One Magic Moment(7)
Author: Lynn Kurland
He hadn’t been able to muster up even a hint of that sort of look that afternoon. He’d been too damn flustered, something he had never once in his life experienced.
Perhaps that should have been a sign of some sort.
Aye, one that said he should ask old Mrs. Winston where the poor driver in question might be found so he could return her card to her and have done as quickly as possible. He turned up the collar of his leather jacket and quickened his pace toward the local green grocer.
Half an hour later, he was standing under the awning of Doris Winston’s front stoop. The door opened and he was greeted with almost as much enthusiasm as she used when he arrived to pay his rent on the little cottage behind his shop that she owned. He’d offered to buy it—indeed he would have preferred that—but she had insisted that for as long as she was alive she wanted to see him every month. Not being one to argue with old women, he’d acquiesced without complaint. The grocery runs were made simply because he liked her.
“Ah, Johnny,” she said, holding open her door, “you’ve come for tea.”
“I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble,” he said politely.
“You know it’s no trouble, lad. Come and sit, and fill an old woman’s ears with village gossip. I heard you rescued a pretty thing from unwanted advances in the pub a few minutes ago.”
“Three hours ago,” John corrected, following her into her kitchen. “Who passed on those tidings?”
“I never reveal my sources,” Doris said airily. “Just leave the things there, love, and come sit. We’ll have a little chat over my famous black currant jam.”
He imagined they would.
She graciously allowed him to hold out her chair at her tea table. He sat across from her, indulged for a quarter hour in a ritual he had come to quite enjoy over the years, then pushed his cup aside and looked at his landlady.
“I’m curious,” he said in as offhand a manner as he could manage. “Mildly.”
“Her name’s Tess Alexander.”
He suppressed a smirk. He’d known that already from a casual glance at her credit card.
“And she’s a Yank.”
He felt his jaw slip down. “She’s not. She didn’t have an accent.”
“And how much conversation did you have with her, my lad?”
John pursed his lips. “Enough to listen to her threaten to do damage to Frank Rivers if he didn’t keep his hands to himself.”
“Thought she needed a rescue, did you?”
“I was being gentlemanly.”
Doris only smiled. “I imagine you were. First gentlemanly, then curious. Where will it lead?”
“To my returning her charge card to her and resuming my own very sensible existence whilst she goes about her own,” John said grimly. “Pray give me details to aid me in that.”
Doris pushed her teacup aside as well. “She’s an academic, or so I understand, and has a PhD in medieval studies of some sort.”
John supposed he would look less than dignified to have his mouth continually hanging open, so he decided it was best to just grit his teeth.
Medieval studies. His least favorite topic of conversation, as it happened. He’d known just looking at her that the relationship was doomed from the start.
“She was offered Sedgwick by Roland, the last Earl of Sedgwick,” Doris continued, “though it’s my understanding she didn’t have a clue who he was at first. Thought him the caretaker, I daresay. You know he wasn’t one for carrying on with his title.”
John hadn’t known Sedgwick had had a last earl, so he supposed the current owner, the possessor of those astonishingly pretty green eyes, might be forgiven as well.
“I believe he’d been looking for the proper person to bequeath his keep to,” Doris continued with a faint shrug, “which took a bit of doing. He’d learned of her through some symposium on medieval life and liked what he’d heard. He up and gave her the castle without hesitation. She doesn’t seem to lack for funds, so I’m assuming he gave her a few quid as well to keep the lights on. She runs parties there of all sorts, mostly reenactment things. Those seem particularly suited to a castle still boasting a roof, don’t they?”
He grunted, because that was all he could do.
“I think she teaches still, some. I imagine you might find her lectures interesting.”
“I much prefer the nineteenth century,” he commented as nonchalantly as possible. “The music was sublime, don’t you agree?”
She looked at him over her spectacles. “I agree. Perhaps you should play something from that era for me sometime.”
He agreed that he would, thanked her profusely for tea, then made for the door before she could ask any more questions or delve any further into her list of things she possibly knew about him. He’d unbent far enough the month before to tell her he’d been born in the north, grown to manhood in the north, then left home to seek his fortune. He’d admitted to a former employment at a garage, but he hadn’t elaborated. He never elaborated.
“You’ll come play for me this week,” she announced. “I’ll expect something tolerable to listen to.”
“I’ll attempt it,” he promised before he escaped out her front door.
He walked quickly back toward his shop only to realize that he was walking quickly toward something he didn’t want to. He didn’t care for otherworldly sensations. The fact that he’d had Fate tap him smartly on the shoulder when Mistress Tess Alexander had pulled into his car park had unnerved him more than he wanted to admit. He didn’t know her and wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to rectify that. He liked his pleasant, unremarkable life where he merely passed his days enjoying the comforts modern times could provide. Anything else made him supremely uncomfortable.
Nay, it was more than that. As far as he was concerned, his life had begun eight years ago when he’d left home with nothing but the clothes on his back, a bag full of coins, and his wits to keep himself alive. Thinking about anything that had come before was something he absolutely refused to do. If an acquaintance began to pry into those years, he or she was pointedly discouraged from prying any further. Blunt questions were answered with an absolute severing of all contact. As far as he was concerned, he had no past.
It was safer that way.