Much Ado In the Moonlight

  “Connor?” Thomas prompted.

  “I do,” he said, then realized what he had said. “I mean, I’ll do it if I must.”

  Thomas burst out laughing.

  Connor looked at Victoria to find her looking at him with pursed lips.

  “I’m happy to do it,” he assured her. “To translate for you, that is. In truth, I am.”

  “I know I should have taken advantage of my granny, but I didn’t.”

  “There’s always today,” Thomas said, wiping his eyes and letting out a final chuckle. “And think about all the tutors you have around you. Ambrose, Hugh, Connor, Jenner. Why, I imagine even Fulbert knows a word or two.”

  “Mostly insults,” Fulbert admitted readily. “Though I could be called on to render a pleasing sentiment or two, if necessary.”

  “Well, then, let’s get to it,” Thomas said. He smiled at Victoria. “You’ll be clueless for a little while, but you’ll catch on. Maybe Connor will give you private lessons later.”

  Connor watched Victoria fling one of her writing instruments at her brother. It brushed his ear and stuck itself in a blanket draped over a chair several feet behind the man.

  “Well done,” he said in admiration. “You would be quite dangerous with a knife.”

  “My brother should live in fear,” she said.

  “I do,” Thomas said with a laugh.

  And then he was off in the mother tongue. Connor listened to him in surprise. Then again, he supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised. Thomas was, his offensive self aside, a shrewd man and not one lacking in intelligence. That he should have learned his lady wife’s native tongue was no surprise. What did come as a surprise, though, was how well he spoke it. It was as if he’d spent his entire life in the Highlands.

  Connor leaned back against the wall and listened with pleasure to the conversation going on around him. Even Jennifer added her part now and again, and quite satisfactorily. As he listened to the talk leap from battle to beautiful locales to visit, to modern things that seemed to be geared to make one daft, he realized that he had, in some unforeseen way, become a part of this group of very fine souls. He added his part when he felt it appropriate and found that his comments were welcome.

  Then he realized he was shirking his primary duty. He looked quickly at Victoria to find that she was watching him, resting her chin on her fists with her elbows on the table. She was smiling slightly, as if she found him not unpleasant to look at.

  And the saints pity him, he couldn’t even muster up a frown in return.

  He would have smiled, but that was apparently beyond him. He conjured up a chair and sat down next to her—not because he needed to sit and not because his knees had gone quite unsteady beneath him, but because he desired to save her the kink in her neck looking up at him would induce.

  “Where to start?” he asked.

  “I’m overwhelmed,” she said honestly. “Tell me your favorite words. I’ll learn those first.”

  So he considered, then translated for her a handful of his favorite things: brook, stand of trees, rain, fire, stew, beautiful woman.

  She turned her chair so she was sitting next to him instead of facing him. “What are they talking about? And is Thomas holding his own, or is he making a fool of himself?”

  “It amazes me to say it,” Connor said, feeling quite amazed, “but he speaks perfectly. I don’t wonder about it, though. Iolanthe likely has driven him to it.”

  “Either that, or he did it because he loves her and it’s his gift to her.”

  Connor looked at her in surprise. Victoria appeared to be equally as surprised.

  “I haven’t slept enough,” she said, sounding stunned. “I’m saying nice things about my brother.”

  “You’ll feel more yourself tomorrow,” Connor assured her. “Now, do you care to learn more single words or would you rather have things to say?”

  She stared thoughtfully at the hearth for a moment or two, then she looked at him. “I wonder if we both could learn to read it and you could teach me to speak on the side. Would Ambrose help us, do you think?”

  “You ask,” Connor said promptly. “I might be tempted to do him damage if he says nay.”

  She smiled faintly. “I’ll ask him. But later. Now, I think I’ll be happy just to listen for a bit.”

  He looked at her and felt himself falling into her sparkling blue eyes. It was all he could do not to reach out and trail a finger along that perfect cheek, smooth a hand over her riotous hair, slide his hand underneath it, and pull her forward to—

  “MacDougal?”

  He blinked. “Aye?”

  Then he realized it hadn’t been Victoria saying his name. She was looking at him with an expression of something that he couldn’t quite term lust, but that—he flattered himself to say—he couldn’t relegate to disinterest.

  “Laird MacDougal?”

  Connor tore his gaze away and focused on the little group before the hearth. He realized that it was Thomas McKinnon who called his name.

  “A battle story?”

  “Aye,” Connor managed. “Which one?”

  “Any one,” Thomas said, without a trace of a smirk on his face. “We’re interested in something really gory.”

  Connor looked at Victoria briefly before he obliged the rest of the company, but in truth, he couldn’t have said for certain just what he’d recounted for them.

  His eyes were too full of the woman beside him who had wished she’d learned his language whilst she’d had the chance.

  For what reason, he did not know and he dared not speculate.

  Several hours later, Connor took up his post outside the library door. The afternoon had been passed most agreeably, with tales of victory and glory, and he’d done his best to dutifully translate for Victoria everything that had been said.

  Such dutifulness had kept him too busy to really look at her again.

  The saints preserve him, that would have been a disaster.

