TemptressofTime

by Dee Brice

  The men made various noises, leading her to believe they recognized a lie when they heard one. So how could she lie without lying for real? Racking her brain, she tried to remember when Texas was first colonized. Everything she thought of happened later than now. Whenever now was—sometime during the Regency period, she assumed based on the men’s and her own clothing. Praying she could bluff her way through, she said, “The game is called Texas,” she gave it a Spanish pronunciation,“sosténgalos. Texas Hold ‘Em.”

  All three men laughed so hard they doubled over.

  “What, pray tell, is so damn funny?”

  Shaking his head, Adrian relinquished the deck of cards to Walker. Making two trips, Jason fetched the brandy, snifters, cheroots and matches. Walker shuffled, then dealt the cards. Two down to each player, three face up in the center of the table.

  “Since this is the first hand,” he said, “I recommend we keep it friendly and not wager.”

  Adrian and Jason nodded, their attention flickering between their hole cards and those common to them all. Diane sat in silence for a long moment, too stunned to say a word. Recovering her voice, she said, “And after this first hand? When the game becomes less friendly, what shall we wager then?”

  After lighting his cheroot, Jason blew a smoke ring at the ceiling and met her unwavering gaze. “Why then, little lady,” he drawled in a heavy Texas accent, “we’ll play Texas Hold ‘Em strip poker.”

  Walker and Adrian surged to their feet, heaving chairs aside as if clearing for war. Jason stood more slowly, his expression blank. His body seemed equally relaxed. A barrage of vile swearing bombarded Diane’s ears, the clearest of which sounded like “Christ on a crutch!”

  The others curses were coarser and un-spellable until Adrian shouted, “Damn it all to hell and back! He’s one of us!”

  Chapter Fourteen

  When the vortex failed to sweep her away, she faced the men. Failing to travel either back to a previous life or home forced her to confront herself. Something she wasn’t sure she wanted to do. Implacable, blank faces stared back at her.

  Okay. She’d caught the men in lies. Or rather Jason had caught Walker and Adrian in lies she could no longer ignore. She might continue to play the coward and not ask questions, but Jason’s spilling the beans demanded she face the truth—no matter how devastating she might find it.

  “Do you—” She looked at Adrian and Walker in turn. “Do you remember living in medieval times? Did we share a life then? Does either of you know why we—why I traveled there?”

  Walker gestured to her, Adrian and himself. “We had issues we all needed to resolve.”

  “Such as?” she challenged, sounding snarky and not caring.

  “That very attitude,” Adrian said, his voice echoing his disapproving expression. “Above us all. Disapproving of everyone and everything.”

  Walker added his two cents, making Diane feel worse. “Unforgiving of—”

  “My husband having six mistresses and even more bastards?” That old resentment raised its head again. She didn’t remember feeling that about a man she had never met, but her counterpart must have for Diane to feel that way now. So, she still hadn’t forgiven long-dead Arnaud or Adrian either. Did she blame him for not forcing his brother to behave more like a gentleman—a nobleman?

  Walker opened his mouth but said nothing. He slanted a pointed look at Adrian. That exchange of glances suggested they had suddenly remembered their pasts. Assuming, of course, they hadn’t faked amnesia. Seeing their expressions harden, she doubted they would admit anything.

  Sighing, the earl resumed the story. “We—Walker and I—conspired to take you down a peg or two. At least that is what we intended to do.”

  Bitter resentment twisted her lips. “How would cuckolding Arnaud bring me down? Humiliation might have achieved your goals and not required me to betray my marriage vows. Did you think of other ways? Ways that might not have led Arnaud to kill me for betraying him?”

  Dear God, now I’m behaving like that was my own life!

  The men’s expressions told her they hadn’t thought beyond their own desires and needs. That her life didn’t matter to either of them. She studied each man in turn, something in their faces leading her to ask, “What changed your minds? Did Arnaud’s death change me?”

  Adrian thinned his lips, again as if zipping them closed and throwing away the key. Like a knight going on a crusade after locking his wife in a chastity belt.

