by Lynn Kurland
She sighed. It wasn’t any of her business. So she was Richard’s houseguest. It wasn’t as if she were married to him. He didn’t owe her any explanations. It was his past to share or not as he saw fit. He hadn’t pried into hers; she wouldn’t pry into his. Though his lack of prying probably stemmed from disinterest, not politeness.
The door opened. She looked up to see Richard come in. He shut and barred the door, then came across the room to her. He stood near her, not looking at her.
“I’ve come to a few decisions.”
“Really,” she drawled before she could think better of her tone of voice.
He looked down at her and his eyes were hard. “That is the first thing you will cease. I will tolerate no more disrespect.”
Great. Mr. Medieval was back in the saddle. Jessica lifted one eyebrow.
“All right.”
Richard’s expression didn’t soften. “Tomorrow you will rise early and hie yourself off to the kitchens. I will expect better food for your efforts. Once you’ve seen to the kitchen staff, you will return here and see to my clothes. You will also fashion yourself a few gowns. There are bolts of cloth in yon trunk. Once you’ve seen to those tasks, I will find other, simple tasks for you to accomplish.”
She wanted to get up, but that wouldn’t have helped her any. She’d have to stand on a stool to look him in the eye. Tramping down her irritation, she looked up at him.
“I can’t cook.”
His expression darkened. “You cannot cook and you cannot sew. Tell me, Jessica, are you good for aught besides making my life hell?”
Well, that certainly put her in her place.
She rose. “You know what they say about guests and fish after three days,” she said, starting toward the door. “I’ll be going now.”
Where, she didn’t know, but she could work that out later.
“I did not give you permission to depart,” he said curtly. “You may still sleep in my bed. I will sleep there as well—”
“Wait a minute,” she interrupted. “I never agreed to—”
“You will remain unmolested,” he said curtly. “There is only one bed and we have shared it the past two days.”
“Yeah, and you were feverish.”
“We will put a bolster of some sort between us,” he said, through gritted teeth. “I will not touch you, since you seem to find the thought so repugnant.”
She had no answer for that. It was much too complicated for a quick fix.
“You will retire now,” he said, pointing again toward the bed. “In silence.”
Silence? Well, if that’s what he really wanted, that’s what he could have. She was an expert in the art of the silent treatment. It had, thanks to honing it on her sister, at one time been the most potent weapons in her teenage arsenal. She’d gone almost a month once without saying a word to a single soul in her family.
She looked at Richard once more and considered her options. Possibly life with a grumpy medieval lord, or maybe a lifetime in a nunnery. Yes, in one of those orders where silence was golden. At least there she might be appreciated for her brain.
She retired, in silence, then stared up at the canopy of the bed. The firelight flickered over the polished wood and she was almost soothed by it. She even succeeded in ignoring the man who stuffed a rolled-up blanket between them, then apparently drifted off into the slumber of the just. She wished she’d had her CD player to drown out his righteous snores.
She felt homesickness wash over her. She’d never really given up hope that she’d be able to go back to the twentieth century. When Richard was being pleasant, she’d actually toyed with the idea that sticking around wouldn’t be so bad. Now things had changed. And Richard hadn’t. He was still as impossible as he had been at the start. Nothing she could ever do would convince him to look at her as anything other than a second-class citizen. She much preferred having the men of her own time look at her that way. At least she could chalk them up to bad dates and head home to her own house, where she was head honcho.
She had even begun to make a name for herself in her field. Musicians were no less sexist than anyone else, but a good composer was still a good composer, no matter his sex. Or her sex, for that matter. She was judged on the quality of her work, not her gender.
She closed her eyes, silently, and let her thoughts slip away. Whining about it wasn’t going to get her anywhere. She’d have to think about it logically. A solution would present itself soon enough, then she would act on it.
After all, she’d have plenty of silence in which to think about it.
15
Jessica stood at the door of the small chamber in the outer wall that had been temporarily appointed as the kitchen and stared at the scene in the bailey. She was just certain she was imagining what she was seeing, but it was hard to deny.
There, in front of her, were a dozen men in chain mail, shuffling in the dirt and apparently trying to do it with some kind of organization.
“Terrifying,” said a voice from beside her.
Jessica looked up to find John standing next to her. They hadn’t spoken any further about Richard’s time in the tub. Jessica suspected John would have liked to have pretended he’d never been there in the first place. She couldn’t blame him.
“What are they doing?” she asked.
John took a deep breath. “Dancing,” he said, sounding completely disgusted.
Jessica looked back at the men, trying to see it. It took a while—they weren’t very good at it—but she could see how, if one had a great imagination, one could imagine that the men in front of her were actually moving in some sort of pattern.
“Sir Hamlet of Coteborne,” John continued. “’Tis his doing. His sire was one of Queen Eleanor’s guardsmen. Hamlet feels ’tis his obligation to teach everyone he can the fine art of courtly love.”
Jessica looked at the men in front of her and wondered how such large, lumbering bears could ever hope to win anyone with those skills.
