Peaches shook her head. “He was very kind to me, but that’s the extent of his feelings for me. I’m sure of it.”
Tess nodded and seemed to have nothing more to say about it. Peaches didn’t blame her. It wasn’t as though there was anything to say. Stephen was not for her and she was not for him. The sooner she came to grips with that, the happier she would be.
Besides, she didn’t like him. He was bossy, serious, and had far too many girlfriends with bad manners popping in to see him at odd hours. She was looking for someone who would be content to let her walk all over him. Really.
She looked at Tess. “What should I do? With my life, I mean.”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Tess said with an uncomfortable laugh. “I’m not the dispenser of advice. That’s your job. If you were you giving advice to someone in your situation, what would you tell them?”
“Not to make any snap decisions, but rather lay out all the options and examine each carefully and with love,” Peaches said dutifully.
“Well, then there you go.” Tess poured the tea into the thermos and packed up the picnic basket with all kinds of goodies. “Let’s go avoid making any snap decisions. And go examine stuff with love.”
“You and me?” Peaches asked.
“You and I,” Tess said pleasantly, “and yes, we should go enjoy the morning. It’s very nice outside.”
“It’s freezing,” Peaches said, “which doesn’t begin to address the idea that you want us to go have fun with John as third wheel.”
“John won’t be a third wheel,” Tess said, putting her coat on. “He has his hands full. This picnic stuff is just for us. We’re spectating this morning.”
“Spectating what?”
“Whom,” Tess corrected.
“Spectating whom, then,” Peaches said, suppressing the urge to throw up her hands in frustration.
“John and his friend. They’re in the lists, working out.”
Peaches put her coat on because Tess shoved it at her. “Who is his friend?”
Tess looked at her in amusement. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Peaches felt suddenly as though she might like to sit down. “Don’t mess with me, Tess. My chi is way out of balance right now. Whom are we spectating?”
Tess took the basket in one hand and Peaches in the other. “Stephen.”
“Stephen de Piaget?”
“The very same.”
Peaches closed her eyes and took several deep, calming breaths. So Stephen had come to Sedgwick. The man had car keys and was old enough to drive. He was free to go wherever he wanted to.
Besides, he had probably come to discuss his recent adventures with John. If he happened to have brought his sword with him, who was she to quibble? It had nothing to do with her. She could go out to the lists with Tess, watch the goings-on dispassionately, then come inside and have a very lovely, leisurely supper no matter who else was at the table.
She took in a deep, cleansing breath, repeated a soothing mantra, then opened her eyes and looked at her sister.
“I would have thought he had class,” she said.
“He had class yesterday, which was why he wasn’t here for supper last night. Today is a different story.”
“He must have been very eager to see John.”
“Oh, yes, I’m sure that’s the reason,” Tess agreed.
Peaches ignored the way that sent her pulse spiking. “Doesn’t Dr. de Piaget teach more than one day a week?”
“Apparently not,” Tess said without so much as a hint of a smirk. “And if you’re curious—though it’s obvious by the way you keep repeating your serenity mantras out loud and not realizing that you’re doing so—Stephen has been here for well over an hour. I’m surprised you didn’t see him as you were running away from the castle earlier.”
“I was watching the ground,” Peaches said, with another handful of deep breaths.
“We should go see what’s left of your friend. They’ve been out there for quite a while.”
“John might be surprised. All that business of Stephen’s not being able to hold his own with Montgomery was fake. He’s been training with Ian MacLeod for I don’t know how long. Too long, probably.”
“I’m not worried.”
“You shouldn’t be, but I am,” Peaches said, finding her mouth very dry all of the sudden. She looked at her sister and tried not to panic. “Why is he here?”
“I believe John invited him for lunch.”
“Why was John talking to him in the first place?”
“He called,” Tess said easily. “Yesterday, which I’m not sure I told you. Right after the very lovely Victoria of Stow threw a very expensive first-edition Joyce into his fire, which bothered him somewhat, and he realized you had gone. Apparently, you left your brush in his bathroom.”
Peaches shot Tess a look. “I didn’t have a brush, though I did use his bathroom. I was just borrowing the shower.”
Tess looked at her in amusement. “Peaches, you’re an adult—”
“And I was just borrowing his shower. One of his girlfriends showed up while I was still in his bathrobe because I didn’t have anything but a filthy ball gown to put back on and didn’t realize Humphreys had brought me my clothes. Victoria of Stow can believe what she wants. You have to believe that I was just borrowing Stephen’s shower.”
“It’s best to wait until marriage,” Tess said solemnly.
“Is it?”
“It is.”
Peaches rolled her eyes. “I’m not quite sure why we’re talking about that because—” She blew out her breath. “I wonder if I can get a flight out of here this morning.”
“To where?” Tess asked seriously.
“To retrieve my underwear from their place of honor on Roger Peabody’s mantel, that’s where.”
