Death it would be, then.
He engaged the first man who stepped forward, then slew him without hesitation. That seemed to change a few minds, but not nearly as many as he would have liked. He drew a knife from one of his boots and fought with both blades, preferring to inflict damage where possible instead of death. Unfortunately, the lads he encountered seemed to have an especial determination to do him in. Perhaps they had been promised something particular by Gunnild if he was removed as lord of the keep. Why they hadn’t bothered to think that through far enough to realize that his father would only send another of his vassals—as well as a very large contingent of angry guardsmen to repay them for their disloyalty—Montgomery didn’t know. He began to wonder if he might do well to trade those knights to Gunnild’s eldest for a few of his most disloyal lads who might find a change of masters to their liking
He watched occasionally out of the corner of his eye to see how his men were faring. They needed none of his support, which didn’t surprise him. Ranulf had, as he boasted as often as possible, squired with Jackson of Raventhorpe, who was no poor swordsman himself, and he’d been hell-bent on proving his worth. Montgomery had made him captain of his own guard three years earlier, sure in not only his skill but his loyalty. Even Phillip was holding his own quite well, needing only a thrust or two from Fitzpiers to keep him from being skewered. At least Pippa was . . . safe . . .
His solar door was open.
He staggered, then caught himself heavily before he tripped over a corpse at his feet. He shoved away the man trying to engage him from the other side of the body, then strode across the great hall. Gunnild appeared suddenly in his way, a knife bare in her hand. He stopped and looked at her in disbelief.
“Surely you jest, lady.”
Apparently not. She threw herself at him, but she was no match for him. Indeed, Phillip could have fought her and been forced to stifle his yawns. Montgomery rid her of her knife as gently as possible, then tossed it to Phillip before he looked at the former lady of the keep.
“I would like to believe you had nothing to do with this uprising,” he said gravely.
“Would I admit it if I had?” she said, drawing herself up and looking at him haughtily. “And if I had, I would be justified in protecting my home from being overrun by usurpers!”
Montgomery would have taken the time to explain to her again just how it was that property was inherited in present-day England but since he knew he would only be wasting his breath, he forbore.
That and he had other business to see to at the moment. He ran into his solar to find Ada and Boydin there, hurling insults at Pippa. At least only words were being used, though Boydin had his sword drawn and looked as if he fully planned to use it for its intended purpose.
Montgomery looked Ada over for weapons, then pushed her out of the way and stepped in front of Pippa. He turned to face Boydin.
“Troubling my guests again, are you?” he said shortly.
“Killing my father’s men, are you?” Boydin sneered.
“They are my men now,” Montgomery said, “and when their honor does not extend to keeping their oaths, they won’t be that any longer. And don’t feign indignation, cousin. You would do the same in my place, did you find yourself master of Artane with men still loyal to my father.”
“I wouldn’t presume to take a keep that isn’t mine,” Boydin snapped. “And I’ll fight to the death to keep you from taking this one.”
Montgomery cursed himself silently. He had handled the entire thing badly. He had assumed Denys’s children would be opposed to him, but he hadn’t supposed they would prefer losing their own lives to going off, accompanied by a good deal of gold, and starting over again somewhere else. Somewhere, perhaps, where the keep wasn’t sporting holes in critical bits of itself.
He paused. Nay, he wasn’t being completely truthful with himself. He had considered just how terrible the situation might become; he had simply dismissed thoughts of it as a lack of faith in his own abilities to influence the outcome. There were times, even as he stood in his own great hall with a woman he thought he might love but knew he couldn’t have standing behind him, that he couldn’t help but wonder if his father had made a terrible mistake. John would have been more suited—
“Montgomery!”
He leapt aside, jerking Pippa out of the way as Boydin thrust with his sword. There was no proper space inside the solar to fight, but he made do because he had no choice. Ada was the unaccounted for element in a mixture he had little liking for. He fought with his back to Pippa, which he supposed was a good way to protect her, but it left him unable to watch her. He would have happily backed Boydin out of the chamber, but that would have left him guarding Pippa in the great hall, which didn’t seem a particularly prudent thing to do. He was also having to make more of an effort to keep Boydin at bay than he had before. Perhaps his cousin was repaying him for the endings of any number of their earlier encounters.
Pippa screamed suddenly, then turned and fled from the solar. Montgomery saw Ada follow her with a knife in her hand. He leapt forward only to find Boydin in his way. He fought his cousin furiously, but Boydin had discovered yet another measure of courage. Montgomery knew he should have just run the bloody whoreson through, but something stopped him—his own foolish notion of honor, he supposed—so he feinted to the left, then caught his cousin in the face with his elbow and sent him sprawling. He bolted out the door, more unnerved than he’d ever been in any battle he’d ever fought. If anything happened to Pippa—
The great hall was still in an uproar. Montgomery made certain Phillip was still breathing, then looked frantically about him for Pippa. He saw the last of something escaping out the front door, though he supposed that could have been anyone. He knew he had three choices for a search: up the stairs, to the kitchens, or through the courtyard and out the gate. To judge amiss would be to sentence Pippa to things she couldn’t possibly fight herself. Ada was, from what Montgomery had seen, ruthless and completely without honor. The saints only knew what other dangers Pippa would find along her way.
