Chapter 9 #2
“Julianna, nay!” he cried out, trying to jerk her back. He set her aside, then looked down at his chest, fully expecting to see an arrow protruding from between his ribs. He wondered, absently, why there was no pain. Perhaps that was a gift for the dying. . . .
Then he realized something quite astonishing.
There was no bolt.
He looked up.
His father was gone as well.
“Oh, my goodness.”
William turned his attentions to his wife, wondering if he might find the arrow lodged somewhere in her precious form. But she was standing on her feet with apparent ease. Her eyes were huge in her face, those beloved eyes of vivid blue, as she looked around them.
“The trees,” she whispered. “Look at the trees.”
“Julianna,” he began.
“Look at the forest,” she insisted.
William scowled. There were several things that were of much greater importance than observing the forest around them, such as finding out where his father had hidden himself and why neither of them was bleeding from a life-threatening wound.
Then he understood the words she had spoken.
Forest?
He looked down. They were still standing in the midst of a faery ring, but the trees surrounding them were far different than they had been but a moment before. Gone were the shorter, leafier trees. In their place were tall, close-set evergreens that cast the glade into deep shadow.
William gaped at his wife. “Think you we’re in Scotland . . . ?”
“I don’t know what else to think.”
William looked around him, searching the shadows for his father. But the man was nowhere to be seen. Nor was the knife that William had flung at his sire.
He suspected this was not a mystery that would be easily solved.
“Let us mount up,” he said, handing her the reins and giving her a leg up. He swung up onto his own horse. Wherever they were, and whoever might or might not be following them, they would no doubt be served well by removing themselves from an open glade. “We should keep watch for my sire.”
“I don’t think he’ll be following us.”
“Don’t you?” William asked. “What would stop him?”
She smiled weakly. “He’s a nasty person?”
“Then only saintly souls are allowed to skip about the centuries as if in a dance?”
“One could hope.”
“One could hope my blade found home in his chest. I daresay, my love, that such will be the only way he remains behind.”
Which meant he would be keeping watch for a goodly while, until he was satisfied.
But for the moment, what he did know was that he’d been spared, for whatever the reason. He wouldn’t be caught unawares again.
He led the way along a path that seemed to be unnaturally well-trod, past a large pond and into a castle courtyard.
There were strangely formed wagons with shiny wheels and enclosed with brilliantly colored coverings standing in front of the hall door.
“Cars,” Julianna breathed.
Well, an explanation was definitely in order, but perhaps later, after they’d discovered where they were truly and if the inhabitants were friend or foe.
Julianna slid off her horse near the hall door.
William was hard-pressed to tie up their horses to a post and catch her before she’d ascended the three flat steps.
He managed to catch her hand before she knocked.
He drew his sword, pulled her behind him and gave her a pointed look.
She rolled her eyes and sighed. But she stepped behind him willingly enough.
He turned his attentions to his current task and banged on the door sharply with the hilt of his sword.
The occupants weren’t expecting visitors, if the lack of haste employed in opening the door was any indication.
A young man pulled the door open, drinking deeply from some kind of long, white box. He finished, dragged his sleeve across his mouth and looked at them with great indifference.
“Yeah?”
“Who is lord of this keep?” William demanded. “I’ll speak with him immediately.”
“And you would be?” the other asked.
William eyed him narrowly. The lad was doing irreparable damage to the peasant’s English, but perhaps he was a servant and knew no better.
Though with the way he slouched against the doorframe as if he hadn’t any cares, William feared he hadn’t yet hit upon the boy’s identity.
Perhaps this was the steward and he was accustomed to men banging on the doors, demanding to see his master.
William knew there was no fault to be found with his own appearance.
He could thank his uncle for replacing his threadbare garments.
Whoever this young pup was, he should have been more impressed.
William resheathed his sword with a flourish and put his shoulders back.
“I am William of Artane,” he said slowly and distinctly, as if that very utterance should cause all within hearing to back up a pace. “And I demand to know where I am.”
“William—” Julianna poked him in the back.
“And in what year,” William added for good measure.
“William—”
“Julianna, I can see to this on my own.”
“Julianna?”
William looked back at the keeper of the door and was surprised to see a flicker of emotion cross his face.
“Julianna Nelson?” the young man asked.
“Julianna de Piaget,” William corrected, but before he could elaborate on that, his wife had popped out from behind his back and was blathering on in the same horrific butchering of the peasant’s English the lad had used.
He found, however, that if he concentrated very hard, he could understand most of what was said. That, at least, gave him some small measure of comfort. Perhaps ’twas true he couldn’t read. He did, however, have an ear for different tongues. He suspected it might serve him very well.
The lad was holding out his hand. “Zachary Smith. Elizabeth’s brother.”
Julianna took his hand and William snatched his wife’s hand away just as quickly. He threw Zachary Smith a glare. How dare the wretch take liberties with his bride!
“All right,” the young man said, carefully backing up so they could enter. “No problem. Come on in.”
“Where is Elizabeth?” Julianna asked.
“She and Jamie are away for a week or so. It’s just me. Alone. Again.”
Elizabeth was Julianna’s friend and the maker of the magical map.
William suspected he would eventually thank her for the like.
First he would have to see if the Future agreed with him, for though he’d had no direct answer to his question, even he possessed wits enough to know that if he was looking at Elizabeth MacLeod’s brother, he’d come to Julianna’s time in truth.
The saints preserve him.
“This is the deal.”
William stiffened when he found himself being stared at so pointedly by young Zachary Smith.
“No swords down the toilets. No phone calls without supervision. No standing in front of an open fridge taking a bite out of everything inside. And the remote is mine in the evenings.”
William had no idea what idiocy the lad was babbling, so he dismissed it and began to look about him.
There was a very adequate fireplace with several comfortable chairs set before it.
William nodded with satisfaction. That, at least, he found to his liking.
He strode out into the hall and looked about him.
No rushes, but the floor was passing clean and had a pleasant smell.
He turned to his left and walked into what he assumed might be the kitchens.
And then he froze in place.
Several enormous boxes made from materials he’d never before seen in his life stared back at him in a forbidding, unyielding way.
Zachary Smith pushed past him and walked to one of the boxes. William found he couldn’t even hold out a hand to stop the lad.
“Fridge,” Zachary said, wrestling with one of the shiny beasts and opening its belly. “Not much food, of course, because no one’s gone shopping. But you can scrape the mold off—”
William looked at his wife and very carefully swallowed. It served him not at all, but he hoped it looked like a manly swallow and not the one of a body about to fall to his knees and weep.
And then bless his sweet lady if she didn’t put her arms around him and soothe him in the very comforting French he’d grown to manhood speaking.
“Let’s go have a nap,” she said.
He knew that word. It was a word from her Future, but one he had grown heartily fond of in the past month.
“We’ll put it all to rights later,” she added.
“Think you?” he whispered against her hair.
“I do.”
William took a deep breath, stepped back and stiffened his spine. “As you say. First, I must see to our mounts and bring in our gear. Then you may lead on to where we might nap in peace.”
He had, after all, put his foot to this path and there was little hope of turning back. He was not one to walk away from a battle and if the Future wanted to wage one against him, it wouldn’t come away victorious.
He only hoped the fridge was the least of the marvels he would be called upon to endure.
Once upon a time there was a knight who made a vow, a solemn vow given with all his heart and soul to protect women of all stations, champion children, defend, and rescue any and all maidens in distress, but preferably one in the greatest of distress.
And when he found such a maiden, he vowed to rescue her from dragons, sweep her up into his arms and carry her off to his castle near the sea where he would wed her and make yet another vow to . . .