All for You

by Lynn Kurland

  Or so Peaches hoped.

  She paced along the hallway, trying to keep herself awake. Chattam Hall was absolutely gorgeous, full of all kinds of Victorian and pre-Victorian antiques. Peaches admired for a bit, then continued on down the hallway.

  She shouldn’t have stopped by the half-open door, indeed she told herself quite specifically that she was an idiot to stop in front of a half-open door, but her feet seemed to be acting of their own accord. She heard the voices and knew she should have continued on, but something wouldn’t let her. She leaned against the wall just outside the door and eavesdropped shamelessly.

  “There is no hope for the thing,” Lady Louise was saying grimly. “It is as he says.”

  “Impossible,” Stephen said firmly. “He’s a—”

  “Yes, yes, I know what he is, but in this, he has a case.”

  Peaches shook her head in silent admiration. The world might have been lying in ruins around her, but Lady Louise Heydon-Brooke would soldier on in spite of it. Stephen sounded less determined than furious, but Peaches couldn’t blame him. She didn’t want to believe that David had any claim to Artane, but it was difficult to deny what she had seen with her own eyes.

  “I’ll find a way to fund this,” Stephen said.

  “Yes, indeed you will,” Lady Louise said briskly, “and you will do this by marrying.”

  There was a conspicuous silence, and then Stephen cleared his throat.

  “I believe, Grandmother, that I am far past the age when—”

  “You are inclined to give into foolish dalliances? Yes, I should hope so. You will wed, sir, and you will wed the girl I choose for you. She will possess not only a title but vast resources. It is the only way.”

  “No—”

  “It is your duty, Haulton,” Lady Louise said with a crispness that made Peaches flinch. “It is a duty, I add unnecessarily, which you have been shirking for at least a decade and which you will shirk no longer.”

  “Ridiculous,” Stephen said shortly. “Grandmother, with all due respect, I will not be told whom to marry. Not even by you.”

  “You will,” Lady Louise said icily, “or you will never see a bloody penny of my money.”

  “Do you actually believe I care for any of that?”

  “You will, my boy, when you are the Earl of Artane and need to repair your roof.” She made a noise of disbelief. “Is this how you were raised, Stephen? To throw away everything your ancestors fought and bled for, guarded, shepherded through countless wars and intrigues, simply because you continue to entertain a preposterously romantic notion of marital love?”

  Peaches listened to a silence that went on for several minutes.

  “Have you a list, Grandmother?” Stephen said finally.

  “I do,” Lady Louise said shortly, “and I will choose someone suitable from it. I absolutely refuse to see that pile of stones that is your father’s heart and soul be sold off to silence that damned fool from Kenneworth. Worse still that it should fall into his hands.”

  More silence ensued.

  “Keep her for your mistress if you like, for she is very lovely. But you will not wed her.”

  “Is that all, Grandmother?”

  “That is all, Stephen.”

  Peaches tried to run away before the door opened fully, but she couldn’t. Stephen looked as if he’d just finished a marathon and thought throwing up might be a good thing to do next. He took her hand and pulled her along with him.

  “You shouldn’t,” she said, pulling her hand away.

  He stopped and looked at her. His eyes were a dark, stormy gray. “I suppose you heard all that.”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Well, she damn well meant you to,” he said angrily. He took her hand again and pulled her with him. “We’re going home.”

  “I can ride with Tess and John—”

  “You will most definitely not ride home with them. You will come home with me.”

  “Listen, buster, I’m not going to be your mistress.”

  He stopped so suddenly she almost tripped. He steadied her with his hands on her arms, then looked at her seriously.

  “Do you think for one minute I would ask you to be?”

  She shook her head, because she knew if she spoke, she would weep. And she never wept. She pointedly ignored the fact that she had suffered from a brief bout of the sniffles in Stephen’s library the evening before.

  “I’ll see to this the old-fashioned way.”

  “Are you going to shoot him?” she asked in surprise. “Or your grandmother?”

  He blinked, then he smiled very briefly. “She is a matriarch in the grand tradition, but she will see reason eventually. As for the other?” He put his arm around her shoulders and walked with her down the long hallway. “No, I won’t shoot him, though I’m tempted. It will take money and vast amounts of it.”

  “And where will you get that?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  He sighed deeply. “I have no reason not to.”

  She paused with him as he bid a very short good-bye to her family and his brother and sister-in-law, then allowed him to bundle her up and help her into his car. The drive back to Cambridge was accomplished in silence, though he did put her hand palm down on his leg and hold it rather tightly.

  They were pulling into his driveway before she thought she could speak casually.

  “You can change your mind, you know.”

  He glanced at her. “Peaches, darling, it would take much more than this for me to change my mind.”

  “This is pretty big.”

  “So is my affection for you.”

  “Affection?” she asked, and she smiled because she couldn’t help herself.

  “I’m trying not to frighten you off.”

  She smiled truly then, because he was so utterly charming.

  He turned the car off, then simply sat there in silence for a bit. “You could change your mind, you know,” he said finally.

