Much Ado In the Moonlight

by Lynn Kurland

  “Now and then. When I get tired of chenille.”

  Victoria threw up her hands and scowled at Connor. “She makes me crazy.”

  “She may be the only way you eat for the next few days,” he pointed out. “I wouldn’t irritate her overmuch.”

  Victoria pursed her lips. “I suppose. But, Jennifer, I want to have a talk with you about your life goals when we get back,” she said. “A very long talk.”

  “Well,” Thomas said, coming to stand next to them, “it’s now or never, I suppose. Who knows when Mrs. Pruitt will come rushing our way, ready to document the attempt on tape. Are you ready?”

  “Ready as we’re going to be,” Victoria said. She looked at her sister. “Shall we?”

  “Good luck,” Thomas said, giving Victoria a quick hug, then doing the same to Jennifer. “Let Connor protect you as much as he can.”

  He stepped away.

  Victoria looked around once more, then took Jennifer’s hand. She reached for Connor’s, as well, as she stepped forward.

  She could have sworn she held onto something.

  She looked up at him in surprise.

  But then the feeling was gone. When she had digested that and was prepared to really get down to the business of wishing herself back to Elizabethan England, she found that they were no longer in Farris’s field.

  They were in an alley in a city.

  “So far, so good,” she ventured.

  “I don’t know about that,” Jennifer said warily. “You’d better turn around.”

  Victoria turned around.

  Half a dozen thugs stood there. In broad daylight. She cursed under her breath. Maybe this wasn’t the best part of town. She should have wished them to a more well-heeled alleyway.

  She put her hands on her hips and dredged up her most impressive frown. “Begone, curs,” she said firmly.

  The men looked unimpressed.

  “Knavish brigands,” she called in a more insulting tone.

  “Knavish brigands?” Jennifer complained. “Couldn’t you have come up with something better?”

  “I don’t know if it will matter,” Victoria said. “I don’t think they care what we call them.”

  “Excuse me,” came a voice from behind them.

  Victoria ducked and pulled Jennifer out of the way before Connor stepped past them and drew his sword with a ferocious war cry.

  Three men screamed, turned tail, and fled.

  The remaining three blinked almost in unison, then two drew swords and grinned happily. The third hung back to watch the melee.

  “Great,” Victoria said.

  “It’s not bad,” Jennifer offered. “There are only three left.”

  “I don’t think this is going to work,” Victoria said grimly.

  Connor tossed a curse at her over his shoulder and threw himself into the fray with all the enthusiasm of a medieval Highlander bent on mayhem. Victoria reconsidered her doubts. Connor was indeed something to see. He was very loud and quite fierce.

  He was also not wielding a sword that made any noise when it connected with those of his opponents.

  They noticed this, too, after a few moments.

  “Oy,” said one. “He’s not the lad we think he is.”

  “Let’s ’ave at ’im.”

  “He’s powerful large,” the first said doubtfully. “No matter that his sword makes no noise.”

  “Wha’ are we gonna do, then?” asked the second.

  “Fight him?” suggested the first.

  “Aye, you should,” Connor said.

  And then he took his head off and tucked it into the crook of his arm.

  The two men screamed, dropped their swords, and ran away. Victoria realized after they had exited the alleyway that Jennifer was screaming, as well. She had to admit to a moment of alarm seeing Connor without his head, but she quickly overcame that.

  “Jenner, be quiet!” she exclaimed. “Connor’s fine. He just scared the men away.”

  Well, all but one.

  The final thug looked at Connor with a sneer, then walked through him. Victoria found herself face to face with one of the most unpleasant-looking characters she had ever seen. His teeth were rotten, his breath vile, and his personal grooming habits left everything to be desired.

  He resheathed a very long sword. Instead, he drew out an equally wicked looking dagger.

  Jennifer jumped between them and shouted “No!” at the top of her lungs.

  He backhanded her and she went sprawling. Victoria looked down at her sister. She didn’t move.

  Victoria threw herself at her attacker, intending to at least gouge his eyes out. The next thing she knew, she had been turned and slammed up against the wall. When the man began to grope her, she knew she was in big trouble. Well, at least he wasn’t going to slit her throat first. That had to be a bonus.

  She wondered if this was what hysterical felt like.

  But the next thing she knew, she wasn’t being accosted anymore.

  She felt her attacker back away. She hardly dared look over her shoulder. When she heard a thud, she turned around and looked. He was lying on the ground next to Jennifer.

  He had a sword protruding from his back.

  Connor was on his knees, his chest heaving.

  “Wake Jennifer,” he gasped. “You must away before anyone comes.”

  Victoria dragged her sister bodily to her feet and pulled Jennifer’s arm over her shoulders.

  “I don’t feel so good,” Jennifer managed.

  “Feel crappy later. We’ve got to go now.”

  She helped Jennifer over the slain assailant and looked at Connor. “And what of you?”

  “No one will see me,” he said weakly. “The sword belonged to one of his fellows. Go secure lodgings. I’ll find you.”

  Victoria would have asked him how in the world he intended to do that, but the look he gave her made her shut her mouth.

