by Lynn Kurland
“Hamlet is a play by William Shakespeare. Do you know him?”
“I’ve no stomach for jongleurs,” Connor said shortly.
Roderick smiled dryly. “You might find this play quite to your liking. There is a great amount of death involved, some revenge, and a good haunting or two.”
Connor refused to be distracted by those enticing thoughts. “I’m certain I would find it deadly dull,” he muttered. “Now, what is this Vee McKinnon business? What does that mean?”
Roderick shrugged. “Produced means ‘put on by,’ so I daresay this McKinnon fellow intends to mount a stage play here in our own humble home.”
“Never,” Connor vowed. “Not while I have means to stop it.”
“If you can survive Thomas remodeling the corner tower last year,” Roderick began, “you could certainly survive—”
“I will not have another McKinnon in my hall,” Connor said curtly. “Not even if he isn’t kin of Thomas McKinnon’s. I will make the life of this new one a misery. Indeed, I will make him sorely regret his intentions before he even sets foot inside the gates. Or perhaps I will wait until he comes inside the gates, then not allow him to leave, giving me ample time to torment him as I will.”
He paused and contemplated the possibilities, finding that just thinking on them made him feel warm and contented inside.
“Lads, to me!” he called cheerfully. “Murder! Mayhem!”
All the men looked up. Some of them came quickly; others dawdled, as if they hoped to avoid some bit of unpleasant labor. Connor’s good humors departed abruptly.
“Damn ye all to hell,” he snarled, “must I best ye all in the lists yet again to prove my worth?”
They gathered around him, not as eagerly or as quickly as he would have liked, but they gathered. He made a note of those whose feet seemed to drag the most, then turned his mind to the matters immediately at hand.
“A McKinnon lad is coming here to put on a play,” he announced.
Many scratched their heads; others looked at him blankly.
“We’re going to be under siege,” Connor clarified, irritated. By the saints, he needed to import more intelligent guardsmen. “Do not show yourselves until I give you leave. I’ll explain as we go.”
The men gave him various nods of assent and shuffled off. Connor called for the men who had been the least enthusiastic about answering his call. They looked a bit green as they clustered together in front of him.
“The lists,” he said, nodding to the place that at various and sundry times had served as a garden. “One by one. You may watch until your turn comes. Then perhaps you will not be so slow next time I bid you come.”
He strode over with his afternoon’s entertainment trailing feebly behind him. He supposed he might have felt a little sorry for them, for they would certainly receive the brunt of his irritation with one Vee McKinnon.
Damn the man, whoever he was.
Evening had fallen and was fast turning into night before Connor finished instructing his recalcitrant guardsmen in their duties and could take himself off to do a bit of investigating. He made his way purposefully to the Boar’s Head Inn. It wasn’t a bad place, as far as inns went. If Connor had cared, he might have been pleased by the look of the place, its fine construction, and the lovely garden laid out to delight both the eye and the nose.
But Connor did not care for such things. He wanted to know what he could expect and given that there wasn’t a soul in his keep who could match him in wit, it was obviously up to him to do all the scouting as well as all the thinking.
He shunned the front door and went around to the kitchen. It was simply a fact of life; more interesting conversations happened near the stove than in the entryway.
He had just rounded the corner of the building when he saw none other than Hugh McKinnon descending upon the place in a tearing hurry, clutching a cap bedecked with feathers to his head with one hand and struggling to carry an armful of gear with the other. He was swathed, head to toe, in a luxurious velvet cape of indeterminate color.
Connor stared at him in horrified fascination.
He certainly hadn’t had much experience with that sort of thing, but it looked to him as if Hugh had decided to become, in his undeath, a perpetrator of frolics. Connor knew he shouldn’t have been surprised.
Hugh was, after all, a McKinnon.
Connor waited until Hugh had gone inside, then walked to the kitchen door and peered in the window.
