by Lynn Kurland
“What is it?”
“You’re frightening me.”
He put his arm around her and pulled her close. “I’m not sure how to tell you this—”
“Ah, nay, not that sort of business,” she warned.
“There is someone inside whom you will know.”
“From the Future?” she whispered.
“Nay, love, from the past.” He took a deep breath and started to elaborate, but the door opened before he could.
“Oh, Master Smith,” Worthington said in his perfectly cultured butler’s voice.
Then he did a double take.
Zachary understood completely. He smiled politely. “Is His Lordship in?”
Worthington only nodded silently, his eyes absolutely enormous. He looked at Mary for another moment or two, then shut the door in their faces.
Zachary shot Mary a smile. “He’s usually better than that. I think you overwhelmed him.”
She scowled. “We’re here to meet some titled fool?”
“Well—”
The door was wrenched open suddenly. “What the hell’d you do to my ... butler ...”
Zachary wished he’d had the whole thing on video; it would have made it much easier to see everything he wanted to. He supposed he could have watched Kendrick gape and listened to Mary gasp and he would have known all he needed to. He did manage to glance at Mary briefly. She looked as if she’d seen a ghost.
Appropriate, actually.
Kendrick stumbled backward, then leaned over for a moment or two, taking deep, even breaths.
“Kendrick, what is ... it ...”
Zachary watched Genevieve wind down in much the same way her husband had. She stared at Mary in astonishment, then turned that same look on him.
“Who ... ?”
Zachary only smiled very faintly. He stepped away from Mary and waited for her to make the first move.
She didn’t have to. Kendrick straightened, reached out, then yanked his sister into his hall and into his arms. And then he lost it. Zachary looked away politely as the good lord of Seakirk fell apart. Until he realized Mary wasn’t weeping, that is. He found that she was looking at him over her shoulder, her expression full of confusion and dismay. He attempted a smile.
He imagined he had failed.
Mary turned back and held on to her brother, who was completely undone.
“There’s a story here,” Genevieve said faintly.
Zachary nodded, but he didn’t offer any details. He wasn’t sure that Kendrick could handle any details at the moment.
But it took the good lord of Seakirk less time than Zachary expected to pull himself together. He sucked in a deep breath, then held his sister away from him.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” he said in disbelief.
“’Tis complicated.”
“Explain it now, then.”
Zachary watched her wave in his general direction. He suppressed the urge to duck behind Worthington for protection.
“I met Zachary in the past,” she said faintly. “Styrr poisoned me and Zachary saved me by bringing me to the Future.”
Zachary wondered absently if every medieval expat would say the word so it sounded capitalized, or if he was just used to thinking of it that way for them.
“He brought you to the future,” Kendrick repeated incredulously. “When?”
“Well over a se’nnight ago, perhaps,” Mary said. She looked over her shoulder then. “When was it, Zachary?”
“About then,” Zachary said carefully.
The change in Kendrick’s mood was expected, but unsettling nonetheless. He set his sister aside and folded his arms over his chest.
“You’ve had her that long and you didn’t tell me,” he said flatly.
“I didn’t know about you, my lord,” Zachary said reasonably. “Not until last week.”
“You should have told me last week then!”
Zachary nodded slowly. “I could have—”
“You should have!” Kendrick bellowed.
“My lord—”
“And you,” Kendrick said, whirling on Mary. His voice was quavering badly. “Why didn’t you call? I assume you had access to a telephone, or did he keep you captive in some hovel?”
Mary looked at him in surprise. “What are you talking about?”
Zachary cleared his throat. “I didn’t tell her, my lord, because I thought—”
“You thought,” Kendrick echoed incredulously.
“I thought,” Zachary continued pointedly, “that since she had been very ill, another shock to her system might be one thing too many.”
“Merde,” Kendrick snarled.
“Kendrick,” Genevieve ventured, “perhaps we should—”
“How dare you keep my sister from me,” Kendrick continued on furiously. “And don’t try to convince me that it was for your lofty, altruistic reasons!”
Zachary took a deep breath. He couldn’t look at Mary, because he wasn’t sure he could bear to witness her expression. On the off chance that she shared her brother’s fury.
“My reasons were altruistic,” he said evenly. “For the most part. And for the rest, yes, you’re right. I didn’t bring her back to England the moment I knew who you were and what she was to you because I had this nagging suspicion that once you saw her, you were going to remind her that she’s an earl’s sister and I’m a peasant and then we would be back where we were almost eight hundred years ago.”
“You’re bloody well right about that last bit,” Kendrick said hotly. “My sister is a woman of rank and station and she will not date an untitled, barely-squeaking-along working sod, much less do anything else with you.”
“I’m not barely squeaking along—”
“My sister will not work down at the local Tesco so you can make ends meet!”
“I make half a million bloody pounds a year for the Trust—”
“A job you have yet to start!”
