Page 11 of When I Fall in Love (De Piaget #4)

J ennifer tried to catch Nicholas as he fell, but it was impossible. He was too heavy and he had fallen too fast. She knelt down next to him and started to roll him over on his back, but she stopped in surprise. She looked at Miles who was kneeling on the other side of him.

“Feel him,” she said.

Miles put his hand on his brother’s back, then whistled softly. “He’s burning with fever.”

“What is it?”

“Poison,” Miles said succinctly.

“You can’t mean that,” she said in disbelief.

Miles bent over and looked closely at the wound on his arm. Jennifer looked at it as well. It didn’t look any worse than she supposed any other medieval arrow wound would look, especially given that Nicholas had ripped it out of his flesh with no particular care. It was a smallish wound, no more than an inch wide, but it had been deep. She would be the first to admit that a proper suture needle would have been a better tool, but she’d done the best with what she’d had.

“Poison?” she repeated. “Why do you think so?”

“Because it was Ledenham,” Miles said simply, “and because my brother didn’t complain. Had it been merely a bout of foul humors, he would have felt it coming on long before this and likely wailed like a babe over it.”

She frowned at him. “Are you joking?”

Miles smiled. “I might be.”

“How can you joke at a time like this?”

“Because he is senseless and will remember nothing of it,” Miles said. “If I cannot jest at his expense now, then when?”

“Miles!”

He waved his hand dismissively. “I am trying to ease your mind, of course. Nay, this is poison and it isn’t beyond Ledenham to do such a thing.”

“But what kind of monster poisons an arrow?”

“One with a particular grudge against my family,” Miles said. “I’ll tell you of it later, but first we must put him to bed. He’ll catch his death out here in the hall.” He paused. “Montgomery says you know much about herbs.”

Jennifer swallowed with difficulty. “I know a little.” She paused. “You know, it’s one thing to make up a good salad or soup; it’s another thing entirely to heal someone.”

“But you can,” he said. “Can’t you?”

Jennifer thought back to the hours she’d passed with Patrick MacLeod and all his lessons on all the properties of herbs she might find useful in another century. She’d learned it all because it had felt good to be outside in the fresh air and because his enthusiasm for weeds was infectious. She’d never dreamed that the knowledge might be the difference between life and death.

She looked at Miles. “Do I have a choice?”

“I could ride for the abbey at Seakirk,” he said slowly. “They have healers there.” He paused. “Of a sort.”

“What would they do?”

“Bleed him, no doubt, to balance the humors in his form.” Miles paused. “I’ve never thought that a wise idea.”

Bleeding? She wasn’t an expert, but she’d seen her share of movies set in medieval times. Even in Hollywood, bleeding was a pretty gruesome practice. She had no faith at all in its efficacy. She shook her head. “No. No bleeding. We’ll just do what we can.”

Miles reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. “I trust you. Now, do you have what you need or must you make a search?”

Jennifer thought of all the herbs she and Montgomery had already collected. She had what would serve, but she could use more and since she knew what to look for, it was best that she do the searching. She looked up at Montgomery who was standing behind Miles.

“Get a torch and you and I will go. Miles, you’ll take him to the steward’s room?”

“Done,” Miles said.

“John, can you boil water?”

“Um,” John said hesitantly.

Miles rolled his eyes. “Go with Jennifer and Montgomery and I’ll see to the water as well.”

Jennifer took the torch Montgomery was holding and hurried across the great hall and out into the night.

Patrick had only given her one concoction to try in case of poison. Apparently the herbal remedy had been a possibility in medieval Scotland or he wouldn’t have known about it. Maybe the same thing held true for medieval England.

Half an hour later, she walked back into the steward’s room with handfuls of herbs and the twins at her heels. Miles had his brother stretched out on the bed, only partially dressed. Jennifer promised herself a good long look later, when she thought Nicholas might survive.

She handed the herbs to Montgomery and looked at Miles. “Hot water?”

“Aye,” he said simply and left the room.

