by Lynn Kurland
By every blessed saint in heaven, he’d just become everything he despised most in the world.
11
Jessica sat in the alcove, stared out the window, and came to a simple conclusion:
Medieval England was giving her a headache.
First she’d banged her head on a rock after going sailing off Richard’s horse. Then she’d had that lovely little thump from the thugs on her last foray on Richard’s horse. Then had come the skewering of her head on Richard’s spurs the night before.
And to think she had thought New York was dangerous.
She didn’t have a mirror, so she couldn’t tell if her pupils were fixed thanks to a concussion, but sleep had been impossible, so she hadn’t been all that worried about it. She’d had too much on her mind—such as her immediate future, which should have been several centuries in the past. Her life had been irrevocably changed, and if that wasn’t a bone to gnaw on for more than a single night, she didn’t know what was.
She should have been home, working on a symphony. She should have been worrying about what to wear to the premiere. She should have been worrying about the health risks of too much junk food and whether or not her workout shoes should have been the straight aerobic type or perhaps a cross-trainer instead.
She paused. That, at least, was one dilemma solved at present. The only shoes she would be looking at were the handmade leather kind. No swooshes or stripes to adorn this footwear.
She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the tears that leaked out and practically froze on her cheeks in the stiff breeze. Her mother would be beside herself. Jessica had the feeling her brother and sister would have only spared her a brief thought before concentrating their considerable energies on figuring how her portion of the inheritance could be divided up between them. For them at least, this would not be a tragedy. But her mother had suffered so much already with the passing of Jessica’s father. Jessica didn’t want to think about what this would do to her. She already knew what it was doing to her own self and that wasn’t pleasant.
She turned her face from the window and looked at Richard’s bedroom. This was not how she was supposed to live out her life. Surely Fate—and she wished she’d been on more than a nodding acquaintance with it—had other things in store for her than life with a grumpy medieval lord who apparently didn’t like her very much.
His kiss aside, of course.
Then again, he hadn’t seemed too happy about that either.
She wasn’t even sure Hugh’s place was the answer anyway. Who knew if there was a gate there back to her time? For all she knew, the place didn’t matter. Maybe she needed a magic word, or a key phrase. For all she knew, she needed ruby slippers and it was for damn sure she wasn’t going to find any of those lying around in Richard’s bedroom.
Getting back to Merceham was proving to be almost an impossibility anyway. After being ambushed by less-than-friendly travelers, she was convinced she probably wouldn’t make it there on her own—never mind her clever disguise. Richard didn’t seem too eager to go back there. She wondered if there were any others passing through who might give her a lift.
The king? She turned that thought over in her mind. Maybe he might be heading that way eventually. It was worth looking into.
Or maybe Richard would take her when his hall was further along. She couldn’t blame his anxiousness, especially if he needed a place to put his men over the winter. Maybe if she went out of her way to help him, he might feel obligated to return the favor and take her all the way back to Merceham.
Assuming it would be worth the trip.
She stood suddenly to shake off her doubts. The only thing that got her was a head rush that almost sent her sprawling over the windowsill and out the window. She put her hands on the stone and remained motionless until the nausea passed. What she really needed was a few days without any bodily damage. Maybe then she would be able to figure out once and for all what she was going to do. Then, too, perhaps she could face the fact that she might very well be stuck in medieval England for the rest of her life.
And that was a thought she just couldn’t contemplate right then.
But she couldn’t deny that for the foreseeable future she was probably trapped where she was. She would just have to get on with her life. She would, however, be avoiding any more human-rights discussions with Richard. Apparently he was very touchy about that kind of thing. It must have been a medieval mystery. She had no desire to become more acquainted with the particulars of it, just in case he decided that she would be better off in the fields than in his bedroom. She’d spent the night in a peasant’s hut and she had no desire to repeat the experience.
No, she would just have to make the best of it. She would make a list of things to do; that would make her feel as if she weren’t wasting her time. Maybe there was a reason for her to be in the year 1260. And if there wasn’t, so what? She was a composer, for heaven’s sake. She had the creativity to make something up.
Maybe she could subtly nudge Richard’s view of his peasants a little more to the humane side. She could plan his hall for him. She could probably also teach him a few manners so when he actually found someone to marry, he wouldn’t scare the poor girl off in the first ten minutes. That seemed the least she could do for his posterity’s sake.
And maybe she could find a lute or one of those period instruments she had diligently avoided studying in her music-history classes. She frowned. Was this recompense for having vowed never to pick one up when there were modern instruments all around her, ready to be played?
She was beginning to wonder if Fate was dressed in medieval garb. It certainly seemed to have a fondness for the period.
And other than trying to ply her trade in the current day, she would just have to bide her time and keep her options open. Who knew whom she might run into? If she had traveled through time, who was to say others hadn’t as well?
Now there was a thought that bore some more examination.
