by Lynn Kurland
It was, perhaps, fitting that he look there last.
He walked into the great hall and saw her immediately. It was as if the first time he'd seen her was happening all over again. She stood in the center of the hall with the sun shining down on her, alone. She was wearing some long flowery skirt and a navy sweater—another outfit that looked like it had come straight out of Megan's closet—but that was the only difference. Her hair still hung down her back in long, heavy curls, and the sunlight still fell down on her like fine strands of silk. Thomas stopped just short of her.
"Iolanthe," he said quietly.
She looked up at him but said nothing.
"Are you sure you won't come?"
She shook her head.
Well, there was nothing else to be said then. Thomas smiled gamely.
"I'll see you soon," he said.
She wasn't smiling. "And if I don't remember you?"
"You will remember me. And if you don't, we'll start over again. How could you not help but like me?"
"How can you not help but fall by the sword before you see the inside of my hall?" she returned.
"Have faith."
A single tear slipped down her cheek. "Thomas, after everything we've said, I simply cannot believe that the risk you intend to take is worth it."
He lifted his hand to touch her cheek, then let his arm fall back to his side. "Iolanthe," he said, "it will work. You'll see."
More tears joined the first. He found himself jamming his hands in his pockets to keep from reaching out to her.
"Oh, Iolanthe," he whispered. "Please, don't."
She dragged her sleeve across her nose and sniffed mightily. "This is not," she said, putting her shoulders back, "how a woman sends her man off into battle."
"Then you have words of encouragement for me?"
"Aye. Duck often."
He laughed in spite of himself. "Thanks. I'll remember that." He paused. "You're sure you won't—"
"Aye, I'm certain."
He wasn't going to push her any more. She knew where her family home was, and if she'd forgotten, he was quite sure Ambrose could help her find the way. He shifted, unsure how one went about leaving behind the woman he loved when he couldn't pull her into his arms and kiss her senseless.
"Off with you," she said, stepping back. "I've books to read, you know. Mrs. Pruitt has generously offered to turn the pages for me whilst you're about your business."
Thomas spared a thought over what Mrs. P. had extorted from Iolanthe for that service, decided it definitely had something to do with Ambrose, then nodded. He could have stood there forever saying good-bye to her, but there was no use in it. If he was going to go, then he needed to go.
Before reason set in and he decided he had lost his mind for real this time.
"I'll see you soon," he said, trying to make it sound as if he was just going to the store. "If you need more books, tell Mrs. P. to use my charge card to pay for them. Spend whatever you like."
She only nodded.
He found he couldn't move.
"Go," she said, shooing him away.
"I'm trying."
"Turn around and walk," she suggested.
He looked at her for a final time, memorizing every detail, then turned and walked from the hall.
He didn't dare look over his shoulder but continued on through the gates, nodding briefly to the guardsmen there. Duncan fell into step with him.
"Laird Jamie will teach you what you must ken," Duncan said.
"I hope so."
"Learn the lessons well."
"My life will depend on it?"
Duncan shot him a look that made Thomas pause.
"Do you know something you're not telling me?" he asked.
"I ken many things," Duncan said simply. "If you'll have my advice, lad, then you'll heed your master and learn what he has to teach. Scotland in my day is a bloody place."
"Any other words of cheer?"
Duncan seemed to consider for a moment, then he spoke. "If you wish to convince me you're in earnest, then I'll tell you something only I know. Something known only to myself and Moira, Iolanthe's mother."
Thomas almost made an offhand remark, when the potential import of Duncan's words struck him. He felt his jaw slide down.
"You didn't."
Duncan looked around as if he was afraid someone might be listening, then glared at Thomas. 'Tell no one."
Thomas frowned. "Maybe I'm not understanding what it is I'm not supposed to be telling."
"What I'm saying," Duncan said through clenched teeth, "is that I loved her ma."
"Then..."
"If you want to catch my attention, tell me that," Duncan said, "and I'll listen."
