The More I See You (38 page)

It was Jessica’s turn to gape. “What did you say?”

It was then that Abigail started to laugh.

Jessica decided immediately that she was locked in an inescapable room with a certifiable wacko. Wonderful.

Jessica started to edge toward the door. “If you’ll just excuse me—”

Abigail laughed all the more, then she put her hands to her cheeks and started to cry.

“I can’t believe it,” she said. “I just can’t believe it.”

“Neither can I,” Jessica said, eyeballing the door. “And if you’ll just let me by, I’ll go get some help—”

“Oh,” Abigail said, with another laugh, “you’re perfectly safe. I’m not crazy.” She held out her hand. “Abigail Moira Garrett de Piaget. Local girl from Freezing Bluff, Michigan. Nice to meet you.”

Jessica felt her jaw slip down to land with a figurative thud on her chest. “You’re kidding.”

Abigail pulled her hand back and hugged herself, still laughing in a gasping kind of way. “Oh, honey, you just don’t know the half of it.”

Jessica could hardly think straight. “You’re from—”

“1996. Fell into a pond and resurfaced in Miles’s moat in 1248. It’s a wonder he took me in with the way I smelled.”

“Then you’re from—”

“Michigan. And what I wouldn’t give for a York peppermint patty about now.”

Jessica felt her way to the bed and sat down. She was quite certain that she was close to falling down, so it seemed like the wisest thing to do. Abigail came and sat down on the bed as well and leaned back against the foot post.

“Tell me your story,” Abigail said with a giddy smile. “I’m dying to hear it.”

“I can’t believe this,” Jessica said, more surprised and stunned than she’d ever felt in her life.

“You think
you’re
surprised,” Abigail said dryly. “How do you think I felt sitting calmly in Anne’s solar, then watching you waltz in? I about fell off my chair!”

Jessica started to laugh. She was beginning to understand why Abigail had sounded a little unraveled.

“Spill the beans,” Abigail said. “I really want to hear it.”

“But I don’t even know where to begin,” Jessica stammered.

“Begin at the beginning. Tell me where you were when you realized you weren’t where you should have been anymore.”

Jessica took a deep breath to do just that, then found herself blurting out the first question she should have asked and probably the last question she really wanted an answer to.

“You couldn’t get back?”

Abigail looked faintly startled, then shook her head with a smile. “I never tried.”

“Really?”

She shrugged. “Miles’s moat was really disgusting. One trip in there was enough.”

“I’m serious. Did you worry about your family?”

“I didn’t have any left. No family, no cat, and no job. And then there was Miles.” She smiled serenely. “He was worth giving up chocolate for, though I questioned that ferociously during six rounds of childbirth without the stuff.” She paused and gave Jessica a piercing look. “You didn’t bring any with you, did you?”

“Sorry.”

Abigail sighed. “I had to ask.” She put her hands to her cheeks again and laughed. “I know I should let you talk, but I have a million questions to ask and now I think I’m the one who doesn’t know where to begin. No,” she said with a shake of her head, “the questions will keep for a little. Just tell me what happened to you. I swear I never thought I’d ever meet another soul who hadn’t cut their teeth on a leather strap instead of zwieback toast.”

“Well,” Jessica said, “it all started really with a blind date.”

Abigail laughed. “A blind date? Oh, man, I wish I had some chocolate about now. I think this story would go down a lot better accompanied by something really bad for me, like a one pound bag of M&M’s, no, make that peanut M&M’s—”

Jessica listened to Abigail contemplate just what would
go best with the telling of time-travel tales and felt a wave of homesickness well up in her. She looked at a woman who had come from her time, who had been in the Middle Ages for some twenty years, and wondered if she was unhappy about what had happened to her.

“Do you,” Jessica interrupted, “regret it?”

Abigail blinked. “Regret it?” She paused, then shook her head. “No. I told you, I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. And believe me, there are things a lot more important than cable TV and central heating.”

