Iolanthe had brought a little folding camp stool, which she immediately made use of behind a clutch of lavender. Then she put her hand over her nose.
“Och, the smell,” she moaned.
“Maybe you should go back inside,” Victoria suggested.
“And miss this? I’ll puke my guts out into the delphiniums, thank ye just the same, just for the pleasure.”
Victoria laughed, then she caught wind of what the combatants were saying and stopped laughing abruptly.
“I feel I have much to repay you for,” Connor said, pausing to scratch his head. “But damn me if I can remember what.”
“Do you want to know?” Thomas asked.
Victoria pursed her lips. His Gaelic was very good. Perhaps that came from living with a medieval Scot. It could also have come from his time-traveling. Or it might have had something to do with hanging out with medieval ghosts. Good heavens, they were popping up like mushrooms. She wondered if the Inland Revenue would have to develop a new department soon just to track down those pesky time-travelers. Would a former ghost have the same status?
Then she found she had no more time for thinking of implausible scenarios, because the battle raging through Mrs. Pruitt’s garden demanded her full attention. Apparently, it demanded Mrs. Pruitt’s attention, as well.
“Me petunias!” the innkeeper bellowed from the door. “Me violas! Damn ye both to hell, be off to trample some other garden!”
Both men looked at her, made profuse apologies, and then walked off down the path, chatting companionably.
“Come on,” Victoria said, pulling Iolanthe’s seat from underneath her. “Let’s go. We can’t miss this.”
Iolanthe groaned and stumbled after her stool.
Victoria set Iolanthe up in the car park and stood next to her as the men fought. Nothing much was sacred, including a black Sterling that soon acquired dusty footprints as it was used for a launching pad.
More shrieks, of the male kind, ensued from the inn for that outrage.
“I’ve wanted to kill you for quite some time,” Connor said, his chest heaving. “The opportunity to do so is very pleasing, even if I can’t remember what you’ve done.” He paused. “I don’t suppose you have any idea.”
“You didn’t like me changing the castle up the way,” Thomas said pleasantly.
“Why would I have cared?”
“Thomas . . .” Victoria warned.
Connor pointed briefly at Iolanthe with his sword before he used it for more immediate business. “You know, I’ve a wealth of irritation for that wench there, as well. I wonder why.”
“You can ask her later, but be careful. She’s my wife.”
“Your wife. She wasn’t always your wife, though, was she?” Connor paused in midswing and looked at Thomas. “I knew her before you wed her, didn’t I?”
Thomas nodded seriously. “You did.”
“But ’tis impossible. I just arrived in the Future yestermorn.”
“Iolanthe lived in the castle up the way for quite some time,” Thomas said carefully.
“Thomas,” Victoria warned, more loudly this time.
Connor stared off into the distance for a moment or two, then looked at Thomas. “How can I know these things?”
“It’s a bit of a tale.”
“Tell me.”
“Here?”
“Here.”
“Thomas!” Victoria exclaimed.
Thomas ignored her. Connor was ignoring her, as well. She was tempted to take both their swords away and clout them over the head with them. Thomas went to lean against the hood of the Sterling, propping his sword up against his hip. Connor did the same.
Protests ensued from inside the inn, but the two men ignored those as well.
“Would you rather sit down?” Thomas asked politely.
“Will I wish to at some future point?”
“Probably.”
Connor waved the idea away. “I’ll content myself with this beast, for now. If I find myself truly irritated, I’ll move on with trying to kill you again. You may proceed.”
“Well, this is the story.” Thomas smiled easily. “I bought Thorpewold castle a few years ago. I came over last summer to repair it, but found out that it was haunted.”
Connor’s eyes widened. “Then you saw them, too? The men up the way?”
“Yes.”
“Just those lads?”
“No.”
Connor paused. “Who else, then?”
“Two others.”
Connor became very still. Victoria watched him clutch his sword. His knuckles were white.
“Two others?” he asked carefully. “Who?”
Thomas nodded toward Iolanthe. “That lovely woman there.”
“But she is a spirit no longer.”
“No, she isn’t, is she?”
Connor seemed to digest that for quite some time. Then he took a deep breath. “The other shade? Who was it?”
Thomas looked at Connor. Victoria wondered if she would ever forget the moment, frozen in time, when her brother looked at her love and said the one word that would change everything.
“You,” he said finally.
Connor looked at him in shock. Then he looked at Victoria. He looked at Iolanthe. Then he looked at Thomas again, in horror this time.
Victoria would have said something, but the warning look on Thomas’s face stopped her.
Connor took his sword in his hands. Victoria wasn’t sure if he was going to stab Thomas, stab Iolanthe, or just fling it at her to make himself feel better. Instead, he jammed it into the gravel and strode away.
The sword quivered for quite a long time before the motion stopped.
Iolanthe leaped up suddenly and bolted for the house. Victoria assumed that she knew where all the bathrooms were and felt no compunction about not helping her, nor about swiping her chair. She sat and looked at her brother.
“Thanks,” she said sarcastically.
