My Heart Stood Still

by Lynn Kurland

  She at least had the grace to feel a bit of shame. "You saved my life, and I disparaged your skill just the same." She chewed on her lip for a moment, then spat out an apology as quickly as possible, for it didn't come easily to her.

  "Well," he said with a laugh, "if you hadn't stowed that dagger in his arm, we'd both be dead, so thanks have to go to you as well."

  She nodded briefly in return, then looked back over the shore. "Thank you for this," she said quietly. " 'Tis a very great gift."

  "It's my pleasure," he said. 'Truly."

  She stood next to him for what seemed like hours, letting the sound of the sea soothe her. When she finally gave in to her shivers, Thomas put his hands on her shoulders and turned her toward the tower door.

  "It'll be there tomorrow," he said. "It's late, and we're exhausted. I think they have a chamber for us."

  She dug her heels in. "For us? The two of us? But—"

  "You're perfectly safe with me."

  "But—"

  "We'll put pillows between us on the bed. I'm fairly sure you'll be too tired to ravish me, so I'll sleep quite easily."

  She whirled around. "Thomas!"

  The look he gave her had the rest of her complaints dying on her lips.

  "Say my name again," he said quietly.

  "Daft man, I will not."

  "That wasn't it. Another try, if you please."

  She scowled at him. "I'm not set to ravish you, Thomas McKinnon, no matter the beauty of your face. I'll take the bed, and you'll have the floor."

  "If you say my name a few more times, I will probably end up doing just that without complaint." He smiled and turned her around. "Let's go, violet eyes."

  She stumbled, but he caught her and steadied her. She didn't dare turn around, and she wondered again if she had just consigned herself to a night in a chamber with a madman.

  Why had he called her that?

  She tried to give it thought, but the feeling of his warm hands on her shoulders was damnably distracting. And when he took her hand and led her downstairs, all she could do was follow like an obedient pup. And when she found herself all tucked up in the finest bed she had ever enjoyed in the whole of her life, she almost began to feel guilty about him sleeping rolled up on the floor in a blanket.

  "Thomas ..." she began.

  "Don't worry, my lady," he said, sounding as if he smiled. "I've slept in worse. At least the floor isn't moving."

  "Did you pass a night or two in my father's pit?"

  "Yes," he said with a half laugh. "I take it Malcolm isn't known for his hospitality?".

  "He isn't," she agreed, then found that sleep was overtaking her with a relentlessness she couldn't avoid. "Good night, Thomas."

  "Good night, Iolanthe," he whispered.

  She was almost asleep when she realized what he'd said.

  Her eyes flew open.

  Damn the man, who was he?

  Chapter 34

  Thomas leaned back on his elbows and looked at the beach in front of him. It seemed like a pretty normal afternoon, actually. He was sitting on a blanket that was covered with sand from being walked on too often. He had the remains of a picnic in a basket next to him along with a bottle of very fine drink that had turned out to be wine made from a berry he couldn't and didn't particularly care to identify. He was obviously being blessed for good behavior because, despite it being close to the middle of November, the sun was shining overhead, clouds billowed in a particularly cheerful manner, and he had just woken up from a peaceful nap.

  To the sight of a medieval Highland woman cavorting in the water like an especially undignified eight-year-old.

  Ah, such was life in the Middle Ages. He watched Iolanthe play on the shore and wondered if he could really get used to the lack of toilet paper, satellite dishes, and ice cubes.

  Then again, there had been an appalling lack of ice cubes in twenty-first-century Britain as well, so maybe that last item wasn't anything to consider.

  Not that they were living a particularly deprived life. Bathroom amenities aside, Artane was a pretty luxurious place. Three square meals a day, which were perfectly tasty as long as you didn't question the age of the meat. He was big on sauces anyway, so it didn't bother him.

  The nightly entertainment was great, and he thought with enough practice he just might learn a few dance steps while he was there. His medieval French was coming along quite nicely, and he'd even ventured out in the lists each day and returned at noon with his pride and his body intact.

