“I don’t suppose you would tell me when that moment might be,” John said carefully, “that I don’t miss it.”
Nicholas stroked his chin in a manner that was so reminiscent of Robin, John almost choked.
“I believe,” Nicholas began slowly, as if he truly considered the matter, “that there must be dancing first. Perhaps a chaperoned walk or two. Flatteries and pleas directed toward her guardian at the moment, so that you might earn his favor.”
John pursed his lips. “Don’t tell me. That would be you.”
Nicholas held out his arm. “Lady Tess—”
“Forget it,” John said briskly. “
I
will escort her to her chamber. You may come along if you wish it.” He didn’t protest when Nick fell in on the other side of her. He supposed he’d spent enough time with his elder brother over the years to know when something was bothering him—and it wasn’t just the thought of John pulling Tess into a darkened corner and kissing her senseless.
He walked Tess up the stairs, then embraced her chastely in front of her bedchamber door. He imagined, judging by Nicholas’s enthusiastic clearing of his throat, that he’d stayed at the task a bit too long.
He kissed Tess with equal chasteness on the cheek, then released her reluctantly. She thanked Nicholas for the escort, smiled wearily, then closed and bolted the door.
John turned to his brother and scowled. “Do you care to tell me now what all that was about?”
“Just a bit of sport at your expense,” Nicholas said with an easy smile, “but also a chance to speak with what privacy is possible. Did you discuss with Sir William your outing this afternoon?”
“I didn’t have a chance,” John said, frowning.
“You should have,” Nicholas said frankly. “He said there was someone in the woods.”
John rubbed his hands over his face. “I feared as much.”
“Is that why you ran all the way from Chevington?”
John looked at him seriously. “That, and I couldn’t keep Tess out in the wild with just my sword between her and death. Would you have walked with Jenner?”
Nicholas shook his head. “You know I wouldn’t have.” He considered John for a moment or two. “You haven’t told me all.”
“I couldn’t stomach telling you all,” John said with a deep sigh, “but I will tomorrow. After I spend a pleasant night on my lady’s floor, keeping her safe.”
“Don’t be daft,” Nicholas snorted.
John shot his brother a look. “I’m sorry, did I ask your opinion?”
“
I’m
sorry, but aren’t you old enough to know better?”
“I want her protected.”
“Then wed her.”
“I’m working on that,” John said through gritted teeth. “And until that time, I’ll do what I must—which includes sleeping on her floor this night.”
Nicholas leaned back against the wall casually. “Let us consider my defenses, shall we? First we have the outer walls, manned by very canny lads with very sharp swords. Should some fool attempt the unthinkable—in the bitter cold, no less—and scale those walls, he would meet his end on one of those very sharp swords. Should he overcome those lads and drop down into the courtyard, he would meet not only braying hounds, but more lads with steel.”
John sighed, but that didn’t stop the deluge.
“The hall is secured and the great hall guarded by yet more men. Should some canny lad—which I can guarantee you couldn’t possibly be a lad sired by Richard of Chevington—manage to get inside the hall, he wouldn’t live to see your lady’s bedchamber door.”
“I’m not sure I feel any better,” John said grimly.
“Then realize that my hall will soon be so overflowing with family and rambunctious children that you’ll likely end up on a pallet on the floor in my chamber. If Tess doesn’t mind sleeping with a blade in her hand, you might perhaps lay your head across the chamber from hers.”
John closed his eyes briefly, then nodded. “You’re right.”
“We’ll talk tomorrow about Chevington’s get,” Nicholas said seriously. “Montgomery had trouble with Everard.”
John pursed his lips. “I’m unsurprised.”
Nicholas clapped him on the shoulder, then turned him and pushed him down the passageway. “Her door is bolted, and there is Sir Ranulf come to keep watch. She’ll be perfectly safe.”
John stopped and looked at his brother. “She doesn’t know the dangers.”
“And that, brother, is something I understand perfectly,” Nicholas said, “having considered the same thing with my bride.”
John smiled faintly. “I suppose that’s true.”
Nicholas slapped him affectionately on the back of the head. “It is, dolt. Trust me.”
John nodded, waited until Sir Ranulf was fully installed in front of Tess’s chamber, then sought his own bed.
He would, however, be up before too many watches had passed. Everard of Chevington might have been a fool, but John was convinced he knew about gates through time, which made him a dangerous one.
He shucked off his boots and went to bed fully dressed, lest something happen and he be needed in a hurry. If Tess called for him, he certainly didn’t want Nicholas trotting down the passageway in answer.
I love you
.
He closed his eyes. The saints preserve him, but he did.
And if he ever talked her into loving him in return, he would make sure she didn’t pay a steep price for it.
Chapter 23
T
ess
followed her guardsman—who appeared to be one of several—along the passageway and down the stairs to the great hall. She couldn’t imagine why she even had guardsmen to begin with, but John was, as she could readily attest, a bit on the paranoid side. She would have thought that being inside his brother’s hall would have made him relax a bit, but perhaps he knew things she didn’t. The collection of men who were either standing at attention in various strategic spots in the great hall or pacing unobtrusively along the walls or up in the gallery didn’t seem to be overly concerned, but perhaps they were used to humoring paranoid brothers of their lord.
She shook her head. She couldn’t imagine being a medieval knight, either as part of a permanent or rotating garrison, and having one’s life be taken up with protecting the keep’s inhabitants during good times and whoever else could cram themselves inside the walls when times weren’t so good. She supposed at least the weapons then were less devastating than during her time, though perhaps no less deadly in their own way.
Her trip with John north was certainly proof of that.