It was as he’d thought before: thirteenth-century England wasn’t the place for her.
That realistic but unpleasant thought only added to his anger. He chose the door to the hall, prayed he had chosen well, then ran across a floor that was slippery with more than just leavings from supper. He leapt down the stairs and bolted through the muck that was less than before but still too much. He saw a lad up on the roof who looked as if he might be tempted to lower the innermost portcullis. Montgomery pointed his sword at him.
“Do and breathe not another moment.”
The man held up his hands in surrender and Montgomery continued on his way, frantic at the thought of what could be happening to Pippa. He wondered how any of his brothers bore that sort of feeling about their wives.
At least they all had loyal garrisons to protect those wives, which he supposed helped a great deal.
He realized he was being trailed only because Boydin began to curse him. Montgomery ignored him. He could see Pippa and Ada fighting at the end of the bridge.
He could also see a shimmer in the air.
Pippa was holding on to Ada by the wrists, keeping her by sheer strength alone from plunging a knife into her breast. Pippa finally kicked Ada in the belly, sending her falling back with a gasp. Unfortunately, the motion overbalanced her, and she started to fall backward into the cesspit.
Montgomery never heard a splash.
He stood there, rooted to the spot, looking at the place where she had stood not a moment before.
And then he felt a blinding pain in his head the moment before his world went dark.
Chapter 20
Pippa resurfaced in Montgomery’s cesspit, fully prepared to spit disgusting things out of her mouth again for the third time.
Only this time the water was clean. And deeper.
She swam to the bank, rather grateful for the light she could see in the distance. Maybe
someone had run out of the keep with a torch so Montgomery would be able to see Boydin and do him in. She would also have to have a conversation with him about Ada. That girl was dangerous.
She crawled out of the water and found to her surprise that she wasn’t covered in sewer leavings. It was odd enough that she stopped to consider it. The little lake had stunk to high heaven as they’d ridden across it the day before. She straightened, then felt a tingle begin at the back of her neck. It was almost dark, true, but she could have sworn that wasn’t the lists she was looking at.
It was Tess’s gift shop, tucked back in the forest where it wouldn’t be seen immediately and ruin the appearance of Sedgwick being stuck in the Middle Ages.
She turned around slowly, then felt her mouth fall open. She looked up and saw a castle silhouetted against the sky in a lovely autumn twilight.
A castle in perfect condition.
She supposed it didn’t matter this time what might drip down from her hair into her mouth given that she obviously had fallen not into Montgomery’s cesspit, but her sister’s moat. She shut her mouth and looked around her frantically, but there was no sign of Montgomery, or his evil cousins, or anything she had grown accustomed to over the past few weeks. All that was there in front of her was modern perfection with its floodlights and long wooden bridge and moat water that contained nothing more nefarious than fish and frogs.
She turned around and around frantically, looking for the sparkles that signaled the opening of the gate she had used twice now, the gate that had suddenly and unpredictably taken her from a place she suddenly realized she hadn’t been ready to leave yet.
Arms flung themselves around her. She fought them ferociously until she realized they belonged not to one of Montgomery’s evil cousins but to her sister. She was even more surprised to find that sister was Peaches, not Tess.
“Pippa, you idiot, where have you been?” Peaches demanded, blubbering copiously.
Pippa couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She wasn’t prone to physical weakness, her habit of going a little weak in the knees when faced with a room full of vintage buttons and trims aside, but she thought she just might pass out from shock.
She had gone through the gate she’d been waiting to go through for two solid weeks.
The unfortunate thing was, she hadn’t wanted to.
“And what in the hell are you wearing?” Peaches demanded. “Pip, I hate to say this, but you need a shower.”
Pippa might have laughed another time, but she couldn’t at the moment given that she felt as if her heart had just been wrenched out of her chest. She was making some sort of sound, though, and it sounded pretty unhinged.
She had to get back. There, that was the ticket. She had to get back to the past even if it was just to tell Montgomery good-bye properly and thank him for his hospitality. Even if she could just poke her head through the gate and wave, that would be enough. But this . . . this leaving without so much as a look . . .
It was intolerable.
“Come on,” Peaches said, tugging on her. “Let’s go inside before you freeze to death out here.”
“No,” Pippa said, trying to pull away. “I have to stay—”
“Pip—”
“I have to stay out here,” Pippa said, fighting Peaches’s hands off. “I have to stay out here and wait for the gate to open back up.”
Peaches took her by both arms and held on tightly. “Look, Pippa, we’ve already dealt with Cindi a few days ago after she called us in hysterics from some random native’s house. Stephen’s still shaking from the return trip with her. Don’t make me lock you up, too.”
Pippa supposed she was glad Cindi had made it back to the right time. She imagined she might at some point in the future care what Cindi had had to say about their whole adventure and more particularly where on her sister’s person her flash drive could be found. Now, though, she could only stand there and shake. She looked up over Peaches’s head at the castle that stood there, visible now only thanks to the floodlights and not the sky behind it.
