Chapter 25
Twenty-five
Harriet faced the door and wondered what medieval England was going to be putting on a trencher for her that day.
Her parents were already off to live their best lives in the current time period.
It had been fairly adorable, she had to admit, watching her father become best friends with Lord Nicholas over the past two days.
Sam’s father had been enormously kind to her father, humoring him in the lists during the mornings and taking him on all his everyday activities for the rest of the day afterward.
She suspected her father would be walking a very fine line with his next book about life in the Middle Ages, though she imagined he would most definitely give his anonymous medieval source proper credit.
Her mother had also seemingly become bosom friends with Sam’s mother, happily joining in the chaos that was definitely Jennifer de Piaget’s life.
Harriet had listened to them converse quite naturally in French when there were others to listen, then switch without skipping a beat to English when they’d had privacy.
They’d had privacy when they’d been in Jennifer’s solar, attending to discussions about modern events, experimenting with a bit of stitchery, and doing a great deal of chaperoning.
Sam hadn’t argued with the last. He had joined them in his mother’s solar as often as possible and been a paragon of chivalry.
He’d dredged up a few ballads that he’d sung in a gorgeous voice while accompanying himself on a lute—he was a man of hidden talents, she had to admit—when he hadn’t been refilling cups, tending the fire, and occasionally asking her if she might like to retire to the solar’s window seat to take in a bit of fresh air.
Breathing during those interludes had apparently been optional, but she hadn’t complained.
She put her hand over her middle to still the butterflies there, then took a deep breath and opened the door. Henri was standing in his usual spot across the hall waiting for her. He straightened immediately, then held out something to her.
A bouquet of flowers that contained a single stem of snowdrops.
Harriet pulled the door shut behind her, which went well. Taking the flowers was a bit trickier, but she was fairly sure an eight-year-old kid wouldn’t notice her hand shaking.
“From my lord Samuel,” Henri announced with not quite the same enthusiasm he might have used for a clutch of garden snakes, but close. “For my lady’s pleasure.”
“Merci, Henri,” Harriet said, then she left it at that. She suspected that if she tried anything else, she might terrify the boy with an undue and overwrought bit of emotion.
She followed him down the hallway and smiled at him when he descended the stairs in front of her, looking back with every step to apparently make sure she wasn’t going to take a header.
She wasn’t sure she would ever run up and down circular stairs like Sam’s nieces and nephews did, but she was definitely more confident than she had been before.
Henri stopped at the bottom of the stairs, then gestured expansively at the great hall.
“My lord Samuel awaits,” he said.
Or, something to that effect. Harriet nodded, mostly because she could see that his lord Samuel was indeed awaiting, standing with his back against the fireplace on the far side of the hall and watching things in her general vicinity.
He caught sight of her and immediately started across the rushes with the ease of a man who’d done it a time or two before.
He ruffled Henri’s hair with an affectionate older-brother sort of smile, then sent the lad off for what she could only assume were mid-morning snacks.
“He’ll come right back,” she said, though she imagined Sam already knew that.
“That’s because he’s your page and that’s his duty.” Sam smiled. “And his pleasure, apparently. He’s very fond of you. He about bit my head off this morning when I said I could see you down to the hall.”
She smiled, then held up her flowers. “These are lovely.”
“As are you.”
She considered. “What now?”
He looked around them, then considered. “A brief hug, then perhaps a stroll in the garden?”
She nodded, managed to save her flowers before they were crushed, then reminded herself to keep hold of them as Sam wished her a more personal good morning.
“We’ve got to stop that.” She attempted to focus on him, but it was difficult. “As your father would say, I feel faint.”
“Please,” he said with a shudder. “Let’s not think about what those four feel faint about, though you aren’t serious about stopping, are you?”
“Of course not.”
He smiled. “Then let’s go outside. I haven’t seen you in hours and I want to have a good look at you in the sunlight. We can sit, if you need to.”
“You mean if you need to.”
He only laughed a little as he offered his hand.
She took it and smiled. She wasn’t quite sure what word to use in describing the past few days in a time not her own, but blissful might have come close.
If she did become more than just friends with Sam and if he did continue his habit of coming home, she thought she might manage to come with him without trouble.
