One Magic Moment

by Lynn Kurland

  It was a paranormal oddity that would have sent his eldest brother Robin into fits they would have all heard about for months.

  “Interested in this sort of thing?” Stephen de Piaget, future sitter on Rhys de Piaget’s family seat murmured politely.

  John only nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak and not blurt out something he would regret. In truth, it was all he could do simply to remain seated there and project an aura of calm.

  He’d known it would happen sooner or later, that encountering someone from home. He’d just never expected it to be in conjunction with the pursuit of a woman he truly wanted nothing further to do with—

  He took a deep breath and shook his head mentally at his ability to lie to himself. It wasn’t that he didn’t want anything to do with her.

  It wasn’t that at all.

  He looked up at her standing behind the lectern, her dark hair pulled back in her usual business chignon, her too-thin frame clothed in a skirt and conservative dark sweater. All she lacked was a pair of librarian’s glasses perched on her nose to look the part of a university fixture.

  He wondered how old she was. His age, perhaps, or a bit younger. He also wanted to know where she’d been born, what her youth had been like, why she had decided to come to England where she had attracted the gaze of the Earl of Sedgwick, planted herself in that castle, then found her way to his shop where he had stood in the shadows, laid eyes on her, and found himself utterly and completely lost.

  He’d never believed in love at first sight.

  Before.

  He turned away from that thought as quickly as possible and settled for simply watching the girl lecturing up there on the stage as if she truly knew what she was talking about—which, he discovered after only a few minutes, she most definitely did. She was discussing the politics of medieval England as if she’d been privy to the king’s councils, dissecting the skirmishes of the time period as if they’d been a chess game and she a master of the art.

  Very well, so he hadn’t stopped to think that there was a reason she’d earned her degrees at such a young age. He had assumed they were of a less taxing nature. Humanities, perhaps, or music appreciation.

  “She’s brilliant,” Stephen de Piaget said, “isn’t she?”

  John nodded, because he could readily hear that for himself.

  “B.A. in art history,” Stephen murmured. “Her masters in Old and Middle English, and her PhD in Medieval Political Thought. I have often told her she was born in the wrong century.”

  “If she’d been born in medieval times, they likely wouldn’t have allowed her any education at all,” John said, before he thought better of it.

  “Sadly enough, I imagine that’s true,” Stephen agreed. “Unless perhaps she’d been born to a more enlightened sort of man.”

  John didn’t dare comment. His father had certainly been that sort of enlightened man, for his daughters had been subjected to the same rigorous education his sons had. John merely nodded, hoping Stephen would take the hint and leave him alone. Whatever else they did there at Artane, they apparently still taught the lords’ sons manners. Stephen sat back and remained blessedly silent for the rest of the lecture, most of which John didn’t hear.

  He was too busy trying to breathe normally.

  ’Twas madness. He had his life, his discreet, private life where he controlled any and all access to anything he could do and anyone he might have been. What he wanted was to go back to that life and—

  He had to take another deep breath. Nay, as difficult to admit as it was, he feared going back to that safe life was becoming less possible by the moment. He had stepped out of what was comfortable, not the first day when he’d taken Tess her credit card, but the next day when he’d taken out a business card and written Studio Five’s address on the back. Though he wished he could say otherwise, the writing down of that address hadn’t been a random thing; it had been a purposeful, deliberate, absolutely deranged decision, but he’d made it just the same.

  Because he’d wanted to see her again.

  He couldn’t blame Tess because he was uncomfortable. He was, after all, the one who’d opened the damned door and pulled her inside. In a manner of speaking.

  But that didn’t mean he was obligated to sit and converse with Stephen de Piaget any longer than he had to. The moment Tess finished and the applause died off, he rose, turned to Stephen, and inclined his head.

  “Thank you for the seat, my lord.”

  Stephen rose as well. “We missed you at supper last night.”

  “I didn’t want to intrude.”

  Stephen looked at him from gray eyes that were the mirror of his own. “I have no designs on her, old man.”

  “Neither do I,” John said, though it sounded hollow to his own ears.

  Stephen pursed his lips, then leaned in slightly. “Hurt her and I’ll kill you.”

  “Thank you, my lord.”

  “And stop lying to yourself, you wee git,” Stephen said in disgust.

  John felt his mouth fall open. Stephen flashed him a brief smile that made him look so much like Robin, John almost flinched. He suffered Stephen’s hand clapping him rather more firmly than necessary on his shoulder before Stephen picked up his portfolio and threaded his way through the remaining students to the front of the hall. John watched him shake Tess’s hand very professionally, lean in and say something, then start toward the front door of the hall.

  John found himself the recipient of a final look he didn’t mistake for anything but warning. He nodded in acknowledgment of the threat, then happily watched the last of Stephen disappear through the door. He found himself a bit of wall to lean back against so he could wait until the last of the students had gone and Tess was alone.

  He walked to the front whilst she was gathering her notes and stowing them in a backpack that had obviously seen a great deal of use. He would have mistaken her for a student if he hadn’t known better. Or at least he would have until he was standing five feet from her and she lifted her head and looked at him.

