Chapter 17 #2
“Because I have things to do,” Peaches said, pulling away. “Important things to get together.”
“Well, while you’re making a plan to get all those important things back together, why don’t you stay?” Tess asked reasonably. “The castle’s big enough for all of us. You figure out what you want to do, and while you’re figuring that out, you can see Stephen when he’s down this way doing research.”
“Research on what?”
“On you.”
Peaches would have shoved her sister, but she’d given that up when she was five. She scowled at her instead. “Don’t push this where it doesn’t want to go. I’ve just recently forgiven him for being a jerk—”
“He wasn’t a jerk. He was tongue-tied.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Peach, I’ve known Stephen de Piaget for almost eight years. The man is a verbal Niagara Falls. It’s impossible to shut him up.”
“He hardly says anything to me.”
“That’s because you scare him.”
“Why?”
“Because he likes you.”
“Why?” Peaches asked miserably.
“Are you kidding?” Tess said with a laugh. “Have you looked at yourself lately?”
“Is that it?” Peaches managed. “He’s only interested in outsides?”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Tess said, taking her by the arm and pulling her out of the solar. “I’m not going to make a lengthy list of your considerable assets.”
“But I can’t do anything—”
Tess stopped so suddenly, she almost pulled Peaches off her feet.
She looked at her seriously. “You listen to me, Peaches Alexander, before I go all Aunt Edna on you. Your gifts are numerous, your brainpower staggering, and your possibilities limited only by your courage. But if you want to know the single most amazing thing about you—which is going to make you impossible to live with—it is that when you talk to someone, the rest of the world falls away and the person so blessed by your attention feels like the most important person in the world. And if you think that’s a small thing, think again. ”
Peaches found herself towed across the floor again. “I don’t have a title.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to marry you.”
“I’m not going to be h-h-his,” Peaches spluttered. “Well, whatever it is, I’m not going to be his version of it. I don’t even like him!”
“Liar.”
Peaches couldn’t refute that, so she shut her mouth and followed her sister across the courtyard and out to the lists.
“Watch out for the rock.”
Peaches looked down to find herself standing far too close to the flat stone that marked the time gate at the end of Tess’s bridge. She looked at her sister. “I think I want to stay here.”
“In England?”
“No, in the castle. Back in the kitchen.”
“Why?”
Peaches took a deep breath. “Because I’m afraid.”
“Afraid to see Stephen or leave Stephen?”
Peaches blew her bangs out of her eyes.
Tess patted her. “I wouldn’t worry. You don’t like him anyway, remember?”
Peaches supposed it would be a poor thank-you for Tess’s hospitality to push her into her moat, so she merely scowled at her again and followed her out to what served as the lists.
She sat down on a log and looked around at anything besides what was going on in front of her. She studied the flat clouds above her head, the muddy lists, the forest of bare trees that surrounded the castle at a discreet distance.
But the ring of swords was relentlessly distracting.
She finally sighed deeply and gave in. And wished immediately that she hadn’t.
She hadn’t thought to ask Stephen how old he was, mid-thirties perhaps, though there was no difference between him and John when it came to energy or grace. John had the benefit of a lifetime of training, but he didn’t seem to be taking it all that easy on Stephen.
She gave up watching her brother-in-law and gave in to the impulse to just watch a man who was nothing at all like she’d originally thought him to be.
He might have had his collection of diplomas on the wall and his certificates from nobility school, and while that might have been a good representation of who he was, it wasn’t all he was.
He had bought her a ball gown to make her feel beautiful, endured her snarls at him, watched her drool openly over David Preston.
He had hoisted a second-rate sword in her defense, ignored the ruination of the insides of a very expensive car, and taken her to his house where she would be comfortable and safe.
He had bought her green drink, simply because he’d known she would like it.
But he was also the future Earl of Artane, the current Viscount Haulton and Baron Etham, and a full-fledged professor at Cambridge who had earned his posh office not because of his father’s money or influence but by virtue of his own hard work.
She wondered why he wasn’t married.
She wondered why she couldn’t escape the thought that that was maybe a good thing.
Tess leaned close. “You don’t like him.”
Peaches had to take a deep breath before she could answer. “Nope.”
“He’s not your type.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I understand he enjoys a good filet mignon from time to time.”
“Barbaric,” Peaches murmured.
“He’s gorgeous, though, isn’t he?”
“Y—” Peaches shut her mouth around the word and glared at her sister. “Stop that.”
“I like to see where your thoughts are leading you.”
“You’re a busybody.”
Tess only smiled pleasantly and went back to watching her husband. Peaches fought with herself for several minutes, minutes during which swords clanged and medieval verbs were conjugated and corrected, then gave in and leaned close to her sister.
“He has girlfriends. Three of them.”
“Two, now,” Tess corrected. “And he doesn’t like them.”
“Then why does he date them?”
“It keeps Granny off his back.”
Peaches looked into the mirror of her own eyes. “He would never, ever want to marry someone like me,” she said in a miserable whisper.
Tess looked at her as seriously as she ever had during all their years of serious conversations. “Why don’t you, my dearest Peaches, let him be the judge of that?”
Peaches threw her arms around her sister, hugged her until Tess squeaked, then jumped up and ran away.
She didn’t want anyone to see her seriously consider bursting into tears.
By the time the afternoon was over, she was a wreck.
Stephen was his normal self … only he wasn’t.
He was gravely polite to her, though she could now see that it wasn’t disinterest that made him so, it was solicitousness.