  “Why would I?” she asked. “I don’t have any money. If you don’t have any money, then we’ll both not have any money together. Though I’ll tell you now that I think I would be much more suited to a life of poverty than you would be.”

  He shot her a look. “Do you, indeed?”

  “Yes,” she said easily. “You with your very soft life, never pitting your considerable brainpower against obscure and obsolete languages, never getting off your fetching backside to do anything but trot from your soft office chair to an equally climate-controlled lecture hall.”

  He laughed. “Climate-controlled, my arse.”

  “Oh, is it chilly inside those ancient halls where you ply your dastardly trade? What deprivation you already suffer.”

  He shifted in his seat to look at her. “Let’s leave that for a moment and discuss my fetching backside.”

  “You, my lord, are a lecher.”

  “And you, my love, looked absolutely breathtaking tonight.”

  She smoothed her hands over the skirts of her gown. “I pulled the—well, I was going to say I pulled the tags off the gown so we can’t return it, but it didn’t have any tags which was very frightening. I’m not sure I could get your money back anyway, though. There’s sherbet on the hem.”

  “When did you spill sherbet on the hem?”

  “I didn’t spill it,” she said pointedly, “you did. While you were trying to grope me during dinner.”

  He smiled and lifted her hand to kiss it. “I was trying to be discreet. Unfortunately.”

  “You were taking liberties.”

  “Darling, you have no idea the liberties—well, never mind. I wouldn’t have taken liberties, even if I’d had you to myself. A chaste kiss, perhaps, at the appropriate moment.” He unlocked the car and reached for the door. “Let’s go inside and see if that moment arrives.”

  She waited for him to open her door for her, then chewed on her words until they were standing just outside his
house. He put the key in the lock, then looked at her.

  “What?” he asked quietly.

  “What would you do if you lost it all?”

  He shrugged. “Sell the car, move to France.” He glanced at her briefly. “We might grow grapes.”

  “I don’t drink.”

  “Neither do I. Apples, then, or olives.”

  “We’d have to move to Italy for olives.”

  “My Italian is terrible,” he admitted. “How is yours?”

  “I could get us to the loo and onto a train, but that’s about it.”

  He let her into his house, shut and locked the door behind them, then pulled her into his arms. “Thank you,” he said with feeling. “I needed a little levity.”

  “Levity?” she echoed. “I have to be honest with you, Stephen, I’d much rather know you as poor and insignificant. Your titles and wealth are not assets.”

  He looked at her gravely. “Can you live with them?”

  “Your grandmother doesn’t think I should.”

  “My grandmother talks too much.”

  “I don’t think she’ll be the only one talking.”

  “Do you care?”

  “Do you?”

  He shot her a look. “I absolutely do not.”

  She only lifted her eyebrows briefly. She didn’t care what anyone said about her, but that was because she knew who she was, how she treated others, and where she was going. Comments on her choice of road or destination didn’t bother her.

  But she imagined they would bother her plenty if her road lay alongside Stephen’s.

  He took her hand and led her into his library. Humphreys rose from tending the fire and brushed off his hands. He made Stephen a bow, then nodded to her.

  “My lord,” he said, “Miss Alexander. Can I bring you anything?”

  Stephen shrugged out of his coat and tossed it over a chair. “I’m fine. Peaches?”

  She shook her head, then allowed Stephen to take her wrap and hand it to Humphreys.

  “I think we’re well off for the moment,” Stephen said. “We’ll raid the kitchen later if we need something.”

  “Then I’ll be on my way, my lord. I’ll return first thing.”

  Peaches watched him leave, watched the library door close, then found herself turned around and drawn into Stephen’s arms. She looked up at him and smiled.

  “What is it?”

  He put his hand along her cheek. “I missed the activity I’d planned to engage in at midnight. I thought I’d make up for it now.”

  She laughed a little in spite of herself. “After all that’s gone on tonight, you’re thinking about kissing me?”

  “Thinking about it, dreaming about it, planning on doing a thorough job of it,” he said, bending his head toward hers.

  She put her arms around his neck and enjoyed his very thorough job of what he was doing. He finally lifted his head and looked at her.

  “Well, at least that won’t change if we’re both broke.”

  She laughed and pulled his head back to hers.

  She woke up, disoriented, then realized she had fallen asleep on the couch in Stephen’s library and that out of self-defense while he was trolling through books she’d been too sleepy to ask the names of. Stephen was gone, though the fire was still burning in a useful fashion. She sat up, pulled the blanket that had been draped over her around her shoulders, then went to look for the master of the house. She only found Humphreys, but she supposed he was a good second best.

  “Where is Viscount Haulton?” she asked, smothering a yawn behind her hand.

  “He went out, miss.”

  “To school?”

  Humphreys hesitated. “A bit farther than that, I suspect.”

  Peaches froze, then felt her way down into a chair at the kitchen table. “In what farther direction did he go, do you suppose?”

  “North, miss.”

  She was somehow not at all surprised, though she was surprisingly panicked. “Which car did he take?”

  “The Range Rover, miss.”

