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longer embarrassed to relate what had happened.
    “What’d the bastard do this time?” David demanded.
    “Somehow he must have found out that I’d finally gotten the sword, or was soon to receive it, because he sent a young man to me dressed in Viking costume, who was very good at pretending to be the real thing. He called himself Thorn Blooddrinker.”
    “ Thorn Blooddrinker?”
    Her expression suddenly mirrored his own disgust as she recalled that part of the joke. David knew about all those crude rosebush innuendos associated with her name that she’d endured over the years. But no one had ever actually tried to claim that his name was Thorn. After all, what parents in their right minds would stick their son with such a name?
    “Exactly,” she said. “It’s my guess that Barry had been planning his little joke for a long time, and he happened to see me luggingthe sword into my classroom the day it arrived. I didn’t have enough time to take it home after picking it up at the post office. If he saw me with that crate, it wouldn’t have been hard for him to guess what it was, and that would have given him ample time to set up the joke for that evening.”
    “Just what one might expect from a man devoid of principles and—”
    “Shh,” she cut in when he started getting red in the face. David despised Barry as much as she did. “He’ll get his one day—somehow. I’m a firm believer in justice catching up to those who escape it the first time around.”
    Roseleen changed the subject then, until David got his anger under control and put all thoughts of Barry Horton from his mind. When she had him laughing again, an easy enough task—she had a droll sense of humor that only those close to her ever saw—she got back to the subject that she was presently fascinated with.
    “So tell me, why did Sir Isaac sell the sword at all, if he was so worried about some silly curse?”
    “Because he was worried about the curse. He doesn’t think he has too many years left, and he has only daughters who will be inheriting his estate. He wanted it sold and away from them before he died.”
    She shook her head. “It’s amazing that someone could believe in curses in this day and age.”
    “Ah, but to your benefit,” he said, grinning.“If Sir Isaac didn’t believe that the sword is cursed, then he never would have sold it. Yet here we sit, proof that there’s nothing to fear from it. The curse, or whatever it is, hasn’t caught up with me for turning the sword over to a woman, and it doesn’t look like you’ve turned to stone yet, though I do notice a gray tinge on your—”
    He stopped, laughing, when she tossed one of the sofa pillows at him.

5
    W hen Roseleen had inherited Cavenaugh Cottage, she had imagined a quaint, cozy little two- or three-room house covered in English ivy. It had been a shock to find instead a fourteen-room house that fit her description of a mansion, replete with a carriage house converted to a four-car garage, a separate caretaker’s house more the size of what she’d been expecting, and four acres of land.
    She had been fortunate that John Humes and his wife, Elizabeth, had more or less come with the house. They had worked for her great-grandmother for nearly twenty years, and although they weren’t young anymore, they took excellent care of the house and grounds.
    The cottage was over two hundred years old. That it had been thoroughly refurbished in the last ten years was the only reason Roseleen hadn’t been forced to sell it yet. She’d never be able to afford the repairs onsuch a large house when they became necessary, as they were bound to, nor would she let it fall to ruin just to hold on to it. But that day hadn’t come yet, and in the meantime, she enjoyed the house for its historical beauty, if not its great size.
    She hadn’t known her great-grandmother, Maureen, very well. The lady had come to the States to visit her grandson’s family only twice when Roseleen was