  Now, evening had fallen and Victoria had retired, leaving him standing outside her door, determined to make certain that she had peace for sleeping.

  And, unsurprisingly, who should arrive to disturb that peace but Michael Fellini, slithering down the steps and across the entryway like the snake he was. Connor wouldn’t have moved aside for Fellini to knock on Victoria’s door, but he couldn’t bear the thought of the whoreson knocking through him. He stood aside and put his hand on his sword.

  Victoria opened the door and looked at Fellini in surprise. “Michael,” she said. “It’s late; what do you need?”

  Fellini bowed his head. “I have been appallingly unsympathetic about your grandmother. I came to apologize.”

  “Well,” Victoria said, clearly taken aback. “I appreciate that.”

  Fellini lifted his head and looked at Victoria with an expression of such contrition that Connor almost believed him to be genuine.

  If he hadn’t been such an accurate diviner of men’s characters, that is.

  “I also think we got off on the wrong foot,” Fellini continued. “What with Bernie and all his rules.” He smiled conspiratorially. “You know agents. He’s just doing his job.”

  “Sure,” Victoria said. She smiled in a friendly manner. “I understand.”

  Connor felt his jaw sliding down of its own accord. She was smiling at that liar? And it wasn’t just a normal, polite smile she was giving him. It was a welcoming smile. He thought it almost could have been called an intimate smile.

  He simply could not believe his eyes.

  “I’d like to start over,” Fellini said. “Tomorrow, perhaps? It would be an honor to maybe share breakfast and take a walk up to the castle. Or perhaps we could borrow your sister’s car and do some sightseeing.”

  Victoria simpered. Connor watched her do it and felt his astonishment increase at an unpleasant rate. What was the wench thinking? Damn her to hell, she was being taken in by this charlatan all over again!

  Connor folded his arms
over his chest and reconsidered his vow never to put a woman to the sword.

  “Oh,” Victoria said with a smile that said she was pleased, flattered, and perfectly happy to agree to anything Fellini suggested, “that would be just wonderful.”

  “Good,” Fellini said. “I’ll pick you up at eight. In the morning,” he added with a terribly familiar chuckle.

  Victoria almost swooned.

  Connor almost retched.

  “Go inside,” Fellini said, making shooing motions with his hand and smiling. “Get your beauty sleep. Not that you need it.”

  “Oh,” Victoria said again, a little breathlessly. “All right.” She put her hand over her heart, as if the bloody thing was about to beat so hard it stood to fling itself out of her chest. She fluttered her eyelashes and gave him a flirtatious smile as if she simply couldn’t believe her good fortune in having Michael Fellini appear at her door and request her presence for the next bloody day. “Good night.”

  And then she closed the door.

  Connor watched Fellini slink back across the entryway and slither back up the stairs. He said nothing and cast no looks of triumph to anyone who might be watching.

  Connor turned and scowled at the library door. Why, the silly wench was under the impostor’s spell yet again! He was terribly disappointed and it took him several moments to discover why. Then he felt an expression descend upon his features that wasn’t his normal scowl.

  It was an expression of disillusionment.

  The door creaked open suddenly. Victoria peered out.

  “Is he gone?”

  “Do you pine for him already?”

  Damn the wench if she didn’t look at him as if he’d lost his mind. Connor felt his expression of disillusionment turn to irritation.

  “Aye, he is gone,” Connor said flatly.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she asked.

  He folded his arms over his chest and glared at her. “If you cannot divine it, then my disappointment in you has reached a new low indeed!”

  “Disappointment?”

  “Aye, and if you cannot divine the why of that—”

  She blinked, then looked at him in surprise. “What? That bit with Michael?”

  “Aye, that bit with Michael!”

  She looked at him in surprise, then rolled her eyes and opened the door. “Come in.”

  “I have lost much respect for you—”

  “Get in here, would you?”

  He got in, only because he suspected she might try to pull him in otherwise, and since that would lead to failure and potential swearing on her part, it was best that he capitulate and allow the rest of the house to remain safely and happily asleep. But as he allowed her to shut the door behind him and take up a place where she could see him, he folded his arms over his chest again and prepared to tell her how he found her lacking in spine.

  “Victoria—”

  “Spill it,” she interrupted.

  He scowled at her. “It isn’t as if this is any of my affair,” he said shortly, “but it is quite a shock to my system to watch you fawn over that . . . that . . .”

  “Fawn?”

  “You’ve fallen for him again!”

  “But, Connor, I wasn’t serious!”

  He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  “That was acting,” she said, suddenly finding a scowl of her own. “Surely you don’t think I am that vapid.”

  “Well . . .”

  “I am, and I say this quite modestly, a damned good actress.”

  He paused and considered. “Well, aye, I suppose so.”

  “I can’t believe you think so little of me.”

  “Well,” he said finally, “you were very convincing.”

  She smiled. “Maybe I’ve missed my calling in life. But that uncomfortable subject aside, I have the feeling Michael’s up to something and I decided this was the best way to find out what.”

  “You aren’t going to spend the day with him tomorrow, in truth,” Connor said in disbelief. “Are you?”