Jennifer sat down on a stool by the bed and looked at Nicholas lying there. Her stomach was in such knots, she couldn’t even gawk at him as she should have. Maybe later, when he wasn’t still as death and she couldn’t feel the heat rolling off him like a wave. She glanced down at her bandaged hand and realized that it was aching abominably. Well, she would think about that later, too. It was just a dislocated finger, not a life-threatening wound. Not like what Nicholas was suffering.

She swallowed hard. There was something terribly unforgiving about life and death in the Middle Ages.

“Here, lady,” Miles said.

Jennifer turned to him and nodded. “Sure,” she said, putting her shoulders back. “We need cool water and clean cloths as well, if you can find them. We’ll try to flush the poison out of him with as much of my tea as possible. If his fever goes too high, we’ll try to bring it down.” She took a deep breath. “That’s all I know how to do.” She looked at Miles.

He smiled encouragingly. “It will be enough.”

She took another deep breath. “All right. Tea first”

She wished she’d had dried herbs, but she did the best she could with fresh and steeped them as long as she dared. She looked at Miles while they were waiting.

“This won’t taste good. Do you think we’ll be able to get it down him?”

“I’ll see to it,” Miles said grimly. “What about the wound?”

“I suppose we could open it and try to draw out the poison, but I think it’s gone all the way through his body by now.” She took a deep breath. “I know the type of herb to heal all kinds of things, but poison...” She shivered. “It’s his life at stake.”

“Shall I ride for the friar?”

She looked up at him. “Do you trust those monks?”

“With my soup? Possibly. With my life? Never.”

“Do you pray, Miles?”

He smiled grimly. “Aye. But first let’s see what your herbs can do. He’s a strong lad and has much to live for.”

“Revenge on Ledenham?”

“Among other things.”

Jennifer looked at Montgomery and John, standing in a comer of the small chamber, looking grave. “Montgomery, do you have another candle? I’d like more light.”

He nodded and ran from the room. John only stood there, grim-faced. Jennifer looked back at Nicholas. If he died, it would devastate his brothers. She could hardly believe she was even thinking about the possibility, but she was so far out of her depth at the moment, she wasn’t quite sure what to think. All she knew was that she wouldn’t manage very well in her own life either if Nicholas died, knowing that she had been partially responsible.

“This isn’t your fault,” Miles said quietly.

She looked up at him and blinked back tears. “Are you reading my thoughts now?”

He tapped his forehead meaningfully. “My terrifying intellect coming to the fore.”

“Frightening.”

He smiled deprecatingly. “Actually, I put myself in your shoes and wondered how I would feel. You must realize that it was Ledenham’s choice to strike out at Nick. It was Nick’s choice not to aid you initially as he should have. Your only choice was to walk out the front gates and leave us all bereft behind you.”

She smiled briefly. “You’re very kind.”

“I always tell the truth.” He leaned back against the wall. “I don’t suppose you could stay, could you?”

“Stay?”

“Stay here with us.”

Jennifer felt the breath be knocked out of her.

“Then again, perhaps your family is waiting for you.”

“Yes,” she managed. “I’m sure they are.”

“Hmmm,” was all he said.

She turned back to Nicholas. Stay?

Never mind that he wouldn’t want her to. The simple fact was that she had a life in another time, a life she wanted to get back to. She couldn’t stay.

She also couldn’t think about the future, or the Future or anything else but doing all she could for the man lying in the bed in front of her, shifting restlessly as he burned.

Montgomery returned with more candles, which John lit. Jennifer drew out a cup of her brew and looked at Miles.

“Can you help me hold him up?”

“Hold him down, you mean?” Miles asked mildly.

She smiled. “I’ll laugh about it with you later.”

“We’ll poach a bottle of Nick’s finest for the occasion,” Miles promised.

“Does he have a finest?”

“Hidden somewhere, no doubt. If it’s here, I’ll find it.”

Jennifer sipped the tea, winced at the bitterness of it, then looked at Nicholas’s brother.

“It’s vile. But it’s also now or never.”

She could only hope never would be something Nicholas would bellow at her in conjunction with again when he woke and complained about the taste of her tea.

