The More I See You.txt - Kurland, Lynn

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The More I See You

By Lynn Kurland

I have you fast in my fortress, And will not let you depart, But put you down into the dungeon

In the round-tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you forever,

Yes, forever and a day, Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,

And moulder in the dust away!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Jessica Blakely didn’t believe in Fate.

Yet as she stood at the top of a medieval circular staircase and peered down into its gloomy depths, she had tc wonder if someone other than herself might be at the heirr of her ship, as it were. Things were definitely not progressing as she had planned. Surely Fate had known she wasn’t at all interested in stark, bare castles or knights in rusting armor.

Surely. She took a deep breath and forced herself to examine the turns of events that had brought her to her preseni perch. Things had seemed so logical at the time. She’d gone on a blind date, accepted said blind date’s invitation to go to England as part of his university department’s faculty sabbatical, then hopped cheerfully on a plane with him two weeks later.

Their host was Lord Henry de Galtres, possessor of a beautifully maintained Victoiian manor house. Jessica had taken one look and fallen instantly in love-with the house, that is. The appointments were luxurious, the food heavenly, and the surrounding countryside idyllic. The only downside was that for some unfathomable reason,

2 Lynn Kurland

Lord Henry had decided that the crumbling castle attached to his house was something that needed to remain undemolished. Just the sight of it had sent chills down Jessica’s spine. She couldn’t say why, and she hadn’t wanted to dig around to find the answer.

Instead, she’d availed herself of all the modem comforts Lord Henry’s house could provide. And she’d been certain that when she could tear herself away from her temporary home-away-from-home, she might even venture to London for a little savings-account-reducing shopping at Harrods. Yet before she could find herself facing a cash register, she’d been driven to seek sanctuary in the crumbling castle attached to Lord Henry’s house.

There was something seriously amiss in her life. A draft hit her square in the face, loaded with the smell of seven centuries’ worth of mustiness. She coughed and flapped her hand in front of her nose. Maybe she should have kept her big mouth shut and avoided expressing any disbelief in Providence.

Then again, it probably would have been best if she’d remained silent a long time ago, maybe before she’d agreed to that blind date. She gave that some thought, then shook her head. Her troubles had begun long before her outing with Archibald Stafford III. In fact, she could lay her finger on the precise moment when she had lost control and Fate had taken over.

Piano lessons. At age five. You wouldn’t think that something so innocuous, so innocent and child-friendly would have. led a woman where she never had any intention of having gone, but Jessica couldn’t find any evidence to contradict the results.

Piano lessons had led to music scholarships, which had led to a career in music that had somehow demolished her social life, leaving her no choice but to sink to accepting the latest in a series of hopeless blind dates: Archie Stafford and his shiny penny loafers. Archie was the one who had invited her to England for a month with all expenses paid. He had landed the trip thanks to a great deal of

THE MORE I SEE YOU 3 sucking up to the dean of his department. He didn’t exactly fit in with the rest of the good old boys who clustered with the dean and Lord Henry every night smoking cigars into the wee hours, but maybe that’s what Archie aspired to.

Jessica wondered now how hard up he must have been for a date to have asked her to come along. At the time he’d invited her, though, she’d been too busy thinking about tea and crumpets to let the invitation worry her. It had been a university-sponsored outing. She’d felt perfectly safe.

Unfortunately, being Archie’s guest also meant that she had to speak to him, and that was something she wished she could avoid for the next three weeks. It was only on the flight over that she’d discovered the depth of his swininess. She made a mental note never to pull out her passport for anyone she’d known less than a month if such an occasion should arise again.

But like it or not, she was stuck with him for this trip, which meant at the very least polite conversation, and if nothing else, her mother had instilled in her a deep compulsion to be polite.

Of course, being civil didn’t mean she couldn’t escape now and then-which was precisely what she was doing at present. Unfortunately escape had meant finding the one place where Archie would never think to look for her.

The depths of Henry’s medieval castle. She wondered if an alarm would sound if she disconnected the rope that barred her way. She looked to her left and saw that there were a great many people who would bear such an alarm if it sounded. Maybe she wouldn’t be noticed in the ensuing panic. Apparently Lord Henry funded some of his house upkeep by conducting tours of his castle. Those tours were seemingly well attended, if the one in progress was any indication.

Jessica eyed the sightseers. They were moving in a herdlike fashion and it was possible they might set up a stampede if she startled them. They were uncomfortably nestled together, gaping at cordoned-off family heirlooms,

4 Lynn Kurland also uncomfortably nestled together- Marcham as a prime destination spot and Jessica seemed to have. placed herself in the midst of the latest crowd at the precise mo-

st peace and quiet. She had alment she needed the mo ready done the castle tour and learned more than she wanted to know about Burwyck-on-the-Sea and its ac-

on the intricacies of companying history. Another lesson d at the medieval happenings was the last thing she neede

moment. Merce-

–Of course the castle here at Marcham, or ham, as it was known in the 1300s, was one of the family’s minor holdings. Even though it has been added to during the years and extensively remodeled during the Victorian period, it is not the most impressive of the family’s possessions. The true gem of the de Galtres crown

lies a hundred and fifty kilometers away on the eastern coast. If we move further along here, you’ll find a painting

of the ‘Keep.”

The crowd shuffled to the left obediently as the tour guide continued with his speech. “As you can see here in this rendering of Bu.rwyck-onthe-Sea-aptly named, if I might offer an opinion-the most remarkable feature of the family’s original seat is

the round tower built not into the center of the bailey as

we find in Pembroke Castle, but rather into the outer seawall. I imagine the third lord of the de Galtres family fancied having his ocean view unobstructed-“

So Jessica and he heartily agreed with the sentiment, but for now an ocean view was not what she was inter-

ested in. If the basement was roped off it could only mean

that it was free of tourists and tour guides. It was also

possible that below was where the castle kept all its res-

ident spiders and ghosts, but it was a chance she would have to take. Archie would never think to look for her

uld be ignored. Spiders could be there. Ghosts co squashed.

She put her shoulders back, unhooked the rope, and descended.

She stopped at the foot of the steps and looked for

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someplace appropriate. Suits of armor stood at silent attention along both walls. Lighting was minimal and creature comforts nonexistent, but that didn’t deter her. She walked over the flagstones until she found a likely spot, then eased her way between a fierce-looking knight brandishing a sword and another grimly holding a pike. She did a quick cobweb check before she settled down with her back against the stone wall. It was the first time that day she’d been grateful for the heavy gown she wore. A medieval costume might suit her surroundings, but it seemed like a very silly thing to wear to an afternoon tea-and said afternoon tea was precisely what she’d planned to avoid by fleeing to the basement.

Well, that and Archie. She reached into her bag and pulled out what she needed for complete relaxation. Reverently, she set a package of two chilled peanut-butter cups on the stone floor. Those she would save for later. A can of pop followed. The floor was cold enough to keep it at a perfect temperature as well. Then she pulled out her portable CD player, put the headphones on her head, made herself more comfortable, and, finally closing her eyes with a sigh, pushed the play button. A chill went down her spine that had nothing to do with the cold stone.

Bruckner’s Seventh could do that to a girl, given the right circumstances.

Jessica took a deep breath and prepared for what she knew was to come. The symphony started out simply. She knew eventually it would increase in strength and magnitude until it came crashing down on her with such force that she wouldn’t be able to catch her breath.

She felt her breathing begin to quicken and had to wipe her palms on her dress. It was every bit as good as it had been the past 139 times she had listened to the same piece. It was music straight from the vaults of heav-

Squeak. Jessica froze. She was tempted to open her eyes, but she was almost certain what she would see would be a big, fat rat sitting right next to her, and then where

Lynn Kurland snack was Still wrapped, and since it would she be? Her what could a rat want really didn’t count as food anyway, with it? She returned her attentions to the symphony. It was the London Philharmonic, one of her favorite orchestras-

Wreek, wreek, wreeeeeek. Rusty shutters’? Were there shutters in the basement? Hard to say.’She wasn’t about to open her eyes and find out. There was probably some kind of gate nearby and it was moving thanks to a stiff breeze set up by all the tour-

ists tromping around upstairs. Or maybe it was a trapdoor to the dungeon. She immediately turned away from that thought, as it wasn’t a place she wanted to go. She closed her eyes even more firmly. It was a good thing she was so adept at shutting out distractions. The noise might have ruined the afternoon for her otherwise.

Wreeka, wreeka, wreeeeeka. All right, that was too much. It was probably some stray kid fiddling with one of the suits of armor. She’d give him an earfu(, send him on his way, and get back to her business.

She opened her eyes-then shrieked. There, looming over her with obviously evil intent, was a knight in full battle gear. She pushed herself back

stone wall, pulling, her feet under her and won- =ituhelt what she could possibly do to defend herself. The knight, however, seemed to dismiss her upper person because he bent his helmeted head to look at her feet. By the alacrity with which he suddenly leaned over in that

direction, she knew what was to come.

The armor cycaked as the mailed hand reached out. Then, without any hesitation, the fingers closed around

her peanut-butter cups. The visor was fl* ed up with en-

Ipp thusiasm, the candy’s covering ripped aside with more dexterity than any gloved hand should have possessed, and Jessica’s last vestige of American junk food disap-

peared with two great chomps.

The chomper burped. “Hey, Jess,” he said, licking his chops, “thought you

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might be down here hiding. Got any more of those?” He pointed at the empty space near her feet, his arm producing another mighty squeak.

Rule number one: No one interrupted her during Bruckner.

Rule number two: No one ate her peanut-butter cups, especially when she found herself stranded in England for a month without the benefit of a Mini Mart down the street. She had yet to see any peanut-butter cups in England and she’d been saving her last two for a quiet moment alone. Well, at least the thief hadn’t absconded with her drink as of yet- “Geez, Jess,” he said, reaching for her can of pop, popping the top and draining the contents, “why are you hiding?”

She could hardly think straight. “I was listening to Bruckner.”

He burped loudly. “Never understood a girl who could get all sweaty over a bunch of fairies playing the violin.” He squashed the can, then grinned widely at the results a mailed glove could generate. Then he looked at her and winked. “How’d you like to come here and give your knight in shining armor a big ol’ kiss?”

I’d rather kiss a rat was on the tip of her tongue, but Archibald Stafford III didn’t wait for the words to make it past her lips. He hauled her up from between her guardians-and a fat lot of good two empty suits of armor had done her-sending her CD player and headphones crashing to the ground, pulled her against him, and gave her the wettest, slobberiest kiss that had ever been given an unwilling maiden fair.

She would have clobbered him, but she was trapped in a mailed embrace and powerless to rescue herself. “Let me go,” she squeaked. “What’s the matter? Aren’t you interested in my strong, manly arms’)” he said, giving her a squeeze to show just how strong and manly his arms were. “Not when they’re squeezing the life from me,” she gasped. “Archie, let me go!”

8 Lynn Kurland

“It’ll be good for research purposes.” “I’m a musician, for heaven’s sake. I don’t need to do this kind of research. And you are a’. . .” and she had to pause before she said it because she still couldn’t believe such a thing was possible, given the new insights she’d had into the man currently crushing the life from her, “a … philosopher,” she managed. “A tenured philosophy professor at a major university, not a knight.”

Archibald sighed with exaggerated patience. “The costume party, remember?”

As if she could forget, especially since she was already dressed ii la medieval, complete with headgear and lousy shoes. Why the faculty had chosen to dress themselves up as knights and ladies fair she couldn’t have said. It had to have been the brainchild of that nutty history professor who hadn’t been able to clear his sword through airport security. She’d known just by looking at him that he was trouble.

If only she’d been as observant with Archie. And now here she was, staring at what had, at first blush, seemed to be one of her more successful blind dates. She could hardly reconcile his current self with his philosophy self. Either he’d gotten chivalry confused with chauvinism, or wearing that suit of armor too long had allowed metal to leach into his brain and alter his personality. “I’ll carry you up,” Archie said suddenly. “It’ll be a nice touch. “

But instead of being swept up into his arms, which would have been bad enough, she found herself hoisted and dumped over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “My CD player,” she protested. “Get it later,” he said, trudging off toward the stairs.

She struggled, but it was futile. She thought about name-calling, but that, she decided, was beneath her. He’d have to put her down eventually and then she would really let him have it. For the moment, however, it was all she could do to avoid having her head make contact with the stairwell as Archie huffed up the steps. He paused and

THE MORE I SEE YOU

Jessica heard a cacophony of startled gasps. Fortunately she was hanging mostly upside down, so her face couldn’t get any redder. “I love this medieval stuff,” Archie announced to whatever assembly was there, “don’t you?”

And with that, he slapped her happily on the rumpto the accompaniment of more horrified gasps-and continued on his way.

Jessica wondered if that sword she’d seen with the armor in the basement was sharp. Then again, maybe it would be just as effective if it were dull. Either way, she had the feeling she was going to have to use it on the man who chortled happily as he carried her, minus her dignity, on down the hallway to where she was certain she would be humiliated even further.

She was trapped for almost an hour at the costumed tea before she managed to escape. She had Lord Henry to thank for her liberation. He’d removed her from Archie’s clutches with a firm “tut, tut, old man, don’t monopolize the girl,” escorted Jessica to the door, and brushed aside her heartfelt thanks. “Go walk in the garden, my dear,” Henry had said with a kind smile. “I’ll occupy him well enough. We’ll discuss Plato.”

She had taken the time to find a bathroom, wash her face, and remove the wimple she’d put on earlier in the day. She studiously ignored the fact that when she’d first seen her postparty self, her headgear had been sliding off her head. That was thanks to Archie’s unruly transportation of her person; she’d been too flustered to try to adjust anything once she’d reached the party.

Just another reason to find a dull blade and whack the goon with it.

She tucked the wimple into her belt and left the bathroom. The garden sounded like a good idea. It was October and already a chilly one, but the paths were smooth

Lynn Kurland

THE MORE I SEE YOU

and wide and she didn’t need dozens of blooming roses

to soothe her spirit.

She paused at the top of the cellar stairs and wondered about the advisability of leaving her CD player down there. She shook her head and turned away before she could give it any more thought. it was stuck behind a suit of armor and wasn’t going anywhere. Besides, she just wasn’t up to facing that dark pit again. Maybe one of Lord Henry’s staff could retrieve it for her later. y where she’d

She turned and made her way to the galleT left the tourists reeling from her ride on Archie’s shoulder. Large French doors opened onto the garden at the end of the room. Jessica started toward them purposefully, fully intending to ignore all Lord Henry’s treasures.

But, in spite of herself, she found herself pausing in front of the painting of Burwyck-on-the-Sea.

The view was from the sea. The water churned ferociously against the stone foundations of the castle. At one

comer of the castle a large round tower sat atop the rocks, looking almost as if it had grown out of them. The castle might have been comfortably large, but Jessica suspected it was very drafty and quite chilly.

It was definitely not the place for her. She walked away quickly. What she needed was some

fresh air and then maybe a return to her room for some

hot chocolate enjoyed behind a locked door. She opened one of the French doors and stepped out into the evening air.

She pulled the door shut behind her, leaned back

against it, and took a deep breath. The sun was setting, the air was still and thick, and for the first time in days she felt herself start to relay..

She needed a vacation from her life, sans Mr, Stafford III and his hoisting ways. She’d secretly been hoping the trip to England would give her a chance to get some perspective on the Big Picture. She’d envisioned some free

time spent holed up in her room, again sans Mr. Stafford

111, sorting out her innermost goals and desires. She’d

been certain cucumber sandwiches would have aided her greatly in coming up with just what was missing.

She wrapped her arms around herself and wandered down the path through the manicured bushes. Maybe it was all much simpler than she wanted to believe. It was true that she had a wonderful career as composer-inresidence at a small, exclusive university, she had a great sublet in Manhattan, and she still had her high-school waistline.

But what she didn’t have was a family of her own. She stopped suddenly as she caught sight of a statue to her left. Some ancestor of heroic proportions stared down at her from his perch atop a marble horse. His features were fixed in an eternal sneer. “Well,” she said defensively, “marriage is the natural state of man.”

He remained seemingly unimpressed. “Ben Franklin said so,” she added. The statue refrained from comment. Jessica shrugged and continued on her way. That had been her father’s favorite saying and his marriage to her mother had been proof of it. They’d been happy and fulfilled, so much so that her mother still seemed sustained by that happiness, even though Jessica’s father had passed away almost two years earlier.

And maybe that was part of her discontent. Life was short. It seemed a shame to waste it on just herself if there might be something she could do to change that.

It looked like more blind dates were in her future. She sighed and looked heavenward. If only there were an easier way to meet a decent guy who might be interested in settling down and producing a bit of offspring. She picked out a star and wished on it. “A decent guy,” she began, then shook her bead. She was wishing, Why not go all the way? “All right, since we’re here in England, I’ll have a fair and gallant knight,” she amended. “One with lots of chivalry. And I’d like one with a steady job, an even temper, and a house with room enough for a concert grand

Lynn Kurland

piano. And I’d like this man to love me at least as much as he loves himself That isn’t too much to ask, is it?”

