Chapter 26
Stephen stood in the mud, shaking with weariness, and wondered what in the hell he’d been thinking to come anywhere near medieval Artane.
Scotland was rugged, Ian MacLeod was fierce, and Claymores were heavy.
But facing a grinning Robin of Artane—his grandfather several generations removed—and realizing that said grandfather was likely pushing sixty but had the energy of a twenty-year-old with no qualms about putting it constantly on display was terrifying.
He suspected he shouldn’t admit how much he was enjoying it.
Indeed, the entire trip had been less unsettling than it should have been—no, actually, it was worse than that.
He had relished every moment of it. It was everything he’d been fascinated by for the entirety of his life on display in front of him, happening in real time.
He had toyed with the idea of regretting not having brought even his phone to record what he was seeing, but decided almost immediately that there was something too magical about what he was experiencing to record it anywhere but in his memory.
Though he was, he had to admit, taking furious mental notes.
He did, however, regret having slept so long.
He’d woken from his nap to find it well into the afternoon and Robin still apparently mulling his alternatives.
He’d eaten a decent meal, then been invited to bring his sword out to the lists and engage in a little diversion whilst Robin continued with his thinking.
He had been somehow unsurprised to hear that Robin had already spent the bulk of his day there, exercising his garrison.
“So, tell me what sort of care you’ve taken of my hall there in that future of yours,” Robin said, suddenly, looking far too energetic for Stephen’s taste.
Stephen tried not to notice that Robin wasn’t even breathing hard, damn him anyway. He would have tried to humor the man with tales of modern Artane, but found himself preoccupied by the task of remaining something besides a repository for Robin’s very sharp sword.
The afternoon wore on slowly. Stephen was tremendously grateful when Robin paused in his attentions and looked to his left.
“That’s a remarkably beautiful woman there,” he said, again not sounding in the slightest bit out of breath.
Stephen cursed silently at his own inability to catch his breath, looked, then realized that looking was bad for two reasons.
One, the split second he shifted his attention away from Robin, Robin caught the hilt of his sword with the tip of his own and flicked it out of Stephen’s hands.
It went arse over teakettle several times, flashing brightly in the late-afternoon sun an embarrassing number of times, before it landed point down in the mud.
It quivered until Robin casually reached out and put his hand on it to still it.
Second, just looking over to his right and finding none other than Peaches Alexander standing at the edge of the lists in a cloak he certainly hadn’t provided for her had caused him to lose what was left of his breath in a particularly abrupt way.
Robin came to stand next to him.
“She bears a strong resemblance to Persephone, my youngest brother’s wife.”
“That is likely because she’s Persephone’s older sister,” Stephen wheezed.
“She’s very different from her sister.”
Stephen looked into gray eyes that were the mirror of his own. “You can tell that from a single look?”
Robin tapped the spot between his eyes. “My superior ability to judge a body with just a glance coming yet again to the fore. Henry’s courtiers live in fear.”
“I imagine they do.”
Robin studied Peaches a bit longer. “What does she do?”
Stephen thought about all the things he could have said about that remarkable woman standing there looking slightly defiant.
He was sure Robin would have managed to wrap his superior intellect around any and all of them, but to limit Peaches to what she could do was to sadly understate her gifts.
She could organize, and change lives, and alchemy, and leave him unsettled and off-balance.
But she could also see through all the noise and the trappings, find the dreams lying there, and help nurture them into reality.
He had listened to Tess tell him stories of that for years, then seen the same thing for himself.
He looked at her for another moment in silence, smiled briefly at her, then looked at his grandfather.
“She loves,” he said simply.
Robin shot him a look of amusement. “Even a loser like you?”
Stephen smiled wryly. “You, my lord Artane, have spent far too much time learning a rather inappropriate amount of modern slang. And whilst I would certainly wish it, I hardly dare hope that she does.”
“Perhaps you had best work on that whilst you have my glorious hall and superior larder at your disposal. I would give you my thoughts on wooing a woman of obviously very fine breeding and heart, but they would, I fear, be lost on you.”
