"I share that feeling," he said, with something of a purr. He seemed to consider his next words for several moments. "And the actors? What do you think of them?"

She took a deep breath. That was the question, wasn't it? "It is difficult to be an actor," she said finally. "It takes a special sort of person to be willing to get up on a stage and create a character."

"Hmmm," he said.

"I like them, for the most part," she admitted. "As for the rest, I put up with them because of their talent.

If I only hired people I liked, I wouldn't have a theater for very long."

"Would you," he began slowly, "truly not prefer to be up on that stage?"

"No," she said firmly. She'd been saying it firmly for years. She didn't want to act. She didn't want to dig deep for emotions night after night on stage, then go home afterward and sleep it off like a drinking binge.

She didn't want to wake up every morning with an emotional hangover. Really. She didn't. "I much prefer just directing the plays," she said. Firmly. He looked at her thoughtfully. "Indeed."

"Indeed," she agreed briskly. "But you might like acting in them very much. Let's get with these lines, shall we? You've been watching us rehearse for a few days now. We don't need to go over the storyline, do we?"

"I believe I have that in my head," he said, raising one eyebrow. "Death, death, and more death. A bit of madness. A little romance. More death."

"That about sums it up. Let's start where Hamlet sees the ghost for the first time."

She tried not to remember the first time she'd seen a ghost. Namely the one sitting next to her, dutifully repeating the lines she fed him, then giving them back to her on his own without hesitation.

She was impressed.

And she did not impress easily.

Things went along swimmingly for the space of about an hour, then Connor's mood soured rapidly.

"What?" she asked. "What's wrong?"

"I do not care for how the king was murdered. And I like it even less that his lady wife could not wait

until he was cold in his grave before she wed with Hamlet's uncle."

"Hey, I didn't write this stuff," she said, holding up her hands in surrender. "I'm just directing it."

Connor stood up and turned toward the empty hearth. "I've little liking for these lines. Little liking at all."

She was tempted to ask him why, but she suspected that he didn't want to talk about it and, if she

pressed him, he would probably either draw his sword or disappear. So she took the opportunity to look at him while his back was turned. How was it he could look no different than a mortal man would have? He put his hand on the mantel just as any other man in torment would have. He bowed his head and his hair fell over his face in a way that any hairdresser would have killed to copy. She could see his chest rising and falling as he cursed his way through his distress. Before she thought better of it, she reached out and touched his kilt, just to see if she had lost her mind. And she felt not his kilt, but his eyes suddenly boring a hole into the side of her head. "What," he asked crisply, "are you doing?" She looked up at him. All right, so she had just made a complete ass of herself, which she never did. It didn't help that he was looking down at her as if she were a bug he intended to crush under his worn leather boots. She stood up as if she'd meant to do it all along, then retreated to a comfy chair a safe distance away.

"I was just curious," she said, trying desperately to convince herself that she had every right to be groping his clothes. It certainly seemed to work for Hugh; why couldn't it work for her? "Were you indeed?" he asked, his voice dangerously soft.

"Can you blame me? You look so real."

"I'm real enough," he muttered. "But yet not."

"Can you touch things from the mortal world, then?" she asked.

"It is not easy. It takes a great amount of strength and drains me quite thoroughly for several hours

afterwards. Or days, depending on what I've done." She looked into his gray eyes and had the oddest feeling that she'd looked into them before. Yes, she knew she had and that morning, to boot. But this feeling was something far different, some sort of cosmic deja vu that made her wish for a chair.

Fortunately, she was already seated and there was nowhere to go besides the floor. She cast about desperately for a distraction. "Who did this... urn, how did you..." "Die?" he finished briskly. "Yes," she said, in what sounded to her like a very, very small voice. "My wife cuckolded me and I was murdered by her lover." She felt her mouth fall open of its own accord. "But what woman in her right mind..." She decided belatedly that maybe she was headed in a place she really shouldn't go. "I think I'm sorry I brought this up," she said finally. "You likely should be." He stared unseeing at the other side of the room. "I have told no one this tale," he began slowly. "At first, I was too full of rage. Then I could not grasp that I was dead and had no chance for living the rest of the life that should have been mine." He met her eyes. "I suppose I should have grieved."

"I think it might be easier to stay angry."

"I daresay."

"I like to forget my troubles in work," she offered. "It keeps me from thinking too much. But, of course, I

don't have any great tragedies in my life." And she didn't, unless you could counted being thirty-two, not married, and her only prospect in the last two years being a man whom she suspected was far more interested in her play than in her.

Well, at least she wasn't a ghost.

"Did you love her?" she asked quietly.

