Richard continued upward and almost tripped over his youngest sibling, who was hugging the wall in the turn of the stairs.
“Stop cowering, you fool,” he snapped. “Come open the door for me, then seek out Captain John. I’ve a mind to leave at sunrise.”
“I’m not staying behind, Richard,” Warren warned, running lightly up the stairs before him.
“You’ll do as I tell you.”
“I’m ten-and-six, by God, and I’ll do as I please!”
Richard would have booted his youngest brother in the backside if he hadn’t had an armful of woman hampering him. Yet in truth, he couldn’t blame Warren for wanting to leave. Having passed ten years in the company of their father, Geoffrey, then with Hugh after their father’s death had to have been hell. Richard knew he should have sent for Warren sooner, but he’d had his own demons to wrestle with and no time to see to a child.
He walked into a chamber and laid his burden down gently on the bed.
“Saints, she’s fetching,” Warren breathed. “You don’t want her, do you?”
Richard caught his brother by the back of the tunic and pulled him away. “Nay, and neither do you. We know nothing of her and I’ve a feeling there’s more to her than we suspect. For all we know, she’s someone important. That puts her comfortably out of my reach and yours.”
“Is she a faery, do you think?”
Richard cast his brother a look he hoped would need no words.
Warren gulped, then turned his attentions back to the woman. “You’re right,” he said. “She’s a noblewoman. Look you how she’s dressed.”
Richard put his hand on his brother’s head, turned him toward the door, and gave him a healthy push. “Get you gone and do as I bade you.”
Warren paused at the doorway. “Why didn’t you come for me, Richard?”
Leave it to the child to cut to the heart of the matter without any preparatory banter. Richard felt his guilt rise in his throat. He should at least have found a place for Warren to go foster. Aye he’d been remiss and he felt the fault of that weigh heavily upon him. He looked down at the bed, at the wall, at the window—anywhere but at his brother.
“I’ve had things to do.”
“But you’ve been home three years and nary a word!”
“I’ve been busy.”
Warren was silent for a good long while, long enough for Richard to grow mightily uncomfortable. By the saints, he had been busy. He’d had a keep to rebuild, memories to forget, drink to avoid. He hadn’t had the stomach for the keeping of a youth who likely should have been sent away to foster at some other man’s keep years before now.
A sniff sounded suddenly in the stillness of the room and Richard stiffened. Tears? Nay, not tears! Warren was too old for tears, wasn’t he? Richard suppressed the intense urge to flee.
“Don’t leave me here,” Warren pleaded hoarsely. “I beg you, Richard.” He threw himself suddenly to his knees and groped for Richard’s hand. “I beg you, brother. If you have any mercy . . .”
Richard pulled his hand away immediately. “Nay, I’ll not leave you to rot here. The saints only know I couldn’t last more than a se’nnight. Find John, then pack your gear. We’ll leave at first light.”
Warren leaped to his feet and hugged Richard quickly. He jumped away before Richard even gathered his wits to shake the boy off.
“As you say, my lord!” he exclaimed joyfully. “I’ll see to it all immediately!”
Richard waited until the door banged shut behind him before he looked down at the floor. The imprint of Warren’s knees showed in the rushes; Richard scowled at the sight. Sentiment. What a waste of energy! Nay, he had no time for the like. Sentiment had never served him in the past. The only emotion his father had ever showed him had been by virtue of his fists or a strap. Had there ever been any tenderness in Richard’s soul, it had been beaten from him long ago.
He walked over to the window and threw open the shutters, hoping for fresh night air to clear his head. Instead, he found that it was raining and the rain only magnified the stench of the bailey surrounding the stone keep. But he breathed of it just the same, deeply. Aye, he had little time for sentiment. He had his hall to rebuild. He wanted nothing more than that. A fine hall overlooking the sea where he could be at peace.
He’d spent eighteen years traveling. First it had been as another man’s squire, then as his own man, with men looking to him for leadership. For months on end he’d slept in a different place each night, in a bed when he was lucky, on the ground when he was not. He’d known fear, he’d known hunger, and he’d known lust. And he’d had a bellyful of the lot of them. What he wanted now was to settle down in an orderly, clean keep and let the rest of the world go to the devil. In a year or two he’d take a docile child to bride, get her with child, then send her off to one of his other holdings where she couldn’t trouble him further. He’d have his heir and his peace.
And then, for the first time in thirty years, he would be happy.
His captain called to him from the passageway and Richard turned and walked back to the door. He paused and cast a look at the bed. The woman was handsome enough. And spirited, if her success in ousting him from his place atop his gelding’s rump had been any proof.
But she was certainly no docile child, and that made her the very last thing he could use.
He sighed. He would have to carry her home with him, that much was certain. Perhaps he could spare a moment or two to question her and decide where she belonged. Or he could have Warren see to the task.
Aye, that was most sensible. It would give his youngest sibling something to do and it would keep the woman out of Richard’s way. Already he had wasted more thought on her than he had to spare. He would have her identity discovered then send her on her way.
And then he would turn his full attentions back to his keep, whence they never should have strayed in the first place, damn Hugh to hell.