Zachary was very happy Kendrick didn’t have a sword, though he wasn’t sure why. He had the feeling that Kendrick could do an equal amount of damage with his bare hands. He took another deep breath. “I make enough to provide for her. And no, I don’t have a title, but this, Your Lordship, is the twenty-first century. I didn’t have what was required in the thirteenth, but things have changed here.”
“Of course they haven’t!”
“When I brought her home, I had no idea you were alive,” Zachary continued, struggling to keep his tone even. “And I thought that I just might stand the chance of having that Lamborghini.”
Kendrick blinked. “That what?”
“Something so far out of my reach that I could only stare at it stupidly,” Zachary said grimly, “and wonder what it might feel like under my hands.”
Kendrick gaped at him for a moment, then he did what Zachary knew he should have expected from the first.
He punched him full in the face.
Zachary stumbled backward, tripped over the threshold, then did what he always did when in those sorts of situations: he admired a set of very well-preserved stairs as he rolled down them. He decided he would find something especially nice to give Patrick MacLeod for Christmas that year in gratitude for all the injuries he’d avoided by having taken his brother-in-law’s Roll Your Way to No Broken Bones survival course.
He landed flat on his back in the courtyard, winded. It took him a moment before he dared open his eyes, and when he did, he wished he hadn’t.
Michael Smythe-Gordon was standing over him, smirking.
Perfect.
“Yet another triumph to add to your résumé,” Viscount Franbury sneered.
Zachary crawled to his feet. He had to lean against his car, though, which didn’t make him happy. “Michael,” he said as calmly as he could manage. “What a surprise.”
“It shouldn’t come as one,” Franbury said. “I believe I made mention of my plan to ruin you.”
“I thought you were bluffing.”
Franbury drew around himself centuries of fine breeding. “You’ll find, my naive friend, that I never bluff. But by all means, continue on with your peaceful existence. It won’t last long.” He looked up the stairs. “It won’t last much longer at all.”
Zachary watched Franbury ascend Seakirk’s fine stairs and knock briskly on the front door. He could imagine a few reasons why Franbury would want to have a little tête-à-tête with Kendrick de Piaget and none of them were good. He wasn’t above hoping that Kendrick would treat Michael to the same sort of send-off he had just experienced himself, so he decided he would stick around long enough to see the show.
Kendrick jerked open the door and looked out, then scowled. “And who are you?”
“Michael Smythe-Gordon. Viscount Franbury, if you’d rather. I believe we have an appointment?”
“Viscount,” Kendrick said, shooting Zachary a glare. “Well, that’s the type of lad I’m interested in, always. One with a title.”
Zachary could have sworn he heard swearing going on inside before Kendrick managed to get Michael in and the door shut, but he wasn’t sure if it was that or he was hallucinating. He walked around to the back of his car and pulled out Mary’s bag. He took it with him and braved the stairs again.
He was ready for Kendrick’s fist and managed to duck out of the way.
“I have your sister’s things!” he managed before Kendrick took a second swing.
Kendrick ripped the bag out of his hands, then gave him another shove. Zachary managed to spin and make it down the stairs without rolling and without killing himself. He landed rather heavily on one leg, then turned and looked back up at the door. Kendrick was glaring at him.
“Don’t come back.”
“That’s for Mary to decide.”
“I will decide for her!” Kendrick bellowed just before he slammed the door shut a final time.
Zachary went to lean against the side of his car. He stood there for several minutes, just watching the front door. He realized quite a crowd was gathering in the direction of what had been a garden minutes before but now looked quite a bit like medieval lists—some impressive paranormal activity, truly. He realized with equal certainty that the souls he was looking at were most definitely not mortal. He paid them no heed, not even when one of them, a burly brute dressed all in black, ran at him and plunged a sword into his chest.
Zachary only yawned. “You missed.”
The ghost drew himself up. “I most certainly did not!”
“Nay, he didn’t,” offered another ghost who hastened over. “Colin of Berkhamshire never misses.”
Zachary looked at the small gaggle of medieval knights who had suddenly gathered around their offended leader. “Look, I appreciate the effort you’re making on my behalf, but I’ve got too much on my mind to really give you the attention you deserve.”
Colin of Berkhamshire withdrew his sword from Zachary’s chest and resheathed it. He folded his massive arms over his equally beefy chest. “We’ve heard about you.”
“I imagine you have,” Zachary said wearily. He couldn’t bring himself to ask if the rumors had been good ones or bad ones. He considered asking the shades if they’d done any haunting in a southerly direction in the past week, but decided against that as well. It had probably been Franbury, carrying on with his quest to be as big a pain in the arse as possible. He looked up at the very shut door for another moment or two, cocked an ear to listen for continuing shouting, then sighed and turned away.
Mary had a phone and she knew how to use it. There was nothing else to be done.
Of course he wasn’t going to give up that easily, but he was certainly going to give her some room to spend enough time with her brother to at least put her heart at ease.
He climbed into his car and turned toward the gates.
