Who was this wench?

By the saints, a single moment, a heartbeat snatched from eternity had changed him forever. He could

hardly believe the change in himself, but when he tested his resolve, it remained steady and firm.

He was tempted to show himself to her, but quickly decided that he wouldn't. Not yet.

Lest she find him lacking...

"Victoria! Victoria McKinnon!"

The woman turned. "What?"

Connor felt himself start to list to the left. It was only his quick hands that saved him from keeling over

completely.

Victoria McKinnon?

McKinnon?

The man who had been in the keep several days earlier, the capering one, came into the great hall and stopped. He smiled.

"What do you think?" he asked. "Your brother didn't exaggerate, did he?"

"I think I might actually have to call Thomas and be nice to him," Victoria McKinnon said. "It's amazing..."

Connor could scarce believe his ears. Thomas? Her brother? Nay, 'twas not possible! A woman this

beautiful, sprung from that line? It could not be so!

But what else was he to believe? How many men named Thomas McKinnon claimed to own Thorpewold Castle? How many women named Victoria McKinnon had brothers named Thomas? He shook his head in stunned and quite unpleasant consternation. Vee McKinnon was obviously a shortened name for Victoria McKinnon.

Thomas McKinnon's sister.

"Well," Roderick drawled from behind him, "now you know who she is, aren't you going to do her in?"

Connor pushed himself upright, grasped his sword, then turned slightly and flung the blade into

Roderick's chest with all his strength. The shade fell backward with a gurgle.

"You've got to come now," the man said to Victoria.

"But I'm not finished," she protested.

"Be finished."

To her credit, Victoria McKinnon gave her keeper a look that would have made many a man back up a

pace and shut his mouth. But apparently the man who capered about when others weren't looking was made of sterner stuff than one might think.

"There's a situation down at the inn," the man said.

Victoria McKinnon rolled her eyes, grumbled, then tromped off with the man out of the great hall.

Connor heaved himself to his feet and followed the pair unsteadily to the door of the ruined keep. He put his hand on the crumbling rock and watched as the kin of his enemy walked away, none the wiser about the terrorizing she had just avoided.

"My laird?"

"Aye?" Connor wheezed.

"My laird, what will you have us do?"

Connor watched Victoria McKinnon walk down the path and through the barbican. He found he

couldn't move, couldn't speak, and couldn't look away.

"My laird?"

Connor marshalled his steely self-control and turned to face the men suddenly gathered behind him. "I'm

working out a proper haunting," he managed.

Many there scratched their heads.

Connor frowned fiercely, apparently fiercely enough that his men found it intimidating, for they backed

away respectfully.

"This haunting will take a bit of time to do properly."

Roderick gurgled loudly from the back of the hall.

The men dispersed, leaving Connor alone with his thoughts.

Well, his thoughts and Roderick's complaints.

Connor walked out into the bailey and stared off down the path to the road.

A McKinnon wench.

He should have known.

He got hold of himself and his ridiculous thoughts. He'd been dazzled by her beauty, but now he knew better. She would be easy to frighten into never again returning to the keep. Indeed, ideas on how to terrify her were already clamoring to present themselves to him. All he had to do was sit back and choose the one which would be the most effective.

Aye, he would frighten her and rid his hall of her. He would do it and have not one regret-no matter her beauty, or how the mere sight of her caused something inside him to sigh... in relief, or terror; he could not say.

He turned and strode back into the great hall. He wrenched his sword from Roderick's chest, with the appropriate comment on the fop's frailties, then resheathed his sword with a mighty thrust and set his heart aright inside him.

Aye, he would do her in and be glad of it.

In spite of her beauty and because of her parentage.

Chapter 5.

Victoria walked swiftly down the little road that led away from the castle. This wasn't what she wanted to be doing. What she wanted to be doing was standing in that great hall again with the sun streaming down inside and that feeling of medievalness washing over her. "This had better be good," she warned Fred.

"It is."

"Don't tell me: more ghosts."

"No, Michael Fellini, irritated by his accommodations."

"Oh," Victoria said breathlessly. She said it breathlessly because she had now increased her walking to a flat-out sprint. The last thing she wanted was to have the star of her show in a snit because he didn't care for the wallpaper.

By the time she reached the front door of the inn, she was gasping for breath. She was going to have to get more exercise, or join a gym, or something. Apparently the occasional sprint for the subway just wasn't doing it for her.

"Fellini's whining loudly," Fred noted. "Can't you hear it?"

Victoria decided that more breath-catching could happen later. Right now she had to stop hell before it broke completely loose.

She threw open the door to the inn and strode inside in her best director fashion. Then she came to a teetering halt, confronted by things she hadn't seen coming.

Well, some of it she should have seen coming. Michael stood there wearing his most formidable give-me-what-I-want-or-I'll-call-my-agent expression. Cressida Blankenship, her star actress, stood there, a single tear trailing artistically down her cheek as she contemplated the key to what was no doubt an equally inadequate room. Mrs. Pruitt was scowling fiercely at the both of them.

But what she hadn't expected was to find the geriatric jet-setter who stood to one side, surrounded by piles of designer luggage and carrying over her arm a clear plastic knitting bag full of funky colors and several pairs of knitting needles in materials ranging from steel to rosewood. Victoria recognized the needles-and the woman toting them-only because that woman was her grandmother.

"Granny!" Victoria said weakly, "what are you doing here?"

"She's waiting in line for me to get my room changed," Michael said loudly.

Victoria found her gaze helplessly drawn to him as if he'd been a vampire mesmerizing her with a presence that could not be ignored. She felt a little breathless.

Of course, that could have come from her recent bout of sprinting, but then again, maybe not.

Michael Fellini was, put simply, perfection. His dark hair was just a little on the long side, swept rakishly across his forehead in perfection rarely achieved outside of the salon. His face was perfectly chiseled, his eyes a deep, chocolate brown, his mouth sensual and mobile. And that was only the beginning; the rest of him was just as divine.

He was an inch or two under six feet and slender, but somehow that worked to produce a wiry, powerful frame that just begged to be set on stage and admired for lengthy periods of time. He could, by turns, appear kingly, peasantly, crazy, and commanding.

And that was just what she'd seen at the afternoon tea.

She had the feeling she might just see the range of his emotions if something didn't happen soon. But it was difficult to concentrate fully on Michael because Cressida had begun to make such a loud, weepy fuss over her room and Mrs. Pruitt had become disgusted enough to begin doing her best to shout her down. Granny simply stood there, smiling in sympathy.

Victoria took a deep breath to prepare to straighten everything out when she was distracted by a scream that cut through all the noise like a knife. Mrs. Pruitt, Cressida, and even Michael fell silent.