One Magic Moment (33 page)
She shoved her phone into her pocket and glared at him. “Will you please knock that off?”
“Aye, when I’m convinced you’re—” He cut himself off before he blurted out anything else untoward. “When we’ve both passed a solid fortnight without any incidents, then I’ll knock it off, my lady. Until then, I most certainly will
not
.”
not
.”
She took a deep breath. “While I appreciate your concern, I am perfectly capable of seeing to myself. Terry managed to get me a slot at a living history faire at Chevington—”
“Nay,” he said calmly. Well, he might have shouted that as well, but he was under a fair bit of duress. “Absolutely, unequivocally, no arguments,
nay
.”
nay
.”
He supposed if she’d been a different sort of gel, she might have bloodied his nose at that point.
Tess only looked at him for a moment or two as if she had never seen him before. “Do you have any idea,” she managed finally, “what an amazing opportunity this is? It’s a chance—”
“To put yourself in danger where you need not,” he growled, “which you absolutely will
not
do.”
not
do.”
She gaped at him for a moment or two, then drew herself up and looked at him coolly. “I think you’d better go.”
“Nay,” he growled.
She walked across her hall to the front door, opened it, and pointed. “Beat it.”
He stalked over to her. “I most assuredly will not, you witless—”
She shoved him out her front door.
He hadn’t expected that, which was the only reason she managed it, to be sure. He stumbled down her stairs, but landed on his feet instead of his face, which she wouldn’t have noticed because she’d already slammed the door shut. He stood there, his chest heaving, and cursed her. He dragged his hand through his hair and fought the urge to stomp off. She was an irascible, unpleasant, impossible—
She opened the door and peeked out.
He glared at her. “Come to finish the job?”
“I wanted to make sure I hadn’t hurt you.”
He closed his eyes and groaned silently before he managed to look at her again. Impossible, impossibly beautiful, dangerously courageous, absolutely, stunningly—
He had to take a deep breath. “What time does your train leave?”
She scowled at him and slammed the door shut again.
Well, as he had reminded himself in the past, he had a BlackBerry and knew how to use it. Assuming she didn’t leave until the morning, and assuming she actually did take the train and not her car, he could have all the possible train times under his fingers within seconds. He would simply camp out at the station and follow her.
Perhaps he might even run into the lad who was following
him
.
him
.
“Lock the door!” he shouted, as a bit of an afterthought.
“Go to hell!” came the muffled response.
But she shoved the bolt home just the same. The sound ricocheted off the walls of the courtyard. John took a deep breath, glanced around him, and, finding no ruffians loitering where he could see them, took himself off toward the barbican gate. He stopped just inside the gate, had a final look about the courtyard, then turned and strode off toward his car.
He would go home, see if there was anything left of his cottage, then slip back to the castle. He wasn’t as familiar with Sedgwick’s grounds as he could have been—and likely should have been—but he could remedy that quickly. Once he knew the lay of the land, as it were, he would plan out a strategy. He would wait for his reinforcements, then put that plan in motion.
And at some point, he would hopefully stop wishing it was a battle he could have fought with a sword.
Chapter 17
T
ess
knew she was being watched.
ess
knew she was being watched.
The thought, when she said it aloud in her head, was absolutely ridiculous. Of course she was being watched; she was half an hour past a lecture that had been so full, people had been trying to listen from the hallway. She’d been meeting and greeting ever since, finally moving out to the great hall where she’d had more room to chat comfortably with men and women in medieval dress. Of course she was being watched.
Somehow, that didn’t rid her of the shivers that continued to run down her spine.
She decided, as the line began to dwindle a bit, that her unease had less to do with an unknown watcher than it had to do with Chevington itself. She’d been to the castle several times before, because it was decently preserved and because there was a rich political history associated with it, but she’d never enjoyed any of the visits. She’d initially been able to ignore the paranormal oddities it boasted, though she’d been less successful at that on subsequent visits. She’d begun to have the feeling she was walking back into time—most often into the midst of a battle.
Today, that sensation had been impossible to ignore.
She continued to make what she hoped was pleasant and coherent conversation with the knight in front of her and forced herself to rationally examine the cause of her unease without wimping out by crediting it to being in one of the most paranormally active castles in all of England.
It couldn’t have been because she’d given a bad lecture. She had stuck to basic, indisputable facts and presented them simply. No one was glaring at her for getting her facts wrong. She’d changed into appropriate clothing once she’d reached the castle, so the medieval gown and delicate if not precisely useful slippers on her feet shouldn’t have garnered any especial notice. Terry had given her a terrific introduction, and she’d put on her best company manners after her lecture to leave the attendees with a good impression. There was no reason she should have stuck out in a castle full of medieval wannabes.
Still, she just couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being
watched
.
watched
.
She took the opportunity as it presented itself to glance around the keep and look for the looker. It was difficult, though, because no one seemed out of the ordinary. She recognized a few souls from Terry’s group and took note of a few others who she was fairly sure she’d seen at academic conferences in different garb, but she didn’t see any stalkers. She suppressed the urge to look behind her to see if anyone was going to come up behind her and clunk her over the head to carry her off.
Someone like John, for instance.
The thought of him left her with an entirely new reason to be uncomfortable. She had never in her life physically assaulted anyone. While pushing John down the stairs probably didn’t descend quite to that level, it came perilously close in her book.