But maybe later, she decided as the door to the bedroom opened and Richard stepped inside. He set down a platter of food on the table and busied himself with rebuilding the fire she couldn’t remember having let go out. Once he was finished with that bit of business, he drew up a chair and sat down, all without saying a word. The only other thing he did was to take the knife from his belt and lay it on the table.
Jessica sat where she was until the silence began to get to her. It wasn’t as if she was unaccustomed to the silent treatment—giving or taking it—but that had been something she’d usually indulged in with her younger sister. It was quite another thing to do it with a man you really didn’t know all that well and what you knew of him suggested he might not be all that receptive to it.
Then again, she wasn’t all that sure she wanted to make the first move. Though it wasn’t his fault she’d fallen, he had frightened her badly. It wasn’t something she wanted him to get into the habit of doing.
Her bladder set up a clamor eventually and she decided that perhaps a little trip to the powder room was in order. It was always a good time-out break on blind dates. She had the feeling it would work just as well here.
But to get to the bathroom, she’d need to get out of the room and that would take a key. Jessica looked Richard over and found it, unsurprisingly, loitering on his belt. Well, medieval life was obviously not for the faint of heart. Taking her courage in hand, she left the shelter of the alcove and crossed the room. She picked Richard’s knife up off the table.
She turned to face him, pointed the knife meaningfully at him, and held out her hand.
“Key,” she said.
“Take it,” he said, looking up at her with his pale eyes. “I won’t fight you.”
“Well,” she said, somewhat taken aback at his willingness to cooperate, “that’s a good thing. I could really do you some damage with this, you know.”
“Could you?”
“Hrumph,” she said, deciding that pleading the Fifth wouldn’t mean an
ything to him, but there was no sense in volunteering any more than she had to. She pulled the key from his belt and crossed the room. She heard Richard rise and follow her. “I can do this on my own,” she said, trying to fit the key into the lock.
“It’s open, Jessica.”
Well, that was simple enough. She pulled the door open and walked across the landing to the garderobe. She shut the door and took care of business as quickly as possible. This was not a place she wanted to linger. She’d been in worse bathrooms—Penn Station, for instance. If she stayed for any length of time at all, she would have to do something about the conditions.
She opened the door to find Richard leaning back against his bedroom door, apparently waiting for her. His clothes were rumpled and his hair mussed, as if he’d been dragging his hands through it for hours. It was almost enough to entice her to hold out an olive branch, but her head still hurt and that took care of that impulse.
“I’m going to eat,” she announced, “then be on my way.” She looked closely for his reaction. Maybe he would want her out of his hair so badly, he’d let her try one more time.
He only shook his head. “Nay.”
“I want to go.”
“Go where, Jessica?”
“Home.”
He hesitated, then shook his head. “I can’t let you,” he said quietly. “You’ve seen a small portion of what you might face, but you don’t know the true dangers. I do.”
Well, there was no sense in beating around the bush any longer. “And those dangers are worse than what I might face here?”
That was a direct hit. She actually saw him flinch. He looked away.
“Trust me,” he said flatly. “They’re much worse.”
She almost relented then. She didn’t think she owed him an apology, apart from swiping his horse a few times, but all the same she felt a twinge of regret. Surely he hadn’t meant to get so angry—
She stopped herself before she went any further down that path. If he couldn’t control himself, then that was his problem, not hers, and it wasn’t up to her to make excuses for him. It was his job to be groveling, not hers. She looked away.
“I would like to eat alone.”
The next thing she knew, she had her wish. He stepped aside and opened the door for her. Then he closed her inside the room.
The key turned in the lock.
Jessica gritted her teeth. Wonderful. Prisoner of a foul-tempered lout who obviously had no experience with apologizing. Yes, her wishing had certainly set her up with a prince all right.
Well, the door might have been locked, but at least Richard was gone.
Why, then, did the room feel suddenly empty?
• • •
Richard spent the day going about his business, but concentrating on none of it. All he could see in his mind was his damnable spurs hanging on the bedpost, mocking him. He had passed the night before on the landing outside with his ear pressed to the wood. He’d toyed with the idea of going inside to make sure Jessica hadn’t thrown herself from the window, but he hadn’t wanted to frighten her the more. Hopefully his one small act of chivalry wouldn’t go unrewarded.
Supper was the second of his offerings for peace. He had no idea how to placate a woman, but he knew if it had been him, he would have looked kindly on whoever saw to filling his belly.
Not that the affair was entirely his fault, he reminded himself quickly. Jessica had babbled on far past the time when she should have fallen silent. He would speak to her about that.
Once she was speaking to him willingly again, of course.
He entered the chamber as darkness fell and set the platter of food he bore down by the hearth. He saw again to the rebuilding of the fire, then sat down and waited.
Jessica was in the alcove, staring out over the sea. Richard envied her even that brief view, for ’twas his only pleasure. His envying didn’t last long, for she quickly shut the window and came to sit down across from him at the table. Her eyes widened in surprise.
“What happened?” she asked, pointing at his arm.