The heavens were silent. Jessica sighed and continued down the path. Archie was living proof that all those things were just wishful thinking. Just once, if only for a few days, she wanted to meet a man who would look on her as an equal. Surely there had to be someone out there with a hint of true chivalry in his black soul. The face of a pirate and the heart of a poet. Other people found men like that. Why couldn’t she?

She could, and she would. She would tell Archie in no uncertain terms that the winds had shifted and were definitely not favorable where he was concerned, then she would return to New York and make a conscious effort to get herself set up with better blind dates.

She shivered, suddenly realizing how cold it was outside. Warmth from righteous indignation lasted only so long after the fog rolled in. Then she frowned. They were an awfully long way from the coast for fog to be rolling in. Maybe there was a serious storm brewing. The thought of her cheery fireplace in Lord Henry’s house was sounding very nice all of a sudden. Maybe just another few minutes to really get uncomfortable, then she would head back and treat herself to an enormous cup of hot chocolate.

A hound bayed in the distance. Jessica tripped over a loose stone and barely caught herself before she lost her balance. She straightened and took a shaky breath or two, wondering how stones had suddenly found their way into the garden. She bypassed the stone, then stopped again just as suddenly.

The garden was gone. Well, the land wasn’t gone, but the nicely tended beds certainly were. Jessica frowned. Could she have been so irritated that she had walked to the edge of Lord Henry’s garden without realizing it? The garden was a great deal bigger than that and she was sure that what had lain be-

THE MORE I SEE YOU 13 yond it looked nothing like the rocky, poorly tilled bit of soil in front of her.

More hounds bayed. Hounds? She didn’t remember Henry having had hounds. Maybe she had lost herself in the mist and wandered onto a neighbor’s property. A neighbor with dogs that sounded as if they hadn’t been fed in a while. A horn sounded closer to her, mingling with the renewed barking.

The fog began to lift. She could have sworn she heard a faint jingling sound, not the sound of bells, but the sound of metal against metal. She knew she wasn’t imagining the voices, or the renewed horn calls. She realized, with a start, that standing out in the middle of a field with what sounded like a hunting party approaching wasn’t very intelligent. The best thing to do would be to turn around and go back the way she had come. She started to when she caught sight of dogs racing across the field toward her, followed by horsemen.

She was very tempted to stand there and gape. Fortunately some small part of her brain was acting on instinct; she turned and ran almost before she realized she needed to do so to avoid being trampled.

As she fled with her skirts hiked up to her knees, she comforted herself with the knowledge that the mist had been playing tricks on her. She’d wandered farther than she had thought. If she just ran fast enough, she would run right into the house and avoid being doggie dinner. Then she would have Lord Henry find out just who was riding over his fields with big, slobbering hounds and reprimand them politely for scaring the sh-

She shrieked as she felt her feet leave the ground. Her captor snarled something at one of his companions and was answered with a raucous laugh. Jessica would have tried to sort that out, but she was too busy looking down between her dangling feet and watching the ground fly by. This was almost as unpleasant as being dumped over Archie’s shoulder. Hopefully there wasn’t an army of tourists watching her wretched rescue.

Rescue? What was she thinking, rescue? She’d proba-

14 Lynn Kurland bly been kidnapped. She had been kidnaPPed and was

being carried who-knew-where to have who-knew-what done to her. She looked around wildly only to find filthy, cloak-begarlbed men riding with their attentions fixed on

whatever the hounds were chasing. iy kind of shiny

One thing was for sure’ she didn’t see ar knight on a white charger heading toward them to defend

her abused self. “It was a stupid idea anyway,” she muttered under her breath as she marshaled her strength to make a bid for freedom. She would just have to take care of herself by herself. She put her hand under her captor’s arm and shoved with all her strength. “Merde,” he growled. [p of its own Iaccord. Merde P

Jessica’s head snapped u wasn’t Well, it was just a good thing her grandmother around or the guy would have found his mouth washed out with whatever cleansing agent was handy..

The men started yelling at each other @gain and this

time Jessica listened more intently. Yes, it was French, but it was the wackiest accent she’d ever heard. She’d spent a year after college wandering through France-and apologizing to her grandmother”S relatives for her grandfather’s having married and carted said grandmother off

to the States after the war-and during those travels she had done a great deal to improve her knowledge of the

had so diligently taught her. language her grandmother heard French But in none of her grovel! ng visits had she

spoken quite like it was being spoken now.

The horse came to an abrupt halt and Jessica almost

sighed in relief. Now she could apply herself to the task of getting down and getting away.

Her relief was short-lived. Before she could move, she was grasped ungently around the waist and plopped down sideways over the front edge of a high saddle, leaving one

leg over the horse’s withers and the other leg over a man’s thighs.

And it was at that precise moment that she knew something was terribly, dreadfully wrong.

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Never mind that she’d somehow lost the manor house in the mist. Never mind that the men around her were speaking some strange French dialect in the midst of the English countryside. No, what really bothered her was that the saddle horn she was holding between her thighs looked uncomfortably like those medieval ones she’d seen in Henry’s castle. Just who the heck would have swiped something like that? The thug who held her captive? She didn’t want to take a look at him, but she knew she’d have to do it sooner or later. No time like the present to determine the direness of her straits.

She took a deep breath and looked up. Whatever breath she’d been holding, she lost inimediately.

He was, and she had to swallow very hard to keep from choking, the most terribly beautiful man she had ever seen. He had a long, wicked scar that traveled from his temple down his cheek to the side of his chin and below his jaw. Somehow, though, it just didn’t detract from his handsomeness, dark though that was. His face was all planes and angles, harsh even in the deepening gloom. His hair was dark and his eyes were full of cynicism.

Before she could wonder about that, she felt herself jerked backward off the horse thanks to a hand in her hair. She couldn’t have said bow, but somehow the man holding her managed to keep her in his arms and dismount, all without missing a beat. Jessica grabbed her hair close to her head and held on, trying to spare herself any more pain. She was set on her feet and then there was the distinct sound of fist against flesh.

She looked up in time to see a mounted man jerk back upright with a curse. As he was holding a very bloody nose, she could only assume he’d been the one to grab her hair-and the one to receive his just deserts for doing so.

He had light hair and a very unpleasant face. That face, behind his bloodied nose, of course, was scrunched up in anger and he was shouting something at her rescuer. Jessica decided tight then that this was a man she had no

16 Lynn Kurland know any better, especially when he let desire to get to draw a sword and brandish go of his nose long enough to in a manner it. He swung it around his head, but he did so

that made him took less than sober.

Jessica felt her Muth slip open, Either she was dreaming or her blood sugar had just taken a decided dip south.

e man on the hOrse wave his sword around She watched th ss with it, then she realized as if he meant tO do busine something else.

The man she was standing next to hadn’t bothered to respond in kind. He had a sword. She knew that because the hilt was digging into her side- That her rescuer-and by now she certainly preferred to think of him as such, if the alternative was casting her lot with the nasty-looking sword wielder-was even wearing a sword was enough to make her want tO sit down until she could sort things

out property. moment or two, then realized

She pondered that for a e was speaking that her non-sWord-drawing acquaintanc voice he made and by nothing more than the tone of his it clear that being in his sights was a very unhappy place to be. Jessica decided right then that confrontation would be her last resort. Maybe she could make off with his

horse while his attentiOn was elsewhere@ She eased behind him. No sense in not using him as a shield while she could.

Jessica looked around his shoulder at the man who still sat astride his horse, his flashing broadsword upliftedThat one seemed to make a decision of some kind. He shoved his sword back into his scabbard and jabbed his heels into his horse’s side. The beast cried out and jumped forward. The rest of the mounted men thundered past. It was only after the dust had dispersed that Jessica realized she’d been holding her breath. Then she realized some-

thing else.

The man with the iron grip around her wrist had faced down a man approximately the same size who was sitting on a horse with a drawn sword, yet he had come out the winner apparently using only words as his weapon.

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He turned and looked down at her. Smiling in the face of that grim mask was more than she could manage, But words weren’t beyond her. “Thank you,” she said, and it came out a croak. “I think.”

He shrugged, apparently noting her apology and then dismissing it. He put his hands on her waist and Jessica jerked back in surprise. “Let go of me,” she said, struggling to push him away. “I mean it, mister. I appreciate the help, but I’m fine now.

Now, if you’ll excuse me-“

She gasped in surprise as the man lifted her easily and cast her up onto his saddle. Before she’d even had time to arrange her skirts to sit astride the horse, the man had vaulted up behind her onto the gelding’s rump.

Things were not going the way she’d planned. But before she could protest, the man reached for the reins, then spurred his horse forward. Jessica clutched the front of the saddle and prayed she would get back to the house in one piece, assuming they were heading back to the house. The sun had definitely set and the twilight was fading quickly; she did her best to calculate where they were going. In that at least she found some relief. It felt like a return to Henry’s house.

Sounds reached her before she could make out shapes. She could hear livestock complaining. There were men

shouting and laughing. Other voices were raised, speaking in a language she couldn’t understand. The sounds re-

minded her of an open market with merchants vocally advertising the excellence of their goods. But these sounds were completely out of place. Lord Henry’s garden was quiet and she certainly didn’t remember the town being this close. Besides, the tourists were long gone by now. “What in the world did Lord Henry do … ah, to. . .” Her voice trailed off as something very large began to materialize from the mist.

No, it wasn’t large, it was eDOrMOUS.

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It was at that moment that she was faced with the overwhelming urge to scream.

ft was a castle. It was a casde sitting where Lord Henry’s manor house should have been. In fact, she suspected that it looked a great deal like the castle she had been so ignominiously carried from by Archie not a pair of hours before.

And there, right there where the garden should have been was a drawbridge. A working drawbridge, with men and horses traveling over it and torches lighting their way. Jessica lifted her eyes up walls that were at least three stories high and jerked back when she saw the men walking atop them. Soldiers with helmets that gleamed silver in the light from the moon.

There was, however, no sign of that lovely Victorian mansion she had grown so attached to in such a short time.

Jessica tried to jerk out of the saddle but the man squeezed her between his forearms. She grabbed the reins in front of where his hands were and gave them a substantial tug. The gelding reared and the man swore. Jessica pulled back again, trying to turn the horse around. She dug her heels into his side for good measure. The beast reared again and Jessica released one rein long enough to give her companion a healthy shove, He teetered. Another jerk on the reins and another shove sent him right off the back of the horse. Jessica forced the horse around and slapped her heels against his flanks. “Go, go!” she shouted. “Allez, you stupid horse!”

Blessed beast, he responded immediately. Jessica gave him his head and let the sharp wind in her face still her panic. She would get out of this just as soon as she could find a road and follow it to a pub. All she had to do was find a phone. Lord Henry would straighten this out.

She heard the shrill whistle and groaned even before she felt the gelding skid to a halt. She went sailing over his head, completely out of control. She knew there was nothing she could do but enjoy the ride. So she did, for the space of a breath or two.

THE MORE I SEE YOU 19 She landed flat on her back and the wind was knocked completely from her. She gave a passing thought to the fact that she hadn’t hit her head on a rock before she concentrated on the fact that she couldn’t breathe. At all.

She tried valiantly to suck in air, truly she did. She kept her eyes open and trained on the stars above her, willing her body to respond. Then her view of the sky was blocked out by a man who planted himself over her with a foot on either side of her body and glared down at her, his chest heaving. It didn’t matter that he was the most ruthlessly beautiful man she’d ever seen. It didn’t even matter that he had a sword belted at his side. Not even his frown or the way his fro wn emphasized his harsh scar fazed her.

What did bother her, though, was his damned horse, who seemed determined to make up for throwing her by snuffling her hair and drooling on her forehead. The man slapped the horse away and grumbled in apparent disgust.

A man who would love her as much as he loved himse@f Jessica smiled wryly. That’s what she’d wished for, wasn’t it? Yes, and there was also that saying that generally went along with wishing: Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.

Her world began to spin before she could give any more contemplation to the irony of those words.

Richard of Burwyck-on-the-Sea had passed better days than the current one over the course of his score-and-ten years. Yet at the moment he was beginning to wonder if these sorts of miserable days were to be his lot in life from now on. He looked down at the woman senseless on the ground between his feet and added her to the events that had imposed themselves upon him since the sun had risen four days earlier.

The first sign of trouble had been a request from his younger brother, Hugh, asking for aid in the resolving of a fierce dispute. Normally Richard would have sent one of his men to do the like, but he’d been plagued by a

nagging impulse to try to repair the breaches in his family wall himself-those walls being rickety at best. Perhaps a wiser man would have left matters be. One of his sisters he had not spoken to since she’d wed ten years earlier, as

her husband didn’t care for her family. His other sister and her husband had both died of consumption whilst he was traveling and he had not wanted to make the effort to return home for their burying.

That left him with but two brothers, Hugh and Warren.

Hugh had inherited the estate of Richard’s dead sister and

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her husband, partly because their father had willed it so and partly because ’twas such a miserable place that no one else wanted it. It was only because Hugh was family that Richard had even considered his request. He scowled. Damned family loyalty. He had succumbed to the desire for familial accord as if to a fever, cast aside his better judgment, packed up his gear to travel to Merceham-all for the noble purpose of fostering what family affection he could.

He’d arrived to find Hugh senseless in his bed, apparently overcome by the ample charms of a castle whore. Richard had done the fool a favor by rolling the wench off him. When Richard had learned the whole tale, he wished he’d let Hugh suffocate under that abundant bosom, for the fierce dispute had turned out to be nothing more than a pair of freemen haggling over a hen. Hugh had still been suffering from the aftereffects of too much ale and bosom the next day to offer any decent explanation for why he hadn’t been equal to solving that problem on his own. Richard suspected that Hugh’s purpose had been to make a fool of him.

Richard had not been amused. He’d indulged his brother’s offer that day for a hunt, not out of a desire for diversion, but rather to see what was left of Merceham. With Hugh as steward of the soil, one never knew. Richard had toyed with the idea of perhaps letting an arrow or two miss their mark on supper and find their way into Hugh’s arse in repayment for his sport at Richard’s expense.

Yet instead of supper, Richard had caught this. He looked down at the woman and scowled. Well, at least she wasn’t dead, though he suspected she might wish to be with the pain in her head she’d have when she woke. When he’d seen her go flying over Horse’s neck, he’d been certain he would find her crumpled up in the midst of a clutch of rocks. He’d cursed his stupidity the moment the whistle had left his lips, but damn the wench, what else was he to do? Let her ride off with his mount? At

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least his guard had ridden on ahead and spared themselves the sight of their lord landing ungracefully upon his backside.

He stared down at the horse thief. She was fair enough, he supposed. Indeed, if one were given to judging such things, one might decide that she was bordering on handsome. Her features were well formed and her skin free of any blemish. He was momentarily tempted to check her teeth, then he reminded himself that she was a woman

and not a horse.

He had been, perhaps, too long out of polite company. He turned his attentions to the mystery of her identity. She carried herself like a highborn lady yet spoke the peasant’s English with an accent that not even the lowliest serf could match. She’d also managed to blurt out a few words in his language, but he’d had trouble understanding her there as well. What was he to divine from that? “You’re to divine nothing, dolt,” he muttered shortly. As if he had time to do anything but finish his business at Merceham and be on his way. Already he’d wasted more time humoring his younger brother than he should have.

And now a helpless woman to care for. He should have let her be trampled. Now he had no choice but to see her to safety. “Bloody knightly vows,” he grumbled as he ran his hands over her body, checking for broken bones. They never served him save to poke and prod him until he relented and dragged out his rusty chivalry for use upon some soul who likely would have been better off without his aid.

Well, at least the wench had suffered no injury he could find. He slipped one arm under her shoulders, the other under her knees, and lifted her with a grunt. She wasn’t excessively heavy, but she was tall and that made for a

somewhat awkward burden. Not that a tall woman troubled him. He was tired of women he had to fold himself in half just to kiss, never mind kissing them while he was

bedding them. Taking a tall woman to his bed would

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likely cure him of the kink in his neck that plagued him.

Not that be was thinking about doing anything akin to that with this wench. He had no idea who she was. She was surely old enough to be someone’s wife or widow. She could have been some nobleman’s daughter with a tongue too shrewish to be borne by a husband.

He sighed. Perhaps he would just take her back to the keep, pack his gear, and be on his way. The thought of leaving a defenseless woman in his brother’s care did not sit well with him, but he wasn’t overly enthusiastic about carrying her back to his hall with him either. Besides, what was she to him? He’d saved her from Hugh’s dogs. She couldn’t ask for more than that.

Richard stopped and looked over his shoulder. “Damn you, Horse, come! You needn’t feel guilty about tossing her. “

Horse trotted up dutifully and bumped Richard’s elbow, as if to grovel a bit more to the woman draped over his master’s arms. Richard cursed his mount fluently for each jar; the last thing he wanted to do was think about the dead weight in his arms. Damnation, the last thing he wanted to do was think at all! How much simpler life had been before word of his father’s death had reached him. There was much to be said for shirking one’s responsibilities under the guise of mercenaryhood. France was lush, Spain was sunny, and Italy was far enough away from England that Richard had almost forgotten his inheritance. He never should have come home. He wanted none of this gloomy England and the ghosts of memories that haunted his hall.