Jessica couldn’t help but agree. So she took a deep breath and began with her blind date to Archie Stafford, a date that seemed a million miles away and decades ago. She told Abigail every detail she could remember of how she’d come to be on Hugh’s land, and then everything that had happened since. She could feel her heart softening as she spoke of Richard. Apparently Abigail sensed as much because her eyes filled with tears.

“And you married him,” Abigail said with a gentle smile.

“I married him,” Jessica agreed. “If words spoken under that kind of duress count for anything. Richard planned to take me to France to have a ceremony in some famous chapel there.” She sighed. “But that was before all this.”

“Well,” Abigail said, “as much as Kendrick loved to be the center of attention, I don’t think he would have liked all this fuss. It’s really done a number on Robin and Anne. This is the second child they’ve lost in as many years.”

“How terrible for them.”

“This one is harder, though. The folks at Seakirk claim Kendrick was murdered by ruffians.”

“And Robin and Anne don’t believe it?”

Abigail shook her head. “Lots of nasty rumors about Matilda being a witch.”

Jessica looked at Abigail. They were from the same time. They might have known each other in another world
if things had been different. Of anyone in the castle, they would share the same beliefs.

“You aren’t buying that,” Jessica asked, “are you?”

Abigail shrugged and smiled weakly. “I’ve seen more in the last twenty years than I ever thought possible. We aren’t exactly in Kansas anymore, Dorothy.”

Jessica shivered. “It all just seems so unreal.”

“And that never changes,” Abigail said with a sigh.

“The roller coaster has left the gate and there’s no getting off in the middle. If only I’d known, I would have brought a few tons of cocoa powder with me.”

“Nothing available?”

“Not in England. And believe me, I would know.”

Jessica wanted to ask her a thousand other things, beginning with how Abigail had survived every day knowing she would never live to see another modern marvel and ending with how in the world she had survived childbirth six times without drugs. But she was interrupted by the sight of Richard opening the door.

And in that moment Jessica had her answer.

Maybe she could have found half a dozen men in her time with whom she could have been happy. Maybe she would have gone on with any one of them to live a full, rich life. Maybe with one of them she could have had a great and lasting love.

But she hadn’t.

She’d found that love seven hundred years in the past.

“I’ll be going now,” Abigail said as she rose, then she slipped out the door.

“Who was that?” Richard asked as the door closed behind him.

“Tell you later,” Jessica said, holding out her arms. “Come here.”

“Bossy baggage.”

But there was a hint of a smile on his face, a small strand of sunlight amidst the storm, and the sight of it was enough to break Jessica’s heart all over again for the sheer joy of knowing it was for her.

The future could keep all its marvels.

She had hers right where she was.

•   •   •

It was well before dawn when Richard rose and dressed. Jessica looked at him in the light of a single candle.

“It won’t be a war, will it?”

He stopped and looked at her. “I can’t predict that.”

She wanted to say,
But you’ll be careful if it is
, but she knew the reaction that would get, so she kept her mouth shut. She used her energy instead to memorize the shape of his body, the veins in his hands, the scar on his face.

He belted his sword around his hips, threw a cloak over his shoulder, and knelt on one knee beside the bed. He kissed her with his eyes open and she understood completely because she couldn’t rob herself of one last sight of him either.

“Mend my hose while I’m gone,” he said, straightening.

“Don’t count on it.”

He smiled, the brief satisfied smile of a man who knew in whose hands his heart was kept, then turned and left the room without saying anything else.

Jessica rose and pulled a blanket around her. Then she knelt on the hard stone floor of a medieval tower chamber and prayed that she hadn’t just seen the last of him.

Richard rode in the company next to Robin and searched his pitiful wits for something to say. A pity he didn’t possess Hamlet’s glib tongue, for he might have been able to offer some comfort. Robin’s heir, Phillip, rode on his father’s side, just as silently, so perhaps there was no need for speech. Still, though, Richard wished he had some comfort to offer. Robin had lost his only daughter to consumption not a year before. This was yet another grievous blow to be borne.

He prayed he would never find himself in Robin’s position.