Connor looked at her in surprise. "My wife? Of course not She was fair enough, I suppose, but she was

my enemy's daughter. Wedding with her seemed as good a way as any to keep the McKinnons from

stealing my cattle." "She was a McKinnon?" Victoria gurgled. She reached for her tea and downed a swig. Damn. Cold. Connor was, to her complete astonishment, almost smiling. It was more of a wry quirk of half his mouth, but that made her spew what was left in her mouth out-fortunately not onto him. "Excitable, aren't you?" he asked. She mopped up with one of Mrs. Pruitt's linen napkins. "No wonder you don't like us." "Aye, well, I'm considering making an exception or two. I've still no use for your brother, but your sister Megan is quite a fetching wench and I like her laugh. I think I could become quite fond of your grandmere as well." He pulled up a chair out of thin air and sat down comfortably. "I haven't come to a final decision on you."

"How nice," she managed. She dragged her sleeve across her face, giving up any semblance of dignity. "So you married a McKinnon. What happened then?" "She bore me twins. A lad and a wee lassie."

"Oh," Victoria said. "How lovely-" "And then a pair of years later, she took up with a French minstrel who had come to try and pluck out a living from whatever foolish Highland chieftain he could," Connor said, his frown returning with vigor. "If she'd had a thought in that empty head of hers, she would have realized he could not keep her as she desired to be kept."

"And the children?"

He looked down at his hands again. "When she fled with the Frenchman, she took my bairns with her.

Of course, the fools couldn't find east when they were staring straight into the morning sun and they

became hopelessly lost. A fortnight hadn't passed before they sent a messenger back to me, begging for me to come and aid them."

"And did you?"

"Of course I did!" he exclaimed, looking up at her. "What kind of man do you think me to be?"

"Honorable," she said promptly. Maybe a little irritated after seven hundred years of haunting, but that

was justifiable.

"For all it served me," he said. "I hadn't ridden half a mile from my home before I was murdered by that French whoreson. But before my life ebbed from me, he let me know that my bairns were dead from the

ague. My wife as well." She shivered. "But I invited him to come with me to the grave with a sword across his belly." "Oh," Victoria said, feeling a little faint.

"Breathe," he instructed.

She nodded. She had to put her head between her knees. She half expected that when the sitting room stopped spinning, Connor would no longer be sitting across from her.

But when the stars cleared and she could see again, he was where she had left him, sitting quite comfortably in a wooden chair of his own making.

"I'm sorry," she said weakly. "I'm sorry to have asked, sorry to have suggested the play-"

"Are you?" he interrupted. "Do you think I am unequal to the task?"

"Of course not," she said. "I actually think you would do a very good job. I'm sorry for the memories it dredged up." He shrugged. "They are never very far below the surface anyway, so you did nothing that a thousand other small things during the day don't do on their own. Who knows that this might be of a purging nature, to settle my humors-"

Victoria opened her mouth to agree that it very well might, when she heard a ruckus in the entry way.

Michael's voice soared above the rest.

It was not a sober voice.

Connor's expression was grim. "I could see to them all, if you liked."

"If I thought I could allow it without most of my actors bolting for the nearest airport, I would take you up on the offer." She sighed and rose. "I'll handle it, but thank you just the same."

He stood as well. "And my thanks for the aid with my lines."

"It was my pleasure."

"Nay, the pleasure was mine."

Victoria was just certain that she was feeling faint from the thought of lost sales and bad press thanks to actors with hangovers. It couldn't have had anything to do with the man standing not three feet from her who made her feel small, fragile, and protected.

Good heavens, she was losing her mind.

"I have to go," she managed.

He took a step back, then made her a very low bow. And when he straightened, his gray eyes were full of something that was not at all hostile or irritated.

Then again, her own eyes could have been crossed from too much speculation on the emotions being entertained by the medieval laird of the Clan MacDougal, who was not only out of her league, but out of her century and out of her mortal sphere, as well. Besides, she was infatuated with Michael Fellini.

She was.

She was almost certain of it.

"Gotta go," she said, then she turned and bolted from the sitting room. She ran right into a gaggle of

performers, who staggered about the entryway in a most convincing manner. Now, here was a problem

she could solve with a loud voice and a few threats. She wasn't at all sure how she was going to solve the dilemma she'd left in the sitting room.

Chapter 9.

Connor stood on the newly completed stage behind the deceased King of Denmark and wondered, very briefly, if he might have set himself to a task for which he was not particularly well suited. Never mind that he had blurted out all his secrets the day before as if he hadn't a thought in his empty head.

Nay, his troubles lay before him. By the saints, could this fool do nothing but stride about and moan in that ghostly fashion? Was this acting?

He thought not.

"Adieu!" the ghostly king bellowed suddenly. "Remember me!"

"By the saints," Connor exclaimed, "I daresay we won't have a bloody chance, to forget you, what with all that noise you're making!"

Hamlet's dead father continued bellowing his parting words, accompanying them with the moans a man is wont to make when he has ingested victuals that do not agree with him. Connor rubbed his ears in annoyance as he watched the would-be shade make his exit stage right, finally disappearing behind a handy bit of scenery and giving vent to one final moan that Connor could only assume was intended to convince all and sundry that he was indeed a ghost.

Pitiful.