One Magic Moment(27)
Author: Lynn Kurland

 

Heaven help her, she was in trouble.

 

She shut the door before she got into any more of it.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 8

 

 

 

John walked into a building that was almost as old as he was, then frowned as he looked about him for some indication as to where Tess might be teaching. He supposed it wouldn’t be one of the smaller chambers, so he made his way to what looked to be a lecture hall.

 

He wasn’t unfamiliar with places of higher learning. He had, over the course of the past eight years, attended many lectures at various universities. It also wasn’t that he hadn’t had an excellent education at his father’s direction, but there had been, he would readily admit, a few new things added to the body of knowledge since his father’s day. Just becoming familiar with even a sketchy overview of all the history he’d missed had taken him a solid year of reading every chance he had.

 

He had, as the opportunity had presented itself, attended lectures at Cambridge along with many concerts. He was actually rather surprised he’d never seen Tess before. Then again, he likely wouldn’t have taken a class from her given his determination to avoid all things medieval.

 

Ah, how the mighty were fallen, something he was especially cognizant of as he put his ear to the wood of the door, then opened it slowly.

 

The hall was larger than he would have expected, but that might work to his advantage. He would be able to slip into the back of it without being noticed.

 

Or, perhaps not. Tess looked at him the moment he closed the door soundlessly behind him, then went back to her lecture. That he could have borne, perhaps. It was looking for a seat at the back of the hall and finding only one empty one that unnerved him. Of course, that could have been because a man had removed his well-used briefcase from it and nodded encouragingly.

 

The Viscount Haulton, as it happened.

 

John would have looked for somewhere else to sit, but he’d been caught, and he was nothing if not polite. He supposed he might come to regret that at some point.

 

So he sat down next to the future Earl of Artane and suppressed the urge to pull his sunglasses down over his eyes. He supposed that would call more attention to himself than he wanted, so he refrained.

 

And aye, he knew bloody well whom he was sitting next to. He had a BlackBerry and knew how to use it. Not that he’d needed a quick search to figure out who the man was. A good look at him would have told John all he needed to know.

 

It was a paranormal oddity that would have sent his eldest brother Robin into fits they would have all heard about for months.

 

“Interested in this sort of thing?” Stephen de Piaget, future sitter on Rhys de Piaget’s family seat murmured politely.

 

John only nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak and not blurt out something he would regret. In truth, it was all he could do simply to remain seated there and project an aura of calm.

 

He’d known it would happen sooner or later, that encountering someone from home. He’d just never expected it to be in conjunction with the pursuit of a woman he truly wanted nothing further to do with—

 

He took a deep breath and shook his head mentally at his ability to lie to himself. It wasn’t that he didn’t want anything to do with her.

 

It wasn’t that at all.

 

He looked up at her standing behind the lectern, her dark hair pulled back in her usual business chignon, her too-thin frame clothed in a skirt and conservative dark sweater. All she lacked was a pair of librarian’s glasses perched on her nose to look the part of a university fixture.

 

He wondered how old she was. His age, perhaps, or a bit younger. He also wanted to know where she’d been born, what her youth had been like, why she had decided to come to England where she had attracted the gaze of the Earl of Sedgwick, planted herself in that castle, then found her way to his shop where he had stood in the shadows, laid eyes on her, and found himself utterly and completely lost.

 

He’d never believed in love at first sight.

 

Before.

 

He turned away from that thought as quickly as possible and settled for simply watching the girl lecturing up there on the stage as if she truly knew what she was talking about—which, he discovered after only a few minutes, she most definitely did. She was discussing the politics of medieval England as if she’d been privy to the king’s councils, dissecting the skirmishes of the time period as if they’d been a chess game and she a master of the art.

 

Very well, so he hadn’t stopped to think that there was a reason she’d earned her degrees at such a young age. He had assumed they were of a less taxing nature. Humanities, perhaps, or music appreciation.

 

“She’s brilliant,” Stephen de Piaget said, “isn’t she?”

 

John nodded, because he could readily hear that for himself.

 

“B.A. in art history,” Stephen murmured. “Her masters in Old and Middle English, and her PhD in Medieval Political Thought. I have often told her she was born in the wrong century.”

 

“If she’d been born in medieval times, they likely wouldn’t have allowed her any education at all,” John said, before he thought better of it.

 

“Sadly enough, I imagine that’s true,” Stephen agreed. “Unless perhaps she’d been born to a more enlightened sort of man.”

 

John didn’t dare comment. His father had certainly been that sort of enlightened man, for his daughters had been subjected to the same rigorous education his sons had. John merely nodded, hoping Stephen would take the hint and leave him alone. Whatever else they did there at Artane, they apparently still taught the lords’ sons manners. Stephen sat back and remained blessedly silent for the rest of the lecture, most of which John didn’t hear.

 

He was too busy trying to breathe normally.

 

’Twas madness. He had his life, his discreet, private life where he controlled any and all access to anything he could do and anyone he might have been. What he wanted was to go back to that life and—

 

He had to take another deep breath. Nay, as difficult to admit as it was, he feared going back to that safe life was becoming less possible by the moment. He had stepped out of what was comfortable, not the first day when he’d taken Tess her credit card, but the next day when he’d taken out a business card and written Studio Five’s address on the back. Though he wished he could say otherwise, the writing down of that address hadn’t been a random thing; it had been a purposeful, deliberate, absolutely deranged decision, but he’d made it just the same.