The More I See You (3 page)

She turned and made her way to the gallery where she’d left the tourists reeling from her ride on Archie’s shoulder. Large French doors opened onto the garden at the end of the room. Jessica started toward them purposefully, fully intending to ignore all Lord Henry’s treasures.

But, in spite of herself, she found herself pausing in front of the painting of Burwyck-on-the-Sea.

The view was from the sea. The water churned ferociously against the stone foundations of the castle. At one corner of the castle a large round tower sat atop the rocks, looking almost as if it had grown out of them. The castle might have been comfortably large, but Jessica suspected it was very drafty and quite chilly.

It was definitely not the place for her.

She walked away quickly. What she needed was some fresh air and then maybe a return to her room for some hot chocolate enjoyed behind a locked door. She opened one of the French doors and stepped out into the evening air.

She pulled the door shut behind her, leaned back against it, and took a deep breath. The sun was setting, the air was still and thick, and for the first time in days she felt herself start to relax.

She needed a vacation from her life,
sans
Mr. Stafford III and his hoisting ways. She’d secretly been hoping the trip to England would give her a chance to get some perspective on the Big Picture. She’d envisioned some free time spent holed up in her room, again
sans
Mr. Stafford III, sorting out her innermost goals and desires. She’d
been certain cucumber sandwiches would have aided her greatly in coming up with just what was missing.

She wrapped her arms around herself and wandered down the path through the manicured bushes. Maybe it was all much simpler than she wanted to believe. It was true that she had a wonderful career as composer-in-residence at a small, exclusive university, she had a great sublet in Manhattan, and she still had her high-school waistline.

But what she didn’t have was a family of her own.

She stopped suddenly as she caught sight of a statue to her left. Some ancestor of heroic proportions stared down at her from his perch atop a marble horse. His features were fixed in an eternal sneer.

“Well,” she said defensively, “marriage
is
the natural state of man.”

He remained seemingly unimpressed.

“Ben Franklin said so,” she added.

The statue refrained from comment. Jessica shrugged and continued on her way. That had been her father’s favorite saying and his marriage to her mother had been proof of it. They’d been happy and fulfilled, so much so that her mother still seemed sustained by that happiness, even though Jessica’s father had passed away almost two years earlier.

And maybe that was part of her discontent. Life was short. It seemed a shame to waste it on just herself if there might be something she could do to change that.

It looked like more blind dates were in her future.

She sighed and looked heavenward. If only there were an easier way to meet a decent guy who might be interested in settling down and producing a bit of offspring. She picked out a star and wished on it.

“A decent guy,” she began, then shook her head. She was wishing. Why not go all the way?

“All right, since we’re here in England, I’ll have a fair and gallant knight,” she amended. “One with lots of chivalry. And I’d like one with a steady job, an even temper, and a house with room enough for a concert grand
piano. And I’d like this man to love me at least as much as he loves himself. That isn’t too much to ask, is it?”

The heavens were silent.

Jessica sighed and continued down the path. Archie was living proof that all those things were just wishful thinking. Just once, if only for a few days, she wanted to meet a man who would look on her as an equal. Surely there had to be someone out there with a hint of true chivalry in his black soul. The face of a pirate and the heart of a poet. Other people found men like that. Why couldn’t she?

She could, and she would. She would tell Archie in no uncertain terms that the winds had shifted and were definitely not favorable where he was concerned, then she would return to New York and make a conscious effort to get herself set up with better blind dates.

She shivered, suddenly realizing how cold it was outside. Warmth from righteous indignation lasted only so long after the fog rolled in. Then she frowned. They were an awfully long way from the coast for fog to be rolling in. Maybe there was a serious storm brewing. The thought of her cheery fireplace in Lord Henry’s house was sounding very nice all of a sudden. Maybe just another few minutes to really get uncomfortable, then she would head back and treat herself to an enormous cup of hot chocolate.

A hound bayed in the distance.

