Chapter 5

Imogen stood in front of the station where she’d just arrived by way of a very nice train ride, looked at the backseat of the taxi she was about to get into, and hesitated. It was only her imagination that left it looking like the gaping maw of something otherworldly.

Wasn’t it?

She had been in Scotland for two days and that had obviously been two days too many. The place was simply saturated with what she could only call magic, and she would have told anyone willing to listen just how ridiculous that sounded in her own head. If she could just have a few pedestrian encounters with the local flora, fauna, and noblepersons instead of encountering all manner of odd things, she might have been able to revise her opinion. As it was, she suspected that if she spent too much time there, she would become just as slathered in otherworldliness as everything and everyone around her.

She rolled her eyes at herself, took hold of her rampaging imagination, then climbed into the back of the taxi and pulled the door shut behind her.

“Haemesburgh,” she said to the driver confidently, suppressing the urge to add, and step on it.

He shifted in his seat and looked at her in surprise. “Really, miss? There?”

“Yes,” she said confidently, “I’d like to go to Haemesburgh. I’ve been invited, actually, by the owner of the castle.”

The man looked at her as if she had asked him to drive her to the gates of Hell. “Och, miss—”

“It’s just a castle,” she pointed out. She had to stop herself from repeating that three times like some sort of charm. Obviously her brief trip inside a shop with plaid curiosities had done something to her common sense. Haemesburgh was just a castle, Lady Heather pulled on her pantyhose one leg at a time, and she would eventually stop having chills run down her spine every moment of every day she spent in a place so slathered with history that she could almost touch it.

The cabbie looked as if the money just might not be worth it to him. “As you say, miss.”

Imogen shivered and gave in to the hair standing on the back of her neck. “What’s wrong with the place?” she asked grimly. “Ghosts? Too many tourists? A bloody history spilling over into the current day?”

“Och, nae, miss,” the cab driver said quickly. “Ghosts and unwholesome happenings limit themselves to the square keep on the border—can’t bring myself to say its name, you see—not Haemesburgh. With Haemesburgh, though, weel, there’re oddities enough there to suit most.” He turned back to his wheel. “Oddities enough, to be sure.”

Well, that was just what she wanted to hear, wasn’t it? She was on the hunt for unique stuff. She could make do with odd in a pinch. And it could be worse, couldn’t it? She could have been heading toward that unnamed square castle where there were unwholesome happenings to be found. She was obviously going somewhere much safer.

Besides, as she’d said before, she knew the owner of the castle. She had a card with the address written on the back in a medievalish looking script. The whole project was coming together for her, yessir. All she had to do was get in and out of a castle that might or might not have been haunted but was definitely being run by a woman who gave her the willies. It was morning, the sun was shining, and she had a cell phone. What could possibly go wrong?

The cabbie seemed perfectly happy to simply drive and leave her to her own thoughts. She stared out the window and was happy to think them.

The countryside she had traveled through on the train had been beautiful, but this was absolutely spectacular. She loved the ocean, true, but there was something about the rolling hills and tidy fields divided by charming stone fences that made her feel as if she’d just been wrapped up in a warm blanket and set down in front of a cheery fire. Maybe if that had been the view she’d been looking at every day, she might have ceased to be delighted by it, but somehow she suspected not.

The rolling hills continued only briefly before she saw not only a village up ahead, but a castle that dominated the skyline. She gasped in spite of herself.

The cabbie only nodded knowingly without turning around to look at her.

She fished out unfamiliar money to have ready to pay the driver. He stopped the car near the front gates, put it in park, then shifted and looked at her over his shoulder.

“You’re certain, miss?”

“I am,” she said, trying to sound more confident than she felt. “If you have a card, perhaps I can use that to call your company after I’m finished here and get you to come pick me up.”

“I could wait,” the man offered. “I’d do it without pay.”

“She’ll be safe with me.”

Imogen almost jumped out of her skin. She looked out the driver’s window to find none other than the lady of Haemesburgh standing there, regal and not to be argued with. Imogen looked at the driver.

“I’ll be safe with her,” she said, because saying anything else seemed out of the question. “I’ll call you when I need a ride back to the station.”

The man looked completely rattled, but maybe he didn’t usually have encounters with castle owners. Heaven knew she could sympathize.

She paid the driver and got out of the cab, making sure she didn’t leave her backpack behind. The cabbie drove off slowly, the driver looking back several times as if he just couldn’t come to grips with the thought of leaving her behind. She had to admit there was a moment when she wished she could chase him down and have him take her back to the station, but she wasn’t a coward and she had a job to do. After all, what could possibly happen to her? It was a public place. The dungeons were probably boarded up. Lady Heather would have been in jail if she’d been in the habit of kidnapping tourists.