Richard looked down, then remembered. “A mishap training,” he said. He vaguely remembered John seeing to the wound. He’d suffered worse. “A scratch.”
She didn’t look all that convinced, but perhaps men in the future didn’t fight as they did at present. The future. He could scarce give credence to the thought and he certainly had no intention of voicing the word, but he supposed he could chew on the idea silently for a time until he had come to a final decision on Jessica’s sanity. And even though he wasn’t certain he believed her tale entirely, he was willing to give it time and see if her words bore themselves out.
Dinner was a less-than-pleasant event for him. Every time he moved his arm he felt pain shoot up into his neck. Perhaps he should have had it tended. It hadn’t seemed a very severe wound at the time, merely an annoyance.
“Don’t you have anything you can take for that?”
Richard looked up to find Jessica studying him intently. “Take?” he echoed.
“For the pain,” she said.
Ah, that he could. He shook his head. “’Tis nothing.”
“It looks like it hurts. Do you have any wine?”
Now that was an opening he hadn’t expected. He certainly had no intention—well, at least not much of one—of apologizing, for ’twas a certainty that he hadn’t pushed her into his spurs. Besides, she had brought his anger on herself with her incessant harping upon his supposed faults.
Then again, he was indirectly responsible for that discoloration on the side of her face.
He scowled fiercely. Damned annoying chivalry. What else would it demand of his sorry self before it was finished with him?
“Wine?” Jessica prompted.
“Ah, wine,” he said, sitting back slowly. He couldn’t look her in the face, so he turned and looked into the fire. “I never drink it,” he said quietly.
She was, blessedly, silent.
And Richard found himself wishing that she would just fill up the emptiness of the room with some of her future chatter.
Well, none seemed to be forthcoming, so he pressed on.
“My father, however, never stopped,” he said. He took another deep breath and prayed he could say everything he needed to. What he wanted to do was clamp his lips together and retreat into the comfort of silence. Instead, he cleared his throat and mustered up as many words as he could.
“I don’t remember a day when he hadn’t slipped completely into his cups.” He took another deep, steadying breath. “I vowed I would never be like him.”
He stole a look at her. She was saying “oh,” but no sound was issuing forth. Perhaps he had cleared up a mystery for her.
“I was not at my best that day. Yesterday,” he added, to remind her which day it had been.
She nodded. He suspected she didn’t need any help in remembering.
“Horse is lame and ’tis my doing,” he continued. “The well water was-fouled, my men are freezing with no hall to sleep in, and that fool of a carpenter I hired hasn’t the slightest notion of how to work with stone. Damn me, but I paid him for a month’s work already!”
He watched a hint of a smile cross her features.
“And then I saw—well, the details are unimportant. Suffice it to say, I drank more than I should have.”
“It must have been bad,” she murmured.
“It was,” he said.
She paused. “You don’t want to talk about it?”
“Nay.”
“All right.”
He girded up his loins. Here came the words he didn’t want to utter, but his bloody spurs were fair drawing blood in their enthusiasm to propel him into an apology.
“I don’t know what came over me,” he blurted out with as much haste as possible. “I vow I don’t.”
She was silent for so long, he began to wonder if she never intended to answer him. Then finally she spoke.
“It had better not ever come over
you again,” she said. “If you ever hit me, I’ll be out that door so fast, your head will spin.”
Her words were, as usual, full of future babbling he didn’t understand, but he caught most of her meaning. Should he ever strike her in truth, she would leave.
He was very surprised by how much that thought disturbed him.
He cleared his throat and prayed the motion would clear his head as well.
“I understand,” he said gruffly.
“Good.”
Well, that seemed to be all there was to that. He prepared to heave himself out of his chair and make his final rounds of the walls when he was interrupted by a faint smile that kept him immobile.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For the apology.”
He scowled. “Was that what that was?”
“Wasn’t it?”
“The saints would weep if I ever uttered such a thing in truth.”
“You’re spoiling the moment, Richard.”
At least she was still wearing something of a smile. If she wanted to believe he had apologized, he wasn’t going to disabuse her of the notion. After all, the like had been his intent from the start, unwilling though he might have been to do it.
And while he was about such baring of his soul, he decided he would be well served to unravel a few more mysteries for her. Whatever the reason—because she wasn’t from his time, or, and this he truly didn’t believe even though he would have liked to, she had lost her wits—she seemed to know nothing of how his keep was run.
“My peasants aren’t paying for my hall,” he announced.
She blinked. “They aren’t?”
“I’m a very wealthy man, not that you’d be able to tell from where we live at present.” He didn’t want to sound boastful, or perhaps he did, but ’twas the truth. “I’m seeing the hall built with gold I earned warring and tourneying.”
“That’s good to know.”
“’Tis my land they till, Jessica. I give them land in return for their labor on it.”
“But here we are warm and comfortable, yet not two hundred yards from your walls they’re cold and starving.” She shook her head. “It’s just such a hard life.”