Montgomery would have been pleased with how it looked.
“Pippa?”
Pippa dragged herself back to the present—a shocking thing to contemplate, truly—and looked at her sister. “Cindi?” she echoed. “You locked her up?”
“We put her in an involuntary detox program,” Peaches said briskly. “She’s now peeling the wallpaper with her swearing and entertaining her keepers with all kinds of interesting stories.” She squeezed the fabric of Pippa’s sleeves. “You’re sopping wet, sister. Did you fall into the moat?”
Yes, three times now was what she wanted to say. Instead, she simply looked around her for things that had disappeared centuries ago.
Or five minutes ago, depending on one’s point of view.
She pulled away from Peaches, then walked back and forth in front of the end of the wooden bridge that spanned Tess’s almost pristine moat. She stopped each time at the spot where the time gate should have been, but each time there was nothing there.
Or, at least she thought there was nothing there. It was a little difficult to decide that given that she was so cold, she could hardly think straight, much less pay attention to her surroundings. Five minutes ago, she could have reached out and touched Montgomery de Piaget, thrown herself into his arms, told him that even though there were a whole slew of reasons it was crazy, she thought she just might love him.
Now, she couldn’t even write him a letter.
Things started to go a little fuzzy, but she didn’t go for a swim as she might have at another time in those circumstances. She felt herself being caught suddenly and lifted up in strong arms. She managed to focus on a face she recognized.
From the future, unfortunately.
“Oh, not you,” she moaned.
Stephen de Piaget looked a bit startled. “I am having terrible luck with women these days. Is it something I’m doing?”
Pippa pushed herself out of his arms. That he let her down without a peep in protest showed that he was obviously not used to the determination of a woman who’d just spent half a month going toe-to-toe with a medieval lord. He did, though, take hold of her arm. When Peaches took the other, she looked at her sister in surprise.
“You aren’t going to put me in the loony bin, are you?”
“The shower,” Peaches said. “I think you’ll feel better when you’re warm.”
“I can’t go inside,” Pippa protested.
“Yes,” Peaches said firmly, “you most certainly can. And you will. I’ll come back out here with you later, after you’ve warmed up.”
Pippa didn’t want to go, but she could tell the fight wasn’t going to be worth it. Peaches was tougher than she looked, and the silent message she’d telegraphed to Stephen had resulted in his taking a firmer grip on Pippa’s arm as well. Maybe if she humored them for a bit, she could escape out the front door and camp out by where the gate should be.
She honestly didn’t know what else to do.
And the truth was, at the moment, a shower sounded heavenly. Hot showers had certainly been on the list she’d made of things she loved about the future and couldn’t wait to get back to, hadn’t they? She was five minutes from having something she had wanted very badly.
Too bad she’d had to give up something else she wanted very badly in order to have it.
She stumbled when she walked into the courtyard only because she was so used to picking up her feet to keep them from sinking into the mire. It was only then that she realized she was no longer wearing her shoes. Maybe she’d lost them in Montgomery’s courtyard. She stared down at her feet and felt the world begin to spin. Only Stephen’s arm around her shoulders kept her from falling on her face.
“Now, shall I carry you?” he asked kindly.
She looked up at him numbly. He looked so much like Montgomery, yet not at all. He was all polished modernness, not all rough around the edges, not at all likely to draw his sword and do serious damage with
it. He was a lovely man, true, but he was not the one she wanted—
No, she didn’t want Montgomery de Piaget. She latched on to that thought with all the tenacity of a woman barely holding on to her sanity. Of course she was thrilled to be back in her time with all its myriad luxuries and opportunities. She could hardly wait to pour herself a big bowl of Cheetos, plunge her face into it, and revel in all the unnatural cheesiness.
She paused. That didn’t sound as good as she’d hoped it would. Maybe there was a French restaurant nearby where she could go, just for old time’s sake.
She realized Stephen was still waiting for an answer. She shook her head, because that seemed a reasonable response to whatever question he’d asked her that she could no longer remember, then she accepted his arm and walked with him across the courtyard. Peaches still had a hold of her on the other side, so perhaps she looked a little more fragile than she felt.
She entered the great hall and gasped in spite of herself. She stepped away from Peaches and Stephen and stared at her surroundings. She turned around in a circle—which she couldn’t seem to stop doing—and looked at the hall. The tapestries were lovely, the fireplaces perfectly capable of keeping the hall smoke free, the furnishings obviously quite new and sturdy.
It was devastating somehow.
She saw Tess come to a skidding halt in the middle of the hall, then watched her sister start to weep. It was odd, the sight of that, because Tess was not a weeper.
“I’ve had an adventure,” Pippa croaked.
Tess almost tackled her where she stood. “I thought you were dead,” she said, hugging Pippa so tightly, Pippa lost her breath. “I had divers out to comb the moat for you and Cindi both.”
“I’m sorry,” Pippa managed. “I . . . I got lost.”
Tess pulled away and looked at her searchingly. “You aren’t hurt, are you?”