Love's Labyrinth

by Anne Kelleher

  The two friends exchanged a long look, and Olivia knew that both of them realized this could, possibly, be the last time they saw each other. “I’ll see you.”

  “Count on it.” Alison winked.

  With another quick hug, Olivia left the room, wiping away a surreptitious tear. She was being silly. Of course she’d see Alison again. Of course they’d be together. How could they not? She went down the steps, consciously composing her face.

  Nicholas was waiting in the hall, speaking to his agent, Miles Coddington. Both men looked up as she entered the hall. A surprised look crossed Nicholas’s face, and it occurred to her that this was the first time he had ever seen her wearing the real accouterments of a woman of his own time, not to mention his mother’s recut dress. His ideas of what was attractive were shaped, of course, by the time and place of his upbringing. But her metamorphosis into an Elizabethan lady seemed to have touched some entirely different place in him, for his eyes met hers with a new and deeper light, and his voice, as he addressed her, had a new and richer timbre. “Mistress—” He stopped, paused, smiled, and said, “My lady.” He bowed.

  Olivia gave a short laugh and curtsied. “My lord.” She walked over to the two men. “Master Coddington.”

  “Mistress Olivia.” Miles Coddington was a middle-aged man, in his late forties to mid-fifties, Olivia judged. It was difficult for her to guess a person’s age in this time, because she assumed that people generally aged faster in the past than they did in the future. His broad face and light blue eyes were open and direct. “My lord’s told me about your helping him by pretending to be his wife, mistress. He’s doing a worthy thing, and bless you for helping him to do it.” He tugged his forelock.

  “Thank you, Master Coddington.” She knew this was someone who could be trusted. Nicholas had explained that Miles Coddington was a veteran of many battles, having served on a number of privateer vessels and, most recently, with Leicester’s men in the Low Countries. Nicholas had met him there and been impressed with his gallantry and innate nobility. When the war ended, Miles had been wounded and impoverished. Nicholas had offered him the position of agent at Talcott Forest, and Miles had turned his hand to running the estates with the same efficiency he’d run a privateer ship. A slight limp was the only evidence of his injuries. How much Nicholas had told her about the way of life here, she thought with a start, as she met his dark blue eyes. It was the best history lesson she’d ever received.

  Nicholas was looking at her with that new intensity and, unnerved, she momentarily lowered her lashes. “I’m ready.”

  “So I see.” He smiled at her again and took her hand with a sudden casual gesture that seemed so natural she was startled once more by its very easiness. “I agree with you, Miles, on what to do with the lower forty. See that those fences are mended, and hire as many as you need to get the harvest in. It looks as if we’re in for a fair spell of weather—I’d like to see as much done by St. Bart’s day as you can manage.”

  He turned once more to Olivia. “Shall we be on our way, then, madam?” He smiled a farewell to Miles over her head as he led her away and, for a moment, Olivia had the unnerving feeling that he was treating her exactly as he would were she, in fact, his wife. Her heart beat faster, and a little voice in her mind whispered: Stop it. You’re behaving like a silly adolescent. Where do you think this could lead? With a sigh, she forced herself to heed the voice of her more sensible side. As they reached the threshold of the house, Nicholas paused and turned to face her.

  Her heart once again beat faster, but his words fell like a shock of icy water on her flushed cheeks and fluttering lashes. “Let me look at you.” It was said with the same terse disdain he’d used just a few days ago, less than an hour after her arrival with Alison in the sixteenth century. She raised her face slowly and met chill blue. She must’ve been dreaming, she thought. There was no more interest in Nicholas’s gaze than if she’d been the milch cow he’d first made her feel like.

  “You’ll do very well, mistress. I must say, I am impressed at old Janet’s efforts. Now, you do remember all I’ve told about this trip? Our names are Master Stephen Steele, esquire, and his wife, Mistress Katherine Steele. We’re on pilgrimage to Notre Dame in Paris, and we receive a message that causes us to turn back to home.”

  “Why?” She met his eyes with a look of cool determination. She would show him that while she may well be a stranger in a strange land, she was not without wits.