He put his sword up on his shoulder like a rifle and walked over to her. “You will. Later.”
“Did you have to?” she asked plaintively. “Couldn’t you have just zipped your lips and thrown away the key?”
Thomas squatted down in front of her. “Your eyes are leaking.”
“Damn it, it’s allergies!”
He smiled. “Vic, he had to know.”
“He would have figured it out in time.”
“Yeah, eventually. But I thought you might want a fall wedding.”
She dragged her sleeve across her eyes. “He’s probably gone home.”
“Without his sword? Sis, you don’t know anything about Highlanders if you think that.” He rose and pulled her up with him. “Let’s go in. He’ll come back eventually, when he’s come to terms with it all.”
“He’ll probably never come to terms with it all.”
“Then he’ll go back to his miserable life and you’ll go back to yours. Did I tell you what a great Ophelia you were? Think of all the misery and madness you’ll be able to put into your characters, thanks to Connor dumping you and heading home. I’d thank me if I were you.”
“Thomas?”
“Yes?”
“You suck.”
He laughed and slung his arm around her. “Ah, that’s music to my ears. You’ll be fine.”
“But will he be?” she muttered. “I doubt it.”
And she did. She doubted it even more when she looked out the front door at one point during the afternoon and found that Connor’s sword was no longer in the driveway. She glared at Thomas.
“Theft or Return to Neverland; you decide.”
“Patience.”
“I have none.”
“You’ll have some after this is over.”
She went back to brooding in the library.
By the time the afternoon, and her fledgling patience, had worn very thin, she put herself out of everyones misery and went for a walk. She was going to go to the castle, but she found herself continuing
on past it. The sun was setting and the air was still.
Well, except for that dry rain that cropped up, but she was in England; she expected no less.
By the time she had cursed her way to Granny’s picnic spot and farther, she realized she was not alone.
Connor stood on the edge of the fairy ring.
She came to a teetering halt, then turned and prepared to tiptoe away.
“Victoria.”
She took a deep breath, then turned back around to face him. “Yes?”
“Does your brother speak the truth?”
There was no denying it now. She took another deep breath. She was going to be hyperventilating soon if this kind of thing didn’t stop. “Yes.”
He looked at the fairy ring for a very long time, then looked at her.
She wondered if she would forget that moment, either.
There stood a proud, undeniably gorgeous Highland laird, in clothes that were just a little too small, holding his enormous sword like a walking stick, looking at her as if he thought looking long enough would reveal all her secrets, making a decision that would affect them both forever.
And then he took his own deep breath and stepped away from the ring in the grass.
He came to a halt in front of her. “I have dreams,” he said quietly.
“Do you?”
“Dreams of another life.”
She nodded, shaking. “Interesting.”
He considered. “They may be of my life as a ghost.”
“It’s possible.”
He looked at her searchingly. “Did I know you?”
“You did.”
“Did I love you?”
She had to gather courage to answer that. “You said you did.”
“Did I ask you to rescue me from death?”
Ah, there was the rub. “Your forbade me.”
He looked at her in surprise, then his expression lightened. “Aye, that sounds like me.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I think you wanted to kill me at first, too,” she offered. “You know, when you were a . . .”
“Did I?” he mused. “I daresay, not.” He put his sword over his shoulder and took her hand. “I must walk,” he said easily. “If I do not walk, I will drop to my knees and weep.”
“Oh,” she managed.
“I will not go home now,” he announced. He looked at her briefly. “But I will later.”
“Of course,” she said gamely.
He walked with her back to the inn, then paused at the front door. “There are several people I wish to question about this whole ghostly business, which I most definitely do not believe.”
“Sure,” she said with a nod. “Make a list. I’ll see they show up.”
He looked at her searchingly for quite some time before he spoke. “Do you believe, Victoria?”
She took an equal amount of time to answer. “I lived a little of it with you, my laird. I can’t not believe.”
He was silent for several minutes, then he grunted. “I want the lads from the castle first.”
“Do you want to interview them down here or terrorize them up there?”
He frowned at her. “Jesting in this matter is not appreciated.”
Well, it beat the hell out of weeping. Victoria put on a businesslike look. “You might have more success getting them to show up if you made the concession of setting up your audience chamber in the bailey. Then you could come down here and question the inn’s ghosts.”
“The inn is haunted, as well?”
“Haven’t I told you that already?”
“I dismissed it as the ramblings of a madwoman, but now I see I was too hasty. Very well. Tomorrow at first light we will away to the castle, then return here for supper and more questions for these lads at the inn. Three of them, are there?”
“There are.”
He paused. “Did you tell me that?”
Poor man. Victoria smiled sadly. “I didn’t.”
He took a deep breath. “Supper. I daresay I’m losing my wits due to lack of strength. I will be fully myself afterward, I assure you.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
But as she led him into the inn, she wondered if she dared expect anything more.
Chapter 32
Connor sat in the inner bailey of Thorpewold castle and thought that if this had been the state of his reputed afterlife, ’twas no wonder he’d been so foul. He looked at Victoria, who sat on the stage and swung her legs back and forth. She yawned hugely, realized he was observing her, then smiled weakly.
