Time Travel Romances Boxed Set (113 page)

The clerk looked a bit desperate. “But sir!
I’m sorry, sir, but…”

“
Maybe I can help,” Derek
suggested, his smooth tone designed to even tempers and ease
attention away from the exchange. He had practiced it to
perfection, but was still delighted every time it
worked.

As it did right now.

The clerk nearly fell on him in gratitude,
just for the intervention. “It’s a procedural thing, sir, really.
We can’t evaluate gold coins here, so we have to send them to the
city…”

“
To the city!” Niall
snorted. “Even better - your accomplice is a
foreigner
. Do
you think me witless enough to wait days for your response, while
my coin travels farther and farther afield?”

“
Sir! We issue a
receipt…”

“
A receipt for what? For
theft of my coin? And will you grant me another equal coin in
exchange?”

“
Well, well,” the clerk’s
gaze strayed agitatedly to the gold coin laying on the counter
between them. “That would be hard to do, sir.”

“
Aha! ’Tis a trick, I knew
it well.” Niall stood back and folded his arms across his chest
with the satisfaction of a man who had proven his point. “I would
suggest,” he said silkily, “that you exchange this coin for the
coin of your realm with all haste.”

The clerk’s mouth opened and closed, he
appealed to Derek with a glance.

“
May I?” At Niall’s nod,
Derek picked up the coin for a closer look. It was gold, or at
least it looked like gold to him. Derek had fingered more gold than
most men, but still he couldn’t be sure without an
appraisal.

But the interesting thing about the coin was
that it appeared to be old. Really old. It sure wasn’t Canadian or
American currency, although the date on it was a bit tough to read.
It could say 1390, but Derek wasn’t sure.

Sure or not, his heart made a little
pit-a-pat. 1390! He could be holding a numismatic treasure in his
hands.

And if he was, Niall wasn’t going to get
anywhere near its real value from a bank. Of course, there weren’t
a lot of options on an island like this.

But Derek could solve that. He handed the
coin back to Niall and smiled. “You’re right, they won’t give you
nearly its value here.”

Niall fired a knowing glance to the
clerk.

“
Especially if it’s
antique, as I think it is.”

Now Niall’s eyes narrowed and he studied
Derek again. “Antiquity is long behind us.”

“
Yeah, yeah, I know, but
there are people who collect old coins. Like this one.”

Niall ran his thumb across the gold, his
voice low and considering. If Derek didn’t know better, he’d think
the guy was trying to drive a better price. “This coin is not so
old as that.”

“
Well, maybe not to some
collectors.” Derek shoved his hands in his pockets and met the
taller man’s gaze. “Look, we can go back to the boat and I’ll
contact a collector I know. He’s a reputable man - if he wants the
coin, he’ll pay a fair price for it.”

Niall nodded. “Referrals are of import in
the business of changing money.”

“
You better believe it.”
Derek flashed a smile at the still-rattled clerk. “I live and die
by my reputation every day.”

Niall’s gaze sharpened. “You are a
moneychanger?”

“
No, no. I’m a financial
analyst.” At Niall’s puzzled look, Derek explained. “I’m an
independent. I invest people’s money for them, manage their assets,
ensure that they make an nice profit or secure their retirement
funds.” He shrugged and grinned. “You could say that I’m a numbers
guy. I do the math.”

“
Ah!” Understanding dawned
on the other man’s face. “I also do the math.” He tapped his
temple. “’Tis my great gift.”

“
You have a gift with
numbers? You can do the math in your head?”

“
Aye. I had a patron once
who found this most useful and consigned me to the counting room.”
Niall shrugged and almost smiled. “It saved him much vellum and
spared him much cheating, though did little for my own
studies.”

“
I can imagine.” Derek
studied the other man with new eyes. A numbers guy. That was the
most interesting thing Derek had heard in quite a while. He was
always looking for new talent, someone to follow in his shoes, and
lately had been bending Paula’s ear about the sad state of the
education system.

