One Magic Moment

  He suppressed a smirk. He’d known that already from a casual glance at her credit card.

  “And she’s a Yank.”

  He felt his jaw slip down. “She’s not. She didn’t have an accent.”

  “And how much conversation did you have with her, my lad?”

  John pursed his lips. “Enough to listen to her threaten to do damage to Frank Rivers if he didn’t keep his hands to himself.”

  “Thought she needed a rescue, did you?”

  “I was being gentlemanly.”

  Doris only smiled. “I imagine you were. First gentlemanly, then curious. Where will it lead?”

  “To my returning her charge card to her and resuming my own very sensible existence whilst she goes about her own,” John said grimly. “Pray give me details to aid me in that.”

  Doris pushed her teacup aside as well. “She’s an academic, or so I understand, and has a PhD in medieval studies of some sort.”

  John supposed he would look less than dignified to have his mouth continually hanging open, so he decided it was best to just grit his teeth.

  Medieval studies. His least favorite topic of conversation, as it happened. He’d known just looking at her that the relationship was doomed from the start.

  “She was offered Sedgwick by Roland, the last Earl of Sedgwick,” Doris continued, “though it’s my understanding she didn’t have a clue who he was at first. Thought him the caretaker, I daresay. You know he wasn’t one for carrying on with his title.”

  John hadn’t known Sedgwick had had a last earl, so he supposed the current owner, the possessor of those astonishingly pretty green eyes, might be forgiven as well.

  “I believe he’d been looking for the proper person to bequeath his keep to,” Doris continued with a faint shrug, “which took a bit of doing. He’d learned of her through some symposium on medieval life and liked what he’d heard. He up and gave her the castle without hesitation. She doesn’t seem to lack for funds, so I’m assuming he gave her a few quid as well to keep the lights on. She runs parties there of all sorts, mostly reenactment things. Those seem particularly suited to a castle still boasting a roof, don’t they?”

  He grunted, because that was all he could do.

  “I think she teaches still, some. I imagine you might find her lectures interesting.”

  “I much prefer the nineteenth century,” he commented as nonchalantly as possible. “The music was sublime, don’t you agree?”

  She looked at him over her spectacles. “I agree. Perhaps you should play something from that era for me sometime.”

  He agreed that he would, thanked her profusely for tea, then made for the door before she could ask any more questions or delve any further into her list of things she possibly knew about him. He’d unbent far enough the month before to tell her he’d been born in the north, grown to manhood in the north, then left home to seek his fortune. He’d admitted to a former employment at a garage, but he hadn’t elaborated. He never elaborated.

  “You’ll come play for me this week,” she announced. “I’ll expect something tolerable to listen to.”

  “I’ll attempt it,” he promised before he escaped out her front door.

  He walked quickly back toward his shop only to realize that he was walking quickly toward something he didn’t want to. He didn’t care for otherworldly sensations. The fact that he’d had Fate tap him smartly on the shoulder when Mistress Tess Alexander had pulled into his car park had unnerved him more than he wanted to admit. He didn’t know her and wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to rectify that. He liked his pleasant, unremarkable life where he merely passed his days enjoying the comforts modern times could provide. Anything else made him supremely uncomfortable.

  Nay, it was more than that. As far as he was concerned, his life had begun eight years ago when he’d left home with nothing but the clothes on his back, a bag full of coins, and his wits to keep himself alive. Thinking about anything that had come before was something he absolutely refused to do. If an acquaintance began to pry into those years, he or she was pointedly discouraged from prying any further. Blunt questions were answered with an absolute severing of all contact. As far as he was concerned, he had no past.

  It was safer that way.

  He almost ploughed into a bairn of some sort who had come flying out his mother’s gates toward the street. He caught the little brat out of habit—damn that chivalry and all its incarnations—and put him back into his mother’s frantically outstretched arms without comment.

  Bairns, he noted with a knowing nod. Yet another thing to avoid like the plague. He had more than enough to keep himself occupied with without the burdens of a wife and children and a place to put them and keep them safe. It was all he could do to keep others from dinging his car. He wasn’t interested in taking on anything else.

  He put his head down and continued on his way, praying he wouldn’t encounter anything else unsettling before he’d done his duty and could retreat to his cozy cottage where he could keep the world at bay.

  He walked behind the shop and opened one of the garages there. In times past, he knew old Grant had stored his prized collection of vintage Jaguars in those bays. He’d filled those slots with his own collection of things he’d had shipped down from the north: two Jaguars, a sweet little MG, and a rather less-than-discreet black Aston Martin. He considered, then decided that perhaps discreet was more the order of the day. He chose the Jag that was running, then managed to get himself out of the village without losing a hubcap or running afoul of any overzealous traffic wardens.

  He’d never driven to Sedgwick, as it happened, and he missed the turnoff—to his disgust. He flipped a U-turn in an appropriate place, then retraced his steps. He forced himself to simply watch the road without putting any thought into the watching. He would have preferred to avoid looking at the castle in time as well, but he couldn’t. He turned off his car in the car park, leaned his head back against the seat, then let out a slow, unsteady breath.

  The keep was spectacular.