“He’s got a lot of work ahead of him,” she said slowly.
“There is truth in that, lady,” John agreed.
“Sir John!” Hamlet had apparently realized one of his pupils was missing. “You’ll want to learn these steps!”
John made an inarticulate sound of horror before turning and running the other way. Jessica watched Hamlet caress the hilt of his sword and wondered if he intended to teach John under pain of death. Then the man shrugged, turned back to his students, and continued to bellow out his instructions.
Jessica noticed, however, that Hamlet wasn’t putting any pressure on Richard to join in. She looked at the lord in question. It had been three days since she had said anything to him and in those three days she had fumed more than she had practically the rest of her life put together. If Richard had reminded her one more time of things she wasn’t capable of accomplishing, she would have slugged him. With the logical side of her brain, she suspected he was taking cover in serious medievalness to make himself more comfortable. Maybe he thought he had exposed too much of his inner self to her and had no choice but to reconstruct the barriers. Either that or he was a complete chauvinist. That had been her first impression.
She hoped, oddly enough, that she hadn’t been right.
Richard was currently arguing with a carpenter about the placement of the great hall. The two of them had spent the morning making designs in the dirt. The carpenter would draw his, Richard would curse and erase it with his boot. He would draw his own and the carpenter would shake his head. Jessica could tell by the way the carpenter couldn’t seem to stack two stones together and make them remain upright that he was going to be no help whatsoever. She doubted Richard was any more adept.
Now, if they’d asked her opinion, she would have suggested drawings of the bailey and renderings of all the buildings inside it. A man couldn’t build anything without a plan. That was her father’s favorite saying and he lived by it. He’d never constructed anything without a blueprint, not eve
n a bird feeder. Richard was going to end up with a wobbly-walled hall at the rate he was going.
But it wasn’t her concern. She pushed her hair back from her face and smiled pleasantly. No, she was learning to cook. Or, rather, watching Cook cook. It was very frightening and she wished she’d never learned just exactly how the man was going about his business. In her book, spices did not contain whatever insects had happened to fall into the jar. She’d given Cook her lecture on the importance of cleanliness but that had been about all she could do. He seemed to hold the general opinion of the day regarding women.
Useless creatures.
Sewing was her next task. She was actually looking forward to sitting in the alcove and staring out to sea for the afternoon. Richard’s clothes wouldn’t get any attention, but she’d have a good time. She pushed away from the doorway and started toward the stairs.
“Jessica!”
She stopped, paused, then turned and smiled pleasantly.
“Where are you going?” Richard demanded.
She pointed up to his bedroom.
Richard gave the latest drawing a vicious swipe with his boot and strode over to her. He wasn’t very happy with the silent treatment.
“I asked you where you were going,” he growled.
She pointed again, refusing to clamp her lips shut. That might make him think she was having trouble not talking. Actually, she wasn’t having any trouble talking—to anyone but him.
“I command you to answer me!”
She lifted her hand, slowly folded down her index, ring, and little fingers, then cheerfully flipped him the bird. Someone behind him laughed and he whirled around and bellowed out a curse. Maybe it had meant the same general thing in the Middle Ages. Or maybe it had been the look on her face. Whatever the case, she felt rather vindicated. She lowered her hand and smiled up at Richard, whose expression had darkened even more. His eyebrows had become a single, dark slash across his forehead. His scar was white. Even if she hadn’t seen the blazing fury in his eyes, she would have known by his scar that he was livid.
Tough.
She dropped him a curtsy, turned, and walked to the stairs.
“I didn’t say you could go!” he roared.
She didn’t turn around. She put her foot on the bottom step, then felt herself being whirled around. She shrieked as her world tilted. Richard’s shoulder in her stomach robbed her of any air and her forehead bumping against his lower back made her slightly sick. It was Archie’s hoisting trick all over again, only Richard seemed to be more adept at taking circular stairs. She thought she just might barf.
“Put me down, you jerk!” she gasped.
He ignored her. She saw, grudgingly, how he might have become a little annoyed by the practice.
He slammed the bedroom door behind them and dumped her to her feet. He took her by the arms and held her immobile. She had the feeling that he wanted to shake her. His hands were trembling.
“I am finished with your silence,” he bellowed. “Damn you, woman, speak!”
“Fine,” she snapped, jerking away from him. “I’ve had a bellyful of you, too, buddy. I’m not your servant, I’m not your squire, and I’m not your damned horse to just take orders and swallow them. I’m sick to death of being treated like a second-class citizen. I’m just as smart as you are and I’ve had it with you treating me like I’m not!”
He blinked. “Of course you aren’t. You’re a wo—”
“Don’t say it,” she said, through gritted teeth. “If you tell me one more time that I’m inferior to you because I’m a woman, I’m going to haul off and deck you!”
“Deck me?” he echoed.
“Take my fist and slam it into your face!”
Richard took a step back and folded his arms over his chest. “You’re powerfully outspoken. Are all the maids so in your time?”
