One Magic Moment(34)
Author: Lynn Kurland

 

She thought about that while she did her best to remember where to put her feet. She also thought about the fact that even though John was wearing the simplest garb there, he was the one who looked like a lord’s son.

 

For some reason, that thought caught her heart and wrenched it, hard.

 

She lasted through three dances, three very formal, non-touchy, medieval dances before she looked over and saw Peaches watching her from a spot near the punch bowl. She looked away only to have her eyes full of John who looked so much like Montgomery that it left her with the unwholesome feeling that the future was again colliding with the past—and not just the past of two months ago when Montgomery and Pippa had danced in her hall, but the past past where Pippa and Montgomery had no doubt spent innumerable evenings dancing with each other just as she was dancing with John.

 

She shivered. The whole evening had become full of things she didn’t want to think about. If she hadn’t taken the castle, Pippa wouldn’t have come to England, then Pippa wouldn’t have fallen into the moat and into Montgomery de Piaget’s arms, Pippa wouldn’t be trapped in the Middle Ages, and she herself wouldn’t be looking at her medieval extended relation who was loitering in the wrong century, but she was finding that she increasingly didn’t want him to be anywhere else.

 

“I need a breath of air,” she said, gulping down unwholesome amounts of the same. “I’ll be right back. Make yourself at home.”

 

He only frowned.

 

She shot Peaches a look she knew Peaches understood completely, then walked through the kitchens and out into the stables. She flicked on the lights, then paused in front of an empty box. She wasn’t one to weep, but she was fast coming to the realization that she might not manage to avoid it.

 

She felt John come to a stop next to her. She wanted to offer a litany of excuses as to why she was so close to losing it, but she supposed that wasn’t necessary. She took another gulp of damp, chilly December air, then gestured to the empty stall.

 

“Lord Roland kept horses,” she managed. “I imagine all the lords of Sedgwick kept horses.” She looked at him. “Do you like horses?”

 

“Love them,” he said, then he bit his tongue. He was silent for a moment or two, then sighed. “I had one in my youth. I don’t have room for any now, of course.”

 

“I do, but I wouldn’t know what to do with them,” she said. “They’re awfully big. And they bite.”

 

He leaned against the stall and looked at her gravely. “Only if they’re mistreated. Or you get your fingers in their mouths.”

 

She nodded and attempted a smile. Unfortunately, and to her horror, she found that her eyes were filling with tears. She would have tried to brush them away as they fell, but she didn’t want to draw attention to them. She looked at him and took a deep breath. “I don’t cry very often.”

 

“I was late in my rescue.”

 

She shook her head and managed a small laugh. “It wasn’t that, and it wasn’t you—it isn’t you.” Well, it was him, but it wasn’t as if she could tell him that. She looked up at the ceiling until she had control over herself. “I’m fine.”

 

“So I see,” he said. “What’s bothering you, then, if it isn’t my tardy rescue?”

 

“I’m supposed to tell you all my secrets yet have none of yours in return?” she asked with an attempt at levity.

 

His expression was grave. “I don’t have any secrets.”

 

She would beg to differ later, when she wasn’t still reeling from dancing with him inside. She also wasn’t about to tell him anything he wanted to know. It was one thing to talk to Peaches, who had so generously put off her own descent into grief so Tess could go first; it was another to describe her broken heart to the man who was so unwittingly mixed up in it all.

 

She wondered how his parents and siblings had managed to lose him to a different time, never knowing if he were alive or dead, never having even so much as a clue as to his happiness or lack thereof.

 

“I’m fine,” she repeated, ignoring the way her eyes were still leaking. It was the remnants of hay in the barn, she was sure of that. Obviously she was allergic to horses and hadn’t realized it over the years.

 

He reached up and moved a strand of hair back from her forehead. “Does Peaches know what ails you?”

 

She nodded. “She lived it with me.”

 

“Lived what, Tess?” he asked, his expression even more serious than before. “What befell you?”

 

It was such a formal, old-fashioned way to put it, she almost smiled.

 

Or she would have, if she hadn’t been so close to breaking down. She didn’t know him, was sure she shouldn’t get close to him, knew her heart wouldn’t survive whatever path they walked together, but she couldn’t seem to keep herself from blurting out the truth.

 

“I lost my younger sister.”

 

He flinched. It was the last thing she saw him do before he reached out and pulled her into his arms.

 

“Is she dead?” he asked quietly.

 

That was the exact thing she just couldn’t bring herself to think about. She wasn’t even sure how to answer it. She knew that eight centuries in the past Pippa was still alive, but only if they were living in a sort of parallel universe, which she wasn’t entirely sure wasn’t the case. But if she was to look at things on a time line, then yes, Pippa was most certainly . . .

 

She let out a shuddering breath and nodded.

 

“Ach, you poor gel,” he said, rubbing his hand over her back. “I’m so sorry.”

 

She clutched the back of his tunic, which seemed altogether too nice for a cheesy reproduction thing, and forced herself to get hold of herself. She wasn’t a weeper, as a rule, preferring to look at things in a logical, rational manner and deal with them just as logically, but it had been a rather trying autumn. And she had held it together—poorly—when she likely should have wept with Peaches and gotten it out of her system. Which she would do, when she’d gotten over stifling her current batch of bitter tears.

 

That Montgomery de Piaget better have made her sister unbelievably happy, or she was going to go back in time, march up to his castle’s front gates, and punch him in the nose.

 

John held her for several very long minutes in silence without a single complaint as she fought to keep herself from completely losing it. Maybe it would have been better if she had bawled her eyes out. Unfortunately, all she could do was stand there and shake.