With a curse he left the chamber.
3
Jessica woke to the feeling of someone tugging at her clothes. Those maids of Lord Henry’s certainly were diligent, but she really didn’t need to take her clothes off. She could return to oblivion perfectly well with what she had on. And return to it she certainly intended to, only this time she wasn’t going to dive back into that horrible dream. What a nightmare! Hounds hollering, men with swords, castles and horses and whistling. Maybe it was time she stopped indulging in so much chocolate. Who knew what sort of detrimental effect it had on a person’s dreams?
She pushed the offending hands away and tried to burrow more fully into that pretty yellow-and-green floral-print comforter.
“Got to sleep more,” she mumbled. “Terrible dream.”
A low laugh answered her, followed by something that sounded remarkably like, “I’ll give you aught to dream about, wicked creature from the grass.”
Jessica frowned. That was not the voice of Henry’s crisply starched housekeeper.
In the space of a heartbeat Jessica came suddenly and fully awake. It was morning. She recognized that right off because the window at her left was open and a breeze straight from Antarctica was blowing right at her, unimpeded by the rustic shutters. Or maybe she was just cold because her dress had been unlaced to the waist and there was a great deal of flesh exposed.
She looked to her right to find a man standing there in a shirt alone. She looked down. Apparently the arctic breeze was having no effect at all on his condition. It didn’t seem that his inebriation was any impediment either—even though he almost knocked her flat with his breath alone.
Then Jessica looked up and realized she’d seen that nose before.
Either she was still dreaming, or she had just entered the Twilight Zone.
She looked around frantically, but Rod Serling didn’t seem to be popping out from behind any of the ratty tapestries.
Damn. She was in trouble.
Before she had time to contemplate that any further, the snarly, aroused
one lunged at her and she had to make a quick roll off the other side of the bed to escape. She would have managed it, too, if he hadn’t snagged another handful of her hair.
“Ouch!” she said, grabbing her hair near the roots to stop the pain. “I really hate that!”
“Ah, but you’ll like what’s to follow,” he said with conviction as he hauled her back toward him.
She tried to reach behind her to deal him some sort of debilitating blow but that only earned her a box on the ears that set her head to ringing like an abused church bell.
One thing was for sure: she’d had better mornings.
The next thing she knew, she was flat on her back, he was straddling her hips, and his hand was coming toward her. She covered her face, already wincing. She’d never been struck before, but she had the feeling she wouldn’t be able to say that much longer.
She waited.
The blow never came.
The weight of the man was suddenly off her. She opened her eyes in time to see him go flying against the wall. He slumped to the floor, looking dazedly up at whoever had thrown him.
Jessica rolled off the bed before she took the time to do the same. She was halfway to the door before she allowed herself to look at who had rescued her.
It was him. The horse-whistling one. So maybe it wasn’t a dream after all. Either that or she was stuck inside her dream, trapped forever with characters she had no desire to get to know any better.
She hesitated, her hand on the door, and watched her rescuer haul the man who had woken her up so warmly to his feet. He dealt him one blow. Her attacker slumped back down to the floor, senseless.
Then the man turned and looked at her. His expression was no lighter than it had been the night before. In fact, it was, if possible, even more displeased.
“You,” he said distinctly, “are, I am quite certain, going to be more trouble than you are worth.”
There went that wacky accent again. Fortunately, by the disgruntled tone of his voice, she had little trouble understanding the gist of his message.
Then she realized what he’d said and scowled. Well, at least she knew where she stood with her captor/rescuer. Very freeing, truly. Jessica gave him her best attempt at a smile.
“I appreciate the rescue. You were rescuing me, weren’t you?”
His expression darkened. Ah, no sense of humor. Jessica made a mental note to remember that in the future, should she find herself unfortunate enough to encounter the man before her again.
She realized then that the front of her dress was still gaping open, so she gave the laces a firm tug, tied the ends of the strings into a double bow, and rubbed her hands together expectantly.
“I’ll be off now,” she said briskly, as if she really did have to be going. “Things to do, you know.”
“And where is it you’ll be traveling to, mistress?”
She paused. “Home?”
“And that would be—nay,” he said, holding up his hand, “I’ve no time to hear of it. Come with me. You’ll tell my brother Warren your tale. He’ll have more stomach for it than I will, I’m sure.”
Right. As if she would really go heaven-knew-where with him just like that. She put her shoulders back and tried to look confident.
“I think I’ll stay, thank you just the same.”
The man looked at her less-than-pleasant alarm clock still in a heap on the floor, then back at her.
“All right,” she conceded, “I probably won’t be staying right here, but that doesn’t mean I’m going with you. There’s got to be a road nearby. I’ll just find it and start walking.”
“Then, lady, you will be walking a very long time, for there is little here about that you would find to your liking.” And with that, he turned and strode from the room.
Well, that didn’t sound all that promising, but who was to say that he was telling her the truth? She would just have to see things for herself. And if he was right about the distances, she would just have to borrow a horse.
