Chapter 16 #2
He smiled, then winced. Damn that Jackson Kilchurn. If he hadn’t known better, he would have suspected his cousin of deliberately getting in the way of any possible dating activities.
“Nothing but still trying to recover from your father’s superior swordplay,” he said, dragging himself back to the moment at hand.
She shuddered. “Let’s not discuss that.”
He smiled. “Let’s speak of other things, then. I didn’t swear in my sleep, did I?”
“Not a foul word was uttered, though I’m fairly sure you wished terrible things on your cousin more than once in your dreams.”
“He deserves them,” Sam muttered, then he smiled at her, because he couldn’t seem to help himself. “I’m sorry if that was uncomfortable earlier. I didn’t mean to keep you all night.”
If he’d been a duller man, he might have thought that perhaps she hadn’t minded all that much. Interpreting her careless shrug as yet another point in his favor was possibly also a reasonable thing to do.
“I felt very safe,” she said, looking anywhere but at him. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure, truly.”
She did look at him then. “No word from your brother?”
He shook his head.
“What can I do to help?”
“Borrow your father’s sword and distract me?”
She laughed a little. “Me? I’ve never picked up a sword in my life.”
“How do you protect yourself?”
“I run away very quickly.”
He couldn’t argue with that strategy, having used it endlessly himself, but the rain was holding off and they had a walled garden in which to ply their trade for a moment or two.
“Your father has plastic swords inside, or so he claims,” Sam said cheerfully.
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “I’ll go get them.”
“I’ll be your second.”
She shot him a quick smile, then walked away. He followed after her for the simple reason that he wanted to.
Poor fool that he was.
He lingered by the doorway as Harriet negotiated the borrowing of weapons with her father, then smiled at her mother who arrived with plate of something that smelled divine.
“Cookies?” she offered.
“Perhaps just one,” Sam said politely.
“I think you should have two.”
“Well,” he said with a small smile, “I wouldn’t want to be impolite and refuse.”
Harriet’s mother laughed a little at him, then handed over the entire plate. “There are more in the kitchen when you and Harriet have finished these.”
He wasn’t going to argue. He also soon discovered that along with growing flowers of questionable lineage, Lady Brewster was an excellent baker.
He followed Harriet out into the garden, offered her one of her mother’s creations, then set the plate down on a bench and looked at her.
He made twirling motions with his finger.
She frowned. “What?”
“I’ll put your hair up for you.”
“Can you?”
“Four sisters and an indeterminate number of nieces and gel cousins.” He took the stretchy piece of fabric she gave him, secured her hair atop her head, then gently turned her around. He examined his work, then smiled at her. “You should pull it back more often.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re very pretty and it hides your face too much.”
“Go away,” she said, blushing. “Out of the reach of my sword, you ridiculous man.”
He smiled, took one of her father’s lesser weapons, then waited for her to join him in the middle of the garden. She looked at the sword in her hand, plastic though it was, and then at him.
“I don’t think I can do this.”
“Think of it as an extension of your bedchamber slippers.”
She pushed a strand or two of hair he’d missed out of her eyes. “I’m not sure that helps.” She took a deep breath. “I think I could defend my family, but I’m not sure how to get from here to where that place might be.”
He couldn’t say he understood because from the time he’d been able to form thoughts, he’d known that his responsibility was to safeguard those in his care.
Perhaps for others that might have been a burden, but for him it had been something he’d taken great pride in.
But he could see how it might seem not only strange, but unnerving for the woman in front of him.
He took her sword and his and laid them on the bench, then walked back over to her. “Leave keeping us safe to me, then,” he said simply. “In celebration of that, perhaps we could indulge in a wee embrace.”
She looked up at him. “This is becoming a bad habit.”
“Let us break it later,” he said seriously, “but consider it now a friendly bit of comfort.”
She stepped forward and put her arms around his waist, which he had to admit was one of the better events of the morning.
He hugged her with as much decorum as possible—to the accompaniment of a pair of warbling bird calls and some curtain twitching in the Brewster cottage—and decided that closing his eyes might be a good strategy for the moment.
“Dinner, still?” he murmured.
