by Lynn Kurland
The journey through the small bit of town was substantially more difficult than the travels down the road, but he managed it, found the car park, then put Stephen’s car there. He turned the car off, then looked to his left.
And he felt a shiver go down his spine.
He glanced at Pippa to find her gaping at the keep, so perhaps he wasn’t the only one overwhelmed.
“You grew up here?” she squeaked.
He found it in him to smile. “Aye. ’Tis impressive, isn’t it?”
“It’s enormous.”
He looked past her. “It doesn’t seem to have changed too much.” He unbuckled and removed the key. “Wait for me.”
“Of course.”
He looked at her quickly to find her watching him with what he supposed he might dare to call affection. He leaned over, kissed her once, firmly, then pulled away and got out of the car. He shoved the key in his pocket as if he’d had pockets and car keys the whole of his life, then went around to fetch Pippa whilst he could still think straight. He hesitated, then gladly turned when she pulled him around and put her arms about his waist.
He held her close and, to his shame, had to close his eyes for a minute to block out the sight in front of him. His father, at that moment, was eight centuries deceased, as were all his siblings, their spouses, and their children. It was, he had to admit with all candor, a terrible realization.
“Montgomery?” she said softly. “Do you want to try the beach first?”
“Nay,” he managed, but he didn’t open his eyes and he didn’t release her, “I am well. I simply feel as if I’m walking over my parents’ graves. I didn’t expect this.”
“You can go home again,” she said quietly. “I’m positive of it.”
He was, too, though that didn’t make the present feel any easier. He sighed deeply, then lifted his head and looked down at her. “I believe there are several time gates in England,” he said slowly. “There was one near Artane, once.”
She didn’t look terribly surprised. “I think I’ve been near it.” She managed a faint smile. “I had come to England with my parents one summer and we were doing a little medieval faire near here. I was watching the sunrise over the beach, then turned around and saw a guy standing behind me in chainmail. He was, I will admit impartially, the most gorgeous young man I’d ever seen.”
He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “And you were easily the loveliest faery I had ever seen.”
Her mouth fell open. “Did you see me?”
“I did. Perhaps you can imagine my surprise when that same ethereal creature came walking out of my bedchamber the morning after I pulled her from my cesspit.”
“You didn’t pull me, buster. I crawled.”
He laughed and hugged her tightly. “That I carried you upstairs should count for something. And that I didn’t faint when I realized your wings were not attached should also count for something.”
She began to blush. “I don’t think I want to carry on any more of this conversation. I’m fairly sure I know where it’s going given that I woke up that next morning missing a bit more than my wings.”
“I didn’t look.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
He laughed and pulled her close again. He could scarce believe they were standing near the place where Fate had given them a glimpse of their future all those many years ago, but it seemed somehow quite fitting.
He stood quite happily with Pippa, relishing the smell of the sea and the sound of the gulls crying from the shore, until he thought he might manage to actually go into his father’s gates and not expect to find his immediate family there. He pulled back and looked at Pippa.
“I’m not sure I’ll let you from my arms very often,” he said. “If you don’t mind.”
“We don’t have to go in yet, if you want to stay out here,” she offered quietly.
He shook his head. “It was a momentary weakness.” He put his arm around her shoulders. “I’ll come back later for our gear. Let us see if we can get ourselves past the woman who wants to make me pay to enter my father’s keep.”
She put her arm around his waist and walked with him across the rock path and up to Artane’s outer gates. He was accosted immediately by an older woman bearing pointed metal implements of torture, who took one look at him, then swayed.
“I’m a guest of Lord Stephen’s,” Montgomery said, trying out his best modern English on her.
“So I see, lad,” the woman said. She waved him on. “I’ll be in me booth, waiting for other odd happenings. Have them often enough here, I’ll tell you.”
He imagined they did. He moved quickly past her glass chamber and continued on up the way to his father’s courtyard. It was only as he’d walked past where the blacksmith’s forge had been in times past that he realized the pain in the side of his head was coming from the glare Pippa was giving him. And then he realized what he’d said. He slowed, stopped, then looked at his love.
“Um,” he began.
“Yes, um,” she said crisply, in that same modern English he’d used. “I believe, my lord, that you have some explaining to do.”
“Might we sit down first—” he began in French.
“Oh, don’t you even think about any more of that medieval French business,” she said. She pulled away and frowned again. “I’m finding myself unpleasantly surprised by your linguistic skills and wondering what other secrets you’ve been keeping.”
“Could you say that more simply?” he asked with a wince.
“Yes,” she said shortly. “You’re in big trouble, buddy.”
Well, that he understood. He considered, then held open his arms. She could either run him through, or walk into his embrace. She scowled, then stepped forward and put her arms around his waist. He sighed in pleasure, more content than he deserved to feel over standing on his father’s cobblestone path with the woman he loved in his arms. He could only hope that, as usual, a comfortable meal and a hot fire awaited him inside. If he managed to get there without Pippa snatching the dagger out of his boot and stabbing him first, he would indeed count himself fortunate.