  She felt something slither down her spine. It was dread, pure and simple. “Did he say what he was planning to do?”

  “If I remember correctly, miss, he said he had some investigating to do at the family seat. He left you a note, if you care to read it over breakfast.”

  She wasn’t sure she could stomach any breakfast, but Humphreys was already pulling green things out of the fridge and firing up a juicer she hadn’t noticed before. She might have smiled over that, but she was too busy opening the card and reading what was scrawled in Stephen’s bold hand.

  Don’t follow me, and I mean that. I’ll be back before Kenneworth’s deadline, solution in hand. Be a good girl, sit in front of the fire, and let Humphreys feed you.

  I love you,

  Stephen

  Well, obviously he was off to do something ill-advised. It occurred to her, with that same feeling of dread, that she knew just what that something was going to be. He was going to use that great big X near Artane to get back to the past and do … what? Wander around and look for buried treasure?

  Unless he’d found something during the night that he hadn’t shared with her.

  She looked at Humphreys, who was concentrating on his mixture.

  “Humphreys, do you have any idea what Lord Haulton was reading last night?”

  “He came out of the library very early this morning, miss, but without any books. I daresay he left them in the library.”

  She considered. “Do we have any costumes?”

  “What sort of costumes are we looking for?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder.

  “Oh, you know,” she said, waving her hand negligently, “Renaissance-faire-type things. Medieval gowns. Shoes. A dagger to slip into a belt.” She looked at him innocently. “That sort of thing.”

  “In the wardrobe, in the spare room, miss.”

  “Would you drive me to the station in a bit?”

  He looked faintly horrified. “The station? Why would you take the train, Miss Alexander, when you could travel in comfort and style?”

  “Do you have the keys to the Mercedes?” she asked in surprise.

  He patted the pocket of his suit coat. “I like to keep them close, on the off chance they’re needed in a hurry.”

  Of course. She considered, then looked at Stephen’s valet. “He wants me to stay here.”

  “No doubt, miss.” Humphreys turned back to pouring her juice. “I’ll have the car ready for travel whenever it suits you.”

  Peaches smiled to herself as she thanked him for the juice he handed her, then walked back into the library. She considered the books she hadn’t noticed before lying on a table in front of the fire and decided that before she rushed off, she might as well know what Stephen was thinking.

  She could only hope she wouldn’t miss anything.

  Chapter 24

  Stephen stood on a stop just outside his father’s walls, looked up at the modern-day castle rising into the air in front of him, and took a deep breath. It was the same view he had looked at for the whole of his life, but somehow it was as if he were seeing it for the last time.

  Obviously lack of sleep had made him maudlin.

  He rubbed his hands over his face and reviewed his morning so far. He had arrived at Artane before dawn, parked in the car park, then gone inside his father’s hall. He had written his mother a note and asked her to move his car inside for him, giving her the excuse that he was going hiking for the next few days with friends and would be having a lift from them. He’d left his keys with the note, retrieved his shorter sword from where he’d left it near the front gate, and gone out into the darkness.

  The honest truth was, he’d initially looked at the time travelers he’d met with a very jaundiced eye. While he had never been one to mock others openly, he had certainly indulged in his own private, silent snorts of disbelief.

  That was until he’d met Kendrick de Piaget, his uncle, who wasn’t precisely
a time traveler but had most assuredly had a most interesting journey to the present day. Kendrick looked very much like Gideon, but that could possibly have been coincidence. Stephen couldn’t say he’d spent all that much time with Kendrick initially, so his exposure to those of a different vintage had been light.

  And then he’d had the pleasure of meeting both Zachary Smith and John de Piaget within a year of each other. If listening to Zachary’s tales hadn’t made the hair on the back of his neck stand up, listening to Zachary’s wife Mary—Stephen’s auntie, as it happened—babble on in perfect Norman French had been. Her husband’s command of it had been equally impressive.

  And he and John de Piaget could have passed for twins if it hadn’t been for the age difference.

  He’d already spoken to Zachary whilst about the happy work of rescuing Peaches from the past, so he’d had nothing further to ask him. Now that he’d had his own experience with time gates, he thought he might know what to expect.

  It wasn’t the traveling through time that gave him pause. It was what he would find on the other side of that stretch of centuries that left him almost frozen in place.

  On one side of the gate, his current side, lay a situation that was absolute pants. He could hardly wrap his mind around it, but there was no denying that David Preston, the wastrel Duke of Kenneworth, held the deeds to Artane, Haulton, Blythewood, and Etham. His attorney, the very canny Geoffrey Segrave, didn’t think that included the private property inside, but that hardly mattered. Artane was priceless, and not just for the history and the memories it held. Stephen imagined they could liquidate every personal item possessed by the entire family yet still not have enough to meet an appraised price. The situation was absolutely impossible.

  It had occurred to him, as he’d watched Peaches sleep on the couch in his library, that he would be wise to set aside something in trust for their children—assuming he was able to earn enough to have anything to set aside for children he could only hope to have with her—something apart from his lands and titles that was untouchable. It was a pity his father hadn’t had a better lawyer to do the same for him.