One Magic Moment

  “I say,” a voice said with the utmost politeness, “I believe the lady said she wasn’t interested.”

  Her would-be attacker squirmed and swore until he got a good look at who was holding him. Then he stopped, probably because the expression on John de Piaget’s face was not nearly as friendly as his words had been. Tess felt a little faint, and she was the one being rescued.

  “Just a friendly little embrace,” the blond reenactment member squeaked.

  “Well then, friend,” John said coolly, “let me help you understand something that I’m sure will be of great benefit to you in your future embraces. When the lady in question threatens to geld you, it means she isn’t interested. At that point, a gentleman apologizes, withdraws, and looks inward to discover what it is about himself that women find so repugnant. You, I believe, have many hours of such reflection to look forward to.”

  “Now, wait a minute—”

  John released him and merely folded his arms over his chest, obviously content to wait for his opponent to make the first move.

  Blondie blustered a bit, apparently thought twice, then quickly slunk off back to the great hall. Tess let out a shuddering breath.

  “Thank you.”

  John turned a frown on her. “Are you hurt?”

  She shook her head. “A little rumpled, but otherwise unharmed.” She took a deep breath and looked at him. “I didn’t expect to see you tonight.”

  He pursed his lips. “Wednesday was too far away.”

  “And yet you don’t sound particularly happy to see me.”

  He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “It isn’t that. I’m simply wrestling with my desire to go beat the bloody hell out of that lad for manhandling you.”

  “I would suggest a refreshing glass of punch, but I think it’s the problem.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “I would say your friend had already sampled more of it than was polite, but I don’t think he’d been drinking.”

  “Too much time in tights.”

  “I didn’t want to say as much, but you might have it aright.” He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, then dropped his arm quickly, as if he’d just realized what he was doing and regretted it. “Perhaps we should go police the punch bowl. Unless you’d rather dance.”

  “Can you dance?”

  “It comes along as part of the lute playing.” He nodded toward the hall. “Let’s see if it will serve as a decent distraction for the both of us and save your would-be suitor my fist in his gut.”

  She didn’t protest when he tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow, just as she’d seen Montgomery do a dozen times with her sister.

  A devastating realization, actually.

  She tried to concentrate on other things. She stole a look at John from out of the corner of her eye, grateful somehow that he wasn’t wearing a sword or she might have mistaken him for someone else of a medieval vintage. She would have closed her eyes in self-defense, but she might have missed the view and that would have been a darned shame.

  He was probably six foot three, maybe a bit taller, and somehow that height added to those broad shoulders added to long legs added to protectiveness he just couldn’t seem to get past all combined to make her feet absolutely delicate when she was anywhere near him. She didn’t consider herself particularly fragile, but she had to admit that there was something rather lovely about standing next to a man who made her feel that way.

  “Oh, Miss Alexander!”

  Tess sighed and turned to look at one of the catering staff who was running after her. “Yes, Karen?”

  “You’re needed,” the girl said, looking at John with undisguised admiration. “Briefly.”

  John put his hand over hers. “I’ll go guard the punch bowl.”

  She nodded and forced herself not to watch him walk away. She followed Karen back to the kitchen, solved a problem that didn’t need her approval, then walked back up the way to the hall, hoping she wouldn’t emerge to find it in a shambles.

  Fortunately, it was simply full of dancers. She didn’t see John immediately, which sent a little thrill of unease through her. She realized, however, that he was still there as she walked out into the middle of her hall, then turned to look at one of the hearths.

  He was waiting for her, visible now and again when the sea of dancers parted.

  She could hardly catch her breath. She’d watched her sister Pippa find herself facing Montgomery in exactly the same way, in the midst of a party of medieval reenactment aficionados—and watched the look on her sister’s face.

  The thought of it about did her in.

  “Tess? Shall we dance?”

  She took a deep breath, nodded, then put her hand in his and walked with him into the fray. She would have asked him, after a few minutes, what he thought of not only the music but the steps, but she was too distracted by the calluses on his right hand. Maybe they came from working on cars. Maybe they came from working with a sword.

  She thought about that while she did her best to remember where to put her feet. She also thought about the fact that even though John was wearing the simplest garb there, he was the one who looked like a lord’s son.

  For some reason, that thought caught her heart and wrenched it, hard.

  She lasted through three dances, three very formal, non-touchy, medieval dances before she looked over and saw Peaches watching her from a spot near the punch bowl. She looked away only to have her eyes full of John who looked so much like Montgomery that it left her with the unwholesome feeling that the future was again colliding with the past—and not just the past of two months ago when Montgomery and Pippa had danced in her hall, but the past past where Pippa and Montgomery had no doubt spent innumerable evenings dancing with each other just as she was dancing with John.

  She shivered. The whole evening had become full of things she didn’t want to think about. If she hadn’t taken the castle, Pippa wouldn’t have come to England, then Pippa wouldn’t have fallen into the moat and into Montgomery de Piaget’s arms, Pippa wouldn’t be trapped in the Middle Ages, and she herself wouldn’t be looking at her medieval extended relation who was loitering in the wrong century, but she was finding that she increasingly didn’t want him to be anywhere else.

