One Magic Moment(19)
Author: Lynn Kurland
Not that anyone would have cared, surely.
He played for another quarter hour, then set the lute aside.
“Four?” Doris asked, disappointed. “That’s all?”
“Three more than my usual limit,” he said darkly.
“Then I’ll be content,” she said, rising. “Thank you, my lad. It was lovely.”
“I’ll take you home—”
She waved him away. “I need the walk.” She paused at his door. “You know, they’re having a little gathering up at the castle tonight.”
“I didn’t know,” he said. Didn’t know and didn’t want to know.
“I’m surprised you haven’t been more in touch with the happenings there,” she said mildly. “Given your affinity for the past.”
He forced himself to breathe normally because he had, he could admit modestly, iron control over himself. “I was still trying to settle in.”
“You looked settled in now. You might have an opinion on how things are run. Given your affinity—”
“For the past,” he finished for her. “Yes, you already mentioned that.”
She only looked at him blandly.
He suppressed the urge to drag his hand through his hair. “I dabble in history. Nothing more.”
“Young Tess does as well, which you know, but she might be in over her head tonight. I understand she’s putting on a small party for very exclusive clients who are notoriously difficult to please. Her sister’s in London and her caterer had a family emergency. I think she’s all on her own up the way.”
“A pity,” he said. It was, but it wasn’t his trouble so he felt no need to rush off to solve it.
“She doesn’t look it, but I think she’s fragile.”
“She’s dangerous.”
Doris reached out and poked him in the chest with her cane. “You know, you little blighter, you could go offer her a bit of aid.”
“’Tis hardly my responsibility,” he said grimly.
“And how many times, my dear John, have you taken responsibility for troubles that were not your own?”
He scowled at her.
“They’re arriving at seven for supper.”
“I am not a chef.”
“But you are an excellent lutenist.”
He reached around her and opened the door for her. “A good day to you, Mrs. Winston.”
She only smiled pleasantly, her dastardly duty apparently done for the day. She propped her cane up against her shoulder exactly as he’d done with his sword, then walked off with a spring in her step a woman half her age would have envied. John watched her go, then shut himself into his house and made plans for the afternoon.
Important plans.
Plans that didn’t involve putting on a tunic and tights and masquerading as some sort of medieval reenactment nutter who had absolutely no bloody idea just how unpleasant the time period could be.
He wondered if there might be football on the telly.
He was still wondering that at quarter past seven as he pulled into the completely inadequate car park that huddled a safe distance away from Sedgwick’s modern incarnation of itself.
He was wearing jeans.
That was the only thing that made him feel in the slightest bit in control of his own destiny. He spared a few dark thoughts for his damnable chivalry that he couldn’t seem to control, then fetched his lute out of the boot of his car and looked at the castle with as much enthusiasm as he might have the welcoming maw of the Tower of London’s dungeons.
He looked over the trio of cars alongside his. Two pretentious Bentleys and a Rolls. He wasn’t surprised. He also wasn’t at all certain why he was lowering himself to waste his evening on people who would likely spend it looking down their noses at him.
He shook his head and walked over to the keep. The place was wearing its best torchlight and actually looked quite lovely for a very rainy evening in November that threatened to turn to snow before the night was through. He could smell it in the air and wished, belatedly, that he’d driven something less ding-worthy. He should have brought the shop’s Rover. Too late for that, he supposed. He would just have to press on and take his chances.
A bit like what he was doing with his life, actually.
He walked across the courtyard and avoided the great hall. He supposed he could, even after all the ensuing years, find the side door to the kitchens. He walked inside before he could stop to question his sanity—again—and found Tess up to her elbows in trying to simultaneously cook and direct staff who didn’t seem to be up to the most menial of tasks.
She turned at the sound of his footstep and almost dropped a pot of something. She set it down on the Aga before he could leap forward and rescue it. She looked at the case in his hand, then back at him.
“I’m afraid to ask.”
He pursed his lips. “You likely should be. Where are the snooty gits you’re being tormented by tonight?”
The girls in the kitchen tittered. Tess frowned them into silence, then looked at him. “I don’t think you’ll help, if it’s all the same to you.”
He set his lute down and shrugged out of his jacket. “I can behave long enough to entertain them. What can I do to see dinner out on the lord’s table?”
She closed her eyes briefly, then took an unsteady breath. “Can you stir white sauce?”
“Barely.”
She didn’t smile. She looked as if she just might break down and weep, which terrified him more than the thought of revealing more about himself to her and her guests than he cared to. He unbuttoned the cuffs of his only decent dress shirt, then rolled up his sleeves and moved to stand next to her.
“I’ll tend the saucepans,” he said. “You go play hostess. But fix your hair first. You’re looking a little frazzled.”
She blew fringe out of her eyes and glared at him. “I knew that.”
He gently nudged her out of the way. “I think a glass of wine might do you good.”
“I don’t drink.”