“Well?” she asked, her voice muffled against his shirt. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“Would you believe me if I said there have been, over the years at Artane, a few paranormal oddities?”
“Would you believe that I fully intend to repay you for the enormous headache I had for almost two weeks trying to get your medieval Norman French right?”
He laughed a bit. “I daresay I would.”
“I want answers.”
“You shall have them. After lunch.”
She pulled away from him. “Let’s go then. Stephen says Artane has a fabulous chef. You probably should have something from him before I start repaying you for all your secret keeping.” She shot him a warning look. “You’re not going to get out of this conversation.”
“I imagine I won’t,” he agreed. He paused. “At least we can rest assured that all things of a paranormal nature are behind us. I think today the only things we need to worry about are a few squeaking floorboards and explaining to Stephen’s father just how we’re related to each other.”
She looked up at him seriously. “Do you think so?”
“I’m sure of it,” he said confidently.
And he was. Fate had obviously had a hand in bringing Pippa into his life from across the centuries, but surely she was finished with her work in his family. If he could convince Pippa to wed with him, that would no doubt bring an end to inexplicable happenings on his father’s soil—and his, too, apparently—leaving them to live out their lives in peace and obscurity.
He smiled, kept his arm around her shoulders, then walked with her toward his father’s hall, hoping that his skill with modern English would be the last of the surprises awaiting them. He had wooing to do, and he didn’t want anything untoward coming between him and the woman he loved.
Chapter 26
Pippa had
to make a conscious effort to keep her mouth from hanging open as if she’d been a medieval farm girl who’d never been more than ten feet from her mother’s cooking fire. To say Artane was impressive was badly understating it. The place was nothing short of magnificent. She looked at Montgomery, who was apparently spending less time watching his ancestral home than he was watching her.
“Did you bring me here to impress me?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Is it working?”
He was back to French, so she decided she would humor him. It seemed fitting to speak his native tongue while he was on native soil, but that wasn’t going to last when she got him back to Sedgwick. She fully intended to wring answers from him one way or another.
“Absolutely,” she said faintly.
He looked around the bailey with a smile. “The stables are much finer than they were in my day, and the blacksmith’s hut is gone, but the chapel still stands.” He frowned. “That might be some sort of shop over there where the garden once was.” He considered. “I wonder what they sell?”
“Chocolate, undoubtedly.”
He shook his head. “It was a very bad habit to start.”
“Especially since I don’t think it hits England until, well, I’m not sure exactly when. You’d have to ask Tess for the exact date.”
“I’m not sure I want to,” he said with an uncomfortable laugh. He eyed the shop one final time, then nodded toward the hall. “I’m not sure who’s expecting us, but perhaps we should just knock and see who answers.”
Pippa nodded, then let him take her hand and lead her up the stairs. She waited with him on the little landing and smiled at his long-suffering sigh, sighed, no doubt, over having to knock instead of just walking inside. They didn’t wait as long as she’d expected. Within moments, the door opened and Jennifer de Piaget stood there.
Or at least Pippa thought so at first.
Montgomery covered his gasp quite quickly, though he stammered for a moment or two before he finally managed something coherent.
“I am, um, a friend of Lord Stephen’s,” he said in his English that was a happy cross between British and American. He paused, started to speak, then simply shut his mouth and held out his hand.
The woman, who couldn’t have looked more like Nicholas’s wife if she had been Nicholas’s wife, took Montgomery’s hand and shook it as if she were moving in slow motion.
“I’m Megan,” she said faintly. “Stephen’s sister-in-law. I mean, I’m married to his younger brother, Gideon.”
“Ah, Lady Blythwood,” Montgomery said, making her a low bow. “Stephen told me about you. I’m Montgomery. Actually, Stephen and I are . . . related.” He paused. “In a roundabout way.”
Pippa couldn’t take her eyes off Megan. It would have been rude—or made her sound like a complete idiot—to have asked Megan if she had a sister who now lived in medieval England, but she almost couldn’t help herself.
“Please, come in,” Megan said, stepping backward and beckoning them inside.
Pippa exchanged a look with Montgomery. She was almost surprised to find she had no trouble telling what he was thinking.
Something strange was definitely going on.
She leaned close as they followed Megan across the great hall. “Is she related to Jennifer, do you think?” she murmured in French.
“If she isn’t, then Fate is toying with us to make us believe so.”
“Any personal insights on this, Lord Secret Keeper?”
He looked profoundly uncomfortable. “Would you believe I once believed Jennifer was a fairy?” He shot her a look. “I saw her spring up from the ground. Now, I suspect she walked through a time gate.”
“You must have suspected more than that sooner than today,” she said pointedly, “given that it was your brother Nicholas we went to ask about a few strange happenings on his land.”
He smiled faintly. “Aye, well, we should probably have speech about that, too.”
She supposed they should. She remembered quite suddenly what it was she’d heard Jennifer humming that particular morning after she’d woken from such a luxurious night’s sleep.
“Here We Go ’Round the Mulberry Bush.”
She supposed she was somewhat relieved she hadn’t realized that at the time. It might have led to questions she wouldn’t have wanted to have answers for right then. She could only assume Megan knew what had happened to her sister, which had to have been difficult.