Ife sidestepped a steaming pile of manure on the drawbridge and held his breath as he carried the woman inside the bailey. Returning to his own keep seemed more appealing by the moment. Burwyck-on-the-Sea would be a good place once he’d finished rebuilding it. The sea breezes continually washed away the stench of daily living, unlike this hellhole Hugh called home.

Richard kicked open the door of the great hall and

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strode inside. The rushes were a slimy, noisome marsh and he struggled to keep his footing. He carried his burden past the huge fire in the center of the room and blinked at the smokiness of the chamber. The new Burwyck was being built more sensibly, with flues that would carry the smoke outside. His eyes would never bum again. “Did I give you leave to bring her here?” a voice asked sharply.

Richard slowed to a stop, then slowly turned his head and looked at his younger brother. “I beg your pardon?” “This is my hall, Richard,” Hugh said. “I say who enters my doors.”

A young man jumped up from the chair next to Hugh and bolted for the stairs. Richard watched his youngest brother, Warren, disappear to the upper floor. At least someone in the family had some sense left to him. A pity the same couldn’t be said about Hugh.

Richard turned and walked to the high table. “You were saying, Hugh?”

Hugh looked at the woman and Richard felt a chill go down his spine in spite of himself. Nay, he would not be leaving this poor woman here, damn her anyway. As if he had time to indulge in any rescues at the moment! “I saw her first,” Hugh said, his eyes burning with a feverish light. “I think she’s a faery.”

That was the other thing about Hugh: He was what a kinder soul would have deemed mad.

Richard sighed. “She is no faery.” “She sprang up from a blade of grass,” Hugh said. “I know what she is.”

Hugh crossed himself, made a handful of signs Richard had no desire to determine the purpose of, then spit a glob of mucus,over his left shoulder.

Richard tried to clamp his lips shut, but he couldn’t stop the words. “Right shoulder, Hugh,” he said grimly. ‘Tis the right shoulder for faeries.”

Hugh looked as horrified as if he expected the wench to wake and eat him whole. “Is it?”

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“I’m sure of it,” Richard said. Damn, he should have remained silent. The very last thing he needed was to start his brother on one of his paths of madness. But the desire to repay Hugh for the journey to Merceham had been stronger than his common sense.

Hugh, Richard decided with finality, was much more tolerable when he was drunk. Fortunately for his people, that was his usual condition.

Hugh spat several times until apparently the effort was too much. Then he sat back and looked at the woman. “I still think I should keep her,” he insisted. “Nay. Your first instinct was to leave her to your dogs.”

Hugh dragged his gaze away from Richard’s burden and looked at his brother. “So it was. But I’ve changed my mind.” “Too late.” ” ‘Tis my land,” Hugh insisted. “I say what happens here.” ” ‘Tis your land by my good graces,” Richard said. “I earned this,” Hugh said, starting to shift uncomfortably in his chair. “I earned it-” “Aye, by kissing Father’s sorry arse before his death and by my not wanting the burden of this hovel afterward.” “I don’t need you-” “You do,” Richard interrupted. “You do indeed, or have you forgotten how life works in this England of ours?” “I’ve forgotten nothing,” Hugh said, slumping down in his chair and scowling like a child. “And even if I had, I wouldn’t need your help in understanding it.” “And I say you would, and you do,” Richard said tightly. “Let me remind you how these matters of hospitality proceed. When my liege Henry-deigns to grace my hall with his presence, I bow and scrape before him, kiss his hands, offer him the finest of my larder, and see that he is served well at all times by pleasing wenches.

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And I do this, repeat this with me, Hugh, because he is my liege-lord and I am his vassal.”

Hugh was silent. “Now,” Richard continued, “though you seem to have difficulty in remembering this, I am your liege-lord. All this–he cast a sweeping glance about Hugh’s hall- “all this finery you enjoy is because of me. Remember, brother, that all you have, from your randiest mistress to your most insignificant cooking pot, comes from me. And I can take it away in less than a heartbeat.”

Hugh opened his mouth, but Richard gave one brief, sharp shake of his head. “Do not. There are several of my knights who would make finer vassals and care more skillfully for what is mine than you. And if you think I lack the stomach for such a deed, you are sadly mistaken.” “Father would never forgive you for it,” Hugh muttered.

Richard lost what little patience he had left. Had he ever entertained the thought that he had family he wanted to see?

By the saints, he was a fool. “Never make the mistake of mentioning him to me again,” Richard said coldly. “He’s dead and rotting in hell where he belongs and you’ll rot alongside him if you push me further this day. Send water for washing to my chamber and edible food if you can find it. And send up a cloak for the woman-one without vermin, if that is possible in this place,” he added as he strode away from the table. “I saw her first,” Hugh insisted. “I saw the faery first and I’ll have her yet!”

Richard ignored him. He had little patience for Hugh or for his foolish ideas. Richard didn’t believe in faeries, or in the ghosts that supposedly haunted the forests between Merceharn and Burwyck-on-the-Sea. He had enough to trouble himself over without worrying about things he could not see and did not believe existed. A pity Hugh could not say the same.

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He felt Hugh’s gaze bore into his back as he walked to the stairs, but he ignored that as well. Let Hugh think what he would. Richard had no fear of his brother’s puny rages.

Richard continued upward and almost tripped over his youngest sibling, who was hugging the wall in the turn of the stairs. “Stop cowering, you fool,” he snapped. “Come open the door for me, then seek out Captain John. I’ve a mind to leave at sunrise.” “I’m not staying behind, Richard,” Warren warned, running lightly up the stairs before him. “You’ll do as I tell you.” “I’m ten-and-six, by God, and I’ll do as I please!”

Richard would have booted his youngest brother in the backside if he hadn’t had an armful of woman hampering him. Yet in truth, he couldn’t blame Warren for wanting to leave. Having passed ten years in the company of their father, Geoffrey, then with Hugh after their father’s death had to have been hell. Richard knew he should have sent for Warren sooner, but he’d had his own demons to wrestle with and no time to see to a child.

He walked into a chamber and laid his burden down gently on the bed. “Saints, she’s fetching,” Warren breathed. “You don’t want her, do you?”

Richard caught his brother by the back of the tunic and pulled him away. “Nay, and neither do you. We know nothing of her and I’ve a feeling there’s more to her than we suspect. For all we know, she’s someone important. That puts her comfortably out of my reach and yours.” “Is she a faery, do you think?”

Richard cast his brother a look he hoped would need no words.

Warren gulped, then turned his attentions back to the woman. “You’re right,” he said. “She’s a noblewoman. Look you how she’s dressed.”

Richard put his hand on his brother’s head, turned him toward the door, and gave him a healthy push. “Get you gone and do as I bade you.”

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Warren paused at the doorway. “Why didn’t you come

for me, Richard?”

Leave it to the child to cut to the heart of the matter without any preparatory banter. Richard felt his guilt rise in his throat. He should at least have found a place for Warren to go foster. Aye he’d been remiss and he felt the fault of that weigh heavily upon him. He looked down at the bed, at the wall, at the window-anywhere but at his brother. “I’ve had things to do.” “But you’ve been home three years and nary a word!” “I’ve been busy.”

Warren was silent for a good long while, long enough for Richard to grow mightily uncomfortable. By the saints, he had been busy. He’d had a keep to rebuild, memories to forget, drink to avoid. He hadn’t had the stomach for the keeping of a youth who likely should have been sent away to foster at some other man’s keep years before now.

A sniff sounded suddenly in the stillness of the room

and Richard stiffened. Tears? Nay, not tears! Warren was

jocj ()16 joy te-ays, Nasv@t he! Richard suppressed the in-

tense uir2e to flee.

I’DoiN leave me here,” Warren pleaded hoarsely. “I beg you, Richard.” He threw himself suddenly to his knees and groped for Richard’s hand. “I beg you, brother. If you have any mercy … 11

Richard pulled his hand away immediately. “Nay, I’ll not leave you to rot here. The saints only know I couldn’t last more than a se’nnight. Find John, then pack your gear. We’ll leave at first light.”

Warren leaped to his feet and hugged Richard quickly. He jumped away before Richard even gathered his wits to shake the boy off. “As you say, my lordl” he exclaimed joyfully. “I’ll

see to it all immediatelyl”

Richard waited until the door banged shut behind him before he looked down at the floor. The imprint of Warren’s knees showed in the rushes; Richard scowled at the

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sight. Sentiment. What a waste of energy! Nay, he had no time for the like. Sentiment had never served him in the past. The only emotion his father had ever showed him had been by virtue of his fists or a strap. Had there ever been any tenderness in Richard’s soul, it had been beaten from him long ago.

He walked over to the window and threw open the shutters, hoping for fresh night air to clear his head. Instead, he found that it was raining and the rain only magnified the stench of the bailey surrounding the stone keep. But he breathed of it just the same, deeply. Aye, he had little time for sentiment. He had his hall to rebuild. He wanted nothing more than that. A fine hall overlooking the sea where he could be at peace.

He’d spent eighteen years traveling. First it had been as another man’s squire, then as his own man, with men looking to him for leadership. For months on end he’d slept in a different place each night, in a bed when he was lucky, on the ground when he was not. He’d known fear, he’d known hunger, and he’d known lust. And he’d had a bellyful of the lot of them. What he wanted now was to settle down in an orderly, clean keep and let the rest of the world go to the devil. In a year or two he’d take a docile child to bride, get her with child, then send her off to one of his other holdings where she couldn’t trouble him further. He’d have his heir and his peace.

And then, for the first time in thirty years, he would be happy.

His captain called to him from the passageway and Richard turned and walked back to the door. He paused and cast a look at the bed. The woman was handsome enough. And spirited, if her success in ousting him from his place atop his gelding’s rump had been any proof.

But she was certainly no docile child, and that made her the very last thing he could use.

He sighed. He would have to carry her home with him, that much was certain. Perhaps he could spare a moment or two to question her and decide where she belonged. Or he could have Warren see to the task.

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Aye, that was most sensible. It would give his youngest sibling something to do and it would keep the woman out of Richard’s way. Already he had wasted more thought on her than he had to spare. He would have her identity discovered then send her on her way.

And then he would turn his full attentions back to his keep, whence they never should have strayed in the first place, damn Hugh to hell.

With a curse he left the chamber.

Jessica woke to the feeling of someone tugging at hei clothes. Those maids of Lord Henry’s certainly were diligent, but she really didn’t need to take her clothes off She could return to oblivion perfectly well with what shc had on. And return to it she certainly intended to, only this time she wasn’t going to dive back into that horrible dream. What a nightmare! Hounds hollering, men with swords, castles and horses and whistling. Maybe it was time she stopped indulging in so much chocolate. Whc knew what sort of detrimental effect it had on a person’s dreams?

She pushed the offending hands away and tried to burrow more fully into that pretty yellow-and-green floralprint comforter. “Got to sleep more,” she mumbled. “Terrible dream.”

A low laugh answered her, followed by something that sounded remarkably like, “I’ll give you aught to dream about, wicked creature from the grass.”

Jessica frowned. That was not the voice of Henry’s crisply starched housekeeper.

In the space of a heartbeat Jessica came suddenly and fully awake. It was morning. She recognized that right off

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because the window at her left was open and a breeze straight from Antarctica was blowing right at her, unimpeded by the rustic shutters. Or maybe she was just cold because-‘her dress had been unlaced to the waist and there was a great deal of flesh exposed.

She looked to her right to find a man standing there in a shirt alone. She looked down. Apparently the arctic breeze was havirig no effect at all on his condition. It didn’t seem that his inebriation was any impediment either-even though he almost knocked her flat with his breath alone.

Then Jessica looked up and realized she’d seen that nose before.

Either she was still dreaming, or she had just entered the Twilight Zone.

She looked around frantically, but Rod Serling didn’t seem to be popping out from behind any of the ratty tapestries.

Damn. She was in trouble. Before she had time to contemplate that any further, the snarly, aroused one lunged at her and she had to make a quick roll off the other side of the bed to escape. She would have managed it, too, if he hadn’t snagged another handful of her hair. “Ouch!” she said, grabbing her hair near the roots to stop the pain. “I really hate that!” “Ah, but you’ll like what’s to follow,” he said with conviction as he hauled her back toward him.

She tried to reach behind her to deal him some sort of debilitating blow but that only earned her a box on the ears that set her head to ringing like an abused church bell.

One thing was for sure: she’d had better mornings. The next thing she knew, she was flat on her back, he was straddling her hips, and his hand was coming toward her. She covered her face, already wincing. She’d never been struck before, but she had the feeling she wouldn’t be able to say that much longer.

She waited.

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The blow never came. The weight of the man was suddenly off her. Sh opened her eyes in time to see him go flying against th wall. He slumped to the floor, looking dazedly up at whc ever had thrown him.

Jessica rolled off the bed before she took the time t do the same. She was halfway to the door before sh allowed herself to look at who had rescued her.

It was him. The horse-whistling one. So maybe wasn’t a dream after all. Either that or she was stuck ir side her dream, trapped forever with characters she ha no desire to get to know any better.

She hesitated, her hand on the door, and watched be rescuer haul the man who had woken her up so warml to his feet. He dealt him one blow. Her attacker slumpe back down to the floor, senseless.

Then the man turned and looked at her. His expressio was no lighter than it had been the night before. In faci it was, if possible, even more displeased. “You,” he said distinctly, “are, I am quite certain, go ing to be more trouble than you are worth.”

There went that wacky accent again. Fortunately, the disgruntled tone of his voice, she had little troubl understanding the gist of his message.

Then she realized what he’d said and scowled. Well, a least she knew where she stood with her captor/rescuej Very freeing, truly. Jessica gave him her best attempt a a smile. “I appreciate the rescue. You were rescuing me weren’t you?”

His expression darkened. Ah, no sense of humor. Jes sica made a mental note to remember that in the future should she find herself unfortunate enough to encounte the man before her again.

She realized then that the front of her dress was stil gaping open, so she gave the laces a firm tug, tied th4 ends of the strings into a double bow, and rubbed he hands together expectantly. “I’ll be off now,” she said briskly, as if she really di(

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have to be going. “Things to do, you know.” “And where is it you’ll be traveling to, mistress?”

She paused. “Home?” “And that would be-nay,” he said, holding up his hand, “I’ve no time to hear of it. Come with me. You’ll tell my brother Warren your tale. He’ll have more stomach for it than I will, I’m sure.”

Right. As if she would really go heaven-knew-where with him just like that. She put her shoulders back and tried to look confident. “I think I’ll stay, thaAk you just the same.”

The man looked at her less-than-pleasant alarm clock still in a heap on the floor, then back at her. “All right,” she conceded, “I probably won’t be staying right here, but that doesn’t mean I’m going with you. There’s got to be a road nearby. I’ll just find it and start walking.” “Then, lady, you will be walking a very long time, for there is little here about that you would find to your liking.” And with that, he turned and strode from the room.

Well, that didn’t sound all that promising, but who was to say that he was telling her the truth? She would just have to see things for herself. And if he was right about the distances, she would just have to borrow a horse.

Jessica scrambled to catch up with him. She trailed after him down the stairs, doing her best to negotiate the tight circular staircase. It reminded her sharply of how difficult Lord Henry’s castle stairs were to descend, only these were certainly better preserved. There were nogrooves in the stone from hundreds of years of feet tramping up and down them.

She paused on the last step, stunned by the realization. The stairs were in perfect condition. Jessica took a deep breath and tried to marshal her last reserves of common sense. The stairs couldn’t be in this kind of condition, because if they were new, that would mean she’d somehow wandered into another century and she just knew that wasn’t possible. She was just a little unnerved because the castle had seemed to appear in the

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place where she’d just recently left Lord Henry’s house, but maybe she’d lost her sense of direction in the fog. Yes, that was it. She’d thought his was the only castle around for miles, but obviously she’d been mistaken aboul that, too. She was an American and obviously unused to English distances. Just a little culture shock.

Feeling a little better about it all, she returned to her earlier decision to borrow a horse and use it to get to a town with a phone.

The stairwell opened up suddenly onto a great hall. Jessica came to a teetering halt, then reminded herself to breathe deeply and avoid at all costs a major freak-out.

This looked like a full-blown, so-authentic-she-couldthrow-up, medieval castle. She’d listened to Henry’s tour guide describe the supposed conditions in medieval England. She’d scoffed silently at the thought of rotting hay strewn on the floor, dinner leftovers curing on tables and under tables, odors of sweat and dog and urine permeating the air. But never in her life would she have believed that someplace could actually smell as bad or be as much of a sty as what he’d described.

Yet that was what she was facing. Jessica had a very bad feeling-and she didn’t think it was caused by olfactory overload. “Not what you’re accustomed to?”

She managed to look at the man before her who had paused to stare at her. She found that all she could do was shake her head no. “Your hall is better kept?”

She couldn’t even manage a nod. The man shrugged, then continued on his way. Jessica didn’t waste any time before following him. She definitely didn’t want to find herself left behind in this place, no matter how freshly laid the steps looked.

