by Lynn Kurland
Nay, she was now finished with opinionated men telling her what she would and would not do. After all, she was now a twenty-first-century woman. She had freedoms. And rights. And other things she was certain she would discover if she could manage a bloody quarter hour without having to listen to her brother go on and on.
She realized, in a startling flash, that she wouldn’t have had those thoughts occur to her if Zachary hadn’t let her season in that lovely cottage in the woods for those few brief days. It also might not have occurred to her if she hadn’t spent a goodly part of those four days either in the company of his sisters, who were very much like her aunts, or by herself where she’d had the chance to simply sit and think.
She took a firmer grip on the pitchfork. She was going to tell her brother she loved him, thank him for a lovely handful of hours in his stables, then she was going to go back inside, find someone else’s phone, then call Zachary so he could come and fetch her.
She turned, then froze.
Kendrick was standing just inside his stables. He looked so much like their father, she doubted for a moment where she was. Or when, rather. She looked down at herself, just to be certain she was still wearing jeans—ones that were too tight, apparently—then let out her breath slowly. Proper century, but wrong location.
She leaned the pitchfork against a stall door and folded her arms over her chest in her father’s favorite pose of intimidation.
“I’m going to call him,” she announced.
Kendrick’s expression darkened. “Nay, you aren’t.”
She wished she’d had a dagger, but since she didn’t, she settled for the pitchfork. She reached out and rested her hand on it casually. “Get out of my way or I’ll stab you.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I would.”
“You wee stubborn wench.”
“You great overbearing lout,” she said through gritted teeth. “I am no longer a child, Kendrick, I am a woman full grown and I have made my choice.”
“Father would be appalled.”
She pursed her lips and decided that she had no alternative but to deal with her brother as she always had. She would ignore him unless he got in her way, then she would run him over with a horse. She’d done it before, with great success. She returned the pitchfork to its home, then gathered up her sweater and shirt and walked past her brother.
Or tried to, rather.
He caught her by the arm.
She made the mistake of looking up at him. He looked absolutely devastated. She cursed him, but that didn’t change the fact that by the time she’d put her gear on a bale of hay and put her arms around her brother, she was as near to weeping as she ever came. He was making unmanly noises of grief as well, so perhaps it didn’t matter.
“I missed you,” he said finally. “Not that you had much chance to miss me.”
She pulled back and looked up at him with a smile. “I haven’t seen you in a year, you heartless oaf. You could have come home more often instead of wreaking havoc all over the Continent with Royce and that terrifying Saracen of yours.”
“We didn’t wreak havoc, we made mischief. And buckets of gold.”
“Mercenary.”
He smiled, the sunny smile that she had to admit she had loved since the first time she could remember having seen it. Kendrick was a horse’s arse, as she had pointed out to his edification more than once, but he was also a most loyal and devoted brother.
And she wasn’t terribly unhappy to know she would have him and her love both in the same century.
He sighed deeply and put his arm around her shoulders. “Fetch your gear, Mary, and we’ll go have something to eat.”
“I’m calling Zachary first.”
“Tell him we’re meeting in the lists before I decide if you might date him. I have standards, you know.”
“We’re past this dating business of yours, Kendrick, and he trained with Father, so I imagine you won’t intimidate him.”
Kendrick snorted. “Trained? Rather Father no doubt destroyed him every morning before breaking his fast just for sport. How long was he darkening our door?”
“A fortnight, at least.”
He shot her a look. “You can’t fall in love in a fortnight, Mary.”
“I think I fell in love with him the first time he, unlike the rest of you oafs, actually plied a little chivalry on me.”
Kendrick snorted. “You’re a romantic.”
“How long did it take you to fall in love with Genevieve?”
“Before or after I tried to murder her?”
Mary started to ask, then thought better of it and shut her mouth. She imagined she would have the entire tale at some point, but she wasn’t sure she could stomach it at present. She leaned her head against her brother’s shoulder and walked with him back to his hall.
Half an hour later, she was feeling her way down into a chair. Not because it was comfortable, but because her knees wouldn’t hold her up. She looked at her brother in shock.
“He must be mistaken.”
Kendrick shook his head. “Gideon says Zachary has gone on a little, ah, errand. He’s not sure when he’ll be back.”
“You’re lying,” she said promptly. “What did he really say?”
“Can’t tell,” Kendrick said, shaking the phone. “Sometimes these things don’t work as well as they should.”
Mary glared at him. “If you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’ll insist your wife do it for me. And I’ll have one of your sons make certain she’s translated it aright. Don’t tell me they cannot.”
Kendrick sighed, then spoke for another moment or two into the phone, his expression becoming more serious with each bit of listening. He finally ended the conversation and looked at her. “Gideon admits that Zachary went off on an errand of a particular nature. I won’t speculate as to that nature, but I imagine we’ll want to go to Artane. Just so you’ll be there when he returns.”
She was heartily glad to be sitting down. “He couldn’t have intended to use a gate through time.”