“Yes.”
He smiled against her hair. He reminded himself that he absolutely should limit himself to considering her a friend at best, something that shouldn’t have been difficult.
After all, he’d watched several siblings and cousins fall face-first into vats of sickly sweet romance and shared the appropriate amount of horrified disgust with his brother at the spectacles.
What he’d never expected, however, was to find himself similarly blindsided by a delicate snowdrop of a faery who made lists that put him to shame, talked a very good game about dangerous things, and would likely spend the rest of her life putting spiders outside the windows instead of sending them off speedily into the next life.
There was something so profoundly sweet and delicate about the place she’d inserted into his chaotic life that he could hardly catch his breath from it.
It might just kill him to let her go.
He just didn’t see how he could ask her to stay.
But the saints pity him for the ridiculously romantic fool he was, he couldn’t help but stand there for another few heartbeats and enjoy something he was certain could never be his.
She sighed finally and pulled out of his arms. “I think it’s starting to rain.”
He didn’t protest her stepping back because he was occasionally sensible. He very sensibly picked up swords and the plate and nodded toward the house before he did something foolish.
Such as chuck all their damn Future rules into the nearest compost heap and take hold of something he suspected he might never find again … in any century.
“Let’s go be warm, then,” he said, pulling himself away from his maudlin thoughts with great effort. “We’ll probably need to head back to the conference soon enough. I still have to find Theo’s only piece of tweed and force myself to put it on.”
“I’m sure you’ll look just like him. I’ll go see what Mom has that I can borrow.”
He couldn’t say he was overly enthusiastic about the thought of a murder mystery supper peopled by a clutch of mystery writers who might possibly take things too far if allowed, but there was nothing he could do about it but make the best of things and hope the pub across the street would be open afterwards so he could find something he dared eat.
An hour later, he was cooling his heels in the great room whilst Harriet’s father was off napping and Harriet and her mother were trying to find the perfect outfit for the evening’s festivities. It gave him more time than he wanted to have for thinking, but things were what they were.
He finally walked over to stand with his back against the fire and tried not to let the familiarity of it fell him where he stood.
The thirteenth century, the twenty-first century, what difference was there really when it came to being fed, having enough sleep, and looking at something beautiful?
He’d definitely eaten well that day and he wasn’t entirely certain he hadn’t spent a fair amount of time half asleep on his feet.
What he knew at the moment, though, was that he was presently at something beautiful, namely Harriet Delphinium Brewster, faery and 1950s glamour gel, walking down the stairs.
She stopped a pace or two away from him, then dropped him a slight curtsey. “What do you think?”
He was fully prepared to be speechless, but fortunately his glib tongue did not desert him in his moment of need.
“I am your servant,” he said, making her a low, courtly bow. “Name your desire, my lady, and I shall see to it immediately.”
She was blushing. He had to admit it left him a bit off-balance to think he could inspire that sort of thing, though the woman herself left him that way more often than not so perhaps it wasn’t unthinkable.
“I would settle for chocolate after dinner,” she admitted.
He inclined his head. “Consider it done. Now if I might escort you to this murderous rampage tonight and assure that all goes to plan?”
“That would be lovely,” she said. “Thank you.”
He was tempted to pull her into his arms for a friendly embrace to start the evening off well, but he could hear her father pacing upstairs where swords might be lurking and her mother puttering in the kitchen where dangerous implements could definitely be found.
He settled for smiling until he realized Harriet’s expression had become rather serious.
“No word still?” she asked quietly.
He took a deep breath, then shook his head.
“He didn’t get in an accident, did he?”
“We’ll see, I suppose.”
She looked at him, clear-eyed. “You really aren’t going to let me help you with this, are you?”
He started to speak, then shut his mouth because there was nothing else to do.
If he told her where Theo was, he would also have to tell her when Theo had gone and that would lead to her finding out all kinds of things about them both that he was fairly certain she wouldn’t believe.
For all he knew, she would then simply turn and walk away.
Either that, or she would stay, call him absolutely barking, then turn and walk away.
“If I need to go after him,” he said when he realized he had to say something or look as daft as he felt, “I’ll need to go alone.”
