by Lynn Kurland
“Granny!” Victoria said weakly, “what are you doing here?”
“She’s waiting in line for me to get my room changed,” Michael said loudly.
Victoria found her gaze helplessly drawn to him as if he’d been a vampire mesmerizing her with a presence that could not be ignored. She felt a little breathless.
Of course, that could have come from her recent bout of sprinting, but then again, maybe not.
Michael Fellini was, put simply, perfection. His dark hair was just a little on the long side, swept rakishly across his forehead in perfection rarely achieved outside of the salon. His face was perfectly chiseled, his eyes a deep, chocolate brown, his mouth sensual and mobile. And that was only the beginning; the rest of him was just as divine.
He was an inch or two under six feet and slender, but somehow that worked to produce a wiry, powerful frame that just begged to be set on stage and admired for lengthy periods of time. He could, by turns, appear kingly, peasantly, crazy, and commanding.
And that was just what she’d seen at the afternoon tea.
She had the feeling she might just see the range of his emotions if something didn’t happen soon. But it was difficult to concentrate fully on Michael because Cressida had begun to make such a loud, weepy fuss over her room and Mrs. Pruitt had become disgusted enough to begin doing her best to shout her down. Granny simply stood there, smiling in sympathy.
Victoria took a deep breath to prepare to straighten everything out when she was distracted by a scream that cut through all the noise like a knife. Mrs. Pruitt, Cressida, and even Michael fell silent.
The screaming continued.
“Gerard,” Fred said wearily from behind her.
Victoria had no trouble imagining just what—or who—had wrung such a noise from him. She swept the collection of troublemakers before her with a single warning glance.
“No more fighting. Cressida, take my room,” she said shortly. “Mrs. Pruitt, give Michael whatever he wants. Granny, I’m sure Mrs. Pruitt has a very nice room—maybe Megan’s—that you can have. I’ll be right back.”
And with that, she turned and ran back through the front door, through the garden, and around to the back of the house where a shed lingered on the edge of Mrs. Pruitt’s vegetable patch.
She wasn’t at all surprised by what she saw.
Gerard was clutching the door frame and screaming his bloody head off. Victoria was tempted to plug her ears, but before she could do it, the squeals of terror reached a pinnacle of shrillness, then suddenly ceased. Gerard slumped to the ground, senseless.
Victoria strode forward, stepped over the body, and looked into the shed.
Hugh McKinnon stood there, fondling finery.
He smiled sheepishly, doffed his cap and made her a low bow, then disappeared.
“What do you think he saw?” Fred asked from behind her.
“A hallucination,” Victoria said firmly.
“Hmmm,” Fred said doubtfully.
She sighed and turned to look down at her unconscious prop manager. “I don’t suppose we can just leave him here and hope for the best.”
“I’ll wake him up.” Fred leaned over and slapped Gerard smartly across the face.
“Fred,” Victoria started to exclaim, but she forwent any more lecture because at that moment Gerard sat up—silently. It was such an improvement, she couldn’t help but smile. “Gerard, how are you?”
Gerard looked around himself wildly, then leaped to his feet. “It’s haunted,” he said hoarsely. “The costumes, the inn, the whole damned island!”
“Gerard,” Victoria said, not having to try overly hard to put a little shock in her tone, “you’re imagining things. Why don’t you go have a little rest and then we’ll talk . . .”
He shrieked once more, then turned and ran away.
Victoria tried to grab him, but she wound up clutching air. She looked at Fred and the horror was real this time.
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Hope nothing tears?”
Victoria was half tempted to track down Hugh McKinnon and ask him if he knew how to ply a needle, given that it was his fault she was in this fix, but she had the feeling he wouldn’t make a very good prop manager. For one thing, he would likely spend all his time stroking the costumes and no time making sure that they were ready to wear.
She gritted her teeth. “I’ll deal with this later.”
“I won’t be volunteering later.”
