Knights (39 page)

“She was wandering and does not remember passing the day and night,” Edward said. “I found her in the woods.”

“Have you lost the ability to speak for yourself?” Gareth demanded, his fingers tightening a little on Gloriana’s shoulders.

“No, my lord,” Gloriana answered, suppressing a smile. She must remember, she told herself, that from the viewpoint of those left behind, she had been gone only a short time. “May I see my husband, please? I’m told that you’ve locked him up to keep him from murdering Merrymont.”

“Aye,” Gareth said, with no hint of remorse, snatching a lamp from one of the men and dismissing the others with a nod. “He’s in the dungeon, my brother. It was that or have him storming the walls of our neighbor’s keep and taking an arrow from Merrymont’s crossbow for his trouble.” With this explanation,
Lord Hadleigh put his free hand lightly to the small of Gloriana’s back and steered her into the castle and through the great hall. Edward kept pace, walking in silence on her other side.

“I appreciate your efforts to protect my husband,” Gloriana said to the lord of Hadleigh Castle, “but I can’t imagine that imprisonment has done his character any good. He’ll be fit to throttle you for holding him captive in such wise.”

Gareth gave his sister-in-law a dour, sidelong look. “No explanation will be required of me,” he said, putting a pointed emphasis on the last word. “Duty demands that I warn you, Lady Kenbrook—my brother won’t settle for this silly prattle you’ve given Edward about wandering in the woods, lost and confused, for the better part of two days. He will demand to know what you’ve been about.”

Gloriana felt a certain sweet uneasiness, but she was too eager to see Dane again to waste time worrying. She would deal with his inevitable irritation somehow.

They entered a passage behind the great hall, leading down a steep set of stairs, cut spiral fashion in the stone. The light of several torches made a golden pool at the foot of the steps, and Gloriana heard her husband’s voice even before she saw him.

“Gareth, if that’s you,” Dane called, from somewhere below, “you’d better be bringing the key to these damnable irons, for if you’re not, I swear I’ll have your liver before cock’s crow’”

Gloriana’s heart soared, and she hurried down the steps, leaving Gareth and Edward behind, and raced into the dungeon. She had never been in the place before and might have been fascinated if her attention hadn’t been fixed on the solitary prisoner.

Dane sat, disheveled and plainly annoyed, in a pile
of fresh straw near one of the dank walls, and he was chained to the wall by one ankle and one wrist. At the sight of Gloriana, he started to rise, but she didn’t give him a chance. She nearly flattened him with the exuberance of her embrace.

“Gloriana,” he said, and the ancient iron chains rattled as he raised his hands to cup her face. He must have felt the odd bundle under her skirts but, mercifully, he said nothing of that. “Oh, God, Gloriana—
where have you been?
”

She kissed his mouth, his eyelids, his cheeks and forehead. “I’ll explain later,” she said.

Dane’s handsome face hardened, though the love in his eyes was not lessened by his anger. “You will indeed, my lady wife,” he said. “At length and in great detail.”

Gloriana nodded, trying to look meek. “Yes, my lord,” she answered, but there was no trace of true humility in her tone or manner, and the fact did not go unnoticed by anyone in that terrible room. She turned a sharp gaze upon her brothers-in-law, who had no earthly idea that they had been, in effect, resurrected from their graves. “Unlock these chains immediately.”

“Contentious woman,” Gareth grumbled. But he produced a rusted key from the pouch tied at his belt—the dungeons at Hadleigh Castle were seldom used, and torture had been outlawed many years before—then squatted to work the locks, which resisted his awkward efforts for so long that Dane finally took over the task.

Gareth and Edward wisely took their leave before their angry brother had managed to free himself, and thus Gloriana was at last alone with her husband.

She wanted to have her way with him in the straw,
she’d missed him so terribly, but for him the separation had not been overlong, and now that he knew she was safe, he was furious.

“I will ask you once again, woman,” he said, rising and pulling Gloriana to her feet as he did so.
“Where have you been since yesterday morning?”

Gloriana wished she’d taken the trouble to think up a viable tale to explain her absence, but she’d been too caught up in the evening’s reunions to do so. Besides, until she’d encountered Edward by the lake, she hadn’t known what she would find when she reached Hadleigh Castle. Dane’s ancestors might have been living there, or even his descendants.