Aye, the customary lads were there: Ambrose MacLeod, Hugh McKinnon, and Fulbert de Piaget. Connor knew them all, had bested them all at one time or another, and disliked them all quite thoroughly. Matchmaking busybodies. Could they not find a more serious work to do than meddling in the affairs of poor, hapless mortals who likely could have found love on their own?
Connor put his ear to the door. When that failed to provide him with the access he desired, he put his ear through the door. That was better, but still unsatisfactory. Connor leaned his whole face into the kitchen, where he could both see and hear. The lads before him were far too involved in their own conversation to pay him any heed. He waited patiently, ready to hear things that would prepare him for what was to come.
“Hugh,” Ambrose said in a garbled voice, “what are you wearing?”
Fulbert made accompanying sounds of horror. Connor had to agree, but he refrained from comment.
Hugh doffed a purple velvet cap and made the other two a low bow. “Theater gear.” He drew his sword with a flourish, but it became caught in his cape, flipped into the air with a bit of aid from its hapless wielder, then dove point-down against the floor, where it collapsed into itself. “’Tis meant to do that, that sword,” he said quickly. “You know, it isn’t as if those players can go about stabbing each other truly, can they now—”
“And how would you know any of that?” Ambrose asked suspiciously.
“Well, I had a day or two of leisure and though I was first for France, I soon felt the pull of the apple.”
“The apple?” Fulbert echoed.
“The Big Apple,” Hugh said, staring off into the distance with a dreamy expression on his face. “Broadway. Central Park. Those loudly braying cabbies in their swift-moving yellow automobiles . . .”
Connor wondered if Hugh had lost his mind. Apples? Cabbies?
“Do you mean to tell me that you actually ventured into New York City?” Ambrose demanded.
Hugh stuck his chin out. “I thought it best to do a bit of investigating before the troupe arrives.” He dragged up a chair of his own and struggled to get himself, his cape, his sword, and sundry other props including wigs, rather authentic looking Elizabethan scientific instruments, and a lute, into his seat. He failed. His gear clattered in a heap about him.
Ambrose hissed him to silence. “Will you wake the entire household?”
Hugh scowled. “I came prepared. I see nothing in your hands to further our plan.”
Ambrose tapped his head meaningfully. “It all resides in here, my good man. I’ve spent hours ferreting out secrets, learning important details, discovering—”
“The play being done?” Hugh asked archly.
Connor almost blurted out the name, but stopped himself just in time. It wouldn’t do to let on to his eavesdropping self.
“Hamlet,” Fulbert supplied.
“And how do you know that?” Ambrose demanded.
“I eavesdropped.”
Connor shrugged to himself. He wasn’t above it; he couldn’t fault Fulbert for the same thing.
“Where?” Ambrose asked. “Where did you go to eavesdrop?”
“In London,” Fulbert said. “Went to make certain that young Megan MacLeod McKinnon—”
“De Piaget,” Hugh added.
Fulbert cursed at him, then continued. “I took meself to London to see that that McKinnon gel who wed with me nevvy wasn’t keepin’ him from doing a proper day’s labor. For as ye know, me nevvy Gideon de Piaget is the powerful and quite capable
head of a vast international conglomerate.”
“And I take it you left my sweet granddaughter Megan—several generations removed, of course—untroubled?” Ambrose demanded.
Fulbert shrugged. “Untroubled enough, I suppose. She only screeched once, but that wasn’t my fault.”
Connor reached a hand inside the door to stroke his chin thoughtfully. Unrepentantly causing mortal screeching? Perhaps he had judged Fulbert too harshly. ’Twas possible he might have overlooked a lad with his own sentiments on the living—
Hugh glared at Fulbert. “She screeched? You forced such a sound from Thomas’s sweet sister?”
“Only once.”
“Did you show yourself to her?” Ambrose asked sharply.
Fulbert scowled. “She’s seen me ’afore and knows me well. But as I was sayin’, she was about some new beauty treatment and when I saw her with her face all a’slathered with green goo, well, can ye blame me for a screech of my own?”
