All for You Read Online Free PDF Page A

of his sword against his shoulder and frowned thoughtfully. “What is that recording?” he asked. “The Lone Piper at the Tattoo playing all his favorite tunes?”
    Ian laughed. “’Tis no recording, my lad. That’s Robert MacLeod.”
    “Who?”
    Ian pointed to his right. “Our clan piper. In the olden days, of course.”
    Stephen shut his mouth when he realized it had been hanging open. After all, he knew he shouldn’t have been surprised by anything he found on MacLeod soil.
    He’d known Ian MacLeod and his cousins James and Patrick MacLeod for what was going on ten years now. He’d been a fairly brash young man in his twenties when he’d first headed north, extremely proud of his academic successes at Cambridgeand looking for some way to expend a bit of energy. He’d heard rumors of some nutter in the Highlands who taught swordplay and felt compelled to investigate.
    It had seemed strange to him then—and still did, actually—how many medieval activities a body could find to engage in with hardly any effort at all, but since that suited his purposes, he never complained. He had simply made an appointment with Ian MacLeod, hopped in his car and ventured north, then felt the hair on his arms stand up when he’d set foot on MacLeod soil.
    He wasn’t unaccustomed to dealing with intimidating people, but Ian MacLeod had been a different animal entirely. It wasn’t merely that he’d looked as if he could have easily defended himself in any darkened alley, though that had been impressive in itself. Stephen hadn’t been able to lay his finger on just what that something was until he’d walked out Ian’s back door. Calling the space beyond that a garden hadn’t done it any justice. If he hadn’t known better at the time, he would have called it a rough Scottish interpretation of medieval lists.
    That had been rather odd, truth be told.
    Beyond that space had been an arena where no expense had been spared for the comfort and safety for what Stephen had immediately identified as very, very expensive Brazilian war horses. Those Lusitanos had been housed next to sturdy Highland mountain horses without any apparent worry over the dichotomy.
    Stephen had realized two things that first day. The first, as he’d watched Ian MacLeod draw the six-foot Claymore from the scabbard on his back, was that he was profoundly out of his depth.
    The second was there was no way in hell that MacLeod lad had learned his swordplay from a DVD.
    “You’re daydreaming, Stevie,” Ian called cheerfully. “Or has Jamie’s piper given you a start you can’t recover from?”
    Stephen realized he was standing in Ian’s training field, simply staring off into the distance. Or, rather, staring at the Highlander—in full dress, no less—standing a hundred yards away with his kilt swaying with a wind that troubled nothing else. He suppressed a shiver, then turned to Ian. “We have paranormal oddities at Artane.”
    “Ah, but can they play the pipes like that?”
    Stephen smiled briefly. “I’m afraid they can’t. The ghosts in my father’s hall just hide in alcoves and bellow ‘boo’ as the mood strikes.”
    Ian laughed. “I imagine they do, my friend.” He resheathed his sword, then stretched his hands over his head until his knuckles popped. “Well, when shall we meet again?”
    “Perhaps when my ego has recovered from this thrashing,” Stephen said dryly.
    Ian paused, then looked at him seriously. “’Twasn’t a thrashing, Stephen. Not this time. Well,” he added with a bit of a laugh, “not entirely. But for a lad who didn’t have the benefit of either a father or an uncle to put a sword into his wee hands when he was a babe, you’ve done fairly well. Of course, you’ll never best me, but no one does.”
    “Not even James MacLeod?”
    “Jamie?” Ian asked with a snort. “Are you daft? He scarce remembers what end of his sword is the dangerous one, though with him both ends are perilous to his soft hands.”