He stopped in the courtyard and Jessica stopped right behind him. She knew she was staring rudely at the mounted men, but she couldn’t help herself. Either this was a Hollywood set or she had one hell of a fantasy life. There were probably a dozen men sitting on horses. The

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men were wearing chain mail. Medieval surcoats were worn like tunics over said armor and they bore an animal that looked like a cross between an eagle and a lion. From the depths of her overworked brain surfaced a single trivial recollection from a history class.

The animal was a griffin. It wasn’t very pleasant looking. Somehow, she just wasn’t surprised at finding it here, and that had a lot to do with the scar on her rescuer’s face. His griffin was black as night, with bloodred eyes. She hadthe feeling he’d seen enough of the latter color to know more about it than was good for him.

She snapped out of her heraldry stupor in time to see him coming toward her, a fierce frown on his face. Great, what was his problem now? It wasn’t all that easy to scowl back at a man several inches taller than she and wearing mail, but she decided she had little to lose in trying.

She was in the middle of thinking of something appropriately tough to say when the man slung a heavy cloak around her shoulders and fastened it at the throat with a heavy metal brooch.

And for a single moment Jessica looked up into his stormy eyes and felt a shiver go through her.

It was rusty chivalry, but chivalry all the same. It was, somehow, one of the most intimate things anyone had ever done for her and she could hardly believe the tumultuous man in front of her had been the one to do it.

Evidently he was thinking the same thing. He stepped back suddenly and dropped his hands to his sides. “I assume you can ride alone,” he stated curtly.

The moment was gone as quickly as it had come and Jessica came back to reality with a welcome jar. A horse. This was very good. A horse meant covering a great deal more ground than her feet could. She nodded immediately.

He grunted. “It will save me another tumble, at least.” He beckoned to a boy, who brought over an enormous black gelding, easily as tall as the horse she had corn-

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mandeered. The man lifted one eyebrow in challenge. “Can you best this one?” “No problem,” she said, hoping that would be true. She started to put her foot up in the saddle, then felt strong hands catch her by the waist and lift her up. But before she could get the words out to thank him, he had walked away, shouting orders to his company.

It was apparently a well-trained group. They immediately followed the man through the inner courtyard of the castle, through the gates, and across the drawbridge.

Jessica tried hard to ignore her surroundings. She promised herself she would pay attention once they reached landscape that was more, well, groomed. She concentrated on controlling her horse and keeping up.

And she didn’t think about the fact that nothing looked familiar. “Good morrow to you, lady.”

Jessica looked to her right to find that a young man had come to ride beside her. He looked at her expectantly. “Oh, um, yes,” Jessica managed. “Same to you.” “I am Warren de Galtres,” he said. “My brother bid me question you and find out your origins.” “Your brother?”

Warren nodded toward the front of the company. “You know him, of course. He’s Richard, lord of Burwyck-onthe-Sea.”

And in that moment Jessica’s world froze. Or maybe it was she herself that froze. Her horse was still moving. Warren’s horse was still moving. In fact, she suspected the entire group was still moving, yet somehow the whole scene became frozen in some weird kind of tableau.

Richard of Burwyck-on-the-Sea? The same Richard the tour guide had been talking about?

She took a deep breath. It was impossible. And then the explanation hit her. She laughed a little, almost giddy with relief. This was obviously some kind of thing put on by some medieval reenactment society. Lord Henry had gone to great expense and effort to have

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them come to his house and put his guests in a less-thanmodern frame of mind. Lord Henry probably had a cousin who Oas the earl of Burwyck-on-the-Sea and his name

was Richard. Maybe Henry had taken pity on her for having to put up with Archie and he’d chosen her as the first victi-ah, the first participant.

Well, no sense in not playing along. Jessica certainly wouldn’t want to be accused of being a bad houseguest. She looked at Warren de Galtres, or whoever he really was, and tried to keep the indulgence out of her smile. “Of course he is,” she said, nodding. “You’re Warren, he’s Richard, and I’m having a really great time. Where

are we going?” “Home, of course,” Warren replied.

He looked a little confused, but she chalked that up to him being male, about sixteen, and in sore need of a bath. Those three things alone were enough to confuse anyone. “And home would be Burwyck-on-the-Sea?” she asked. They probably had a tour bus waiting there to take her back to Henry’s house. The idea of going to Burwyckon-the-Sea by horse was a little extreme, but she could handle it. She’d ridden horses before. She wasn’t all that sure how the events of her awakening that morning fit into the picture, but that was probably something she could complain about to the management when she had a chance. “Where else would home be?” Warren asked, looking even more baffled than before. “Good point,” she agreed. She held out her hand. “I’m Jessica Blakely. Nice to meet you.”

He looked at her hand as if he didn’t have a clue what to do with it, so she pulled it back before she embarrassed him any further. “Whence come you, then?” he asked. “Lord Henry’s house, of course,” she said. Medieval reenactment or not, there was no sense in giving out more information than she needed to.

Apparently her announcement had more force than she

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had anticipated. Warren’s eyes bugged out and his jaw went slack. “Henry?” he said, and it came out as a squeak. “Yes, Henry,” she said, wondering why the name was

causing such a stir. “I’ve been staying with him for the past couple of weeks.”

That didn’t appear to be making things any better. “Well, he invited me,” Jessica said, starting to feel a little defensive. So what if she was just a tag-along guest. She was still a guest. “Merciful saints above, you’re kin to the king,” Warren said in tones of awe.

King? Well, if they wanted to think of him that way, that was fine with her. Maybe Lord Henry had an ego problem and that little tidbit had been put into the acting contract to soothe him. “If that’s the kind of title you want to give him,” she told Warren with as straight a face as she could manage, “you go right ahead.” “Then you must be very close kin indeed, if you speak of him so familiarly.” “Actually I just met him,” Jessica confided. She looked at Warren and wondered just how brainwashed the kid was. “Look,” she said in a low voice, “he’s really not the king. He’s just a lord. I don’t know who’s been telling you differently, but I wouldn’t believe them.”

Apparently the brainwashing had been a bang-up job because Warren looked as if she’d just told him the sun was going to change colors from yellow to hot pink with turquoise polka dots. He swallowed convulsively a time or two, then he paused. After another uncomfortablelooking swallow, he suddenly smiled. “You’ve had a bump on your head, haven’t you?” be asked. “Well, now that you mention it-” “I’ve heard of men forgetting things after a blow to the head. ” “I guess that happens,” she agreed.

She didn’t think he could look. any more relieved.

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“Then I will instruct you on the way of things,” Warren said importantly. “So you don’t mistake our liege for someone else again. And then perhaps we might discover your true origins and send you on your way so our lives will not be troubled further.”

The fact that he didn’t look shocked at his own rudeness left Jessica with no doubt that it was “Richard” who had put the words into the boy’s mouth.

She really would have to have a talk with the troupe’s boss. Rudeness to paying customers-even if it was Lord Henry paying and not her-shouldn’t be tolerated. “Great idea,” Jessica said. “Why don’t you tell me all about current events?” “Gladly,” Warren said, his voice taking on a very pedantic tone. “Henry, the son of John Lackland, now sits the throne. As you know, he’s sat the throne for some

thirty years now. He’s quite the builder, but I don’t know how many care for the course he’s chosen for the country. My father never did and I daresay Richard doesn’t much either.”

Well, one thing she could say for the kid, he was certainly convincing about his historical details. He sounded like Henry’s tour guide. “Interesting,” she said. “Go on.” “I daresay Richard’s peers aren’t overfond of the king either,” Warren continued. “Though I suppose once we’re home, it will matter less what goes on around usat least to me.” “By home, you mean Burwyck-on-the-Sea,” Jessica supplied. “Aye,” Warren said with a nod. “You see, I was born there, but my father sent me away with Hugh when I was a wee lad. My sire died over three years ago. I thought Richard would come for me sooner, but he’s been pressed by other concerns.”

Jessica found herself with the sudden urge to give Richard a swift kick in the behind. Then she remembered it was just acting and smiled faintly. The kid was good, she would give him that. He almost had her going.

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“The saints be praised I must needs remain with Hugh no longer.” He smiled apologetically. “Hugh’s hall smells like a sty, I know. Home will be better, I promise you. , I

“So, are you happy to be going with your brother?” “Aye,” Warren said, but his face fell. “I fear he isn’t as pleased. He’s an important lord, my lady, and has much to see to. But I vow I’ll be no trouble to him. I’m skilled with arms and I’ll stay out from underfoot.” “I’m sure he’ll come around eventually,” Jessica said, her mind just locking in on something Warren had said. “So, who did you say was king these days?”

Warren smiled reassuringly. “Henry, my lady. Your kinsman.”

Here we go again, she thought, suppressing the urge to roll her eyes. “And that would make the year what?” she asked. “The Year of our Lord’s Grace 1260, my lady. And I’m finding it to be a sweet year indeed.” He smiled sunnily. ” ‘Tis the year of my liberation.”

From Hugh orfrom the local sanitarium? was on the tip of her tongue, but she found she couldn’t give voice to the words. She looked around and tried to reconcile what she knew had to be true with the fantasy Warren had been spouting.

1260? Yeah, right. Or maybe I’m just so, strung out on whatever was slipped into my morning cocoa yesterday that I’m actually thinking of going along with this medieval mumbo jumbo, she thought wildly. “Lady Jessica, are you ill? You look powerfully pale. I’ll tell Richard– “No,” she said quickly. “Let’s not bother him. I’ll be fine.”

Just as soon as I get a firm grip on my hysterics. All right, so she’d seen Somewhere in Time and loved it. So she’d read all those time-travel books and fantasized about it. That didn’t mean it was happening to her. It couldn’t

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be. She wasn’t stuck back in a place with no phones, no fast food, and no Bruckner.

Good grief, no music! She almost started to cry. No Brafims. No Rachmaninoff. They hadn’t even been born yet. She was stuck with all that Gregorian chant she couldn’t stomach.’Bach wasn’t even around!

Strong fingers closed around her upper arm and gave her a hard shake. “Are you going to faint?” a curt voice demanded.

She looked next to her. Richard, the alleged lord of Burwyck-on-the-Sea, had suddenly appeared and was looking none too pleased with her. Was this the same Richard who didn’t want his sea view obscured? She was beginning to be sorry that she’d paid so much attention to that tour guide. “Lady, are you going to faint?” he repeated, shaking her again. “No,” she croaked. “No fainting.” “Good. We’ve three days of hard riding ahead of us and I’ll not have you slowing down the progress. Warren! ” “Aye, my lord,” Warren said, snapping to. “If she faints, drag her up out of the mud and catch up as quickly as you can.” “Of course, my lord!”

And with that, Richard, who Jessica couldn’t believe had enough depth to care about a sea view, spurred his horse on and again took his place at the front of the company. “I’m dreaming,” she said. “This is all a bad dream. I will wake up soon and find this was all a hallucination brought on by bad cucumber sandwiches. Then I will sue Lord Henry for pain and suffering and buy myself an eleven-foot Steinway and a house big enough to put it in.”

Warren looked at her as if she’d just sprouted horns. “And I will never again do any kind of wishing upon any kind of heavenly body,” she finished.

He crossed himself, edged away from her, and left her

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contemplating the surrounding countryside, which was starting to look more medieval by the hoofbeat.

Then again, maybe more wishing would be called for. Jessica closed her eyes and began to do just that. But she had the feeling she wasn’t going to be any more successful than she had been the last time.

Richard stood at the edge of his camp and watched with satisfaction the sight before him. This was what he understood, this manly business of exchanging glorious stories of war around the fire, sharpening weapons, rising when the duty fell to you to walk the perimeter of the camp and watch for enemies. Aye, ’twas a good life, the one before him, and he was proud to take part in it. He looked over the men he’d brought with him and was pleased to see that they attended to their duties with precision and care.

Well, mostly. Richard didn’t want to took at the handful of men who didn’t fit the mold, but he could hardly help himself. They were, after all, his personal guard.

He looked at his captain, John of Martley. Currently John sat with his head bowed, sharpening his sword. Richard suspected that the pose was less than comfortable, but he also suspected John was doing his best to ignore the two men arguing with each other over his head. Perhaps the habit came from being the youngest of a large family. Martley was in vassalage to Burwyck-on-the-Sea and John had escaped his home and his lack of prospects at

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an early age to come serve Richard’s father. More was the pity for him, Richard had always thought, but a lad did what he had to.

John’s hopes for a good meal had been few when Richard had met him again on the continent many years later. Richard had taken one look at John’s skill with the blade and offered him a position in his guard, It was not below a youngest son to accept the like, and John had done so without hesitation. Richard had never been sorry for his choice. John was a good soldier and a loyal friend. And he had the necessary ability of being able to ignore whatever foolishness was going on about him. Such as the present madness.

Richard scowled at the man on John’s left. Sir Hamlet of Coteborne was the son of a man who had guarded Queen Eleanor. Richard had stumbled across Hamlet trying to hold his own against a dozen men he had offended in an inn in the south of France. Apparently Hamlet was convinced that southern men could not possibly woo as well as anyone born north of Paris, and he was not shy about saying the like to anyone who would listen. Unfortunately he had been unsuccessful in trying to convince his audience to agree with him. The final straw had been trying to teach them the proper way to compose wooing verse. Richard had joined in the fray simply for the sport of it, but soon learned that Hamlet fought much better than he sang.

Richard didn’t bother to interrupt the current diatribe. Hamlet wouldn’t have noticed him anyway. When the man took a mind to enlighten those around him upon the finer points of wooing, there was no stopping him. “And I say,” Hamlet insisted, “that ’tis the left leg you stretch out when bowing to your lady, not the right!” “Nay, damn ye, ’tis the bloody right-” “The left, you fool! Then should you have to draw your sword and instruct another on proper courtly comportment, you are balanced aright!”

Sir Hamlet stood to demonstrate this and managed to

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wallop his unfortunate student full in the face with his blade as he flourished it.

Richard turned his attention to the man now lying on his back, struggling not to howl. Sir William of Holte was a man of few words, but mighty with weapons of all sorts. Less mighty, however, with his wits-which was why he often found himself drawn into these kinds of discussions. Then again, perhaps it was the less-than-pleasing visage of his that caused him to want to assure himself he had his manners aright. ‘Twas a certainty he would never win a woman without the like.

Joining John in the sharpening of his warriorly gear was the final member of Richard’s guard, Godwin of Scalebro. Richard watched the man work on some painful-looking implement of torture and found himself glad yet again that he had never been on the receiving end of Godwin’s ministrations whilst the man was at his work. He could torture like no other, though Richard had found little use for those skills. The threat was often enough to intimidate and Richard was pleased to have that threat at his disposal. Unlike Godwin’s former employer, Richard kept the man well supplied with the sweet pastries he craved and that seemed

– ),- – @,;_ D@__16_A -M-A @t a small price to pay.

He looked at his little group and indulged in a small feeling of satisfaction. Despite their small flaws, they were fine warriors all. He had earned their loyalty and was grateful for it. Richard nodded approvingly. This was a sight he was accustomed to and one he felt very comfortable, with.

Yet somehow he was less than comfortable. There was something not right, something out of place, something that didn’t belong in his orderly world of men and horses.

He wandered the camp again, then came to a stop and looked down at that something. She sat on the ground at his feet, wrapped in his cloak yet still shivering. He had to admit that looking at her gave him the shivers as well.

Kin of the king. Why was he not surprised? He had grilled Warren thoroughly, once he’d convinced

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his brother that Jessica could not possibly be possessed and that the bump on her head had likely addled her wits. Warren had divulged that she came from a village called Edmonds and that she was related to the king. Other than that, she had revealed none of her intimate details.

Richard gave her noble status a bit more consideration. In truth, her relation to the king made his task easier. Henry was rumored to be coming north within the next month. All Richard had to do was keep Jessica fed and relatively happy, deliver her to the king when he arrived, and then be done with the tale. Perhaps Henry would think it a favor and Richard might have a boon of him.

Though the only gift he could think to ask for was to be left alone to enjoy his peace and quiet.

But he would have no bequest at all if Henry’s kinswoman was aggrieved by his treatment of her. ‘Twas a certainty that she didn’t look very comfortable at present and that forced a scowl to his features. By the saints, he had no time to dance attendance on some woman’s whims for the next month! He had a hall to complete before the chill of winter set in truly. And he would also have to think on hiding enough of his stores to see hisyxispi) fed for the winter, as he was certain that when Henry arrived, he and his retinue would deplete whatever of Richard’s larder was uncovered and vulnerable to the eye. He sighed deeply. There were times he wished Hugh had been the eldest. It would have saved him a great deal of grief

He looked down at his current trial and frowned again. Naught but her face showed from inside his cloak. Warren sat next to her, shoving food into his mouth as quickly as it would go. Apparently Warren had decided that @usk because Jessica had lost her wits was no reason not to enjoy the fairness of her visage. Either that or he felt he stood a better chance of filching food from Jessica than from anyone else. There was certainly no doubt that Jessica wasn’t eating. That might not have bothered Richard another time, but it did now, for it meant she would

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slow him down. By the blessed saints, a woman was a bother!