He laughed with John over things about the modern day that amused them both, switched gears easily to grill Tess on her meeting with Terry Holmes, then seamlessly continued discussions in medieval Norman French.
He did glance her way briefly during that last bit, one of his eyebrows raised.
She waved him on to his pleasures, trying not to feel flattered that he’d been interested enough in her comfort level with that version of the language that he would think to ask.
He was the product of good breeding and the beneficiary of a mother who had obviously taught him good manners, nothing more.
Nothing that meant anything out of the ordinary for her.
She managed to convince herself of that all the way until he asked her politely if she wouldn’t walk him to his car.
She went, because Tess pushed her out the door.
And honestly, by that point it would have been rude to turn and run the other way, so she put her shoulders back, reminded herself she was a grown-up, and walked with him through the courtyard.
She was extremely grateful to be in jeans, a warm sweater, and boots instead of one high heel and a Cinderella dress.
He paused at the end of the drawbridge, eyed the marker there, and moved to the other side of the bridge. Peaches looked at him in surprise.
“Why are we stopping?”
“It’s cold,” he said with a shrug, “and I wanted to make sure you got back inside safely.”
She looked at him and frowned. “Then why did we come out here?”
“Because I wanted to ask you something.”
She didn’t dare speculate on what that something might be, so she simply looked at him, mute and terrified.
“Are you going back to Seattle?”
The question was abrupt enough to startle her. She blinked, then took a deep breath. “I don’t know.”
He chewed on his words for a moment or two. “Tess mentioned something in passing about a bit of a blip in your business, but I didn’t ask the details.”
“Blip,” Peaches echoed. “You could call it that.”
“What would you call it, then?”
“Complete destruction. She told my biggest client to shove off. That client took the rest of them with her.”
He studied her in silence for several very long moments, which made her extremely nervous. “That must have been unpleasant.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Peaches said, aiming for lightness but fearing she had only managed to sound as panicked as she felt. “A booming business is highly overrated. Besides, it was just sorting socks.”
Stephen leaned against the iron railing and looked at her thoughtfully.
“Well, I suspect it wasn’t just that, but I don’t know enough about it to comment.
” He paused. “I’m wondering, though, if you might be willing to take a day or two for a charitable mission before you go back to rebuilding your empire. ”
“Not if that mission requires any time traveling,” she said with a shiver, “and just know I feel as weird saying that as it sounds.”
Stephen smiled faintly. “Nothing so perilous.” He paused, then jammed his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “I have something that needs to be done, and I was wondering if you might be willing to lend a hand.”
“Do you need your socks sorted?”
He smiled very briefly.
The sight about knocked her flat.
“Nothing so lofty, I fear. I was thinking more along the lines of help with research. I was thinking that given your background—”
“In organic substances?” she asked, that time managing a bit of lightness.
Stephen looked at her seriously. It was a different expression from his usual gravely polite one. She wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse, but it was definitely different.
“I was trying to find something to say that evening,” he said quietly, “and succeeded only in offending you.” He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I would pay you, of course, for the aid with my research.”
“What do you need researched?”
“Oh,” he began slowly, “just things.”
“Sounds pressing.”
“One must publish often,” he said. “That sort of thing.”
She wasn’t sure she would get anything done for him. She wasn’t sure she could sit inside his office and read. Maybe she could hide in the library and send him her notes via courier pigeon. She looked at him frankly.
“I have visa issues,” she said, “but John’s working on it. He knows a guy.”
“I imagine he knows several.”
“Don’t look at me,” she said, holding up her hands. “He’s your uncle.”
“So it would seem.” He looked at her. “And your answer?”
“Can I think about it?” she asked.
He nodded slowly. “Of course.” He stepped up on the bridge, looked at her, then extended his elbow. “I’ll walk you back.”
She looked at him in surprise. “Wasn’t I walking you?”
“That was just an excuse to have you alone,” he said seriously. “Let’s go, love, before you catch your death.”
Love. She had listened to John call Tess that dozens of times and smiled every single time.
Having a de Piaget lad use that term on her was slightly more knee-weakening than she’d thought it would be.
She took Stephen’s proffered arm, because it seemed like the best way to get herself back inside the gates while remaining on her feet.
She found herself soon deposited on the front steps, then turned and watched him walk down the three steps to the courtyard. He paused and looked up at her.
“I meant to give you this earlier.”
She wrapped her arms around herself. “Give me what?”
He pulled a shoe out of the inside of his jacket.
It was the mate to the glass slipper she’d completely trashed in medieval England. She took the pristine shoe, then looked at him, mute.
He smiled gravely. “I thought you might want it.”
And then he turned and walked away before she could say anything. She clutched the shoe and watched him walk back across the courtyard. He paused at the barbican, turned, and held up his hand briefly.
She waved back, because it made more sense than running after him and flinging herself into his arms.
“Go inside, Peaches,” came words that floated back over his shoulder as he started across the bridge.
Peaches went inside and shut the door behind her. Work for him? As a research assistant?
It was insane. She would have a ringside seat for all his trysts with his girlfriends, get to watch him prepare for all his society functions, see him living in a world that suited him so perfectly and he managed so well.
Well, she would just give herself a good night’s rest to regain her good sense, then she would tell him no.
“Did he give you a shoe?” John asked as she walked across the great hall.
“Yes,” she said shortly.
“Well, it could have been worse,” Tess offered. “It could have been a ring.”
Peaches glared at them both and trotted toward the stairs, ignoring their giggles. She wasn’t going to chuck her shoe at them, though they certainly deserved it.
A good night’s rest, then a resounding no.
It was the only thing she could do.