Until Forever (21 page)

R
oseleen threw up her hands the moment she stepped into the tent and nearly shouted, “I’ve never seen anything so absurdly macho, so unnecessary, so—so
possessive
. Do you realize that Sir Reinard could have taken offense and challenged you on the spot?”

The fact that she’d had to wait so long to get this off her chest had merely added to her frustration and anger, instead of lessening it. But she hadn’t had a private moment with Thorn since the incident had occurred last night, or she would certainly have brought it up sooner.

It was now morning, the ships had sailed into Pevensey Bay without incident to land on the English shore, and the construction of an inner rampart inside the old Roman fort in order to fortify it had already begun. It was a wasted effort, as she could have told anyone who cared to listen, since it would soon be determined that Pevensey was too exposed and
the ships would shortly be sailing again eastward to Hastings.

But since that order hadn’t been given yet, tents were being erected, and she’d hurried Guy into erecting theirs even though she knew it wouldn’t be up long, just so she could tell Thorn what she thought of his macho demonstration last night. It was beside the point that she wouldn’t be so angry if that tense scene hadn’t frightened her because she’d expected swords to clash during it.

“You as much as threatened him,” she continued to upbraid him, as she paced back and forth in front of him. “You do realize that, don’t you? I’m surprised he
didn’t
challenge you.”

Thorn merely crossed his arms over his chest and replied in a tone that reeked with male confidence and certainty, “I would that he had, so be more surprised that I did not do the challenging myself.”

“But why?” she cried in exasperation. “All the man did was ask me to sit with him for the meal. You can’t get much more harmless than that. So tell me why you blew it all out of proportion?”

At that point, he growled, “Because I like it not that he is in love with you!”

That had her backing up and asking with a lot less heat, “How do you know that?”

“Guy told me that de Morville came to him daily to ask of your whereabouts the whole while we have been absent from this time. That speaks for itself, Roseleen, yet did Guy
make mention of the same suspicion. ’Twas necessary to show that lordling that you wouldst never be his.”

She had to allow he might be right in that respect. She wouldn’t like thinking of Sir Reinard pining away for her here in his time, once she’d returned to her own time. He would be long dead, of course, but then he really wouldn’t be, not with Blooddrinker’s Curse making him accessible at anytime.

But regardless of whether he should have been discouraged, she didn’t like the way Thorn had handled the situation, embarrassing both her and Sir Reinard. And that hadn’t been the only way he’d embarrassed her last night.

“All right, forget Sir Reinard for the moment,” she said testily. “Did you also
have
to tell the duke and everyone else within hearing that you’d been absent this last month because I was leading you on a merry chase around the neighboring countryside? You made it sound like a damn hunting expedition, with my being the hunted—”

“And caught—”

“Even worse!”

By now he was grinning and damn lucky there was nothing lying around the tent yet that she could hit him with. She recalled the duke had laughed. Sir Reinard had also heard the tale and looked utterly dejected. And she’d gone up in flames of embarrassment.

“Lord William required a reason for my absence,” he reminded her, still grinning. “Ver
ily, did I think that an excellent one, inasmuch as he would remember my other self asking him of you. And you
have
been caught, Roseleen, well and truly—”

“The devil I have. And that’s not why you used me as an excuse. You did it solely for Sir Reinard’s benefit, just to rub it in some more that he wouldn’t stand a chance with me as long as you were around.”

“Nay, he understood that well enough already. That excuse was for your benefit.”

“Mine?” she gasped incredulously. “How do you possibly figure that?”

“How do you not see it, when all others there saw it clearly? Even de Morville understood I was admitting my love for you.”

The hot steam just got knocked clean out of her. In fact, Roseleen suddenly felt like crying, hearing that. Instead, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him for all she was worth. She wouldn’t make a similar profession of love, no matter how much she ached to say the words. It would be too hard then to explain why she was going to send him away later. It would be infinitely better if he didn’t think her heart had become involved.

But just now—just now she loved him so much, and the only way she could express it was this way. And he didn’t need much encouragement to respond in a like manner—no, not any at all. Within seconds, he had borne them both to the floor of the tent, his
hands moving over her in a slightly rough manner, testament to the fire she’d ignited.

It was more passion than he’d ever released before, and she was more than receptive to it, too inflamed already to feel anything but the aching need to join with him immediately. And he was apparently of a like mind.

Their clothing probably suffered some rips in his impatience to get rid of it. She didn’t hear or care. Each bit of his skin that was revealed to her, she kissed, caressed, or raked her teeth over. She made him groan. He made her tremble. And when he entered her…

It was over as quickly as it had begun, hard, fast, and incredibly explosive. Coming back to earth, Roseleen felt a bit like a tornado had just run over her. She almost laughed aloud. She had wondered once about Thorn’s ability to keep his emotions under strict control. Well, she was kind of pleased to find he didn’t
always
have that ability.

