My Heart Stood Still by Lynn Kurland (best book club books of all time .TXT) 📕

and sprawled out on the blanket. "By the saints, this agrees with me."

"I can see that," he said with a smile. "It's a good place."

She rolled over on her back and looked up at him. "We canna remain here forever, Thomas."

"Sure we can."

She shook her head and sat up. She took up a handful of shells and began to sort through them.

"Tell me the tale," she said simply. "Now."

"But—"

"And spare me nothing."

"Io—"

She looked at him and smiled easily. "I like that name you call me. Io. Seems simpler, aye?"

Would the woman never cease to leave him breathless? He managed a weak nod. "Yes, it does."

She looked down at her hands. "You've done a merry dance this past se'nnight with the truth."

"I didn't want to spoil the peace."

She stole a look at him. "And will the tale do that?"

"It might," he admitted. "Parts of it are pretty unbelievable."

"Today," she said, looking up at the sky, "today, I think I could believe anything." She looked at him and smiled again. "Even one of your tales, you poor, daft man."

"Are you sure you want it all?"

"Aye. All of it."

He took a deep breath and prayed he wasn't making the biggest mistake of his life.

"All right," he said, crawling to his feet. "Let's walk."

"The truth pricks at you so?"

"It'll be easier to catch you when you run if I'm already on my feet." He held out his hand for her and pulled her up. "Where do you want me to start?"

"At the beginning."

It figured. Thomas put his hands behind his back and started to walk down the beach with her. If she wanted the whole thing, perhaps she had a right to it. It was, after all, her story. He took a deep breath.

"Well, you see, I bought a castle."

"You must be very rich."

He was, but there was no sense in bringing that up right then. "Actually, it was a fairly old castle and it had fallen into disrepair."

"An old castle?" she asked, frowning. "Are there such things?"

"Where I come from, yes, there are. Now, I bought this castle without having seen it, though when I saw it, I... I wasn't surprised by how it looked."

He could feel her eyes on him, but he couldn't look at her. The whole thing was still too unsettling to think about. Who would have thought that a simple check made out to someone he didn't know would eventually have landed him in medieval England, walking next to the woman he had loved when she'd been a ghost, and who was now as corporeal as he?

"Why weren't you?" she asked. "Surprised, that is."

"Because I'd seen it before." He paused. "In my dreams."

She was, amazingly enough, silent.

Thomas looked at her. "Daft? Fey? Anything to call me?"

She only shook her head. "I've had dreams as well."

"Have you?"

She looked at him, and Thomas was surprised by the familiarity in her gaze. As if she had known him all her life.

As if she might have loved him at least that long.

And then the look was gone as quickly as it had come, so quickly that he wondered if he'd imagined it.

"Aye, I have," she said briskly. "Now, continue on, if you will."

He smiled, then shrugged. "Well, I came to take possession of my castle only to find that it wasn't empty. There was a garrison of Highlanders and a particularly unpleasant man named Connor MacDougal—"

She stopped so suddenly that he had to back up to look at her.

"MacDougal?" she asked, her forehead wrinkling.

"Yes. Know him?"

"Where was your castle?"

"In England," he said slowly, but he didn't dare tell her more than that. Yet.

"I see," she said, chewing on her lip.

"I was so startled by seeing all these men in kilts," he continued, "and by Laird MacDougal waving his sword at me, that I stumbled backward, tripped, and hit my head on a rock."

She laughed. "Ah, but your pride must have been wounded. Did they strip you and leave you out in the open for others to mock or merely toss you outside the gates and leave you to the wild beasties?"

"Neither," he said, scowling. "They argued plenty over what to do with me, but left me alone. In the end, I managed to get myself back to the inn down the way. It was a day or two before I came back to the castle, but I managed it eventually—"

"Without your pride," she interrupted.

"Yes," he said. "Which only added to my problems. The MacDougal said I didn't have any rights and that I'd find that out soon enough when I went inside and met with the real lord of the castle."

He paused.

"Only it wasn't a lord."

She looked at him and waited. "Aye?"

He started walking again. "It was a woman, and the keep was undeniably hers."

"I imagine she wasn't too happy about you taking it from her."

"That, my lady, is the understatement of the millennium," he said dryly. "No, she wasn't happy about it, and I was quite rude to her. We didn't exactly begin our relationship on the best of terms."

"And then?"

He shrugged. "I tried to rebuild the keep, with her permission of course, and we became friends. Then I fell in love with her."

"Oh," she said softly.

He stole a look at her. A more foolish man might have thought she seemed the slightest bit disappointed.

"Then you loved her very much?" she asked.

"With my whole soul," he said.

"Hmmm," she said, turning her face away from him and looking out to sea. "A remarkable tale."

Well, now this was something. Could she be jealous? The thought was almost startling enough to make him stop, but he thought he might be on a roll, so he pressed on.

"We had a problem, the lady and I," he continued, "and there was only one way to solve it. So I took myself on a very long journey."

"To my home," she put in absently.

"Yes. I studied swordplay and learned Gaelic. It's then that the story takes a different turn."

"No doubt."

He stopped and waited until she had reluctantly turned toward