by Lynn Kurland
“They’re not really supposed to.”
“And if they were to strike a rib on their way through a man?” he asked. “How would they fare then?”
“I’m not sure,” she answered, holding one up. It glinted nicely in the sunlight. “I’ve never tried to stick one through a man.”
“A pity. Then what useful thing do you do with them?”
She held up a beautiful sweater fashioned from the colors of water and forest, heather and thistle.
“Lovely,” he admitted frankly. “And quite an interesting use of threads, if I might venture an opinion.”
“Fair Isle,” she said, stroking the fabric. “I like the colors together. It reminds me of the Scottish countryside, somehow. How it used to be before the English cut down the forests.”
“Have you been?” he asked.
“I’m a MacLeod,” she said simply. “How could I stay away? But you haven’t been back, have you?”
He shook his head. “Not since . . . well, not in many, many years.”
“You should go.”
“There is nothing for me there.”
“But what a pity to deny yourself the pleasure—”
“I cannot bear it,” he said shortly.
Mary looked at him long, then smiled gently. “I suppose I can understand. I have lived in places that I’ve loved and not been able to go back, or really even think about them. The loss is too great.”
He grunted in answer. Aye, he had lost much in the Highlands, much more than his own life, and he supposed it might have been because of that that he hadn’t returned. In truth, he wasn’t certain and had no desire to peer into his own black heart and discover the truth.
So he sat and watched Victoria’s grandmother work her magic with needles and yarn and found himself quite mesmerized. She began to instruct him about various techniques and species of yarn. He listened with interest to the manner of creating invisible increases and the technical formula to calculate loft, then he felt himself growing tired. He closed his eyes.
And it was when his eyes seemed the most heavy that Victoria’s grandmother began her true assault.
She was more than making up for her nap in the sitting chamber the week before.
He was fairly sure he answered questions—and Mary seemed to have many of them. He was quite certain he divulged his mortal age of thirty-five and his status as the eldest son of three, the other two being worthless leeches who were content to live off their father’s wealth and not do an honest day’s labor in their lives. He suspected he had told her that he’d been wed at one time and the father of a pair of bairns.
But after that, his eyes grew far too heavy to keep them open and he wasn’t quite sure what he told her.
“Laird MacDougal?”
He woke with a snort and sat up, reaching for his sword. “What?” he said, looking around with wide eyes.
“Vikki has been gone for quite some time.”
It took him a moment to get his bearings, then he realized what Mary had said. “Has she been gone long?”
“Long enough that I wonder why she isn’t back.”
“I’ll go immediately,” he said, getting to his feet. He looked down at her. “Do you have your needles?”
She patted her bag. “Right here. I’ll be all right.”
“We won’t be long, if I have anything to say about it,” Connor said grimly.
It took him only minutes to find his quarry on the far side of a little hill. Victoria had her arms folded over her chest and looked a little bored.
Well, that was something, at least.
Connor approached carefully. It was tempting to draw his sword, but he thought of Victoria’s warning that her actors might leave her without themselves to decorate her stage if they became too frightened. In Fellini’s case, it would not be a great loss, but Fellini’s understudy was almost as arrogant as the man himself, so perhaps there was no point in staging a proper haunting now.
“So, how large a space is Tempest in a Teapot?” Fellini asked.
“Large enough,” Victoria answered. “We have room for what we want to do.”
“Give me dimensions,” Fellini insisted. “For my students, of course. It would help to have an idea of how big a stage they might someday be able to perform on.”
What difference could that possibly make? Connor shook his head. Good acting was what was needful, not pacing off the stage. Was this man as simple-minded as he appeared, or was there a more sinister purpose to his questions?
Connor studied Victoria as she answered increasingly specific questions about her theater. He learned quite a few things he hadn’t known before about Victoria’s troupe; he spent many more fruitless moments puzzling over other things he had no familiarity with.
What was hemp and why did Fellini’s eyebrows disappear under his hair when Victoria mentioned it growing in pots all about the stage? And why, when Victoria mentioned the rents on her theater being paid through the new year, did Fellini clap his hands together as if in pleasure he could not contain?
And why, after that clapping of his hands, did Fellini resume an attitude of disinterest, as if everything they had spoken about in the preceding half hour had held little interest for him at all?
Baffling.
Connor looked at Victoria. Her expression had shifted from boredom to faint suspicion.
Fellini seemed not to notice.
Connor supposed he wouldn’t have noticed, either, had he not become so acquainted so quickly with the myriad appearances of that lovely visage.
The saints preserve him for it.
“You know,” Victoria said briskly, “I think I need to get back.”
Fellini yawned. “Me, too. I think I’ll dash off a letter to a faculty member or two at Juilliard. I’m sure they would be interested in Tempest in a Teapot, as well. You know, in the details you so kindly gave me today. In the interest of our students, of course.”
“Of course.”
Victoria walked with Fellini back the way they had come. Connor would have thought she hadn’t seen him—indeed, he had intended that she not—but to his surprise, she flashed him a look and nodded her head toward the path she and Fellini were taking. As if she wanted him to come along.