  Her gaze shifted to Walker. His scowl warned her away even as her stare compelled him to speak. “You seemed very different than either of us expected.”

  “More compassionate about the Days’ situation,” Adrian said, a tentative smile hovering in his eyes. “Something we talked about later, when we returned to our own time.” He looked as if he wanted to say more but didn’t.

  “Almost—” His Adam’s apple bobbed as if Walker might choke on his own words. “Almost as if you used hauteur to cloak your fear.”

  “I wasn’t—” Jason’s hand over hers corralled the lie before it left her mouth. “She was—I was afraid. My uncle’s people despised me from the moment I came to foster with him and my aunt.” More and more memories of her past lives rose to devil her. Shoving them away, she sat, her lips pressed together against revealing more.

  Jason spoke into the lengthening silence. “They viewed you as a threat to their ill mistress, your aunt. Some believed you poisoned her so you might take her place. Not—” He raised a cautionary finger. “Not that you did anything to harm her. She was the only true friend you had there and you loved her.”

  Unable to speak around the huge lump in her throat, Diane nodded, hoping her gratitude shone in her eyes. That someone had cared for her, whom she had cared for deeply. She’d think about how the young man knew all that later.

  She tried to absorb everything they’d shared thus far and discovered she disliked being thought a murderess as well as an adulteress—especially since she’d done nothing to deserve being branded as such. Not that she could remember at any rate. Were she guilty of either sin, surely she’d remember. Wouldn’t she?

  Silence greeted the question she asked the woman who shared her body and thoughts on occasion. No one answered.

  Needing to press on before the men refused to answer other questions, she said, “What about King Henry—the Eighth,” she clarified, anticipating someone asking which Henry. “What purpose did our traveling to the Tudor era serve? Or to the here and now?”

  All three men shrugged. Even her hardest, most intimidating stare failed to force answers. She suspected Jason knew—she also suspected nothing short of being drawn and quartered would compel him to say more. Okay. Well, not okay but typical of men who treated knowledge as power. She expected that from Walker but not from Adrian. As for Jason…he remained a mystery she’d explore some other time—when the other men were elsewhere.

  The ensuing silence deafened her. Cupping her hands over her ears, she pretended not to have heard anything beyond one of us. Instead, she waited for the room to change or disappear. Or time to shift yet again, dumping her in some long-forgotten past or some yet-to-be-discovered future. She truly didn’t care so long as she got away from the men.

  Stupid? Hell yes. She’d wanted answers but now… This time, this place—even these men—seemed so dear to her, she didn’t want to leave.

  Nothing happened for what felt like an eternity. The crackling fire and the ticking clock on the fireplace mantel made the only sounds. Someone must have thrown a cone of silence over the rest of the room, for she could hear nothing else—not even her own breathing or her own heartbeat.

  This must be how soldiers felt when returning home from a war zone. As if their world were wrapped in cotton batting so thick no sound could penetrate. As if people moved in such slow motion they seemed not to move at all.

  She saw her hands as if looking through the wrong end of a telescope—her fingers lifting a cheroot from its crystal box, then
striking a match to light it. She couldn’t hear the match against the strike plate, couldn’t smell or taste the cherry-soaked tobacco. More from habit than need, she blinked away the hazy smoke in front of her eyes and watched the men come back to the table, sit, then look at their hole cards as if they had never attacked each other. As if those fateful words had never been spoken.

  Good. If they could pretend, so could she. After all, nothing had changed. They remained in the same sprawling house. Drank and smoked the same brandy and cigars. Her numbness seemed to ease a little, allowing her to reexamine her hole cards and evaluate whether to bet or fold.

  A sound—half gurgle, half laugh—escaped her control. The men once again sprang to their feet, their lips forming words she couldn’t hear. Hysterical laughter vibrated up from her diaphragm to her chest, then to her vocal cords. It gushed out of her mouth, so loud and unexpected, the men flinched and stepped away.

