Much Ado In the Moonlight by Lynn Kurland

limit yourself to a supervisory role. Maybe Mrs. Pruitt can round up some seamstresses for us.”
    “I’m sure she’ll help,” Mary said. “She’s a lovely woman, if not a little preoccupied with the paranormal.”
    Victoria didn’t bother asking how her grandmother had found that out so quickly. Secrets did not last long around her. “Can you blame her?”
    Mary looked briefly over her shoulder. “Given our escorts, I suppose not. Who knows what we’ll find at the castle?”
    Victoria was unsurprised to see her grandfathers and sundry strolling along behind them. She looked back at her grandmother. “I was there earlier and I didn’t see anything unusual.”
    Then again, she hadn’t been at the castle but five minutes, so perhaps that wasn’t a true test.
    The whole situation was unsettling. It wasn’t like her not to be in full command of her surroundings and everything happening in those surroundings.
    Then again, she wasn’t usually dealing with ghosts.
    Non-Shakespearean ones, that was.
    Well, at least the hauntings were limited to old men loitering the inn’s kitchen. Heaven help her if the infection spread to the castle.
    How would you like to put on your next play in my castle next spring? And by the way, what play are you doing?
    Hamlet.
    Perfect.
    Her conversation with her brother last December came back to her like a bad smell. Hamlet had a ghost in it, didn’t it? Was that why Thomas had been so thrilled?
    She felt her eyes narrow. Thomas knew something. She wasn’t precisely sure how much he knew, but she knew he knew something. She would get him for this, purse strings or no purse strings.
    “I’m going to kill Thomas,” Victoria announced.
    “How nice,” Mary said. “Oh, look, there’s the main road. Which way do we go from here?”
    Victoria opened her mouth to say, then found that her input was not necessary.
    “This way, dear lady,” Ambrose said, striding up to Mary’s side and giving her a gallant smile. “Allow me to escort you.”
    “And me, as well,” Hugh said enthusiastically, popping up on Victoria’s left. “’Tis a dangerous world these days. Two lovely wenches such as yerselves shouldn’t be out without protection.”
    “Wenches,” Mary repeated, beaming at Hugh. “I like that. It makes me feel quite adventuresome.”
    “Heaven help us,” Victoria muttered. Her grandmother was seventy-five but she didn’t look a day over fifty and her opinion on what constituted a good adventure was something Victoria didn’t want to contemplate. She’d been convinced her granny was satisfied pitting her skills against complicated Fair Isle patterns.
    She should have known better.
    Grumbling began behind her. That she knew it was Fulbert tromping along behind them and not some other grump of indeterminate age and life situation . . . well, it said a lot about the current state of affairs in her life.
    Her granny came to a sudden stop. “Oh, my goodness,” she said, her hand over her heart. “Why, Victoria, this is spectacular.”
    Victoria looked at the castle and couldn’t help but smile. “It is amazing, isn’t it?”
    Mary nodded, then began to walk again, slowly. Victoria walked with her, admiring Thomas’s castle afresh. It was a pretty remarkable place, even though half of it had been eaten away by the ravages of time. The walls were crumbling, but it wasn’t hard to imagine them being manned in another time by fierce knights eager to do their lord’s will. It also wasn’t hard to imagine the sound of hammer on anvil, of peasants conversing, of men-at-arms cursing and shouting as they trained.
    Victoria frowned. She was imagining those things, wasn’t she? She shot Ambrose a look. He was watching her thoughtfully.
    “Aye, granddaughter?” he said.
    “Do you hear it?” she asked. “That medieval stuff?”
    Ambrose listened, then smiled. “I hear many things, lass. Come and let us be about your inspection. I imagine the construction has begun. I can