“I didn’t imagine you would be.” She trudged back through the garden to the front door. “Please let this be the extent of the disasters,” she muttered as she went back inside the inn.
Well, the entryway was empty—a big plus—except for Mrs. Pruitt, who was standing at attention by her reception desk.
“His Majesty wants his bags brought up,” she said in a voice that clearly implied she was not going to be the one doing it.
Victoria looked behind her only to find that Fred had conveniently managed to lose himself between the garden and the front door. She sighed and picked up one of Michael’s suitcases. Or tried, rather. What was he toting in there, thousand-page tomes on every aspect of Shakespeare he might possibly need in an emergency?
It took quite a while to get the one suitcase up the stairs. She struggled to haul it down the hallway, realizing too late that the path wasn’t clear. She went sprawling, narrowly avoiding being crushed by Michael’s gear, only to further realize that it was her stuff she had tripped over.
She crawled to her feet, swore, then channeled her irritation into dragging Michael’s suitcase to the end of the hall. She knocked. It took a very long time for the door to open, but when it did she found herself rendered speechless—and not just by Michael and his intensely attractive self.
The room looked as if it belonged behind ropes. It was something straight out of an Elizabethan movie set, only this stuff was authentic. No wonder Mrs. Pruitt guarded the key so ferociously. Victoria suspected the room should have been guarded by National Trust employees with stun guns.
“Michael . . .” she began.
He grabbed his suitcase, dragged it inside, and shut the door in her face.
Victoria stared at the door for a minute or two before she shut her mouth. Well, jet lag could make even the most rational, polite soul turn a little feisty. Michael was obviously suffering from a difficult case of it.
Surely.
She gathered up her stuff that was strewn all over the floor, shoved it into the handy suitcase that had been tossed into the hall as well, then propped the whole mess up against one wall. She would sort it all out later. For now, she had to find her granny, find her granny a room, and figure out what to do with her granny who was currently hundreds of miles away from where she should have been.
She thumped down the stairs and came to a teetering halt in the entryway. Raucous laughter came from the sitting room on her left. Her grandmother was definitely one of the revelers. It was with no small bit of trepidation that Victoria approached and threw open the door.
She was somehow unsurprised by the sight that greeted her. There, sitting around the coffee table and chatting as if they’d known each other for years, were Ambrose, Fulbert, Hugh, and, of course, her grandmother. Hugh was looking a little out of breath—probably from his quick dash back from the costume shed. Victoria frowned at him briefly before turning back to her grandmother.
“Granny—”
“Vikki,” her granny said, rising and coming to envelope Victoria in a hug and a cloud of Wind Song. “You look tired, dear. Come and sit with us. We’re just catching up.”
“Catching up?” Victoria wheezed. “Do you know these three?”
“We just met,” Mary MacLeod Davidson said, “but you know how it is with family. It doesn’t take long to feel as if you’ve known each other for years.”
Really, could the day deliver any more surprises? Victoria felt her control begin to slip through her fingers at an alarmin
g rate.
“Granny, what are you doing here?”
“I’m here to save the day, love. Your mother was worried about you and since I’d had a spat with my Stitch ’n Wench knitting group—you know that Fiona McDonald and how she just can’t wean herself from man-made fibers—I decided that maybe a bit of traveling was just the thing. I don’t know if there’s room enough for me here, though.”
“Our good Mrs. Pruitt will sort it all out,” Ambrose said reassuringly. He stood. “But perhaps for now, you might wish for a walk up to the castle?”
“Why, Laird MacLeod,” Mary said with a flirtatious smile, “what a wonderful idea.”
“Granny,” Victoria said weakly, “you’re related to him!”
“Several generations removed, my dear.” Mary patted her hair and smiled. “A handsome Highland lad is always a pleasure to engage, no matter the degrees of separation.” Mary smiled at Ambrose. “We’ll join you in a moment.”
