Chapter 28
M ary dragged her sleeve across her face, set her pitchfork aside, and rebraided her hair. She was tempted to sit down on a strangely fashioned squared bale of hay, but that would have perhaps given the appearance of weakness. Never mind that she’d sat often enough over the past few hours. She’d found an added reserve of strength—and anger—and she knew exactly how to make best use of both.
Kendrick’s stables were spectacular, which earned him a positive mark or two in her book. He, however, was a horse’s arse, which removed those marks before anyone could have noticed that they’d been there in the first place.
She had already finished with one side of the aisle, so she turned to the other. She removed one of his mounts, tied it up out in the aisle, then set to cleaning the stall with a vengeance. She was furious, but even after almost three hours of having the peace to decide, she wasn’t sure with whom.
She had first thought Zachary should be the recipient of all her anger. He had known, the bloody lout had known that her brother was alive and he hadn’t called her immediately to let her know. Instead, he had allowed her to languish in the rain in bloody Scotland before he’d managed to drag her sorry self back to the right side of the border where he could present her to an actual relative who might have wanted to see her a bit sooner.
She cursed as she narrowly missed stabbing herself in the foot with the pitchfork.
She paused and blew stray strands of hair out of her eyes. She had already taken off her sweater but she now stripped off another layer, tossed it onto the hay with her sweater, then set to work in jeans and a T-shirt.
Jeans and a T-shirt that she had listened to Zachary insist that Elizabeth take his gold for.
In time, she returned the gelding to his home, then began work on another stall. By the time that was finished and yet another begun, she felt some of the fog of anger recede.
The truth was, Zachary couldn’t have given her the tidings over the phone. She was quite sure learning who Kendrick was had come as an equal shock to him. Indeed, she wasn’t certain she wasn’t still in a like state. She hadn’t had the entire tale, but she’d readily seen that her brother was now the father of six. He’d bellowed something at her about curses and shades and centuries, but she’d honestly been too distracted to pay any of it any heed. There was a tale there, and one she would have at her earliest opportunity—after she’d rid herself of the desire to kill him.
Nay, Zachary couldn’t have told her any of that over the phone.
And the truth of it was, he’d needed to be about his labors. Hadn’t he returned to Scotland far more quickly than he’d intended to? And hadn’t he then brought her immediately to England? And hadn’t he insisted that she not decide if she wanted him or not until she’d had the chance to meet someone in particular?
She’d just never imagined that someone would be her brother.
She put the steed back in his stall and stood there for a moment, cursing under her breath. Nay, she wasn’t going to kill Zachary, she was going to kill Kendrick. ’Twas difficult to believe she had actually forgotten just how autocratic he could be. He was stubborn, and overbearing, and far too much like their father for her taste. She snorted. Ridding her of her mobile phone. Telling her that her jeans were too tight. Commenting on the cut of her jib.
She wasn’t quite sure what that last one meant, but the criticism had been implied easily enough.
Nay, she was now finished with opinionated men telling her what she would and would not do. After all, she was now a twenty-first-century woman. She had freedoms. And rights. And other things she was certain she would discover if she could manage a bloody quarter hour without having to listen to her brother go on and on.
She realized, in a startling flash, that she wouldn’t have had those thoughts occur to her if Zachary hadn’t let her season in that lovely cottage in the woods for those few brief days. It also might not have occurred to her if she hadn’t spent a goodly part of those four days either in the company of his sisters, who were very much like her aunts, or by herself where she’d had the chance to simply sit and think.
She took a firmer grip on the pitchfork. She was going to tell her brother she loved him, thank him for a lovely handful of hours in his stables, then she was going to go back inside, find someone else’s phone, then call Zachary so he could come and fetch her.
She turned, then froze.
Kendrick was standing just inside his stables. He looked so much like their father, she doubted for a moment where she was. Or when, rather. She looked down at herself, just to be certain she was still wearing jeans—ones that were too tight, apparently—then let out her breath slowly. Proper century, but wrong location.
She leaned the pitchfork against a stall door and folded her arms over her chest in her father’s favorite pose of intimidation.
“I’m going to call him,” she announced.
Kendrick’s expression darkened. “Nay, you aren’t.”
She wished she’d had a dagger, but since she didn’t, she settled for the pitchfork. She reached out and rested her hand on it casually. “Get out of my way or I’ll stab you.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I would.”
“You wee stubborn wench.”
“You great overbearing lout,” she said through gritted teeth. “I am no longer a child, Kendrick, I am a woman full grown and I have made my choice.”
“Father would be appalled.”
She pursed her lips and decided that she had no alternative but to deal with her brother as she always had. She would ignore him unless he got in her way, then she would run him over with a horse. She’d done it before, with great success. She returned the pitchfork to its home, then gathered up her sweater and shirt and walked past her brother.
Or tried to, rather.
He caught her by the arm.
