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

she were the most beautiful, the most desirable, the most wonderful person he knew.

As if he loved her.

She rested her chin on her fist and stared out the window with what she was sure was a foolish smile on her face.

Perhaps it had taken all those centuries of being alone to appreciate having someone to care for her. Not as Duncan cared, nor as Ambrose cared. But as a man who looked on her as a woman.

A knock sounded, interrupting her musings. She sighed and called out for the soul to enter.

Roderick walked through her door. He stopped in the middle of the chamber, looked at her, then pursed his lips.

"Mooning over him!" he asked shortly.

"And what if I am?"

He opened his mouth to speak, then shut it and shook his head. "I would ruin my reputation as a gentleman were I to give voice to my thoughts."

"The saints preserve us from that."

He looked at her darkly. "I predict disaster. Mortals and spirits were never meant to become entangled."

His words made her briefly uneasy, but she shrugged them off. If the mutterings of a bejeweled peacock could unsettle her, then she wasn't worthy of her name. She was a MacLeod. MacLeods took risks, did not bemoan their fate, and were firm in their purposes. If she had decided that having an ... um ... association with Thomas McKinnon was what she wanted, then have it she would, and the skeptics be damned.

"I understand the artist arrives on the morrow," Roderick said with a heavy sigh. "You'd best let me look at your gowns and give you my thoughts."

She studied him in silence for a moment or two.

"Dash it all, woman, I'll not lead you astray!" he exclaimed. "I have excellent taste. I would provide you with scores of testimonials, but I daresay we don't want to invite any of my fellows up here."

"Or your scores of former lovers?"

He pointedly ignored her remark. "You would find your lovely chamber overrun with card games, cigar smoke, and spilled drink. So, trust me on the merit of my word. I'll help you choose the appropriate gown."

Iolanthe weighed the alternatives. She could select her own gown, surely, but what if she chose amiss? Thomas was no doubt paying an enormous sum to have this all done. And much as it galled her to admit it, she couldn't deny that Roderick was always impeccably dressed. Even though his personality left much to be desired, his attire did not.

She sighed and rose. She didn't need to look at the book again to know what her choices were. She'd spent the past three days studying the bloody thing.

One moment she was in her normal peasant dress, the next she was wearing the illusion she'd created. The first gown she made was Elizabethan in style, black in color. It was covered with lace and encrusted with jewels. Iolanthe held her hair up on top of her head and looked at Roderick.

"Well?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Not your color. Too many baubles. The next?"

The next one was a simple dress, purple, and quite modern in its style. It reached to the ground as a straight sheath of material with all manner of sequins hanging from it. Thomas had called it a flapper gown. Iolanthe looked at Roderick.

"Your thoughts?"

"It should be burned. Try something else."

She sighed and conjured up the final gown she'd found in the book. She had thought it the loveliest of them all, and it claimed to be from the proper period in time. How anyone had decided what a medieval wedding gown looked like, she wasn't sure, but given the fact that she hadn't attended all that many medieval weddings, she supposed she wasn't in a position to judge.

The gown was dark blue with a sort of stitching done on the bodice in gold thread. The same thread outlined a subtle pattern on the rest of the gown as well. She looked down at her bare toes peeking from beneath the gown and decided that perhaps she would have to think about shoes as well. Then again, mayhap the painter wouldn't ask to see her feet, and she would be all right as she was.

She took a deep breath to steel herself for Roderick's inevitable dislike, then looked at him.

He was watching her with the most sincerely unlecherous expression she'd ever seen him wear. She held up part of her gown.

"Well?" she asked.

"Perfect," he announced.

She held up a lock of her hair. "What should I do with this? Put it up?"

"Wear it down," he said shortly. He practically leaped to his feet, then stared at her with an expression she couldn't decipher. "Wear it down. You'll steal his breath."

"He'll need breath to paint," she said.

"I was speaking of him, not his bloody artist. You'll steal his breath away. And if he doesn't go down on his knees before you and beg you to be his, I'll stir myself to learn swordplay and then find a way to remove his empty head from his shoulders."

Iolanthe smiled before she could stop herself. "Then you like it."

"Since when did you care what I thought?" he demanded, sounding mightily irritated.

Since I found love, she started to say, then she realized just how true that was. She couldn't imagine anything more impossible, but it seemed as if everything about her was sweeter somehow. She treasured her friendships more. She suspected that she would even view the MacDougal with less animosity than she normally did. And it had everything to do with the softening of her own heart.

Because of him.

A knock sounded on the door, and she jumped in spite of herself.

"Change," Roderick said. "Don't let him see you in that gown until the artist arrives."

The blue dress vanished, and Iolanthe stood there in the dress she normally wore. And somehow, foolish though it was, she felt less.

"You know," Roderick said slowly, "you don't have to wear just that."

"Spoken by a preening peacock who changes his clothing upon the stroke of