She nodded numbly. “You’re right.”
Miles looked down at her and, despite his better judgment, felt a small stirring of pity. She was shivering. What she truly was, he couldn’t tell, but she had come banging on his gates in the middle of the night seeking refuge. How could he refuse her?
He jammed the torch into a wall sconce, then turned back and looked at her.
“Are you alone?”
She nodded again, silently.
“No retainers lie in wait, ready to storm my keep and take it by force after I let you in?”
She looked up at him and blinked. “Retainers?”
“Men-at-arms.”
“No. Just me and my stinky self.”
Miles almost smiled. “Very well, then. The both of you may come in. I’ll raise the gate just far enough for you to wriggle under, agreed?”
“Whatever you say.”
Miles propped his sword up against the wall and trudged up the steps to the upper floor of the gatehouse. For all he knew, the woman could be lying. She could very possibly be a decoy some Lowland laird had sent to prepare the way for an assault.
He found himself cranking up the portcullis just the same.
“Are you inside?” he called down.
He heard a faint answer in the affirmative. He released the crank and the portcullis slammed home. Miles thumped down the circular steps. He realized as he retrieved his sword and the torch that he was relieved to find both still in their places. The years had taken their toll, he thought with a regretful sigh.
Well, at least the woman was still alone and not accompanied by two score of armed men. That wouldn’t have done much for his mood. His guest was standing just inside the gate. She smiled at him, seemingly a little self-conscious.
“I’m sorry to barge in on you like this. I need a bath and then I’d like to look for my cat.”
“Cat?” His nose began to twitch at the very thought of such a beast. He rubbed the possibly offended appendage almost without thought. “Cat, did you say?”
“You’re allergic?” she asked.
“Allergic?”
She looked at him closely. “You know, you sneeze when you smell one?”
“Aye, that I do, demoiselle. If your beastie has wandered into my keep, I daresay we’ll have no trouble locating him.”
She laughed. Miles found himself smiling in response. Saints above, he was going daft. He’d just let a stranger inside his gates without demanding to know aught of her business save that she was seeking a missing feline. Her person did nothing to recommend her—especially since it was all he could do to breathe the same air she occupied. But her laugh was enchanting.
Without warning, Miles felt a surge of good humor well up in him.’Twas true he could have remained at Artane and joined in the festivities eventually, but if he had, he wouldn’t be standing at his gates with this woman. Beyond reason, he couldn’t help but think he’d made the right choice.
He made her a small bow. “Miles of Artane, lately of Speningethorpe, your servant.” He straightened and gave her his best lordly look. She didn’t respond. He cleared his throat. Perhaps she merely needed something else to be impressed by. No sense in not making use of his connections. “My sire is Rhys de Piaget,” he said. “Lord of Artane.”
She looked at him blankly.
“You know him not?” Miles asked, surprised. His father’s reputation stretched from Hadrian’s wall to the Holy Land. And what reputation Rhys hadn’t managed to spread, Miles’s older brothers Robin and Nicholas had seen to. Surely this woman knew something of his family.
Her mouth worked, but nothing came out.
“Saints, lady, even the lairds in the Lowlands know of my sire.”
She swallowed. “I think I’m really losing it here.”
Miles frowned. “What have you lost?”
“My mind.” She shook her head, as if that would somehow solve the problem. It must not have helped, because she gathered herself together and gave the whole of her a good, hard shake.
Miles hastily backed up to avoid wearing what she’d shaken off.
“Look,” she said with a frown, “I’m confused. Now, am I in hell, or not? Telling me the truth is the least you can do.”
“Nay, lady, you are not in hell,” he said. “As I said before, you are at Speningethorpe. ’Tis in the north of England, on the Scottish border.”
“And you’re Miles of Ar-something, lately of this other Spending place, right?”
Close enough. “Aye.”
She shook her head. “Impossible. I can’t be in England. I was in Freezing Bluff, Michigan, half an hour ago. I fell into a pond.” She was starting to wheeze. “I couldn’t have resurfaced in England. Things like this just don’t happen!” Her voice was growing increasingly frantic.