  “How else am I to find out anything? Though it’s going to take all my self control to make nice.” She turned and walked across the room to sit down in front of the hearth. “I suppose I’ll have to at least hang out with him during the morning.”

  “What will you do to escape his clutches after that?”

  “Bore him with production minutiae until he goes away of his own accord.”

  “I could run him through,” Connor offered. “There would be no permanent damage.”

  “Except to his ego, when he ran screaming the other way.” She paused, then shook her head. “I was hoodwinked. And for the longest time, that’s the kind of man I thought was the epitome of masculinity.”

  “Hmmm,” he said, stroking his chin as if he were truly surprised that such a man might not be her ideal. “And now?”

  The words came out of his mouth and he found that it was, unfortunately, much too late to call them back.

  She smiled. “My tastes have changed.”

  Damn the woman, would she give him no hint as to her thinking? “Have they? Not that I’m really interested,” he added quickly, to save his pride, in case she had someone in mind besides him. “I’m just being polite.”

  She blinked as if she’d been slapped briskly. “Oh. I see.”

  He wondered if it would disturb her if he cut off his own head. He considered blurting out that he thought her a right fearsome wench and one he would have been honored to guard day and night for the rest of her life. He considered telling her that the foregoing was a load of tripe and that he bloody well had fond feelings for her, and that if she took another serious look in Fellini’s direction he bloody well would take his blade to her. He even considered telling her that if she didn’t think him all that a man should be, he would walk out of the inn and find another part of England to haunt—

  “Connor?”

  “Aye?” he snarled.

  “I think you need a nap.”

  “I most certainly do not need a nap!”

  She sat back in her chair and studied him. He almost drew his sword in self-defense. At least then she would have been distracted by the glint of steel and ceased with her staring at him. He started a fire in the hearth with a flick of his wrist. Blades were better admired by firelight, he decided.

  And damn it, so were red-haired, porcelain-complected women of the kind to steal his breath in spite of his iron self-control.

  “Connor?” she asked quietly.

  “Hmmm?” He put away his unreasonable and impossible thoughts. He was spirit; she was flesh. There was no circumnavigating that small inconvenience.

  Would that he could.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  In Gaelic.

  The saints pity him, he thought he just might love her.

  “For what?” he asked gruffly.

  “For today,” she said. “For keeping me company and wanting to avenge my bruised honor.”

  “A shade’s work is never done,” he managed.

  Her smile faded, but didn’t disappear.

  “No,” she said softly, “I suppose it isn’t.” She looked at him for several minutes, then rose slowly. “You don’t have to stay.”

  “I ken that well enough, woman,” he said gruffly. “Go to bed. I’ll make certain Fellini doesn’t slip something foul into your tea on the morrow.”

  She crawled into bed and closed her eyes. “Good night, Connor.”

  He was a very long time in answering, mostly because he wanted her to be asleep before he did.

  “And to you, my lady,” he whispered.

  Damnation, he was past any hope of reason.

  Chapter 15

  Victoria walked along the way from the castle back to the inn, cursing in Gaelic. Learning the language was her new obsession and curses were the extent of her vocabulary so far. That was okay. She’d been swearing at Michael Fellini all morning, which was the only thing that had kept her from killing him.

/>   She’d managed to eat breakfast with him that morning without doing him bodily harm. Then she’d bored him to tears with talk of technical things she knew he couldn’t possibly have the patience for. He’d lasted until noon, which had been three hours longer than she’d been betting on. She’d learned nothing more than what she should have known from the start, which was that the man was a complete jerk. Why she’d ever found his exuberant, over-the-top, diva-type personality appealing, she would never know . . .

  She hesitated.

  She had obviously spent too much time around men packing swords.

  She shook her head and continued on her way back to the inn. She no longer recognized her life and that should have sent her speeding off to a therapist’s couch. That it didn’t was something to be examined another day. For now, she would just go with it. Maybe when she was striking the set after the show was over, she would do an equal amount of tearing down of her own life.

  So many things she had taken for granted.

  So little time spent on what really mattered.

  Not that she was going to quit the theater and start making baby clothes any time soon. Jennifer could lose her mind that way, but Victoria had no intentions of doing the same thing. But balance? Yes, balance was something she could definitely stand to find.

  She walked along the path up through the garden and smiled with the pleasure of sniffing Mrs. Pruitt’s quite lovely-smelling flowers. There was also the fact that another day had been successfully conquered to savor. And that was no small feat. With only two days remaining until opening night, she was past being nervous. There was nothing else she could do at this point. Her actors knew their lines; they had their blocking down; they knew where to find the castle; no one was sick.

  And no one was being haunted, either, at least today. Even the Boar’s Head Trio had deserted her. She hadn’t seen a one of them all day, not during the morning when Michael had been hanging onto her like a limpet, nor when her rehearsal had flown by during the afternoon.

  She hadn’t seen Connor, either. She’d grown so accustomed to him hanging around the stage or waiting to walk her back to the inn that it seemed strange to have seen nothing of him. What was he, a fair-weather ghost only willing to make an appearance if there was a good scream in it for him? Too busy with his afterlife to show up for five minutes and say hello?