"If you don't slit my throat first. Are you telling me that you and ... and Iolanthe's mother—"
"Must I give you the particulars?" Duncan asked, pained.
"Is Iolanthe yours?"
"Why else, lad, do you think I am here?" Duncan asked.
Thomas could hardly believe his ears. "If you're Iolanthe's father, then why haven't you told her?"
Duncan's face turned a dull shade of red. "Why would she want me?" he demanded. "Laird's daughter or the bastard daughter of a nameless cousin of her sire?"
"I think," Thomas said slowly, "that you undervalue yourself. I think she would very much want to know." He smiled at Duncan. "I think you should tell her. But I've got go now, so I can't stay and help you out with that. You're on your own."
Duncan looked horribly indecisive.
"Tell her," Thomas said, more gently. "I think she'd want to know. I'm thrilled. She's not my half-aunt anymore." He made Duncan a bow. "I'll see you soon."
And with that he left, before anyone else showed up to make any more revelations he wasn't sure he could take in. He forced himself not to look back at the castle as he made his way down to the main road. It was unsettling enough to think that the next time he'd be on that road, it would be several centuries in the past.
Assuming, of course, that everything worked the way it should. Jamie had said there were no guarantees—something Thomas hadn't wanted to share with Iolanthe.
Well, there was nothing he could do about it now. His foot was to the path; there was no turning back.
He made his way back to his car, took another look at his map, then got under way before he thought any more about anything.
It was safer that way.
He'd driven very fast on the long, unlovely stretch of road from Edinburgh to Inverness. It was something he thought he'd like to forget as soon as possible. He'd passed too many caravans and trucks that he'd had no business passing, but he'd done it anyway. Haste seemed to be the watchword of the day.
By the time he'd made it up into the Highlands and driven up the little winding roads that led through the forests and glens, he was exhausted. It was very dark before he managed to find his way—after several misturns and U-turns—to Jamie's keep. Maybe the most unsettling thing about it was the feeling that he'd been there before, but with a different landscape. By the time he actually pulled inside the gates and turned off the car, the feeling had become such a constant companion that he had almost accustomed himself to it.
He crawled from the car, stretched, then sighed. One step closer to his goal, and all he wanted to do was beg for a bed and use it.
He walked up the wide, broad steps leading up to James MacLeod's hall and shivered. It was just too familiar.
The door opened suddenly.
"Yeah, what do you want?"
Thomas stared at the young man standing there with a Ding-Dong in one hand and a carton of milk in the other. A huge swig was taken, a mouth wiped with a shirtsleeve, and a look of complete and utter boredom once again descended on the face. If the man hadn't looked so much like a younger version of Alexander Smith, Thomas might have suspected he'd come to the wrong place.
"Thomas McKinnon," Thomas said.
The young man looked him over from head to toe, then
nodded a weary nod. "Of course you are. Come on in. I'm Zachary, the doorman."
Thomas walked in and found himself in the middle of an enormous argument over the origins of haggis.
" 'Tis not a Scottish dish!" one man was saying quite loudly.
"'Tis!" another said, just as loudly.
"Ian, you're a daft dolt."
"William, you're an Englishman, and that says it all!"
Thomas blinked in surprise as the two men pulled out swords and started hacking at each other right there in the great hall. Chairs were kicked out of the way as the fight continued in earnest. Thomas noted that a handful of women were sitting by the fire, watching the scene with placid expressions. A handful of men sat with them, sprawled in their chairs, looking equally as unconcerned.
"Standard fare," Zachary said. "Come on. Jamie's been waiting for you." He led Thomas across the room. "That's Ian MacLeod," Zachary said, pointing at the combatant wearing a plaid. "He's Jamie's cousin. His wife is Jane. The other one fighting is William de Piaget; he's the Brit. That's his wife, Julianna. She was my sister's college roommate. That's my sister, Elizabeth, who married Jamie. That's him there, and that's his brother Patrick. And their minstrel Joshua." He looked over his shoulder at Thomas. "You getting all this?"