“Does this mean I am forgiven for whatever you
think
I did wrong?”

She opened her eyes to find him looking down at her, his expression full of male satisfaction and the knowledge that he’d curled her toes big time. So she perversely said, “Not exactly. I’ll get back to your weird way of telling me that you—well, what you said. This was simply because I really couldn’t keep my hands off you any longer.”

He laughed. “Then mayhap I should distract you a little longer.”

“Well…” She grinned back at him. “You
can give it your best shot, and we’ll see what happens.”

He did, and it was a very long while before she thought about anything other than pleasure.

“I
have noted, more often than not, that you like this time in your history.”

Thorn’s offhand remark immediately caught Roseleen’s attention. They had just finished eating a hastily prepared meal, and she was feeling well-sated in all respects. She’d even been thinking about a nap before the ships sailed again.

“Fascinated would more aptly describe how I feel about it,” she said, then joked, “But let’s face it, there is much to be said for modern plumbing.”

He smiled, though it was doubtful he caught her meaning. And she couldn’t remember if she’d explained much about plumbing to him, or at least that toilets were a benefit of it. But now her curiosity was aroused by his remark, or rather, what had prompted it.

“Why do you mention it?” she asked him.

“Because we need not return to your time. We can stay in this time—if you like.”

The moment he said it, her heart leaped with excitement, and for a number of reasons. They really
could
stay in the Middle Ages. She hadn’t even considered it before. But it was possible.

If they did, she could continue her research firsthand. They could even make a trip to, say, the eighteenth century, to get her book published once it was finished. But since women rarely got published before the nineteenth century, at least not if their work was of a serious nature, her book probably wouldn’t come out under her own name, but nonetheless it would be published. And at least in an earlier century, she wouldn’t have to worry about verifying the sources of the information she had gathered here. Books had simply been published in those days, without lawyers nitpicking over them.

Yes, it was possible, but what excited her even more was that she could then keep Thorn.

Here in this antiquated world, he could be happy. And she would be happy wherever he was. And what, actually, would she be giving up by staying here? She could still visit her friends thanks to the sword. Her career—well, that would be hard, yes. She’d worked most of her life to attain the position she had. And she would miss teaching. But when she weighed that against staying with Thorn for the rest of her life, well, he won hands down.

“We could build a fine home here,” Thorn added when she made no response. “There will be grants of land when William has secured England for his own.”

“Yes, I know, William was very generous to his supporters.” And then she laughed, her delight bubbling over. “I’m amazed I didn’t think of—”

She stopped and even groaned, as the one thing that threw a wrench in that wonderful idea suddenly occurred to her. Hadn’t she already concluded that time traveling was too risky, because they could effect changes in the natural order of things without even realizing it?

Here they were, trying to right something that had gone wrong, and every day they remained here, something else could end up changing because of them. To stay here permanently would almost guarantee that they’d alter all kinds of things, and she couldn’t take that responsibility upon herself, not even to keep Thorn.

“What is wrong?” he asked, his hand reaching across the space that separated them to caress her cheek.

She felt like crying, but she wouldn’t put that burden on him. Instead, she took his fingers and kissed them, and somehow managed a smile for him.

“Nothing,” she lied. “It was a nice idea, but of course, unrealistic. We’d end up changing more things, destroying more lives without
even realizing it, and that’s something my conscience couldn’t bear up under.”

He sighed. “Verily, did I know you wouldst say that. But have you considered that you are meant to stay here?”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Because of the sword, you are here. Who is to say that is not as it should be?”

She shook her head. “I’m here by
unnatural
means, and that can’t be as it should be. Besides, if I stayed, I’d have to go back often just to make sure I’m not changing things, and if I find that I am…I don’t care to be fixing things like this the rest of my life.”

“But if you found nothing changed when you returned,” he pointed out, “would you then agree that you are meant to stay in this time?”

Now she sighed. His persistence meant he really wanted this, yet how could she possibly agree?

“Let me give you an example of what you’re suggesting. Say we stay here for a year and go back periodically to make sure we’re not hurting anything by staying. We find everything okay and think we’re safe to remain here. We check again the next year, and then the next, and still, everything’s fine. But then ten years down the road, or even twenty, we suddenly find something really wrong.

“It would be almost impossible at that point to figure out what had happened to change things, when we’re talking about a long stretch of years where the change could have
occurred at any time during that period. And if we determine at that point that we can’t stay here any longer, how can I go back to my time and resume my life there, when I will have aged ten or twenty years here? And you can’t get us back to ten or twenty years later in my time, where I could maybe claim amnesia or something to account for being missing so long, because the sword can only return us to its present time. Do you get my point?”