  He and Iolanthe had been clothed in sumptuous fabrics and bedecked with several baubles that probably each would have fed a handful of peasants for a handful of years. They had peace and quiet. They had time for loitering on the beach with the only question being what they would have for lunch. It had been blissful.

  But as pleasant as all those things were, they weren't what made him seriously consider staying.

  It was the woman collecting shells near the water.

  Of course, the previous week hadn't been all smooth sailing. He'd gone to sleep that first night kicking himself for having used her name. He hadn't meant to. It had just slipped out. He'd been very surprised she hadn't leaped from the bed and demanded all her answers right then and there.

  Of course, waking the next day to find her sitting comfortably on a stool not two feet from him, pointing the business end of Duncan's knife at him had certainly come as no surprise. He'd tried to deny having said what he'd said, then ended up promising her all the answers she could have wanted if she would just come walk on the beach with him. And while she was considering that, he'd asked her just what it was he was supposed to call her.

  Her look of utter discomfort had been so familiar, he'd almost smiled. In the end, she had told him he was a very bad liar, expressed her amazement that he'd been able to concoct a story that had bought them food and shelter for as long as they wanted it, and then defiantly given him her name as if she couldn't spit it out fast enough for public consumption.

  Given that he knew what it had cost her, he received it with what he'd hoped was an appropriate amount of reverence.

  And he hadn't used it very much at first. Watching the woman he loved fondle a knife hilt while looking at him purposefully was more unsettling than he ever would have imagined it could be.

  The beach had been, fortunately, a stroke of genius. Just walking along it had changed her somehow. She hadn't asked him any questions, and he hadn't given her any answers. He still suspected that she thought he was out of his mind, but after a week of spending her afternoons on the shore, she didn't throw that at him with any venom—and with less and less seriousness.

  She laughed more.

  He could hardly believe it was the same woman he'd known six hundred years in the future, yet he couldn't deny it.

  He sat up as he realized she was running toward him. She was carrying heaven knew what in her skirts that she'd hiked up. Apparently, she didn't mind wandering around in her slip, and to be honest, neither did he. The first time he'd teased her about it, she'd looked at him archly and asked him if he'd never seen a woman's legs before. When he'd squirmed instead of answering, she'd merely tossed her head and wandered off to gather more things in her skirts.

  She came to a teetering halt before him, knelt, and dumped out handfuls of shells.

  "Look at them," she panted. "Bonny, aye?"

  "Magnificent," he agreed.

  "Ach, ye wee lecher, look at the shells," she chided.

  "Oh," he said, sitting up and looking down. "Yes. They're nice, too."

  She shoved them aside and sprawled out on the blanket. "By the saints, this agrees with me."

  "I can see that," he said with a smile. "It's a good place."

  She rolled over on her back and looked up at him. "We canna remain here forever, Thomas."

  "Sure we can."

  She shook her head and sat up. She took up a handful of shells and began to sort through them.

  "Tell me the tale,"
she said simply. "Now."

  "But—"

  "And spare me nothing."

  "Io—"

  She looked at him and smiled easily. "I like that name you call me. Io. Seems simpler, aye?"

  Would the woman never cease to leave him breathless? He managed a weak nod. "Yes, it does."

  She looked down at her hands. "You've done a merry dance this past se'nnight with the truth."

  "I didn't want to spoil the peace."

  She stole a look at him. "And will the tale do that?"

  "It might," he admitted. "Parts of it are pretty unbelievable."

  "Today," she said, looking up at the sky, "today, I think I could believe anything." She looked at him and smiled again. "Even one of your tales, you poor, daft man."

  "Are you sure you want it all?"

  "Aye. All of it."

  He took a deep breath and prayed he wasn't making the biggest mistake of his life.

  "All right," he said, crawling to his feet. "Let's walk."

  "The truth pricks at you so?"