He squatted down before her, taking her chin in his hand and lifting her face upward. “You need to eat. You’re pale.” “I’m perfectly fine,” she said curtly.

He was surprised by her tone, unpleasantly so. The ,n woman was not as meek as she should have been, give the circumstances. He had saved her, hadn’t he? To his mind, that demanded a bit of gratitude. “You don’t look sound,” he retorted. “I’ve had a few shocks today. I won’t hold you up, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Though her answer was a good one, he didn’t care for the delivery. It was more than clear that her father had done nothing to teach her her place. Never mind her supposed kinship to the king. Richard was a lord in his own right, with several holdings to his name. He preferred not to think on the condition of most of them, but that was beside the point. He deserved a bit of respect just the same. “Richard, remember,” Warren said, tapping his head meaningfully.

That was hardly an excuse for such check, but perhaps Warren had it aright. Richard looked at Jessica, wanting to hear for himself that she had suffered some kind of wound to her wits. “Is that so?” he asked.

She met his gaze and he was momentarily taken aback by the bleakness in her eyes. Saints, but he readily recognized the desolation. Aye, she’d lost much. Whether that included part of her memory was something be couldn’t tell, but she had certainly lost something dear to her.

A man? The thought flashed through his mind before he could stop it, but he squelched the impulse to pause and consider the idea. It mattered not to him if she pined after some fool. All that mattered was that she eat so she wouldn’t

be an encumbrance to him on his journey. Trying to make peace with Hugh had been a foolish idea. He had no intention of leaving his keep to do anything remotely as foolish again. Aye, the journey had been naught but a misery from the moment he’d left Burwyck-on-the-Sea in a torrential downpour to the moment he’d felt a sudden wave of chivalry sweep over him like nausea and prod him into scooping up a troublesome wench to save7 her from Hugh’s dogs. He should have let them make a meal of her.

The memory of finding her in Hugh’s fields brought another troubling question to his mind. How had she come to be there alone, without any trace of gear or baggage? Had she merely wandered off, or had her companions left her behind? And if they’d left her behind, was it because she was daft?

Or was she, as Hugh supposed,. a faery? Richard clapped a hand to his head. By the saints, he was the one on the path to madness. The woman had likely just become lost and he had worsened her dilemma by sending her flying off his horse. The least he could do was see her fed until Henry arrived, then his task would be done.

He reached over and snatched an apple from Warren’s pile of sustenance. Without ceremony, he pulled Jessica’s hand free of the cloak and slapped the fruit into it. “Eat. If you’re weak, you’ll hinder me and I’ve no time for that.” “I’m not hungry.” “That matters not to me. Eat, lest you provoke me further. ” “I’m not your servant to be told what to do V’

“You’re of less worth to me than a servant,” he said bluntly, “for a servant would do my bidding without question. Put away your foolish womanly sorrows and obey my command. Your trivial cares will not be what keeps me from reaching my home as quickly as possible.” “Trivial?” she echoed, her eyes wide with sudden pain.

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“Aye, trivial,” he pressed on ruthlessly, “as are all womanlytares.”

She opened her mouth to retort, then shut it with a snap. She reached over and took a piece of bread and a hunk of cheese from Warren, ignoring the lad’s bereft look. Then she took the apple and bit into it viciously. “Do you know what you are?” she said, between bites.

Richard watched the fire in her eyes and found that the sight of it relieved him somewhat. The last thing he needed was a bawling woman to contend with. Not that he was used to contending with women anyway outside the bedchamber, but he supposed if the task was thrust upon him, ’twas better that the wench have a bit of sharpness to her tongue.

Then again, perhaps ’twas better he return to his former position of wanting her to be meek and tractable. Surely she would be easier to cow if that were her mien.

Richard suddenly had the desire to throw up his hands and retreat to the safety of a sentry post. He had no idea which way he would have preferred the wench before him and it irritated him to find he was even having such a foolish debate with himself. He cared nothing for the handsomeness of her face, nor for the fire in her eyes. He had a bloody keep to build and no time to be distracted by some foolish girl who had obviously gotten separated from her company and wandered onto Hugh’s fields. “A month,” he muttered. “I can endure this for a month.” “Well?” she demanded. “Don’t you want to know?”

He suspected he didn’t, but there was no sense in her thinking he was afraid to hear her assessment of his character. “What am IT’ he asked reluctantly. “A chauvinist.”

Chauvinist was no word he’d ever heard before and he prided himself on having learned a great deal on his travels. He looked at her with narrowed eyes. “A chauvinist?”

She nodded, taking another bite of apple that made him

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very relieved she hadn’t take a like bite out of his backside. “Aye,” he said, deciding suddenly to assure her he was familiar with her term for him, “that I am. You would do well to remember it.” “I doubt I could forget it, even if I wanted to.”

Somehow, he had the feeling chauvinist was not flattering. And, torn between admitting his stupidity and saving his pride, he walked away. The wench was eating. He’d won that battle.

He remained on the far side of the camp until most of the men had settled down to sleep. No fires had been lit. The warmth would have been pleasant, but it also could have meant unwanted and unforeseen arrows in the back. Life instead of comfort was never a poor trade.

He rose and began to walk, having no destination in mind. To his discomfort, he found himself again standing over Jessica. She was trembling even beneath his cloak. Warren lay next to her, sleeping peacefully. Richard didn’t stop to think, he merely reached down and stripped away his brother’s blanket. The boy woke with a curse, then shut his mouth hastily. He lay back down and stared up at Richard, mute.

Richard ignored the look in his brother’s eye, something he suspected might have been reproach, and draped Warren’s blanket over Jessica. He didn’t remain to see if that helped her at all. That he had even made the effort to look after her galled him. No one had ever cared for his comfort; why should he bother troubling himself for anyone else?

Two turns about the camp only succeeded in landing him back where he’d started. He looked down at Jessica and saw again in his mind’s eye the bleak look in her eye he’d seen that afternoon. She had lost something very dear to her, and despite himself, he felt a kinship with her because of it. He’d lost his innocence and any hope of joy. What she’d lost was a mystery, but he had the feeling he would find it to be grave indeed when he learned of it.

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That thought pulled him up short. As if he would trouble himself to question her! Yet he found the thought of it alTost irresistible. After all, he would have the keeping of her for almost a month. There was little sense in not having a bit of diversion after he had labored long and hard during the day.

He lowered himself to sit on the ground next to her. She trembled still. With a sigh, Richard gave her the blanket he’d reserved for himself. He could do without the warmth. He’d slept many a night without a cloak in his youth for reasons he didn’t care to think about overmuch. Just the memory of his father’s pit was enough to make him shiver.

Or at least the memory had been in the past. The pit had been filled and his father’s hall reduced to rubble. Nothing awaited him on the seashore but his own partially completed keep. Whatever memories he would have would be ones he made himself. His father had no more power over him.

He unclenched his fists when he realized his blunt nails were nigh to drawing blood from his palms.

Jessica stared at the broad back of the knight who rode in front of her. She had all the stains on his heavy woolen cloak memorized. Forcing herself to do so was what had kept her from becoming hysterical the day before. Today, life was better. She was only mildly interested in how his coat had become so soiled. She had too many other things to worry about-namely, trying to keep herself from falling headfirst into a black depression. There was a particular reason for her fear of that, one she didn’t have to think about too hard to remember.

It was the fact that despite her high hopes of finding herself back in her comfortable bed at Henry’s estate, she had woken between two people who belonged in those musty books in the medieval history stack at the public library.

Things had not improved from there. There hadn’t been any more pay phones lining the road today than there had been yesterday. She hadn’t seen anything even remotely resembling a town either. A few gatherings of crude huts here and there, but nothing that would boast something as ordinary as a phone. Too bad. She’d had such plans to lay into Henry for having somehow

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thrown her into such an amazing reenactment of medieval times.

Crying had seemed such an inadequate way to express her distress that she’d settled on shivering violently. ‘Mat had only earned her a lecture from Richard de Galtres on the frailties of women in general. He’d also thrown another blanket around her. She wasn’t sure which she preferred less: when he was ignoring her or when he was treating her like a recalcitrant child. What she really wished was that he’d treat her to a one-way ticket back home.

To the twentieth century, that is, because as much as she wanted to hope differently, she knew she couldn’t deny the truth much longer. The facts were all around her.

She was stuck. In medieval England. With a man who wasn’t exactly what she’d always wished for in a Prince Charming.

Her mother would be frantic. Jessica could just see the scene at home when she was supposed to have been back in New York, calling for her weekly check-in. Her grandmother would be in the kitchen, either cooking or stitching. Her mother would be puttering around the house, periodically dropping in to look at the phone, as if by her very will alone she could make it ring.

But it never would. Unless Henry had already called and broken the news of Jessica’s disappearance.

Jessica closed her eyes and said a small prayer that somehow time worked differently in different centuries and she would be home before her mother had to get that phone call. “Merciful saints above!”

Jessica opened her eyes in time to find that the company had halted. She reined her horse reflexively and looked at Warren, who rode to her left. “What is it?”

Warren looked faintly puzzled. “Home. I think. I don’t remember the outer wall being this far from the keep,

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though. And ’tis far taller than I remember it.” “Maybe you’ve just forgotten how it looked the last time you saw it.”

He flashed her an embarrassed grin. “Perhaps.” He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “Can you smell the sea? By the saints, I’ve missed it!”

Jessica couldn’t smell much beyond sweat, leather, and horses, but she didn’t bother to say as much. If Warren thought he was smelling something other than those things, he was more than welcome to the fantasy. Jessica pulled both Richard’s cloak and his blanket more closely around her and wondered if she’d ever warm up. Part of her chill might have come from her suppressed panic, but most of it came from just the air around her. Oh, and the fact that she’d just spent the last two nights camping out without the necessary gear, like a suite at the nearest Hilton.

She had the feeling she was going to hate medieval England much more than she’d hated girls’ camp.

She had to get back to her time. Maybe if she wished hard enough for a swine like Archie, she would be hurtled back to 1999. Unfortunately she couldn’t seem to muster up as much enthusiasm for him as she had managed to for that unknown man who would value her as he valued himself. Not that that wish had come true. As Richard de Galtres continued to remind her, she was nothing but a trouble he would be glad to get rid of as soon as he could.

And that presented her with an entirely new set of problems.

Her very mention of Henry’s name had somehow convinced Richard and Warren that she was the king’s cousin and any denials were met with skeptical looks and Warren’s fingers creeping up to his temple, where he would tap meaningfully. It was really starting to get annoying. But that wasn’t the worst of it. What was worse was the thought of being presented to the king of England and trying to explain to him why he didn’t know her. If he didn’t bum her as a witch, he would probably toss her in his dungeon and then she’d never get home.

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No, keeping herself out of the royal sights was definitely high on her list. But even higher was figuring out how to get home. She suspected that the best thing to do was try to head back to Hugh’s castle, but she remembered vividly her last encounter with him and she wasn’t looking forward to having another. She wasn’t sure how she was going to work it, but she would have to get back to his garden without being noticed. That would take planning and it would probably take a disguise.

And that was why she was still traveling with Richard’s company. She would spend a few days at his house, gather her thoughts, and work out her plan. At least she kept telling herself that was the reason she was still there. That she was simply too overcome to do anything but be carted across England was something she didn’t want to think about too much.

The company began to move again and she moved right along with them, even though her first instinct was to bolt the other way. The closer they drew to the wall, the harder she found it to breathe.

It was no wonder Hugh didn’t like Richard. The outer wall of this place alone made Hugh’s castle look like a cheap imitation. Whoever had built this wall had intended that it keep all enemies at bay by its sheer size alone. It had to have been at least thirty feet tall. Jessica looked up and didn’t bother to keep her mouth from hanging open. She continued to stare up as they rode beneath a heavy metal portcullis. The spiked edges at the bottom of the gate made her nudge her horse ahead quickly. She had no desire to be impaled by one of those.

The tunnel was long, maybe fifteen or twenty feet. Which meant … she caught her breath. The walls were that thick? She looked behind her as they exited the tunnel. What army could ever hope to topple that protection? She turned her face forward and stared over the dirt field that greeted her. She saw men jousting, others honing their skill with the bow. To her left were several crude huts. Bodies hovered near the doorways, dogs came

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close and barked at the horsemen who kicked at them with curses. Jessica could only stare in amazement. The poverty and the living conditions she saw were appalling. How could Richard allow his people to live like this?

The inner wall wasn’t quite as tall as the outer, but who was measuring? It was still impossibly high and, she noted as she rode through the gate, impossibly thick. Obviously Richard had no intention of being murdered in his bed by marauding neighbors.

The inner bailey wasn’t exactly what she’d expected. Though medieval English history hadn’t exactly been her thing, she had seen artists’ renderings of medieval courtyards and remembered them to be full of all sorts of interesting buildings.

Richard’s inner bailey looked more like a quarry. There was a crude wooden building to her left that obviously served as the stables, for men were leading their mounts to it. Other than that, the only things of interest were the enormous piles of rocks, and the huts and tents hugging the walls. A small patch of ground looked to be trying to sprout something edible but Jessica had her doubts it would succeed.

Then she lifted her eyes to the comer of the bailey and found that something-probably horror-was squeezing her chest so tightly she couldn’t breathe.

It was a round tower. It wasn’t that the castle didn’t have three others in its comers. It was just that this one was so much bigger than the others. It should have looked out of place, but it didn’t. The frightening thing about it was that she knew what it looked like from the seaward side.

That view was courtesy of that Victorian painting she’d seen in Henry’s gallery.

If she’d entertained in the back of her mind some lingering doubt that she hadn’t actually traveled back in time, she entertained it no longer.

Richard’s guardsmen had departed, leaving her sitting atop her horse in the midst of the bailey. She knew she should have dismounted, but she wasn’t sure she could.

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She thought about asking Richard for help, then she saw the look on his face and decided that silence was definitely the better part of valor at the moment. He was advancing on a young man who held a mallet in his hands. She couldn’t help a little sigh of relief. She wasn’t the one going to be getting yelled at. “What in the hell are you doing?” Richard bellowed.

The other man flinched. “Starting the hall, my I– “I can see that, you fool!” Richard thrust out his hand and pointed at what looked to be framing for something very large. “That looks remarkably like wood.”

Well, his powers of perception were right on, Jessica noted. “Of course, my lord. The hall will be fashioned– “Of stone,” Richard finished, jabbing his finger in the man’s chest. “I told you no wood! What must I do to make my wishes clear? No wood!” “But I cannot see the harm in it,” the man said hastily. “That is how ’tis done, my lord.” “Aye, a century ago!” “But, my lord de Galtres-” “The hall will be made of stone. Saints, boy, haven’t you seen the abbey at Seakirk? ‘Tis made of rock, not twigs! Now, either you build my hall thusly, or you pack your gear and hasten through my gates before you sour my humor further!”

The architect made Richard a hasty bow and scuttled off without further comment. Jessica dismounted slowly, then found herself almost knocked over from, behind. She regained her balance in time to see Warren come to a skidding halt in front of his eldest brother. “Where is everything?” he exclaimed. “What have you done with the hall? What have you done with every_ thing it took Father so long to build?”

The look in Richard’s eye made Jessica back up a pace. She wondered why it didn’t have the same effect on his younger brother. Richard looked at Warren coldly. “I tore it all down.”

The way he said those five simple words left Jessica

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with no doubt that he took a vicious satisfaction in just being able to utter them. The why behind them was something she didn’t want to discover. “How could you?” Warren cried out. “How could you ruin my home?” “It’s my home now,” Richard said, lifting his shoulder in a casual shrug. “If you don’t care for it, leave. It matters not to me what you do.”

Warren staggered back as if Richard had slapped him. Then he turned tail and ran. “Warren, he didn’t mean that,” Jessica said, appalled at what she’d just witnessed. She’d watched Warren watch Richard for two days. It was obvious he worshiped his brother. “How do you know what I meant?”

The freezing blast from that voice made Jessica feel as if she didn’t have a stitch of clothing on. She shivered as she turned to face Richard. “You hurt his feelings.” “As if I care,” he said flatly. “He’s a child!” “So was I and no one-” He shut his mouth with a snap and glared at her. “Come inside. Just looking at you makes me cold.”

He spun on his heel and walked away. Jessica gathered up her skirts and hurried after him. “What did you mean, ‘so was I-‘

He turned so fast, she plowed into him. He jerked back as if he’d been bitten. 3essica looked up into his stem face and winced at the fury she saw there. His scar was white along his cheek. ” ‘Tis none of your affair,” he said through gritted teeth. “Your place is to obey me and remain silent. If I want speech from you, I’ll demand it.” “I’m not your slave!” “You’re a woman.”

With that, he turned and walked off. Jessica watched him go, torn between the desire to walk off the other way or follow Richard to give him a piece of her mind. Rich-

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ard stopped, then looked back over his shoulder. He made a curt motion for her to follow him. Jessica chose to do so. Finding her way out of medieval England would certainly be much easier after she’d had a warm bath, a hot meal, and had toasted herself in. front of a fire for a few hours.

She followed Richard up a set of winding stairs. A room opened up off the first flight. “Gathering hall,” he said, gesturing without looking back at her.