“Aye, though I could wish it had not occurred to you,” he replied.

To be honest, she wished it hadn’t either.

S
hooting down such a nice idea sort of put a damper on their moods for the next few days. And then there was an encounter with Sir John du Priel that only reinforced Roseleen’s conclusions that history shouldn’t be revisited other than through normal means, in books or films.

They had assumed—or rather, Roseleen had concluded—that Thorn had effected the change that had caused the Vikings to defeat Harold Godwineson instead of William, because Thorn had gotten Sir John drunk enough that he missed his opportunity to get the truth out of the English spy the next morning before the spy was killed. That they had been able to fix that change supported her conclusion. Yet they were wrong. Thorn had had nothing to do with it. She kicked herself for not having realized that the other Thorn was a part of the original process of history that had created her time, the 1990s,
and therefore could not have caused the discrepancy. This time traveling certainly was rattling her. She vowed to make a better effort to stay cool, calm, collected, and logical.

Sir John came aboard the
Mora
one day to confer with William, and as he was leaving, he noticed Thorn on the deck with Roseleen and came over to him to ask, “You left ere the thieves showed up in the hostelry in Dives that morning, did you not? I recall seeing you there the evening before.”

“I must have,” Thorn replied carefully. “There was a robbery?”

“Aye, though a botched one in my case. I dispatched both of the ruffians who thought to set upon me in my sleep. They were no match for a knight.”

Roseleen had to wonder if Thorn had also been attacked early that morning originally, when he had been in Sir John’s place because he got him drunk, but had never mentioned it to her. She couldn’t very well ask him in front of Sir John.

“’Tis fortunate you did not overindulge the night before,” Roseleen remarked to Sir John, while she gave Thorn a see-didn’t-I-warn-you look. “You could have been seriously hurt by those thieves as well as robbed if you had been taken unawares in the common room.”

But Sir John disabused her of that notion quick enough. “Nay, lady, ’tis to my fortune that I am well-trained to rouse at the first sound of armed combat, whether I am in a stupor or nay. Yet the common room was not
disturbed that morning. Only those abiding upstairs were set upon and robbed. Though one of the two thieves who thought to do me ill revealed ere I dispatched him that it would have been otherwise.”

“Otherwise?” She frowned.

Sir John nodded. “’Twas mischief long in the planning apparently. The intent had been to rob the entire hostelry, common room as well as those sleeping above. Yet their leader was sore injured earlier that morning. Some knight had clouted him good when he and his cohorts attempted to molest some wench. But without the leader, the rest decided to avoid open combat in the common room, and just rob those few customers still asleep upstairs. Those in the common room were not disturbed by it.”

Roseleen groaned inwardly. In other words, Thorn hadn’t changed things at all. Had that morning gone as it was supposed to, the common room would have been set upon as well, and Sir John would have been roused to defend himself, and probably sobered up enough afterward to make that morning interrogation as he was supposed to.

They had corrected the change by getting Sir John upstairs, yet the change hadn’t been caused by Thorn, it had been caused by her. And the look Thorn was now giving her said so.
She
had caused the change when she’d left Thorn’s tent, and run into those ruffian-thieves who’d attempted to rape her. Because of her, their leader had been injured and so
their plans had been altered, leaving Sir John sleeping blissfully unaware in his drunken stupor in the common room, well past noon, so that he had missed his chance to get the truth out of the English spy.

And they hadn’t put the course of events back to exactly the way it had happened originally, but getting John back upstairs and preventing him from getting drunk had given them the same end result at least. Thank heavens for that.

Sir John and Thorn exchanged a few more words about the incident and thieves in general. But the moment the knight left them, Roseleen beat Thorn to any blame-casting.

“All right, so that altered history wasn’t your fault, it was mine, but it doesn’t change the fact that everything I’ve said is true,” she told him. “Our presence here, mine in particular, obviously, changes things. So we need to leave here as
soon
as we find out how to fix this new change—if we can find out,” she amended with a sigh. “I still can’t imagine what went wrong this time, or why. But hopefully you’ll be able to figure it out on the day of the battle.

“By the way,
were
you attacked that morning by those thieves—originally?” she asked him.

“Aye,” he replied. “And likely by the same two that bedeviled Sir John.”

“Why didn’t you mention something that important when we first discussed this?”

“Important? Nay, ’tis too common an occur
rence in these times, to give it importance. I did not even recall the incident, until Sir John mentioned it.”

“I suppose you also dispatched both of the thieves that set upon you?”

“Certainly.” His look and tone said she needn’t have asked.

She sighed. “I guess it’s just as well you didn’t mention it, or I might have drawn still another conclusion that wouldn’t have gotten things fixed quite so easily. That they
were
fixed is all that counts. And with a little luck, which we’re due, this other matter with the arrows can be fixed too.”