Chapter 8 #2
He held out his hands and she put hers into them.
He pulled her a step closer, then smiled down at her.
Julianna watched the candlelight flickering over his face and wondered why she hadn’t done more things by candlelight when she’d had the choice.
It was a very soft, gentle light. She suspected it was something she could learn to appreciate very much.
“May I say something?” William said. “In all seriousness?”
Oh, great. Was he going to tell her that along with the “minor” amount of gold he’d managed to send home for safekeeping, he had a mistress or two tucked away as well?
“Yes?” she asked sharply.
He clasped his hands behind his back and looked at her solemnly. “I hope,” he began slowly, “I hope that in time you will, if nothing else, become fond of me.” He took a deep breath. “Nay, that isn’t what I mean. I hope that in time, you will come to love me.”
Then he shut his mouth and looked at her in silence.
“That’s it?” she asked, incredulous.
“Aye,” he said stiffly. “Unless the thought—”
“I thought you were going to tell me you had a mistress!”
He looked at her with an expression of complete bewilderment. “I just wed you. Why would I keep a mistress?”
“You tell me.”
“I’m telling you that I have fond feelings for you,” he said, sounding as if those feelings were about to take a hike out the door. “Feelings that I am quite certain will only increase with time. And I hoped,” he added with a scowl, “that you might feel the same way.”
Julianna felt many things, but most overwhelming of which was surprise that she found herself standing in the tower room of a castle, married to a man she had known not quite a week, and happier than she’d ever been in her life—even when faced with a dwindling stash of junk food and no possibility of indoor plumbing in the near future.
So she took a step forward, put her arms around her medieval knight and snuggled against his chest. His arms went immediately around her in a sure embrace. Julianna sighed happily.
“Well?” His voice rumbled deeply in his chest.
“Yes,” she said. “I think it’s more than possible.” She pulled back only far enough to look up at him. “I think it’s unavoidable.”
He bent his head and kissed her softly. “Then let me make you mine in truth. With any luck at all, that will endear me to you and start us on the proper path.”
“You don’t want to look in my bag first?”
He shook her head with a smile. “Later. I’ve the true prize in my arms and no desire to relinquish it. The other will keep.”
How could she argue with that?
And she found that along with being an exceptional swordsman, her husband was an exceptional lover.
She was very grateful she’d had such a good night’s sleep the night before.
Julianna opened her eyes and realized that it was morning. She realized then that it had been the cold that had awakened her. Odd how one grew accustomed to the warmth of a husband in such short order.
Odder still how one grew accustomed to other things as well in such short order.
The thought of that made her blush and she was grateful the candle that burned on the table probably wouldn’t give her away. Who would have thought it? If she’d known that’s what she’d been missing, she might have indulged a little sooner.
Then again, perhaps it all had to do with the man she had married.
She turned that thought over in her head for some time—coming quite easily to the conclusion that William and a ring on her finger had made all the difference—then she tried to get up. She clenched her teeth to keep from groaning from the protests of sore muscles.
“Are you unwell?”
The deep voice startled her and she sat up with a squeak.
“ ’Tis only me, Julianna,” William said, sounding amused. He was sitting at the table, but turned to look at her. “Who else?”
“Who else indeed,” she muttered as she gingerly got to her feet and pulled a blanket off the bed.
She wrapped it around her and went round the end of the bed to stand next to her husband.
He was holding her copy of The Canterbury Tales and fondling it with what she could only term reverence.
“Find anything interesting?” she asked, noting the contents of her bag littering the table.
He shivered. “Interesting, nay. Unsettling, aye.”
“I told you the truth.”
He looked up at her, then put his arm around her waist and hugged her. “Aye, and more the fool am I for not having believed you at first.”
“It’s a lot to take in.”
He dropped his arm and bowed his head. “Aye. It is.”
She had the sinking feeling that maybe he was beginning to have serious regrets. She contemplated going back to bed and trying to reawaken after William had dealt with things, but that would have been cowardly and she wasn’t a coward. Or, not much of one, anyway.
No, she wasn’t and it didn’t matter if she’d just decided that a medieval kind of gal should have a medieval sense of courage. William was, literally, all she had in the world and she wasn’t going to let something as stupid as his discomfort come between them.
“All right,” she said, kneeling down next to him, “talk. I can’t guess what you’re thinking and I’m not going to try. If you have regrets, you’d better tell me now.”
“Me?” he said, looking at her with an expression of surprise. “Rather you should have them, I’m thinking.”
“Me?” she asked in much the same tone. “Why would I have regrets?”
He held up a sportswear catalog. “Look at this,” he demanded. “Look at what you’ve given up for me.”
“That?” she asked with a half laugh. “William, there’s more to life than clothes.”
He blinked, silently. Then he smiled a bit ruefully. “I suppose there is. But Julianna, these marvels—”
“Mean nothing if I had to trade you to have them,” she finished. She smiled up at him. “I’m passing fond of you, you know. You’re well worth trading my birthright for.”
He kissed her and she was almost certain she felt the tension ease out of him.
“I feared,” he whispered against her mouth, “that you would wake and regret having given yourself to me. Especially when I understood what you had given up.”
She didn’t want to tell him that he didn’t understand the half of it, so she merely nodded and let him kiss the socks off her. If she’d had socks on, that was. Soon she didn’t even have on a blanket, and she was just sure she soon wasn’t going to be able to walk anymore.
“Will you read to me?” he asked much later as he snuggled happily next to her in bed with her Chaucer in his hands. “These stories are passing amusing.”