Jessica didn’t have time to stop and look. She was too busy running up the stairs after Richard with his longlegged stride. They came to a landing with a doorway on

the left, another doorway on the right, and more stairs leading up. “To the battlements, such as they are,” he said, waving his hand at the stairs. “Garderobe, on the left.” He flung open the door on the right and walked inside, leaving her to follow.

Jessica did, hoping she was up to what she was going to see. She was very surprised. The rest of the place might have been in a shambles, but this room had been seen to.

A large bed was shoved up against one circular wall and it came complete with canopy and bed curtains. A fireplace was set into the opposite wall. But it was the alcove that drew her immediate attention. Medieval builders had certainly known how to do up window seats right. She walked over to where the wall had been cut away to provide such a cozy retreat.

It was perhaps five or six feet across, with stone benches set against each wall. It was twice as deep as it was wide, which had to mean the outer walls were at least twelve feet thick. That didn’t say much for twentiethcentury plywood housing.

Heavy wooden planks covered what she assumed was a window. Richard pushed past her, pushed up the bar across the shutters, and flung them open. A blast of .*-‘, ocean air hit Jessica square in the face and made her shiver. It didn’t seem to faze Richard. He stood with his

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hands against the sides of the unpaned window and breathed deeply. She tried to look around him. He didn’t help her by moving. “Might I look?” she asked.

He stepped aside without comment. Jessica looked out the window and caught her breath. She hadn’t realized how much of a cliff the castle sat on, or how violently the water churned against the shores here. “It’s beautiful,” she breathed. “The savagery pleases you?”

She looked up and felt as if she were seeing her unwilling host for the first time. Gone was the arrogant lord who seemed to think of no one but himself. In his place was a man whose mask had slipped. Whatever bitterness drove Richard de Galtres had been brushed away by the tangy sea winds. If possible, he seemed almost at peace. The lines of his face were softened somewhat, increasing his dark handsomeness a hundred times. Not even the scar detracted from his good looks.

Maybe the historians hadn’t been so far off, claiming that he’d built his keep this way so nothing got in the way of him watching the sea.

She looked up into his eyes and noticed for the first time their strange colors-more green than blue, or maybe they were more gray than green. They were the colors of the sea and for a moment she half wondered if she’d stepped into some kind of fairy tale and landed herself in an elven king’s hall. It would have been very easy to fall under his spell when he looked as he did at present. She wondered in the back of her mind if he was as passionate about everything else as he apparently was about the ocean. Maybe her star had been a better guide than she’d suspected. There was something in Richard de Galtres’s eyes, something powerful and steady.

She had the feeling that he didn’t lose very many battles.

What would it be like to be the prize he fought for? He suddenly reached past her and slammed the shutters home. He threw the bar over them for good measure.

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When he turned toward her, the harshness was back in his face. “The sight was too much for you,” he said curtly. “I’ll build a fire, then you can pass your time doing something Jess frightening, such as my mending.”

So much for fairy tales. Maybe she needed to eat something. She was obviously starting to hallucinate.

She hugged herself for warmth as she followed Richard across the room. “I can’t sew.”

He looked up from where he knelt, placing logs in the hearth. “I beg your pardon?” “I can’t sew. Not very well, at any rate. Maybe I could help your architect with the hall. My father was an architect.” “Architect?” he echoed. “Carpenter,” she clarified. “The mason needs no wench to fetch him water when he thirsts. He can fetch it himself.” “No, I mean help him plan the building,” she said patiently. During her father’s lifetime, she had spent hours watching him design buildings. She had worked for him summers and holidays for years. She’d even planned a thing or two by herself. She could help Richard with his hall.

Richard fed the small blaze he had started, then pushed it under the logs. Then he stood and looked down at her, a mirthless smile on his face. “Stay and ply your needle. I need no hall that stands crooked.” “I wasn’t going to build it, I was going to help plan it.” “Impossible.”

Jessica looked up at him with narrowed eyes. “Why?” “You’re a woman.” “And what’s that supposed to mean?” “It means,” he said, a dark frown settling on his brow, “that women are capable of sewing, bearing children, and

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making a man’s life hell. And you aren’t even capable o sewing. “

Richard left before she had a chance to do anythinj besides gape at him. So she was only good for making; man’s life helf) Well, she wouldn’t stay long enough t( do that for him. He and his clothes could rot together. Sh( was getting out of there at the first opportunity. There wa,, nothing redeeming about her host. He might have beer handsome in a rough, uncompromising kind of way, bui his personality more than made up for that. Besides, shc had no intention of making Burwyck-on-the-Sea hei home, despite the view.

She brushed the dirt away from the hearth with her foot then sat down and held her hands to the blaze. She woulc get warm, then make other plans.

She had just begun to relax when the door opem again. Richard came in and held out a bundle. She toot the cloth and looked up at him. “Food,” he clarified. “Eat. You’ll– “Be a bother to me if you don’t,” she finished for him She took a deep breath. Just because he was rude didn’l mean she had to be. “Thank you. This was very kind,”

He looked suddenly uncomfortable, as if he hadn’t expected gratitude and didn’t know what to do with it noA that he had it. Then his expression darkened and he glar& at her. “Thank me by eating. I’ve enough problems withoul adding to them the worry of a starving woman.”

And with that, he banged out of the room. Jessica sighed deeply. It was going to be a long couple of days. She looked around her, wondering just where il was she was going to sleep. She seriously doubted Richard would give her his bed and she was even more certair she wouldn’t be sleeping in it with him. She looked dowri at the floor. It was immeasurably cleaner than Hugh’.q floor, so she might manage to sleep on it a night or two, It couldn’t be any harder than the ground had been and she’d survived that.

Besides, it wasn’t going to be for long. She’d give her-

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self a chance to rest up, then she’d make her move. Richard wouldn’t mind getting rid of her and she sincerely hoped he wouldn’t mind the loan of a horse. She’d leave him a note and tell him where she thought she was going, and he could pick up his horse later.

But for now, Richard had a point about eating and she would take that small order and run with it. She didn’t want to be faint when the moment of truth arrived.

Richard woke, chilled. The fire had burned to nothing but ashes and the coolness of the wood floor beneath him had seeped into his bones. Then he heard the noise and knew it had been more than cold to disturb him. “Damn.”

The curse was uttered in a whisper and accompanied by the sound of an appendage making contact with something unyielding. Probably a toe against a trunk. Richard listened to Jessica stumble around his chamber and thought about rising and chastising her before putting her back to bed. Then he heard her rummaging about for clothes and his curiosity was aroused-as well as his ire. Where was she sneaking off to in the dead of night, especially after all he’d done for her?

As if it weren’t enough to have fed her and given her shelter, he’d even gone so far as to give her his bed! He wouldn’t have if she hadn’t looked so bloody tired and he hadn’t been overcome by another nauseating wave of chivalry. Her look of gratitude might have been reward enough for any other man. Indeed, Richard had to admit that it had made the floor seem comfortable enough.

Until sometime during the second watch, when his

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shoulder had begun to ache from an old injury and the poorly healed axe wound in his thigh had set up a throbbing that had fair lifted him from the floor.

Chivalry. Ha. What a useless virtue. He should have spent yesterday ignoring Jessica, but instead he’d found himself run fair ragged seeing to her comfort and his hall both. As if he’d had time to do aught besides see to his affairs! As new squire, Gilbert de Claire, had arrived and demonstrated a sullenness that even Hugh would have had to admire. Richard knew he should have sent the boy home the moment he’d clapped eyes on him, but his sire had done Richard a good turn or two and Richard had felt the obligation weigh heavily enough upon him that he’d bitten back his censure and vowed to give the boy time.

Of course he’d had less time than he would have liked, thanks to the moments he’d spent during the day fretting over his guest. ‘Twas certain that he couldn’t have cared less what she thought of him. But if he treated her poorly, she would give the king a poor report of his actions and then where would he be?

Likely in his comfortable bed, snoring contentedly. The moment the door clicked shut he rose. She might only have been crossing to the garderobe, then again, she might have been leaving. He would no doubt be well rid of her.

Then he was suddenly assaulted by very vivid memo-

ries of pulling Hugh off her. Jessica was far too beautiful to be wandering about without someone to look after her. He still hadn’t had the chance to learn why she found herself roaming about by herself Her shrewish tongue was enough to frighten away any sensible man, but surely she had value at least to her sire. Her beauty alone would have been enough for a profitable match. Shrewishness could be beaten out of her.

Though the thought of any man touching her thusly somehow didn’t sit well with him. He suspected Jessica would be slow in forgiving anyone who laid a hand on her. Richard suspected he would be quick in slaying any-

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one who did the like. He was hardly pleased with the irritating flare of protectiveness that surged through him when he thought of her, but he was hard-pressed to ignore it. Damned annoying impulse.

He crept down his stairs and followed her across the moonlit bailey. She was heading toward the stables and, somehow, that didn’t surprise him. The woman had a penchant for horse thievery. Richard stopped at the edge of the building and leaned against the rickety wall, watching Jessica as she continued down the row of stalls. She stopped and looked at Horse. Richard shook his head in wonder. The wench had a good eye for horseflesh at least.

Jessica looped a rope around Horse’s neck and led him out. Richard pulled back into the shadows and continued to watch. It wasn’t as if she’d make it out the gates with the beast. The portcullises were both down. But there was no sense in pointing that out to Jessica at present. He might have been tempted to do so, but he found himself tempted far more by the sight of her standing in the moonlight, trying to woo his gelding.

The full moon cast its silvery glow over her like a cloak, darkening her hair and caressing the fair skin of her visage. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen hair like hers before. Those riotous curls tumbled down over her shoulders with a complete disregard for symmetry. He watched as she blew a curl off her forehead in exasperation, then reached up and put her hands on Horse’s face, holding it so she could look at him. Horse reached out and began to nibble on her hair. Jessica laughed softly. The sound so took Richard by surprise that he could only wince as the simple joy of it pierced him in the heart. He’d seen the bleakness in her eyes, yet still she could laugh? Oh, how he envied her! “Come on, baby,” Jessica crooned. “Be a good horse and let me ride you. You can find your way back, can’t you?”

Her speech was yet another thing Richard couldn’t quite puzzle out to his satisfaction. She claimed to be from France but he’d never heard French such as hers spoken

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there and he’d traveled the length and breadth of the country. He understood her well enough, but she sounded like a foreigner who hadn’t quite mastered the tongue. Where was she from, if not from France? Who was her sire, to let her roam as she wished? How had she come to be on Hugh’s land without a mount? Why had she looked on the verge of tears for two days as they traveled home?

And, more to the point, why was she trying to steal his horse in the middle of the night?

A crunching sound made his head snap up of its own accord. Horse was chewing contentedly as he followed Jessica across the courtyard. Stupid beast, Richard thought to himself Led about by an elfin creature who offered him food. Richard was tempted to let her take him. It was more than obvious that she’d ruined him for anything useful anyway. Horse should have been digging in his hooves and remaining firm. Instead, he trailed after her like a bleating lamb wanting suck. Jessica gave him another bite of apple and praised him for his obedience. Richard followed, torn between grudging amusement and exasperation. He’d known it the moment he clapped eyes on her. The woman was going to be nothing but trouble.

And that was precisely just the kind of woman he wanted to avoid.

Jessica pulled up short at the portcullis. Richard leaned against the wall and watched the expressions cross her face. First there was surprise. Then she frowned. She reached out and tried to push the gate up. Richard shook his head. He caught the eye of a guardsman leaning over the wall and waved him away. Jessica dropped Horse’s lead rope and used both hands to try to lift the gate. Richard wanted to smile, but the habit of frowning was too firmly ingrained in him. He settled for a silent snort of rusty humor. The wench was daft. Didn’t she realize that two dozen men couldn’t lift that gate but a few inches?

Obviously not. That, more than anything else, made him realize that Jessica Blakely was not at all what she claimed to be.

By the same token, he quickly eliminated the things

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she could be. Not a servant. No serf would have cheek such as hers. Someone’s mistress? Possibly, but he had his doubts about that, too. The look of relief on her face when he’d said she could have the bed to herself had been too spontaneous for a practiced courtesan. And the fact that she was stealing his horse to get away from him led him to believe she had no desire to stay and become his lover. It would have been a simple thing to warm his bed in return for food and a roof over her head.

An outlaw? Now, that was something he could readily believe. He could see Jessica ensconced in the deepest reaches of the forest, leading a band of ragtag peasants to freedom and glory, poaching their lord’s finest without any concession to the law. Aye, an outlaw wasn’t too farfetched. The thought was almost outrageous enough to make him want to laugh, something he was certain he hadn’t done in years.

He folded his arms over his chest and watched as Jessica gave up and rested her forehead against the wooden gate. “Horse thieves are hanged, you know,” he remarked.

She jumped at least half a foot, whirled around, and looked at him, her hand over her heart. “I didn’t see YOU.” “Obviously.” “I wasn’t stealing,” she said quickly. “I was borrowing. “

Richard pushed off from the wall and walked over to her, stopping but a hand’s breadth from her. He looked down at her and had the sudden urge to gather her into his arms and kiss that look of astonishment off her face.

By the saints, he was going daft. “Come back inside,” he said, picking up Horse’s rope. ‘Tis too cold out for you.” “You know, I’m getting really tired of you telling me what to do.” “You don’t seem capable of thinking for yourself,” he pointed out. “Didn’t you realize the gates would be closed?”

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She hadn’t, if the look on her face told the tale true. She looked almost sheepish. “I didn’t realize, no.” “Surely your father’s hall was secured at night,” he said, watching her closely to see what her reaction would be.

She shook her head. “Things are different where I come from.”

Perhaps her sire was an outlaw, too. Richard was beginning to give more credence to the thought by the moment. Well, that could be sorted out later. For now all he wanted was to return to what precious bit of sleep re-

mained him before dawn. “Come,” he said, holding out his hand for her.

She shook her head. Richard paused, then frowned. “I said, come.” “And I said, no.” He frowned again. “The cold has numbed your thinking, lady. ‘Tis your duty to obey me.” “I’m not your trained dog to come when you call.” “You forget your place.” “My place, buster, is not at your feet, licking your boots!” “There are many who would beg for the chance to do just that!” he snapped. He doubted it very much, but there was no use in telling her that. The scar on his face kept most of them away; the foulness of his temper took care

of the rest. “Then call one of them to heel,” she saidjolding her arms over her chest and sticking her chin out. “I’ve got better things to do with my time.” “Then do so.” “I would, if you’d open the damned gate.” “Robert,” Richard shouted, “open the bloody gate.” He glared down at Jessica. “Walk to where you’re going, wench. I wouldn’t spare my poorest nag to carry you.” “Somehow, that just doesn’t surprise me,” she said, just as sharply. “Have a nice life, Richard.”

The well-oiled gate slid up with hardly any noise. Jes-

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sica turned to walk away. Richard found himself starting after her-prodded no doubt by that annoying chivalry he couldn’t seem to control. But, by the saints, what else was he to do? He couldn’t let her go in the middle of the night!

His sudden attack of conscience lasted only until she turned and shot him the coolest look he’d ever received. He sincerely doubted he’d ever managed such a cutting glance. Anger flared right along with stung pride and he reached out and jerked the cloak off her shoulders. Jessica carefully unwrapped the blanket she’d worn under his cloak and dropped it in the dust at his feet. Then she turned and walked away, her head held high, her shoulders back. Richard gave the blanket a hearty kick. “The outer gate doesn’t open till dawn,” he shouted after her. “Fine,” came the curt reply. Jessica didn’t stop to deliver her words.

Richard watched until she had reached the outer gate and blended in with the shadows. Let her freeze. It would likely be the only thing that would still her rancid tongue.

He stooped, hauled up his cloak and blanket, and barked for Horse to follow him. He stabled his mount, then retreated to his chamber, intent on finally seeking his comfortable bed.

His pillow carried her scent. He flung it across the chamber with a curse and toyed with the idea of stripping off the rest of his bedding, too.

Nay, that would mean she had won the victory over him and that he couldn’t bear. He was still master of his own life. Jessica had been a mild disturbance but now the disturbance was over. He could resume concentrating on rebuilding his hall. In a year or so he would begin looking for a bride. Perhaps he would seek a convent-trained lass, a child who could be molded into the kind of wife he could tolerate. No cheek, no disrespect, and above all, no unruly curls and flashing eyes.

He had the feeling, as he lay awake till dawn, that those would be the precise things that would haunt him for the rest of his days.

Jessica stood in the middle of the field, wrapped her arms around herself, and examined the hopelessness of her situation. She was in medieval England with no transportation, no food, and absolutely no idea where she was or how to get to Henry’s land so she could get back home.

That was the good news. The bad news was that the only place she had to turn to for help was the castle an hour’s walk behind her. Given Richard’s fond adieu, she had the feeling he wouldn’t exactly be overjoyed to see her again if she re-

turned and knocked on his gates.

Not that she had any intention of doing that. She would manage just fine on her own. All she had to do was ask for some directions, keep herself alive for a couple of days until she got back to Henry’s, then hope like hell that she could transport herself forward to the twentieth century.