He went.
It was likely because he was walking behind her, mesmerized by the cascade of flame curls she sported on her head, that he didn’t notice she had stopped until he fair walked through her. He jumped back, startled almost as much by that as by her gasp of surprise.
“Where’s my grandmother?”
“She’s probably gone on ahead to the inn,” Fellini said with a shrug. “Bathroom break, or something like that.”
Victoria went very still.
Connor found that her stillness became his quite easily.
There was something here that was not right.
Not right at all.
“She wouldn’t have gone off without saying something first,” Victoria said.
“She knew better than to interrupt me,” Fellini said. “Obviously a woman with good sense.”
Connor walked around Victoria and looked down at the picnic paraphernalia. The hamper was there, devoid of food thanks to Fellini, of course. Nothing else looked disturbed, however. No signs of a struggle. No blood. No tracks from half a dozen booted ruffian feet. Connor met Victoria’s eyes and he grimaced. He should have stayed behind.
Then again, perhaps Fellini had it aright. The habits of an old woman . . .
Victoria took a step closer. “Her knitting bag’s gone, but look.” She reached down and picked up a room key. “Why would she have left this?”
“I’m sure your grandma just ran off for some incontinence containment and forgot some of her stuff,” Fellini said. “Pruitt’s got another key.”
“I have a feeling something’s not right,” Victoria said, looking around her.
“You’re imagining things,” Fellini said.
Victoria reached down and picked up M
ary’s sunglasses. “She wouldn’t leave without these.”
“It’s cloudy out,” Fellini said shortly. “Come on, Victoria. I’ve got things to do. Grab the stuff and let’s go.”
Victoria stroked the sunglasses. “This just isn’t good. She left her key and her sun—”
“Look,” Fellini said curtly, “I’m not going to hang around here and speculate. She’s probably at the inn and that’s where I’m going to go. And I want to see your theater space when we get back to Manhattan.”
Connor watched the man spin on his heel and stride angrily away. If he hadn’t known of the man’s whereabouts, he might have suspected him of foul play.
He looked at Victoria. “I left her here not a handful of moments ago.”
Victoria looked around in consternation. “It doesn’t make sense. She wouldn’t just . . .”
She stopped speaking and walked a few paces away. She bent and picked something up.
It was a single knitting needle.
She looked at Connor and held it up.
“A long 4.00 mm,” he said grimly. “No doubt one of her best weapons.”
Victoria looked at the picnic basket, then back at him. “Maybe she did go back to the inn. Maybe she did just lose this . . .”
She turned and bolted for the road.
Connor took one more look at the scene, then sprinted after her. He caught her easily. “We’ll find her,” he promised, supposing she might be weeping already.
She was dry-eyed.
“I hope,” she said.
He ran with her to the inn, then waited whilst she stood outside the front door, leaning against the door frame to catch her breath. She gulped in air for a few moments, then shook her head.
“I need to exercise more,” she said. “You would think that yelling at actors all day would be workout enough, wouldn’t you?”
“You need time in the lists,” Connor said wisely. “It aids not only strength of body, but agility of mind, as well as having the added benefit of according you the useful skill of being able to do someone in.”
She blew her hair out of her eyes. “I wish I could get Michael Fellini there. Damn him for not caring!”
“I am unsurprised,” Connor said, pursing his lips.
Victoria looked up at him. “You don’t like him.”
“You know I do not.”
She shook her head with a sigh. “You’re right about him, of course. I should have seen it earlier.” She looked at the front door, then put her hand on the doorknob. “I can only hope we’ll find her inside.”
Connor nodded, but he held out little hope they would find Victoria’s grandmother safely tucked away inside the inn.
They didn’t.
Chapter 10
Victoria sat in the chair, staring into the darkened hearth. There was only one lamp on and it did little to relieve the gloom. She wasn’t sure what time it was. She suspected it was no longer Saturday, which meant it had to be Sunday. The fact that she could still tell the difference was probably a very good thing.
Yesterday was a blur. She remembered running an abysmal rehearsal in the morning. She remembered a picnic with her granny and Michael’s very odd questions. She remembered returning to the blanket and finding her grandmother gone. She remembered a frantic return to the inn, only to have her suspicions confirmed.
The bobbies had been subsequently summoned. She was fairly sure she had answered questions, waited while others answered questions, then answered more questions. It had seemed to take most of the afternoon and quite a bit of the evening. Then the bobbies had gone. More were promised for the morning.
Mrs. Pruitt had deposited a tea tray in the sitting room, lit a single lamp, and left her alone.
Only she hadn’t been alone.
She looked away from the cold hearth. There, in a hard chair across the room, sat a dark-haired man, tall and broad-shouldered. His head was bowed, his hands were clasped. He lifted his head and looked at her, silently.
She sighed. “I need to call my family.”
He started to rise. “I’ll go—”
“Don’t,” she said quickly, then hesitated. “That is . . . if you wouldn’t mind staying . . .”
