“This won’t take much longer. Unfortunately.”
Zachary watched the lady of the hall glance his way, look at her husband once more, then laugh as she turned and walked away. Zachary honestly couldn’t blame her. If he hadn’t been in his present condition, he might have laughed as well.
But that was apparently Robin of Artane standing there with the sword, and if he knew nothing else, he knew of Robin’s reputation from tales that William had told him. He was probably lucky to still have all of himself intact. And he was under no illusions about the amount of effort Artane’s lord wasn’t putting into his morning’s exercise.
But half of being a good swordsman was carrying oneself as such, so he didn’t dare show any weakness. He pushed himself back to his feet and stood there with a carving knife in one hand and a fire iron in the other. He thought he might have swayed a little, but perhaps Lord Robin hadn’t noticed.
Then again, perhaps he had. The man studied him for a moment or two, then resheathed his sword with a disgruntled look. He folded his arms over his chest.
“You’re giving me very poor sport,” he said.
“I’m better with a sword,” Zachary said. “And a head that isn’t killing me.”
Or words to that effect, he hoped.
Robin leaned back against the wall and commenced another lengthy, silent study of things that no doubt perplexed him. “I continue to wonder,” he said finally, “what it is you’re doing in my hall without my permission.”
“I took a wrong turn.”
“Apparently.” He frowned. “I have the feeling I would be better off to just kill you now and have done. You look like trouble.”
Zachary supposed he could argue with Robin about the merits of leaving him alive, but in the end, it was entirely up to the lord of the keep. Fighting his way out of the keep, then managing to stay alive long enough to find another time gate—all au naturel, as it were—might just be more than he could manage in his current state. He took a deep breath, then had to wait for a minute or two until the subsequent stars cleared enough for him to see. He struggled to focus on Artane’s lord.
“I would like to be trouble for a very short time, my lord.”
Robin considered for another eternal moment, then pushed away from the wall. Zachary didn’t want to give Robin any reason to change his mind about tossing any stray time-travelers onto the fire, but he couldn’t leave his gear behind. The potential for disaster there was catastrophic. “Have a bath and wash the floor out of your hair, then we’ll see where we stand.”
“My lord,” Zachary said quickly, “if I might ask about my clothes?”
Robin paused, then looked at him slowly. “Burned. They were crawling with vermin, or so I was told.”
Zachary was very grateful for whoever had told that whopper. The less the locals thought about what he’d been wearing, the farther away from a hot fire and stake he would find himself. But there were some things that wouldn’t burn so well and those were the things that troubled him the most.
“All my things, my lord?” Zachary asked.
“Your boots were beyond saving, apparently. We’ll discuss your knives in my solar. Don’t cause any trouble on your way there or you’ll regret it.”
Zachary would have nodded if he’d dared, but he didn’t. “Of course, my lord,” he said as deferentially as possible. He’d walked barefoot before. At least it wasn’t snowing outside. It could have been much worse.
Robin stared at him for another moment, the wheels turning quite loudly, then he lifted his eyebrows briefly before he walked out of the kitchen, shaking his head. Zachary watched him go, then suppressed the urge to sigh deeply. In reality, things could have gone much worse for him. He’d already had more of a taste of Artane’s dungeon than he cared to and he had no desire to revisit the place.
He laid the carving knife on the table, then walked unsteadily over to the fire to replace the iron in its place. He didn’t bother with the blanket. Everyone had seen everything they were going to and they would likely think him daft for any modesty now.
“Sit by the fire, good sir,” said the cook with a nod toward a stool. “We’ll have a bath for ye as quick as may be.”
Zachary accepted ale, then very carefully leaned his head back against the stone. Medieval England. Why wasn’t he surprised?
He was going to kill Gideon de Piaget when he got home.
An hour later, bathed, dressed, and fed, he walked unsteadily up the passageway in the care of a trio of fierce medieval knights. What he wanted was a week of vegging out in front of the TV with an endless supply of healthy snacks. Well, maybe mostly healthy snacks and a few Twinkies. After what he’d been through, he thought he just might deserve them.
He suspected lazing around uselessly wasn’t going to be a part of his immediate future, as much as he might have wished for it. If he managed to finish the day without his head splitting in two from the pain, he would be doing well. If he had the chance to spend the afternoon resting, it would be a miracle. He would have preferred to be mooching dinner off his sister-in-law Sunshine and begging her for a little reflexology for dessert, but since she was hundreds of years away and he probably wasn’t completely out of the woods yet with the lord of Artane, he would just press on and hope for the best.
He would have asked his escort to take him on a little detour to the lady of the keep’s solar, but he didn’t dare chance it. That Robin hadn’t asked him any pointed questions about why he’d been loitering where he’d been found was an unexpected gift. He suspected the restraint wouldn’t last long.
He was deposited in front of a doorway and told curtly to wait while one of the guardsmen knocked for him.
“Come!”
A guardsman opened the door and nodded for him to go in. He thanked them all kindly for the company, then walked inside. The door closed behind him quietly. Zachary clasped his hands behind his back and waited. Robin looked up from where he sat at his table, poring over sheets of something. Zachary made him another bow and regretted it immediately. He managed not to land on his face, but it was a near thing.