“Perhaps the chill has bewildered you,” he offered.
“I’m not bewildered! I smell too bad to be bewildered!”
He had to agree, but he refrained from saying so.
“England! Geez! And backwoods England at that!”
“Backwoods?” he echoed.
“Backwoods,” she repeated. She looked at him accusingly. “I bet you don’t have running water, do you?”
Miles gestured apologetically toward the moat. “I fear the water runs nowhere. Hence the less than pleasing smell—”
“Or a phone?”
“Phone?” he echoed.
“Oh, great!” she exclaimed. “This is just great! No phone, no running water. I bet I’ll have to haul my own water for a bath too, right?”
“Nay, lady. I will see to that for you.” Let her think he was being polite. In reality, he didn’t want her moving overmuch inside. She was sopping wet and he didn’t want moat water being dripped all over his hall, sty that it was. Having the cesspit emptied into the moat had seemed a fine deterrent to attackers at the time, but he wondered about the wisdom of it now.
“Look,” she said, planting her hands on her fluffy waist, “I appreciate the hospitality, such as it is, but what I really need from you is a bath, some hot chocolate and a bed, pretty much in that order. Sir Sweetums will have to wait until tomorrow. Things will look brighter in the morning.”
She said the last as if she dared him to disagree with her.
So he nodded, as if he did agree with her.
“And then I’ll figure out where the hell I am.”
He nodded again. Whatever else she planned, she certainly needed a bath. Perhaps her wits would return with a bit of cleanliness.
“Garretts never have hysterics,” she said sternly, wagging her finger at him.
“Ah,” he said, wisely. “Good to know.” The saints only knew what hysterics were, but he had the feeling he should be relieved the woman before him never had them.
“You are a Garrett?” he surmised.
“Abigail Moira Garrett.”
“Abigail,” he repeated.
“Right. But don’t call me that. Only my grandmother called me that, and only when I was doing something I shouldn’t have been. Call me Abby.”
“I like Abigail better,” he stated.
She gave him a dark look. “Well, we’ll work on that later. Now, let’s go get that bath, shall we?”
Miles watched her march off toward the stables. He smiled in spite of himself. The saints only knew from whence this creature had sprung, but that didn’t trouble him. He’d seen many strange things in his travels. He liked her spirit. She made him smile with her bluster and babble.
“Miles?”
“Aye, Abigail?”
“I can’t see where I’m going,” she said, sounding as if that were entirely his doing.
“That shouldn’t matter, as the direction you’ve chosen is the wrong one. The great hall is this way.”
She appeared within the circle of his torchlight again. “Great hall? What’s so great about it? Do you have central heat? What, no phone but a great furnace?”
Miles didn’t even attempt to
understand her. He inclined his head to his right. “This way, my lady. I’ll see to a bath for you.”
He led her to the hall, ushered her inside and rehung the torch. He set the bar back across the door. That was when he heard her begin to wheeze again.
“Garretts do not faint. Garretts do not faint.”
“I’ll be back for you when the tub is filled,” he said, giving her his most reassuring smile. “Things will look better after a bath.”
She nodded. “Garretts do not faint,” she answered.
Miles laughed to himself as he crossed the hall to the entrance to the kitchens. If she continued to tell herself that, she just might believe it.
Chapter Three
ABBY SAT IN a crude wooden washtub and contemplated life and its mysteries. It gave her a headache, but she contemplated just the same. Garretts didn’t shy away from the difficult.
No phone, no electricity, and no Mini Mart down the street. Things were looking grim. She looked around her and the grimness increased. Had she stumbled upon a pocket of backwoodsiness so undiscovered that it resembled something from the Middle Ages? The fire in the hearth gave enough light to illuminate a kitchen containing stone floors, rough-hewn tables and crude black kettles. Not exactly Better Homes and Gardens worthy.