“I could tell you on the morrow,” she offered hopefully. “When we’ve both had a good night’s rest.”

“You will tell me now,” Dane replied, folding his arms. Although he did not say so, Gloriana suspected he had other plans for the hours ahead, and sleep was not among them.

Gloriana was beginning to lose patience. She loved this man enough to cross the very borders of time to live out her days at his side, but if she allowed him to bully her, she would be setting a disastrous precedent. Dane St. Gregory might as well learn, right now, what she would put up with and what she wouldn’t.

“Take care, my lord,” she told him angrily, “that I don’t refuse to speak to you altogether. I am not your dog, your squire, or one of your men-at-arms’”

Dane shoved splayed fingers through his hair, which needed barbering, as always, and was filled with bits of straw that glittered in the shifting light of the torches affixed to the walls. His frustration was nearly palpable, but he was making an admirable effort to restrain his temper.

“Explain,” he rasped through his teeth.

“What will you do if I refuse?” Gloriana challenged, putting her hands on her hips and squaring her nose with his. “Give me a good drubbing? Banish me to the nunnery?”

Dane opened his mouth, then closed it again. He was utterly magnificent, Gloriana thought, even in a state of fury. “God’s breath,” he spat, “you know I would never strike a woman, be she wife or whore or both—and as for banishing you, there probably isn’t a convent in the realm deserving of such a fate’”

Gloriana tried to retain a fierce expression but, in the end, she couldn’t do it. Dane was being impossible, of course, but she was simply too glad to see him to remain angry. She started to laugh, and when he glared at her, she laughed harder.

Finally, after a muttered curse, Kenbrook wrapped her in his arms, spun her about once in celebration of her return, and then kissed her soundly.

“I’m sorry you were frightened,” she said in an unsteady voice, when Dane released her at last. “I didn’t mean to leave you.”

Dane’s look penetrated deep, searching her soul. “I believe that, milady,” he said gravely. “I can’t think why I should, but I do.”

“I love you,” Gloriana said with a sniffle. Her vision was blurring again. She wondered if she needed spectacles, then concluded that they probably hadn’t been invented yet.

“And I love you,” Dane responded, touching the tip of her nose with an index finger. “Are you all right, Gloriana? Were you hurt, or sick?”

She shook her head. “No,” she said softly.

He frowned, his hands resting gently on her upper arms. “That day in the tower room, when you vanished for a few moments—was it something like that?”

Gloriana swallowed, then nodded.

“You were in the future, then?”

“Yes.”

Dane sighed and clasped her close against his chest, as though fearing that she would be torn right out of his arms.

Gloriana wanted to reassure him and drew back slightly to look up into his face. “It won’t happen ever again.” she said.

“How can you be sure of that?” Dane demanded.

“This time was different,” she answered. It was not the proper moment to tell Dane about her other visit, to what would have been his future, when both Edward and Gareth had been dead and they had been together in Elaina’s cell at the abbey, keeping a sorrowful vigil. Even so, Gloriana could not resist showing off a little of the knowledge she had gained on that particular excursion. “I am told you wanted to kill your uncle, thinking he had taken me captive.”

“My uncle?” Dane spoke firmly, but he could not hide his surprise.

“Merrymont.” she said. “Your mother, Jillian, was his younger sister, wasn’t she?”

Dane looked as though she’d struck him. “Did Gareth tell you this?”

“No,” she said, in all truth. “I found it out in my travels.”

He sighed, rubbing his wrist where the irons had chafed the flesh. “You are past understanding, woman,” he said. “ ’Tis a good thing I am a patient man.”

“You are anything but ‘a patient man,’” Gloriana countered, moving toward the stairs and trusting her newly freed husband to follow, which, of course, he
did. “I fear your temperament is oft unsavory, and wants a great deal of work.”

Behind her, Dane made a contemptuous sound. “While yours, my lady,” he drawled, “is beyond reproach, a shining example to lesser souls, such as I.”

Gloriana looked back at him. “Thank you,” she said, as if he’d meant the words as a compliment. “For all your foibles and shortcoming, my lord, you can, with effort, be a charming fellow on occasion.”

