Victoria, not looking nearly as irritated as she should have, rose. "Granny, will you be all right?"

"Of course, darling."

"We won't go far."

"Don't worry about me. I'll keep busy."

Victoria nodded, then followed Fellini off into the distance. Connor stepped from behind the tree he'd

recently appropriated as a hiding place, and watched her go. She looked weary. He supposed he understood. After all, how was she to have any energy at all when she had to spend it on those obnoxious actors?

He thought about that for quite a while, then realized with a start that Mary had turned to look at him.

"Connor, come and sit."

He sighed and unbuckled his sword, then came to sit down next to her on the blanket.

"What an unpleasant afternoon," he said bluntly.

"Isn't it?" she mused. "Let's speak of something else before I go do that man an injury."

She smiled at him. "Tell me how you are passing your days at present. Is it a complete distraction to

have Vikki's company in your hall, or are you managing?"

"It is a distraction from my main purpose of finding a captain for my garrison, but I am managing to conduct searches in spite of it."

"Must you really conduct a search?" she asked. "Surely men line up for the privilege."

"One would suppose that to be the case, wouldn't one?" he asked. "Damn me, if I don't have to prod

them into that line with my sword!"

"It hardly bears thinking on."

Connor liked Victoria's grandmother more all the time. Not only did she immediately appreciate the

difficulties of commanding a garrison, she possessed the most interesting implements of death he had ever seen. "What are those delightful bits you have there?" he asked, peering at them closely. "Knitting needles," Mary said, holding a pair up for his inspection. "These are steel ones." "Do they bend?" he asked, terribly interested. "They're not really supposed to."

"And if they were to strike a rib on their way through a man?" he asked. "How would they fare then?" "I'm not sure," she answered, holding one up. It glinted nicely in the sunlight. "I've never tried to stick one through a man."

"A pity. Then what useful thing do you do with them?"

She held up a beautiful sweater fashioned from the colors of water and forest, heather and thistle.

"Lovely," he admitted frankly. "And quite an interesting use of threads, if I might venture an opinion."

"Fair Isle," she said, stroking the fabric. "I like the colors together. It reminds me of the Scottish

countryside, somehow. How it used to be before the English cut down the forests."

"Have you been?" he asked.

"I'm a MacLeod," she said simply. "How could I stay away? But you haven't been back, have you?"

He shook his head. "Not since... well, not in many, many years."

"You should go."

"There is nothing for me there."

"But what a pity to deny yourself the pleasure-"

"I cannot bear it," he said shortly.

Mary looked at him long, then smiled gently. "I suppose I can understand. I have lived in places that I've

loved and not been able to go back, or really even think about them. The loss is too great."

He grunted in answer. Aye, he had lost much in the Highlands, much more than his own life, and he supposed it might have been because of that that he hadn't returned. In truth, he wasn't certain and had no desire to peer into his own black heart and discover the truth.

So he sat and watched Victoria's grandmother work her magic with needles and yarn and found himself quite mesmerized. She began to instruct him about various techniques and species of yarn. He listened with interest to the manner of creating invisible increases and the technical formula to calculate loft, then he felt himself growing tired. He closed his eyes.

And it was when his eyes seemed the most heavy that Victoria's grandmother began her true assault.

She was more than making up for her nap in the sitting chamber the week before.

He was fairly sure he answered questions-and Mary seemed to have many of them. He was quite certain he divulged his mortal age of thirty-five and his status as the eldest son of three, the other two being worthless leeches who were content to live off their father's wealth and not do an honest day's labor in their lives. He suspected he had told her that he'd been wed at one time and the father of a pair of bairns.

But after that, his eyes grew far too heavy to keep them open and he wasn't quite sure what he told her.

"Laird MacDougal?"

He woke with a snort and sat up, reaching for his sword. "What?" he said, looking around with wide eyes.

"Vikki has been gone for quite some time."

It took him a moment to get his bearings, then he realized what Mary had said. "Has she been gone long?"

"Long enough that I wonder why she isn't back."

"I'll go immediately," he said, getting to his feet. He looked down at her. "Do you have your needles?"

She patted her bag. "Right here. I'll be all right."

"We won't be long, if I have anything to say about it," Connor said grimly.

It took him only minutes to find his quarry on the far side of a little hill. Victoria had her arms folded over her chest and looked a little bored.