  He blinked. “Why what?”

  “Whyfore are we on our way to Paris, my lord husband? What boon do we beg? What cure do we seek? Is’t an old war wound of yours, sir? Or perhaps something that prevents the growth of your seed in my womb?” She raised her chin and cocked her head, eyes dancing.

  A glint of humor made his lips quirk, and momentarily she thought she saw that new look glimmer in his eyes, but whatever flame there was, was immediately dashed. “Point scored, mistress. We’ll say… an old war wound of mine that makes me incapable of planting a seed in your womb.” Another fleeting smile lifted the corner of his mouth.

  He offered her his arm and pushed open one side of the great doors. Together, they stepped outside onto the broad stone steps that led down to the curving drive. Two horses were saddled and waiting; a third was ridden by the young boy who would serve as Nicholas’s squire. Fleetingly, Olivia realized there would be no woman to attend her as Janet had. Who would help her dress? She glanced up at Nicholas in sudden horror. This was no case of maidenly vapors, she thought. There was an undeniable attraction between them. And alone, thrown together on a journey, if Nicholas showed any of that charm, what could happen? She suppressed her thoughts with a rueful little sigh. A brief fling, pleasurable as it might be, was hardly what she wanted. It could only lead to hurt and regret.

  He lifted her up into the saddle. “You must call me Nicholas until we arrive in Dover,” he said gruffly as his hands spanned her tightly laced waist.

  She did not reply. She gathered the reins in her gloved hands and sat up straight in the saddle, thanking God that she and Alison had gone through the typical adolescent girl’s preoccupation with horses. Both of them had been interested in the beautiful animals long enough to learn to ride proficiently, if not expertly, and once or twice they’d ridden together in Central Park.

  The chest that held their clothes was strapped to the back of the boy’s saddle. Jack, that was his name, thought Olivia. He touched his forelock in the same gesture of respect Miles had used. His mouth hung slightly open, as though he was amazed beyond words at the sudden appearance of Lord Nicholas’s supposed bride.

  Nicholas swung into his own saddle. “Let’s away, then.” There was no sign of Geoffrey, and Olivia wondered if the brothers had exchanged unpleasant words before they’d left.

  She gave a last look to the silent windows within the shade of the great trees. “Good-bye, Allie.” She whispered a silent prayer that she would see her friend again, then touched her heels to her gelding’s sides.

  CHAPTER 7

  “ALL FRESH AND clean?” Geoffrey teased as Alison walked in the door of his study.

  She sighed, running her fingers through her still damp curls. “You just can’t imagine.”

  “I like to be clean.” He put down his astrolabe and crossed his arms over his chest. “We aren’t complete barbarians, you know.”

  “I know you do the best you can. I had no idea a bath could be so much trouble. How do people without servants do it?”

  ‘They don’t,” he answered. “Or not very often. I guess you get used to bathing all the time, hmm?”

  “Do you know, there are some days when I take three showers a day?”

  ‘Three?” He blinked.

  “Sure. One when I wake up in the morning before work, one after I go to the gym at lunch, and one after I run in the afternoon.” She shook her head. “Now that’s a lot of hot water.”

  “Three of these showers—the water runs by itself?”

  “Yeah
. All you do is turn a tap. That’s it. And it’s hot and it’s fresh and it’s clean—and there’s all of it you could ever want.”

  “What I wouldn’t give to see such a wonder.” He sighed.

  “Well, maybe you should come with us.”

  “Go with you?” His eyes widened.

  “Why not? Think about it. If you can figure something like this out here, now, under these conditions—think about what you could do with all the resources of the twenty-first century. If you’d just hurry up and figure out the way to get us back there, we might even make it in time to celebrate the new millennium. You know, Y2K, the year two thousand and all that.”

  “I—why, it never occurred to me to go with you!”

  “Isn’t that what you built the maze for in the first place?”

  “Yes, I suppose it was.”