She didn’t allow herself to think about the alternative, but she had the feeling it would contain a lot of starvation, some rapine, and likely a very cold, lonely, uncomfortable death.

Then again, maybe she didn’t need to be on Henry’s land. Maybe she could just stay where she was, wish very

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hard, and pop herself forward in time anyway. Even though she hadn’t quite made it out of eyesight of the castle, maybe it was far enough.

She closed her eyes and focused all her thoughts on a single desire: I want to go home. I want to go home to Archie.

She frowned. Somehow, the last just didn’t ring quite true. Richard de Galtres might have been one of the biggest jerks in the thirteenth century, but she suspected Archie was well in the running for the twentieth. Perhaps she needed to take another tack.

I want to go home to my nice warm bed, good food, and a hot bath.

She imagined the warmth licking at her toes, her favorite heavy cotton robe around her, a pair of warm long johns insulating her against whatever the robe and the fire didn’t take care of. And best of all, she had no trouble conjuring up an image of a Mini Mart, because she was having a craving for peanut-butter cups that would have gnawed a hole through Richard’s thickest wall in no time at all.

A twig snapped behind her. Jessica heaved a huge sigh of relief. That was definitely the sound of a modem twig cracking. It was probably some do-gooder in a pair of Doc Martens, just ready to drive her back to Lord Henry’s in his toasty-warm Range Rover. Jessica smiled, turned, and paused for a heartbeat to savor her return to modem life, then opened her eyes expectantly.

And she shrieked. The man facing her was possibly the filthiest person she’d ever seen. He was holding a sickle in both hands as if he expected her to jump him at any moment. A woman and several children huddled behind him, stealing looks at her from around his body. Jessica immediately held up her hands in surrender.

The man lowered his weapon and looked at her closely. He pointed at her, then back up at the castle. Then he made motions for her to go. She shook her head. “I can’t.”

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The man pointed up at the castle, then at her, making motions as if to indicate that someone would be coming for her. Jessica shook her head again. “I don’t think so.” “Ah.” Then he was off and babbling in something Jessica could only assume was either Old English or AngloSaxon. Either way, he was speaking so quickly, she couldn’t make heads or tails of it. “Slower,” she said, hoping that would help.

The man spoke more slowly but she only caught a few words like wife and house, or words approximating those terms. The woman said something to the man and he snapped back at her angrily. Jessica didn’t want to be the cause of a marital dispute and started to walk away. The man protested and gestured back across the fields, then at his wife.

And at that moment it started to rain. Now, had it been a dry kind of rain, Jessica would have continued to firmly but politely decline the offer of shelter, but as it was, she thought she might be better off not attempting her return trip to the future with pneumonia. Besides, it wasn’t quite midmorning and she could always leave once the inclement weather had abated.

She followed the woman and the younger children. The older ones remained with their father. Jessica wondered what they would possibly find to do in the fields. She looked back over her shoulder only to find them trying to clear the ground of rocks by hand. Judging by the condition of the field, that would take them all winter. The ground was already hard and hands were certainly no substitute for tools.

She was stunned. How could Richard let this go on? Home for them was a dismal place indeed. It was nothing more than four walls of dried grasses and a thatched roof. Jessica’s eyes burned the moment she walked in. A cooking fire had been built in the middle of the dirt floor and there was no place for the smoke to exit. She might have agreed with the lack of chimney had the house possessed any warmth. It didn’t. She sat down next to the

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fire and tried to get warm by its pitiful blaze.

It was the most eye-opening day of her life. She tried to leave several times,”but each time the wife begged her to stay. Jessica feared spousal abuse, so she stayed to keep peace in the family. She watched the woman make onion soup out of a gallon of muddy water and a piece of onion. The bread was black and full of sand. No one snacked during the day. Children played quietly with rocks in the comer of the hut. Their mother hung wash from twigs in the walls to dry.

A grandmother and grandfather lay on the only mattress in the room, an inadequate thing made of rotting hay. Jessica spent a good deal of her time sneezing and wanting to cry. Abject poverty took on a whole new meaning for her.

She forced herself to concentrate on the language, finding that the mother was willing to talk once she got started. Jessica sat across the fire from the woman and watched her mend a ratty shirt with a wooden needle. “Lord Richard is fair,” she said, plying her needle with calloused fingers. “Hard but fair.” “But you could have so much more,” Jessica protested.

The woman looked at her blankly. “Nay, we could not. ” “Why don’t you leave this place? Find a new place to live?” “We belong here, to Lord Richard. Why would we leave?”

And that seemed to be the extent of the woman’s vision. Jessica realized quickly enough that the family’s entire world was only as large as the land they tilled. Even going to the forest wasn’t something they had the courage to do. The forest was full of beasties and ghosties that would sooner eat a man alive than look at him. As for trying to make a better life somewhere else, well, apparently that thought was so far out of their scope of experience that they couldn’t grasp it.

Jessica had never been so grateful for her century and her country in her life. And she thought she had problems

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with just finding a nice nine-to-fiver to marry or wondering about the fat in her diet or finding socks that matched. This family didn’t own socks!

Dinner was consumed carefully, as if actually saving onion-flavored water could be a guarantee against starvation. For all Jessica knew, it was. She ate a few spoonfuls then gave back her bowl, pretending to be full. It wasn’t so much that it tasted awful, which it did; it was that she couldn’t take food from starving souls that stole her appetite.

The family bedded down for the night shortly after the sun went down. Jessica found herself sleeping on the straw pallet with children curled up next to her like puppies. She sincerely hoped that the pitiful excuse for an ox that had been brought inside for the night wouldn’t step on her. The smell inside the hut was blinding.

It had all the earmarks of a doozy of a miserable night. Fleas bit her from head to toe, an animal defecated not five feet from her, and the children kicked her in their sleep. Somehow, those things just weren’t the worst of it. The worst was wondering if she’d spend the rest of her life like this, taken in by farmers and sleeping in a place where birth, death, and bedding were entertainment for the rest of the group.

Just when she thought she might really lose it, the door to the hut flew open and a torch was thrust inside.

Everyone inside the hut hollered in terror. Jessica hollered just as loudly. “Enough!” a voice bellowed.

The voice cut through the shrieks. Jessica saw Richard’s face appear in the torchlight. He didn’t look any happier than he normally did and she wondered absently if he ever loosened up enough to smile.

Without further ado, he stooped inside, reached out, and hauled her up by the hand she’d flung up to shield her eyes from the torchlight. He pulled her outside, bid the family a curt good night, and closed the little flap that served for a door.

He stared down at her, his face cast in harsh shadows

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from the torchlight. He looked as if he was trying to come up with something to say, but apparently his efforts weren’t bearing any fruit.

Jessica had never been so glad to see anyone in her entire life-even if he looked like he’d gone and stepped again in something he’d just recently managed to scrape off his shoe. It wasn’t exactly a welcoming expression he was wearing, but it was somehow one she’d become accustomed to, and that was good enough for her. He started to scowl and even that seemed rather endearing, especially when she found herself standing outside a medieval hovel and not in it. “I’ve been remiss in my duty to you,” Richard announced suddenly, sounding as if the words bad been dragged from his mouth by some kind of hospitality drug. “Though perhaps I can be forgiven, as you were trying to steal my horse.” “Borrow,” she corrected. “I was borrowing.” “And for the second time, no less,” he went on, as if he hadn’t heard her. “Another man would surely have been just as suspicious of your motives.” “I meant to leave you a letter and tell you where I was going,” she said, “but I couldn’t find anything to write with.” “Therefore,” he continued, as if he hadn’t heard her, “I extend again the comfort of my hall and pray you will return with me and take your ease. I wouldn’t wish for my liege Henry to think I had offered you any less.”

He wasn’t sincere, but she wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. She also decided that perhaps the present moment was not the proper one in which to inform Richard that she didn’t know his king from Adam. She nodded as regally as if she really had been related to the king, then accepted his help up onto a horse and didn’t argue when he turned his little group back toward the castle. He didn’t say any more and she didn’t fight it. She had just been through one of the worst days of her life and she had too much to think about for small talk.

It was dawn when she walked back into Richard’s

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tower bedroom. He invited her to make use of the tub of water by the fire. “I hope you’ll be comfortable,” he said through gritted teeth. “The king will no doubt be concerned that you were treated well.”

Two things Jessica realized immediately: Richard didn’t really care what the king thought; and, two, she had to get the heck out of Dodge before Henry breezed through. She watched Richard leave, realizing that she was going to have to be much more diligent about her horse borrowing if she were going to make it back home. She was going to have to get to Merceham and it was a sure thing she wouldn’t make it there on foot.

Fortunately she knew just where to get a horse. This time, though, she wasn’t about to get tripped up by a little thing like a locked gate. Unfortunately the only time the gate seemed to be unlocked was during the day.

She put her shoulders back and looked around for an appropriate disguise. Probably the sooner she left, the better. Richard wouldn’t be looking for someone dressed up like a boy, would he?

There was only one way to find out.

Richard suppressed the urge to walk away from the training field and go back to bed. Jessica was to blame for that. He hadn’t had any sleep the first night she was gone, nor had he had any the night before courtesy of his search for her whereabouts. And if that wasn’t enough to truly sour him for good, what he faced now certainly was. He looked at Gilbert de Claire and wondered how by all the blessed saints the boy’s father expected him to make a man out of this sniveling babe.

Gilbert’s tasks for the mom had included nothing more strenuous than a small bit of swordplay and saddling Richard’s mount, yet already the boy looked as irritated as if he’d worked a fortnight without pause while the rest of the keep looked on from their positions upon their backsides, wine and sweet figs at their elbows.

And if Gilbert’s sullenness wasn’t trial enough, there was the immediate and intense dislike that had sprung up between Gilbert and Warren. Richard had thought it might work in his favor for the two to be in competition, but apparently such a thing was not having the desired effect. Warren fumbled under the scrutiny and Gilbert, unsurprisingly, had merely looked about sullenly.

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Richard wished heartily he had never left Italy. He looked around for someone upon whom he might vent his displeasure. John stood nearby with his arms folded over his chest and a small smile on his face. Richard glared at him. “What are you smirking about?”

John’s smile deepened. “I was just watching the events of the day unfold, my lord, Nothing more.”

Richard growled. It seemed the most appropriate noise to express his complete disgust with his life and the goings-on in it. “I’m surprised you didn’t notice the lad walking toward the gate, hitching up his hose every other step,” John said conversationally. “Some fool mason, no doubt,” Richard said “Actually, I believe ’twas your hose the lad was hitching up.” “What?” Richard whirled around and looked at the outer bailey gate. “And I believe,” John continued, in much the same amused tone, “that ’tis your horse the lad is now taking out for a bit of exercise. “

Richard gritted his teeth so hard, he came close to cracking a handful of them. “Damn that woman!” “Clever disguise,” John offered.

Richard threw his captain a glare and stalked off toward the gate. The only thing he could find to be grateful for was that he hadn’t yet donned any mail. His leather jerkin did not hamper him in the least as he began to run. He snagged the first horse he came to and swung up onto it without bothering to find out whose mount it was.

As he thundered along the way after the lone horseman, he came to a conclusion: Jessica Blakely had passing fair skill with the beast. Either that or he’d just managed to choose the slowest horse in the garrison.

But he had ridden his share of horses as well and was determined Jessica should not escape him. By the time he drew alongside her, he and his mount both were frothing at the mouth. He could have stopped Horse with a whistle,

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of course, but he wanted Jessica in full possession of her senses when he shouted her deaf. He grabbed Horse’s reins and brought both animals to an abrupt halt. Jessica dismounted with him and that certainly wasn’t by her choice.

He took her by the arms and bared his teeth at her until he I = d muster up something foul enough to express his inte displeasure.

And damn the wench if she didn’t look as displeased to see him as he was her. “Cease with that expression!” he shouted. “You’ve no cause to do aught but drop to your knees and apologize for stealing my horse yet again!” “I wasn’t stealing,” she returned hotly as she jerked away from him. “I was borrowing.” “I should have you hanged all the same,” he snarled. “This is thrice I have been forced to retrieve my horse from your vile clutches. And why is it, mistress, you feel the need to snatch my poor beast each time?”

Damn the woman if she didn’t pat Horse in a most proprietary manner and look at the beast with a great amount of unwarranted affection. “Because he likes me,” she said, looking back at Richard coolly.

Bloody useless beast with no sense, Richard thought immediately, but he didn’t say as much. He found, quite suddenly, that his powers of speech had deserted him. And as quickly as he’d become mute, he’d also become feebleminded, for ’twas all he could do to stand there with his hands limp b@ his sides and stme at the woman betom him.

She was blowing her hair out of her face in the same way she had been the night before. It was possibly the single most fascinating thing Richard had ever seen a woman do, and to be sure he had seen them do a great many things. Why this moved him, he couldn’t have said, but it did.

The other thing that was even more distracting was Jessica’s stroking of his mount’s neck. It was a gesture of

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genuine affection and it stirred in him some long-disused portion of his black heart and left him wishing she might put her hand on his head and comfort him in like manner.

The realization of what he was torn between-lust and apparently the desire to crawl back as near to the womb as he could and be mothered until he smothered-was almost enough to send him fleeing the other way.

He cast a baleful eye heavenward and wondered what saint was toying with him in such a manner. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be on my way,” Jessica said, removing the reins from his unresisting fingers. “I’m off to your brother’s castle. Will your horse find his way home, or will you need to send someone after him?” “Wait,” Richard said, snagging his reins before Jessica absconded with not only his horse, but his wits as well, “you are not going to Hugh’s.” “Yes, I am.” “Nay, lady, I will not permit it.” He took a firm grip on himself and mustered up what he hoped was a stem frown. “You’ll return back to the keep with me and await King Henry’s arrival.”

She shook her head. “Haven’t got the time.” “I daresay you’ve all the time you need,” he said, “and I am certain the king will be interested in seeing you. Unless,” he said, remembering his deliberations with himself as to just who Jessica might truly be, “unless you are not overanxious to see him for some reason.”

She remained silent but her eyes gave everything away. He decided at that moment that whatever else she was, Jessica Blakely was not a good liar. He had no trouble now looking at her sternly. “If you have triisled me about your kinship to him. . .

She stuck out her chin. “I never claimed to be anything to him. Warren assumed it.” “And you allowed him to assume as much,” he said flatly. ” ‘Tis nothing short of lying and for that you should be … well, you should be-” “Drawn and quartered?” she asked tartly.

He could not fathom whence she mustered up her ir-

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ritation. By the saints, she was the one caught in transgression, not he! “The priest should decide your penance,” he said, deciding not to tell her that he had no priest and likely wouldn’t unless one desperate enough to endure his foul moods could be found. He took a firmer grip on both sets of reins and folded his arms over his chest. “If you are not kin of Henry’s, then to whom do you belong? Where is your sire?” “Dead,” she said calmly. “Gone two years now.” “And your dam?”

Jessica swallowed hard and began to blink very rapidly. Richard watched as she folded her arms over her chest. “My mother is so far away, she might as well be dead,” she said quietly.

Richard watched in horror as her eyes began to fill with tears. Ah, not tears! By the saints, how he hated tears!

He suppressed the urge to wring his hands. He watched Jessica weep and felt completely helpless. He shifted his weight uncomfortably from one foot to another, praying for some sort of inspiration.

And then, as if his hand had taken on a life of its own, it reached out and thumped her awkwardly on the shoulder. “There now,” he said, hoping with all his might that she would stiffen her spine before he was called upon to render further aid. “No need to weep.” “You don’t know the half of it,” she said, her eyes beginning to leak even more enthusiastically. “I am beginning to wonder if I’ll ever get home.” “Ah,” Richard said helplessly, “ah, surely there is no need for such lack of hope-” “For all I know, it is hopeless!”

His feet began to twitch. Richard heartily agreed with them and wished he’d never taken any knightly vows, for if he hadn’t, he would have turned and fled, and thought himself well escaped.

But ’twas as if her eyes knew what his feet were about, for they began to pour forth a torrent of tears. Richard

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patted himself frantically but felt no spare cloth there to use to dry her off. He groped about in his head for something to say that would stem the tide. He latched onto the first thing that came to mind. “I’ll see you home myself,” he blurted out.

Oh, by the saints, he was a babbling fool! “No matter the time it would take,” he continued, deepening his own grave. He cursed himself thoroughly, but he’d begun the digging. No sense in not finishing the task. Perhaps his words might have some effect and he would escape more of this feminine, watery scourge. In truth, no journey would be too long if it would mean he

could be free of it.

She began to laugh. “You could,” she said, “take all the time you have during the rest of your life ‘and it still wouldn’t be enough time to get me home.”

Well, that was the most foolish thing he’d ever heard. He’d traveled extensively and knew a great deal about distances and the time required to cross them. “I am not as ignorant as you might think,” he said stiffly.

She shook her head, wiping her eyes. It took several moments, but she seemingly mastered her womanly emo-

tions. She gave him something approximating a smile. “I never said you were.” She looked at him with wet cheeks and very red eyes. “It’s just I don’t think anyone can get me home but me. I’m not even sure I can do it.”