She made the mistake of looking up at him. He looked absolutely devastated. She cursed him, but that didn’t change the fact that by the time she’d put her gear on a bale of hay and put her arms around her brother, she was as near to weeping as she ever came. He was making unmanly noises of grief as well, so perhaps it didn’t matter.
“I missed you,” he said finally. “Not that you had much chance to miss me.”
She pulled back and looked up at him with a smile. “I haven’t seen you in a year, you heartless oaf. You could have come home more often instead of wreaking havoc all over the Continent with Royce and that terrifying Saracen of yours.”
“We didn’t wreak havoc, we made mischief. And buckets of gold.”
“Mercenary.”
He smiled, the sunny smile that she had to admit she had loved since the first time she could remember having seen it. Kendrick was a horse’s arse, as she had pointed out to his edification more than once, but he was also a most loyal and devoted brother.
And she wasn’t terribly unhappy to know she would have him and her love both in the same century.
He sighed deeply and put his arm around her shoulders. “Fetch your gear, Mary, and we’ll go have something to eat.”
“I’m calling Zachary first.”
“Tell him we’re meeting in the lists before I decide if you might date him. I have standards, you know.”
“We’re past this dating business of yours, Kendrick, and he trained with Father, so I imagine you won’t intimidate him.”
Kendrick snorted. “Trained? Rather Father no doubt destroyed him every morning before breaking his fast just for sport. How long was he darkening our door?”
“A fortnight, at least.”
He shot her a look. “You can’t fall in love in a fortnight, Mary.”
“I think I fell in love with him the first time he, unlike the rest of you oafs, actually plied a little chivalry on me.”
Kendrick snorted. “You’re a romantic.”
“How long did it take you to fall in love with Genevieve?”
“Before or after I tried to murder her?”
Mary started to ask, then thought better of it and shut her mouth. She imagined she would have the entire tale at some point, but she wasn’t sure she could stomach it at present. She leaned her head against her brother’s shoulder and walked with him back to his hall.
 
 
Half an hour later, she was feeling her way down into a chair. Not because it was comfortable, but because her knees wouldn’t hold her up. She looked at her brother in shock.
“He must be mistaken.”
Kendrick shook his head. “Gideon says Zachary has gone on a little, ah, errand. He’s not sure when he’ll be back.”
“You’re lying,” she said promptly. “What did he really say?”
“Can’t tell,” Kendrick said, shaking the phone. “Sometimes these things don’t work as well as they should.”
Mary glared at him. “If you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’ll insist your wife do it for me. And I’ll have one of your sons make certain she’s translated it aright. Don’t tell me they cannot.”
Kendrick sighed, then spoke for another moment or two into the phone, his expression becoming more serious with each bit of listening. He finally ended the conversation and looked at her. “Gideon admits that Zachary went off on an errand of a particular nature. I won’t speculate as to that nature, but I imagine we’ll want to go to Artane. Just so you’ll be there when he returns.”
She was heartily glad to be sitting down. “He couldn’t have intended to use a gate through time.”
“I—”
“He wouldn’t have.” She looked up at him. “’Tis perilous, which he knows full well. He told me during our travels here that he had once tried to right a wrong across the seas in what he called the Colonies. He scarce escaped with his life. He wouldn’t be foolish enough to try it now.”
Kendrick’s expression had become very grim indeed. “He must have had good reason, then.”
She pushed herself to her feet, swayed once, then steadied herself. “Whatever the reason, he’ll need aid.”
“Well, you certainly can’t go save him.”
She glared at him. “Don’t start this again.”
He scowled. “What has possessed you to be so difficult? Not that you weren’t before, but you have taken it to new and unpleasant heights here today.”
“’Tis the jeans.”
He pursed his lips. “They are merely a symptom of a disease you were born with, I’m afraid.” He turned away. “Very well, I’ll take you to Artane, where you will await this fool who has likely gone off to find you a wooing gift from another century. I’ll beat sense into him when he returns.”
She didn’t argue the point. She watched him disappear only after telling Worthington to help Genevieve collect the children and their things and put them in the car. He returned soon enough with a bag slung over one shoulder and a sword in his other hand.
“Let’s be off, sister.”
Mary followed him out of the keep in time to watch Worthington put her suitcase in the back of Kendrick’s car. It looked as if it would go very fast indeed, which likely would have pleased her at another time. Now, she only cared inasmuch as it would carry her home that much more swiftly.
Kendrick drove out of the castle gates and through the village at a very sedate pace, but soon left that idea behind.
“Sorry,” he said, shooting her a look.
She would have smiled if she hadn’t been so terrified that Zachary would never find his way back to her. “I don’t mind the speed.”
“I imagine you don’t.” He shook his head. “I think, Mary, that you were meant to be in this modern century.”
“I daresay you have that aright.”