“
Aye. Though as is the way
with most gifts, ’tis honed to a keen edge only by diligent
practice.”

Derek liked the sound of this better and
better. A numbers guy who wasn’t afraid to work. Now, there was a
novel proposition!

“
Hey, look, we’ve got to
talk. Why don’t you open an account here, just in case this all
goes through? Horace is pretty fond of just transferring funds.
Saves a lot of trouble.”

“
Ah!” Niall’s opinion of
the bank seemed much improved. “Is this facility associated with
the Templars? They are great facilitators of the transfer of coin
between realms.” He shook a finger at the bewildered clerk. “You
should have told me this sooner.”

“
I don’t think the Templars
are involved here,” Derek acknowledged as the clerk dropped a form
on the counter.

“
Perhaps the Hospitaliers,
then,” Niall acknowledged absently, gaze scanning the form. “Either
are equally adept, though I profess a fondness for the Templars.
’Tis more manly, in my estimation, to wage battle against the
infidel than to bind the wounds of the fallen.”

Fortunately, Derek was spared from
responding to that bit of oddness by Niall’s questioning of demands
of the form.

He didn’t have a speck of I.D., which
complicated things quite a bit. Derek refused to think too much
about why, because then he would have had to think about Niall’s
odd appearance and all of that was better left unexplored.

There was always a reasonable explanation,
for anything worth explaining. The guy must have left it somewhere
when he changed into his knight’s gear to stow away on the
sailboat. Yeah, he was one of those anachronism types, the ones who
dressed up in medieval gear and had fake battles, much like
Viviane. Obviously that was how they knew each other.

Perfectly reasonable. Derek reminded himself
that he liked people with a little bit more dimensionality, people
with interests outside of their work, no matter how weird those
interests were. Medieval dress-up might be strange, but it was
harmless.

Come to think of it, Paula had made a couple
of comments about how sexy Niall looked in his gear.

Sexy. Hmm.

Derek and the clerk exchanged a glance when
Niall professed his lack of drivers’ license, in silent agreement
that they not rile the bank’s new customer yet again. Derek
suggested they use Viviane’s address as Niall’s, which seemed to
only make sense. The clerk was visibly relieved by this suggestion
and took over the task of filling in the form for Niall.

He waved off the lack of drivers’ license,
saying he had only needed it for the address.

He was, though, not nearly so ready to
concede the matter of a social insurance number. Damn government,
with their fingers in every pie! Derek couldn’t see what the hell
difference it made, since Niall hadn’t a dime to put in the
account, but the clerk wasn’t backing down.

Niall looked more than willing to rumble. He
easily outweighed the little guy and was clearly all out of
patience for bank procedure.

Before he could question his impulse, Derek
grabbed the pen and counter-signed for Niall, personally vouching
for him as a respected bank customer. Effectively, it was his
account, though he insisted on giving Niall signature on it. The
clerk ceded on that, though unwillingly and only after checking
Derek’s balance on his other accounts.

They made a quick exit, by Derek’s plan. It
was definitely time to check out that coin.

Preferably elsewhere.

*

There was a little room in the sailing
vessel that Niall had not been privileged to see the previous day.
Ingenious slatted doors along one wall below the deck hid a desk
that had been built right into the wall. A swiveling chair was
tucked beneath, the desktop pulled out to make its surface larger.
Derek gestured to the gleaming boxes reposing in the hidden
space.

“
Fax, laptop, laser printer
- all the conveniences of home.” One slim box had a hinged lid,
which Niall noted when Derek opened it. The bottom of the box was
covered with buttons, each labeled with a letter, the top was a big
square. Derek pressed a button and Niall jumped at the note that
the box sang, his eyes widening in astonishment as the top box lit
up with color.

“
Yeah, it’s one of the new
Mac PowerBooks,” Derek said with a nod more fitting of a proud
papa. “Impresses the hell out of me every time I boot it up.
Beautiful display.” He recounted what were evidently statistics but
his words fell on deaf ears.