“My lady Jennifer is resting above and instructed me to offer you the run of the keep until she descends,” Sir Ranulf said with a slight bow. “Shall you go to the kitchens?”
Tess shook her head. She wasn’t much of a breakfast person anyway and while Nicholas’s cook was indeed better than she’d dared hope, she didn’t think she would be indulging in anything before lunch. Her stomach was in knots after spending the night torn between remembering that John had told her he loved her and reminding herself that she couldn’t be the one to tear him away from his family.
And she’d been worried a medieval thug would be what would do her in. She’d never expected the danger to her heart would come from an entirely different place.
“I wouldn’t mind just wandering, if possible,” she managed, when she realized Sir Ranulf was still waiting for her answer.
He nodded. “Of course, my lady. Lord John is, I believe, with Lord Nicholas in the courtyard.”
That sounded like an excuse to go outside and freeze. “I think I’ll go fetch my cloak—”
“No need, of course,” Sir Ranulf said. He beckoned for a page, then sent him scampering up the stairs.
Tess spared a moment of regret for the fact that she likely wasn’t going to manage to hire any eight-year-old boys to run her errands for her at home, then accepted her cloak and walked across the hall, preceded by Sir Ranulf and followed by a cluster of guardsmen she didn’t recognize. She couldn’t imagine Nicholas was worried about her making off with any of his medieval relics, so she had no choice but to believe the men were there for her protection.
Weird didn’t quite cover it.
But since she wasn’t sure her medieval French would hold up to the scrutiny of a long conversation about the reasons for that, she decided to just go with things and see where they led. It was yet another in a very long line of academic distractions she indulged in purposely to keep herself from thinking about things she couldn’t fix and didn’t want to face.
She realized immediately upon exiting the keep proper that she wasn’t nearly as flexible as she would have liked to have thought herself. The sight of a fully functional medieval courtyard was, to put it bluntly, shocking. Peasants were going about tasks that seemed to include caring for livestock, mailed men were either training or patrolling, and the sound of the blacksmith’s hammer was like a clarion call that screamed
not of your century, girlie
.
Or something to that effect.
Tess took a deep breath of bitterly cold air, coughed vigorously for her trouble, then held Sir Ranulf off when he peered at her to apparently make sure she wasn’t going to swoon. She walked down the steps and decided that since there seemed to be a group of men standing just beyond the barbican gate and since two of the taller of those men were fair-haired and dark, there was obviously something interesting going on that might be of some educational value to her. It was a decent-looking distraction, if nothing else.
She walked over to that little cluster of men, making furious mental notes right up until the moment she got a glimpse of what was lying there in their midst.
A lifeless hound.
Sir Ranulf stepped immediately in front of her. She was accustomed to that sort of thing, so she didn’t protest. Of course, she didn’t let it stop her from trying to move to his left. She had a bit of a tussle with her other guardsmen bringing up the rear, but she finally managed to at least peek between shoulders and look at what was going on. There was something far too posed about what she was seeing there in front of her.
As if someone were sending a message.
John and Nicholas were standing together, almost mirrors of each other except for their coloring and age. They apparently realized she was standing there at almost the same time because John moved just before Nicholas’s elbow caught up with his ribs. He stepped over the hound, walked through the sea of men who parted for him, and put his hands on her shoulders. He turned her around without comment and walked her forward, back through the gates.
She went, because he’d obviously trained her very well.
“What,” she asked when he finally gave up herding and reached for her hand to tuck under his arm, “was that?”
“A not very amusing prank,” he said with a shrug, “which we’ll leave the mystery of to someone else. Now, what would you care for first: a walk on the roof or breakfast?”
“Are you distracting me?”
“I don’t know,” he said, frowning thoughtfully. “Is it working?”
“John,” she began with a long-suffering sigh.
“A walk on the roof,” he said, “after we have a moment or two by the fire. Having a bird’s-eye view of the castle will be very informative, I’m sure.”
She supposed that was better than either revisiting what they’d discussed the night before or wondering why someone would leave a lifeless hunting dog at Nicholas’s front gate.
She went along and decided to save her questions for a more opportune moment. She agreed to wait by the fire—under guard, of course—while John went off to find bread and cheese and something to drink. She even humored him by eating more than she was comfortable with, which she was sure would lead to a mid-morning nap. She wasn’t entirely sure that hadn’t been his plan, catching sight as she did of the look on his face.
He was worried.
And he was subjecting her to an unusual amount of frowning scrutiny, as if he thought she might be thinking thoughts he wouldn’t care for.
She put on her most untroubled smile, to throw him off the scent. Besides, what else could she do? If he wanted to stay, she couldn’t order him to take her home. She might be able to get there on her own if she could get a peek at the infamous map in Nicholas’s trunk.
It occurred suddenly that if his brother Robin was coming south from Artane, his brother would also be going home again. There was no reason she couldn’t hitch a ride with him and use that big X near that castle to get herself back to her proper place in time. The current Earl of Artane would let her crash for a couple of days until she’d stopped bawling her eyes out over what she’d left behind in 1241, then she would get herself on a train and go home—
John rose to his feet suddenly and pulled her up to hers. “You think too much about things I don’t think I like. Let’s go walk.”
She was wrapped in the exceptionally luxurious cloak loaned to her by the lady of Wyckham, then left to wait while John did whatever medieval lords’ sons did when they were on edge about something. He had a couple of conversations with a pair of guardsmen while trying to look very casual about them, then looked around the hall with the same sort of carelessness. His eyes, however, were missing no detail. If someone had made a false move, she had no doubts that John would have reacted instantly in a way that would have rendered his foe quite unable to do anything else.