She supposed she could justify it in any number of ways if she tried hard enough. She had felt a tingle run down her spine the night before when she’d been talking to Terry, as if Fate had been breathing down her neck just to make sure she didn’t miss the special significance of the moment. It had occurred to her as she was talking to him that maybe she could do that sort of thing at Sedgwick. In addition to parties, she could do seminars for those who truly wanted to step back in time and gain a feel for the Middle Ages. It might be a nice change from
events
. She supposed, with a fair bit of chagrin, that she was just as proud as the next academic, what with not wanting to look less than her degrees said she was.
events
. She supposed, with a fair bit of chagrin, that she was just as proud as the next academic, what with not wanting to look less than her degrees said she was.
But to attract the sorts of people who might want to attend those sorts of seminars, she needed to make a different sort of contact than the sort she had already. That was why she’d been so determined to get north, even if it had meant taking the 5:05 train that morning.
She might not have been so hell-bent on taking a different tack in her life if it hadn’t been for the finish to her Regency adventure. Being belittled by women who wouldn’t have known a trencher from a trowel had been very unpleasant. Needing a rescue had been galling, but having John try to thwart her subsequent march into the academic side of living history fray, no matter how well meaning it had been, had been the final straw.
Now, though, that her temper had cooled, she was unnerved, and she was half considering going back to the little guardroom where she’d left her stuff with the rest of the presenters and digging out her cell phone so she could call and ask for John to come herd her for a bit.
She had only four more people to talk to when a blond knight stepped up to her side and handed her a note. She glanced at it and felt her heart leap a little at the hastily scrawled words.
Meet me in the woods behind the keep. I have news.
It wasn’t signed with John’s name but it must have been from him. Tess looked up to ask the knight who had given him the message, but he’d disappeared. She frowned. It would have been just like John to follow her, then watch over her without letting her know he was watching over her. It would be even more like him to send a messenger who didn’t want to be noticed.
She supposed an apology would be in order.
She finished her business, then briefly considered changing clothes before deciding to just go as she was. She had a cloak around her shoulders to ward off the chill, and her shoes would last for a quick trip outside and back. She looked for Terry to thank him, but didn’t see him. He wasn’t going anywhere before dinner, so she would just track him down later.
It was cold and rainy outside, which didn’t surprise her at all. It only added to the supernatural atmosphere that seemed to slather itself over Chevington and its environs. No one followed her—she knew that from a quick look over her shoulder—and no one was waiting for her in the woods—she knew that from many other careful looks around herself. There was no reason to be spooked. She told herself that until she reached the end of the path that she suddenly suspected had been laid out just for her and saw what was waiting for her.
A sword, driven into the ground.
She stopped short of it, only because she hadn’t expected to see it simply stuck there in the ground. Of course, that wasn’t the only thing that gave her creeps.
It was that the sword was near a time gate.
She didn’t want to examine how she knew that. She sure as hell wasn’t going to do any investigating—
She stumbled forward thanks to someone’s hands on her back, tripped, and felt herself falling toward the sword. If she managed to do something besides shatter her nose against the steel, she would consider Karma more of a friend than she ever had before.
She landed on her hands and knees but with her nose intact. She looked up and blinked.
The sword was gone.
She heaved herself to her feet and spun around. There was no one there, but that didn’t make her feel any better. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Whereas it had been cold and rainy before, now it was absolutely bitter. She had the feeling that wasn’t because she’d been overcome by a sudden bout of terror.
She took a deep breath, then began to run. The forest seemed thinner than it had before and the castle more easily reached. She looked up and felt her mouth fall open. It wasn’t an eight-hundred-year-old castle covered in history standing in front of her; it was a squeaky-clean, recently built structure.
She turned and bolted back into the woods. She wondered, as she ran, what she intended to accomplish by that, but she conceded that she wasn’t at her best at present. She needed a few minutes of peace and quiet to think. If she had indeed come through a time gate to another century, she could use that time gate to get back to her proper place. All she had to do was catch her breath, make sure she was safe, then retrace her steps. She would find her way home because she wouldn’t give herself any other choice.
The forest ended sooner than she expected. She found herself facing not some useful B-road but a trio of poorly fed, poorly dressed reenactment wackos.
She looked over her shoulder and saw there another pair of men who looked to be about the same vintage as the three in front of her. They were scruffy, unwashed, and sporting several blackened teeth. That didn’t seem to bother them any, though, because they were leering at her without embarrassment.
Tess decided that if she ever had the chance, she would tell John de Piaget that he was right. About it all. Well, mostly about the part where he’d told her to stay within arm’s reach.
She kept her mouth shut, but it didn’t do anything for the sudden bout of teeth chattering she was suffering. If those were living history types, they had achieved an entirely new level of authenticity. She wondered how in the world they’d managed to acquire that collection of blades without somebody kicking up an insurance fuss.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she said, taking a quick gander to both her right and her left to see what way might be more accessible, “I think I’ll be going.”
One of them leaped forward. She didn’t think; she merely shoved the heel of her hand into his nose. The crunch might have been satisfying if she hadn’t been so flat-out terrified.
He stumbled away, howling in a language she didn’t recognize. His companions also began to babble in that tongue, angrily, as if they discussed things she wouldn’t want to know about. And then she realized she had judged too hastily because she did understand them.
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