She smiled at him and touched his cheek. “I could teach you to read them yourself.”
“There is no use in it. The priest here at Artane tried to teach me, but without success. My father, on one of his rare visits to see if I lived still, said I was too feebleminded to manage the feat.”
“Your father is an ass.”
He smiled briefly. “Aye, I suppose so.”
“What was the problem?”
“I couldn’t fathom the letters,” he said. “They moved about and turned themselves around until I wept in frustration. So I conceded the battle and turned my energies to other things.”
“It’s probably dyslexia,” she ventured, hoping she was right. “The same thing happens to me with my numbers. Half the time they’re not in the same place I left them when I go back to read them again. It’s very confusing.”
He leaned up on one elbow and looked at her in astonishment. “Nay,” he breathed. “For you too?”
She took a deep breath. She didn’t want to promise him something she couldn’t deliver, but maybe with enough time, she could help him. And after all, she had all the time in the world and not a lot of distractions.
“I think you can learn to read,” she said slowly. “But it wouldn’t be easy.”
He looked as if she’d just come down from heaven and given him his heart’s desire. The terrible hope on his face almost brought tears to her eyes.
“Think you?” he whispered.
“Anything’s possible,” she said quietly.
He lifted one eyebrow as he looked at her, then smiled. “I suppose, lady, that you are proof enough of that. But for now, read me another tale or two and I’ll be content.”
She took the book and opened it only to have something fall from the pages. She unfolded it.
It was Elizabeth’s map.
“What is this?” he asked.
“It’s what got me into trouble in the first place,” she said dryly. “My friend drew me a map of England. According to her, these places are spots where if you stand on them, you can travel through time.”
“And you stood on one of these?” he asked, tracing the outline of the island.
“Nope. I sat on a bench in a park. It’s the same idea though.”
“Tell me what they say,” he urged.
“Well, I guess they’re all to different centuries. The Picts—those were the ancestors of the Scots up north. Vikings—”
“Aye, I know them,” he said with a shudder. “Unpleasant lot.”
“Pirates in the seventeenth century, Jousts in the Middle Ages—”
“A fine destination,” he noted.
“And this one . . . here . . .” She squinted to make out the words—and when she thought she might have the faintest idea what they said, she sat bolt upright. She scrambled out of bed and practically leaped to the table.
William soon came up behind her, wrapped a blanket around her, and peered over her shoulder. “What does it say?”
She pulled the candle toward her and held the paper behind it where she could see the words clearly. “It says,” she began, squinting to make out Elizabeth’s tiny writing, “ ‘Return to Scotland of the Future.’ And there’s a note at the bottom that says ‘Good from Any Century.’ ”
“By all the saints,” he breathed. “Think you ’tis true?”
She could hardly breathe. To think that she might be able to get home. To think the possibility existed and she’d had the answer in her bag all the time. She turned her head to look at him.
“I can’t imagine why Elizabeth would be lying.”
“Julianna!” he exclaimed suddenly.
She looked back at the map and screeched.
The paper was on fire.
William yanked the map away, tossed it on the table and beat the flames out.
“Crap, crap, crap,” she said, hopping up and down. “Did I ruin it?”
He looked at her with a rueful smile. “Came close, I’d say. You tell me what’s gone.”
She took the map and noticed that Trip to the Picts was nothing but a black curl, as was any reference to Vikings.
“We weren’t interested in those anyway,” she said, holding the map well away from the flame and peering at it closely. “It’s okay,” she said with relief. “There the little circle is, right there. Now, if we just had any idea where there was.”
And then she realized what she was saying.
She had just married a medieval knight and committed herself to a life with him. Even contemplating returning home was something she couldn’t allow herself to do.
Unless he wanted to come along.
She looked up at him to find him studying her with a thoughtful expression.
“What?” she asked.
He smiled faintly. “I’m wondering if we’re considering a like foolish notion.”
“A little jaunt to the future?”
He nodded, then shook his head. “I cannot believe I’m even considering it. It seems passing improbable.”
She sighed. “It’s probably a really silly idea anyway—” “But one worth considering,” he finished. “What think you of a walk on the shore? I’ve always done my best thinking there.”
“Is there a possibility of breakfast first?”
“I think, my lady, that too many days of subsisting on your future food has shown you what a foul work it has wrought upon you. Aye, we’ll have something edible before we go.”
He took the map from her, folded it carefully and placed it back between the pages of the book. “We’ll keep this with us at all times as well. No sense in losing it before we’ve had a chance to try it.”
“William, we don’t have to—”
“Don’t you wish to go home?”
It had become altogether too possible for her taste. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t shake her head or nod or even breathe for that matter. There was only one thought that seemed to be clear in the swirling mist of possibilities. She looked at William and smiled.
“My home is with you.”
“See?” he said with satisfaction. “I told you that you might become fond of me in time.”
She put her arms around him and hugged him. “How right you were.”
“Clothes, food, then the shore,” he said, kissing the top of her head and disentangling himself from her arms. “We’ll have clearer heads for thinking there.”
Julianna dressed in her medieval clothing and tried not to let her thoughts run amok. Somehow, though, she just couldn’t stop them. It was one thing to be stuck in the past and be resigned to it. It was another thing entirely to think that perhaps there was a way back to the future.
Then again, perhaps she had already made her choice. She’d married a man centuries in the past with every intention of staying with him. A little piece of paper wasn’t going to change that.
But what if it were true?
She could hardly bear the thought of it.