It was a very long night. At one point, during that very long night after they’d tried to get tea down Nicholas for the fifth time and ended up wearing most of it, she wished she had a first-aid kit with her. Or some dried herbs ready-made in tea form. All she had was the knowledge Patrick MacLeod had given her and the most rudimentary of tools with which to make that knowledge work.

She suspected that might not be enough.

She sat there far into the night, feeling very inadequate. Obviously that was yet another reason why she shouldn’t be anywhere but in the twenty-first century with a drugstore and emergency room down the street. She was not good with poisons inflicted by disgruntled medieval barons.

But she did the best she could.

And hoped it would be enough.

I t was barely dawn when Miles convinced the boys to go curl up on the floor in the great hall and took himself off to do a little guard duty. Jennifer was almost too tired to think. She had to, though, to digest what had gone on that afternoon and what it meant.

Her gate was destroyed. The ramifications of that were enormous. She couldn’t say that she was a vastly experienced time traveler, but she did have a few centuries under her belt. She didn’t know all the rules, but she did know that it was only possible to follow another person to wherever a time gate had taken them by using the same gate.

And only if the destination side of that gate were functional.

Her family couldn’t come along behind her and arrive at the place she had because her side of the gate was destroyed. And since they couldn’t follow her, they wouldn’t have any clue where she’d gone.

She bowed her head. She could only imagine what would happen at home.

Megan would panic, first when she didn’t come home, then when they found her car abandoned near the abbey. Her parents would be devastated. Someone probably would attempt a rescue only to have it fail as many times as they might attempt it because Ledenham had dug up her side of the gate.

She was, for all intents and purposes, stuck.

She sat up, then slowly pulled her cell phone out of her pocket. Her wallpaper was a picture of the Manhattan skyline. She stared at it, hearing the sounds, smelling the city smells, seeing the snow in winter, feeling the press of people on the subway in the summer.

Yet where she sat, there was absolute silence.

Well, except for the ragged sound of Nicholas’s breathing.

She looked at her phone for quite some time, then let out a deep, shuddering breath. Slowly, she turned off the power. It beeped once, then the light faded and the phone went silent as well. She put it back in her pocket.

She closed her eyes briefly. She wanted to believe that she was there for a purpose. Maybe Nicholas would have been wounded by Ledenham anyway and she was there to save his life. She turned that around over and over in her head until it gave her a headache, then she stopped. She reached out and took Nicholas’s pulse another time. It was still racing and he was still burning.

She put her head down on the bed. She would rest for a minute, then go make more tea and try to get it down him.

It was all she could do.

S he realized she had fallen asleep with her head on the bed only because her back hurt so badly she could no longer ignore it. She straightened with a groan. The candles had burned low again. She propped her chin up on her fists and tried to remember how long she’d been there. Two nights? Three? She rubbed her face with her good hand. Three nights already. She supposed, based on the light trying to get in through the crack in the shutter, that it was day again. Day number three.

She rose, gasped at the pain in her back, then limped over and lit another candle with the one that was threatening to go out. She hobbled back over to the bed and sat down on her stool. She looked at Nicholas.

His eyes were open.

She suffered a momentary flash of panic until she saw that he was breathing. Then she put her face down on the bed and let out a shaky breath.

Thank heavens.

“I feel terrible,” he croaked.

She lifted her head and smiled for the first time in three days. “I imagine you do.”

“What in the hell did you pour down me?”

She couldn’t help it. She laughed. “You’re so welcome, gracious lord. I worked very hard on that tea.”

“It was dreadful.”

“And here I was afraid you wouldn’t remember it.”

“I had hoped it was but a nightmare.” He coughed. “Woman, you make appallingly bitter brews.”

“Tell Ledenham the next time you see him. He thinks I’m a witch.”

Nicholas snorted weakly. “No witch of any skill would make such vile stuff.” He let out a shaky breath and closed his eyes. “What was it?”

“We think poison. From the arrow.”

He took a deep breath, then coughed again. “Fever?”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“Three nights,” she said quietly. “Today is the third morning.”

He was silent for several minutes, then opened his eyes and looked at her. “In truth?”

“Yes. But I didn’t worry about you,” she said lightly. “Miles said you had much to live for.”

“Did he,” Nicholas said. “And what would that be?”