  Her hands shaking, she flipped over her hole cards. Two hearts to match the three Walker had dealt face up. A heart flush and she hadn’t had to bet at all.

  Beyond too exhausted to think, she willed herself to stand. “I want more answers—especially from Jason—but I’m too tired to listen. Tomorrow…” The lyrics to a Broadway song floated through her mind without lingering. “We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

  * * * * *

  She awakened to a series of loud snorts interspersed by what sounded like lip smacking. Uncertain about where and when she was, she opened one eye to assess the situation. Ah. Her own room, her own canopied bed with its semi-familiar down-stuffed comforters, satin sheets and plump pillows. Familiar yet strange at the same time, imprisoned by something heavy at her sides and feet that kept her from moving.

  Blinking, she opened both eyes, then shut them again. She had no recollection of going to bed, let alone why she would awaken with Walker peering down at her. She reopened her eyes. Concern shone from his drowsy eyes, a soft smile curved his chiseled lips.

  “Good morning,” he whispered, drawing her hand from under the blankets then planting a kiss in her palm.

  “Mmm,” she said, pulling away her hand, then tugging on the covers in a futile attempt to free herself from them. “What in blue blazes—”

  Adrian grunted as he rolled over to face her. Swiping his hand down his face, he made those lip-smacking sounds that had disturbed her sleep. At her feet, a couple of sharp snorts startled Jason, so he jerked upright and scanned the room as though expecting armed intruders. Sighing, apparently realizing his own snores had awakened him, he relaxed enough to send her a bone-melting smile.

  “In my very first erotic romance novel, I wrote a scene similar to this,” she confessed before she thought. If she described that scene these men might expect her to act it out. While she might have sex with each of them—one at a time—no way would she allow a ménage à quatre.

  Why not? You’ve already done a ménage à trois.

  Not in this life.

  Not yet, anyway!

  Walker cleared his throat, effectively silencing the warring voices in her head. “You have intruded on my time with Diane long enough. Be gone.” One sun-bronzed muscular arm swept over her like a broom cleaning a floor, earning glares from Adrian and Jason.

  “We have yet to cut the cards to determine who goes first,” Jason protested, nonetheless rolling off the foot of the bed.

  Wordless, Adrian rolled to his feet, sketched a bow, then gathered his clothes from the floor. With a smart salute, he opened her hallway door, his scowl hurrying a naked Jason to exit. Now.

  Last night’s events crashed into her mind. She kicked them out, more than willing to continue as if nothing had happened.

  Walker tugged the bedside bell rope and scant seconds later Margaret appeared with a food-laden tray in her hands. “I’d help you,” he said to her maid, his shrug making Diane aware of his wide, naked shoulders above the blankets and his muscular, equally naked body beneath them. His heat warmed her bare body from breasts to toes. She hadn’t expected modesty from him. So maybe he was protecting hers. As if she had any to protect after being found with a naked man in her bed!

  With a broad smile and a deep blush, Margaret deposited the tray on the foot of the bed, then scurried out.

  “You seem to have lost your clothes,” Diane said, disentangling herself from the bedding, then scooting off the bed. Not waiting to hear his response, she hurried to the water closet then locked the door against Walker’s possible intrusion. If he had to relieve himself…tough. Her rooms, her toilet.

  “I’ve planned a quiet day for us,” he said, loud enough for her to hear him through the solid oak door.

  “Uh-huh.” If he stayed undressed his day would be quiet indeed. She’d take herself elsewhere. Anywhere but the memory-filled billiard room, which struck her as extreme cowardice on her part. Too bad. She liked that room a lot, but wouldn’t set foot in it again. Not in the foreseeable future at any rate. She just wished her future were as foreseeable as her here and now, plus however long it took to eat breakfast.

  Rummaging in her clothing press, she found a sacklike muslin gown with four-leaf clovers embroidered around the low-cut neckline and pulled it over her head. Struggling to tie the matching green satin sash, she could only tie it in front, then wiggle it to the back. She stared at her reflection, twisting and turning to see herself from all sides, but couldn’t decide if anyone—especially Walker—could see through the lightweight material.

