined the road to sling slander at him.
Ambrose was, however, waiting for him, leaning casually against the outside of the crumbling castle wall.
"Finished, grandson?" Ambrose asked.
Thomas didn't bother to ask why Ambrose had come. Maybe he had heard Thomas shouting from the inn.
They started off down the road.
"I guessed her name," Thomas said.
Ambrose's jaw slipped down. "You did?"
"Didn't you hear me yelling for her to come back from out here?"
Ambrose shook his head. "I just came out to enjoy the evening and thought I'd wait for you." He looked closely at Thomas. "How did you guess? How did you even know where to begin?"
Thomas looked at him helplessly. "I have no idea. I just knew it. I just know things."
"She couldn't have been happy about it."
"She cried again."
Ambrose opened his mouth to speak, but the bellow from behind him stopped all hope of conversation.
"There he goes! After him! To me, lads! The MacDougal!"
Thomas sighed. "My friend, Connor MacDougal." He turned to face the Highland chieftain bearing down on him. "Can I help you?"
"So," Connor said, his chest heaving, "ye thought to escape 'afore I could see to ye, eh? Not this time, ye wee—"
"Connor," Ambrose said wearily, "shut up."
"Shut up?!" Connor drew his sword with a flourish. "I'll be avenged for that, ye wee silly woman! Bring out yer blade, unless ye've forgotten how to wield it."
"You're the bloody woman, MacDougal," Ambrose said, drawing his blade with a great whoosh.
"And ye're a field faery, MacLeod!"
Ambrose looked at Thomas. "You can stay if you like, grandson," he said conversationally. "This won't take long..."
It was amazing how swords that were seemingly made of nothing but thin air could ring so truly. Thomas had the feeling that sword lessons might have to be bumped up on his list of priorities. Just in case the odd laird decided that his head really would make a fine gate post adornment.
He walked down the path, leaving the sounds of battle behind him. He turned at the bend of the road and looked back at the keep. Was she watching? Would she ever speak to him again?