  "It'll be easier to catch you when you run if I'm already on my feet." He held out his hand for her and pulled her up. "Where do you want me to start?"

  "At the beginning."

  It figured. Thomas put his hands behind his back and started to walk down the beach with her. If she wanted the whole thing, perhaps she had a right to it. It was, after all, her story. He took a deep breath.

  "Well, you see, I bought a castle."

  "You must be very rich."

  He was, but there was no sense in bringing that up right then. "Actually, it was a fairly old castle and it had fallen into disrepair."

  "An old castle?" she asked, frowning. "Are there such things?"

  "Where I come from, yes, there are. Now, I bought this castle without having seen it, though when I saw it, I... I wasn't surprised by how it looked."

  He could feel her eyes on him, but he couldn't look at her. The whole thing was still too unsettling to think about. Who would have thought that a simple check made out to someone he didn't know would eventually have landed him in medieval England, walking next to the woman he had loved when she'd been a ghost, and who was now as corporeal as he?

  "Why weren't you?" she asked. "Surprised, that is."

  "Because I'd seen it before." He paused. "In my dreams."

  She was, amazingly enough, silent.

  Thomas looked at her. "Daft? Fey? Anything to call me?"

  She only shook her head. "I've had dreams as well."

  "Have you?"

  She looked at him, and Thomas was surprised by the familiarity in her gaze. As if she had known him all her life.

  As if she might have loved him at least that long.

  And then the look was gone as quickly as it had come, so quickly that he wondered if he'd imagined it.

  "Aye, I have," she said briskly. "Now, continue on, if you will."

  He smiled, then shrugged. "Well, I came to take possession of my castle only to find that it wasn't empty. There was a garrison of Highlanders and a particularly unpleasant man named Connor MacDougal—"

  She stopped so suddenly that he had to back up to look at her.

  "MacDougal?" she asked, her forehead wrinkling.

  "Yes. Know him?"

  "Where was your castle?"

  "In England," he said slowly, but he didn't dare tell her more than that. Yet.

  "I see," she said, chewing on her lip.

  "I was so startled by seeing all these men in kilts," he continued, "and by Laird MacDougal waving his sword at me, that I stumbled backward, tripped, and hit my head on a rock."

  She laughed. "Ah, but your pride must have been wounded. Did they strip you and leave you out in the open for others to mock or merely toss you outside the gates and leave you to the wild beasties?"

  "Neither," he said, scowling. "They argued plenty over what to do with me, but left me alone. In the end, I managed to get myself back to the inn down the way. It was a day or two before I came back to the castle, but I managed it eventually—"

  "Without your pride," she interrupted.

  "Yes," he said. "Which only added to my problems. The MacDougal said I didn't have any rights and that I'd find that out soon enough when I went inside and met with the real lord of the castle."

  He paused.

  "Only it wasn't a lord."

  She looked at him and waited. "Aye?"

  He started walking again. "It was a woman, and the keep was undeniably hers."

  "I imagine she wasn't too happy about you taking it from her."

  "That, my lady, is the understatement of the millennium," he said dryly. "No, she wasn't happy about it, and I was quite rude to her. We didn't exactly begin our relationship on the best of terms."

  "And then?"

  He shrugged. "I tried to rebuild the keep, with her permission of course, and we became friends. Then I fell in love with her."

  "Oh," she said softly.

  He stole a look at her. A more foolish man might have thought she seemed the slightest bit disappointed.

  "Then you loved her very much?" she asked.

  "With my whole soul," he said.

  "Hmmm," she said, turning her face away from him and looking out to sea. "A remarkable tale."

  Well, now this was something. Could she be jealous? The thought was almost startling enough to make him stop, but he thought he might be on a roll, so he pressed on.

  "We had a problem, the lady and I," he continued, "and there was only one way to solve it. So I took myself on a very long journey."

  "To my home," she put in absently.

  "Yes. I studied swordplay and learned Gaelic. It's then that the story takes a different turn."