Tess stopped and put down her burden, then put her arms around Peaches. She hugged her tightly for a moment or two, then released her only far enough to put her hands on her shoulders. “Stay.”
“I’m afraid to,” Peaches whispered.
“You might like him.”
“I’m not planning my life around a man.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have things to do,” Peaches said, pulling away. “Important things to get together.”
“Well, while you’re making a plan to get all those important things back together, why don’t you stay?” Tess asked reasonably. “The castle’s big enough for all of us. You figure out what you want to do, and while you’re figuring that out, you can see Stephen when he’s down this way doing research.”
“Research on what?”
“On you.”
Peaches would have shoved her sister, but she’d given that up when she was five. She scowled at her instead. “Don’t push this where it doesn’t want to go. I’ve just recently forgiven him for being a jerk—”
“He wasn’t a jerk. He was tongue-tied.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Peach, I’ve known Stephen de Piaget for almost eight years. The man is a verbal Niagara Falls. It’s impossible to shut him up.”
“He hardly says anything to me.”
“That’s because you scare him.”
“Why?”
“Because he likes you.”
“Why?” Peaches asked miserably.
“Are you kidding?” Tess said with a laugh. “Have you looked at yourself lately?”
“Is that it?” Peaches managed. “He’s only interested in outsides?”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Tess said, taking her by the arm and pulling her out of the solar. “I’m not going to make a lengthy list of your considerable assets.”
“But I can’t do anything—”
Tess stopped so suddenly, she almost pulled Peaches off her feet. She looked at her seriously. “You listen to me, Peaches Alexander, before I go all Aunt Edna on you. Your gifts are numerous, your brainpower staggering, and your possibilities limited only by your courage. But if yo
u want to know the single most amazing thing about you—which is going to make you impossible to live with—it is that when you talk to someone, the rest of the world falls away and the person so blessed by your attention feels like the most important person in the world. And if you think that’s a small thing, think again.”
Peaches found herself towed across the floor again. “I don’t have a title.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to marry you.”
“I’m not going to be h-h-his,” Peaches spluttered. “Well, whatever it is, I’m not going to be his version of it. I don’t even like him!”
“Liar.”
Peaches couldn’t refute that, so she shut her mouth and followed her sister across the courtyard and out to the lists.
“Watch out for the rock.”
Peaches looked down to find herself standing far too close to the flat stone that marked the time gate at the end of Tess’s bridge. She looked at her sister. “I think I want to stay here.”
“In England?”
“No, in the castle. Back in the kitchen.”
“Why?”
Peaches took a deep breath. “Because I’m afraid.”
“Afraid to see Stephen or leave Stephen?”
Peaches blew her bangs out of her eyes.
Tess patted her. “I wouldn’t worry. You don’t like him anyway, remember?”
Peaches supposed it would be a poor thank-you for Tess’s hospitality to push her into her moat, so she merely scowled at her again and followed her out to what served as the lists.
She sat down on a log and looked around at anything besides what was going on in front of her. She studied the flat clouds above her head, the muddy lists, the forest of bare trees that surrounded the castle at a discreet distance.
But the ring of swords was relentlessly distracting.
She finally sighed deeply and gave in. And wished immediately that she hadn’t.
She hadn’t thought to ask Stephen how old he was, mid-thirties perhaps, though there was no difference between him and John when it came to energy or grace. John had the benefit of a lifetime of training, but he didn’t seem to be taking it all that easy on Stephen.
She gave up watching her brother-in-law and gave in to the impulse to just watch a man who was nothing at all like she’d originally thought him to be. He might have had his collection of diplomas on the wall and his certificates from nobility school, and while that might have been a good representation of who he was, it wasn’t all he was.
He had bought her a ball gown to make her feel beautiful, endured her snarls at him, watched her drool openly over David Preston. He had hoisted a second-rate sword in her defense, ignored the ruination of the insides of a very expensive car, and taken her to his house where she would be comfortable and safe.
He had bought her green drink, simply because he’d known she would like it.
But he was also the future Earl of Artane, the current Viscount Haulton and Baron Etham, and a full-fledged professor at Cambridge who had earned his posh office not because of his father’s money or influence but by virtue of his own hard work.
She wondered why he wasn’t married.
She wondered why she couldn’t escape the thought that that was maybe a good thing.
Tess leaned close. “You don’t like him.”
Peaches had to take a deep breath before she could answer. “Nope.”
“He’s not your type.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I understand he enjoys a good filet mignon from time to time.”
“Barbaric,” Peaches murmured.
“He’s gorgeous, though, isn’t he?”
“Y—” Peaches shut her mouth around the word and glared at her sister. “Stop that.”
“I like to see where your thoughts are leading you.”
“You’re a busybody.”
Tess only smiled pleasantly and went back to watching her husband. Peaches fought with herself for several minutes, minutes during which swords clanged and medieval verbs were conjugated and corrected, then gave in and leaned close to her sister.
“He has girlfriends. Three of them.”