  “Your chocolate’s getting cold.” Without so much as a by your leave, Walker opened the door to hand her both cup and saucer. He shut the door behind him, leaving her alone.

  She sputtered, forcing herself not to demand to know how he’d unlocked the door. Once she got rid of him, she’d figure it out for herself.

  Staring again at her reflection, she picked up her brush to deal with her hair. If she dawdled long enough, Walker would get bored with waiting and go elsewhere for amusement. With her hair tied back, she squared her shoulders, then opened the door, expecting to find the bedroom empty.

  Walker looked up from the book on his lap, the warmth in his gaze stealing her breath and even more of her heart. Although he didn’t touch her, his outstretched hand tugged her forward like a puppy on a leash. She willed herself to resist his power over her, but couldn’t. He looked too tempting for her peace of mind. Despite herself she readily went to him, snuggling against his side where he lay on her wide chaise longue. He’d dressed, sort of, in the same breeches and shirt he’d worn last night. No shoes, but he had donned his hose and garters. She missed having his flesh against hers.

  “What kind of quiet day have you planned?” she asked, comforted by the steady thump of his heartbeat against her ear.

  “I thought we could read to each other. If we become bored with the sound of each other’s voices…”

  As if! She loved his voice. The way it caressed her like a zephyr-borne melody. The way his laughter rumbled over her skin like a distant train en route to paradise. The pleasure growls that rose from his throat and filled her mouth and soul with music. And need and lust, as well.

  “We can play chess or cribbage,” he finished, kissing her cheek, his smile curving against it. She tried to see his face, but his hand held her head firmly to his chest. “Later, I thought we might get around to our aborted game of strip poker.”

  She tensed until she feared she’d stay that way for the rest of her life. Walker’s warm hand stroked up and down her back, his heat seeping from his body to hers. Her muscles relaxed a tiny bit.

  “I don’t want to talk about last night,” she told him. After Adrian proclaiming Jason one of us, she was uncertain she wanted to know what one of us was. Okay, the coward had reappeared, but at this point she’d take cowardice over more shocking truths. Tomorrow or the day after she might feel ready to hear more. Might.

  “Then we shan’t.”

  “What shall we talk about then?” Sulky. Mercy, she abhorred sounding sulky.

&nb
sp; “I don’t know. Your favorite color?”

  “Only one?” His chin rested on the crown of her head and she felt him nod. “All shades of red.”

  His laugh vibrated down her body, making her smile. Had she ever felt this contentment? Not that she could remember.

  “What’s your favorite color?” she asked.

  “Whatever color you are wearing.”

  She tugged on a strand of his silky black hair. “I’m serious.”

  “As am I. Favorite food?”

  “Chocolate.”

  “Chocolate is not a food, per se.” He sounded as if he would lecture her about nutrition.

  Not in the mood for lectures of any kind, she said, “What is it then?”

  “A state of mind,” he replied, taking the rest of her heart. “Feel like celebrating? Eat strawberries dipped in chocolate.”

  Giggling, she said in her haughtiest tone, “I prefer bananas.” Somehow her index finger wiggled between the laces on his shirt. Tracing little whorls in his chest hair, she went on. “In truth, there is only one fruit I don’t first dip in chocolate.”

  “So many as one?”

  “Uh-huh. Peaches are best macerated in sparkling burgundy,” she told him in a scholarly manner. “And then I dip them in chocolate.” Had vintners produced sparkling burgundy yet? Did those kinds of details matter anymore, now that the men had admitted… Nothing. She was content to leave it at that—for now, at least.

  “And if you feel sad? Eat a piece of chocolate,” he counseled once they finished laughing.

  “Only a piece? Horrors! When I’m very sad I may eat an entire pound.”

  His chest stopped moving. Panic arrowed through her like a bolt fired from a crossbow. An overreaction? Yes! One she couldn’t help. Was that better—easier than no reaction at all?

  Thinking too much. As usual.

  Shoving at his shoulders, she pushed away until she could see his face.