Sophie had sent one of the pages out to check on Leo’s house, telling him to knock on the door and report back who answered. If he came back saying the house was deserted, she was going to give up hope. Who could fight a curse that could make entire buildings and the people within them disappear? The boy came back a few hours later, huffing and puffing and saying mean old Lady Alise had answered and shooed him away without so much as offering him a drink. Sophie grilled him. Had everything looked normal? Was there anything strange about the place? Yes and no, except, of course, for how mean Lady Alise was.
That had been the only reason she’d been able to get a good night’s sleep and not be a raving lunatic right now. Whatever strangeness had happened on the two men’s properties, it had either been an illusion or it was righted when the curse reset. Sophie thought it might have been a warning to them of what might happen to people who tried to run away from it. She shivered again. She seriously hated that curse.
“Are you cold?” Batty asked solicitously, draping her with a shawl. “Would you like me to bring you up your breakfast?”
“No,” Sophie said. “I’m going down.”
It was time to get back into it. She needed to see what was the same and what, if anything, was different. When she’d come back, she’d messed things up, caused the curse to do strange things. This time, no one had been brought back from her and Fay’s time, which was the ultimate in strangeness. They’d assumed someone had to find the dress and put it on in order to get the party started again. But now it seemed there were no rules.
Sophie spied Fay and Tristan and the long, family table. It was raised slightly on a dais so it looked out over the great hall which, at the moment, was mostly empty.
“About time you woke up,” Fay said, pretending to look at a nonexistent watch. “I thought you’d be up at the crack of dawn, worrying about everything.”
Sophie grimaced. She’d been trying hard not to worry about everything. “I have a reason for sleeping so long,” she said. “You’ll be glad of this. I bribed one of the pages to go check out Leo’s house yesterday and he didn’t get back to me until late. Where is Leo, by the way?”
She was antsy to see him. Even a few hours apart made her jittery. She believed their love was true and he wouldn’t forget about her, but the curse was so hateful she wouldn’t feel comfortable until they were safely married. Goodness, but she wanted to be married to that man.
Fay snapped her fingers under her nose. “He hasn’t come down yet, so concentrate. What did the page say about Leo’s house?”
Tristan peered around Fay’s shoulder. “What’s this about Sir Leo’s house?”
Fay sighed. When the curse reset neither of the men remembered anything about the strange and scary goings-on at their properties. Which was probably best for their sanity, but it made it difficult to have a conversation about it.
“Nothing, dearest. Could you find one of the kitchen boys and see if there’s any more ham?”
“Of course, my darling.” He kissed the top of Fay’s head and headed toward the kitchen.
Sophie pushed aside her envy. Oh, how she wanted that, and sooner rather than later. If Leo didn’t ask Sir Walter for her hand by the end of the day she might go crazy. Crazier.
“The house is fine. Perfectly normal. If anything really happened there, it’s fixed now. We can probably safely assume it’s the same at Dernier.”
“God, I hope so,” Fay said, twisting the ends of her shawl. “But didn’t you tell me last night some creepy old lady told you something up in Leo’s attic?”
“Uh huh. She told me to hurry, that someone was waiting for me.”
“How or why would the curse do that? Make you hallucinate a …”
“Ghost?” They both shuddered. Sophie was in the camp that believed it might be a ghost behind everything. Fay was in the camp that didn’t ever want to talk about ghosts. “I just assumed she meant Leo was waiting for me. Then I thought she meant whoever came through next. But nobody came through. Don’t you think that’s the strangest part of all?”
Fay nodded. “Yes. Listen, real quick before Tristan gets back,” she started. Tristan could understand perfectly when Fay spoke about the curse, but he had a hard time deciphering anything about it when Sophie was doing the talking. It was a pain having to translate. “I have a theory about that.”
“Nobody coming through this time, you mean?” Sophie asked.
She nodded some more, looking excited. “Sophie, what if it’s broken? Really broken this time?”
Sophie slumped. “You know it’s not. It reset. Anne’s alive again, Catherine’s still pregnant.”
“That’s where my theory comes in,” she said, all but bouncing on the bench. “I think it all started at this point in time. Whoever set the curse—”
“Or whatever,” Sophie interrupted, purely out of habit and to annoy her sister. Maybe the only other good thing about the curse was that it had given Sophie two sisters she truly loved like real family.
“Ugh, stop. I think the curse got set originally because whoever or whatever wanted a chance to do something over. Or change something. I think that’s why the same damned year keeps happening. So. Now it’s broken, we start at the beginning again, but time will continue on normally from now on.”
“I like your theory a lot,” Sophie said, meaning it. “The only problem is, we have to wait and see. We won’t know either way until it decides to reset. Because it didn’t go the whole year last time.”
“But it has to be broken because no new person came through to fall in love this time. There’s no way to break it so it has to be broken.”
It sounded feasible but Sophie was too wary and skeptical to believe it. She didn’t want the rug pulled out from under her again. Leo appeared in the doorway, taking her breath away and erasing all the anxiety about whether or not the curse was broken. If she could get married, she’d fulfill her part of the bargain and should be allowed to leave and live happily ever after. He saw her and she waved him over eagerly.