“Two, now,” Tess corrected. “And he doesn’t like them.”
“Then why does he date them?”
“It keeps Granny off his back.”
Peaches looked into the mirror of her own eyes. “He would never, ever want to marry someone like me,” she said in a miserable whisper.
Tess looked at her as seriously as she ever had during all their years of serious conversations. “Why don’t you, my dearest Peaches, let him be the judge of that?”
Peaches threw her arms around her sister, hugged her until Tess squeaked, then jumped up and ran away.
She didn’t want anyone to see her seriously consider bursting into tears.
By the time the afternoon was over, she was a wreck. Stephen was his normal self … only he wasn’t. He was gravely polite to her, though she could now see that it wasn’t disinterest that made him so, it was solicitousness. He laughed with John over things about the modern day that amused them both, switched gears easily to grill Tess on her meeting with Terry Holmes, then seamlessly continued discussions in medieval Norman French.
He did glance her way briefly during that last bit, one of his eyebrows raised.
She waved him on to his pleasures, trying not to feel flattered that he’d been interested enough in her comfort level with that version of the language that he would think to ask. He was the product of good breeding and the beneficiary of a mother who had obviously taught him good manners, nothing more.
Nothing that meant anything out of the ordinary for her.
She managed to convince herself of that all the way until he asked her politely if she wouldn’t walk him to his car.
She went, because Tess pushed her out the door.
And honestly, by that point it would have been rude to turn and run the other way, so she put her shoulders back, reminded herself she was a grown-up, and walked with him through the courtyard. She was extremely grateful to be in jeans, a warm sweater, and boots instead of one high heel and a Cinderella dress.
He paused at the end of the drawbridge, eyed the marker there, and moved to the other side of the bridge. Peaches looked at him in surprise.
“Why are we stopping?”
“It’s cold,” he said with a shrug, “and I wanted to make sure you got back inside safely.”
She looked at him and frowned. “Then why did we come out here?”
“Because I wanted to ask you something.”
She didn’t dare speculate on what that something might be, so she simply looked at him, mute and terrified.
“Are you going back to Seattle?”
The question was abrupt enough to startle her. She blinked, then took a deep breath. “I don’t know.”
He chewed on his words for a moment or two. “Tess mentioned something in passing about a bit of a blip in your business, but I didn’t ask the details.”
“Blip,” Peaches echoed. “You could call it that.”
“What would you call it, then?”
“Complete destruction. She told my biggest client to shove off. That client took the rest of them with her.”
He studied her in silence for several very long moments, which made her extremely nervous. “That must have been unpleasant.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Peaches said, aiming for lightness but fearing she had only managed to sound as panicked as she felt. “A booming business is highly overrated. Besides, it was just sorting socks.”
Stephen leaned against the iron railing and looked at her thoughtfully. “Well, I suspect it wasn’t just that, but I don’t know enough about it to comment.” He paused. “I’m wondering, though, if you might be willing to take a day or two for a charitable mission before you go back to rebuilding your empire.”
“Not if that mission requires any time traveling,” she said with a shiver, “and just know I feel as weird
saying that as it sounds.”
Stephen smiled faintly. “Nothing so perilous.” He paused, then jammed his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “I have something that needs to be done, and I was wondering if you might be willing to lend a hand.”
“Do you need your socks sorted?”
He smiled very briefly.
The sight about knocked her flat.
“Nothing so lofty, I fear. I was thinking more along the lines of help with research. I was thinking that given your background—”
“In organic substances?” she asked, that time managing a bit of lightness.
Stephen looked at her seriously. It was a different expression from his usual gravely polite one. She wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse, but it was definitely different.
“I was trying to find something to say that evening,” he said quietly, “and succeeded only in offending you.” He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I would pay you, of course, for the aid with my research.”
“What do you need researched?”
“Oh,” he began slowly, “just things.”
“Sounds pressing.”
“One must publish often,” he said. “That sort of thing.”
She wasn’t sure she would get anything done for him. She wasn’t sure she could sit inside his office and read. Maybe she could hide in the library and send him her notes via courier pigeon. She looked at him frankly.
“I have visa issues,” she said, “but John’s working on it. He knows a guy.”
“I imagine he knows several.”
“Don’t look at me,” she said, holding up her hands. “He’s your uncle.”
“So it would seem.” He looked at her. “And your answer?”
“Can I think about it?” she asked.
He nodded slowly. “Of course.” He stepped up on the bridge, looked at her, then extended his elbow. “I’ll walk you back.”
She looked at him in surprise. “Wasn’t I walking you?”
“That was just an excuse to have you alone,” he said seriously. “Let’s go, love, before you catch your death.”
Love. She had listened to John call Tess that dozens of times and smiled every single time. Having a de Piaget lad use that term on her was slightly more knee-weakening than she’d thought it would be. She took Stephen’s proffered arm, because it seemed like the best way to get herself back inside the gates while remaining on her feet.