One Magic Moment (22 page)
The thought was, John found to his surprise, a bit more painful than he’d anticipated.
He looked at his Future gel and wondered how it was he would go about winning her. She was currently trying to lean over a rope that separated her from Queen Elizabeth I’s reputedly favorite bed without
looking
as if she were leaning over the rope that separated her from QEI’s favorite napping spot. John smiled politely at the National Truster who was frowning severely in their direction, then did Tess the favor of hooking a finger through the belt loop of her jeans so if she pitched forward, she wouldn’t bloody her nose.
looking
as if she were leaning over the rope that separated her from QEI’s favorite napping spot. John smiled politely at the National Truster who was frowning severely in their direction, then did Tess the favor of hooking a finger through the belt loop of her jeans so if she pitched forward, she wouldn’t bloody her nose.
“Thanks,” she whispered conspiratorially.
“My pleasure, believe me.”
She pursed her lips at his tone. “Scoundrel.”
If she only knew. He released her trousers and reached for her hand when she’d finished her investigations, but he doubted she’d noticed. She was far too busy making mental notes of things she’d no doubt seen before. Why she was so interested in it all at present, he couldn’t have said.
“Haven’t you been here before?” he asked after the third chamber in which he’d had to cover for her nosiness.
“With Peaches, who doesn’t have the patience for this sort of thing,” she said, looking at him apologetically. “She would rather stand in the middle of the room, close her eyes, and take a reading on the feng-shui quotient of what she’s seeing. I’m not entirely sure she doesn’t have a paranormal meter running as well.”
“Ghosts?” he said with a snort. “What rubbish.”
She only lifted her eyebrows briefly and turned to focus on yet another bit of weaving.
He surrendered and resigned himself to holding on to her trousers.
It was a long morning.
“Lunch?” he suggested hopefully, when it seemed they had examined at least half the bedchambers and most of the common rooms.
“Briefly.”
“I wonder what would happen if you studied me as intently as you have the tapestries?” he asked politely.
“If I subjected you to the same sort of scrutiny I have QEI’s bedclothes,” she said with a smile, “you would bolt the other way.”
“I would not,” he protested.
“Shall we test that?”
“Nay,” he said, shifting uncomfortably.
She turned to look at him fully, which left him longing rather more than he would have suspected for those moments when she’d been studying tapestries and carvings.
“I thought you didn’t want this thing moving too quickly,” she said seriously.
He started to pull her into his arms, but he was interrupted by the pointed throat clearing of yet another National Trust do-gooder. He looked at Tess. “Never sell your hall to the government.”
“I won’t.”
“At least there I can maul you without being harrumphed at.”
She smiled and took his arm. “I think you need to be fed. You’re starting to get a little cranky. And we don’t have to look at all the rest today if you don’t want to.”
“The saints be praised,” he said, though he wasn’t entirely serious about it. He had to admit he enjoyed a good historical sight as well as the next Englishman, though if he were to be entirely honest with himself, he enjoyed the sight of Tess more. Traipsing through the past in jeans and boots was simply a decent excuse to have more of that last part.
What he ate for lunch, he couldn’t have said. He consumed it without haste, but without tasting it, either—which could have been considered a good thing given its prepackaged nature. He was too busy watching Tess. She looked up from the notes she was making in the guidebook, froze, then blushed.
“Stop that.”
“I’m not bolting,” he pointed out.
She took a deep breath. “What
are
you doing, then?”
are
you doing, then?”
“Looking.”
“And?”
He took his own deep breath. “Liking very much what I see.”
She pushed the guidebook toward him. “I’m going to go powder my nose.”
He watched her bolt—a novel occurrence in and of itself—and studied the book in front of him. It was interesting, but it was suddenly quite a bit less interesting than the sensation he suddenly had.
That he was being watched.
He would have said being aware of that was a habit he’d developed in the current century, but the truth was, the instinct was purely medieval. Learned from his father, honed by his brothers, perfected by himself in skirmishes he truly preferred not to think on.
Odd how that sort of thing came in handy in the present day.
He continued to feign interest in the book, but he was in truth taking note of everyone in the little outdoor seating area and wondering why he’d been stupid enough not to have done the like sooner. He saw nothing untoward, not even when he stretched and then used the excuse to carry the remains of their lunch to the rubbish bin to have a closer look around.
There were none in the little outdoor patio but a handful of tourists brave enough to venture out into the cold and a pair of pensioners and their wives no doubt determined to have their money’s worth from their Trust pass.
“John?”
He was certain he’d jumped, but he ignored it. He turned around and smiled at Tess. “Nothing.”
“I didn’t ask you if it was something,” she said slowly.
He took her hand. “Let’s go find a darkened corner, shall we? Perhaps in the garden where we won’t be pestered. I believe I have some sort of business with you that doesn’t involve paneling and creaking wooden floors.”
She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. He wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t well on the way to it.
He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Let’s walk, if you don’t mind. I’m restless.”
“Sure,” she said easily.
He kept her hand in his, partly because he liked holding it and partly to keep her close enough to him that he could protect her if need be, though from what he couldn’t have said. A disgruntled employee who’d watched them peer too closely at a sixteenth-century relic?
“I forgot my purse,” Tess said suddenly. “I’ll run back—”
“I’ll come with you,” he said without hesitation. He put on a soothing smile. “Because I want to.”
“Whatever you say,” she said, giving him that look again that said very clearly she wasn’t at all confident in his hold on reality.
