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

"I assumed as much. For how long?"

Jamie smiled briefly. "You could train a year and still not be ready."

"Fortunately for you," his cousin Ian said with a wolfish grin, "we've a dire-straits course that will take just over a month. Gaelic, swordplay, and the swagger, all for a modest fee."

Jamie snorted. "Ian's given up cattle raiding for teaching swordplay. He brings poor, hapless souls up to his land and tortures them for weeks at a time."

"And they pay me for it," Ian agreed. "Hollywood types, rich men with more money than wits, lads with more energy than maturity. Aye, I wreak havoc upon them all."

"I'll pay you whatever you ask," Thomas said promptly. "It'll be worth it."

"Fee waived," Ian said with another smile. "I do what I can for the course of true love."

Elizabeth ruffled his hair affectionately. "You always were a romantic."

"I don't mind that about him," his wife Jane agreed happily. "But then again, I benefit from it."

Jamie waved toward William de Piaget. "Here is our lone English-man. We allow him to stay now and then because of his knowledge of England. You'll need his skills as well."

"Aye," William said, "but I pay for my heritage each day."

"Ha," Ian said with a snort. "Who pays? You're now running those bloody medieval reenactment tours and making a fortune! I'm the one who's sweating from dawn to dusk."

Julianna smiled at Thomas. "We're just here for a visit. We just bought a large estate in England, actually, near the castle where William grew up."

"That would be Artane," William supplied with a nod. "And it would please me to aid you as I can." He looked at Thomas unflinchingly. " 'Tis a bloody dangerous time, that. You'll need your wits about you."

Jamie put his hands on the table and rose. "Which means to bed now. You'll want an early start on the morrow, Thomas. We'll all help you as we can."

Thomas looked around the table. "I don't know how to thank you. I really don't. It's more than I could have hoped for."

Jamie's brother Patrick laughed. "We'll speak of this again in a se'nnight and see if you're still grateful then. I know what it's like to fight with Jamie and Ian each day, and I can't say as I'm grateful for it."

"Lazy whelp," Jamie threw at his brother.

Patrick only shrugged with a smile. " 'Tis the duty of the second son to take things as lightly as possible."

Jamie opened his mouth to retort, but Elizabeth got to her feet before he could.

"Why don't you two leave that discussion for tomorrow?" she suggested, juggling a sleeping toddler in her arms. "It's late, and Thomas looks beat. You can tell him all your gory tales when you have at him outside." She placed her son in Jamie's arms, then smiled at Thomas. "Come on, and I'll show you your room."

"If it's no trouble," he said. "I really could go stay at a B and B—"

"An inn?" Jamie asked, looking appalled. "You're family. You'll stay here."

And that, Thomas supposed, was that. He said his good nights, then followed Elizabeth from the kitchen and across the great hall. He looked to his left, and a chill went over him. Elizabeth looked at him with a puzzled expression.

"What?" she asked.

"What's through that doorway?"

"A storeroom now, for swords and things like that."

He halted in midstep. "The dungeon used to be there."

She looked at him in shock. "Yes, it did. How did you know?"

He met her gaze. "I just knew."

"Well," she said, taking his arm and pulling him along, "as one who has spent a night in Jamie's pit, his medieval pit, mind you, I'm here to tell you that you don't want to become familiar with that place."

Thomas couldn't have agreed more.

Chapter 26

A se'nnight later, Iolanthe stood behind a fat, obnoxious couple from the Colonies who were dressed in shirts adorned with orange, yellow, and pink flowers, sporting some sort of woven straw hats, and arguing loudly over whether or not the castle they were tromping through had any historical importance. The man yelled at the woman, the woman began to cry, and Iolanthe found herself acting without thinking. She placed herself in front of the man, made herself unmistakably visible, and scowled her most formidable scowl.

"This castle has importance in that it's haunted," she said pointedly.

And then she took off her head and tucked it under her arm.

The woman screamed and fell over in a dead faint.

The man, apparently overcome, wet himself, then fell over in a manner like his wife.

Iolanthe dispensed with her headless illusion. The men in the garrison applauded, then went on their way after offering various and sundry congratulations on a haunting well done. Even the MacDougal unbent enough to grunt at her in a less-gruff-than-usual manner. All of it should have left her feeling rather pleased with herself.

"Now, daughter," Ambrose said, clucking his tongue as he came to stand beside her, "did you have to do that?"

Iolanthe glared at the older man. Older was, of course, misleading. Would that he'd been a toddler she could have turned over her knee.

"I am in a foul mood," she said pointedly.

"Aye, I can see that. What ails you? Thoughts of turning me over your knee?"

"Actually, aye. 'Tis a powerfully tempting thought."

He only smiled. "You wouldn't of course, even had I been your child. You've too kind a heart and will make a wonderful mother."

"In what existence do you speak of?" she asked bitterly. "Certainly not this one."

"The one Thomas will provide for you," Ambrose said. "He'll succeed."

Iolanthe had decided over the course of a se'nnight that she couldn't care less if Thomas succeeded or failed. The man had had a perfectly acceptable existence with her, but apparently it hadn't been enough.

"He can go to the devil for all I care," she said.

"Hmmm," Ambrose said. "Well, as he intends to seek to restore you to life at great personal sacrifice, perhaps you should begin to care."

She glared