by Lynn Kurland
She hadn’t been looking for very long, actually, before she stumbled upon a situation that was so perfectly matched to what she was looking for, she could hardly believe what she was reading. Lord Reginald de Piaget, Earl of Artane during the beginning of the nineteenth century, had been, from very brief and sketchy reports, a man interested in wagers.
That was one way to put it, she supposed. She reached for a book on the Kenneworths she had found after a good hunt and opened it to the same time period. The Duke of Kenneworth during the same time period, Lionel, had been as famous for a spectacular string of wins as he had been for the number of very exclusive mistresses he had kept.
Typical.
She supposed Lionel wasn’t her man given that he was in the direct line, though he certainly would have been the easiest suspect. She sighed, then started to shut that book when she caught sight of his death date. Lionel had died fairly young, though Peaches found no indication of cause. Perhaps it was nothing more than the usual problem of bad water, bad hygiene, and a duel at dawn.
She shut the book slowly, then stared off unseeing into the fire. If Lionel had been the one to win the title to Artane in a card game, why hadn’t he claimed it immediately? Or had he intended to just torment Reginald de Piaget for a bit before demanding Artane and the other properties entailed on the estate?
She frowned, because something didn’t fit. If Lionel had died before he could claim his winnings, why hadn’t his brother Piers trotted out the IOU? She supposed it was possible after the heir’s death that Piers had been too busy running things to rifle through his brother’s papers. Perhaps he had simply tossed everything that wasn’t cash into a box and forgotten about it. But that didn’t explain why Andrea Preston’s father had had the deed and not David’s father.
She opened the book back up, retraced her steps, then followed the line down from Lionel’s grandfather—
And found that Lionel had had an infant son living when he’d died, which mean that Piers hadn’t inherited the title, he’d simply held things together until the little lad had come of age and claimed his father’s title.
Apparently, that son hadn’t claimed all his father’s papers. It was the only way Andrea Preston could have found the IOU in her father’s things.
She memorized dates, names, and places, then shut the books. “Bingo,” she murmured.
“Bingo?”
She almost fell off her chair. She recovered with difficulty, then turned around to see who was standing at the door.
It was, unfortunately, Zachary Smith, inveterate time-traveler, leaning casually against the doorjamb with his arms folded over his chest.
“Well, hello, my lord,” she said with a bright smile. “How is Wyckham?”
“Almost finished,” he said, “a fact for which I am profoundly grateful. How is the library?”
“Interesting, but I’m always interested in a good book.” She rose and stood in front of her books on the off chance Zachary got any ideas about borrowing them. “It’s nice to see you, Zach, but I gotta go.”
“Do you gotta?” he asked, not moving. “Where?”
“Oh, just back to my room.”
“Megan says you don’t have a room yet.”
Megan talks too much, Peaches thought, but she didn’t say as much. She only restacked her books behind her back, then rubbed her hands together as she walked over to the door.
“I’m off to get one,” she said. In another century. “How’s Mary?”
“Feeling better, and you’re changing the subject.”
Peaches had been herded enough by de Piaget men and de Piaget men-by-marriage to know if she didn’t push right on through Zachary Smith, she wouldn’t get out the front door.
“It’s not a very interesting subject and considering all the Regency delights I’ve been researching for Stephen, I know interesting. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go see if I can be useful.” Somewhere.
Zachary didn’t move. “I know where he went.”
Peaches stuck her finger in her ear. “I’m not at all sure I know what you’re talking about, but I do know I’m in a bit of a hurry. So, if you’ll excuse me—”
“I would have done the same thing in his place,” Zachary continued relentlessly, “and told the woman I loved, the woman I was leaving behind, to stay behind. I can’t believe Stephen didn’t do the same thing.”
“Oh, he left me a little love note,” Peaches said, wondering if it would be rude to just give Stephen’s uncle a good shove. “Why don’t you let me by and I’ll go get it? You and Mary can reread it with me, and we’ll all enjoy it again.”
Zachary wasn’t smiling. “I don’t suppose it would do me any good to list for you all the perils associated with what you’re contemplating.”
“What?” she asked with the best laugh she could muster. “A trip downstairs to the kitchen?”
He wasn’t laughing with her. “Peaches, this is nothing like a trip downstairs to the kitchen. The dangers are real and quite often fatal.”
She put her shoulders back. “I know.”
Zachary pursed his lips, then he reached down behind him and pulled up a very rustic-looking pack. “You should take this,” he said. “You know, on that adventure you know all about.”
She would have smiled, but she was too terrified to. “Are there snacks inside?” she managed.
“Beef jerky and pork rinds.”
“You know, you aren’t very funny.”
“That’s what your would-be lover says to me as well,” Zachary said mildly, “but he blames it on too many adventures having warped me.”
“Have they?”
He looked at her seriously. “The gate here is … turbulent, which is why I would hazard a guess Stephen told you very explicitly to stay behind and knit—”
“Read.”