Connor frowned. ’Twas one thing to wrest a scream from a mortal; ’twas another thing entirely to give vent to one oneself. Perhaps he hadn’t judged Fulbert too quickly. Obviously, those de Piaget lads possessed the weak spines he’d always suspected they did.
“Anyhow,” Fulbert continued, “I heard her sayin’ that Hamlet was the play being done up the way this summer and that gear had already been sent ahead in preparation.”
Connor almost made an exclamation of triumph before he could stop himself. He knew it! ’Twas one of Thomas McKinnon’s relations come to put on the play.
His elation, but not surprise, at being correct was immediately extinguished by the realization that he had been correct. One of Thomas’s kin was coming to put on a play.
Connor pulled his head back outside with a curse. Damnation, but would he never rid himself of that blasted family? Everywhere he turned, there was another one cropping up like a poisonous mushroom. Obviously, this would require a newer, more unpleasant strategy. He would have his peace and quiet that summer, no matter the cost. He turned to walk away . . .
Only then realizing that he was not alone. That damned innkeeper, Mrs. Pruitt, stood there, dressed all in black, loaded down with all sorts of modern gear that beeped and blinked and, truth be told, startled him so badly that a manly shout of surprise was wrenched from him against his will.
Mrs. Pruitt whipped herself around to look up at him. Her mouth dropped open and a look of astonishment descended upon her features.
Connor scowled. Had she never heard a lad bellow before? Aye, well, so that might have been considered a scream, but who was this woman to judge?
Then again, perhaps she wasn’t judging. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped to the ground, senseless.
Connor briefly considered ascertaining the extent of her injuries, but two things stopped him: He did not care; and Ambrose and his mates were coming out the door. Connor hastened away before they saw him.
So, he had not been mistaken in what was to come. It appeased him only slightly, for he had yet the matter of that McKinnon lad to deal with. Not that such troubled him. He would greet the man with his sword bared, leaving him with no choice but to flee.
He had not paid for the stones beneath his feet with his blood like another specter he’d once known, or with his gold, as Thomas McKinnon claimed to have, but he had damned well paid for it with his will to hold it.
And hold it he would.
And pity the next McKinnon who thought otherwise.
Chapter 3
“Vikki, we’re here.”
Victoria struggled to wake. She knew she had a good reason to open her eyes, but she’d been lost in the most delicious dream and wanted to savor it a bit longer. Shakespeare had been involved somehow. She thought Michael Fellini had been starring in the production. She was almost positive there had been a Tony award and rave reviews in the background.
She was certain it hadn’t included ghosts, ghosts in prop rooms, or prop rooms that she no longer had access to.
She opened her eyes. It took her several minutes to reconcile herself to the fact that she was sitting on a train and the train was no longer moving. Her sister Megan was struggling to get out of her own seat. Victoria frowned. Megan was only five months pregnant with her first child but one would have thought she was on the verge of delivery. Why was she waddling like a duck already?
It was probably better not to ask. Megan had picked her up at the airport, chauffeured her to the train station, joined her on the train, and kept her purse from getting ripped off while she slept. Now a car was picking them up at the station and taking them to the inn. Megan could waddle all she wanted in return for all those favors.
She got into the back of the car with her sister and stared out the window, feeling as if she were in some sort of French Impressionist painting of the English countryside. The whole experience was surreal. Gone was the smell, the busyness, the comforting closeness of skyscrapers and other buildings stacked up next to each other. In their places were rolling hills, a quaint village, and a road that led out of town to heaven only knew where.
“The inn’s not far,” Megan assured her. “I’m sure supper will be waiting. If you can stay awake for it.”
“I probably should,” Victoria said with a yawn. “If nothing else, I should make sure everything’s ready.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Megan said. “Mrs. Pruitt runs the place like a boot camp. Everything will be in order.”
Victoria looked at her sister and had to shake her head, though she didn’t do it too vigorously; jet lag wasn’t all that bad from New York to London and beyond, but she hadn’t had all that much sleep in the previous seventy-two hours, so she wasn’t exactly fully functional.