He sat. “Of course.”
She stared at him for several moments in silence, then looked down at her hands. “Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For staying. For my granny.”
He cleared his throat. “It isn’t for her.”
Victoria looked up in surprise.
“Well, not entirely,” he amended.
She hardly knew what to say to that. Here was a man who a short time ago was ready to scare the living daylights out of her, and now he was . . . well . . . not. She smiled briefly. “Thank you for that, as well,” she said. “Laird MacDougal.”
“Connor,” he said.
She looked up at him, dry-eyed. “Connor?”
“’Tis my pleasure and duty to render aid to you,” he said formally, “Mistress—”
“Victoria,” she interrupted. “It’s just Victoria.”
He paused for several moments.
“Victoria,” he said, finally.
She shivered. She was certain that shiver had everything to do with the lateness of the hour and absolutely nothing to do with the fact that a man she could never have and probably shouldn’t even be talking to had just said her name in a way that sent chills down her spine.
She looked for the phone. She was losing it. She had to get on with the phone calls she dreaded making while she still had some small hold on her sanity.
She never should have allowed her granny to stay in England. The smartest thing to have done would have been to heave her grandmother’s bags back in the taxi and point the driver toward the train station.
Actually, what she should have done was to tell Thomas to take his castle and go to hell. She never would have hired Michael Fellini, never would have had Gerard flee for less-haunted ground, never would have had her grandmother come to rescue her.
She never would have met Connor MacDougal.
She put her face in her hands. It was hopeless . . .
Then she sat up straight and rubbed her hands over her face, as if she had intended to do that all along. Giving in to discouragement was not her habit. She put her shoulders back and turned to face the problem. She also couldn’t help a small peek at Connor, just to see if he’d seen her weakness.
He was watching her with a grave expression.
“I’m fine,” she said briskly.
“I never doubted it.”
“I’m just not sure who to call first.” She paused. “I don’t think I’m ready to hear what my mother will say.”
He cleared his throat. “This is none of my affair,” he began slowly, “but . . .” He hesitated, as if he didn’t dare speak his mind quite so fully as he would have liked.
“Go ahead,” she said, waving him on. “If you have an opinion, offer it. I’m fresh out of ideas.”
He chewed on his next words as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to give voice to them. “It galls me to admit this, but your brother is . . . um . . . not unwise.”
She blinked. “You think I should call Thomas?”
“He is not a complete fool.”
“That’s high praise.”
“If you tell him I said as much, I will deny it.”
She smiled in spite of herself, then sobered. “He’ll kill me.”
Connor frowned. “Why?”
“This is all my fault.”
“Victoria, your grandmère was a woman of ripe age and well-developed canniness. She could see to herself.”
Victoria wanted to believe it. She knew her grandmother was clever. She also knew her grandmother had her knitting bag and there were at least a few things that might qualify as a weapon in there. But it was hard to think of her out on her own.
She shook her head to clear it, then reached for the phone. She dialed Thomas’s number
, her hands shaking so badly she could hardly manage it. It rang three times. Iolanthe answered.
“Hello?”
Ah, such a lovely Scottish lilt. Victoria closed her eyes briefly. “Iolanthe, this is Victoria.” She wanted to say more, but found that she couldn’t.
Iolanthe was silent for a moment or two, as well. “Is aught amiss, sister?”
Well, there was no sense in beating around the bush. “My grandmother has gone missing.”
“Missing?”
“Vanished without a trace. Well, not without a trace. She left her key and sunglasses behind. But there were no signs of a struggle. And her knitting bag was gone. She never went anywhere without it, you know, just in case she had a spare minute to work another row or two.” Victoria paused. “She was working on a sweater.”
She knew she was babbling; she couldn’t seem to help herself.
Iolanthe was silent for another eternity. Victoria wondered if her sister-in-law had moved away from morning sickness and on to all-day sickness and was now struggling to keep her dinner down.
“I’ll fetch Thomas,” Iolanthe said suddenly.
Victoria reached for her tea and downed it cold. It didn’t give her any courage, but it did wet her whistle enough that she thought she might be able to spar verbally with her brother.
“Vic?”
Then again, maybe not. What she wanted to do was break down and bawl like a baby. The only thing that kept her from it was the fact that she would be doing it in front of Connor and Thomas both. She would never live it down. She took a deep breath. “I lost her.”
“You lost who?”
“I lost Granny. I left her sitting on a blanket and when I came back, she was gone. It’s my fault. I was off making nice to one of my actors.”
“Fellini?”
“Thomas,” she said, through gritted teeth, “what difference does it make which one?”
“I’m just curious.”
“You idiot, I just lost our grandmother!” she bellowed.
“Did you call the cops?”
“Yes, I called the cops.”
“Were there signs of foul play?”
Victoria rubbed the spot between her eyes that was starting to throb. “No.”
“So, you’re telling me she just wandered off?”
“I don’t have conclusive evidence to that fact, but all things seem to point to it.”