  Victoria dragged Jennifer from the little alleyway and onto a main street. That not a soul stopped to inquire why she and Jen were in such awful shape was likely a good indication of their location. Victoria had glanced at a map of Renaissance London but only long enough to ascertain where the Globe found itself. Unfortunately, the theater wasn’t exactly entertainment for the upper crust, and actors and their ilk weren’t exactly members of that upper crust, which left her with the choice of either taking a room in a less-than-desirable establishment or forcing Jennifer to walk for miles.

  She was so desperately tempted to just stand in the street and gape at her surroundings that she could hardly stand it. She was in the midst of Elizabethan-looking souls going about their business with very King-James-English kinds of accents.

  It was like dreaming, only it smelled much worse.

  “I’m better now,” Jennifer said, managing to straighten up. She put her hand to her cut lip. “This will look authentic, don’t you think? I doubt anyone will mess with us now that they see what a brawler I am.”

  “We can hope.”

  Jennifer fell silent. Victoria strode along in the most manly fashion she could devise, thinking about nothing more than finding somewhere safe to stay, when she realized that her sister hadn’t said anything for quite some time. She looked at her.

  “What?”

  Jennifer was wide-eyed. “Can you believe this?” she whispered. “Where we are?”

  “Without a can of Lilt in sight,” Victoria said crisply. “I doubt we can even find any chocolate. It’s a catastrophe.”

  “Where’s Connor?”

  “He’s coming.”

  Jennifer nodded, but said nothing more. They walked until the surroundings began to look a little more reputable. Victoria stopped at the first likely place.

  She paid for a week’s lodging out of the money Jamie had given her. She hadn’t thought to ask him how he’d come by it.

  In fact, there were several questions she hadn’t thought to ask him, such as how had he returned from his little jaunt to Elizabe
th’s England without so much as a flicker of unease. Just how much experience did he have with these sorts of gates? Why was it he had that rough, medieval lairdliness that Connor had? And why was her brother thick as thieves with the man—outside of the fact that Iolanthe was related to him?

  Grandfather.

  There was something very fishy about that.

  She made herself a mental note to determine the answers to those questions just as soon as she got home. But for now she was happy to drag her sister up the stairs and hope that both Connor and lunch would arrive at the same time.

  She let the maid make up a fire for them in the hearth, then waited until food was brought before she bolted the door and sat down at a little table with her sister.

  “How did you meet Connor?”

  Victoria looked at her sister in surprise. “What?”

  “How did you meet him? You never told me.”

  Victoria pursed her lips. “Don’t beat around the bush, Jenner. Why don’t you ask me what you really want to know?”

  Jennifer smiled, then winced at her cut lip. “I’m curious about him. I can’t imagine you brought him over from the States with you unless I’m hanging out in the wrong part of Manhattan.”

  “It’s a very long story.”

  “I have lots of time.”

  Victoria sighed. She looked around, but there seemed to be nothing else to distract her sister with besides lunch, and she wasn’t all that sure that lunch looked edible. She found that Jennifer was still waiting, rather expectantly, and decided that there was no reason not to answer her.

  “All right,” she said with a deep sigh, “here’s the deal.”

  She outlined her entire paranormal experience, beginning with Hugh in the prop room and ending with Connor trying out Renaissance outfits in the sitting room.

  “Unbelievable,” Jennifer said when Victoria finished. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen him for myself.”

  “I wouldn’t have believed a lot of things if I hadn’t seen them for myself,” Victoria agreed.

  “What now?” Jennifer asked. “We find Granny, find Michael, go home, then what?”

  Victoria blinked. “Then what, what?”

  “What are you and Connor going to do?”

  Victoria very rarely found herself without something to say. But the fact that her sister had so deftly and with such little mercy cut right to the heart of her most desperate concern was enough to leave her speechless.

  “Ah,” she managed.

  “It isn’t as if you can marry a ghost,” Jennifer said.

  “Marry!” Victoria exclaimed. She blushed furiously and began to babble.

  She never blushed.

  She never, ever babbled.

  It was at that moment that Connor chose to walk through the door.

  Jennifer squeaked. “Oh,” she managed, putting her hand to her chest. Then she jumped to her feet. “Vikki . . .”

  Victoria saw. She jumped up, as well, but found quite quickly that there was absolutely nothing she could do. Connor fell. It was probably a good thing he wasn’t precisely corporeal; he probably would have gone through the planks. Victoria knelt down next to him as he lay with his cheek against the floor.

  “Connor,” she said uneasily, “what happened? Was it the knife in the man’s back? Did he hurt you?”

  Connor shook his head. “He couldn’t. But for me to wound him . . . took all my strength.” He closed his eyes. “I’ll need to rest. Wielding things . . . from the mortal world . . . very taxing.”

  “Take the bed,” Victoria said promptly.

  He grunted weakly. “Won’t know the . . . difference.”

  And with that, he closed his eyes firmly and fell asleep.

  Victoria knew this because he began to snore.

  “Well,” Jennifer said, “at least we’ll know when he’s awake.”

  Victoria looked up at her from where she knelt next to him. “I think we should wait for him to . . . um . . . recover.”