Abby stood up and rinsed off with water of questionable cleanliness. She wasn’t sure she felt much better. Even the soap Miles had given her was gross. She decided right then that she was a low fat person, especially when it came to soap. At least she thought she’d just washed with a glob of animal fat. She filed that away with half a dozen other things she would digest later. On the brighter side, though, at least she didn’t smell so much like a sewer anymore. She’d splurge on a fancy bar of soap when she got home.
She dried off with a completely inadequate piece of cloth, then looked at what Miles had given her to wear: coarse homespun tights and a coarse linen tunic. Not exactly off-the-rack garments, but they would do. She put the clothes on, sans her dripping wet underthings, and found, not surprisingly, that Miles’ hand-me-downs were much too large. They might have fit if she’d kept her oversized down coat on under them, but there was no wearing that at present. She kept the tights hitched up with one hand while she dumped her clothes and coat into the washtub with the other. She’d let them soak for a while. She didn’t want to wash her leather Keds, but she had no choice. She dunked them in the tub a few times with everything else.
“Hachoo!”
The sneeze echoed in the great hall. Abby dropped her shoes in the tub and ran for the doorway. She slipped and skidded her way out into the large gathering hall. Miles was standing by the wood piled high in the middle of the room, sneezing for all he was worth. He looked at her and scowled.
“Dab cat,” he said, dragging his sleeve across his furiously tearing eyes.
“Where?” Abby said, looking around frantically. “Sir Sweetums! Here, kitty, kitty.”
She saw a flash of something head toward the back of the hall.
“Damn cat,” she exclaimed, taking a firm grip on her borrowed clothes and giving chase. “Come back here!”
“Abigail, wait!”
Oh, like Miles would be any help in catching the spirited feline. Abby scrambled up the tight, circular stairs, almost losing her balance and the bottom half of her clothes.
“Here, kitty, kitty—whoa!”
She would have fallen face first into nothingness if it hadn’t been for that arm suddenly around her waist, pulling her back from the gaping hole that was the top of the stairs.
“We’re missing some of the passageway and a good deal of roof,” Miles said, panting. “By the saints, woman, you frightened me!”
His fingers investigated a bit more around her waist. Abby would have elbowed him, but her situation was too precarious.
“What happened to your middle?” he asked. “And your arms?” He frisked her expertly. “Saints, I thought you were excessively plump!”
“That was my down coat, you creep. Stop groping me!”
“Hrumph,” he said. His fingers stilled, but he didn’t move. “Just what manner of woman are you, Abigail Garrett?”
“One on the verge of heart failure—if Garretts had heart failure, which we do not. Now, can we please go back downstairs? It’s really drafty up here.” She looked out into the shadows. “And I’ve lost Sir Sweetums again.” She had the most ridiculous urge to sit down and cry. “Just when I thought I had him. But how can I have him? He’s gone.” An unbidden tear slipped down her cheek. “I’m losing it.” She sighed heavily. “I’ll be the first in my family to go that way, you know. Garretts never lose it. We die in flamboyant, reckless ways. We never go quietly. Except me. I’m such a familial failure.”
“The only place you are going, Abigail, is to a chair before the fire. You’ll catch the ague here in this night air.”
“Don’t call me Abigail.”
He grunted. “Turn around and keep hold of my hand. These stairs are steep.”
Abby followed him, because he had her hand in his and didn’t seem to want to let go. She didn’t want to go downstairs. She wanted to keep her eyes peeled for her cat, who should have been chasing butterflies in heaven. Instead, he was causing an allergic reaction to an inhabitant of hell.
“I’m tired,” she said.
And with that, she pitched forward. She felt herself be caught and lifted.
“Saints, woman, but you are a mystery.”
“I can’t handle any more tonight,” Abby whispered.
She felt herself lowered onto something relatively soft.
“Then take your rest, slight one. Things will look better in the morning.”
Abby thought they just might, especially since the last thing she heard was a sneeze.