They were within sight of Seakirk’s walls. Richard looked back over the small army of Robin’s relatives and vassals. It presented a very unpleasant sight. Would Matilda be moved by it? Would Richard of York run scampering the other way?

“At least we have had a goodly army,” Richard said with a sigh.

Robin nodded. “Aye. Let us hope it serves us.”

Richard fell silent and concentrated on looking about him. Perhaps he might mark something out of place or
poke his nose in a deserted corner whilst the others were about their business.

Though once he and their company had been allowed into the great hall, Richard decided that poking his nose into anything was out of the question. He’d never seen such a filthy place, and that was no mean boast. He wondered what Kendrick had thought when he’d walked through those doors.

Assuming he’d managed to gain the hall.

Richard leaned back against a soot-encrusted portion of a wall and let his gaze roam over the sight before him. Robin stood facing Matilda and Richard of York. Robin was backed by a handful of powerful kin, all wearing grim expressions. Richard of York had his share of men as well, though they were as unkempt and ill-smelling as the hall itself.

The place reeked of death.

The thought occurred to Richard before he even suspected it, but once it had crossed his mind, he couldn’t ignore it. He looked down at the rushes. It was hard to tell what made up the marshy mess, but he suspected blood could have been a part of it. He nudged something in the rushes, then bent to look more closely at it.

It was a finger.

Richard straightened carefully, then scanned the crowd. All attention was fixed upon the two men facing off in the middle of the hall. Richard wondered where the dungeons were and if he could reach them without becoming a permanent occupant.

He slipped along the back of the hall carefully. Matilda and Richard’s men didn’t pay him any heed. The other thing that surprised him was the sight of bandages on those men that he hadn’t noticed from a distance.

There was something being concealed. Richard was half-surprised Matilda hadn’t cast some sort of foul spell upon the place. For all he knew, she had. For a moment he almost wished he had brought Hugh with him. Hugh likely could have told Richard what the witch was about.

He gained the kitchens and glared the occupants into silence. It took no effort at all to find the steps leading down to the cellars. Apparently Seakirk had no dungeon, but Richard suspected these chambers would have served just as well.

He nosed about, shifting filth about with the point of his sword. He saw nothing.

He had almost given up when he saw out of the corner of his eye something that made him pause. He bent closer to examine it. It was a bit of cloth, torn as if by a sword or a bolt from a crossbow.

Kendrick’s cloak?

Richard straightened. It was no proof, but by now he needed no proof. Something foul had happened in this keep and he had no trouble believing Matilda and Richard of York were the makers of it. And much as he might have liked to believe differently, his heart told him that Kendrick had met his end here.

He only wished he knew the why of it.

He reached the great hall in time to hear Richard of York expressing his deep sorrow to Robin over the loss of Artane’s son. Matilda stood nearby, her head discreetly bowed, her hands clasped in front of her.

Well, at least Matilda wasn’t casting any spells over the company as yet.

Richard observed the parley going on before him and decided that his presence was not needed. There was a great deal of slippery speechmaking by Richard of York and a like amount of disbelief coming from the Artane camp. Richard suspected the only thing he might add would be a few slurs cast York’s way and that wouldn’t serve anyone.

He left the hall, walked through the ill-kept courtyard and into the empty lists. He stood there and stared off into the distance, wondering about the deeper meaning of life and death. It occurred to him that he was very fortunate indeed to have found someone to love.

And cursed as well. He would not survive it if something happened to Jessica.

You have that aright.

Richard spun around, but there was no one there. He could have sworn he’d heard Kendrick say the like to him. He drew his hand over his eyes and shook his head for good measure. He was losing what poor wits remained him, obviously.

Though he couldn’t help but believe that if he’d just been able to look closely enough, he would have seen his brother-by-affection standing right next to him.

By the saints, what a tangle.

Before he could speculate further, the front door burst open and Robin and his company strode angrily from the hall. Richard caught them as they gathered up their horses and made for the outer barbican. It was only after they were all mounted and riding away from the castle that Richard managed to question Robin.