“I’ll give you the tour I promised you, if you like.”

“That would be great,” Imogen said, trying not to fall at the woman’s feet and kiss her ring, if she even owned such a thing. She followed her guide on heeled boots she had definitely not put in her suitcase. In fact, none of the sensible shoes she’d packed had apparently made the journey with her, which was less a disaster than an inconvenience. An evil sibling at work again, no doubt.

“You may call me Heather, if you like,” the woman said casually. “No need to genuflect.”

Imogen smiled. “That’s good to know. I’m not sure of the protocol, actually.”

“You’re American?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re here in the UK looking for items for a movie,” Heather stated.

“Medieval things,” Imogen said. She was actually supposed to be looking for English medieval things, but Tilly had suggested they start in Scotland. She had been happy not to argue. Besides, who knew what sorts of antiques were tucked away north of the border? “It’s why I was so surprised by your offer, actually.” She smiled. “It felt a little like Fate.”

“Ah, well, I’m very familiar with Fate,” Heather said. “Scotland’s saturated with it, you know.” She nodded toward the front gates. “Shall we?”

She nodded, then looked up at the gatehouse as she walked through it, feeling rather relieved she wasn’t going to be dealing with trying to escape that anytime soon. She followed Heather across the courtyard, wishing she dared stop her and ask how many of the inner structures were original, though she suspected the only things that had lasted over the centuries had been made of stone. The tea shop had to be new, and seeing it made her realize she couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. Maybe she could talk the lady of the house into breakfast sooner rather than later.

She paused at the steps to the great hall and looked back over the courtyard. It was ridiculous, of course, but she couldn’t help but feel like she had just walked over her own grave. She’d rarely been back to the places where she’d grown up—her father had never wanted to stay in places where he’d left scorched business earth—but even when she had been, she’d never had the feeling as strongly as she did at the moment.

“We’ll start upstairs, if you like.”

Imogen pulled herself back to the present and blinked at her hostess. “Sure,” she managed. “Whatever you like.”

And that was, she was certain, the last coherent thing she said for at least an hour. In fact, she wasn’t sure she managed to speak at all, though she thought she might have made a few babbling noises.

The keep was spectacular. She wasn’t sure how anyone had managed to preserve so many fragile things without an army of preservationists with stern words at the ready, but it was obvious someone had done it. She stood in what had been the lady of the keep’s private solar, turned around a time or two, then looked at Heather in surprise.

“I’m speechless.”

Heather was leaning back against a priceless table as if it were something that had come from the local thrift store. She was dressed impeccably, with an effortless chicness that Imogen knew not even her most stylish and annoying sister ever could have matched. How she had managed to keep the place up and running was something Imogen didn’t want to begin to speculate on. Then again, maybe it wasn’t so unthinkable. If anything, the woman in front of her had a toughness about her that not even expensive clothing could mask.

Heather shrugged. “’Tis a castle, to be sure.”

Obviously familiarity bred contempt, which in this case Imogen could hardly believe. “Were you born here?”

Heather looked at her coolly. “Aye.”

Well, so much for chitchat. Even with all her skills at reading people so she could avoid confrontations she didn’t want, she had to admit she had no idea what the deal was with that one. She’d been pleasant enough up to that point.

Or perhaps she hadn’t been. Imogen honestly had no idea. She’d been too busy gaping at an amazing medieval castle and wondering how it was she was going to beg Lady Heather to let her recommend it as a set location to really pay attention to her hostess’s mood. Did she hate her current car? Was it tax season? Did she have a business deal currently going south?

Having exhausted her checklist of things she would have considered with her father, Imogen gave up trying to psychoanalyze the owner of the keep and simply smiled pleasantly.

“Thank you for the tour.”

“I have one more thing you might like to see.”

“Oh,” Imogen said, faintly surprised, “of course. I’d love to.” Anything to move things along.

She followed Heather from the room and out into the hallway, marveling again at the period details. Even the lights looked authentic. Getting the rights to use the castle she was in would have been a career-altering coup. She took several steadying breaths to keep herself from blurting out an annoyingly long list of reasons why Heather should let her production use Haemesburgh as a set, then simply followed Heather down the hallway. Maybe she would give it a try when they landed in the great hall again. Only, when she put her foot on that stone floor, she forgot everything she’d been thinking to that point. She was stunned she hadn’t noticed it before.

Itbeing that enormous broadsword with the aqua stone in the crossbar of the hilt jammed into the floor behind that gigantic table at the lordly end of the great hall.

Heather was saying something, but she couldn’t hear her. She didn’t want to be rude, but the truth was, she couldn’t have cared less what Heather was babbling about. It seemed suddenly that she had no choice but to get herself across the room toward that sword. She went with the impulse and hoped she wouldn’t land in the dungeon as a result.