Chapter 26
G enevieve de Piaget stood at the doorway of her husband’s castle and watched as two paths diverged. The one her husband was taking led to the lists, which didn’t surprise her. The one her sister-in-law—a woman she’d never thought to ever encounter this side of the grave—was taking led toward the stables. Genevieve chose the one of a less-equine nature, because she was fairly sure it would, as Frost would have said, make all the difference.
It was going to be Kendrick’s job to find his way down that other road.
It had been a very interesting couple of hours, what with the arrival of a woman who she had assumed had been dead for centuries, the ejection out the front door of that woman’s would-be suitor, and yet another man added to the mix in the person of Michael Smythe-Gordon, who apparently had more vindictiveness than sense.
Kendrick had listened to the Viscount Franbury only long enough to realize he was a small-minded fool who was only being polite in order to dig up paranormal dirt on Zachary Smith. He’d thrown Franbury out the front door, citing lack of time for such a ridiculous conversation.
Too close to home, no doubt.
There had then ensued another round of shouting, tears, and conversations in the vintage French that Genevieve had been very relieved she’d taken the trouble to learn. Trouble had begun to brew when Kendrick had told Mary how she was going to conduct her affairs from then on. When he’d frisked her and confiscated her mobile phone, the discussions had deteriorated rapidly into threats and curses.
Genevieve had watched her five boys watching the goings-on with openmouthed astonishment.
Mary had turned to her and demanded directions to the stables. She hadn’t dared not give them. Kendrick had stomped off after his sister, but apparently thought better of following her, hence the diverging paths. Genevieve had followed at a distance because her husband had wept and he rarely wept. She had to see if there was anything left of him.
She walked around the castle and through gardens that were a perfect front for the very medieval-looking lists in the back. Her husband used that bit of ground regularly for its intended purposes. He lured their sons out there just as regularly, which wasn’t an effort, given that they were just as driven as he was.
It was in the genes, apparently.
Today, though, the lists weren’t being used for training with the sword or the schooling of horses. They were empty except for a man sitting on a bench pushed up against a wall. Genevieve walked over to that bench and sat down. She looked at her husband.
“Are you possessed?” she asked bluntly.
He shot her a dark look. “Nay, ’tis just me. The horse’s arse you wed.”
“What happened to you?”
“I think I became my father.”
Genevieve laughed in spite of herself, then leaned back against the wall and began to rub her hand over his back. “I imagine you didn’t see this one coming.”
He was silent for a very long time, then he turned to look at her. His eyes were very red. “I was on the Continent when she died. I came back to find her gone almost two years and my parents well past their grief. I hardly had time to grieve before the whole business with Seakirk came to the fore. And then ... well, you know what happened then.” He paused. “I loved my sister deeply.”
“She is a lot like you.”
“Trouble?”
“Well,” Genevieve said, trying not to smile, “I wasn’t going to say that, but since you did, I’ll agree. She certainly isn’t shy about expressing her opinion.”
“Heard her, did you?”
“Kendrick, everyone in the village probably heard her. I don’t think you’re going to find her to be very tractable.”
He sighed and dragged his hands through his hair. “I don’t want that Smith character taking her away before I’ve had a chance to have her to myself for a bit.” He paused. “A few months. Maybe longer.”
“She loves him.”
“She can love him all she likes—from a distance. I am her nearest living relative and I will decide if and when she’s to have anything to do with him.”
Genevieve cleared her throat carefully. “You know, husband, tho
se are pretty potent juices you’re stewing yourself in.”
He only scowled.
“She can use the phone, you know.”
“I took hers away.”
“She’ll find another.”
“I forbade her!”
“I imagine she’ll ignore you when she’s finished cleaning your stables.”
endrick scowled a bit more. “’Tis a good place for her. She loves horses.”
“She loves him more.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.”
He slapped his hands on his knees and pushed himself to his feet. “I’m going to go remind her who is in charge.”
“Good luck.”
He shot her a dark look before he stomped off, cursing.
Genevieve watched another pair of paths meet and then diverge. The eldest of her triplet sons, Robin, exchanged a brief word with his father, then continued on toward her. He sat down and stared off over the lists for quite some time, just as his father had done, then he turned to look at her.
“My aunt?”
She nodded solemnly.
“Mum, you have a bit of explaining to do.”
“Going to draw your sword and motivate me if I refuse?”
He only gave her an arch look so reminiscent of his father that she laughed. What a delightful life she had, a life that was colored with so many things that didn’t find themselves in the current century.
Just as Zachary Smith’s would be, if he had the chance.
She stood up and waited for her eldest to do the same. Robin offered her his arm as he’d seen his father do countless times. She took his arm, sighed at the fact that she was going to be looking up at him sooner than she wanted to be, then nodded toward the castle.
“Let’s make the big circle, Robin.”
“Will the tale be a long one?”
“Yes, son. It will be.” Almost eight hundred years’ worth, she added to herself. But he was his father’s son, and he had spent his life getting into things he should have stayed out of. She didn’t imagine much would come as a surprise to him. She had great hopes that her conversation would go well.
She didn’t hold out the same hope for her husband.