By the end of the evening, he had done his fair share of hobnobbing with the rich and cultured of London and watched Tess do the same. She was, he could admit without hesitation, very good at what she did. She gave Peaches all the credit for supper, praised village helpers for their aid, and effortlessly left everyone commenting on such a lovely evening. By the time the last of the guests had departed, Doris and her granddaughters were long gone and Peaches had finished tidying up the kitchen. He stood in front of the hearth with his hands clasped behind his back, just as he’d stood innumerable times in his father’s hall.
He watched Tess stop just in front of him. She looked beautiful but exhausted. He smiled gravely, then reached out and drew her into his arms.
“We shouldn’t begin this,” he murmured.
“I couldn’t agree more,” she said, putting her arms around his waist and laying her head on his shoulder. She sighed deeply. “I’m not sure how to thank you.”
“Breakfast tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow isn’t Wednesday,” she said, the smile plain in her voice.
“I couldn’t care—” Her phone rang, startling him. He pulled back and looked at her in surprise. “It’s almost midnight.”
She looked at her mobile. “It’s Terry Holmes,” she said, frowning thoughtfully. “He knew I had a party tonight, so perhaps he was waiting for it to end. It must be important for him to call this late.”
“Who is Terry Holmes?” he asked.
“The president of the Tynedale reenactment group,” she said. “The ones from the other night. Maybe he has bad behavior to apologize for.”
“At least one of his club members certainly does,” John said pointedly.
She shot him a quick smile. “I’ll make it quick.”
He watched her pace back and forth in front of the fire, stopping now and again when she apparently heard something that surprised her. John couldn’t deny that he was curious about what that bloke might say. He didn’t imagine he should hope for it, but he couldn’t help but wonder if the man might have tidings about one of his members having acquired a fine new sword.
He finally sat down, then caught Tess’s hand and pulled her down to sit on his lap. She was halfway there before she realized what she was doing. She shot him a warning look, then pulled away and went to sit in the chair across from him. He shrugged. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. He did, however, pull her chair close enough to his that he could capture her feet with his own.
“No, I’m not teaching next week,” she said slowly. “When is the festival? Well, I suppose either Wednesday or Thursday would work.”
John focused on what she was saying and had the words sink in. “No,” he said firmly.
“Hang on, Terry,” she said. She put her thumb over her phone and looked at him. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t want you going alone.”
She frowned. “John, it’s a medieval faire at Warewick Castle. How dangerous can it be?”
“Go Thursday,” he said firmly. “I’ll take you.”
“John—”
“Thursday, Tess.”
She looked at him, clearly puzzled, then shrugged. “All right.” She turned back to her call. “Terry, how about Thursday?” She listened for a moment or two, then smiled. “I’ll be there. Thanks for the chance.”
John watched as she ended the call and set her phone down on the floor. “What chance did he offer you?” he asked politely.
She took a deep breath. “He wants to introduce me to the president of the living history society that sponsors that faire. Apparently there’s been some interest in trying to combine lectures with living reenactors.”
He smiled at the light in her eyes, something he had yet to see in conjunction with her business of hosting parties. “A potent combination.”
“And a very safe one,” she said pointedly. “Are you going to tell me why I need a keeper?”
“Because I don’t want you interacting with those fools unless I’m with you, and I’m in studio Tuesday and Wednesday,” he said. “Or it could be that I just want to spend time with you.”
“Why do I think there’s more to it than that?”
He only looked at her.
“And why do I think you aren’t going to tell me anything about it?”
Because she knew him already too well.
“You never know who might be in the crowd,” he said carefully. “I don’t want you caught in any dark corners.”
“With anyone but you?” she asked with a faint smile.
He nodded solemnly.
She reached out and took one of his hands, put his palm against her cheek, then kissed that palm quickly before she smiled at him. “Play for me now, would you? Something you love?”
He thought he might be too winded to. He took his hand back, curled his fingers into his palm, then looked at the spot where her lips had touched his skin. He wasn’t entirely sure she hadn’t left some sort of scorching mark there. He met her eyes and saw that she was almost as overwhelmed as he was.
“I will,” he managed, “play whatever you want.”
Which he did. He got through half a dozen songs before he thought he might have exhausted his ability to play without blurting out some sort of sentiment he should have been saving for another time.
He left his guitar in her hands, checked the doors, had a little walk on the battlements just because he thought the chill might be useful in restoring his good sense, then went back downstairs to find Tess in the same place, trying out something on his guitar. She looked up when she heard his footstep and smiled.
He didn’t stumble, but it was a near thing.
He forced himself to concentrate on packing up his gear and checking the kitchen door one last time. After that, he had nothing left to distract himself with, so he grasped for the last shreds of his good sense and walked with Tess to her front door.
“What are you doing tomorrow?” he asked.
“Church in the morning, naps in the afternoon,” she said with a smile. “But we probably shouldn’t see each other.”