“Then I’ll sit by the fire with my knitting and my notebook.” She paused. “The notebook might help you, though.”
He closed his eyes, cast caution and his good sense to the wind, then reached out and pulled her into his arms. He rested his chin lightly atop her head, then forced himself not to jump a little at the shadow that turned out to be Harriet’s mother.
Lady Brewster—and he could scarce keep himself from calling her that aloud—only held a finger to her lips, smiled at him, then tiptoed up the stairs.
“Did my mother just pass by?”
“She did,” he said wrapping his arms more securely around her. “No kitchen knives were brandished, thankfully.”
“They like you.”
“I like you.”
She pulled back and looked at him. “Do you?” she asked wistfully.
He was so desperately tempted to change course, damn all passing ships and temporal conundrums to their fates, and kiss her. He was also beginning to heartily dislike that side of himself that had become so disciplined in his maturity.
But perhaps that discipline didn’t preclude taking her out on that first date.
He could do that, soak up every moment of her hesitant smiles and wry observations, then do the sensible if not difficult thing and watch her go back to the States with her parents.
He might even take his life in his hands and venture across the Pond to go visit her in the wilds of the Colonies where he might ask her on a second date.
A bending of the rules, surely, but nothing more
But none of that would happen until he’d sorted the mess in Stratford, discovered who was stalking him—or, the saints preserve them, Theo—and come to some sort of understanding with the matchmaking shades who haunted his kitchens and tormented his laptop.
He supposed that all of that might be put off for another few minutes whilst he allowed himself the very great pleasure of having Harriet Brewster within reach.
“Do I like you?” he repeated, dragging himself back to the present moment, “I do.” He pulled back slightly and looked at her. “And you?”
“Do I like me?”
He smiled in spite of himself. “You, Mistress Brewster, are a worthy adversary. Must I challenge you to a duel to have my answer?”
“Not with Jackson’s swords.”
He conceded the point with a nod, then waited.
She took a deep breath. “You’re a bit fancy for me, but you’re all right I suppose.”
He smiled more truly that time, pulled her closer for another perfect moment, then stepped back. He put his hands on her shoulders and looked at her seriously.
“You will stay next to me at all times tonight.”
“Aren’t you bossy,” she managed.
“Protective,” he corrected. “And when you are not within arm’s reach, you will cling to Miss Collins with the tenacity of a proper second taking refuge behind the man with the pistol.”
She took a deep breath, then nodded. “If you want.”
What he wanted and what he dared attempt to have were, as seemed to be his lot in life, two very different things, but he could most assuredly put off thinking about that until Harriet was, again, safely back in the Colonies.
Perhaps they could carry on a lengthy correspondence and see where that led. Unfortunately, where he suspected it would lead would be to her sending him an invitation to her wedding to someone who’d been born in the adjacent century.
Damn the man.
“Sam?”
He looked at her and smiled. “Aye?”
“You think a lot.”
“They are very boring thoughts,” he promised her. He took a deep breath, then took a step back. “Let’s survive supper, then perhaps Master Phillips would accompany us on a walk.”
“He’s very good security, isn’t he?”
Sam had heard rumors about just what Oliver Phillips could do and was very grateful to know the man was on his side.
“I understand that he is,” Sam managed, “which means we’ll have our stroll in perfect safety. Now, where’s your wrap, my lady?”
“I’ll go grab it.”
He waited for her to fetch a shawl that she was apparently also borrowing from her mother, wrapped it around her, then made polite leave-taking conversation with both her parents that he honestly didn’t remember more than a moment or two after he’d engaged in it.
He ushered Harriet out the door after promising her father he would take very good care of her, then listened to the door close behind them with a soft click. If he scanned the surroundings for both miscreants and family, well, he imagined Harriet at least couldn’t blame him.
He offered her his arm and walked with her back toward the inn. He knew they were being watched and hoped it was by friendly eyes. Perhaps ‘twas time to ask for a few slightly more visible reinforcements. His father wouldn’t have thought twice about it, so he imagined he shouldn’t either.
But first he would deposit Harriet into the very capable clutches of Miss Francine Collins and hope they both survived dinner.