  “I need a breath of air,” she said, gulping down unwholesome amounts of the same. “I’ll be right back. Make yourself at home.”

  He only frowned.

  She shot Peaches a look she knew Peaches understood completely, then walked through the kitchens and out into the stables. She flicked on the lights, then paused in front of an empty box. She wasn’t one to weep, but she was fast coming to the realization that she might not manage to avoid it.

  She felt John come to a stop next to her. She wanted to offer a litany of excuses as to why she was so close to losing it, but she supposed that wasn’t necessary. She took another gulp of damp, chilly December air, then gestured to the empty stall.

  “Lord Roland kept horses,” she managed. “I imagine all the lords of Sedgwick kept horses.” She looked at him. “Do you like horses?”

  “Love them,” he said, then he bit his tongue. He was silent for a moment or two, then sighed. “I had one in my youth. I don’t have room for any now, of course.”

  “I do, but I wouldn’t know what to do with them,” she said. “They’re awfully big. And they bite.”

  He leaned against the stall and looked at her gravely. “Only if they’re mistreated. Or you get your fingers in their mouths.”

  She nodded and attempted a smile. Unfortunately, and to her horror, she found that her eyes were filling with tears. She would have tried to brush them away as they fell, but she didn’t want to draw attention to them. She looked at him and took a deep breath. “I don’t cry very often.”

  “I was late in my rescue.”

  She shook her head and managed a small laugh. “It wasn’t that, and it wasn’t you—it isn’t you.” Well, it was him, but it wasn’t as if she could t
ell him that. She looked up at the ceiling until she had control over herself. “I’m fine.”

  “So I see,” he said. “What’s bothering you, then, if it isn’t my tardy rescue?”

  “I’m supposed to tell you all my secrets yet have none of yours in return?” she asked with an attempt at levity.

  His expression was grave. “I don’t have any secrets.”

  She would beg to differ later, when she wasn’t still reeling from dancing with him inside. She also wasn’t about to tell him anything he wanted to know. It was one thing to talk to Peaches, who had so generously put off her own descent into grief so Tess could go first; it was another to describe her broken heart to the man who was so unwittingly mixed up in it all.

  She wondered how his parents and siblings had managed to lose him to a different time, never knowing if he were alive or dead, never having even so much as a clue as to his happiness or lack thereof.

  “I’m fine,” she repeated, ignoring the way her eyes were still leaking. It was the remnants of hay in the barn, she was sure of that. Obviously she was allergic to horses and hadn’t realized it over the years.

  He reached up and moved a strand of hair back from her forehead. “Does Peaches know what ails you?”

  She nodded. “She lived it with me.”

  “Lived what, Tess?” he asked, his expression even more serious than before. “What befell you?”

  It was such a formal, old-fashioned way to put it, she almost smiled.

  Or she would have, if she hadn’t been so close to breaking down. She didn’t know him, was sure she shouldn’t get close to him, knew her heart wouldn’t survive whatever path they walked together, but she couldn’t seem to keep herself from blurting out the truth.

  “I lost my younger sister.”

  He flinched. It was the last thing she saw him do before he reached out and pulled her into his arms.

  “Is she dead?” he asked quietly.

  That was the exact thing she just couldn’t bring herself to think about. She wasn’t even sure how to answer it. She knew that eight centuries in the past Pippa was still alive, but only if they were living in a sort of parallel universe, which she wasn’t entirely sure wasn’t the case. But if she was to look at things on a time line, then yes, Pippa was most certainly . . .

  She let out a shuddering breath and nodded.

  “Ach, you poor gel,” he said, rubbing his hand over her back. “I’m so sorry.”

  She clutched the back of his tunic, which seemed altogether too nice for a cheesy reproduction thing, and forced herself to get hold of herself. She wasn’t a weeper, as a rule, preferring to look at things in a logical, rational manner and deal with them just as logically, but it had been a rather trying autumn. And she had held it together—poorly—when she likely should have wept with Peaches and gotten it out of her system. Which she would do, when she’d gotten over stifling her current batch of bitter tears.

  That Montgomery de Piaget better have made her sister unbelievably happy, or she was going to go back in time, march up to his castle’s front gates, and punch him in the nose.

  John held her for several very long minutes in silence without a single complaint as she fought to keep herself from completely losing it. Maybe it would have been better if she had bawled her eyes out. Unfortunately, all she could do was stand there and shake.

  “You know,” he said finally, continuing to stoke her back, “you might weep fully, if you cared to.”

  She shook her head and pulled away—with a great deal of regret, but she didn’t think she should accustom herself to being in his arms. It was hard to tell when he would want to run the other way again. Better that she at least put a little distance between them while she still could.

  “I’m okay,” she gulped. “Really.”

  He frowned. “There are times when it is understandable to shed a tear or two. I wouldn’t think less of you.”