ABBY WOKE, STRETCHED, and shuddered. What a lousy night. And what an awful dream! Too many chocolate chips eaten straight from the bag. She’d have to coat them in cookie dough the next time around to diffuse the impact.
She rolled out of bed with her eyes closed, mentally halfway to the shower before her feet hit the floor.
“Oof!” the floor exclaimed.
Abby stumbled as the floor under her feet moved. She would have hit the ground if it hadn’t been for those hands that came out of nowhere and caught her. How it happened she couldn’t have said, but she soon found herself sprawled out over a long, impressively muscled form, staring down into dark eyes. She looked in them for several moments before she figured out their color. Gray. Dark gray. Like storm clouds.
So, it wasn’t a dream. Miles of Spend-whatever held her up just far enough for her to get a good look at his face. She really felt as though she should be polite and get up, but she found she just couldn’t.
The torchlight from last night just hadn’t done justice to this guy. Maybe she’d been distracted at the time by the clamoring her sense of smell had set up. She must have smelled very badly. It was the only possible reason she could have done anything besides gape at the man she was currently using as a beanbag.
She propped her elbows up on his chest and took advantage of her vantage point. He was a stunner, even if he was a little bit on the unkempt side thanks to an abundance of shaggy dark hair and a stubble-covered chin. He was beautiful in a rough, mountain man kind of way. He probably lived off the land for months at a time. No fighting for mirror space with this guy, no sir. Abby felt her blood pressure increase at the thought. He probably limited his toilette to dragging his hands through his hair a few times each day and shaving when his face got too itchy. She had the feeling he didn’t use hairspray or mousse—which meant her feet wouldn’t stick to his bathroom floor. Oh, yes, this was her kind of man. Handsome and low-maintenance.
“Hmmm,” she said.
“Hmmm,” he replied.
He was giving her the same once-over. He reached up and fingered her hair. It was unruly hair, she knew, and she opened her mouth to make an excuse for the riot of auburn curls, when he met her gaze and smiled.<
br />
“You have beautiful hair, Abigail.”
Okay, if he wanted to like it, he was welcome to.
“Indeed, you clean up very passably.”
“What do you mean I clean up just passably?” she demanded. “I was giving you much higher marks than that.”
He grinned. “Indeed.”
Abby tried to hold onto her annoyance, but it didn’t last long against the dimple that appeared in his cheek.
“Oh, you are cute,” she said, feeling a little breathless.
“I take that to mean you find me tolerable to look at.”
“Who, you? Of course not. I was just talking about your dimple. The rest of you isn’t even passable.”
He laughed. “Disrespectful wench. You’ve no idea whom you’re insulting.”
“At least I gave you credit for one decent feature,” she grumbled. She started to move off him, then got a good look at his floor. “Geez, Miles, what’s the deal with your living room here? Are you planning on bringing barnyard animals inside anytime soon?”
He sighed. “I know the rushes need changing.”
“Yeech,” she said, climbing gingerly onto the bed. It was then she realized that she’d slept on a bed while he’d slept on a blanket on the floor. On the rotting hay, rather. She frowned at him. “Why didn’t you just go sleep in another bed?”
“There is no other bed.”
“Well,” she said, slowly, “I appreciate the gallant gesture, but you wouldn’t have had to make it if you didn’t run such a lousy hotel. You know, inn,” she clarified at his blank look.
He shook his head, with a small smile. “This is no inn, my lady.”
“Spend-whatever. If that isn’t a name for an inn, I don’t know what is.”
“Speningethorpe. ‘Tis the name of my hall. I know ’tisn’t much, but it gave me peace and quiet.”
“Until last night.”
He shrugged. “Perhaps too much peace and quiet isn’t a good thing.”
“All right,” she said, crossing her legs underneath herself, “if you don’t run an inn, what do you do? Is it just you here?” At that moment a surprisingly distressing thought occurred to her. “Are you married?” she demanded. She looked around. “Is there a wife hiding in here somewhere? This is all I need—”