Keeping her parents from coming along as chaperons would be more difficult, but they were adults after all and could make their own travel decisions.
“What are you thinking?”
She looked at Sam as she sat down with him on their accustomed stone bench under his mother’s favorite apple tree. “Nothing,” she said brightly. “Just wondering where everyone is this morning.”
“I made the general announcement that I wanted five minutes of private conversation with you and there would be hell to pay if I didn’t have it.” He looked at her archly. “So you see that I am not without influence even here.”
“I never doubted it,” she assured him. “And the little ones?”
“Distracted with sweets,” he said promptly. “I had to promise Cook another selection of those very strange spices I found in London the last time I was there in return for it, but one does what one must.”
She fought a smile. “Do I dare speculate?”
“Cinnamon, chocolate, and some extremely past-date instant coffee,” he whispered. “Don’t tell on me.”
“Sam,” she chided. “You aren’t telling me he combines them, are you?”
“He’s a genius, truly.”
She laughed a little, then happily took advantage of their privacy to allow herself to be kissed. More than once.
And she was, she had to admit, very glad to be sitting down.
“By the way,” Sam said, looking at her with his eyes a bit crossed as well, “our fathers are out in the lists.”
“My father is loving this, but I probably don’t need to point that out.”
“He loves it less when he catches me kissing you,” Sam said solemnly. “They’ve both threatened to have me walled up in my bedchamber.” He paused. “Alone, if you’re curious.”
“I would say I’d sneak you snacks, but I don’t think you have a window.”
He shook his head. “A deliberate oversight on my parents’ part.”
“You and Theo must have been terrors.”
“We’ve matured,” he said solemnly.
She imagined they had, but she couldn’t help a little regret that she hadn’t known them both as teenagers.
She could only imagine the trouble they’d gotten themselves into—and out of.
She sighed as he took her hand in both his own and rested her head against his shoulder to better enjoy the view of the garden.
“Did we wake up to another year or did they really take you seriously about the privacy thing?”
He shook his head. “I’ve already been to the lists, so ‘tis definitely the latter. I believe the entire keep realizes how I feel about you.”
She swallowed with a good deal of trouble, then felt her eyes begin to sting a little. The thought that the man sitting next to her with his gorgeous smile, insane amounts of charm, and sweet aura of innocence might look at her and see anything but a small brown mousey—
He leaned over and kissed her. “Stop.”
“Stop what?” she managed.
He shifted a little to face her, then took her hair down before he frowned thoughtfully as he rearranged it so there was none of it to have to hide behind in moments of embarrassment or, well, wanting to hide. He looked her over, then smiled.
“Better. You should wear it back like that always,” he said firmly, then he paused.
“Well, not if there are other lads about who might want a closer look at you. I’d hate to wind up in someone’s dungeon for having done in a relative for looking at the gorgeous faery I lo—er …
” He took a deep breath and looked at her. “Well, you know.”
“You?”
He nodded.
She couldn’t help but want to make certain she wasn’t missing anything so she pointed at herself. “Me?”
He looked uncharacteristically hesitant, but nodded.
She considered, then decided there was no reason not to march right into the fray.
“You were with my father for quite a while last night.”
“Did you watch the door?”
“Joanna and I tried to eavesdrop, but you have nephews—and a few nieces—who told us we were doing it wrong.”
“The saints preserve us all.”
“I thought you’d agree,” she said. She shifted so she could look at him squarely, though that took a bit of courage. “And?”
He smiled gravely. “What if we made a leafy, comfortable bower for just the two of us?”
“Just us two?”
“We could allow others to visit the surrounding environs, if you like.”
“But in the end, just us?”
He nodded carefully.
“Your parents seem to have that.”
“They are enormously happy.”
She considered. “My parents have that.”
“Please let’s not ask them what goes on in your mother’s greenhouse.”
“You could have anyone—”
“And so could you,” he said without hesitation. “But how fortunate are we that we were in the right place and just the right time? Of course, you could have taken one look at me and run the other way.”
“I didn’t want to.”
“Neither did I.” He cleared his throat. “The thing is, my life is a complicated, chaotic sort of existence.”
“Plays in Stratford,” she noted.