The sword wasn’t even in glass. It was just stuck in the floor there behind the table, unprotected and un-tourist-proofed. She stood next to it for several minutes in silence, then looked at Heather.

“Aren’t you afraid someone will steal this?”

Heather shrugged. “How? It’s lodged in the stone of the floor behind the lord’s chair. Makes it difficult to clean around, but there you have it.”

Imogen could see that Heather was right. That sword was forced so thoroughly into a crack between two paving stones, she didn’t imagine anything was going to get it out. She curled her fingers into the palms of her hands to keep herself from reaching out and touching the blade.

“Why am I thinking Arthurian legends here?” She looked at the lady of the keep. “Perhaps the original inhabitants did this as flattery. You know, imitation and all that.”

“I daresay the original inhabitants of this keep couldn’t be bothered to look up from their trenchers long enough to consider such a thing, but you can believe what you want.” Heather leaned back against the wall and gestured at the sword. “You can touch it, if you like.”

“How old is it?”

“I believe it was driven into that stone circa 1250. Perhaps sooner, depending on whom you ask. Some sort of disagreement between a suitor and his unfortunate choice of bride, or so the tale goes.”

Imogen smiled in spite of herself. “Are you telling me that a girl swiped some knight’s sword and shoved it in this stone herself? I didn’t realize women in the Middle Ages were so empowered.”

“They weren’t,” Heather said, her smile gone, her eyes shuttered. “But you and I are in this blessed age where things are very different from what went on the in the past.” She nodded toward the sword. “Go ahead and see if you can pull it free.”

Imogen reached out, then hesitated. There was something about that sword... maybe it was just the thought of touching something so old. It didn’t look fragile, but medieval weapons were not her specialty. She looked at Heather.

“Do you let the tourists do this?”

“The great hall is generally roped off and the high table is never open to visitors. You’re the first to be allowed here in quite some time, as it happens.”

“Lucky me.”

“Lucky you,” she agreed. “Perhaps you would like to take advantage of your privileged status and put your hand on that bloody blade.”

Imogen supposed it was a good thing she’d become somewhat accustomed to Heather’s mercurial changes of mood or she might have been a little unnerved by the woman’s tone. If the lady of the keep wanted her to finger priceless treasures, she wasn’t about to say no. She took a deep breath, then faced off with an almost-eight-hundred-year-old sword.

It was amazingly well preserved, if Heather was right about its age. The stone was an amazing shade of blue, obviously cut centuries earlier yet stunning nonetheless. She couldn’t begin to imagine the cost or even where such a stone had been found. She knew next to nothing about the forging of medieval weapons—something she thought she might want to remedy fairly soon—but the dangerous part looked very lethal. The hilt was inscribed with something—

“Just touch it, would you?” Heather demanded impatiently.

Imogen refrained from pulling the sword free and beaning her hostess with it only because she’d spent a lifetime scooting past irascible family members. She took a deep breath, reached out, and touched the hilt of the sword.

And the world exploded.

She stumbled backward into the lord’s table, very hard, then felt herself go rolling right over it. She landed, winded, on the stone floor. It was so shocking, all she could do was lie there and try to catch her breath. She closed her eyes because she thought she might recover faster from the way her head was spinning as if it wanted to spin right off her shoulders. She couldn’t believe that Heather had punched her, but she wasn’t sure she was equal to determining that. All she knew was that she felt as if she’d just been blindsided by a freight train.

Just what in the hell had happened to her?

She put her hand over her eyes and concentrated on carefully breathing in and out. That was made substantially more difficult by the horrendous smell she was suddenly enjoying. Had the sewer just exploded around her? She supposed that was possible. At the moment, she supposed anything was possible. She gathered her courage, took her hand away, took a deep breath—an unfortunate decision, really—then opened her eyes.

Bigfoot was leaning over her.

She shrieked. He shrieked. He might have made some sort of sign to ward off something unwholesome, or he might have just been scratching his very unkempt beard. She wasn’t sure and she really didn’t want to know.

“Her eyes!” he bellowed. “The color of her eyes! A demon has taken over our lady!”

Or words to that effect. Imogen wasn’t quite sure what that garbled bellowing was, but that’s what it sounded like, so she was going to go with it. She patted herself, though she wasn’t sure how that was going to potentially improve the condition of her eyes that were apparently doing something her new friend didn’t like.

“Blue,” he wailed. “Then brown!”

Well, hers were actually sort of brownish-green, but who was she to quibble? Heather really needed to make sure the crazies in her castle were a little more careful about their observations, something Imogen decided she would share with her hostess as soon as possible. Perhaps over that brunch she’d been promised but hadn’t had yet. It had been an interesting morning, but she thought she might have had enough of weird for the day. She scrambled unsteadily to her feet, rubbed her eyes, and looked for Heather.