  He hadn’t paid attention to many castles over the past few years. He’d lived and worked in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle for a pair of years, true, but he was an Englishman, not a Scot, so their puny bit of stone perched up atop that bluff had troubled him not at all. He had avoided, again like the plague, visits to any other keeps of note.

  He wondered, briefly, if he might have been a bit hasty about that.

  The last time he’d seen Sedgwick, it had been overrun by Denys of Sedgwick’s ill-bred and mannerless children who had seemingly taken great pleasure at crawling in and out of the holes in their father’s foundations—

  He opened the car door abruptly, putting an end to thoughts he wouldn’t have allowed on his mind’s stage if he’d been thinking clearly. He crawled out of his car before he could think too much about what he was doing, then locked the door and walked toward the bridge that spanned what looked less like a cesspit and more like a lovely, serene lake.

  He hesitated at the end of the bridge, though he wondered why. It was a private house, true, but there had been no sign that he could see telling him that only certain hours were maintained and would he mind keeping his sorry arse off the property outside those hours.

  He continued across the bridge, realizing only as he was doing so that he was keeping a wary eye out for lads leaning over the parapet with unfriendly arrows pointed his way. He resisted the urge to clap his hand to his forehead to hopefully dislodge what good sense he’d started the day with and continued on into the barbican gate with its trio of portcullises that were no doubt still hiding in their nooks thanks only to prayers and a bit of duct tape. He was happy to leave them behind—

  Until he walked into the courtyard.

  He stumbled to a halt, then simply looked at the woman who was standing there with her arms wrapped around herself, staring off at things he couldn’t see. She was so still, she might have been made of stone. He froze, lest he disturb her.

 
She was dressed as she had been earlier that morning, in jeans and a sweater. Her hair was either very short, or caught up in some sort of business at the back of her head. There was a light rain falling, but she didn’t seem to notice. What she was thinking, he couldn’t have said, but it seemingly occupied all her energies.

  He had the feeling it was a melancholy sort of subject, which struck him as particularly wrong. She should have been waiting in the courtyard for the man who was hers, waiting to be loved, cherished, protected—

  She turned her head suddenly and looked at him, as if she’d known he’d been standing there.

  His first instinct was to make an abrupt dash for the nearest exit, but he didn’t run from things that were dangerous.

  He paused. He might have not been faulted for scampering away when his heart might have been involved, but since that happened so rarely, he wasn’t sure he could use that excuse at present.

  Immediately on the heels of those thoughts came the one that he was truly going to look like an idiot if he simply stood there and gaped at one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen. Not beautiful in a gaudy, flashy, expensive sort of way. Beautiful in a quiet, lingering sort of way that had him almost turning in truth and fleeing indeed whilst what was left of his good sense remained.

  That he didn’t might have been, he conceded reluctantly, the hand of Fate clutching the back of his coat so he couldn’t do aught but walk forward, but he wasn’t going to examine that closely enough to find out.

  Tess Alexander only stood there, watching him with enormous eyes, as if she’d just seen a ghost.

  He suppressed the urge to look over his shoulder in truth that time, on the off chance that she had it aright. He wasn’t unaccustomed to things of a paranormal nature, though he preferred to keep them behind him where he needn’t look at them. He continued on toward her until he was standing but a foot away.

  “You forgot your charge card,” he said, his voice sounding hoarse in his ears.

  “You shoved me out of your office,” she said faintly.

  He paused. “I can be a bit of an arse.”

  She held out her hand.

  John was halfway to taking her hand in his before he realized she was merely waiting for him to put her card into it. He fumbled in his coat pocket for it, then handed it to her. She took it, then clutched it as if it were some sort of lifeline.

  “Thank you . . .” She trailed off.

  “John,” he supplied.

  “John?”

  “John de Piaget,” he said, though he rarely gave his last name unless it was required. He had, actually, given a few false names over the years, when he’d been working under the table in the north and hadn’t particularly cared for anyone to know who he was.

  Not that anyone would have cared, surely. It wasn’t as if his family was notorious or noteworthy. He knew his father’s hall was still standing because he’d seen a picture of it in a newspaper once. He hadn’t seen the castle itself since he’d put it behind him years ago, and he’d had no interest in finding out who lived there or if the whole place had been turned over to the National Trust because his father’s descendants hadn’t managed to hold on to it. In the end, his name would mean nothing to anyone. Still, old habits died hard, which was why he generally just went by John and left the rest to the imagination.

  Tess didn’t react to his name; she merely nodded and remained where she was. John supposed she would have stood there all day if he hadn’t taken her by the elbow and drawn her away from the spot she seemed to be rooted to.

  “’Tis raining out,” he said, guiding her toward the great hall.

  “I don’t mind the rain.”

  “You will when you catch cold,” he said.

  She didn’t argue. She simply walked with him across the courtyard and up the steps to the hall door. It opened, as if they’d been expected, and John looked up.

  And gasped.

  He realized immediately that Tess not only had a sister, but a twin sister at that, only the woman standing there looking at him—again as if she’d seen a ghost—could not have been more different. Tess had obviously walked the hallowed halls of University long enough to take on its conservative mores. Her sister had apparently been frequenting more—how could he say it politely?—unbuttoned venues.