  “Well, then.” She gave his arm a little poke. “Let’s get busy there, buddy. If it worked once, it has to be able to work again. And maybe we can figure out a way to sweet talk Nicholas so he won’t destroy it the minute we’re all gone. It’d be a real bummer if you didn’t like the future and couldn’t get back.” She winked at him, choking back a laugh at the startled expression on his face.

  He picked up the astrolabe and set it down again, turning to the window with a troubled expression. “Hey, what’s wrong? I was only teasing you.”

  “It’s Nicholas. And this whole foolhardy venture of his. I don’t like it—the whole thing makes me uneasy, but I can’t put my finger on why. I tried to tell him so this morning before he left, but he’d not hear a word I had to say.” Geoffrey shook his head and sighed.

  “Well, what strikes you as odd about it? It seems reasonable enough to me. Gets him back in the Queen’s good graces and all.”

  Geoffrey sighed again and drummed his fingers on his desk. “It’s just—this Master Warren, suddenly appearing out of nowhere. I mean, how does Nicholas even know he works for Walsingham? How can Nicholas be so sure he’s even in the Queen’s service? It’s just too—too—”

  “Convenient?”

  Their eyes met in sudden understanding. “Yes,” he said after a brief pause. “It’s too neat. I don’t trust this Master Warren, whoever he is. There was a very nasty incident involving someone named Warren in my father’s time. He never spoke of it, but my mother told us both the story after his death. I think it changed him forever.”

  Alison sat down on a high stool opposite the desk. “I’m listening.”

  “It was during the reign of Queen Mary—Bloody Mary, they call her now. Did you know that?” When she nodded he shrugged. “So even four hundred years later…” He trailed off, then started again after a few moments. “My father was a devout Catholic. His devotion never wavered, even when it was clear it would be safer to sway with the wind. When Mary was finally made Queen, after so many years of suppression, his fervor exploded into something closer to fanaticism. I think even my mother feared him in those years. There was a schoolmaster in the parish—Robert Warren was his name. He had a wife, and several children, and—well I don’t remember him. I wasn’t even born. He was accused of heresy, and when an English Bible was found in his home—it was his undoing. Father saw him burned alive at Canterbury.”

  “Burned?” Alison leaned back, horrified that someone could speak of something so terrible as a distinct reality.

  “Aye. It’s a thing neither Nicholas nor I am proud of, believe me. It’s a chapter best closed, I say. If no one ever burns to death in England again, I say it will be too soon. Surely there can be no crueler death.”

  “I can’t imagine…” Alison whispered.

  “They don’t do such things in your time, I suppose?”

  “No—well, cruelty is—there are still terrible people who do terrible things. But in England—and in the United States for that matter—no one is put to death by burning.”

  “Thank God.” He closed his eyes. “Well. That’s all there is to the story. When I heard the name Warren, I couldn’t help but think of it. I guess Nicholas is too preoccupied with his hopes of restoring our fortunes to remember such a thing.”

  “Do you blame him?”

  “No. It’s his purpose as the eldest son and heir to all the family estates. While I, I get to be the eccentric dabbler in the arcane arts.”

  “We’d better get to it, don’t you think? After all, whether or not Nicholas restores the family fortunes, neither Olivia nor I want to be here to enjoy them. How soon do you expect to hear from this teacher of yours—Dr. Dee?”

  With a brief laugh, Geoffrey picked up his astrolabe. “With no mishap, I expect my letter to arrive within another day or two. Assuming he writes back within another day or two after that, I expect we’ll have a reply by the time Nicholas and Olivia return. And as for you, Mistress Wise-and-Wonderful, be so kind as to check these calculations I did while you were enjoying the comfort of your bath?”

  “Whatever you’d like, Master-of-the-Arcane-Arts.”

  With another shared laugh, the two of them bent over their papers. Just let Olivia be okay, prayed Alison to whomever might be listening. An uneasy premonition ran through her mind. She didn’t care a fig what happened to Nicholas and his family fortunes. Just as long as she and Olivia made it home to 1999, she’d be happy. After all, was that really so much to ask?