Nothing she was saying made any sense to him. “Why will you not accept aid?” he asked. “I donot offer it lightly.” Nor with my full wits, he added silently. Then again, he hardly should have been surprised. Since the moment he’d clapped eyes on her, he’d found himself doing and saying the most ridiculous things.

Jessica studied him silently for a moment, then she shook her head. “I appreciate the offer. I imagine it really would be a sacrifice for you.”

He frowned. It sounded like a compliment, but some-

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how he suspected there was something less than complimentary about what she’d just said. “But you can’t help,” she finished. “And you cannot return to Merceham by yourself,” he ,said. “Or perhaps you have forgotten your last encounter with my brother?” “I’ll just avoid him.”

Richard shook his head. “Know you nothing of England, lady? Even with scouts as poor as his, he would know within minutes that you had set foot on his land. And I can assure you, his welcome would not be something you would enjoy.” “I have to try,” she said, and to his mind she sounded overly stubborn about something that seemed completely absurd to him. “To return home by frequenting Merceham? I cannot understand what difference that makes.” “It makes a difference. Trust me on it.”

He pursed his lips. “After you have stolen my horse three times now, once from under my very backside? You’ll forgive me if I am less than eager to trust you.”

She sighed deeply. Richard was relieved to see she was seemingly becoming aggravated. That was much easier to tolerate than a trough full of tears. He had the feeling that her tears were an unusual occurrence anyway. He’d seen her under very trying circumstances and not once had she resorted to them, as he’d seen other women do. Perhaps she was more troubled by being away from her home than he’d thought. “Look,” she said, “I’d tell you that I’d just walk, but that wouldn’t be honest because I don’t think I’d make it all the way to Marcham, or Merceham, as you call it, intact. ” “In this much at least, we are in agreement-“

She looked behind him and sighed lightly. “Well, I suppose I won’t be going anywhere now. It looks like your guard has come along.”

Richard cast a look over his shoulder at the guard in

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question. They’d taken their bloody sweet time about reaching him. “I guess you’ll want your horse back now,” Jessica said. “In a moment,” Richard said. There was no time like the present to chastise those who were supposed to be guarding his life. He dropped the reins to the horses and walked toward his men that he might more fully glare them into shame. He reminded himself as he approached that he was indeed grateful enough for their discretion and their protection, though at the moment he was hardpressed to produce any feeling of affection for any of them, especially his captain, who was wearing that smirk again. “What?” Richard demanded.

John merely shook his head and smiled. “She rides very well.” “What?” Richard turned to see his horse’s rump now far in the distance. “Damn that woman!” He glared at his guard. “Go home, the lot of you. You’ve been no help to me thus far. I can’t see how you can help now.”

They didn’t argue. Richard mounted his borrowed horse and turned it toward Merceham. He could hardly believe Jessica had made off with his mount yet again. It would be the last time, if he had to tie her up and haul her back to the keep himself.

And he would have his answers this time. He had no idea why she was so fixed upon returning to Merceham, but ’twas a foolish and shortsighted idea. Wherever her kin were, they could be sent for. His earlier offer aside, he truly did not have time to escort her to Hugh’s, nor did he have time to guard her whilst she went about her business. She would just have to come home with him.

Assuming he didn’t have her drawn and quarteredwhich he wouldn’t, of course, for ’twas a messy business indeed, though it was powerfully tempting-for yet again making off with his mount!

Jessica kicked Richard’s horse into a full-out gallop. Behind her she heard a faint “damn that woman I” and knew her chance to get ahead of him would be short-lived.

The time, though, had come to stop messing around and get down to business. She had to get back to Merceham. and the only way to do it was to get there on a horse. Maybe she could outride Richard all the way there, hop off his horse, and be back in New York before he could strangle her.

She studiously ignored the fact that it had taken three days to get to Burwyck-on-the-Sea. That was different. They’d been riding slowly. She was going to fide very fast.

She kept telling herself that even as she heard Richard’s curses coming increasingly closer, carrying with them, no doubt, a very annoyed medieval lord. At least he wasn’t whistling anymore. She wasn’t sure she wanted another flight over his horse’s head.

She saw him draw alongside her and held tightly to the reins. She wasn’t sure how he intended to stop her this time, but it wouldn’t be because she’d been stupid enough to let go of the wheel, as it were.

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And so it took her by complete surprise when she saw him make a flying leap from his horse to hers. She was

even more surprised to find he hadn’t knocked both of them off. The reins became a moot point, because apparently all it took to communicate his wishes to his horse was a knee or two in the ribs.

She felt him relax and she turned to put her hand in his chest to push him off. “Do not,” he growled. “That will not work with me a second time!”

He jumped down and didn’t give her much choice but to dismount right along with him. “Why do you continue to do this?” he demanded. “Have you no sense at all?” “It’s a long story-” “Hugh won’t leave enough left of you to return home, I can assure you of that,” he continued, as if he hadn’t heard her. “I am past fathoming why I care what happens to you. It must be concern for Horse. Aye, that’s it.” He reached out and patted his horse for good measure.

Jessica rubbed her hands over her face and wanted nothing more than to curl up with a,nice blanket in front of a warm fire and have a very long nap. There was no way to explain her situation without having Richard think she’d lost her mind. Just trying to come up with a good beginning was almost too exhausting to contemplate. ” ‘Tis obviously a womanly preoccupation you have with this idea,” he announced. “Perhaps you can be forgiven for not being able to think on something else.”,, “Think on something else?” she echoed. “There ish t anything else to think on!” “You don’t need– “Don’t,” she said, gritting her teeth. “Don’t tell me what I need. You don’t know the first thing about it.”

He frowned fiercely at her and she wondered if he might be considering the possible outcome of strangling her. Then he seemed to master that impulse, because he only pursed his lips and appeared to be mentally counting to ten, not a hundred.

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“I have a thought,” he said, sounding as if he were summoning up all the patience he possessed. “Why don’t you tell me your sorry tale.” “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

She could have sworn she could hear his teeth grinding. “After the se’nnight I’ve just passed,” he said tightly, “I am nigh onto believing anything. Tell me how you came to be on Hugh’s land.” “You’re sure?”

A muscle began to twitch in his cheek. Jessica took that as a good a sign as any. “All right,” she said. She took a deep breath. She could hardly believe she was about to spill her guts to a medieval baron while standing in the middle of a field with two panting horses for company, but maybe she shouldn’t have been surprised by anything. She never should have accepted Archie’s invitation. She could have been sitting in her nice, roomy warehouse of an apartment pounding out some Bach on her piano. She could have been sipping Red Zippy tea and contemplating what to have for dessert. She could have been wearing warm socks instead of a pair of Richard’s tights that seemed to want nothing more than to pool around her ankles.

But all that would have meant missing out on even just the sight of the irritated man standing in front of her scowling ferociously.

There was something almost charming about him when he scowled.

She put her hand to her forehead. Too much time traveling had obviously had an adverse effect on her common sense. What she needed was a rich accountant who would work lots of overtime and leave her alone to compose on the eleven-foot Grotrien he’d bought her to put in her custom-built music room.

A man who couldn’t listen to her without patting his sword every now and again as if he intended to use it on her if she took too long was not the man for her. “Your tale,” he prompted. “Yes, well,” she said, wondering just what he would

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believe and how far she should go before she found herself being used as kindling. She took a deep breath. “Actually, I was standing in a friend’s garden trying to get away from a man I had been dating-” “I knew it,” he said grimly. “I knew there was a hapless fool involved.” “Well, thanks so much for the vote of confidence, but the hapless fool was me,” she replied crisply.

He grunted, but didn’t say anything else. “Anyway, as I was saying, I was out in the garden, trying to find some peace, and I decided that what I really needed was a gallant, honorable knight to carry me off on his white horse. So, I wished upon a star.”

He blinked. “You wished upon a star.” “Yes. One minute I was in the garden, wishing for someone with a little chivalry to come along, and the next moment I was standing in your brother’s fields.”

He pursed his lips. “Then your wishing went awry. You certainly found no chivalrous soul-“

Don’t sell yourse@f short, she started to say. –in Hugh,” Richard finished. She was somehow not surprised that Richard didn’t think himself in the running. Perhaps he had a better idea of his shortcomings than he thought. “Yes,” she said dryly, “you’ve certainly got a point there. ” “But how is it that you went from the garden to Hugh’s fields? Were you so consumed with your looking into the sky that you didn’t mark the distance you crossed?”

Jessica shook her head. “I didn’t walk anywhere. I was just standing there. One minute I was in one place, the next I was in … ah … another,” she finished, realizing she had probably just said too much. It certainly sounded wacky and who knew what Richard would think of it. She hazarded a glance up at his face.

She’d never in her life seen anyone look more skeptical. He shook his head slowly, as if it had just been confirmed to him that she was several peasants short of a full work crew.

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“That’s not the half of it,” she said, pressing on against her better judgment. “But I don’t think you’d believe the rest of the story.” “I don’t believe this much of the tale,” he said. “Then you really won’t believe the rest. And even if I tell you the whole thing, you’ll probably either toss me in your dungeon or bum me at the stake. And I’d really rather avoid both.” “Are you a witch?” “No.”

He looked at her closely. “Are you an outlaw?” “No.He grunted. “I knew that was too easy an answer to the riddle. Very well, if you are neither of those things, then what have you to fear from me?” “You aren’t exactly shy about giving in to your temper. I I

“And if I vowed to keep it in check?” “I don’t think you could.” “Damn you, Jessica, I demand you give me the tale!” “See?” she said.

He took a deep breath, releasing it very slowly. Then he looked at her again. “Tell me,” he said calmly. “Nothing, and I vow I mean that truly, nothing you say could possibly surprise me. In the space of less than a se’nnight my life has run afoul of more trouble than I saw in ten years of warring, and you have much to do with that. You’ve stolen my horse three times and fair ruined him for battle. He wants nothing but to eat and be petted. You obviously have no concept of how a castle is when run properly, so I can only assume the rest of your tale will be equally as hard to swallow. But I will attempt it. Go on, while the blood pounding in my head has quieted enough to allow me to hear your words. Go on,” he said, gesturing for her to do

“You’re sure?”

A muscle twitched in his cheek and he had to take

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another breath before he answered, but he sounded calm enough. “Aye. Give me the tale.” “You asked for it,” she muttered under her breath. Maybe telling him the whole story wasn’t such a bad idea. He would probably think she’d lost all her marbles and he’d be so glad to get rid of her that he’d take her to Hugh’s and put her on the time-travel train himself.

She hitched up her hose and drew a long straight line in the dirt. She made a hash mark at the left end. “This is the birth of Christ. The Year of Our Lord Zero, right?”

He nodded, his eyes flicking from the line to her face and back down again.

She made another hash mark near the middle of the line. “This is the Year of Our Lord 1216, when John Lackland, son of Henry II died. Right?”

He nodded again, more slowly this time. She made another mark. “This is the current year. What is it?”

He looked at her sharply. “1260.” “Right. 1260.” She looked back at the line and gathered her courage. Then she made two more marks toward the right end of the line. She didn’t dare look at his face. “This is the Year of Our Lord 1971,” she said, pointing to the first mark. “And this, this last mark is the Year of Our Lord 1999.” She lifted her eyes and looked at him. “I was bom in 1971. The day you rescued me, I had been standing in the garden of a friend of mine and the year was 1999.”

He looked down at her line, up at her face, then turned and walked away. She watched him stop, rub the back of his neck, and stare down at the ground. He stood like that for several minutes, then he walked away a little more, stopped, and assumed the same pose. Jessica didn’t even think about trying to make off with his horse again. After having been witness to his leaping from one moving beast to the other, she was almost convinced there was just no

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way to outrun or outmaneuver this man. If she got to Hugh’s, she would get there because he wanted her to.

Suddenly he turned, walked back to her, and rubbed out her line with the toe of his boot. Only then did he look down at her. He looked very unhappy and his eyes were the color of a stormy sea again. It wasn’t exactly what she’d been hoping for. “That blow to your head,” he began. “It wasn’t that blow to my head!” she exclaimed. “Then you’ve been troubled by dreams-“

She cut him off with a sharp shake of her head. “I told you it was hard to believe-” “Impossible to believe,” he interrupted. “Go back to your castle and look at my clothes. They’re how men of my day thought clothes of your time should look. You won’t find material of that kind coming from a home loom.” “The cloth is very fine,” he conceded, “but you could have purchased it in the East. Constantinople is very civilized. I know, for I’ve seen its wonders for myself.” He looked her over carefully. “Then again, perhaps Hugh had it aright and you are a faery.” “I’m not a faery!” “Well,” he said slowly, “I suppose I never believed that anyway-” “Look, I don’t have any proof you’d believe. Unless,” she said, struck by a sudden bit of inspiration, “unless you’d like to hear about the future.”

He dismissed her words with a wave. “You’ve nothing to tell me that I could not divine for myself. The world will not last another fifty years.”

I’Wrong.” He glared at her. “Man will not live to see the year

1300. The Lord will come again and bum the world to cinders. That is what the priests say.” “Well, on that score, they’re wrong.” “Blasphemy,” he breathed. “Fact,” she said crisply. “I can’t vouch for the year

2000, but I’m telling you that 1300 will come and go

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without incident. Though I’d say those who make it past

1300 will wish differently after they come face-to-face with the Black Plague.” “The what?” “Plague. It will sweep through England and wipe out entire villages. ” “Impossible,” he said, but he was starting to sound a little less sure of himself. “Is it? You don’t know the half of it. If the plague isn’t bad enough, wait until England starts having wars over religion. You’ll lose priceless treasures in monasteries, all for the sake of wiping out popery. A few hundred years later you’ll have wars, bigger and uglier wars than you’ve had now, when a single weapon can destroy thousands of people.” “Cease,” he said, holding up his hand. “You want news of your king?” She had never been more grateful for a few quick history lessons from tour guides than she was at present. “Give him a couple more years and then he’ll be facing off with Simon de Montfort. Henry will lose and a little group will be set up to keep him in line. In time that little group will be called the House of Commons and the monarch will benothing more than a figurehead.” “Sedition-” “No, it’s the truth. You can wait four years to see it happen for yourself, or you can believe me now.” “You spout foolishness.” “That’s just the depressing stuff. Let me tell you about the good things.” She pointed to the horses. “Someday you won’t need horses to travel anymore. You’ll ride around-well, you won’t be doing it, but your descendants will-in big metal boxes on wheels that move on their own.”

He looked almost stricken. “No horses?” “Men will cross great distances in a matter of hours, because they’ll fly through the sky in machines called planes. They’ll fly to the moon. They’ll live up in the sky for months at a time on space stations. You’ll sit in your

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house and look in a black box and see things that are happening on the other side of the world. And wait till I tell you about dessert-” “Wait. ..” “Computers, the Internet, CD players, global economies– “But. . “Godiva, Hdagen-Dazs, angel food cake-” “Enough!” He held up his hands and shook his head sharply. “I can listen to no more of this.” “But I’ve only begun-“

He took Horse’s reins and slapped them into her hand. “Go. If it means I must needs listen to no more of this witless babbling, then I’ll count myself blessed. Take my horse and go to Hugh’s.-

Jessica was surprised enough to stop regaling him with things he would never see. “Really?” “Aye.- “Great,” she said, then she squeaked as he tossed her bodily into the saddle. “I have no rations to send with you,” he said, turning to the other horse. “I took the liberty of helping myself at the kitchen.”

Richard turned and scowled at her. “Thorough, aren’t you?” “If it makes any difference, I think you’re getting lots of good marks for chivalry.”

He positively growled at her. “As if chivalry served me! Look you the lengths it has driven me to this past se’nnight. If I had my bloody spurs in my purse, I would give them to you as well. Now begone! Enough of my day has been wasted upon your fruitless quest.” “That is a problem,” she said hesitantly, wondering if his patience would permit some directions. “I’m not sure where Hugh’s castle is.”

Richard thrust his arm out. “Take this road until you see one marching off to the west. Take that. Follow your nose. The stench will alert you to Merceham’s location.” “Well,” she said, taking the reins and wondering how

96 Lynn Kurland

best to express her appreciation for him actually letting her go. “Um, thanks-“

Richard swung up into his own saddle. “I do not want your thanks,” he said curtly. “I want nothing further from you. You’ve been naught but trouble since the moment I clapped eyes on you and I count myself well rid of you and your foolish words.” He waved her on. “Go on. And believe me, my lady, the world will end before the year

1300 and I can only pray the fire catches you before you spread your folly across the rest of this poor isle!”

Well, now that was offensive. “Fine,” she retorted, stung. “I’ll go.” “Do so, and do so silently!”

But he didn’t move. Neither did she. In fact, it was all she could do not to crawl down from the saddle and tell him she’d changed her mind, that she was staying. He was impossibly arrogant, foul-tempered, and crotchety. He’d practically thrown her out of his cas-

tle and now he was telling her she was a lunatic.

But he had also rescued her from Hugh and his dogs, apparently searched through several peasant huts to find her the previous night, and now he was loaning her his horse to go three days’ ride from his castle so she could do something that was important to her, and all that without much more than a major bout of grumbling.

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