  “Peaches, move.”

  John watched Tess’s sister step back unsteadily and hold the door open. Tess looked up at him.

  “Care to come in?”

  “I’ve things to do,” he said, then he released her and backed away before he could find himself sucked into that hall and into something he could tell already he didn’t want to get involved in. He had a sense about that sort of thing.

  “Thank you for bringing me my card,” Tess said quietly.

  He nodded but didn’t look at her again. He turned and strode purposefully across her courtyard and out the gates, forcing himself to merely walk calmly, though with definite purpose. He had things to do, important things, things that didn’t involve looking at a woman who made him want to run like hell the other way.

  He hurried back toward the life he’d been so comfortable in that morning.

  Odd how it didn’t seem as welcoming as it had before.

  Chapter 3

  Tess rubbed her arms as she stood in front of the roaring fire in her great hall. She’d built that fire herself an hour ago, which she imagined the former owners of Sedgwick hadn’t needed to do, but her staff hadn’t arrived yet and she was freezing.

  Paranormal activity did that to a woman, she supposed.

  She didn’t like to get lost in the past unless it was the past past where some Plantagenet or other was king, but she found herself powerless to stop herself from reliving the events of the previous afternoon.

  There she’d been, standing innocently in her courtyard, getting rained on, when she’d realized someone was watching her. She’d known without looking just who it was, but that hadn’t made it any easier to face him and not feel a little faint.

  And that hadn’t exactly come from his good looks, truth be told.

  She remembered taking her card from him, remembered asking him his name—an unnecessary and unsurprising exercise if ever there had been one—then listening to his car drive off into the distance. Then she had simply stood at the door of her hall, watching the rain fall softly onto the grass, dirt, and cobblestones of her courtyard. She had wondered, very briefly, if her sister Pippa had ever stood in just that spot and watched another de Piaget lad walk away with all due haste.

  She imagined that that de Piaget brother had walked away with a great deal more reluctance.

  Peaches had, quite wisely, said nothing, but that could have been because her cell phone had chosen that moment to ring and she’d gone off to do business. By the time she’d finished, Tess had been on her way to bed. Peaches had given her a hug and said nothing.

  Tess had known that wouldn’t last. She looked to her right to find Peaches standing next to her, clad in yoga gear. She cleared her throat, but that didn’t go very well. She tried again.

  “That’s the new owner of the garage in the village,” she croaked.

  “Was it?” Peaches asked. “I don’t suppose you got his name.”

  “John de Piaget.”

  Peaches nodded thoughtfully, not looking terribly surprised. She glanced at Tess. “You’re shaking.”

  Tess couldn’t argue with that. “Can you blame me?”

  “Nope.”

  “I think I’m either hallucinating or having a nervous breakdown.”

  Peaches put her hand on Tess’s forehead. “Well, you’re not feverish.”

  “I don’t think a fever’s part of either.”

  “You’re probably right.” She shivered. “He can’t be who he looks like.”

  “That was my first thought as well, but I’m not sure how long we’ll manage to cling to it.”

  Peaches looked at Tess assessingly. “Are you heading back to the village for a
nother look?”

  “When hell freezes over,” Tess said without hesitation. She had to take a deep breath. “I’m going to go into London to pick up a book or two Andrew found for me.”

  “Taking the first train available?”

  “When escaping uncomfortable things, it’s always best to get an early start.”

  “Things will look better when you get back,” Peaches offered, “or they might just look different.” She shrugged. “Sometimes, that’s all you can hope for.”

  Tess turned and looked at her sister steadily. “Do you think that things are going to look any different later? With him, I mean?”

  “I doubt it, but what are you going to do about it? Ask him a few pointed questions about when he was born? Let him know that his brother Montgomery married your younger sister?”

  “We don’t know he’s Montgomery’s brother.”

  Peaches rolled her eyes. “He couldn’t look any more like our charming brother-in-law if he were Montgomery, which we know he isn’t. They have to be twins.”

  “You and I could be having a joint hallucination,” Tess said, grasping desperately for any excuse—reasonable or not—to discount what was staring her in the face.

  Peaches only looked at her steadily.

  Tess shivered in spite of herself. “I don’t think I want to see him again.”

  “Then either find a different mechanic or stop knocking mirrors off your car,” Peaches advised. She paused, then spoke carefully. “You know, we could solve this mystery quite easily if I rifled through that book in your gift shop on de Piaget genealogy—”

  “No.”

  Peaches blew her bangs out of her eyes. “Tess, be reasonable.”

  “I don’t want to know,” Tess said firmly.

  Peaches shrugged. “Well, you probably don’t have anything to worry about anyway. It’s not like you’re going to start running into him everywhere you go. I’m sure he has other interests besides medieval geopolitical studies.”

  Tess shot her a sharp look. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?” Peaches asked, obviously unimpressed. “Don’t talk about things that make you uncomfortable? Please, Tess. It’s facing the things that make you uncomfortable that are generally most necessary for your growth. And just so you know, people pay me big bucks for that kind of advice.”