“Where are you going?” she asked, feeling slightly terrified by the prospect of his taking a sword and using it in a pitched battle.
“Out to keep you safe,” he said. He shrugged. “Not to worry.”
“Not to worry?” she echoed incredulously. “But, John—”
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her briefly. “Stay,” he commanded.
“John—”
“Stay behind, Tess,” he said seriously, “as a good medieval wife should.”
“But—”
He smiled. “You don’t think I’m about to wed you and be too dead not to fulfill the rest of my grandmother’s commands, do you?”
“I don’t know what to think,” she managed, feeling lightheaded. “John, this isn’t a movie scene—” She shut her mouth abruptly at the look on his face. She put her arms around him and held him tightly. “You don’t have to say it. I know you’ve done this before. At least I think you’ve done this before.”
“I have, and come away unscathed.” He took her face in his hands and kissed her briefly. “Go back inside that bedchamber, sit with my mother, sisters, and nieces, and wait for me. I’ll be back when I’m finished outside. If someone tries to break down the door, clout them over the head with a fire iron.”
She knew he was trying to make her laugh, but she honestly couldn’t. The realities of his former life were staring her in the face, and she didn’t like them.
“My time period,” he said quietly. “My rules.”
“And when do my rules apply?”
“We’ll negotiate that later, when we have the leisure to do so. I’ll tell you right now, however, that there will never be any negotiation where your safety is concerned.” He kissed her again, then turned and walked away. “Go back inside,” he called over his shoulder.
She started to, then stood with her hand on the door. He turned at the top step.
“I love you,” he said quietly.
“I love you,” she managed.
He held up his hand, then disappeared down the stairs.
Tess turned and walked into the bedroom only to walk bodily into her sister. She didn’t protest when Pippa took her by the arm, then shut the door and bolted it. It was all she could do to get herself over to a chair and sit down before her knees gave way. She looked up at her sister. “How do you stand this?”
“All part of the territory, sister dear,” Pippa said gently. “You can still play the lute, can’t you?”
“Now?” Tess asked incredulously. “And yes, I play, but very badly.”
“Play for Joanna anyway. She’ll love you for it.”
Tess soon found she didn’t have any choice. She dredged up the two things she knew, played them very badly indeed, then toyed with a few Renaissance things she’d learned to pad her repertoire. She was quite happy eventually when Amanda’s daughter Rose volunteered to demonstrate to her grandmother the things she’d been learning. She waited until everyone was resettled before she drew her sister aside and prepared to grill her quietly about the Chevington boys and what they’d been up to.
She had the feeling knowing that might mean the difference between John’s life and death.
Chapter 30
J
ohn
wasn’t sure if chain mail was going to be a help or a hindrance, but he didn’t protest when his father helped him into it. He wasn’t unused to battle, but he had to concede that eight years of being away from it left him feeling rather less prepared for it than he would have been otherwise. No sense in not being protected against an attack he might not see coming.
Rhys put his hand on John’s shoulder. “We’ll finish our conversation later, after this annoyance is seen to. And after that conversation, I intend to have a goodly bit of speech with your wife. I’m sure she’ll provide me with details of yours I’ll be most interested in.”
“She’s a scholar, just so you know,” John said. “Her specialty is medieval political thought.”
Rhys blinked in surprise, then laughed. “You’re not serious.”
“Oh, I am. She has her degree from Cambridge.”
“Does she, indeed?” Rhys asked in surprised. “I can scarce believe the place still exists. I assumed the windbags there would blow it over somewhere in the fifteenth century.”
“It wasn’t for a lack of trying, I’m sure,” John said dryly. He stretched, but there was no hope for finding any comfort from that. “That damned Everard. What is he thinking?”
“You’re assuming ’tis Everard who vexes us,” Rhys said. “For all we know, ’tis Roland behind this idiocy.”
“Nay,” Montgomery said, walking up to them and shaking his head. “Everard wants Segrave much worse than Roland ever did. I’m quite sure he’s been loitering in the area like a carrion bird, waiting for the spoils.” He smiled. “Canny of Joanna to thwart him by giving the keep to you, wasn’t it? You might have to come back now and again to see how your crops are coming and keep Everard out of your larder.”
John blew out his breath. “I can’t think about that right now. Let’s go rid ourselves of this plague, then discuss it later over a decent supper.”
“And then to the standing up,” Robin said cheerfully from behind him. “And to think I feared I might miss out on that joy with you.”
John turned around. “Have you managed it with
any
of your siblings?”
“Nay,” Robin admitted with a grin, “but hope, as they say, springs eternal.”
“Not with me it doesn’t,” John said. “So wipe that smirk off your face before I must see to it myself.”
Robin only smirked once more, then laughed as he walked away with their father. John scowled at his back, then looked at Montgomery, who was standing next to him, watching him with a faint smile.
“You aren’t going to echo him, are you?” John asked in disbelief.
Montgomery smiled more deeply. “Of coure not. And if it makes you feel any better, he tried the same thing with me. I left him with the aftereffects of my fist in his mouth. Miles finished the job whilst I went off to more pleasant labors.”
“The saints be praised for brothers with sense.” He shrugged his shoulders again to adjust his mail, then blew out his breath. He wasn’t unaccustomed to a case of nerves before a battle or a tourney, but in the past all that had been at stake had been either his honor or his own life. Now . . . now he had much more to worry about.