“Thank you, my lord, for the clothing,” he said hoarsely, bracing himself with his hands on his thighs.
“By the saints, sit down, lad, before you fall there.”
Zachary felt his way over to a chair and sat gratefully. He had to put his face in his hands for several minutes until he thought he could straighten without heaving his breakfast onto Robin’s boots. His vision eventually cleared enough for him to see Robin studying him thoughtfully.
“Your French is poor,” Robin commented.
“My Gaelic is better.”
Robin looked at him with an inscrutable expression. “Is it, indeed?” he asked, in that tongue.
“It is, indeed,” Zachary agreed, also in that tongue, rather grateful he’d had enough exposure to the medieval version of it to have acquired a decently authentic accent. “Yours, I can tell already, is excellent.”
Robin lifted one eyebrow briefly. “I’ve had ample opportunity to learn it over the years. That doesn’t answer my question, though, about why you find yourself in my hall. Did you come through the gate?”
Zachary almost flinched, then he realized that Robin was talking about the front gate. He was accustomed to inventing stories for being where he was, but he couldn’t for the life of him think up one at the moment. There was, after all, no good reason for him to have found himself upstairs in Robin’s keep. He could only bluster on and hope for the best.
“I became lost,” he said.
“So you said before.” He laid Zachary’s daggers on his table and fingered them thoughtfully. “Very nice steel for a simple peasant to possess.”
Zachary thought it best to allow Robin to believe what he wanted. After all, lying low and being underestimated were two of his best strategies for staying alive in times that weren’t his own.
He supposed he might manage the same thing now, though that didn’t help him get
himself back upstairs. Maybe all he could hope for was to thank Robin for the boots and clothes, then see what he could do out in the countryside. He could immediately bring to mind two gates that were reachable without too much effort.
Of course, time gates were fickle, which he well knew, and it might take longer than he wanted to get something to work for him, but he was fresh out of quick fixes.
“Lad?”
Zachary dragged his attention back to the conversation at hand. “Aye, my lord, they are very fine blades. I befriended a blacksmith in Scotland who fashioned them for me. I feel fortunate to have them.”
Robin sat back in his chair and stroked his chin. “Do you have interesting answers to any of my other questions?”
Zachary didn’t imagine Robin would care for any of his answers—not that he would have given them anyway. He attempted yet another deferential smile.
“At the risk of another encounter with your spectacular swordplay, my lord, I must admit that I can offer you nothing more than the truth that I took a wrong turn and that I would like to be on my way as quickly as possible.”
“Are you in any condition to be on your way?” Robin asked mildly.
“My lord, I have no choice. You’ve already been more generous than I deserve.”
Robin shrugged. “I couldn’t let you roam about my keep in your altogether, could I? My kitchen wenches won’t do a decent bit of labor for the rest of the day as it is. But as for you, aye, you may be on your way as you will.”
Zachary rose and carefully reached for his knives, then paused. He looked down at the blades, comfortable and familiar in his hands, then met Robin’s gaze. He couldn’t see him as well as he would have liked, but that would pass. His concerns, though, weren’t dismissed so easily. “Speaking of serving wenches, my lord, might I ask something of you?”
“Do you want one of them?” Robin asked in disbelief.
Zachary smiled briefly. “Nay, my lord, though I would like to ask something on the behalf of one of them.”
Robin frowned. “Go on.”
“The lass who tried to help me last night ... I didn’t think to ask her name but understood her to be one of your serving maids. I was hoping that you might be lenient when dealing with her.”
Robin’s mouth fell open. “A serving maid?”
“Aye, my lord. I would be willing to work to save her any punishment.”
“A serving—”
Zachary suddenly found himself sitting again without really knowing how he’d gotten there. He shoved his knives back down his boots—apparently someone else’s boots—and put his hands over his eyes to keep himself from having to watch the room spin. Yes, he would have been happy to work off quite a few things if he could have just found a place to lie down for another hour or two.
“I think you’re not going to be doing anything this morning besides puking into whatever corner I put you,” Robin said with a sigh. “I’m short on beds at the moment. Are you opposed to a pile of hay?”
“’Tis far more than I could hope for, my lord.”
Zachary heard the scrape of a chair, then the sound of booted feet. He felt strong hands take him by the arm and pull him to his feet. He managed to stay there on his own after a moment or two. He squinted at Artane’s lord.
“Thank you,” he managed.
“I’ll just be happy to get you out of my solar,” Robin said with a grimace, “before you retch all over it. Saints, you’re making me ill. Think you can manage the journey to the stables?”
“Absolutely.”
Robin released him, then walked over to the door. Zachary followed, less steadily than he would have liked. He managed to glance at the great hall as they walked through it. He saw the shadow of the stairwell behind the lord’s table, but he couldn’t bring himself to even think about it. It was going to be all he could do to get himself to that luxurious pile of hay.
He hoped he wasn’t making a serious mistake by agreeing to pass out in the stables without someone as a guard. Obviously, he’d become too accustomed to having Jamie to guard his back.