“You know,” Stephen said thoughtfully, “I’m fairly certain John said almost the same thing to me several days ago.”
“And where do you think John learned anything useful?” Robin asked archly.
“From me, of course. I’m pleased to know that very soft life in the Future hasn’t ruined his wits.
” He nodded toward Peaches. “Perhaps you’d best go welcome your lady properly before she decides someone else might be more to her liking than you. ”
Stephen thought that very good advice, so he fetched his sword, resheathed it, then made Robin a low bow before he walked off the field and over to where Peaches was standing in the company of several lads Stephen imagined were Robin’s nephews. He started to speak to her, then froze.
There were two fair-haired young men there, twins, who were looking at him—or, rather, not looking at him with a purposefulness that for some reason struck him as very suspicious. They also looked a great deal like Nicholas of Wyckham, which made him even more suspicious.
He wondered, accompanied by a frown he couldn’t help, if those had been the sons Nicholas had been traveling to that inn to meet. But that would have meant …
The thought of what that said about other members of his extended family traveling through time was just too much to consider at present. He promised himself a good grilling of the two later, then looked at Peaches and folded his arms over his chest.
“I am surprised to see you here,” he said in his best medieval Norman French.
Well, he lied it in his best medieval Norman French, because he wasn’t at all surprised to see her there.
But he supposed it was better to sound annoyed than accepting, on the off chance she ever thought to try another time gate on her own.
“Surely you didn’t think I needed a rescue. ”
She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Of course not.”
“Well,” he said, feeling slightly more medieval than was likely good for him. “That’s as it should be.”
“Though I would have if you had needed it.”
He blinked, then looked at that stunning, intelligent, courageous woman who could have just as easily stayed where he’d put her and waited for him to be about his business, and actually saw her.
She wouldn’t have, he was positive, risked her life and potentially his as well by coming to find him unless she’d had a very good reason.
He didn’t, as he had said to Robin before, dare hope it was because she loved him.
He hardly dared touch her in his current condition, but one of the benefits of training like a fiend in the Middle Ages was it was so cold, the sweat was converted quite quickly to solid form. He pulled her into his arms and held her tightly.
“Forgive me,” he whispered.
She was holding on to him as though she were rather happy to see him, all things considered. “For what? The medieval barbarian response?”
He laughed a little and pulled back only far enough to look her in the eye. “That, too.”
She leaned up and kissed him briefly. “Forgiven.”
Stephen would have thanked her properly for that, but he was distracted by the conversation that had started up next to Peaches.
“Oh, so that’s how it is,” a voice said knowingly.
“What a surprise,” another voice said dryly.
Stephen looked over Peaches’s head at the twins, then singled out the one on the right for further scrutiny. “Have we met?”
“Theophilus de Piaget,” the blond said, grinning. “And this is my less handsome, less intelligent but far more mischievous brother, Samuel.”
Samuel made Stephen a low bow. “At your service, always. Now, who are you again?”
“Stephen,” Stephen said, imagining the less he said, the better.
“Stephen of where?” Samuel asked innocently. “Somewhere near here, perhaps? Are you a relative? You look so much like Phillip, I daresay you could be bro—”
Theophilus slapped the back of his brother’s head sharply.
“He looks like no one,” he finished, shooting his brother a warning look.
“No one we would know, surely.” He looked at Stephen and made his own low bow.
“My lord, I believe your lady looks cold. Why don’t I escort her inside and leave you to your torture—I mean, exercises out here with Uncle Robin? ”
Stephen looked at Peaches and studied her for a moment or two.
Whilst she seemed happy to see him, surely that wouldn’t have been enough to induce her to risk traveling through time.
There was something else afoot, something that he could see in her face was rather more serious than he might have wished it to be.
He glanced at Theophilus. “Why don’t you retreat a safe distance away from my sword and let me have speech with my lady first? ”
“’Tis probably just as well, Theo,” said Samuel with a look thrown his twin’s way that Stephen couldn’t quite decipher. “Undue scrutiny and all.”
“From Uncle Robin, of course,” Theophilus said, returning his brother’s look.
“Who else?” Samuel asked politely.