He gave her bottom a light pinch. “And tonight,” he said, “is going to be one of those occasions.”

The bag rustled and bulged beneath her gown, at thigh-level.

“What
is
that?” Dane asked, in a baffled rasp.

Gloriana pretended she hadn’t heard the question. There was clearly no need to keep secrets from her husband, but if any of the servants or men-at-arms were to become curious, the results could be tragic.

In Dane’s chamber, the fire had been lighted and the covers turned back on the bed. There was water for washing, and because word of Gloriana’s “rescue” by brave Sir Edward had surely reached everyone within the castle’s far-reaching walls, one of Lady Kenbrook’s favorite dressing gowns had been laid out for her use.

Dane closed the door once they were inside, lest they be interrupted by Judith or some other wellmeaning maid, and stood facing his wife with one brow raised. He did not need to speak; his countenance said everything.

Gloriana blushed slightly and brought the bag out of its awkward hiding place, offering it to him, holding it out wordlessly for his inspection.

Kenbrook accepted, his frown deepening as he
rubbed the thin plastic back and forth between his thumb and two fingers. After a glance at Gloriana, he took the strange pouch to the bed and upended it upon the mattress, causing the things inside to spill out in a colorful jumble.

One by one, he examined the books, the bottles containing vitamins and various wonder drugs, such as aspirin and mild antibiotics. He examined the tubes of toothpaste, in their bright cardboard boxes, and unstrung a length of the dental floss, his brow still knitted in consternation.

Gloriana laughed softly. “Be careful with that, my lord husband,” she teased. “It has to last more than six hundred and fifty years.”

Dane put the floss down, still glowering, and took up one of the books. After touching the smooth paper and examining the many-colored pictures inside, he raised his eyes to Gloriana again in frustration and wonder. “I cannot make out these words,” he complained. “What language is this?”

She went to him and kissed his cheek. “English,” she said, her eyes dancing.

Dane peered at the dark, even print again, then slammed the book closed. For all its violence, the gesture was somehow reverent, too. “Can you read it?” he asked. He did not relinquish the volume, but instead held it tightly in both hands.

Gloriana nodded. “It will come to you plain, my lord, when you’ve studied the letters awhile.”

“Tell me about this,” he said, shaking a plastic pill bottle.

“Medicine for fevers and infection,” Gloriana said. While in Lyn’s care and keeping, she had read many of his medical journals and overheard his telephone conversations with patients and the local chemist.

Dane dropped both bottle and book, as if they’d burned his flesh. “God’s breath, Gloriana, if anyone hears you talking so, you’ll be put to the stake for serving Satan.”

“But you won’t let that happen, will you, Dane?” Gloriana asked, feeling a little thrill of fear as she stood close to her husband and put her arms about his neck. “You promised to pierce my heart with an arrow, before matters reached such a pass.”

He went white. “I made no such vow,” he breathed.

And, of course, he was right. The oath had been offered in another time, a tributary of the future that they would now bypass completely.

Gloriana simply looked at him, asking a new pledge by her silence.

“I will not see you suffer,” Dane said gravely, after a very long time. “No matter what I have to do to prevent it.” He drew her close, and she felt his mood lighten, even as other parts of him grew noticeably heavier, harder. He glanced briefly at the magical items lying on the bed. “I mean to learn what there is to know about your books and medicines,” he said. “But just now, my lady wife, I wish to study other things.”

G
areth stood on the dais in the great hall, holding his tankard of ale high in the air. His voice boomed, joyous, through that vast, drafty chamber, from the rush-covered stone floor to the huge oak beams supporting the ceiling.

“Milady Gloriana has returned to hearth and husband,” he thundered. “Let us rejoice, one and all, and give thanks to heaven that she was spared from harm.”

Gloriana sat at Dane’s side, at the head table, her eyes lowered, her breathing shallow and quick. She would have preferred that little be made of her homecoming; too much ado was bound to stir speculation and remind people of her strange disappearance. Their theories concerning the vanishing of Lady Kenbrook could only be dangerous.

There was murmuring among the soldiers and servants, but the company lifted their own tankards in acknowledgment of the celebration, and the evening meal went noisily on.