Well, that was something, at least. Connor approached carefully. It was tempting to draw his sword, but he thought of Victoria's warning that her actors might leave her without themselves to decorate her stage if they became too frightened. In Fellini's case, it would not be a great loss, but Fellini's understudy was almost as arrogant as the man himself, so perhaps there was no point in staging a proper haunting now. "So, how large a space is Tempest in a Teapot?" Fellini asked. "Large enough," Victoria answered. "We have room for what we want to do." "Give me dimensions," Fellini insisted. "For my students, of course. It would help to have an idea of how big a stage they might someday be able to perform on." What difference could that possibly make? Connor shook his head. Good acting was what was needful, not pacing off the stage. Was this man as simple-minded as he appeared, or was there a more sinister purpose to his questions? Connor studied Victoria as she answered increasingly specific questions about her theater. He learned quite a few things he hadn't known before about Victoria's troupe; he spent many more fruitless moments puzzling over other things he had no familiarity with. What was hemp and why did Fellini's eyebrows disappear under his hair when Victoria mentioned it growing in pots all about the stage? And why, when Victoria mentioned the rents on her theater being paid through the new year, did Fellini clap his hands together as if in pleasure he could not contain? And why, after that clapping of his hands, did Fellini resume an attitude of disinterest, as if everything they had spoken about in the preceding half hour had held little interest for him at all?

Baffling.

Connor looked at Victoria. Her expression had shifted from boredom to faint suspicion.

Fellini seemed not to notice.

Connor supposed he wouldn't have noticed, either, had he not become so acquainted so quickly with

the myriad appearances of that lovely visage.

The saints preserve him for it.

"You know," Victoria said briskly, "I think I need to get back."

Fellini yawned. "Me, too. I think I'll dash off a letter to a faculty member or two at Juilliard. I'm sure they

would be interested in Tempest in a Teapot, as well. You know, in the details you so kindly gave me today. In the interest of our students, of course."

"Of course." Victoria walked with Fellini back the way they had come. Connor would have thought she hadn't seen him-indeed, he had intended that she not-but to his surprise, she flashed him a look and nodded her head toward the path she and Fellini were taking. As if she wanted him to come along. He went. It was likely because he was walking behind her, mesmerized by the cascade of flame curls she sported on her head, that he didn't notice she had stopped until he fair walked through her. He jumped back, startled almost as much by that as by her gasp of surprise.

"Where's my grandmother?"

"She's probably gone on ahead to the inn," Fellini said with a shrug. "Bathroom break, or something like that."

Victoria went very still.

Connor found that her stillness became his quite easily.

There was something here that was not right.

Not right at all.

"She wouldn't have gone off without saying something first," Victoria said.

"She knew better than to interrupt me," Fellini said. "Obviously a woman with good sense."

Connor walked around Victoria and looked down at the picnic paraphernalia. The hamper was there,

devoid of food thanks to Fellini, of course. Nothing else looked disturbed, however. No signs of a struggle. No blood. No tracks from half a dozen booted ruffian feet. Connor met Victoria's eyes and he grimaced. He should have stayed behind.

Then again, perhaps Fellini had it aright. The habits of an old woman...

Victoria took a step closer. "Her knitting bag's gone, but look." She reached down and picked up a room key. "Why would she have left this?" "I'm sure your grandma just ran off for some incontinence containment and forgot some of her stuff,"

Fellini said. "Pruitt's got another key." "I have a feeling something's not right," Victoria said, looking around her. "You're imagining things," Fellini said. Victoria reached down and picked up Mary's sunglasses. "She wouldn't leave without these." "It's cloudy out," Fellini said shortly. "Come on, Victoria. I've got things to do. Grab the stuff and let's go." Victoria stroked the sunglasses. "This just isn't good. She left her key and her sun-" "Look," Fellini said curtly, "I'm not going to hang around here and speculate. She's probably at the inn and that's where I'm going to go. And I want to see your theater space when we get back to Manhattan."

Connor watched the man spin on his heel and stride angrily away. If he hadn't known of the man's whereabouts, he might have suspected him of foul play.

He looked at Victoria. "I left her here not a handful of moments ago."

Victoria looked around in consternation. "It doesn't make sense. She wouldn't just..."

She stopped speaking and walked a few paces away. She bent and picked something up.

It was a single knitting needle.

She looked at Connor and held it up.

"A long 4.00 mm," he said grimly. "No doubt one of her best weapons."

Victoria looked at the picnic basket, then back at him. "Maybe she did go back to the inn. Maybe she did just lose this..."

She turned and bolted for the road.

Connor took one more look at the scene, then sprinted after her. He caught her easily. "We'll find her,"

he promised, supposing she might be weeping already.

She was dry-eyed.