For Niall was marveling at the little
pictures. Derek steered a little arrow around somehow, his hands
moving so fast that Niall had a hard time seeing precisely what did
what. In a moment, there was a white box displayed and Derek was
hitting the little buttons in succession.

And words appeared in the white box. Niall
watched closely and realized that each button Derek struck put the
matching character on the white box.

’
Twas a marvel, but a
machine all the same.

Derek laughed beneath his breath. “Old hunt
and peck school, that’s me. You’d think after all these years, I’d
learn, but I never have. Drives Paula crazy.” He winked. “Maybe
that’s why I haven’t - this way, she does the lion’s share of my
typing.”

Niall smiled fleetingly at the older man’s
jest, his interest fixed by the words appearing on the screen.
’Twas a letter, as any fool could see. Derek was writing to one
Horace Thorogood, asking after his interest in gold coins. This
made good sense to Niall, though he acknowledged that ’twould be
inconvenient to be without coin until this Horace replied and any
transaction could be made.

It could take weeks, even if the
Hospitaliers transferred the funds.

But to Niall’s astonishment, when Derek
finished the letter, he pointed the tiny arrow at a little box
labeled “send”. The cabin filled with a series of tones that made
Niall jump and look around.

Derek laughed at his reaction. “Hey, this is
my
ship! All the bells and whistles and modcons. Paula’s
comments notwithstanding, I can’t be unconnected for weeks at a
time. There’s two phone lines here -” he looked up and Niall was
sure he looked suitably impressed “- and a sweet little dish on the
mast to get me onto the ’net.” He gestured at the box, which
displayed a dizzying array of messages. “Look, there it goes.”

Niall looked.

Message sent. Waiting for Reply.

Niall leaned closer, peeking around the back
of the box and finding naught but a few cables. Certainly no boy
had scooped up the missive and run with it, for there was no means
by which that could have been done without Niall seeing it. “I do
not understand how this message was dispatched.”

“
Don’t you use
e-mail?”

Niall shook his head.

“
Ah, well, you see, it’s
pretty simple stuff. Uses phone lines to relay messages, but a lot
quicker than actually talking on the phone.” Derek turned the
little box around, pointed to a variety of cables and quickly
explained matters, even taking Niall up on deck.

Niall did not follow all of the explanation,
though he understood that the little disk on the mast beamed the
message into the sky, from which another disk far way snatched it
up and passed it on, eventually to this Horace.

’
Twas a marvel.

And the work of man. Not magic, but
sophisticated machinery.

Not Avalon, but some place of man. Niall
looked around the harbor and wondered once more
precisely
where they were.

Fortunately he had a good idea where an
answer might be found.

“
Have you a map of this
place?” Niall asked, trying to keep the anticipation out of his
voice. “You must have need of one to guide this vessel through
these islands.”

“
Oh, yeah, regular mare’s
nest around here.” Derek led him back below and unrolled a map
across the top of a table. ’Twas intricately detailed, more
elaborate than any Niall had ever seen, with sweeping blue lines
all across it. Indeed, ’twas a thing of beauty, and as fascinating
as the one map Niall had seen before.

“
See here’s the prevailing
current.” Derek traced a line with his fingertip, explaining the
course he charted here in such detail that Niall was almost
immediately lost.

Niall’s ears pricked up only when he heard
the word ‘home.’

“
You do not live
here?”

“
No, no. Most of the year,
we’re down in the condo in Seattle. The sailboat is a summer
thing.”

“
Seattle?”

Derek tapped a town marked at the bottom of
this map, one that Niall hadn’t noticed before. “It’s a bit of a
haul, gotta cling to the coast a bit because I’m not the most
experienced sea captain going. I’d like to change that though, take
some time when we retire and really doing some sailing.” He looked
at Niall. “Course, I can’t retire until I find someone to take on
the business.”

“
Ah. An
apprentice.”

“
Right. A real numbers
guy.”

Derek paused and Niall realized that his
question had not been answered as yet. “Could you sail this craft
to England?”