“I—”
“He wouldn’t have.” She looked up at him. “’Tis perilous, which he knows full well. He told me during our travels here that he had once tried to right a wrong across the seas in what he called the Colonies. He scarce escaped with his life. He wouldn’t be foolish enough to try it now.”
Kendrick’s expression had become very grim indeed. “He must have had good reason, then.”
She pushed herself to her feet, swayed once, then steadied herself. “Whatever the reason, he’ll need aid.”
“Well, you certainly can’t go save him.”
She glared at him. “Don’t start this again.”
He scowled. “What has possessed you to be so difficult? Not that you weren’t before, but you have taken it to new and unpleasant heights here today.”
“’Tis the jeans.”
He pursed his lips. “They are merely a symptom of a disease you were born with, I’m afraid.” He turned away. “Very well, I’ll take you to Artane, where you will await this fool who has likely gone off to find you a wooing gift from another century. I’ll beat sense into him when he returns.”
She didn’t argue the point. She watched him disappear only after telling Worthington to help Genevieve collect the children and their things and put them in the car. He returned soon enough with a bag slung over one shoulder and a sword in his other hand.
“Let’s be off, sister.”
Mary followed him out of the keep in time to watch Worthington put her suitcase in the back of Kendrick’s car. It looked as if it would go very fast indeed, which likely would have pleased her at another time. Now, she only cared inasmuch as it would carry her home that much more swiftly.
Kendrick drove out of the castle gates and through the village at a very sedate pace, but soon left that idea behind.
“Sorry,” he said, shooting her a look.
She would have smiled if she hadn’t been so terrif
ied that Zachary would never find his way back to her. “I don’t mind the speed.”
“I imagine you don’t.” He shook his head. “I think, Mary, that you were meant to be in this modern century.”
“I daresay you have that aright.”
He glanced at her briefly. “I’ll unbend far enough to tell you that I’ve heard this Smith character is fairly canny. Gideon, our nephew several generations removed, speaks very highly of him. Though I imagine you could tell me more tales than I could tell you.”
“Not now.”
“Nay, sister, not now. After I’ve humiliated him in the lists, perhaps.”
“Kendrick, you are a horse’s arse.”
He squeezed her hand briefly, then concentrated on the road.
They walked into Artane at sunset. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but she was so distraught that nothing made much of an impression. She knew she met the current lord of Artane and his lady wife. She knew she eventually listened to Kendrick’s children tumble into the hall with the abandon that bespoke familiarity with the place. She met Megan de Piaget, who so strongly resembled a younger version of her sister Jennifer that Mary found herself rendered speechless. When she found her tongue, she promised to give Megan all manner of tales about Jennifer and her children. But later, after she thought she could breathe again.
She asked and was given leave to wander the keep at will. She nodded her thanks, then walked to the back of the hall and up steps that were so grooved and worn, she could hardly believe they belonged to her father’s keep. That alone was evidence of the centuries she had leapt over to reach a place where jeans were available.
She walked down the passageway and stopped at the doorway to her mother’s solar. She put her hand on the wood, then she pushed the door open. The chamber was full of things she could see shadows of, but she didn’t suppose she cared to find out what they were in truth.
She took a deep breath and continued on until she reached her own bedchamber. She opened the door and realized she had no idea how to light the room.
“Light switch on your left.”
She shrieked in spite of herself, then spun around to find Kendrick leaning against the opposite wall of the passageway.
“How long have you been following me?” she asked breathlessly.
“Long enough.”
He pushed himself away from the wall and reached around her to turn on more of those magical Future lights. She turned around and looked inside her chamber.
Zachary’s clothes were tossed over the back of a chair and his backpack was sitting on the floor nearby. Mary walked into the chamber and sank down onto the bed. She looked to her left. Zachary’s keys were sitting on a low table there, as if he’d simply put them down for a moment, fully intending to come back and fetch them. She stared at them for several moments in silence, then looked up at her brother.
“I don’t understand why he did this.”
Kendrick handed her a manuscript. “Read through that and I imagine you will.”
Mary accepted the book and turned the pages slowly. Obviously Kendrick didn’t know Zachary as well as she did. He wouldn’t have risked not only his life but her parents’ lives as well simply because of something he’d read in a—
She froze.
There in front of her was one of the drawings he’d done for her father’s kennels. She ran her fingers over the page, marvel ing at the clarity of the ... well, she couldn’t call it a drawing. It was some sort of photograph, similar to the ones she’d seen in Zachary’s book. She looked up at Kendrick.
“Why does this matter?”
“It matters first because he signed the bloody plans. And for what I imagine truly caused him concern, turn the page.”
She did and came face-to-face with herself. She stared at her own face there and shook her head. Indeed, she shook her head several times. ’Twas unusual, perhaps, but surely not of such import that he would have felt the need to return to the past to do ... what? He might have liked to look at her, but surely no one else would.
And then she realized that wasn’t exactly true.
“Franbury,” she breathed. She looked at her brother. “That bloody oaf who came to your hall today. What did he want again? I didn’t understand half of what he said.”
