“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
J
ohn
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 have 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?”
He opened his mouth to protest, but didn’t even manage a single syllable before Peaches was popping up energetically to her feet.
“I’m teasing,” she said with another smile. “Thanks for coming.”
He could only nod and watch as she walked away, presumably to find her sister. He turned in his chair to have a better view of them as they met at the back of the hall. It was a little startling to see them standing there, mirrors of each other yet so unalike. No wonder he and Montgomery had received so many of the same sort of looks, never mind that those looks had usually been accompanied by some gesture to ward off evil.
Times had changed.
He rose when he realized Tess was coming toward him. She waved him back down into his seat and took the one across from him. He realized that he didn’t much care for that, but he thought that moving his chair next to hers might have been a bit much.
She looked impossibly tired, which led him to believe the evening had been a bigger drain on her than he’d suspected.
“Have you eaten?” he asked.
“I can’t remember.”
He glanced at the front door to find it locked, then rose and reached out to pull her to her feet. He kept her hand in his and led her toward the kitchens.
And he tried to ignore that he felt as if he’d done the like countless times before.
He saw her seated at the worktable, then put a kettle on for tea. He rummaged about in an enormous refrigerator, but the best he could do was eggs. A traditional English breakfast it would be, then.
He cooked, then looked over his shoulder to make sure she hadn’t fallen asleep on him. She hadn’t. She was watching him with what a duller man might have suspected was tolerance.
Affection was, he supposed, something to hope for as time wore on.
“I could do that,” she said.
“I imagine you could,” he said, “but I’ll do it instead.”
“Bossy even in the kitchen.”
He prepared two plates, then carried them over and set one down in front of her. “I like to be consistent.”
She smiled, then looked at what was in front of her. “I think I’m too tired to eat this, but it looks wonderful.”
“Force yourself.”
“Pass the chilled toast, then.”
He smiled and did so, then badgered and bullied her until she’d finished what he’d made for her. He washed up, put the Aga to bed for the night, then fetched his coat off the hook by the door and Tess from off her chair. He took her by the hand, then stopped in front of the fire in her great hall.
He handed her his coat. “I’ll check the doors.”
“They’re fine—” She shut her mouth. “Don’t say it.”
He shot her a look. “I
will
check the doors of the keep, Tess, to make certain you’re safe.”
“You said it.”
“You seem to need the reminder.”
She only watched him, silent and grave.
He did a more thorough job of it than usual, only because he didn’t trust any of the blighters who’d been lingering in her great hall. Apart from one tower door being propped open by a loose stone—something he found himself rather alarmed by—the rest of the hall seemed not to have suffered overmuch from the assault. He went so far as to look under what he assumed was Tess’s bed, reminded himself that offering to sleep on the floor in front of her fire would be a very odd thing to do, then jogged down the stairs and out into the great hall.
Tess was asleep in the chair in front of the fire.
He stood in the middle of that great hall for far longer than he should have, allowing himself to entertain thoughts he shouldn’t have for far longer than was wise. He never would have imagined during the last time he’d stood in the middle of Sedgwick’s great hall with a sword at his side and his only method of transportation being his mount that he might one day be standing there in far different garb, admiring a woman who loved what he’d grown to manhood surrounded by but had no idea how well acquainted he was with the same.
Life was very strange.
He walked over to the fire and squatted down in front of her. He put his hand over hers, trying not to startle her. She opened her eyes, blinked, then looked at him.
She smiled.
He closed his eyes briefly, then attempted a smile in return. “All the doors are locked.”
“Thank you,” she said sleepily.
“Can you get yourself to bed?”
“That I think I can manage on my own.”
“Just trying to be chivalrous.”
She pursed her lips and held out his coat. “I wouldn’t want you to use it all up.”
He rose, then held out his hand for hers. She looked at his hand, then up at him, then hesitated again before she put her hand in his.
He understood why. It was rather earth-shattering.
But not so terrible that he couldn’t bring himself to keep her hand in his as he walked across the great hall with her. It was madness, even thinking to start up any sort of relationship with her, but he was afraid he might have already crossed the line into lunacy.
He paused at the door, then looked down at her. “I suppose it would be unwise to suggest we see each other sooner than Wednesday.”
“I suppose it would be,” she agreed. “Though I appreciate the rescue tonight.”
He leaned against the doorframe. “Another party tomorrow night?”
“A small one,” she said. “Just supper for twenty.”
He smiled. “After tonight, I can see why that seems small.”
“And they’re all very well behaved,” she said. “Londoners entertaining out-of-town clients. I’ll just welcome everyone at the front door, then spend the rest of the time in the kitchen, making sure the white sauce doesn’t burn.”
“It doesn’t sound so taxing that you couldn’t patronize a National Trust site in the morning,” he said thoughtfully, “if you had sauce-stirring aid in the evening.” He paused. “Knole House?”
She took a deep breath. “If you like.”
“I’m more interested in what you would like.”
“Accommodating tonight, aren’t you?”
“You should probably take advantage of it.”
“I love Knole House,” she said with a smile. “It’s a very luxurious place.”
“They had no idea how luxurious, I’m sure,” he muttered under his breath. He opened the door, squeezed her hand, then released it and walked out onto the top step. He continued down to the courtyard before he turned and looked up at her. He thought keeping those steps between them was a very circumspect thing to do, though it left her rather farther out of reach than he cared for. He put his coat on, then jammed his hands in his pockets. “I’ll pick you up at ten.”
She leaned against the doorframe. “All right.”
He nodded, then paused. “Can I trust you would tell me to shove off if you didn’t want to see me again?” He cleared his throat. “I haven’t given you much choice about it in the past, just showing up as I have uninvited.”
She wrapped her arms around herself. He could only hope that was because she would have preferred to wrap her arms around him but was being discreet.