“We can talk about it more later,” Sophie said. “I want to enjoy breakfast with my man.”
Fay snorted a laugh. “Okay, enjoy your man. I’ll go find mine. But think about my theory. It makes more sense the more you think about it.”
Fay gave Sophie a quick hug and left her alone to eat without thinking about the curse. Which was impossible, of course, but she kept trying to shove it out of her mind. Why wasn’t Leo sitting down with her already? She saw he was being tugged at by a young boy she didn’t recognize. She was quite positive it wasn’t a Grancourt servant or page. But the boy was yanking at Leo’s tunic and gesticulating wildly at him. Leo looked down at him skeptically and said a few words. This made the boy actually jump up and down and tear his cap off. Sophie might have laughed if she was in a laughing mood, but anything new at this point made her more anxious. What else could go wrong?
Stop. The curse is most likely broken.
It was true, the more she mulled over Fay’s theory, the more it made sense. She relaxed her saddle-stiff muscles and let her shoulders drop. All she wanted to give her attention to was the thick slice of ham she was about to devour.
Leo patted the boy on the head and waved him off, finally joining her. His face was more furrowed than she liked.
“What was that about?” she asked, loading up a trencher with ham and what she thought had once been some sort of green.
The cook only served vegetables one way, boiled beyond recognition and slathered with whatever meat grease he had on hand. Sophie had grown surprisingly fond of the mushy dishes and prayed they’d keep her from getting scurvy or rickets or any of the countless other things one could get in her new time.
“That’s my mother’s kitchen boy,” he said. “According to him, last night a man came to the house seeking shelter. Crowley let him stay the night, but now he won’t leave. He’s hunkered down in the barn and my mother is annoyed by it.”
“Don’t you need
to go take care of it? What if he’s dangerous?”
Leo shook his head and took a big bite. For whatever odd reason, probably one of the many mysteries of love, Sophie enjoyed watching him eat. “The boy says he’s only been sorting through his belongings and that he says he’ll leave when he’s collected by the woman who left him there. He hasn’t been loud or threatening, so I think I can eat breakfast before I head over. Perhaps by then, his woman will have come back for him.”
Sophie shrugged. People often sought shelter at the castle. If it was a traveler or tinker, they were given a pile of straw in the barn. If it was a stray knight or noble, they were upgraded to a place in the great hall. And Leo’s mother, Lady Alise, was easily annoyed, so that wasn’t all that extraordinary, either.
“Do you have things to attend to, or would you like to accompany me?” he asked after finishing his breakfast. She gaped at him. Cold goosebumps broke out on her arms. Didn’t he remember anything they’d been through? Finally, he broke into one of his rare, genuine smiles. It creased the scar that crossed most of his face and lit up his dark eyes. “I’m only jesting with you, my love,” he said, taking her hand and squeezing it under the table. “I wouldn’t let you out of my sight for that long. Being without you during the night was almost unbearable.”
She sighed. “That’s more like it. I thought you might have forgotten.”
“I haven’t forgotten a thing.” He grimaced and looked out at the great hall. “I wish I could kiss you.”
She knew he’d forgotten everything that had happened at his house the day before but had bigger fish to fry than that. “When are you going to ask my father? I won’t be able to breathe properly until we’re married.”
He nodded seriously. “I feel the same. I’ll speak to Sir Walter as soon as we’ve returned from my house. If that man there is simple or has no skills to earn his keep, I’ll just give him a few coins and point him toward the village. Problem solved.”
“I love easy problems like that. Let’s solve all our problems today,” she said teasingly. When he looked down at her with such sincerity and love, her heart melted a bit.
“I shall endeavor to do that,” he said.
Chapter 5
Jordan stuffed more hay behind his back and pulled the smelly horse blanket up higher over his legs. It was flipping freezing outside and only a few degrees warmer in the barn. Randolph had assured him he’d be fine once he got out of the castle. Medieval people were well known for hospitality toward strangers. All he had to do was find a house and ask for shelter.
This didn’t feel very hospitable to him. He’d woken up that morning actually unable to move. He was literally frozen. Trying to be grateful he wasn’t dead, he’d dragged himself up and jogged in place, trying to jog an idea out of his listless, still-frozen brain. The old man who’d stuffed him out here the night before came out and told him to be on his way and he’d panicked. On his way where? Suddenly, the drafty barn seemed like a safe haven. He promised to go when Lyra returned. But the man looked confused.
“Lyra?”
“Lady Lyra?” Jordan tried. “The woman who was with me last night?”
The grouchy old man shook his head and muttered that, perhaps, he was deranged. It took Jordan a second to realize the man was muttering about him. And that’s when he started to think he might have been ditched. Lyra had worked her mojo to make the man not remember her, which meant she might not be coming back.
“Just let me stay the rest of the day, maybe another night. I’ll muck out the stalls or whatever.” He’d never done that before but how hard could shoveling poop be?
“The lady of the house doesn’t like it. You’d best be on your way.”