“Whatever.” He blew out his breath. “You know, it’s very difficult to know where he went, and the odds of you landing in the same place are very slim.”
Peaches slung the pack over her shoulder and held the strap because she thought it might hide her trembling hands a bit better. “But it isn’t impossible.”
“Not entirely.”
“That’s enough,” she said.
He shook his head slowly, smiling faintly. “Peaches Alexander, you are a formidable woman.”
“No,” she said, her mouth suddenly very dry. “I’m terrified.”
“Good,” he said without hesitation. “You should be. Do you have a knife?”
“Knife?”
He nodded at her shoulder. “In the pack. Stow it somewhere on your person where it can’t be seen but can be reached. And be prepared to use it.” He rolled his eyes. “I can’t believe I’m saying any of this. You’re absolutely crazy to go without at least some sort of training.” He looked at her, hard. “Could you kill someone if you had to?”
She couldn’t even nod.
“That’s what I thought.”
“He needs to know his father is gone,” she managed, “and he needs to know what I just found out.”
“You can tell him both when he gets back.”
“It will be too late then,” she said, starting to feel a little panicked. “David gave us seventy-two hours. We’re already through almost twenty-four and look what that jerk has done. Stephen needs to be looking in a different direction instead of—”
“Talking Robin de Piaget into hiding things in the wall?”
She blinked in surprise. “Why would you think that?”
“It’s a long story,” Zachary said with a smile, “having to do with some enterprising souls in James MacLeod’s family. Keep going with what you were telling me. Stephen will think he’s taking care of things, but then what?”
“He won’t be looking in the right place.”
“And you know the right place?”
“I know the right place,” Peaches said, “and I think I’m close to the right person.”
Zachary shifted. There was now ro
om enough to escape if she’d wanted it, but now she had him listening and not lecturing, she supposed she could ask him for help.
“I need Regency-era clothes for both of us,” she said. “I’ll wear the medieval ones Humphreys dug up for me in Stephen’s house for the first leg of the trip.”
“You can’t go today,” Zachary said firmly. “It’s too late.”
“If I can get clothes together and be gone in an hour, I’ll have plenty of time to get there before dark.”
“Get where?” he asked politely. “I’m not sure you were clear about that before.”
“Medieval Artane. Then Stephen and I will head to Regency-land and change history.”
Zachary sighed, then rubbed his face. “It goes against my grain to send a woman through time unprotected.”
“And just who am I going to take with me?” Peaches asked reasonably. “You, a father-to-be? John, a new husband? Kendrick, who might give his father a heart—” She shut her mouth before she finished the rest of that sentence. “I’ll be fine. Just a little step in and a little step out and there I am at Artane.”
“And if it’s the wrong year?”
“I’ll deal with it.”
He looked at her seriously. “And if you can’t?”
“Then I can’t,” she said.
He sighed. “I’ll go look for costumes.”
“Thank you, Zach.”
“Thank me when you get back safely with that crazy man you’re in love with.”
“How do you know I’m in love with him?” she asked lightly.
“You wouldn’t be contemplating this trip if you weren’t.”
Peaches smiled, though she thought it might have been a less successful smile than she would have wanted. She watched Zachary go, then made her way to Megan’s room where her accomplice was waiting for her.
She would pack in a hurry, then be on her way.
And hopefully catch Stephen before he made decisions they both might come to regret.
Chapter 26
Stephen stood in the mud, shaking with weariness, and wondered what in the hell he’d been thinking to come anywhere near medieval Artane. Scotland was rugged, Ian MacLeod was fierce, and Claymores were heavy. But facing a grinning Robin of Artane—his grandfather several generations removed—and realizing that said grandfather was likely pushing sixty but had the energy of a twenty-year-old with no qualms about putting it constantly on display was terrifying.
He suspected he shouldn’t admit how much he was enjoying it.
Indeed, the entire trip had been less unsettling than it should have been—no, actually, it was worse than that. He had relished every moment of it. It was everything he’d been fascinated by for the entirety of his life on display in front of him, happening in real time. He had toyed with the idea of regretting not having brought even his phone to record what he was seeing, but decided almost immediately that there was something too magical about what he was experiencing to record it anywhere but in his memory.
Though he was, he had to admit, taking furious mental notes.
He did, however, regret having slept so long. He’d woken from his nap to find it well into the afternoon and Robin still apparently mulling his alternatives. He’d eaten a decent meal, then been invited to bring his sword out to the lists and engage in a little diversion whilst Robin continued with his thinking. He had been somehow unsurprised to hear that Robin had already spent the bulk of his day there, exercising his garrison.
“So, tell me what sort of care you’ve taken of my hall there in that future of yours,” Robin said, suddenly, looking far too energetic for Stephen’s taste.
Stephen tried not to notice that Robin wasn’t even breathing hard, damn him anyway. He would have tried to humor the man with tales of modern Artane, but found himself preoccupied by the task of remaining something besides a repository for Robin’s very sharp sword.
The afternoon wore on slowly. Stephen was tremendously grateful when Robin paused in his attentions and looked to his left.