  Later, Olivia decided that the best she would ever be able to say about her first sixteenth-century journey was that it was slow. Although she knew intellectually that travel in Elizabethan England was difficult, it was a very different thing to experience it firsthand, especially after knowing the comparative ease of twentieth-century travel. The roads, if such they could be called, were deep, pitted ruts that made her shudder at the thought that one of the horses could be lamed. But the weather was fine—the sun warm across her shoulders and the breeze cool enough to refresh. The countryside was like a picture book come to life: fields gold with summer wheat and green with hay, bustling with peasants dressed in faded blues and browns, who tended sheep or cows or gathered in the harvest.

  They stopped for a late lunch beneath a stand of trees that Nicholas said was nearly halfway to Dover.

  “What d’ye think, sir?” asked Jack, munching an apple. “Will we come to Dover by night?”

  “I expect so,” said Nicholas, squinting in the direction of the sun. ‘The road will open out between here and there. We should be able to make better time.” He tore the last bit of meat off a chicken leg and tossed the bone into the brush, then delicately wiped his fingers with his napkin. “Are you quite finished, lady?” Ever since leaving Talcott Forest, he’d addressed her as “my lady,” or simply “lady.” It was as if, Olivia realized, he was preparing himself to play the part, and she nodded, the hint of a smile on her lips.

  ‘Thank you, yes.”

  “Do you need to—er—” Nicholas paused and nodded toward a clump of bushes on the far side of the clearing “refresh yourself?”

  Olivia followed his glance and understood. “Ah, yes. A good idea.” She got to her feet, gathering and arranging her skirts. And Alison thought chamber pots were awful to use.

  They came to Dover just as night was falling over the ancient seaside port. The scent of the ocean filled the air, and the gentle slap of the sea against wharves was a constant soft refrain. Nicholas stopped before a half-timbered inn. “We’ll stop here for the night,” he said. “Jack, you see to the horses. As soon as you’re settled, my lady, I’ll book passage on tomorrow’s first tide.”

  He swung out of his saddle and led them all through the stone arch, into the courtyard of the inn. A groom came forward to take the horses, and Nicholas reached up to help Olivia down from her saddle. She groaned momentarily, as muscles she’d forgotten she had protested the day’s overuse.

  “Are you all right?” He frowned down at her.

  “Just a little sore. It’s been a while since I spent that much time on horseback.”

  “Ah.” He raised an eyebrow and turned awa
y, as if to forestall any further conversation. She smoothed her skirts, and allowed him to lead her into the common room, where the landlord, recognizing at once Nicholas’s status by what was probably a combination of dress and bearing, came forward, bowed, and asked what he could offer them.

  “A room,” answered Nicholas, stripping off his gloves. “Two rooms,” he amended, looking at Olivia. She lowered her eyes instinctively. She felt him willing her to look up, and she met his gaze. Desire so clearly struggled with control in his eyes, it took her breath away. “Yes. Two rooms,” he said again.

  “Where do you want me to carry this, m’sir?” Jack stood in the doorway, the small trunk on his shoulder.

  “Follow me,” said the landlord, leading them up the steps at the back of the common room. “I have two rooms right beside each other. Share a door, in fact, just so you can—” He started to chuckle, looked over his shoulder at Nicholas’s expressionless face, and broke off. “This way.”

  He led them down a short corridor and paused before a thick oak door. He turned the key in the iron lock. “That’s yours, Master Steele.” He handed it to Nicholas and, pushing open the door, stood aside to let Nicholas and Olivia pass. “An it please, sir.”

  Olivia followed Nicholas, looking around at the cozy room. It was neat and very clean, the big bed made with white linen sheets. The scent of fresh, line-dried linen and ocean air filled the chamber. The landlord pushed open a door on the other side of the hearth.

  “And in here is the second chamber—with a key in the lock outside the hall door, just like this one.”

  “Fetch it, Jack,” said Nicholas. “This will do,” he said to the landlord. He pulled a money pouch from his belt. “What do I owe you?”

  “For just tonight, Master Steele?”

  “Aye, we’re bound for Calais on the morrow.”

  “Fourpence for each room, an it please you. That includes the stabling of your horses, and room for your squire in the loft above the stable.”