“I go to church,” he muttered. “Now and again.”
“Then we might run into each other.”
“How long a nap?”
“Too long for you,” she said easily. “Monday you should actually do some work in your shop, then you’re in London through Wednesday. I’ll be catching up on my mail and adjusting my tiara.”
He smiled in spite of himself. “Very well, I’ll limit my pursuit of you to phone calls and ecclesiastical sightings. Satisfied?”
“You made the rules,” she said airily.
“I was an idiot.”
She leaned up on her toes and kissed his cheek, then pushed him out the door. He went, because it was either that or stay and make bad habits out of several things. He turned on the bottom step and looked up at her.
“Good night, my lady,” he said quietly.
“Thank you for the rescue tonight,” she said, just as quietly.
He nodded, started to turn away, then looked back at her. “I might have to pop in for a moment or two now and again. Just to make sure your doors are locked.”
“You might,” she agreed.
He wasn’t going to tell her just how thoroughly he intended to keep watch over several things, because there was no reason to unnerve her.
He smiled, wished her another good night, and bade her lock the front door so he could hear the bolt sliding home. He walked around the courtyard once, then out the front gates. He saw nothing, sensed nothing, heard nothing.
But he had the distinct feeling the games had only just begun.
Chapter 13
Tess wondered if the time had come for her to learn to use a sword.
She wasn’t unused to crowds, and she wasn’t unused to people dressing up in costume, but having both combined into one big medieval mob was almost more than she could take. If she found herself jostled by one more guy in a tabard and tights, she was going to do da
mage to him. She supposed, though, that the men probably gave her a wider berth than they might have otherwise, given whom she was walking with. The women didn’t, but she honestly couldn’t blame them. She would have been doing the same thing in their places. John de Piaget was nothing short of stunning.
She looked at him surreptitiously to find him watching everything around him with absolutely no expression on his face—a sure sign he was on the verge of rolling his eyes or blurting out some comment on the authenticity quotient of his surroundings. He was dressed as she was in jeans and a sweater, and looked far more modern than any of the somewhat scruffy men they passed.
She wondered how Karma felt about having time turned on its head like that.
John glanced at her, then jumped a little. “What?” he asked.
“Just watching you.”
“Why?” he asked, very uncomfortably.
“Because you’re cute.”
He blinked, then he smiled briefly. “And you’re daft. I understand it comes from wearing a tiara that’s too tight.”
“I’ll have to call my sister Cinderella and ask her how to mitigate the effects.”
He squeezed her hand, smiled again, then turned back to his contemplation of their surroundings. She could tell he wasn’t up to small talk, so she didn’t push him. The fact that he’d come—albeit at his own insistence—to a medieval gathering was probably testing the limits of his tolerance anyway. She could honestly say she would be happy to get in, find Terry’s friend and talk, then make her escape unscathed.
She had to wonder about John’s willingness to come to a place that smacked so strongly of where he’d come from. There was something going on, something he wasn’t telling her, something that seemed to worry him about her. She knew that because despite their pseudo-agreement to not see each other, she’d seen him every day since Saturday.
She’d sat next to him Sunday morning in church, then had a call from him in the evening, followed by a brief visit to check her doors. She’d had flowers on Monday, two phone calls on Tuesday, and a tiara on her doorstep Wednesday, all topped off by late-night visits every night to make sure the castle was secure.
She had begun to wonder if he thought someone might be trying to get inside when she wasn’t looking.
But since she’d lived in the castle for a year without so much as a brochure having been swiped, she thought John might have been imagining things.
She had to admit, though, that she’d been happy to see him and his buff self that morning, leaning against the stone wall of her barbican gate, waiting for her—and not just because she had the feeling he could protect her.
The truth was, she was fond of him.
Which was perhaps a terrible understatement, but she wasn’t going to examine it too closely. It was too soon, and there were too many appalling things that stood between them. Such as the fact that his brother was married to her sister, and she hadn’t seen her way clear to tell him as much.
She realized he’d stopped only because he pulled her behind him exactly as she’d seen Montgomery do half a dozen times with Pippa. She looked around his shoulder, then suppressed the urge to swear. It was absolutely nothing he should get himself in the middle of, which she had every intention of telling him. She moved to stand next to him—
He pulled her behind him again.
“John,” she began in exasperation.
“Don’t.”
Well, there was no arguing with him when he took on that very medieval tone. She wondered if he knew he’d said it in French. She sighed and wondered how Pippa had accustomed herself to being herded and protected and watched over as if she’d been something precious that merited absolute safety.
It was, she had to admit, quite lovely when looked at in that light.
She put her hands on John’s back. He was tensed, as if he thought the entire French army was about to swoop down on them. She couldn’t imagine the future could muster up anything close to that, but she’d been wrong before. She finally managed to lean a little more to her right and look around his shoulder to see just what was bothering him so.