“That’s a remarkably beautiful woman there,” he said, again not sounding in the slightest bit out of breath.
Stephen cursed silently at his own inability to catch his breath, looked, then realized that looking was bad for two reasons. One, the split second he shifted his attention away from Robin, Robin caught the hilt of his sword with the tip of his own and flicked it out of Stephen’s hands. It went arse over teakettle several times, flashing brightly in the late-afternoon sun an embarrassing number of times, before it landed point down in the mud. It quivered until Robin casually reached out and put his hand on it to still it.
Second, just looking over to his right and finding none other than Peaches Alexander standing at the edge of the lists in a cloak he certainly hadn’t provided for her had caused him to lose what was left of his breath in a particularly abrupt way.
Robin came to stand next to him.
“She bears a strong resemblance to Persephone, my youngest brother’s wife.”
“That is likely because she’s Persephone’s older sister,” Stephen wheezed.
“She’s very different from her sister.”
Stephen looked into gray eyes that were the mirror of his own. “You can tell that from a single look?”
Robin tapped the spot between his eyes. “My superior ability to judge a body with just a glance coming yet again to the fore. Henry’s courtiers live in fear.”
“I imagine they do.”
Robin studied Peaches a bit longer. “What does she do?”
Stephen thought about all the things he could have said about that remarkable woman standing there looking slightly defiant. He was sure Robin would have managed to wrap his superior intellect around any and all of them, but to limit Peaches to what she could do was to sadly understate her gifts. She could organize, and change lives, and alchemy, and leave him unsettled and off-balance. But she could also see through all the noise and the trappings, find the dreams lying there, and help nurture them into reality. He had listened to Tess tell him stories of that for years, then seen the same thing for himself. He looked at her for another moment in silence, smiled briefly at her, then looked at his grandfather.
“She loves,” he said simply.
Robin shot him a look of amusement. “Even a loser like you?”
Stephen smiled wryly. “You, my lord Artane, have spent far too much time learning a rather inappropriate amount of modern slang. And whilst I would certainly wish it, I hardly dare hope that she does.”
“Perhaps you had best work on that whilst you have my glorious hall and superior larder at your disposal. I would give you my thoughts on wooing a woman of obviously very fine breeding and heart, but they would, I fear, be lost on you.”
“You know,” Stephen said thoughtfully, “I’m fairly certain John said almost the same thing to me several days ago.”
“And where do you think John learned anything useful?” Robin asked archly. “From me, of course. I’m pleased to know that very soft life in the Future hasn’t ruined his wits.” He nodded toward Peaches. “Perhaps you’d best go welcome your lady properly before she decides someone else might be more to her liking than you.”
Stephen thought that very good advice, so he fetched his sword, resheathed it, then made Robin a low bow before he walked off the field and over to where Peaches was standing in the company of several lads Stephen imagined were Robin’s nephews. He started to speak to her, then froze.
There were two fair-haired young men there, twins, who were looking at him—or, rather, not looking at him with a purposefulness that for some reason struck him as very suspicious. They also looked a great deal like Nicholas of Wyckham, which made him even more suspicious.
He wondered, accompanied by a frown he couldn’t help, if those had been the sons Nicholas had been traveling to that inn to meet. But that would have meant …
The thought of what that said about other members of his extended family traveling through time was jus
t too much to consider at present. He promised himself a good grilling of the two later, then looked at Peaches and folded his arms over his chest.
“I am surprised to see you here,” he said in his best medieval Norman French. Well, he lied it in his best medieval Norman French, because he wasn’t at all surprised to see her there. But he supposed it was better to sound annoyed than accepting, on the off chance she ever thought to try another time gate on her own. “Surely you didn’t think I needed a rescue.”
She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Of course not.”
“Well,” he said, feeling slightly more medieval than was likely good for him. “That’s as it should be.”
“Though I would have if you had needed it.”
He blinked, then looked at that stunning, intelligent, courageous woman who could have just as easily stayed where he’d put her and waited for him to be about his business, and actually saw her. She wouldn’t have, he was positive, risked her life and potentially his as well by coming to find him unless she’d had a very good reason.
He didn’t, as he had said to Robin before, dare hope it was because she loved him.
He hardly dared touch her in his current condition, but one of the benefits of training like a fiend in the Middle Ages was it was so cold, the sweat was converted quite quickly to solid form. He pulled her into his arms and held her tightly.
“Forgive me,” he whispered.
She was holding on to him as though she were rather happy to see him, all things considered. “For what? The medieval barbarian response?”
He laughed a little and pulled back only far enough to look her in the eye. “That, too.”
She leaned up and kissed him briefly. “Forgiven.”
Stephen would have thanked her properly for that, but he was distracted by the conversation that had started up next to Peaches.
“Oh, so that’s how it is,” a voice said knowingly.
“What a surprise,” another voice said dryly.
Stephen looked over Peaches’s head at the twins, then singled out the one on the right for further scrutiny. “Have we met?”