But in spite of her impaired mental state, she did manage to look at her sister and marvel at the change. At twenty-nine, Megan was three years younger than Victoria and had been struggling to find her place for years. She’d worked at all kinds of jobs; gone to and moved past college; tried her hand at all the family businesses, including Victoria’s theater troupe and their mother’s clothing company. Nothing had fit. Then Thomas had sent her to England to check out the castle he’d bought himself, sort of as a last-ditch effort to give Megan something to do.
Instead of failing yet again, Megan had wound up owning a little country inn and marrying some titled Brit who was so filthy rich that even Thomas genuflected when they met.
That had been a serious deviation from the script, but since it was Megan’s life and not hers, Victoria hadn’t said anything about it. Of course, she wouldn’t have the tolerance for that kind of detour herself, but to each her own.
She found herself distracted by the countryside as they wound their way through it and then up a small road to what was indeed a quaint, Tudor-style inn. They pulled to a graceful, dignified stop.
“Like it?” Megan asked.
“It’s wonderful,” Victoria said honestly.
“You were here before, you know,” Megan pointed out. “For my wedding.”
Victoria yawned. “Megan, I flew in the morning of your wedding, went straight to the church to put on my brides-maid dress, watched you get married, vaguely remember lunch at a very dark pub in the village, then I got back on a plane to close a very satisfying run of Romeo and Juliet.”
Megan laughed. “I suppose you never made it this far, did you? It’s probably just as well.”
The chauffeur opened Megan’s door for her. Megan leaned over and whispered, “It’s haunted,” before she leaped gracefully from the car as if she hadn’t spent the first five months of her pregnancy eating and puking for two.
Victoria sat there for several moments with her jaw hanging down before she realized that if she didn’t do something soon, she was going to drool on her shirt. She shut her mouth, clambered out of the car on shaky legs, and looked at the inn in front of her.
Haunted?
Perhaps all that smog in London had gone to Megan’s head and withered her br
ain. Then again, hadn’t their dad warned her there were otherworldly things going on here? She’d assumed he’d been kidding . . .
She hoisted her bag farther up on her shoulder and made her way uneasily through the front door. And then she came to a sudden standstill.
She stood in the entryway of a place that looked as if it had been lifted straight from a movie set. The furniture and paintings were perfectly period. The carpet was less so, but who was she to quibble? The innkeeper, doubtless the intrepid Mrs. Pruitt, was holding her feather duster over her shoulder like a bayonet and commanding a hapless teenager to be about settling Lady Blythwood as quick as might be.
Victoria realized with a start that Megan was Lady Blythwood. If all the people who had fired Megan over the years could have had an earful of that . . .
“That’s my sister, Victoria,” Megan was saying. She retrieved Victoria from the doorway and pulled her over to the reception desk. “Vikki, this is Mrs. Pruitt. She’ll be keeping your actors in line for you while they’re staying here.”
Mrs. Pruitt put her free hand over her ample bosom. “I’ll do what I can for the cause, Miss. We can’t have a proper play without proper rest for the players now, can we? Not that ye’ll need worry about that,” she said, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “We have lights out on time here at the inn.”
Victoria leaned in closer, in spite of herself. “We do?”
Mrs. Pruitt nodded knowingly. “I need peace and quiet for me investigations.”
Victoria immediately had a vision of an Inland Revenue audit that would make the IRS look like a bunch of third-grade math students. “Investigations?” she asked warily.
“Don’t ye know?”
Victoria blinked. “Know what?”
Mrs. Pruitt looked her over, then straightened suddenly. “Nothing,” she said in a businesslike tone. “Nothing to trouble yourself over, Miss. Your room is up the stairs. Last one on the right. The nicest—after Lady Blythwood’s, of course. I’ve a map where I’ve placed the rest of your troupe, if you’d care to study it. I daresay you could use a bit of supper first, though, then a good rest tonight.”