One Enchanted Evening Read Online Free PDF Page B

lock Cindi in for the duration of their stay.
    But ghosts? Ridiculous. Tess’s castle was just a pile of old rocks that had acquired a few, well, quirks along the way: drafts, crumbling mortar, the odd bird nesting in an out-of-the-way spot. Nothing unusual, nothing spooky, nothing to worry about, just smooth sailing from now on. After all, she’d gotten all her rotten luck out of the way that morning. What else could possibly go wrong?
    She decided it was probably better not to know.
    She took one last look at the disaster behind her, then put her head down and marched off to find breakfast before she had to face the fact that she suspected her adventures in the unexpected had just begun.

Chapter 2
    SEDGWICK CASTLE, ENGLAND PRESENT DAY
     
     
    ’T was no secret that Hugh McKinnon favored a well-turned seam.
    He was actually quite proud of that, for he considered it proof that he had improved himself over the course of his unlife. When he’d had a mortal frame, he’d been mostly concerned with the turn of a nicely revealed bit of intestine or the arc of his blade as it dispatched without alacrity whomever was troubling his clan. It had been a violent life, and he had been a product of that. He had considered himself fortunate in that he’d lived out a full tally of years instead of succumbing to an early death thanks to the elegant curve of another’s slice across his gut.
    He wasn’t quite sure when it had happened, but at some point during his undeath, he had begun to look at other things: the weave of a particularly well-fashioned plaid; the drape of a woman’s gown; the happy coupling of velvet and lace. His vague interest had eventually turned to enthusiasm, then passion. He had traveled far from home in search of things that he could imagine were soft and silky and luxurious to the touch.
    That love of all things lovely had led him to locales he’d never in his life dreamed he might go. Across the Pond, to the Continent, into the bowels of theaters whose age and reputation had given him pause. Of course, the pause had been brief before he’d once again taken up his quest to breach their defenses and mount an assault on their prop chambers. It had been the overwhelming passion of his afterlife, his most pressing duty, his one and only goal—
    He paused as he stood in the barbican gate. Perhaps his one and only goal was being less than honest. He had another work, of course, a goodly work that required delicacy and diplomacy and called on all the skills at reading men’s hearts that he’d learned over the course of his years as head of the clan McKinnon. Perhaps there was no shame in admitting that he was first and foremost a matchmaker and that fondling fabric came second.
    He was waging Cupid’s war by himself for the moment because his companions were off laying the groundwork for another particularly troublesome case. Well, that and they had no inkling he’d taken up the cause of love on his own. But how could he have done otherwise? His compatriots weren’t the ones with their ears pressed to the boards where rumors of costumial triumphs and matches unmade whispered along the well-trod wood.
    He paused a bit longer. Very well, so he’d been eavesdropping in a swanky theater in Seattle and heard tell of a fabulously skilled seamstress who had created the garb for a rendition of a modern, lush version of Cinderella he’d quite thoroughly enjoyed for several nights in a row. Taking a wee peek back in her family tree had revealed that one of her ancestors had been the fifth cousin thrice removed of one of his cousins, which no doubt gave him the authority to see to her. She was surely ready for matrimony, and she sewed a marvelously turned seam. How could he not be the one to look for a proper mate for her?
    All of which had led him to where he was at present: walking along the fixed bridge that led over what had originally been a moat but was now a pristine lake. The castle that rose up before him