He shoved his worries aside. He had been in enough battles over the course of his youth to believe he could emerge from one more unscathed. His sojourn in the Future had added eight years of learning to fight with his hands and feet, something no medieval knight would expect. If he found himself in true danger, he would toss aside his honor and do what was necessary to keep himself alive.
He looked up at the sky that threatened rain, then back at his brother. He wished he’d had the chance to talk to Montgomery in more detail before, but there was nothing to be done about that now.
“When did you see Everard last?” he asked, settling for a question that wouldn’t require aught but a brief answer.
“A pair of months ago,” Montgomery said. “I cast him from my hall, though I’ll admit I have wished since that I’d kept him close a bit longer. He had rallied a handful of my garrison knights to his banner, but I imagine they soon realized that they had made a grave mistake in following him.” He paused, then looked at John seriously. “I’ve been curious about his activities, especially given that he watched Pippa come through the gate at the end of my drawbridge.”
“Do you think he had any idea what he was seeing?” John asked unwillingly. Though he would have liked to have believed that Everard was the fool his brothers thought him, there was simply no guaranteeing that the man hadn’t watched eight years ago as John disappeared into that gate near Artane. If he had subsequently watched Pippa do the same near Sedgwick, then . . .
“I doubt he had any idea what he’d witnessed,” Montgomery said. “Besides, if he had gained the Future, why would he have returned to our time?”
“To make a spectacle of himself?”
Montgomery smiled. “This is a great deal of trouble for that, don’t you think? Nay, I suspect ’tis nothing more than it looks. He wants Segrave and thinks that an attack at this moment, when we’re likely caught up in our grief over Joanna’s impending passing, will win him what he wants.”
John was willing to try to believe that—at least until he could prove otherwise. He looked up to find his father coming back toward him. “Who leads the charge?”
“Some burly lad wearing Chevington colors who isn’t Everard,” Rhys answered, “though I imagine Everard is lurking somewhere in the company. Why do you ask?”
“Just resigning myself to a pair of hours spent schooling the whoreson in manners when I find him,” John said with a sigh. “I’m for having that over with as quickly as possible.”
Rhys nodded, clapped him on the shoulder, then went to take the reins of his horse from a squire.
John swung up onto the back of his borrowed horse and rode through the gates, then found himself back in a medieval frame of mind without having to try. The battle began without fanfare, but with a desperation on the part of Everard’s lads that was unusual. Perhaps Everard had inspired his men more successfully than Montgomery had supposed he might.
Not that it would matter, in the end. His father and siblings were still formidable, their men terrifying. John was profoundly relieved to be fighting with them, not against them. It was almost as if no time had passed since the last time he’d stepped out into a fray with Montgomery on his left. He hardly had to give thought to what he was doing, which provided him with the opportunity to look for Everard. He didn’t see him, but then again, chainmail coifs weren’t precisely made to reveal who the wearers might be.
Or, he realized with a start, perhaps not, for there was at least one lad he recognized.
Roland of Chevington, loitering uselessly at the rear of the press.
It was at that moment that something else occurred to him, something that left him feeling as if he’d taken an enthusiastic fist to his gut.
If Tess had it aright—and he had no reason to think otherwise—and Roland of Chevington was in the Future Roland of Sedgwick, then the man who was fighting feebly with his sword was in a great bloody bit of danger at the moment. All it would take was a stray bolt from a crossbow, or a purposeful sword between the ribs to render him quite dead. And if he were dead—
“John?”
John looked at Montgomery who was still beside him. “What?”
“You look as if you’d seen a ghost,” Montgomery said with a frown. “What is it?”
“Tess thinks that Roland is the man who gave her the keep in the Future,” John said hoarsely. “Your keep, I mean. And if he dies now without going to the Future, then—”
Montgomery blanched. “Pippa never falls into my moat, and you don’t meet Tess.”
“Exactly.”
“Bloody hell,” Montgomery managed.
John left his brother to a renewed enthusiasm for his work and cut his way across the field over toward Roland. Perhaps he was imagining it, but it seemed as though things heated up in direct proportion to how close he came to the key to his future. Perhaps Everard’s lads had been told there was treasure inside Segrave and Roland was the one to help them procure it. It was odd that they were fighting so fiercely with no one to lead them, but perhaps those tales of spoils had been rather more embellished than they should have been.
Or so he thought until he realized that they weren’t leaderless.
Everard of Chevington stepped out from behind a group of very large soldiers and looked at John with a smirk.
John realized with a start that Everard had a pair of sunglasses hanging around his neck. It was without a doubt the most ridiculous thing he’d ever seen on a battlefield. He would have wasted the breath to mock him, but he suddenly didn’t have any breath because the ramifications of what he’d seen hit him.
Everard was sporting sunglasses, which meant he had gone to the Future. He had made sure John saw them so
John
would know he had gone to the Future. And for the final blow, he looked at Roland, looked back at John, then lifted his eyebrows briefly before he began to move purposefully toward his brother.
John would have bet his life it wasn’t to keep that brother safe.
In fact, he was certain it was quite the opposite. He swung down off his mount, because he felt more comfortable on his feet, then fought furiously with men who had obviously been instructed to concentrate solely on him. He would have called for aid, but he was too busy trying to keep his body unpierced by half a dozen well-wielded swords. He looked for Roland out of the corner of his eye, then swore viciously.
Roland was cowering, holding his sword over his head and using it as a shield against his brother’s relentless attack.
Everard finally cursed, then simply reached out and took the sword away from his brother. He slapped him with it, then tossed it aside in disgust. He looked at John.