“Is there someone else I can speak with?” he asked. He’d worked as a customer service operator for a summer and that was one of his favorite phrases to hear. It meant the pain in the butt he was currently talking to was about to become someone higher up’s problem. “A man of the house, perhaps?” He made a silent apology to his mom and sister for the sexism, but it was 1398, after all.
The old man muttered some more, glared at him, then left. No one else came to kick him out so he’d been trying to get warm and devise a plan since then. He had gold and jewelry he could sell for whatever passed as currency in this time. But would he be able to get enough to become a person of any standing? Could he fake an identity with enough clout to get him back into the castle? He needed to be a guest instead of a fugitive dropped from another century. Then he could rescue Sophie from that snarling, scarred giant and get her and Fay out of there. Somehow. That part was still eluding him. What they’d do after that was even more elusive.
He still hadn’t completely given up hope that Lyra would come back and help him, but the hope was waning with every hour he sat on the cold barn floor. He had a feeling she had more answers than she had shared with him in their own time, so now he had to rely on the even stranger fourteenth century version of her. And it wasn’t as if she wasn’t already the strangest person he’d ever met. That included the six months he’d worked for a traveling circus, putting up and tearing down the tents every night.
A creak and scuffle at the doors had him scrambling to his feet, trying to pound the feeling back into his stiff legs. It was the old man again, this time with a triumphant grin on his face.
“The man of the house is on his way. It’s up to you if you want to stay and face him or get out while the getting’s still good.” He cackled and left.
“That sounded ominous,” Jordan said.
He patted the one horse in the barn and briefly toyed with the idea of stealing it. He knew from old western novels that stealing a horse was a hanging offense back in that time and decided not to risk it in this one. He looked at his backpack, full of so many helpful and necessary things. But no weapons. He didn’t think his compact multi-tool knife would do much damage. His head would be cut off by a broadsword or something before he could get close enough to nick anyone with it.
“Run away on foot or stay and beg for mercy?” he asked the horse. “Yeah, I decided not to steal you, so you could give me some advice.” He patted its soft nose again. “Is your owner going to slaughter me?”
The horse whinnied. Jordan hoped it was an incredulous laugh, not an assertion he was dead. Either way, it seemed he was out of time to decide to run, because the barn door creaked again. He straightened to his full six feet and squared his shoulders. It had been a long time since his high school football days but he still hit the gym regularly and often took jobs that involved swinging a hammer. He thought he could hold his own with an average-sized person not wielding a sword of any kind. That thought made him step behind the horse’s stall door. He wasn’t hiding, just assessing the situation.
His shoulders unsquared themselves when the man of the house, the one he’d demanded to speak with, filled up the entire barn door. You’re faster, he assured himself. Think of all the vitamin deficiencies that guy probably has.
The big man stepped through the door and held up his candle, looking to and fro for his unwelcome guest. Jordan choked, seeing the scar. The snarl. Those ice cold eyes. It was the man who’d been holding his sister hostage at the castle. What else had he been doing to her all this time? Jordan’s vision blurred with a rage so great he forgot to check if the man had a sword of any kind at his side. He ducked around the door he was assessing the situation behind and flung himself at the man. He got him around the legs and the force of his weight sent both of them into a heap on the straw-covered ground. The man was strong and lightning fast. Apparently, he’d been getting his vitamins from somewhere.
Jordan found himself on his back with the man’s fist heading toward his face. He’d been raised to not fight at all, and to definitely never fight dirty. But he really didn’t want that fist connecting with his face. He brought up his knee with all the force of his fear and anger and got the man square in the bits. The man made a garbled noise and fell to the side.
�
�Sorry,” Jordan grunted as he rolled away. Already the man was getting back to his feet, angrier than ever now. “Come on, that should have kept you down longer.”
Jordan put his head down and, channeling a battering ram, plowed into the man’s stomach. He thought his neck had broken from the impact with the rock hard belly, but the man was down again. Jordan grabbed what he thought was a shovel and held it over his head, ready to smash the man’s head in.
“This is for my sister,” he said. Giving the man enough time to catch his breath and roll onto his side faster than any snake Jordan had ever seen slither off into the Bayou.
He grabbed Jordan’s leg and before he could make any more stupid, time wasting proclamations, he was on his back, the man’s fist once again about to break every bone in his face. And then probably his body. This was it for him. He thought he heard Sophie’s voice from very far away, but his ears were ringing pretty badly from hitting the ground so hard. It was most likely his regret at failing her. He squeezed his eyes shut and hoped he’d die fast.
“Leo, stop! Don’t hit him!”
That really was Sophie’s voice. The life-ending punches never rained down on him and he tentatively opened his eyes. The scarred man was still on top of him, snarling away as usual, but his little sister had her hands around his fist. Had she been bitten by a medieval radioactive spider? Was that a thing? How did she have the strength to be holding the monster back like that? She looked down at him, shaking her head. He realized she was both laughing and crying. She shoved the man off him and knelt next to him.
“Damn it, Jordan, what did you do?”
“I came to rescue you,” he croaked.
Her face turned purple. She hauled back her fist and cracked him hard across the jaw.
Evermore (Knight Everlasting Book 3) Page 3