Ambrose, Hugh, and Fulbert all made low bows, gave vent to a handful of appropriate leave-taking sentiments, then tromped out of the sitting room as the crow flew.
That would be through the wall, not the door.
Victoria looked at her granny. “I need a drink.”
“But you don’t drink, love. Come on. I’m anxious to see this castle of yours.”
Well, in this, at least, Victoria found that she had no trouble mustering up enthusiasm. She followed her grandmother from the sitting room through the usual exit of the door.
“Tell me what’s been going on,” Mary said, drawing Victoria’s hand through the crook of her arm as they left the inn and wandered through the garden. “What was all that screaming about?”
“Gerard saw a ghost.”
Mary laughed. “Here? How unusual.”
“Granny, it isn’t funny,” Victoria said, but she had to laugh a little herself. “I had to pay him extra to get him to England in the first place because he saw Hugh McKinnon groping my costumes in the prop room under Tempest in a Teapot. The same thing just happened in the garden shed here.”
“Never mind, dear. I’ll keep your costumes in line.”
Victoria wanted to protest; she knew she should protest, but she couldn’t. Mary MacLeod Davidson was possibly the most delightful woman on earth and while Victoria didn’t have any trouble refusing an invitation to spend time with her brother—her recent trip to Maine aside—she never passed up an opportunity to spend time with her grandmother.
Besides, her granny had once upon a time sewn marvelous costumes for her and her siblings as they were growing up and flexing the muscles of their imaginations. Victoria suspected that those costumes had been the beginning of her desire to do what she did.
“All right,” Victoria conceded, “but only if you’ll limit yourself to a supervisory role. Maybe Mrs. Pruitt can round up some seamstresses for us.”
“I’m sure she’ll help,” Mary said. “She’s a lovely woman, if not a little preoccupied with the paranormal.”
Victoria didn’t bother asking how her grandmother had found that out so quickly. Secrets did not last long around her. “Can you blame her?”
Mary looked briefly over her shoulder. “Given our escorts, I suppose not. Who knows what we’ll find at the castle?”
Victoria was unsurprised to see her grandfathers and sundry strolling along behind them. She looked back at her grandmother. “I was there earlier and I didn’t see anything unusual.”
Then again, she hadn’t been at the castle but five minutes, so perhaps that wasn’t a true test.
The whole situation was unsettling. It wasn’t like her not to be in full command of her surroundings and everything happening in those surroundings.
Then again, she wasn’t usually dealing with ghosts.
Non-Shakespearean ones, that was.
Well, at least the hauntings were limited to old men loitering the inn’s kitchen. Heaven help her if the infection spread to the castle.
How would you like to put on your next play in my castle next spring? And by the way, what play are you doing?
Hamlet.
Perfect.
Her conversation with her brother last December came back to her like a bad smell. Hamlet had a ghost in it, didn’t it? Was that why Thomas had been so thrilled?
She felt her eyes narrow. Thomas knew something. She wasn’t precisely sure how much he knew, but she knew he knew something. She would get him for this, purse strings or no purse strings.
“I’m going to kill Thomas,” Victoria announced.
“How nice,” Mary said. “Oh, look, there’s the main road. Which way do we go from here?”
Victoria opened her mouth to say, then found that her input was not necessary.
“This way, dear lady,” Ambrose said, striding up to Mary’s side and giving her a gallant smile. “Allow me to escort you.”
“And me, as well,” Hugh said enthusiastically, popping up on Victoria’s left. “’Tis a dangerous world these days. Two lovely wenches such as yerselves shouldn’t be out without protection.”
“Wenches,” Mary repeated, beaming at Hugh. “I like that. It makes me feel quite adventuresome.”
“Heaven help us,” Victoria muttered. Her grandmother was seventy-five but she didn’t look a day over fifty and her opinion on what constituted a good adventure was something Victoria didn’t want to contemplate. She’d been convinced her granny was satisfied pitting her skills against complicated Fair Isle patterns.
She should have known better.
