One Magic Moment(18)
Author: Lynn Kurland

 

All of which had left him that morning rising before dawn and marching out to his very luxurious excuse for lists in an attempt to ignore things that bothered him.

 

He dragged his sleeve across his forehead. What he needed, he had to admit, was something to train with besides dead air. Unbidden, and certainly unwelcome, came to mind the contents of Oliver’s note. Ian MacLeod didn’t advertise, which meant his school was either hideously expensive or terribly exclusive. John was betting on both, neither of which bothered him. He supposed it might be a bit of stretch to pit himself against a canny Scotsman, but it might be just the thing to cure his wee head of its ridiculous thoughts—of swords, and times not his own, and music that he had rattling around in his head that hadn’t been preserved by others over the years.

 

And a certain dark-haired wench he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about.

 

He turned back to less uncomfortable things, namely those MacLeods who seemed to have all manner of interesting tales following them. Now that he could allow himself to think a bit more on them, he remembered that he’d first heard of them, surprisingly enough, from the lad who had forged his passport and birth certificate and seemed not at all troubled by the fashioning of either. He’d advised John to seek them out if he needed anything, mentioning in passing that they had used his services now and again for the same sort of thing.

 

John had immediately filed that away with a list of other things he’d never intended to think about again.

 

Now, though, he was beginning to wonder if he’d been too hasty. It said much about his pitiful state of mind that he was riffling through the file of impossible minutiae. He could, with an unflinchingness that would have impressed even his father, safely say that he was losing it.

 

And he knew, again, at just whose feet to lay the blame.

 

But since thinking on unpleasant paranormal impossibilities was preferable to thinking about her, he’d readily turned to them. To go to Scotland, to venture into the Highlands where they would have once upon a time just as easily killed an Englishman as to look at him, was to acknowledge things about himself that he didn’t like to think on.

 

Such as the fact that he had held a sword in his hand for hours a day for as long into his past as his memories stretched. And save for an impossible year when he had, with his brother, spent time at a castle half full of Scots, he had spent his life learning swordplay from his father, then having it polished by his elder brothers—no mean swordsmen themselves.

 

Perhaps he would be better off finding a local dojo and working out there. At least there he wouldn’t be asked questions about his abilities with steel that would make him uncomfortable.

 

He stabbed his sword into the ground, dragged his sleeve across his forehead again, then turned to go into the house for a drink. He froze when he realized he wasn’t alone.

 

Doris Winston was leaning against the wall, watching him.

 

He was flustered enough to swear, but he bit his tongue just in time. His mother would have been proud of him, but it did little for his level of comfort.

 

“You said you would play for me,” she said, fumbling for her cane—which he was just certain was nothing more than a prop—and tapping it against the sidewalk. “Though I will beg pardon for intruding into your private garden.”

 

“You weren’t,” he lied, because he’d been taught to be kind to old women. “I was just, ah, trying to keep from going to fat.”

 

“Interesting way to do it.”

 

“Isn’t it, though,” he muttered, half under his breath, starting across the garden so he could invite her in for tea and take her attention off things she didn’t need to be looking at.

 

To say he was alarmed didn’t begin to describe his discomfort.

 

“Don’t forget your sword, lad. Wouldn’t want it rusting in the rain.”

 

John blew his hair out of his eyes, then turned and went to fetch his sword. He resheathed it, then rested it casually against his shoulder as if it were nothing more interesting than a rapier, not a medieval broadsword. It was, as it happened, his own sword, the sword he’d been given as a youth by his father. At least he hadn’t been using the one he’d received at his knighting, or the Claymore purchased in the Future and generally kept hidden in the back of his closet. And he hadn’t been fighting someone else. Doris could have seen much worse things than she likely had.

 

He stopped in mid-step at the look on her face. He took a deep breath.

 

“Just a hobby,” he managed.

 

She only looked at him steadily. “I keep many secrets.”

 

“A pity I have none to give you.”

 

“Are you inviting me in,” she continued ruthlessly, “to play your lute for me? I imagine it goes with the sword-fighting expertise, doesn’t it?”

 

“Bloody hell, old woman, you’re frightening me.”

 

She laughed and took his arm, seemingly not put off by the aftereffects of his workout. “As I said, I keep many secrets for many people. I won’t tell anyone what you can do.”

 

“One could hope,” he managed. He supposed his fate was sealed, at least for the next hour or so, so he surrendered without complaint.

 

Besides, England was full of reenactment lads. For all she knew, he had an unwholesome fascination with time periods not his own and had taken that fascination to an unhealthy level. There could have been nothing more to it than that.

 

He ushered her inside his humble cottage, saw her seated, then locked himself in his room and headed for the shower. He cleaned up, purposely keeping his mind empty, then stowed his gear behind his clothes where it usually rested. He considered, then sighed deeply and fetched his lute. He walked back out into the little living room to find that Doris had made a fire and tea.

 

“Thought at least one of us should be comfortable,” she said.

 

“Good of you,” he said sourly.

 

She sat down in his favorite chair, then looked up at him. “Well?”

 

He dredged up his best company manners, sat down, and took his lute out of the case. It wasn’t an inexpensive reproduction, though it was indeed a reproduction. He’d had it made at great expense to suit his specifications. The mechanics were modern, but the sound was pure medieval.

 

He tuned the strings, then sang the song he’d recorded two days earlier for Kenneth, damn him to hell. It was one thing to play for himself—something he did quite often—and for old women who knew how to keep secrets, but it was another thing entirely to have anything of an antique nature associated with his name.