“An extensive cache of very fine French wine that you hadn’t come close to finishing yet,” she said. “He said you hoard things.”

“He would.”

“He suggested that if you lived, you might want to share.”

“With him, no doubt.”

“Well, yes, actually,” she said.

He took a deep breath, then coughed. Then he merely breathed in and out raggedly for several minutes. Jennifer reached out and briefly touched his arm. His skin was cool, for a change. She would have to tell Patrick MacLeod that his recipes were good ones.

Somehow, she suspected he probably already knew as much.

“Did I behave?” Nicholas asked suddenly.

“Ha,” Jennifer said, before she could stop herself. Then she smiled. “You’re a terrible patient.”

“Patient?”

She bit her tongue. She was going to have to stop mixing English with medieval Norman French.

“One who is treated by a healer,” she clarified. “You’re a rotten one.”

He turned his head to look at her. “Was I indeed?”

“You were indeed, but I suppose I could blame that on the fever.”

“I fear to ask what I did.”

“Oh, I’ll tell you without you having to ask,” she said, settling herself more comfortably on her stool. “You spoke to people who were not here, you cursed, you spat out your tea on me and Miles, you threatened to kill all your brothers including Robin, who you vowed to track down and kill as soon as you were able, and you almost gave me a black eye.”

“Did I?” he asked quickly, starting to sit up.

“I said almost,” she reminded him. “I was too quick for you.”

He fell back against the bed. “Forgive me.”

“I did, already.” She didn’t bother to tell him that he’d also slept like the dead and been so pale, she’d been certain on several occasions that he had been dead.

She watched him as his eyelids fell and he began to sleep again. She looked up as Miles came into the chamber. His expression was grave, then he looked at her.

“The fever is broken?” he asked quickly.

“It is,” she said with a smile.

“And he is himself?”

“He complained about my tea.”

Miles smiled. “Ah, then all is as it should be.” He came and sat down on the end of the bed. “He owes you his life.”

She shook her head. “You’re trying to make me feel better, but none of it would have been necessary if he hadn’t come to rescue me.”

“Trust me, Ledenham would have found some other opportunity to harm him. Instead, content yourself with knowing that you were here to tend him when he needed you.”

“I suppose,” she said, feeling somewhat better. She looked at Nicholas for a moment or two, decided she was just too tired to really appreciate him, and turned to Miles. “Well? What shall we do now?”

“Let us discuss him whilst he’s senseless,” Miles said, making himself more comfortable on the edge of the bed. “Shall I begin with his faults or his virtues?”

“Which list is longer?”

Miles laughed. “I daresay you’re not rested enough for the faults. You tell me what you want to know and I’ll give you the brief answers. We’ll save the more interesting details for another day.”

“All right,” Jennifer said. Nicholas was asleep again and Miles looked ready for a good gossip. She was feeling a little punch-drunk from lack of sleep and it seemed like as good an idea as any. She would ask her questions and see what sorts of answers she could get. “Why isn’t he married? He has to be, what, almost thirty?”

“A score and eight,” Miles said. “As to why he is not wed, there is no good answer. He has looked at every eligible maiden my grandmother has been able to produce. He will have none of them.”

“Are they ugly? Bad tempered? Not frugal?”

“Not that I’ve seen.”

“Then what’s his problem?”

Miles shrugged helplessly. “I have no idea.” He paused. “Well, I have an idea why he wouldn’t be interested now —”

Nicholas’s foot jerked so hard, it almost sent Miles off the edge of the bed. Jennifer looked quickly at him, but he was snoring.

“Bad dream,” she surmised.

“No doubt,” Miles said dryly, resuming his place. “Now, what of you, my lady? Are you wed?”

“No,” she said. “I suppose your brother and I are in the same situation. I’ve met many men, mostly musicians, and I just haven’t been able to find one I like.” She smiled briefly. “I’m getting old, I suppose.”

“Surely not,” Miles said. “You look barely past your childhood days.”

She laughed. “Very diplomatic of you.”

“I’m always that, at least,” Miles said, his eyes twinkling. “Now, do I dare ask your age?”