  She shook her head and put on a happy smile. Well, she attempted to put on a happy smile. She imagined it looked more like a grimace, but John was apparently too polite to say anything.

  “Don’t need to,” she said firmly. “This sort of thing happens all the time and people get over it. Which I will do. And speaking of things I should do, I should probably go work on my face.”

  “If you work on your face any more, Tess Alexander,” he said seriously, “I won’t be able to look at it.” He put his arm around her shoulders. “We should also rescue your sister from the louts inside, I daresay. I would like to believe your suitor was the only imbecile in the hall tonight, but I fear that isn’t the case.”

  She would have smiled, but she realized something that had seemed just a little strange. “You’re speaking French, you know.”

  If she hadn’t been watching for it, she supposed she wouldn’t have noticed that very brief look of panic that flashed in his eyes. It was gone immediately, which led her to believe he’d spent years—probably the last eight of them—perfecting the ability to listen to the most outrageous things and not react to them.

  “Private tutors,” he said.

  The liar.

  Tess shivered, and it wasn’t precisely from the cold.

  He tugged her—well, shepherded her along because he was a de Piaget lad, after all—back toward the hall. “How much longer are we to be enjoying these reenactment delights?”

  “They’re booked at least until midnight,” she said. She looked up at him. “Sorry about the musicians.”

  “I’ve heard worse,” he said politely. “I don’t suppose you would care to dance a bit more.”

  “I’ve exhausted my repertoire of dances I know,” she admitted, “but I think I can fake others if you don’t mind a bruised toe or two.”

  He smiled, just the slightest bit. It almost knocked her over.

  “’Tis a small price to pay for the view.”

  “The hall is lovely,” she agreed.

  “I wasn’t talking about the hall.”

  She felt her mouth fall open, then she shut it with a snap. “Knock that off,” she said with an uncomfortable laugh. “I think I like you better when you’re snarling.”

  “Do you?” he asked, tilting his head just the slightest bit.

  She walked away from him. “You bother me.”

  He caught up to her without effort. “In a good way or a bad way?”

  She looked up at him. “Do you really want to know?”

  He lifted his eyebrows briefly. “I’m not sure.”

  “I didn’t think you would be. Let me repair the damage, then I’ll dance with you. And now I won’t feel bad if I step on your toes.”

  “It’s why I wore boots.”

  She gaped at him only to feel the need to do so again when she saw his eyes were twinkling. He had a dimple, the lout.

  She was in big trouble.

  The next time he suggested they not see each other for a week, she was going to hold him to it.

  Chapter 10

  John leaned back against the wall in Sedgwick’s great hall and found himself assailed by thoughts he couldn’t seem to fight off.

  First, it was altogether too ironic to find himself in a hall he’d frequented in his youth only to find himself in that same hall several hundred years later, no longer in his youth but dressed in about the same sort of clothing. All he was missing was his sword, but he didn’t need it to, as they said in the Colonies, take care of business.

  Second, there was something poetically just about finding himself in said hall because of a woman he had tried his damndest to forget.

  Unsuccessfully.

  He had danced with her as often as she would humor him, but for the most part, he’d simply stood with his back against the wall—a habit from his past he apparently hadn’t managed to break, he supposed—and watched her. Watched over her, rather. She was an excellent lecturer, but he realized she was just as good at her current sort of thing. Perhaps managing college lads had been of more use to her than she could ha
ve anticipated. She moved effortlessly between keeping a few of the more exuberant knights under control and discussing more academic things with an ever-changing collection of admirers. John gave himself the task of managing the less well behaved of those pretend lords.

  The evening should have seemed endless, but somehow it didn’t. John supposed that was to be expected when one was spending most of his time trying to keep the past from intruding on the future.

  He wondered, absently and after almost four hours of trying to fight off the speculation, who had taken over Sedgwick after Denys’s death. Boydin, no doubt, unless he’d been done in by one of his siblings. No one from Artane would have been stupid enough to venture south and sentence himself to the place for the rest of his life. He was actually rather glad he didn’t feel free to sneak off to Tess’s library, else he might have been tempted to wander casually into it and do a little thumbing through her historical texts.

  Nay, it was probably better to stay where he was.

  He spent the next hour suppressing his yawns. He was, he could admit without shame, enormously glad when the last of the revelers had been escorted out the front door. Tess went off to see to the caterers, leaving him sprawled in a chair across from Tess’s astonishingly pretty sister.

  Whom he wasn’t at all interested in, it should have been noted.

  “It was nice of you to stay,” Peaches said, smothering a yawn herself.

  He wasn’t at all sure how to respond. Did he tell her that there was no way in hell he would have trusted her and her sister to lock up properly, or did he tell her that he’d met lads like that blond fool before and hadn’t wanted Tess to enjoy a second encounter with him?

  “Where did you get your clothes?” Peaches asked with another yawn. “Costume shop?”

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  “It’s surprising how many there are here in the area, isn’t it?”

  “Very,” he agreed.

  She looked at him, then laughed a little. “Get talked out already tonight?”