Grumbling began behind her. That she knew it was Fulbert tromping along behind them and not some other grump of indeterminate age and life situation . . . well, it said a lot about the current state of affairs in her life.
Her granny came to a sudden stop. “Oh, my goodness,” she said, her hand over her heart. “Why, Victoria, this is spectacular.”
Victoria looked at the castle and couldn’t help but smile. “It is amazing, isn’t it?”
Mary nodded, then began to walk again, slowly. Victoria walked with her, admiring Thomas’s castle afresh. It was a pretty remarkable place, even though half of it had been eaten away by the ravages of time. The walls were crumbling, but it wasn’t hard to imagine them being manned in another time by fierce knights eager to do their lord’s will. It also wasn’t hard to imagine the sound of hammer on anvil, of peasants conversing, of men-at-arms cursing and shouting as they trained.
Victoria frowned. She was imagining those things, wasn’t she? She shot Ambrose a look. He was watching her thoughtfully.
“Aye, granddaughter?” he said.
“Do you hear it?” she asked. “That medieval stuff?”
Ambrose listened, then smiled. “I hear many things, lass. Come and let us be about your inspection. I imagine the construction has begun. I can hear the generators from here. I assume you’ll run them from one of the tower chambers during the shows.”
“Yes,” Victoria said, distracted by the sounds layering themselves on top of each other. “I don’t think the audience will hear them and there’s certainly no other way to get power inside the castle without them. Granny, do you hear those medieval sorts of noises?”
Mary patted her hand. “Inspect your workers, love, then we’ll go back to the inn and you can have a nap.”
She didn’t need a nap; she needed a specter-free castle in which to do her play. She walked into the bailey and looked at the place where the stage would be built. Workers were setting up their gear and the area seemed to be quite free of all paranormal activity.
She couldn’t help breathe a faint sigh of relief.
“They’ve worked hard,” Victoria said, gratefully.
“Like as not, they have cause,” Fulbert said. “I wouldn’t want to stay here longer than I needed to.”
“Why not?” she asked.
Ambrose cleared his throat. “Well, there are a few unsavory lads loitering about the keep. Those kind of lads,” he added knowingly.
Damn. So
, her worst fears were going to materialize. “Ghosts?” Victoria asked.
“Aye, but no one of consequence,” Ambrose said. “Certainly no one whom I would give a second thought to—”
“Aye, but your head might, as it left your womanly shoulders,” a voice growled from behind Victoria. “Draw your sword, MacLeod!”
Victoria whirled around.
That unsettling prop-room numbness started again at the top of her head, but she clamped down on her self-control with all her strength and gave that tingling the old heave-ho. She would not faint. There were probably several things one could say about her that might be uncomplimentary, but it could not be said that she had ever swooned. Not once.
Well, that prop room debacle aside, of course.
Oh, and also the first time she’d seen Michael Fellini, but there had been a handy couch nearby and she’d managed to fall gracefully upon it in a lounging posture. That had been less of a swoon and more of a dignified slump.
But this time she wasn’t sure she would manage anything so dignified. First off, there was no couch nearby. Secondly, this wasn’t a sleek, suave New Yorker wowing her with his good looks and easy charm. This was a Highlander standing not two feet from her, his enormous sword in his hands, and a look of death in his eyes.
“Let’s move out of the way, shall we?” Mary said easily, taking Victoria by the arm and tugging.
Victoria backpeddled until she was well out of the way of that very large sword. She came to a stop next to her grandmother, wishing desperately that she’d brought along a chair so she could sit while she grappled with the reality she was facing.
She was used to handsome men on stage, but they were generally not very tall and more of their muscles came from dance than hefting very big swords and swinging them around like thin, lightweight rapiers. She was also used to powerful men whose money she had no trouble trying to solicit for her productions, but their power came from their bank accounts and their ability to control destinies with those bank accounts.
She was not used to men who intimidated by their mere physical presence alone.