She wondered if they had any way at all to keep in touch.
Perhaps it was better not to know that presently. She took a deep breath, then turned back to the matter at hand, which was waiting with Montgomery near the lord’s table while Megan ran upstairs to get her husband. She glanced at Montgomery to find him staring at the hall with a thoughtful look on his face. He caught sight of her, smiled, then reached out to pull her close. Pippa went happily into his arms, then took the opportunity to look over the father’s hall from the security of that father’s son’s arms.
Artane’s insides were no less impressive than its outsides. The great hall was enormous with equally large hearths set into opposite walls. Tapestries lined the place, but the stone floors were free of rugs, filthy straw, and any vestiges of dirt. She wondered idly what it had looked like eight hundred years earlier, but she suspected it hadn’t been much different. It was, as Stephen had promised, remarkably well preserved.
She rested her head on Montgomery’s shoulder. “Well?” she asked. “What do you think?”
“I think my father and Robin both would be amazed the place is still standing,” he said, sounding equally amazed. “Then again, Sedgwick seems to be as well so perhaps it isn’t as rare a thing as I think.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said slowly. “There are many castles that haven’t been so fortunate. I’m no expert, but I think between wars and time, lots of keeps were either destroyed or left to rot.” She paused. “We could see if your family has any sorts of books here that might tell about happenings in the past.”
He nodded, then started to speak only to shut his mouth and stiffen. Pippa pulled away, because it seemed the thing to do, then found herself watching as a blond version of Montgomery came bounding out of the stairwell into the great hall. He stumbled briefly, collected himself, then continued over with a smile and outstretched hand.
“Gideon de Piaget,” he said, looking not the least bit uncomfortable. “I wonder if you’re a cousin?”
“An uncle, actually,” Montgomery said gravely.
Gideon only smiled. “I suspected as much, and I must say your English is excellent. Whose son are you?”
“Rhys’s,” Montgomery said. “I’m his youngest.”
Gideon looked him over. “You’re missing your sword.”
“ ’ Tis in the car.”
“Of course it is,” Gideon said with a bit of a laugh. He looked at the entrance to the stairs and held out his hand until Megan had walked over to them, carrying who Pippa supposed was their offspring. Gideon held out his hands for a little girl, who immediately squirmed to get down. Gideon smiled at his wife. “I was afraid you might drop her when you find out who’s come for lunch.”
“Do I dare ask?” Megan asked faintly.
Gideon nodded at Montgomery. “Nicholas’s youngest brother. You know, darling, the Nicholas who is married to your sister.”
“I knew it,” Pippa said, then she clapped her hand over her mouth. She looked at Megan. “I’m so sorry.”
“Have you seen Jennifer?” Megan asked in surprise.
“About a week ago,” Pippa admitted. “She looks just like you. Well, a little more harried. She had four little boys to chase after.”
Megan smiled, though tears were suddenly running down her cheeks. “I’d like to hear about it.” She shot Montgomery a look. “And I imagine, my lord, that you could tell me quite a few stories yourself. I understand you squired for Nicholas off and on, didn’t you?”
Montgomery’s mouth fell open. “Ho
w did you know that?” he asked Megan.
Megan opened her mouth only to be interrupted by a robust laugh coming from the kitchen.
“Gideon, you coward, where did you go? I thought we were meeting in the lists at noon. The lads have worn me down a bit, but I’m . . . still . . . ah . . .”
Pippa watched as Montgomery’s twin walked out of some passageway or other. She realized almost immediately that he wasn’t Montgomery’s twin, though he could certainly have passed for it.
No, that man was older, perhaps by fifteen years or so. His English was laced with crisp, posh British consonants, but he seemed to be quite comfortable in his jeans with his sword propped up against his shoulder. Or at least his sword was there until it was dropped. The hilt clattered against the stone for a moment, then fell silent.
A string of hearty curses escaped the man, then he strode across the hall and jerked Montgomery into a manly hug complete with many slaps on the back, another look or two, then more curses and backslaps.
“Montgomery,” the newcomer said finally in perfect medieval French accompanied by an incredulous laugh, “what in the hell are you doing here?”
“Needing to find somewhere to sit down,” Montgomery said faintly. “Kendrick?”
“Who else?”
Montgomery pulled away and felt his way over to lean against the table. Pippa found herself pulled over—well, yanked over, really—apparently to be used as something to keep him from falling on his face.
“What are you doing here?” Montgomery asked hoarsely.
“Well,” Kendrick said, rocking back on his heels and looking contemplative, “it’s complicated.”
Pippa leaned close to Montgomery. “Paranormal oddities?”
Kendrick looked at her and smiled. “You’ve met my father.”
“I haven’t,” she said, shaking her head, “but I’ve heard quite a bit about him.”
Montgomery gestured weakly in Kendrick’s direction. “This is, if you can believe it, Phillip’s younger brother, Kendrick. Kendrick, this is my lady, Persephone.” He took a deep breath. “I brought her home to woo her.”