Much Ado In the Moonlight by Lynn Kurland Read Free Book Online Page A

safe on that score. To be sure, no McKinnon Connor had ever known would have been caught sitting down on a rock and staring off into space as if all his wits had suddenly vacated his poor head.
    Then the man leaped up and began to pace.
    Connor glanced at the men gathered in the bailey. To a soul, they looked as baffled as he felt. They stood in huddles well away from the madman as he walked, stopped, counted, then walked some more. He made little writings in a notebook he produced from a pocket on his shirt.
    Connor watched with growing alarm as the man continued to perpetrate his unfathomable activity. What did it all mean? Striding here and there, scribbling, muttering, holding his hands up as if he framed bits of the castle between his fingers? Indeed, he even managed a chortle or two, as if his discoveries were so delightful, he couldn’t stop himself from letting everyone within earshot know of them. By all the saints above, what was this man about?
    Connor wondered.
    He didn’t care to wonder overmuch, actually. He wanted peace and quiet, not a mortal cluttering up the inner bailey and distracting his men with his antics.
    The man finally ceased his strange and unfathomable behavior. He gathered up the sheaves of paper he’d scribbled on and made his way out the front gates. Connor looked after him, then slowly turned back to the bailey.
    A single sheaf lay there, discarded.
    Connor felt doom descend.
    He strode over to it and looked down. It galled him to the very depths of his soul to admit it, but he could not make out the scrawls scribbled there. He should have learned to read. He’d had the opportunity, a year or so ago. Many men in the keep had submitted to lessons from another of their kind trying to master the skill, but Connor had kept himself aloof, feeling it too far beneath him to engage in such foolishness.
    Now, he wondered if he might have been the foolish one.
    He looked unwillingly at Roderick, who stood next to him, waiting patiently.
    “Well, damn you,” Connor snapped, “what are you waiting for?”
    “An invitation?”
    “You’ll have a skewering—”
    “I can’t read if I can’t breathe,” Roderick said pleasantly. He leaned over and peered at the paper. “It says, ‘ Hamlet, produced by V. McKinnon.’”
    Connor only heard McKinnon .
    He roared.
    “Oh, do be quiet,” Roderick complained. “You don’t know that it’s one of those McKinnons.”
    Connor unclenched his jaw. Roderick had it aright. There was no sense in aggravating himself without cause. “What means the rest?” he said, gesturing impatiently toward the ground.
    “ Hamlet is a play by William Shakespeare. Do you know him?”
    “I’ve no stomach for jongleurs,” Connor said shortly.
    Roderick smiled dryly. “You might find this play quite to your liking. There is a great amount of death involved, some revenge, and a good haunting or two.”
    Connor refused to be distracted by those enticing thoughts. “I’m certain I would find it deadly dull,” he muttered. “Now, what is this Vee McKinnon business? What does that mean?”
    Roderick shrugged. “Produced means ‘put on by,’ so I daresay this McKinnon fellow intends to mount a stage play here in our own humble home.”
    “Never,” Connor vowed. “Not while I have means to stop it.”
    “If you can survive Thomas remodeling the corner tower last year,” Roderick began, “you could certainly survive—”
    “I will not have another McKinnon in my hall,” Connor said curtly. “Not even if he isn’t kin of Thomas McKinnon’s. I will make the life of this new one a misery. Indeed, I will make him sorely regret his intentions before he even sets foot inside the gates. Or perhaps I will wait until he comes inside the gates, then not allow him to leave, giving me ample time to torment him as I will.”
    He paused and contemplated the possibilities, finding that just thinking on them made him feel warm and contented inside.
    “Lads, to me!” he