"Sure," Thomas said, though in reality, his mind was spinning. He could hardly keep from gaping at the two men who were, by their swearing and bearing, quite obviously not from the twentieth century, swordfighting in the middle of a great hall, with their very twentieth-century looking wives watching without any trace of panic on their faces.
Until a toddler started toward the combatants. Elizabeth leaped to her feet and bellowed for them to stop.
"That's enough, the both of you! Haggis was a British dish that the Scots took over for their own in the early eighteenth century and, as far as I'm concerned, I wish the Brits had kept it. Now, can we finally have supper before you kill one of the children?"
Thomas watched in admiration as the two men meekly put up their swords and returned to their seats. He followed Zachary over to the group in front of the fire and felt distinctly like he was being sized up. And then James MacLeod stood.
And Thomas wondered if he was out of his mind.
Not that he wasn't tall himself, and in good shape. And it wasn't as if he wasn't rugged. He spent a lot of time out-of-doors, and that tended to put a rough edge on his boardroom persona. But what he wasn't was a medieval clansman who'd cut his teeth on hardship and bloodshed.
Like the medieval clansman before him, for instance.
Jamie was big, he was broad, and he had a pirate's grin that made Thomas suspect he was in for one hell of a month of training.
"Thomas," Jamie said, extending one great paw for a handshake. "You found us easily enough, I see."
"No problem," Thomas said, returning the very firm grip.
"Sit for a moment," Jamie said, indicating a chair in front of the fire. "We'll eat very soon, for I've no doubt you haven't yet."
"I didn't want to take the time."
Ian, one of the ones who had been fighting, laughed. "Ah, well, that's the last time you'll say that. When we've started in on you, you'll be begging for meals simply to rest."
The way they all grinned left Thomas feeling decidedly queasy—if he ever felt queasy, which he didn't, because he was a manly man and unafraid.
"You look like your sister," Elizabeth said kindly. "I imagine even more so when you smile."
Thomas managed a smile just to prove her point. Then he realized what Elizabeth had said. "When was Megan here?"
"Stopped in on her honeymoon," Elizabeth said with a smile of her own. "Isn't it great to have family?"
"It is," Thomas said.
Jamie clapped his hands on his knees, then rose. "Dinner first, then speech. We've a great deal to accomplish tonight."
Dinner was, for better or worse, not haggis, though the conversation revolved around it for some time.
And once they had finished, Jamie pushed away his plate. "Thomas, I know most of your tale, but the others do not. As you will likely need all our aid to have success, perhaps it would not be amiss to recount it again."
Jamie couldn't have known that much, because Thomas had listened to Alex give him the short version. He was obviously skilled at filling in the blanks.
And so Thomas began. He told it from his point of view and left little out. His mention of Everest had Jamie peppering him with questions.
"Jamie," Elizabeth warned. "Do not even entertain the thought."
"But to go back in time and climb it before Hillary managed it," Jamie said. "What a feat!"
"No," she said firmly. "No, no, and no." She looked at Thomas. "Go on. And hurry, before he really starts thinking about it seriously."
So Thomas took up his tale again, told of the castle and how he'd seen it in his dreams before he'd gotten Megan's pictures. He told of his journey to England, his thoughts on restoring the castle, and the purpose of his year in England. He told them of meeting Iolanthe.
And of learning who, and what, she was.
There was a good stretch of silence then, but no vapors and no uncomfortable shifting.
"And what did she think of you?" Jamie asked.
"I'm sure she thought I was a pompous ass."
Elizabeth laughed. "And so runs the course of true love. What did you think of her?"
"I wanted to fall to her feet and pledge undying love."
"Sounds familiar," Jamie said, with a sigh. "Go on."
Thomas told them of his trip to New York, and of meeting Alex. And he gave them his thoughts on what he wanted to do. Then he turned to Iolanthe's story and told it as faithfully as he could.
"All of which led me to calling you," he said, "and here I am."