She was gone.

Unfortunately, Heather had been replaced by several other less elegant things. Imogen turned in a circle, gaping at what she was faced with. So she’d thought to herself just how authentic and well-preserved Haemesburgh had seemed. She hadn’t intended that to be any sort of signal to Fate that she wanted to see the place with a layer of medieval grime on it. Apparently while she’d been passed out, someone had come in and thrown the contents of the local sewer all over the floor. With some hay. She wasn’t sure she wanted to see what else she was standing on. She was also surrounded by a dozen extras from an ultra-realistic medieval movie set, extras who were really giving it their all. Obviously there was a casting director hiding somewhere in the wings, taking notes.

It had to be a joke. She attempted a weak laugh.

“All right,” she said, “who’s the kidder?”

The unkempt guys didn’t look like they were in on the joke. They were simply gaping at her in astonishment. Obviously there were things going on that she hadn’t been told about, and honestly she just wasn’t enjoying being the target of someone’s lousy sense of humor. She frowned and looked around for the lady of the keep. It was time someone called that cranky noblewoman on her lack of courtly manners. The sooner that happened probably the better. She put her hands on her hips and turned around in a circle, taking in the whole of the great hall until she was again facing the lord’s table. Heather was gone.

And so, unfortunately, was the sword.

She could hardly believe her eyes. She rubbed them for good measure, then staggered a pair of steps closer to get a better look. Nope, there was nothing there but that heavy table, a selection of decently built chairs in desperate need of a good cleaning, and a hay-strewn floor. No sword. No lady of the keep in expensive trousers and a cashmere sweater. Nothing but raw and, it had to be said, not-very-nice-smelling surroundings.

Where was that sword that Heather had thought important enough to protect by roping off the entire great hall? And why were the people around her babbling in a language she could hardly understand? Why were they dressed in period costumes that took authentic to an entirely new level? Why were there ratty tapestries on the walls?

She had obviously stumbled onto a set. It was the only thing that made sense. Whether she had been clunked over the head and sent temporarily into oblivion as a sick joke while the whole thing had been set up was something she would have to determine later. The one thing she could say with certainty was whoever had thought the whole thing up would pay.

The head extra was obviously looking to further his career with his absolute unwillingness to break character. He made a production of scratching his head—no doubt to reconcile himself to the color of her eyes—before he put on a scowl and stepped forward toward her. The rest of them would have given the Buckingham Palace guards a run for their money with their inscrutable expressions.

Damned method actors.

She decided abruptly that maybe a bit of fresh air would be the best thing for everyone, especially herself. A joke was a joke, but she was done. She would find the craft table, go for the most caffeinated, sugar-filled thing she could find, then get down to business. The culprit would then be identified, she would get her brother the lawyer on the phone, and whoever was responsible would seriously regret having messed with her. She glared at the extras, then turned and walked quickly from the great hall.

All right, she might have run as if all the hordes of Hell were after her, but what difference did that make? Whoever was playing that rather tasteless joke on her was going to make fun of her anyway. She might as well give them something to truly laugh about.

She managed to get the front doors wrenched open and herself down the stairs without landing on her face. She skidded to a halt in what wasn’t a nicely tended bed of gravel but a marshy soup of mud and other things she didn’t want to identify. It wasn’t raining currently, but it had obviously rained enough to turn the courtyard into mud.

That was bad enough, she supposed, but worse was the utter lack of movie paraphernalia. No cameras, no crew, no assistants, and definitely no craft table with things she could use to stave off a losing battle with low blood sugar.

Obviously, there were things going on she couldn’t quite wrap her mind around. It was entirely possible that she was hallucinating for real this time. She considered, then shook her head. Impossible. The joke was just extending to the courtyard. If she could just get beyond the castle walls, everything would return to normal. She was probably just overcome by the sheer magnificence and potential paranormal possibilities of the castle behind her. Hadn’t that cab driver warned her that strange things went on in Haemesburgh? She would have to give him a call and let him know he’d been right.

She took her good sense in hand and bolted toward the front gates.

The drawbridge—and damn that thing if it didn’t look like it was actually working for a change—seemed to be thinking about creaking to life. She ran under the gate and started down it. It was a good thing she’d spent so much time in the gym running on a treadmill pushed up to a fifteen percent incline, because that’s about where that long slice of wood was heading. The difference between then and now was she’d never before had the opportunity to fling herself off the end of a treadmill and cling to its edge as it continued its slow but inexorable climb skyward.

She only realized as she made a grab for the end and swung herself over it into thin air that she had perhaps made a serious tactical error.