Jessica tripped over a loose stone and barely caught herself before she lost her balance. She straightened and took a shaky breath or two, wondering how stones had suddenly found their way into the garden. She bypassed the stone, then stopped again just as suddenly.

The garden was gone.

Well, the land wasn’t gone, but the nicely tended beds certainly were. Jessica frowned. Could she have been so irritated that she had walked to the edge of Lord Henry’s garden without realizing it? The garden was a great deal bigger than that and she was sure that what had lain beyond
it looked nothing like the rocky, poorly tilled bit of soil in front of her.

More hounds bayed. Hounds? She didn’t remember Henry having had hounds. Maybe she had lost herself in the mist and wandered onto a neighbor’s property. A neighbor with dogs that sounded as if they hadn’t been fed in a while. A horn sounded closer to her, mingling with the renewed barking.

The fog began to lift. She could have sworn she heard a faint jingling sound, not the sound of bells, but the sound of metal against metal. She knew she wasn’t imagining the voices, or the renewed horn calls. She realized, with a start, that standing out in the middle of a field with what sounded like a hunting party approaching wasn’t very intelligent. The best thing to do would be to turn around and go back the way she had come. She started to when she caught sight of dogs racing across the field toward her, followed by horsemen.

She was very tempted to stand there and gape. Fortunately some small part of her brain was acting on instinct; she turned and ran almost before she realized she needed to do so to avoid being trampled.

As she fled with her skirts hiked up to her knees, she comforted herself with the knowledge that the mist had been playing tricks on her. She’d wandered farther than she had thought. If she just ran fast enough, she would run right into the house and avoid being doggie dinner. Then she would have Lord Henry find out just who was riding over his fields with big, slobbering hounds and reprimand them politely for scaring the sh—

She shrieked as she felt her feet leave the ground.

Her captor snarled something at one of his companions and was answered with a raucous laugh. Jessica would have tried to sort that out, but she was too busy looking down between her dangling feet and watching the ground fly by. This was almost as unpleasant as being dumped over Archie’s shoulder. Hopefully there wasn’t an army of tourists watching her wretched rescue.

Rescue? What was she thinking, rescue? She’d probably
been kidnapped. She had been kidnapped and was being carried who-knew-where to have who-knew-what done to her. She looked around wildly only to find filthy, cloak-begarbed men riding with their attentions fixed on whatever the hounds were chasing.

One thing was for sure: she didn’t see any kind of shiny knight on a white charger heading toward them to defend her abused self.

“It was a stupid idea anyway,” she muttered under her breath as she marshaled her strength to make a bid for freedom. She would just have to take care of herself by herself. She put her hand under her captor’s arm and shoved with all her strength.

“
Merde
,” he growled.

Jessica’s head snapped up of its own accord.
Merde?
Well, it was just a good thing her grandmother wasn’t around or the guy would have found his mouth washed out with whatever cleansing agent was handy.

The men started yelling at each other again and this time Jessica listened more intently. Yes, it was French, but it was the wackiest accent she’d ever heard. She’d spent a year after college wandering through France—and apologizing to her grandmother’s relatives for her grandfather’s having married and carted said grandmother off to the States after the war—and during those travels she had done a great deal to improve her knowledge of the language her grandmother had so diligently taught her. But in none of her groveling visits had she heard French spoken quite like it was being spoken now.

The horse came to an abrupt halt and Jessica almost sighed in relief. Now she could apply herself to the task of getting down and getting away.

Her relief was short-lived. Before she could move, she was grasped ungently around the waist and plopped down sideways over the front edge of a high saddle, leaving one leg over the horse’s withers and the other leg over a man’s thighs.

And it was at that precise moment that she knew something was terribly, dreadfully wrong.