  “I think so, too. We can get some details of where we are from the servants, I imagine. Too bad we don’t have a map.”

  “We can probably get that, too, for a price.” She looked at her sister. “I think I need a nap, but we should sleep in shifts. You go first.”

  “No—”

  “Yes. I didn’t just get popped in the mouth. Go to bed.”

  “All right,” Jennifer said slowly. “Maybe we should practice your Gaelic this afternoon when I wake up. You really should put some more effort into it.”

  “I’m sure it will be incredibly useful here,” Victoria replied.

  Jennifer smiled gingerly. “I wasn’t thinking about here. I can’t imagine any Highland laird resisting being wooed in his native tongue.”

  Victoria only half heard the last. But when she realized what her sister had said, protestations rose and fell off her lips.

  Jennifer had a point.

  Victoria looked at her sister, who was playing possum, then looked at her laird, who was definitely not, and decided that perhaps her time could be used well that afternoon.

  She went to sit back at the table, then looked around the room and started naming all the things she could under her breath.

  In Connor’s native tongue.

  On the off chance it would make a difference to him someday.

  Chapter 18

  Connor sat up with a groan. He felt much more himself, but he supposed that was nothing to rejoice over. He looked around the chamber and found himself somewhat surprised he was where he was. There had been a part of him that feared the time gates would not work for him.

  They had worked in transporting him to another age.

  They had not restored him to life.

  He hadn’t expected that they would. Not truly.

  He looked around the very sixteenth-century chamber and marveled at the construction. It looked somewhat like the Boar’s Head Inn, though ’twas obvious to him that this chamber was far newer.

  It was currently being used not only by him but by Victoria and Jennifer, both of whom were unconscious on the bed. Connor would have feared for their safety, but Jennifer was talking in her sleep and Victoria was reaching over to give her a shove. Obviously, they lived still.

  Connor had to admit to being somewhat fascinated by the interaction between the two sisters. He’d had little to do with women as he grew to manhood, having no sisters and a mother who had died in his youth. Victoria and Jennifer were a revelation to him. Neither was shy about expressing opinions on the other’s conduct or business. Connor had learned quite quickly that Victoria thought Jennifer should be earning her bread playing music and Jennifer thought Victoria should be finding herself a husband and settling down.

  Connor wondered, absently, why Victoria hadn’t.

  He found it not an unhappy state of affairs, though he certainly couldn’t have said why. It wasn’t as if he could do a bloody thing about it save dance at her wedding to some lad from her time.

  He got to his feet, swayed, then steadied himself as best he could. He wished grimly that he had brought someone else along. How he was going to protect these two women with naught but his wits was beyond him. Then again, hadn’t he done as much the night before?

  But had it been the night before, or had he been senseless for days?

  He would have given that more thought, but a knock sounded on the door, interrupting him.

  Victoria sat up with a start, caught sight of him, then relaxed and smiled. “You look better.”

  “Did I look so ill before?” he asked.

  “Well, yes, you did.” She rose and went to answer the door. Food arrived and Connor looked at the window to see what the time might be. Daylight again. Well, perhaps he had only slept through the night.

  Victoria gestured to the table. “There, if you please,” she said with a decidedly French accent.

  The maidservant obeyed, bobbed a curtsey, and left with alacrity. Connor looked at Victoria.
/>   “French?”

  She shrugged. “I thought Scottish, but I wasn’t sure how that would play here.”

  “And what, pray, am I to do, mistress?” he asked archly. “I cannot be what I am not.”

  “You just be quiet,” she said easily, “and let me do the talking. Jennifer speaks quite a bit of French, so if things really go south, we’ll let her see what she can do. But I’m hoping we won’t run into any more problems.”

  “Aye,” he said, with feeling. He sat down across the table from her. “Are you recovered?”

  “From the sight of you without your head, or the feeling of that now-dead Londoner groping me?”

  He couldn’t smile. “The latter, surely.”

  “I’ll survive. You can’t imagine how I appreciated the rescue, though.”

  “I daresay I can.”

  She smiled and began to study breakfast. Connor watched her with her hair loose about her shoulders and her features not overwrought with anything but choosing from the offerings before her. How he wished he could have pulled that hair back from her face, brushed it for her, braided it if she pleased.

  By the saints, the sight of that whoreson attacking her had made his heart stop.

  If he’d had a heart to behave in such a fashion.

  The rage that had rushed through him had surprised him, but not rendered him useless. It had given him strength beyond what he should have had, strength enough to raise a sword and plunge it into the man’s back. He supposed he was fortunate he hadn’t impaled Victoria, as well.

  “Connor, are you all right?”

  He rubbed his hands over his face and gave her a weak smile. “I am well enough.”

  “I would comment on that pleasant expression you’re wearing, but I’m trying to be discreet.”

  “Does it make me look less fierce?” he inquired politely.

  “Definitely.”

  “Then you see why I do not wear it often.”

  She smiled at him and a dimple appeared in her cheek.

  Connor fought not to wheeze.

  “Aren’t you past trying to intimidate me?” she asked. “I think I’m immune.”