  "No doubt."

  He stopped and waited until she had reluctantly turned toward him. "This is the truth of it. I traveled through time, then found myself in your father's pit. Duncan rescued me. He and I followed your trail. We overtook Charles's men, only to find you not among them. We fought with them just the same. We slew them, but at the cost of Duncan's life."

  "Why did Duncan come?" she asked, looking pained.

  "Because he loved you. And he believed me when I told him Lord Charles would kill you if left to himself."

  She bowed her head. "Duncan protected me quite often at great cost to himself. He was a good man."

  You don't know the half of it, Thomas thought to himself.

  Then she looked up at him suddenly. "How did you know where the English-man was taking me? Not even my sire knew that."

  Later, he thought. Later, when you'll believe me. "Duncan helped me," he said, which wasn't untrue. "After Duncan was slain, I took up the trail and followed you. I trailed you to the English-man's keep, got inside, and walked up the stairs to the tower room."

  "How did you get past the guards?"

  "The same way we got out of the castle. With the help of the ghosts. Charles had killed scores of people. Their ghosts were milling about outside the keep. They spoke to me and told me their tale. I asked for their help."

  She looked at him skeptically but didn't stop him.

  "So," he continued, "I got inside the tower chamber, distracted Charles, and the rest you know. Except," he added slowly, "for a couple of things that make the story make sense."

  "Such as?"

  "The secret of the MacLeod keep."

  She was very still. "Aye?" she asked carefully.

  "Well, the secret really is time travel," he said. "I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't experienced it myself."

  She was watching him closely, but she wasn't calling him names or shaking her head. Those were good signs.

  "And I really can see ghosts," he said. "My mother can, too. So can my sister."

  "Your father?" she prompted.

  "My father would"— he wanted to say come unglued, but that wasn't exactly medieval terminology— "he would roar endlessly if he knew I could, so believe me, he knows nothing of it. I didn't ask for this."

&nb
sp; She nodded. " 'Tis understandable."

  "He thinks we're all out of our minds."

  "I think I would like him," she murmured.

  "You probably would. And all I can say is it's lucky I can see ghosts, or we wouldn't be standing here today."

  "Why is that?"

  Thomas wondered how the hell he was going to get out of this intact. He wished he'd had a comfortable pair of jeans with pockets just made for him to jam his hands into.

  "Well, there are several reasons," he said, hoping he managed to get through all of them before she either walked away or decked him. Why hadn't he thought to offer to hold her knife for her? "First is that the year I bought the castle was 2001."

  She only blinked.

  "And the keep was Thorpewold."

  At that, she flinched.

  "And the Highlanders I saw, including Connor MacDougal, were ghosts."

  "Ah," she said; then she felt silent.

  That silence became as tangible as a third person standing there. The sea still roared next to them, and the birds still wheeled in the sky above. But between the two of them, there was a stillness that half made him begin to wonder if they would remain frozen there forever.

  Iolanthe took a deep breath. "And the woman?"

  Thomas nodded slowly. "Yes. She was a ghost as well."

  "And her name?"

  He paused. "Iolanthe MacLeod."

  She closed her eyes and swallowed. Hard. He could see her struggle with something, but whether it was disbelief or fear or revulsion, he couldn't tell. Then she opened her eyes and looked at him.

  "I can scarce believe it," she said hoarsely.

  "I know."

  " 'Tis madness."

  "I was hoping," he said slowly, "that you would remember."

  "Remember what?" she asked with a humorless laugh. "My own death?"

  "No, six hundred years of haunting," he said.

  "And why," she asked with a break in her voice, "why, by the very saints of heaven, would I want to remember such a thing?" She wrapped her arms around herself. "Ach, but what a misery that must have been!"

  He nodded slowly. "Yes, I think it was."

  She took several paces away from him, then came back and stood in front of him. She looked up at him. "Did I..." She asked, "Did I love you?"