“He was quite interested,” Kendrick began sourly, “in whatever paranormal activities I might have heard associated with a certain Zachary William Smith, architect. Paranormal as in ghosts, time travel, magic. The sort of thing that we, as it happens, both have quite a bit of experience with. The sort of thing any number of souls would no doubt be happy to discuss with irritating government busybodies.”
She felt a shiver go down her spine. “And would the current king send us to that new Tower he built in London?”
“The Tower is now old, the king is a queen, but aye, you have the rest of it aright.”
She swallowed with difficulty. “Then Zachary is risking his life to save us.”
“Oh, his own arse is being saved as well,” Kendrick muttered, “but aye, I imagine we figure into his thinking quite prominently.”
“You mean, I do. You, he would likely happily see sent to the gallows.”
Her brother smiled faintly, then came to sit next to her on the bed. “Likely so, and I imagine I deserve it. I’ll go easy on him when I meet him in the lists upon his return. Just for you.”
“You’re not meeting him in the lists.”
“And you’re not traipsing back through time to aid him.”
“Of course not,” she said. “Why would I?”
He shot her a look, then stood. “Let’s go find supper. That will pass the time pleasantly. Before you know it, I’ll be happily humiliating your would-be beau in the lists with my sword held between my teeth. Truly something not to be missed. But supper first.”
Mary nodded and rose as well. Aye, she would first find supper, then she would go look for other things. There had been many things in her mother’s solar, things that might be of a rather old vintage. Perhaps even things from Wyckham, things that might once have been contained in her uncle Nicholas’s trunk.
Maps were, as many in her family could attest, very useful things indeed.
Chapter 29
Z achary made his way up at twilight to what he hoped was the medieval incarnation of Artane’s gates. He had no way of knowing the exact date, which bothered him just as much as it should have. He easily could have come too early in time, in which case trying to fix the problem of his signature on two pieces of parchment was going to be useless. He might have arrived years too late when someone else was lord and wouldn’t be so willing to let him do what he had to. Worse still would be arriving in the middle of his last stay where he would have to avoid not only everyone he knew in the keep, but himself as well.
He knew how that ended up.
He usually had more of a plan than simply hoping for the best, but he hadn’t had much time to come up with anything better. He had to get inside the keep one way or another. It was probably too much to hope for that it would be easy.
He realized suddenly that he wasn’t the only one out for a little walk. He knew this because he found himself in the way of two men bolting up the road toward the keep from the village and couldn’t get out of their way fast enough to avoid landing in a pile with them.
Thaddeus and Parsival, as it happened.
Thaddeus’s mouth fell open. “Merciful saints above, what are you doing here? I thought—” He shut his mouth suddenly, then looked at Parsival. “I mean to say, we thought—”
“Thad, don’t attempt speech,” Parsival said with a sigh, heaving himself up to his knees. He looked at Zachary. “You have taken a very great risk, mon ami. There are those in the keep who firmly believe that you—” He took a deep breath. “I’ll let you speculate on what they believe. You are free, of course, to rid us of the exertions of such speculation.”
Zachary sat up and put his hand against the spot on his back th
at had connected with a particularly unyielding cobblestone. “I can’t explain anything in any way that would satisfy you—either of you. I can only ask that for friendship’s sake, and for whatever love you bore your cousin, that you help me get inside the keep. Into Robin’s solar.”
Parsival studied him for a moment or two, then heaved himself to his feet and extended a hand to pull Zachary to his. “Keep your face covered. We’ll see you inside.”
“Thank you,” Zachary said, feeling vastly relieved.
“You made my cousin happy for the last few days of her life. Consider it my thanks for that.”
Zachary nodded. He ignored the fact that Thaddeus was still gaping at him as if he’d seen a ghost. Or at least he did until Parsival slapped his cousin smartly on the back of the head. Thaddeus shut his mouth, pulled his hood over his head, and dropped back to bring up the rear.
Zachary kept his own hood around his face, ruthlessly tamped down his nerves as Parsival made excuses for bringing in a new friend at the side gate, then continued to try to look as inconspicuous as possible as they made their way up to the keep.
He would have given much to have had Mrs. Gladstone chasing him, demanding her very reasonable fee that was going to beggar him come fall.
Parsival led Zachary not to the keep, but to the healer’s house. Zachary wasn’t at all thrilled to be making another visit there, but he imagined Parsival was trying to keep him from being stared at by everyone eating dinner inside. Apparently the healer had died earlier in the week from the aftereffects of poison. Zachary didn’t ask for any details, nor did he want to know how Styrr’s mother had handled the news of her son’s perfidy. He simply sat with Parsival in that cold, unwelcoming little room where Styrr had tried to poison Mary, in the dark, until Thaddeus went on a little reconnaissance mission and announced that the hall was being put to bed for the night.
Zachary followed Mary’s cousins into the keep, keeping himself well in the shadows and praying he would actually get to Robin’s solar without being discovered. He had to. Mary’s future, and his, and a family tree full of others depended on it. He would have liked to have believed that Michael Smythe-Gordon didn’t have the stomach for a long, very public airing of MacLeod and de Piaget dirty laundry, but he knew better. The irritation of having to look at zinnias had apparently been enough to convince him to do quite a few nasty things.