  Then he mistook her for nothing but a goddess.

  His first instinct was to bolt. After all, despite what it meant for his future happiness, he had resolved never to entangle himself in any sort of permanent arrangement with a Future girl.

  He suppressed the urge to sigh. He certainly wasn’t in the market for a wife, but he also couldn’t imagine beginning a relationship with the woman in front of him that ended with a casual word and a wave as he walked away. The saints pity him, he was a fool.

  He woke to find her standing directly in front of him and he couldn’t remember having seen her move.

  “Too many deep thoughts, John de Piaget?”

  “Only about lunch,” he said, desperate not to talk about anything more serious. He stepped back and made her a little bow. “After you, Dr. Alexander.”

  She frowned at him, but said nothing. He followed her silently up the way between the chairs until they reached the doors. He caught her hand before she reached for one of them, then opened the door for her. She looked up at him.

  “Your chivalry is showing.”

  He took a deep breath. “I’m trying to be nicer about it.”

  She leaned against the opposite door and looked up at him. “Why?”

  He suppressed the urge to say something off-putting, though he supposed it would have been the safer course of action. He ruthlessly squelched the urge to flee. He was—or had been—a knight of the realm with spurs on his heels that hadn’t been put there out of pity. He had faced sterner tests than simply being pleasant to a woman who stole his breath every time he looked at her.

  But he also couldn’t blurt out that he wanted to be nicer to her because he didn’t want her to dislike him. He considered a bit longer, then leaned against the opposite doorframe.

  “I’m trying,” he said, taking another in an endless series of deep, steadying breaths, “because you deserve it.”

  “But you said you didn’t
want to see me again.”

  “I also said I could be a bit of an arse.”

  She looked up at him, smiled faintly, and walked away. “So you did.”

  He caught up with her and only had to stop her at one more door before she seemed willing to allow him to ply a bit of chivalry on her.

  He saw her into his car, then took a fortifying breath or two as he rounded the boot. Perhaps it was just best to not think about anything at all unless it had to do with lunch.

  He avoided the trendiest of the pubs near the university and headed instead for the most rustic. He supposed he was eventually going to give himself away as something he didn’t want to if he didn’t stop gravitating to things that were old. He found the nearest car park, then surrendered to the thought of dings on a car he should have left at home.

  He ploughed through lunch, because there was literally nothing that put him off his food, then looked up and realized Tess was not as enthusiastic about her meal. He stopped with his fork halfway to his mouth.

  “Not good?”

  “It’s delicious.”

  He frowned. “You’re not one of those prissy women who won’t eat something that’s put in front of them just to impress a date, are you?”

  “No, I’m one of those who doesn’t like to waste the hardearned money of men who take me out to lunch,” she said shortly, “which is why I didn’t order all that much.”

  “I was going to talk to you about that.”

  She started to glare at him, then she smiled, apparently quite reluctantly. “Is this the new you who’s nicer to me?”

  He finished the last pair of bites on his plate, then had a long sip of some nonalcoholic rot before he looked at her.

  “I’m not off to a very good start with it, am I?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “You’ve held open all the doors for me today.”

  “That seems a paltry offering.”

  She leaned back and stirred honey into her tea. “Then what else do you have in mind? The divulging of uncomfortable personal details?”

  “Nothing so interesting,” he said quickly, lest she think too much about the former. “Let’s talk about you instead. How did you come by Sedgwick?”

  She lifted a perfectly arched eyebrow. “Thinking to make me an offer for it?”

  “Saints, nay,” he said without thinking, realizing only as he’d said it that he’d blurted it out in French. He decided without hesitation that the only thing he could do was pretend he hadn’t heard himself.

  Coming to Cambridge had been a terrible idea.

  “You aren’t going to leave me here, are you?”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “Your keys are in your hand.”

  He realized with a start that they were. He took a deep breath, then let it out whilst he put his keys back in his pocket where they belonged. Then he looked for something to say to explain the action he hadn’t realized he’d taken, but latched upon nothing but the truth.

  She frightened the hell out of him.

  She set her spoon down. “I was at a conference,” she said, as if nothing untoward had just happened, “and Lord Roland came up to me after my presentation and asked if I’d like a tour of his castle.”

  “The bloody lecher,” John managed.

  She laughed a little. “He was—is, actually—every day of eighty, so I wasn’t imagining he had anything lecherous in mind. I did take a friend, if you’re curious—”

  “I was,” he said.

  “And the minute I walked inside the front gates—” She took a sip of her tea. “Well, it was love at first sight. It isn’t an enormous keep, I suppose, like Artane or Windsor, but I think it’s beautiful. I understand Roland’s ancestor, Lord Darling, did extensive renovations to it in the nineteenth century.”

  He flinched at the name of his father’s hall, but he supposed she hadn’t noticed it. “Did he?” he asked. “Clever man.”

  “Lord Darling had purchased it from the last of the Sedgwick family,” she continued, “and for a song, or so I understand. Wrested the title to it away from the crown, as well. I don’t think the seventeenth century had been particularly kind to the inhabitants of the keep. Politics and all that, I imagine.”