Never mind that she’d somehow lost the manor house in the mist. Never mind that the men around her were speaking some strange French dialect in the midst of the English countryside. No, what really bothered her was that the saddle horn she was holding between her thighs looked uncomfortably like those medieval ones she’d seen in Henry’s castle. Just who the heck would have swiped something like that? The thug who held her captive? She didn’t want to take a look at him, but she knew she’d have to do it sooner or later. No time like the present to determine the direness of her straits.

She took a deep breath and looked up.

Whatever breath she’d been holding, she lost immediately.

He was, and she had to swallow very hard to keep from choking, the most terribly beautiful man she had ever seen. He had a long, wicked scar that traveled from his temple down his cheek to the side of his chin and below his jaw. Somehow, though, it just didn’t detract from his handsomeness, dark though that was. His face was all planes and angles, harsh even in the deepening gloom. His hair was dark and his eyes were full of cynicism.

Before she could wonder about that, she felt herself jerked backward off the horse thanks to a hand in her hair. She couldn’t have said how, but somehow the man holding her managed to keep her in his arms and dismount, all without missing a beat. Jessica grabbed her hair close to her head and held on, trying to spare herself any more pain. She was set on her feet and then there was the distinct sound of fist against flesh.

She looked up in time to see a mounted man jerk back upright with a curse. As he was holding a very bloody nose, she could only assume he’d been the one to grab her hair—and the one to receive his just deserts for doing so.

He had light hair and a very unpleasant face. That face, behind his bloodied nose, of course, was scrunched up in anger and he was shouting something at her rescuer. Jessica decided right then that this was a man she had no
desire to get to know any better, especially when he let go of his nose long enough to draw a sword and brandish it. He swung it around his head, but he did so in a manner that made him look less than sober.

Jessica felt her mouth slip open. Either she was dreaming or her blood sugar had just taken a decided dip south. She watched the man on the horse wave his sword around as if he meant to do business with it, then she realized something else.

The man she was standing next to hadn’t bothered to respond in kind. He had a sword. She knew that because the hilt was digging into her side. That her rescuer—and by now she certainly preferred to think of him as such, if the alternative was casting her lot with the nasty-looking sword wielder—was even wearing a sword was enough to make her want to sit down until she could sort things out properly.

She pondered that for a moment or two, then realized that her non-sword-drawing acquaintance was speaking and by nothing more than the tone of his voice he made it clear that being in his sights was a very unhappy place to be. Jessica decided right then that confrontation would be her last resort. Maybe she could make off with his horse while his attention was elsewhere. She eased behind him. No sense in not using him as a shield while she could.

Jessica looked around his shoulder at the man who still sat astride his horse, his flashing broadsword uplifted. That one seemed to make a decision of some kind. He shoved his sword back into his scabbard and jabbed his heels into his horse’s side. The beast cried out and jumped forward. The rest of the mounted men thundered past. It was only after the dust had dispersed that Jessica realized she’d been holding her breath. Then she realized something else.

The man with the iron grip around her wrist had faced down a man approximately the same size who was sitting on a horse with a drawn sword, yet he had come out the winner apparently using only words as his weapon.

He turned and looked down at her. Smiling in the face of that grim mask was more than she could manage. But words weren’t beyond her.

“Thank you,” she said, and it came out a croak. “I think.”

He shrugged, apparently noting her apology and then dismissing it. He put his hands on her waist and Jessica jerked back in surprise.

“Let go of me,” she said, struggling to push him away. “I mean it, mister. I appreciate the help, but I’m fine now. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

She gasped in surprise as the man lifted her easily and cast her up onto his saddle. Before she’d even had time to arrange her skirts to sit astride the horse, the man had vaulted up behind her onto the gelding’s rump.

Things were not going the way she’d planned.

But before she could protest, the man reached for the reins, then spurred his horse forward. Jessica clutched the front of the saddle and prayed she would get back to the house in one piece, assuming they were heading back to the house. The sun had definitely set and the twilight was fading quickly; she did her best to calculate where they were going. In that at least she found some relief. It felt like a return to Henry’s house.