Great. Now he was beginning to believe her about her birth date. It was the first time he’d said anything remotely approaching the like without a heavy coating of skepticism slathered over his words.
Well, she wouldn’t let it unbalance her. She was annoyed with him and for good reason.
“I am outspoken,” she said, “and with good reason. And if you think I’m bad, you should see some of the other women of my time.”
“Saints have mercy.”
“Don’t you forget it.”
He stepped back another pace, then looked at her again, as if he just couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“Well,” he said at last. “I’ll leave you to your pleasure.”
With that, he left the room almost at a dead run.
Jessica walked over to the alcove and sat down with a grunt. She wasn’t sure if it had been a clean victory, but at least he hadn’t left after giving her another order. She’d have to wait and see what he did after he’d mulled over her words for the afternoon. Richard was a muller, if ever there was one.
She rose and jerked open the shutters before her thoughts ran away with her. She stood with the sea breezes tugging at her oversized tunic and felt suddenly the unreality of her situation. She was standing in a medieval castle, worrying about the disposition of a medieval baron. Too bad she would probably never make it back to the twentieth century.
It would have made a hell of a movie.
* * *
Richard climbed the stairs to his chamber, fingering the ring in his palm. This was likely utter foolishness, but it was the best alternative he could think of. He’d had—what had Jessica called it?—a bellyful of her silence and he’d have no more of it if he could help it. Her gesture in the bailey had been nothing short of obscene, and if he hadn’t been so angry at the laughter of his men, he might have laughed himself at her cheek. By the saints, the wench had spine.
He paused outside his bedchamber door and dragged his hands through his hair. Saints, he was going daft. He had no use for a spirited woman. What he needed was a lass he could train.
Though that thought had somehow lost all appeal.
How could he stomach passing the rest of his days with a child who cried when he shouted at her, or jumped when he commanded her? He’d grown far too accustomed to being challenged, though he still wasn’t sure he cared for it completely.
But the fire, ah, the fire. Aye, that would be what he missed. He would never look at another woman that he didn’t see Jessica with her hands on her hips, tilting back her head to lecture him on human rights or whatever nonsense she had rattling about in her head at the moment. He would never see another woman smile without thinking of how Jessica’s smile encompassed not only her mouth but her eyes as well. He longed to laugh with her, to see her eyes turn to him with pleasure, not irritation or anger.
And once she had smiled at him truly, he knew he would want other things. He would want her lips against his, her soft breath in his ear telling him what would please her.
But later. First, he wanted her joy. And once that empty place in his heart was filled, he would think of other things. He’d spent far too many years bedding women without having them touch anything but his body. When he finally took Jessica to his bed in truth, he wanted her to touch his soul.
But that would certainly never happen until he appeased her somewhat. And the ring was a start.
He opened the door and closed it behind him, turning to bar it. He took another deep breath and turned around, trying to be prepared for almost anything.
Jessica sat on the floor before the hearth, polishing his chessmen. He crossed the chamber to her and looked down. Half the men were fashioned of gold, half of silver. He’d had them made in Spain by the man who’d fashioned his blade. A master gold- and silversmith, the like of whom he’d never seen before.
Jessica smiled up at him.
“These are beautiful. I hope you don’t mind.”
He shook his head, mute. He’d expected to find her spitting fire. Instead, she sat there calmly, lovingly buffing one of his favorite things. He wondered if he would ever find his balance arou
nd her.
Richard sat down on the stool near her. He cleared his throat.
“Jessica?”
She looked up. “Yes?”
Sweet Mary, was this what shyness felt like? He felt himself color and he cursed himself for it. Completely flustered, he thrust his ring at her.
“Here,” he barked.
She took the ring slowly, then held it up to the fire, turning it this way and that. Then she looked up at him.
“Nice. What’s it for?”
“’Tis mine.”
“I gathered that.”
“The ring of my house. Of Burwyck-on-the-Sea. My crest,” he added.
“Yours alone?”
“Actually, it was my grandfather’s. My father changed it.”
“And you changed it back.”
He had the insane urge to run his hands over himself to make certain he was still in one piece. Did she know aught of his father? He could scarce bear the thought.
He clasped his hands together. “Aye. I did.”
“I think that was a very good choice.”
“Aye.” He nodded. He took a deep breath. “I thought that perhaps . . .” He cleared his throat. “Perhaps you would care to wear it. While we are in this chamber,” he added hastily.
She lifted her eyebrows. “Why?”
“Because then you would be lord.”
“Why would I want that?”
“Then you would rule over me. As I rule over you when I wear this ring.” He looked at her earnestly. “To give you a feeling of power. At least while we are inside.”
She slowly folded her fingers over the ring and Richard was sure he’d appeased her. Then she shook her head.
“You don’t understand.” She looked up at him. “I don’t want to rule you.”
“But . . .”
“Richard, I just want you to stop thinking of me as someone who isn’t your equal. That’s all.”
“But you’re a woman!”
“And you’re a man.”
“You cannot fight.”
“You can’t bear children.”
He frowned. “You couldn’t defend the keep.”