He frowned. So, he was not the only one having trouble listening to these goings on with any seriousness.
Aye, my laird, I did ken ye from centuries past. From before the ’45, actually.
The ’45? Connor had little liking for those numbers, but he hadn’t pressed the man on what they meant. He would ask Victoria about them later.
Laird MacDougal, I aided ye in routing out those pesky Brits when that Tudor wench sat the English throne. What a day that was, with us havin’ our heads tucked beneath our arms!
Routing out and pesky in the same breath were always good, but Connor had been afforded little time to truly enjoy them. Instead, he’d listened, open-mouthed, to the horrors he had perpetrated, apparently, upon hapless mortals whilst he was, reputedly, a disembodied spirit.
Horrors, he had to admit, that were masterfully executed.
Even if he did say so himself.
Sword fights, loud boos, ghostly wails, headlessness, armlessness, blood spurting, goo oozing, entrails trailing . . . aye, the tales he had listened to that morn were indeed something.
And all the while, Victoria McKinnon had either sat upon that stage and listened with raised eyebrows or paced about, fighting a smile.
Was it possible that it was true?
And then a man sauntered up to him, dressed in velvets, with enough lace at his wrists and neck to leave a gaggle of Highland lassies drooling for a fortnight. Connor gaped at him in astonishment.
“Roderick St. Claire,” the man said with a low bow.
“So I see,” Connor said, wide-eyed.
“We’ve played cards together on more than one occasion,” the shade continued. “I have many tales to tell you, old man, when you would care to tear a pheasant together and break open a bottle of claret. Of course,” he smiled faintly, “you can indulge. I’ll just pretend.”
“Old man?” Connor repeated. “Old man?”
“A term of respect,” Victoria called helpfully.
Connor looked at Roderick St. Claire and wondered why it was he felt such a strong urge to run the man through. He frowned. “You irritate me.”
“I have for decades.”
Connor rubbed the space between his eyes. “Decades?”
“I came to Thorpewold after my untimely demise during Queen Victoria’s rule.”
“Another woman on the English throne?”
“I fear, old chap, that it’s all too true.”
Connor rubbed his hands over his face. “I think I must have a few moments to think.”
Roderick made him a low, flourishy bow better suited to a player on stage, then disappeared.
Connor jumped, in spite of himself. Would he ever accustom himself to this appearing and disappearing these shades did? He suspected not. He dismissed the rest of the garrison with a sharp movement of his hand. They vanished with alacrity. He sighed, stood, and went over to Victoria.
“I am hearing these tales and finding them difficult to believe,” he said bluntly.
“I imagine you are,” she agreed.
He paused and considered. “I see no reason why these lads would perjure themselves.”
She smiled sadly. “I can’t, either.”
He grunted, then nodded to her before he took himself off to investigate the nooks and crannies of Thorpewold Castle proper. He walked to the one wall that seemed to be the least crumbling of all the walls. To his left was a quite well-preserved
tower. Connor approached, but the closer he came, the more dread he felt.
He stood at the bottom and looked up the steps. There was evil there. He wasn’t certain what had happened, but it was not of his making, and he had no desire to investigate. He turned away and walked along the wall to the far tower.
It was newly reconstructed. He admired the lower floor, with Victoria’s theater equipment still contained therein. He could remember the day—and it hadn’t been all that long ago—when the place had been nothing but a shell. But, by the saints, that Thomas McKinnon had been a royal pain in the arse, hammering and banging at all hours, day in and . . . day . . .
Out.
Connor looked at the tower and wondered how in the hell he knew that.
He turned to see how Victoria was viewing his lunacy. She was sitting on the stage still, but she was looking toward the gates, no doubt leaving him privacy to descend into madness. He looked at the corner tower again, shivered once, then moved away before he had any more incomprehensible reactions.
He roamed over the castle, scaling what steps he dared and leaving alone the ones he didn’t. He walked through what was left of the great hall. He stepped into the garden, which was now nothing more than a grassy field. He knew it had not always been so. He could see it as a garden full of flowers and a training field full of men with swords. He watched monks coming and making offerings of plants to a woman he was most startled to recognize.
Iolanthe MacLeod.
But why would they have done that? And when?
Connor leaned on his hand against the wall and let things wash over him. He couldn’t call them memories. He wasn’t sure what to name them, but he knew he could not call them lies.
Mayhem, terror, decapitations. And that had just been his activities with other men in the keep. But those lads popped their heads right back atop their shoulders and brushed aside killing wounds as if they had been mere stings.
He would have suspected his reign of terror was merely happy recollections of his time as laird of the clan MacDougal, but two things stopped him. One, he hadn’t been drenched by the dry Scottish rain; and two, he hadn’t been cold.
Odd.
He pushed away from the wall and strode back into the bailey. He looked for Victoria, then nodded sharply at her. She lifted one eyebrow at him, but hopped off the stage just the same. She joined him at the gates and trotted alongside him as he strode away from the castle and its uncomfortable revelations.