He wasn’t about to explain himself. He simply walked quickly back to the loo with her, then waited for her whilst she went inside. She came back sooner than he’d expected, but empty-handed. He frowned.
“Find it?”
“No,” she said slowly, “it was gone.” She shrugged. “There wasn’t anything in it. Five quid and some lip gloss.”
“No identification?”
“I thought they could just look me up in Burke’s Peerage if they needed to,” she said lightly, but she seemed a little unsettled.
He was, too, actually.
“John.”
He realized he wasn’t paying her any heed. He had also pulled her behind him, which he hadn’t realized he’d done until he’d been forced to turn around and look at her. “Aye?”
“You’re acting a little suspiciously.”
He blinked. “Do you think I nicked your purse?”
“Of course not,” she said with a bit of a laugh. “I’m just wondering why it is that you seem to be looking over your shoulder.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. You also keep pulling me behind you.”
“I’m trying to keep you out of the sights of those Trust busybodies.”
“I don’t think so.”
He swore, because it was a bad habit, then took her hand. “I’m just wondering if that lad who tried to kiss you in your passageway might have been a little more irritated than he let on at my instruction.”
She looked at him in surprise. “Really?”
“Really.”
“John, maybe you just don’t look in the mirror often enough, but if I were a jerk you’d come close to punching, I don’t think I would be coming back for a second helping.”
He put his arm around her and sighed. If she only knew just how dangerous a time she lived in. At least in the thirteen century, he could have protected her with a sword. Now, what was he to do? Swear and hope for the best?
“I might have an overactive imagination,” he conceded, finally.
“And where did you come by that?”
“My misspent youth,” he said, hoping she wouldn’t ask him to elaborate. He kept his arm around her shoulders and walked with her back to his car. He opened the door for her, saw her inside, then shut the door and took a minute or two to look around him.
There was nothing.
He considered, then walked around to the driver’s side and slid under the wheel. He started up the Vanquish, half expecting it to explode, then sat back and let out a long, slow breath.
“John, you’re starting to make me nervous.”
He looked at her and smiled briefly. “Not enough sleep last night. Not to worry.” He paused. “Would you mind if I did come and stir sauce for you tonight?”
She studied him in silence for a moment or two. His first instinct was to either deflect her obvious curiosity or shift uncomfortably. He chose to do neither. He was a knight of the realm, after all, and beyond squirming. Hedging, however, was another thing entirely, and he fully intended to engage in it when he’d caught his breath.
“Are you bringing your lute to play for me after the guests leave?”
He laughed a little in spite of himself. “You, Tess Alexander, are a difficult woman.”
She reached out and tucked a bit of his hair behind his ear, then pulled her hand away quickly, as if she thought she shouldn’t have. He caught that hand before it escaped too far, then kissed it before he released it.
“Aye, I will,” he said easily. “If you insist.”
“Very generous of you.”
“It is, isn’t it?” he agreed.
“You could play just for me while I stir, I suppose,” she said thoughtfully, “but then you might draw all the guests kitchenward.”
“And then I would be forced to share you with them more than I like,” he agreed. “Let me get you home, then I’ll run and fetch my gear. I’ll see what instrument comes first to hand.”
“And tights as well?”
He shot her a look. “Jeans, you hussy.”
She smiled and buckled herself in. He supposed she was wise to do so. He didn’t like the fact that someone had stolen her purse, no matter what it had contained. Perhaps she deserved nothing less for having been distracted enough to leave it behind, but that fact that it had been hers and he had felt someone watching them . . .
He shook his head and concentrated on getting them back to Sedgwick in one piece. Perhaps it was coincidence. Perhaps he had simply spent too many years listening for the crack of a twig or the glimpse of a shadow that might contain an enemy. The morning’s events were nothing more than coincidence.
Surely.
T
wo
hours later, he was standing in his bedchamber, looking into his closet, and feeling as if he’d been kicked in the gut by an enthusiastic stallion. In fact, he had to lean over with his hands on his thighs to catch his breath.
wo
hours later, he was standing in his bedchamber, looking into his closet, and feeling as if he’d been kicked in the gut by an enthusiastic stallion. In fact, he had to lean over with his hands on his thighs to catch his breath.
His sword was gone.
And there had been no sign of a break-in.
Coincidence? He seriously doubted it. He straightened and went to look about the cottage once more, on the off chance that he’d missed something. He checked both doors and every window—including the one over his bed that wasn’t quite shut.
Which was not at all how he’d left it.
He looked on the bedspread and saw faint indentations, but nothing that he could have used to tell him anything except that his thief had rather large feet. He didn’t even consider calling the bobbies. They would have wanted all sorts of details he wouldn’t have wanted to give, beginning and ending with why he had a trio of swords propped up in the back of his closet.
Well, a brace of them only, now.
He stood in the midst of his bedchamber and folded his arms over his chest so he could scowl and think a bit. Nothing else was missing; he knew that from a cursory glance around. It wasn’t that he had anything of value save his cars, and he’d had the priciest with him, leaving the others still safely tucked in their bays. The tools in his shop were worth something, but he wouldn’t know if something were missing there without a serious search.
He considered, then walked into his closet, pulled aside the false front he’d built into the back and opened the man-sized safe he had there. His lute and two guitars were inside, untouched. He considered, then took his remaining medieval sword and stashed it inside. The fit was tight, which was why he’d never kept it in the safe, though now he wondered why not.
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