“I don’t have anything to hide,” Jennifer said with a shrug. “I’m twenty-eight.”

“Nick’s age,” Miles said. “Yet not wed? How is this? Is it your music that has kept you from it?”

“Partly, I suppose. Mostly I think it’s because I just couldn’t find the right man.”

“I’m available,” Miles offered.

Nicholas kicked him so hard that he landed on the floor in a sprawl. He crawled to his feet and glared at his brother.

“That was no dream.”

“You’re disturbing my rest,” Nicholas muttered. “Go tend the horses.”

“I already tended the horses,” Miles said. “I’ve been tending the horses for two bloody days. I came so our good lady might go take her rest in your bed that I put together for you yesterday, you ungrateful wh—”

“Careful,” Nicholas said, opening his eyes and looking at his brother narrowly.

Miles rubbed his abused backside. “I don’t know that I’ll sit with you after all. But I will send Mistress McKinnon upstairs.”

“Feed her first,” Nicholas said weakly. “I’ll come fetch something for myself later.”

“Of course you won’t,” Jennifer said, rising. “I’ll go make something. Miles, don’t irritate him. Nicholas, don’t kick him again.” She rolled her eyes. “Your poor mother.”

“And we are the well-behaved ones,” Miles said. “You should see him with Robin.”

“I can only imagine.” She limped toward the door, then turned briefly and looked back at Nicholas.

He was watching her gravely.

At least he was alive to do so.

She was very, very grateful.

She smiled at him, then left the room and went to the kitchen for something edible. There was an abundance of rather wilted greens on the table, but she wasn’t going to be choosey. She sorted things into piles, then set to chopping and mixing up a salad. There were flowers there as well. That was Montgomery’s doing, she was certain. She would have to thank him later, for they were lovely and she suspected he’d picked them to please her. She took the blossoms that were edible and sprinkled them in a ring around the edge of her salad bowl.

And then she froze.

Flowers in the grass.

Fairy rings.

She felt her way down onto the kitchen’s lone stool. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it before. There was a fairy ring in Mr. Farris’s potato field near the inn Megan owned. The Boar’s Head Inn was a little over an a hour west of Artane, which meant it couldn’t be all that far from Wyckham. Certainly something she could get to by horse.

The gate was one she had used with Connor and Victoria to get back to Elizabethan England to rescue their grandmother. Jamie had said, after having tried it himself, that it was a very powerful gate. Thomas had suggested once that Farmer Farris put up a fence around it before someone really got lost.

Then something else occurred to her. Thomas had used a gate as well, one he had claimed was north of Artane in a clutch of rocks. Did that gate still exist as well?

Maybe she wasn’t as stuck as she had thought.

She looked down into her salad bowl. Why hadn’t either of those options occured to her in the past three days?

Oh, right.

Nicholas.

She bowed her head and thought about it all for far longer than she should have. Oh, why had he held her hand? Why had he stroked her hair?

Why did she have to meet a decent guy hundreds of years before she’d been born?

She sighed deeply. There was nothing to be done, no matter how much she wished things could have worked out differently. He was a medieval lord. He needed a medieval lady. She was not for him and he was not for her.

She would have to try again to get home.

She took a deep breath and looked blearily at the things on the work table in front of her. She would take Nicholas something to eat, then go crash upstairs in his bedroom. Maybe she would watch over him until he was well and try not to spend any more time with him than she had to so she wouldn’t become any more fond of him than she was already.

It occurred to her briefly that such had possibly been his strategy that first fortnight she’d been at Wyckham, but surely it hadn’t been for her reasons.

No, she would do what was necessary to see him get back on his feet, then run like hell for Farris’s potato field. She knew for herself that that gate worked. Surely it had a stop in the Middle Ages, sort of like a subway station. Who knew how many places she could have gotten off if she’d had the right sort of map?

She stood up and gathered together dinner. Yes, she would stay as long as was required, then get home.

And then she would spend quite a bit of time in the future trying to forget the way a medieval lord had looked at her when he’d woken from a fever.

As though he’d been glad to see her. As though he wanted her to stay.

She shook her head firmly. She had to go home. She had no choice.

No choice at all.