Then again, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t traveled back in time on his own more than once. The last time he’d done so was something he didn’t think on often. It had been a particularly unpleasant experience, one he had no intention of repeating.
That had been five years ago, though. He was much better at blending in than he used to be.
Not exactly a skill he could put on a resume.
He followed Robin out to the stables and waited while Robin gave instructions to his stable master. He thanked the good lord of Artane for his concessions and for his promise to leave a certain serving wench unreprimanded, had a grunt in return, then found himself led to a quiet corner.
He lay down, threw his arm over his eyes, and considered how fortunate he’d been. He wondered absently if an equal amount of good fortune had befallen that astonishingly beautiful serving girl—
He turned away from that thought sharply. She was the last thing he needed to think about. He was going to settle his debt with the lord of the castle for both his clothes and the girl, then he was going to get the hell back home. He would make a few additions to the master map of hot spots that James MacLeod had hanging over his desk in his office, then he was hanging up his boots. This was the very last, the positively final time he ever tripped through time. He wasn’t sure if he was going to remind Jamie about that first or yell it at Ambrose. Maybe he would get Jamie on the phone and shout it while he was standing next to Ambrose.
And then he was going to punch Gideon de Piaget. Very hard. Probably in the nose.
No paranormal activity, his arse.
He took a deep breath and tried to sleep.
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Chapter 6
M ary pulled her mother’s solar door shut behind her and took her first decent breath of the day. She didn’t panic often, but she was panicked now. She had been upstairs for the past three days and she feared she had lost any chance of an escort to anywhere besides the chapel.
She had spent the first two days after her adventure in the dungeon abed, shivering. The third, she’d found herself banished to her mother’s solar. She hadn’t dared ask any of the servants if a handsome Scotsman in strange clothing had been hanged and displayed outside the gates as a warning to other impudent trespassers, and she hadn’t seen any of her cousins to determine the same thing. She had simply sat and stitched, which she did unwillingly at the best of times.
Fortunately for the condition of her mother’s linens, today she’d been released from the tortures of the solar before noon. If she’d had to pass any more time listening to the lady Suzanna babbling about all the things that should have been going on at Artane but, to her deep disappointment, weren’t, she would have taken her tapestry needle and stabbed the woman with it. Her mother had finally sent her off on an errand from which she’d had to have known Mary wouldn’t return.
She hurried to her bedchamber and changed into something more sensible for working horses, not because she intended to work horses, but because she thought if her Scottish rescuer wanted to bolt for the gates, she would want to be ready to bolt with him. Assuming he was still inside those gates.
At least she was certain her father wouldn’t have hurt him. He’d given his word, and Robin of Artane never went back on his word.
She ran out of the stairwell and skidded across part of the hall floor. It was completely empty. Indeed, she might have believed she’d walked into someone else’s great hall if she hadn’t recognized the tapestries on the walls and the enormous hearths set into those same walls.
She wandered across the floor, feeling slightly unsteady on her feet. Had there been some sort of disaster? Had something happened to one of her cousins or, the saints forbid, her father himself? She opened the door, then came to a teetering halt. The answer was in front of her, thanks to the battle going on in her father’s courtyard.
Well, perhaps calling it
a battle was overstating things a bit. There was a skirmish in the offing. Part of the household was clustered on the steps, whilst the garrison and a pair of her cousins were standing on the courtyard floor. She pulled the door shut behind her silently, then saw Theo and Samuel a step or two below her. They made space for her to come stand between them, which she did without hesitation.
“You escaped,” Theo said out of the side of his mouth.
“Finally,” she agreed, “though I don’t think my sire knows.”
“He won’t notice.”
She saw quickly that Theo had that aright. Her sire was standing by himself in the courtyard with his arms crossed over his chest, watching the madness unfolding in front of him without any discernible expression at all—a sure sign he was very interested indeed.
Geoffrey of Styrr was there, talking to a man who had chivalry but no sword. Well, perhaps talking was an overstatement. Geoffrey was berating him sternly for the saints only knew what.
It was difficult to ignore the relief that rushed through her. Her Scotsman was still inside the gates and still breathing—for the moment, at least.
’Twas one thing to have seen him by torchlight, dressed in those strange blue trews and sporting blood on his face. It was another thing entirely to see him by the pleasant light of noon, standing confidently in her father’s courtyard as if he were a Scottish lord who had paused in the conquering of his neighbors long enough to examine a very loud, unpleasant trespasser whom he would subsequently dispatch lest the dolt irritate him overmuch.
He was dressed in modern clothes with his hands clasped behind his back, listening to Styrr rage at him. He still had no sword, but Mary supposed he didn’t need it. She had seen what he could do with his hands and feet alone. She suspected that many men left him alone simply because of what danger his very fine form boded. The maids he no doubt bested simply with the fairness of his face.
She wondered how it was the day had become so hot so suddenly.
She wrenched her thoughts back to more useful places. “I wonder who he is,” she whispered to Theo. “A Scottish lord, do you suppose?”