Jamie nodded. "You've quite a task before you. I think you'll find the proper time easily enough. But passing yourself off as any kind of medieval man will be difficult." He looked at Thomas. "You could go as a McKinnon. We were allies enough at the time. But 'twill mean a goodly amount of training."
"I assumed as much. For how long?"
Jamie smiled briefly. "You could train a year and still not be ready."
"Fortunately for you," his cousin Ian said with a wolfish grin, "we've a dire-straits course that will take just over a month. Gaelic, swordplay, and the swagger, all for a modest fee."
Jamie snorted. "Ian's given up cattle raiding for teaching swordplay. He brings poor, hapless souls up to his land and tortures them for weeks at a time."
"And they pay me for it," Ian agreed. "Hollywood types, rich men with more money than wits, lads with more energy than maturity. Aye, I wreak havoc upon them all."
"I'll pay you whatever you ask," Thomas said promptly. "It'll be worth it."
"Fee waived," Ian said with another smile. "I do what I can for the course of true love."
Elizabeth ruffled his hair affectionately. "You always were a romantic."
"I don't mind that about him," his wife Jane agreed happily. "But then again, I benefit from it."
Jamie waved toward William de Piaget. "Here is our lone English-man. We allow him to stay now and then because of his knowledge of England. You'll need his skills as well."
"Aye," William said, "but I pay for my heritage each day."
"Ha," Ian said with a snort. "Who pays? You're now running those bloody medieval reenactment tours and making a fortune! I'm the one who's sweating from dawn to dusk."
Julianna smiled at Thomas. "We're just here for a visit. We just bought a large estate in England, actually, near the castle where William grew up."
"That would be Artane," William supplied with a nod. "And it would please me to aid you as I can." He looked at Thomas unflinchingly. " 'Tis a bloody dangerous time, that. You'll need your wits about you."
Jamie put his hands on the table and rose. "Which means to bed now. You'll want an early start on the morrow, Thomas. We'll all help you as we can."
Thomas looked aroun
d the table. "I don't know how to thank you. I really don't. It's more than I could have hoped for."
Jamie's brother Patrick laughed. "We'll speak of this again in a se'nnight and see if you're still grateful then. I know what it's like to fight with Jamie and Ian each day, and I can't say as I'm grateful for it."
"Lazy whelp," Jamie threw at his brother.
Patrick only shrugged with a smile. " 'Tis the duty of the second son to take things as lightly as possible."
Jamie opened his mouth to retort, but Elizabeth got to her feet before he could.
"Why don't you two leave that discussion for tomorrow?" she suggested, juggling a sleeping toddler in her arms. "It's late, and Thomas looks beat. You can tell him all your gory tales when you have at him outside." She placed her son in Jamie's arms, then smiled at Thomas. "Come on, and I'll show you your room."
"If it's no trouble," he said. "I really could go stay at a B and B—"
"An inn?" Jamie asked, looking appalled. "You're family. You'll stay here."
And that, Thomas supposed, was that. He said his good nights, then followed Elizabeth from the kitchen and across the great hall. He looked to his left, and a chill went over him. Elizabeth looked at him with a puzzled expression.
"What?" she asked.
"What's through that doorway?"
"A storeroom now, for swords and things like that."
He halted in midstep. "The dungeon used to be there."
She looked at him in shock. "Yes, it did. How did you know?"
He met her gaze. "I just knew."
"Well," she said, taking his arm and pulling him along, "as one who has spent a night in Jamie's pit, his medieval pit, mind you, I'm here to tell you that you don't want to become familiar with that place."
Thomas couldn't have agreed more.
Chapter 26
A se'nnight later, Iolanthe stood behind a fat, obnoxious couple from the Colonies who were dressed in shirts adorned with orange, yellow, and pink flowers, sporting some sort of woven straw hats, and arguing loudly over whether or not the castle they were tromping through had any historical importance. The man yelled at the woman, the woman began to cry, and Iolanthe found herself acting without thinking. She placed herself in front of the man, made herself unmistakably visible, and scowled her most formidable scowl.