  “I daresay,” he said. He couldn’t have said he’d done any research into Sedgwick or its inhabitants, but he’d done more than his share of reading about the history that didn’t concern his family. He could say with complete sincerity that he’d been more than happy to leap over the centuries and miss several unpleasant things. The Black Death, Henry the VIII, the absolute boredom of Regency manners and mores to name just a few. If he’d had to put on a cravat and limit his activities to hunting and drinking, he would have gone mad.

  “And so the next thing I knew,” she said. “I had the big brass key to the front door and knew the secret of dropping the portcullises.”

  “It seems a fitting thing for you to own,” he said politely, “given your obvious knowledge of medieval England.”

  “Thank you,” she said, blushing slightly. “I try to be as accurate as possible.”

  “You were—” He shut his mouth with a snap. “I thought you sounded as if you knew what you were talking about,” he amended quickly. “For all I know about it.”

  “What’s your degree in?” she asked.

  “Life,” he said without hesitation. “I was, ah, privately tutored for most of my youth. By the time I left home, I had other interests than University.” He paused. “I read a bit now and then.”

  “Your time has been well spent, then.”

  “As has yours.”

  She laughed briefly. “You’re being excessively polite. And don’t say I had best enjoy it while it lasts.”

  He leaned his elbows on the table. He wanted to ask her why she found herself in England, but he suspected it might have been Fate getting involved, but he wouldn’t have said that if tongs destined for his tender flesh had been warming in the fire. The thought that he could have ignored his first instinct and thereby passed on the garage, or she could have decided that French literature had been more to her taste and wound up in Paris—

  He realized she was holding out her hand.

  He reached out to take her hand only to find he was holding his keys in that hand. He met her eyes.

  “Old habits die hard.”

  “Have you bolted often in the past?”

  He opened his mouth to tell her it was none of her business what he’d done in the past, but the words disappeared almost before he could think them—certainly long before he even thought to blurt them out. He looked at his keys, then very deliberately put them into her hand. He folded her fingers around them, rested his hand on hers for an excruciatingly brief moment, then pulled away before he did something monumentally stupid. He wasn’t sure what it would have been, but he supposed the list of possibilities was very long indeed.

  “We could go,” she said, very quietly. “If you need to.”

  “Nay,” he said quickly and perhaps with a bit more force than necessary. “Nay,” he repeated, then realized he was again falling back into habits he’d thought he’d long since rid himself of. Third bloody time was a charm, or so they said. “No,” he managed. “I am well.”

  “Sure.”

  He looked at her. “You bother me.”

  “I’m not trying to.”

  “I’m not complaining, though that might not be as clear as it should be.”

  She smiled and put his keys on the table well out of his reach. “I won’t ask you anything else personal today, which I’m sure will just glue you to your seat. Have I told you that I have a beauty queen for a sister?”

  He had to agree that she hadn’t, but he invited her to do so at length. He spent the rest of an hour, when he could do something besides stare at her by the light from the window and wonder why it hurt his heart to do so, asking her about herself. He heard tales of her five sisters, her parents who had stopped just short of ti
edyeing themselves, and her time at her aunt’s house where she had learned to pull weeds with vigor and love the austere self-discipline her aunt distilled upon everything within her reach.

  “Why England?” he asked finally, because she had his keys and he thought he could bear to hear how close he had come to never having clapped eyes on her.

  “Castles,” she said without hesitation. “Grooves in stairs where scores of feet have gone up and down them millions of times. Rocks that are covered with history.”

  “And the grubby leavings from fingers of Year Five boys on school outings,” he said with a snort.

  She smiled. “You’re a cynic.”

  “Realist.”

  “Why are you in England?”

  He blinked. “Because I am an Englishman.”

  She leaned her head back against the pub bench. “You are full of national pride.”

  “Do you have none?” he asked.

  “Oh, I do,” she answered easily. “I’m a Yank, through and through.”

  “Despite your rather crisp consonants and lovely vowels.”

  She smiled, one of the truer smiles he’d ever had from her. “Thank you. I’ve tried to mitigate the effects of a brush with a Midwest twang.”

  He felt himself relaxing—an alarming realization in and of itself—and thought that perhaps he shouldn’t relax too much. There was no way to predict what sorts of perils he would plunge himself into if he did. He looked at his watch. “Shall we go?”

  “If you like.”

  He didn’t, but he was a realist. Too much more time sitting companionably with her and he would be letting things slip he didn’t want to.

  He walked with her out to the car, took his keys from her and saw her inside, then drove her to her mate’s house where she collected her things. He put them in the boot of his car with his own he’d packed earlier from his hotel, then slid in under the wheel and was very grateful he was driving and not looking forward to several days’ worth of travel to get to Sedgwick.

  He was also happy to do nothing but drive until they were on the motorway. It never ceased to amaze him how easily a car with a bit of horsepower could accelerate to speeds he never would have dreamed of in his youth. More amazing still that he could be the master of that car and those speeds.