The sight shouldn’t have been anything out of the ordinary considering where they were. It was just two men carrying on with a little sword demonstration. They weren’t very well matched because one of the men was substantially larger than the other, but the little guy seemed to be holding his own, for the moment.
There was something off, though, in the bigger man’s eyes. Even from where she stood, Tess could see he wasn’t doing what he was doing for sport; he was serious about it.
And then, as quickly as that, things took a definite turn for the worse. The smaller man began, perhaps, to sense that he was in over his head and no amount of bluster and no number of “take it easy, mate” entreaties were going to save him from embarrassment.
Or worse.
John looked over his shoulder at her. “Stay here.”
Her mouth fell open before she could stop it. And before she could stop him, John had stepped between the very large, burly man with an obviously well-loved sword and that much smaller guy who had been trying to keep his opponent from forcing him to endure a whole slew of blunt-force traumas.
John looked at Mr. Burly, who announced loudly that his name was Bill and if John didn’t move pretty damn quick, he was going to suffer a worse fate than little Gary who had since scurried to safety. John only folded his arms across his chest and looked Bill in the eye.
“Is that so,” he drawled.
Tess would have done something, but she had no idea what to do. Putting herself between Bill, who was an idiot, and John, who looked perfectly capable of rendering Bill quite unfit for anything useful with nothing but his hands, would have been colossally stupid. She looked around herself nervously to find that quite a crowd had gathered, almost all of it comprised of men dressed in medieval gear and sporting swords.
None of them was smiling.
She couldn’t decide if that was because they were irritated with John for ruining their entertainment or because they thought Bill was completely out of control and there might be a need soon for whatever doctor might be in the house.
“I believe,” John said calmly, “that you may have had a bit too much to drink, friend.”
“And I believe,” Bill said, sounding perfectly lucid and sober, “that you have stuck your pretty nose precisely where it didn’t belong. Friend.”
John looked at the sword in Bill’s hands. “I suppose whilst we discuss that, you might want to put your blade down, lest you hurt yourself.”
Well, that wasn’t a very politic thing to say. Tess would have pointed that out to the edification of all, but she didn’t have a chance. She was too busy being absolutely speechless with terror.
Mainly because Bill attacked John and no one seemed to care. John did an amazing job just keeping out of his way and avoiding being poked with a sword that looked a little sharper than it perhaps should have been. The point of that sword eventually caught the sleeve of John’s jacket and put a spectacular rent in it. John considered that, shot Bill a look, then shucked his coat off and threw it across the little battlefield.
Tess caught it without thinking and decided that she’d had enough. She walked into the fray, as it were, fully intending to stop it.
John caught her by the arm and whirled her out of the way.
She went, because he hadn’t given her a choice. And once she turned around to protest, she very wisely—to her mind—reconsidered her good intentions. She backed up, clutched John’s jacket to her chest as if it had been a life preserver, and prayed blood wouldn’t be spilt.
Bill shoved John suddenly. John tucked, rolled, and came back up to his feet with someone’s sword in his hands.
And then she began to think that Bill might soon come to a different opinion about his own skills.
John threw away any pretense of being what he wasn’t. She watched, openmouthed, as he schooled Bill in a little swordplay. She mana
ged to tear her eyes away long enough to look at the men surrounding the combatants.
They were gaping as well.
She wondered how long things would go on, but she perhaps needn’t have bothered. Bill was not up to the standards of swordplay at Artane. Tess could tell John was, methodically and mercilessly, putting him in his place. Bill finally watched, his mouth agape, as his sword went flying up into the air, hung there for a moment, then began its downward trajectory.
John caught it, then pointed both swords at Bill.
Then he seemed to realize just what he’d done.
She was sure no one else had noticed, but no one else knew what to look for: that little flash of panic in his eyes that was ruthlessly squelched and the way he stiffened his spine as if he prepared to deflect all inquiries by his posture alone. His face suddenly shuttered, as if he’d dropped a portcullis and slammed an inner gate home at the same time.
He turned and handed the sword he’d poached back to its owner without comment. He held Bill’s sword in his hands and seemed to be considering just what to do with it.
“Bloody hell,” Terry wheezed suddenly from beside her. “Where’d he learn to do that?”
“I wouldn’t ask,” Tess said, because it was hard on short notice to come up for an excuse as to why anyone but a perfectly trained medieval knight would make perhaps the best swordsman in the area look like a child with a plastic weapon. “I’m sure you can ask him later, after the little guy has finished slobbering all over him.”
Terry shot her an uneasy smile, then went out to take Bill’s sword from John and pry Gary from John’s side where he was indeed heaping enormous praise on him.
Bill was still shaking.
And furious.
Tess thought it might not be imprudent to get herself and her very silent escort the hell out of Dodge, so she walked up to John and slipped her arm through his. She smiled easily at Terry.