Jessica scrambled to catch up with him. She trailed after him down the stairs, doing her best to negotiate the tight circular staircase. It reminded her sharply of how difficult Lord Henry’s castle stairs were to descend, only these were certainly better preserved. There were no grooves in the stone from hundreds of years of feet tramping up and down them.
She paused on the last step, stunned by the realization.
The stairs were in perfect condition.
Jessica took a deep breath and tried to marshal her last reserves of common sense. The stairs couldn’t be in this kind of condition, because if they were new, that would mean she’d somehow wandered into another century and she just knew that wasn’t possible. She was just a little unnerved because the castle had seemed to appear in the place where she’d just recently left Lord Henry’s house, but maybe she’d lost her sense of direction in the fog. Yes, that was it. She’d thought his was the only castle around for miles, but obviously she’d been mistaken about that, too. She was an American and obviously unused to English distances. Just a little culture shock.
Feeling a little better about it all, she returned to her earlier decision to borrow a horse and use it to get to a town with a phone.
The stairwell opened up suddenly onto a great hall. Jessica came to a teetering halt, then reminded herself to breathe deeply and avoid at all costs a major freak-out.
This looked like a full-blown, so-authentic-she-could-throw-up, medieval castle. She’d listened to Henry’s tour guide describe the supposed conditions in medieval England. She’d scoffed silently at the thought of rotting hay strewn on the floor, dinner leftovers curing on tables and under tables, odors of sweat and dog and urine permeating the air. But never in her life would she have believed that someplace could actually smell as bad or be as much of a sty as what he’d described.
Yet that was what she was facing.
Jessica had a very bad feeling—and she didn’t think it was caused by olfactory overload.
“Not what you’re accustomed to?”
She managed to look at the man before her who had paused to stare at her. She found that all she could do was shake her head no.
“Your hall is better kept?”
She couldn’t even manage a nod.
The man shrugged, then continued on his way. Jessica didn’t waste any time before following him. She definitely didn’t want to find herself left behind in this place, no matter how freshly laid the steps looked.
He stopped in the courtyard and Jessica stopped right behind him. She knew she was staring rudely at the mounted men, but she couldn’t help herself. Either this was a Hollywood set or she had one hell of a fantasy life. There were probably a dozen men sitting on horses. The men were wearing chain mail. Medieval surcoats were worn like tunics over said armor and they bore an animal that looked like a cross between an eagle and a lion. From the depths of her overworked brain surfaced a single trivial recollection from a history class.
The animal was a griffin. It wasn’t very pleasant looking. Somehow, she just wasn’t surprised at finding it here, and that had a lot to do with the scar on her rescuer’s face. His griffin was black as night, with bloodred eyes. She had the feeling he’d seen enough of the latter color to know more about it than was good for him.
She snapped out of her heraldry stupor in time to see him coming toward her, a fierce frown on his face. Great, what was his problem now? It wasn’t all that easy to scowl back at a man several inches taller than she and wearing mail, but she decided she had little to lose in trying.
She was in the middle of thinking of something appropriately tough to say when the man slung a heavy cloak around her shoulders and fastened it at the throat with a heavy metal brooch.
And for a single moment Jessica looked up into his stormy eyes and felt a shiver go through her.
It was rusty chivalry, but chivalry all the same.
It was, somehow, one of the most intimate things anyone had ever done for her and she co
uld hardly believe the tumultuous man in front of her had been the one to do it.
Evidently he was thinking the same thing. He stepped back suddenly and dropped his hands to his sides. “I assume you can ride alone,” he stated curtly.
The moment was gone as quickly as it had come and Jessica came back to reality with a welcome jar. A horse. This was very good. A horse meant covering a great deal more ground than her feet could. She nodded immediately.
He grunted. “It will save me another tumble, at least.” He beckoned to a boy, who brought over an enormous black gelding, easily as tall as the horse she had commandeered. The man lifted one eyebrow in challenge. “Can you best this one?”
“No problem,” she said, hoping that would be true. She started to put her foot up in the saddle, then felt strong hands catch her by the waist and lift her up. But before she could get the words out to thank him, he had walked away, shouting orders to his company.
It was apparently a well-trained group. They immediately followed the man through the inner courtyard of the castle, through the gates, and across the drawbridge.
Jessica tried hard to ignore her surroundings. She promised herself she would pay attention once they reached landscape that was more, well, groomed. She concentrated on controlling her horse and keeping up.
And she didn’t think about the fact that nothing looked familiar.
“Good morrow to you, lady.”
Jessica looked to her right to find that a young man had come to ride beside her. He looked at her expectantly.
“Oh, um, yes,” Jessica managed. “Same to you.”
“I am Warren de Galtres,” he said. “My brother bid me question you and find out your origins.”
“Your brother?”
Warren nodded toward the front of the company. “You know him, of course. He’s Richard, lord of Burwyck-on-the-Sea.”
And in that moment Jessica’s world froze. Or maybe it was she herself that froze. Her horse was still moving. Warren’s horse was still moving. In fact, she suspected the entire group was still moving, yet somehow the whole scene became frozen in some weird kind of tableau.