He glanced at her briefly. “I’ll unbend far enough to tell you that I’ve heard this Smith character is fairly canny. Gideon, our nephew several generations removed, speaks very highly of him. Though I imagine you could tell me more tales than I could tell you.”
“Not now.”
“Nay, sister, not now. After I’ve humiliated him in the lists, perhaps.”
“Kendrick, you are a horse’s arse.”
He squeezed her hand briefly, then concentrated on the road.
 
 
They walked into Artane at sunset. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but she was so distraught that nothing made much of an impression. She knew she met the current lord of Artane and his lady wife. She knew she eventually listened to Kendrick’s children tumble into the hall with the abandon that bespoke familiarity with the place. She met Megan de Piaget, who so strongly resembled a younger version of her sister Jennifer that Mary found herself rendered speechless. When she found her tongue, she promised to give Megan all manner of tales about Jennifer and her children. But later, after she thought she could breathe again.
She asked and was given leave to wander the keep at will. She nodded her thanks, then walked to the back of the hall and up steps that were so grooved and worn, she could hardly believe they belonged to her father’s keep. That alone was evidence of the centuries she had leapt over to reach a place where jeans were available.
She walked down the passageway and stopped at the doorway to her mother’s solar. She put her hand on the wood, then she pushed the door open. The chamber was full of things she could see shadows of, but she didn’t suppose she cared to find out what they were in truth.
She took a deep breath and continued on until she reached her own bedchamber. She opened the door and realized she had no idea how to light the room.
“Light switch on your left.”
She shrieked in spite of herself, then spun around to find Kendrick leaning against the opposite wall of the passageway.
“How long have you been following me?” she asked breathlessly.
“Long enough.”
He pushed himself away from the wall and reached around her to turn on more of those magical Future lights. She turned around and looked inside her chamber.
Zachary’s clothes were tossed over the back of a chair and his backpack was sitting on the floor nearby. Mary walked into the chamber and sank down onto the bed. She looked to her left. Zachary’s keys were sitting on a low table there, as if he’d simply put them down for a moment, fully intending to come back and fetch them. She stared at them for several moments in silence, then looked up at her brother.
“I don’t understand why he did this.”
Kendrick handed her a manuscript. “Read through that and I imagine you will.”
Mary accepted the book and turned the pages slowly. Obviously Kendrick didn’t know Zachary as well as she did. He wouldn’t have risked not only his life but her parents’ lives as well simply because of something he’d read in a—
She froze.
There in front of her was one of the drawings he’d done for her father’s kennels. She ran her fingers over the page, marvel ing at the clarity of the ... well, she couldn’t call it a drawing. It was some sort of photograph, similar to the ones she’d seen in Zachary’s book. She looked up at Kendrick.
“Why does this matter?”
“It matters first because he signed the bloody plans. And for what I imagine truly caused him concern, turn the page.”
She did and came face-to-face with herself. She stared at her own face there and shook her head. Indeed, she shook her head several times. ’Twas unusual, perhaps, but surely not of such import that he would have felt the need to return to the past to do ... what? He might have liked to look at her, but surely no one else would.
And then she realized that wasn’t exactly true.
“Franbury,” she breathed. She looked at her brother. “That bloody oaf who came to your hall today. What did he want again? I didn’t understand half of what he said.”
“He was quite interested,” Kendrick began sourly, “in whatever paranormal activities I might have heard associated with a certain Zachary William Smith, architect. Paranormal as in ghosts, time travel, magic. The sort of thing that we, as it happens, both have quite a bit of experience with. The sort of thing any number of souls would no doubt be happy to discuss with irritating government busybodies.”
She felt a shiver go down her spine. “And would the current king send us to that new Tower he built in London?”
“The Tower is now old, the king is a queen, but aye, you have the rest of it aright.”
She swallowed with difficulty. “Then Zachary is risking his life to save us.”
“Oh, his own arse is being saved as well,” Kendrick muttered, “but aye, I imagine we figure into his thinking quite prominently.”
“You mean, I do. You, he would likely happily see sent to the gallows.”
Her brother smiled faintly, then came to sit next to her on the bed. “Likely so, and I imagine I deserve it. I’ll go easy on him when I meet him in the lists upon his return. Just for you.”
“You’re not meeting him in the lists.”
“And you’re not traipsing back through time to aid him.”
“Of course not,” she said. “Why would I?”
He shot her a look, then stood. “Let’s go find supper. That will pass the time pleasantly. Before you know it, I’ll be happily humiliating your would-be beau in the lists with my sword held between my teeth. Truly something not to be missed. But supper first.”
Mary nodded and rose as well. Aye, she would first find supper, then she would go look for other things. There had been many things in her mother’s solar, things that might be of a rather old vintage. Perhaps even things from Wyckham, things that might once have been contained in her uncle Nicholas’s trunk.
Maps were, as many in her family could attest, very useful things indeed.